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Brody drove Damian's classic pickup truck at a slow pace down Rte. 62, while Sean followed him driving the town's tractor back to Tionesta. The windy two-lane road followed the river closely through the rolling hills of the Allegheny National Forest, and the setting sun produced a rainbow of color that danced off the smooth waters of the Allegheny River to Sean’s right. The beauty of the moment made it hard for Sean to focus on his surroundings for any threats that may be present. He remembered this stretch of road from numerous motorcycle rides he had taken with his brother and father. Every few years, the three of them would escape for a weekend and rent a cabin in the area for some guy time. Sean couldn’t remember the last time they had done it before the collapse. Now that his father was gone, Sean regretted that he hadn't spent more time with him.
Halfway to Tionesta, they stopped at an open stretch of road so that Sean could fire a couple of rounds through the new Bravo Company AR-15 he had acquired and make adjustments to the Aimpoint red dot. Apparently, it had never been zeroed because it was hitting nearly four inches off at fifty yards. After firing two sets of three rounds each, they decided to continue down the road a few miles and make the final corrections. They didn't want to stay in one spot too long and give anyone who might be in the area time to pinpoint their exact location. They were probably being overly cautious as the road into town didn't have any visible homes situated on the steep hills along the river, but they figured it was better to be safe than sorry.
After being admitted through the town's roadblock, they found the mayor, Pastor Dan, at the same greenhouse where they had left him that morning. Sean parked the noisy tractor next to the greenhouse and Pastor Dan stepped outside, offering his hand to Sean as he jumped off the tractor. "Did you get your family situated?" he asked.
"Yes, Dan. Thank you again for everything,” Sean said sincerely.
Dan smiled and nodded before turning toward Brody who approached them carrying a red plastic bin. "We come bearing gifts," Brody said as he set the heavy container down at the mayor’s feet with a groan. "Thanks for the help," he ribbed Sean for not helping him carry it from the truck.
"Don't mention it, Bud," Sean joked back.
"What do we have here?" the mayor asked while pulling the red bin’s lid off.
"We followed an escape tunnel your security guards found last week. It's a couple hundred yards long and offers a way to escape the retreat undetected if needed. We're not sure where on the property it comes out yet, but we'll figure it out. At the end of the tunnel we found another hidden room with various supplies. It's not as big as the others and has just enough to outfit a small group of people if needed. Hauling all that gear back down the tiny tunnel isn't really an option and we thought it best to leave the stuff there in case of an emergency. At the same time, there are about a dozen rifles stored in that room that the town could probably use to bolster its defenses...unless you wanted to leave them there for a fallback. Again, we'll leave it up to you and the council to decide what's best. We'll get an inventory list together for you in the next couple days. Just an FYI, Brody and I swapped out our tactical vests for two of the vests that were there and I took one of the rifles for my own personal use. I hope you don't mind?” Sean asked.
Pastor Dan looked up from digging through the plastic bin. "That's not a problem Sean. We’re indebted to you guys. Did you say there are a dozen rifles there?"
"Yeah, well, eleven now," Sean smiled. "They are nice high-end Bravo Company Recce 16 models with Aimpoint red dots on them, identical to this one."
Sean dropped the mag and locked the bolt back before trying to hand it to the mayor to inspect, but he waved it off. "I wouldn't know the difference between the rifle you hold in your hands and the two dozen or so rifles we acquired from Mr. Andrews’ safe room last month."
"There's actually a big difference," Brody answered. "The Bravo Company rifles in that storage room are built to military specifications making them much more reliable than the cheap Bushmasters you retrieved out of his safe room before. I don't understand why Mr. Andrews would have even bought and been using those Bushmasters when he had access to these, but hey, whatever. There is also a large bin of plate carriers like these that your guards could be wearing,” Brody said, pointing at Sean’s vest. “They contain Level IV stand-alone ceramic plates and I would recommend the council retrieve them all because they won’t save anyone’s life sitting in underground storage. As far as the camping gear and other supplies, it might make sense to leave it there for an emergency, like Sean said."
