Part I

Mike Vasquez checked the condition of his Puma lever action carbine one last time and slid it into the scabbard where it would ride under his right leg. His partner Tom was already seated on his horse, his Ruger Mini 14 resting on the pommel of his saddle. Mike’s wife Rachel watched from the doorway of their kitchen. He had already said goodbye to her before Tom arrived, but he walked over for another embrace after he finished checking his gear. “Be careful” she whispered. Mike knew she would be worried the entire two weeks he was gone.

“Tom is shaping up to be a good partner” he answered in a low voice. “And anyway, bandits are a lot more interested in our stock than they are in us. Worst case we give them our horses and mules and walk home. Anyone who shoots a librarian would have a mighty big price on his head.” To some extent this was true. Librarians were popular figures in the various settlements, but the stock and supplies they travelled with made them tempting targets for bandits, and in these post-collapse days, the life of a remote services librarian was not without danger. Still, Mike could think of no reason not to sugar coat the work he did for Rachel’s benefit.

Swinging into the saddle, Mike brought his horse up next to Tom’s and together they rode out of town, the string of nine mules trailing behind, laden with food, gear, and of course books. With each mule carrying 160 pounds, personal gear and supplies were kept to a minimum. Mike figured an average book weighed one pound, two ounces, while a gallon of water weighed about eight and a half pounds, counting the container. Mike was keenly aware of the weight of the axe and small shovel, the grain that fed the stock when no good forage could be found and supplemented their diet at other times, and the food that he and Tom would eat on the nights they did not stop in a settlement. All of it added up to less books, and he tended to think in 18 ounce increments when calculating his loads. Personal gear was mostly kept on the librarians’ horses. Mike’s poncho and blanket were lashed behind his saddle, and his mess kit, extra shirt and socks, ammunition, tool kit, first aid supplies, and a bit of food were stored in his saddle bags. As he had explained to Tom, keeping personal gear on your own mount not only allowed the mules to carry a few more books, but in the event that a horse and rider became separated from the mules, having basic supplies on the horse made survival a bit less dicey.

The route to the first settlement, Archersville, was a familiar one, and Mike and Tom’s horses turned down the dirt path almost without needing to be directed. As the path dipped toward the first river crossing of the trip, Mike saw movement along the tree line to his left. His hand dipped toward the pistol on his belt, but before he drew he saw that there was no danger. A large wolfish dog bounded out of the undergrowth. “Kelev! I told you to stay home” Mike scolded. The dog hung his head and did its best to look pitiful.

“Aw Mike” Tom said, coming to Kelev’s defense, “we always have room for one more don’t we?”

“Alright” Mike relented. “You can come with us Kelev.” The dog immediately abandoned the pitiful routine and fell into stride next to Mike’s horse. Mike chuckled as he turned to Tom. “I thought you were supposed to be my partner?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “It seems more like maybe you and Kelev are teaming up against me.”

Tom shrugged. “I like dogs” he said. “Is there something so wrong with that? By the way, what does Kelev mean? I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Trying to change the subject, eh?” Mike chuckled. “Rachel named him. Kelev is the Hebrew word for male dog. I wanted to just name him ‘Dog’ like in that John Wayne Movie Big Jake, but Rachel didn’t like it, so she suggested Kelev.”

Now the men had reached the ford. Mike crossed first, leading the string of mules, while Tom brought up the rear. The water at the crossing was shallow, and soon the librarians were riding side by side again. As the terrain became less forgiving and the trails more narrow, this would not be an option, but during the first leg of the trip they took advantage of the opportunity to talk. Tom was a trained librarian from before the collapse, but working the reference desk in a brick and mortar library compared to guiding a string of mules through the remote settlements was really no comparison, and talking to Mike was an important part of Tom’s on the job training as well as a relief for the boredom of covering 30 miles a day on horseback.

All of the “Remote Librarians” as they termed themselves, were volunteers who were selected for their knowledge of horses and pack animals, military service, outdoor knowledge, and any combination of other factors. Tom had grown up in a hunting family, but was relatively inexperienced in bushcraft and with livestock. The Director of Libraries had paired him with Mike because Mike’s practical background was much more extensive, but he was actually not a trained librarian. The two would make a good pair, the Director had told Mike, and Mike had readily agreed. Although he valued the mission of the Remote Librarians, he was often keenly aware that he lacked the skills of a professional librarian. He had completed a master’s degree in library science while in the Army, but after getting out his lack of library experience had made finding a position in that field difficult, so he had opened a welding and machine shop and hung his degrees on the wall to gather dust.