"You give solid advice as usual, Brody. I'll discuss it with council when we meet tomorrow night. Did you find these radios in there as well?” the mayor asked.
“Yeah,” Sean answered him. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense why they would be in that particular storage room or why Mr. Andrews hadn’t tried to set up the radio at his compound. The only thing we could figure was that with this safe room ten feet underground and only accessible from a long tunnel, he must have known the room would be EMP proof.”
“Well, I’m not an expert, Sean, but I think these handheld ham radios only work for short distances like regular walkie talkies,” he mentioned, scrutinizing one of the boxes.
“Actually, Dan, there is a larger hundred-watt base station model on the bottom. It’s the one covered in bubble wrap,” Brody said as he dug through the bin to reach the large box at the bottom. He removed the bubble wrap and handed the box to the mayor. “We don’t really know anything about ham radios either, but you had said that there was someone in town that might know.”
“Yeah, Hank does. You remember him from the council meeting the other night. He was the one we sent up to Warren to see what was going on. He said that he used to have his ham radio operating license years ago. He doesn’t claim to be an expert, but said that if the radio was in good shape, he should be able to operate it.”
Brody nudged Sean on the shoulder. “Hey, wasn’t Hank on security detail back there at the roadblock?”
Sean just shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t notice, to be honest. There wasn’t a lot of room when they opened the roadblock, and I was trying not to wreck the tractor into anything,” Sean chuckled.
“What do you say you boys give me a ride up there and we’ll see what he thinks about all this?” Pastor Dan said, standing up and wiping his dirty hands off on his jeans.
“Let’s do it,” Brody said. “We’ve gotta be quick though, we are losing light fast. We still need to return Damian’s pickup to him and swap it out for the Bronco.” They had acquired a late-sixties Chevy Impala and a rusted out mid-seventies Ford Bronco after defeating the group of looters that had attacked the retreat earlier that spring. They gave the Impala to the town, but they had kept the Bronco and not run it very often. In fact, before Sean’s family had shown up, they were planning on donating it to Tionesta as well. Damian and Andrew were supposed to be going over it to make sure it was running. “Are you going to help me this time?” Brody asked Sean with an exaggerated smile, nodding towards the heavy plastic bin filled with radios.
Sean smiled back and nodded before giving his friend a playful shove. They carried the bin to the pickup truck parked on the street before speeding up the road to the edge of town. They found Hank leaning against a car and talking to one of the other men on security detail. The town's security forces looked like a hodgepodge of hunters for the most part. Most wore some sort of camouflage, but mostly of the hunting variety.
“How are things going, Gentlemen?” Pastor Dan asked the two men as he got out of the truck.
“Mostly quiet, Mayor. The bridge detail radioed a few minutes ago that they are escorting two travelers through town right now; one of them has an injured leg. Other than that, we haven’t seen anyone here all day,” the stocky man next to Hank answered. Any travelers who approached Tionesta’s roadblocks were given directions on how to bypass the town. It was an extra seven miles with quite a few steep hills, so in certain cases where travelers were elderly or injured and didn't look threatening, they would be escorted through town. They would have to agree to be thoroughly searched for weapons which would be confiscated and returned to them once they reached the other side of town. They would also have to agree to wear hoods over their heads for the section of road that passed by the greenhouse and yards which were repurposed into fields for the town’s crops. It was important that any travelers were kept unaware of the town’s food resources. As more time went by, they encountered less and less travelers willing to travel the country's roadways.
“Hank, Sean and Brody found some radios at Mr. Andrews’ retreat that we’d like for you to take a look at.” Hank just gave a short nod and walked over in no apparent rush. Sean remembered him from the earlier council meeting. Hank seemed to be a fairly laid back individual. He slowly picked through the plastic bin, while organizing the boxes in neat piles on the truck’s tailgate. Sean gave a sidelong glance to Brody, who rolled his eyes in response to the man’s slow and meticulous nature. Finally, Hank unpacked the protective wrapping on the base-station unit and turned it over in his hands, reading the entire backside of the box before commenting.
“This is a pretty nice 100 watt base unit. Yaesu is one of the more reputable manufacturers. Are you sure these radios even work?” Hank asked. “They have fairly intricate circuitry inside and with the EMP....”
Brody jumped in. “The storage room where we found these was about ten feet underground at the end of a couple hundred-yard-long tunnel,” he explained. “We already put batteries in one of the handheld units and it worked fine, so we’re assuming they should all be okay.”
“Hmmm,” Hank pondered before spending a couple more minutes looking at the different boxes and reading the fine print on each model. “Because of the terrain in this area, I'm afraid these handheld ham radios with their short stock antennas won’t work much better than the walkie talkies we already have. You might get a mile or two outside of town at most. The Yaesu would make a really nice base station for town and 100 watts will transmit stations from the other side of the country on a clear night. The problem is that we don’t have a tower in town that will broadcast the signal. Even if we could steal that tower from up the road, I don’t think it will make much difference. Tionesta’s elevation is too low down here in the valley next to the river and we are completely surrounded by mountains. Unless we put a tower up on the top of one of the hills there, we probably won’t pick up much.”
Pastor Dan shook his head. “The problem with that is we create another outpost that needs to be manned and protected. Also, how would we power it without taking one of our generators up there where it would be vulnerable? I don’t know, Sean. I think our best bet is to just take the radio with us to the tower up the road and see if we can get it to work. Then we can send a group periodically to get updates on what’s going on around the rest of the country.”
“Even that has its own risks with periodically sending a group of people into an unknown area," Sean disagreed. "What if we were to install it at the new homestead? The new retreat is located at the top of Bakers Hill. It has some tall trees around the perimeter of the property, but if we could get a tower up there, then I’m guessing we could probably get a good signal. What do you think, Hank?” Sean asked.
“Bakers Hill is definitely one of the taller hills in this area,” Hank began. “If we could get that antenna from up the road and move it to Mr. Andrews’ place, then we shouldn’t have any problems listening to whatever we want. Plus, with the river valley running in a straight line towards his place, I’m guessing we could probably transmit all the way up there with these smaller 5 watt units. Hell, you might even be able to talk between both of your retreats. However, I’m not totally familiar with exactly where they are and we’d have to look at the map to see what kind of terrain is in the way of your sightline. You would definitely be able to pick up the signal from the base station, but you may need to climb a hillside somewhere or get on a tall roof to get the signal sent back from the handheld. There are no absolutes when it comes to radio signals and it mostly involves the terrain in the area. The only way you’ll know for sure is to try it.”
Sean looked at the mayor who smiled and said, “Let’s do it. I’ll run it by each of the other council members tomorrow night, but I’m sure they will be on board. It would be really nice to be able to communicate to the outside world and get some news.” Everyone nodded their head in agreement. “If you’re willing to go, Hank, I’d like to send you with a couple men to take a look at that antenna tower and get a game plan together for what kind of tools and transportation we’ll need to haul it out of there.”
“Sure, I’d be willing to go and take a look,” Hank agreed with a half smile, which was the first time Sean had seen any positive emotion coming out of the man. Obviously, he was interested in getting news from the outside world, as well, and this assignment gave him a sense of purpose.
“Great!” Sean said eagerly. “We’ll come back through in two days to get the details from you and the council. If you’re okay with it, Mayor, I’d like to take one of the handheld ham radios and two of the midlands for each retreat since we didn’t have our radios in a protected location and have been going without radio communication since the EMP. It would be really huge for our security and would still leave the town with four handheld hams and eight additional Midlands above and beyond what you already have.”
“Go ahead and take them for now, Sean, but as you know, I’m not the final say. I’ll run that by council as well and see what they say. Okay?” Pastor Dan asked.
“Fair enough. Well, we better be on our way, Mayor. We’ve already missed our opportunity to make it back to North Homestead before dark,” Sean commented. And with that, they said good-bye to Hank and the others and departed once more, dropping the mayor off in town on their way to the East Homestead.