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Well before sundown, Mike and Tom found themselves outside the walls of the first settlement they would be visiting, Fleisch’s Keep. Like many of the settlements Mike visited, Fleisch’s Keep had grown around a farmhouse that friends and relatives had flocked to in the days at the beginning of The collapse. The settlement consisted of perhaps twenty families living in trailers, cabins, barns, and even a couple of canvas wall tents. Mike guessed that a total of about 110 people lived here, which put Fleisch’s keep right in the middle of the range for a smaller sized settlement. A boy of about 16 saw the librarians approaching and ran to alert the inhabitants. Mike saw two other youths racing for the fields around the settlement, alerting work parties that the day would end early. By the time the riders and mules reached the settlement the gate at the road had been flung open and a line was forming to exchange books. The mules were quickly stripped of their loads, and Mike and Tom directed the men and boys helping with the unloading so that the books were arranged in neat rows. Of the 792 books Tom and Mike had packed in, 401 were fiction, and the rest were nonfiction. The fiction books were arranged by author, while Tom tried to keep the nonfiction books roughly arranged by Library of Congress Classification. This was not as easy as it might first seem, and Tom had given in to rearranging the books after every stop, and even then not having every book in its proper place.

As the line moved through the makeshift library, Tom checked books out by removing catalog cards, while Mike worked on placing cards back into books as they were returned. Each settlement had an envelope assigned to it, and when the envelope was empty Mike knew that all of the books checked out to citizens of Fleisch’s keep on his previous visit had now been returned. After the line had filtered completely through, a new stack of cards was placed in the envelope, and together Mike and Tom placed the returned books back in circulation for the next town before repacking the panniers with books for each mule. Then the two librarians checked over all the stock, unsaddled their horses, picketed all of the animals, and checked over their personal gear. The Remote Librarian’s mantra was “see to the books, see to your stock, see to your gun and your gear, and only then see to yourself.” Oscar Fleisch, the patriarch and original landowner of Fleisch’s Keep, knew this and kept his distance until the two men finished their tasks.

When Oscar finally approached, he simply said “you boys must be hungry,” and beckoned for them to follow him up to the farmhouse. There, the men were treated to a meal of scrambled eggs, ham, green beans, squash, and black coffee. Everything but the coffee had been grown on the farmland that the men of the settlement worked, but Mike and Tom knew that the coffee had not been obtained cheaply. In the months following the collapse, coffee had quickly become a luxury item, and now ten years on, most people drank locally produced tea daily and served coffee only on special occasions and holidays. Mike knew and liked Oscar, but he also knew that the appearance of coffee on the dinner table meant that Oscar planned to ask him a favor. Mike also knew that Oscar would not be inclined to speak about business until after the dishes had been cleared away, so he enjoyed the meal and talked with his host about hunting, the weather, and various bits of news from town and the settlements.

Finally, Oscar’s daughter collected the plates, and after a suitable interval, Oscar cleared his throat and looked at Mike and Tom.

“Now to the matter at hand,” he said as he gazed at the librarians. “There’s a settlement that I think the library should extend services to.”

Tom looked at Mike. Mike looked at Oscar. What’s his angle? Mike wondered. Remaining silent, he continued to contemplate Oscar. Silence is a weapon. He reminded himself.

After a moment of silence, Oscar continued. “Look. I really do value what y’all are doing. I’m happy to pay taxes to the Network to support the library…” He trailed off, appearing to be searching for the right way to frame his next thought. “The thing is, you can go places others can’t. Try sending a trading party to some of these outlying areas.”

“You need us as scouts?” Mike asked.

“That’s about the long and short of it.” Oscar answered. “I’ve been hearing things about this settlement. The various bandit gangs are always looking for a toehold or a home base. You guys know that. If a settlement feels hung out to dry they’ll turn to the bandits just to have a group to belong to, or because they feel they can’t hold out on their own. I’d like to bring them into the Network, establish a regular trading route, make them part of us before they become part of them. I thought the two of you could go and talk to them. Find out where their minds are at, and let them see that the Network has benefits. Maybe ask them if they’d be interested in doing a little trading. Y’all can think of yourselves as scouts, ambassadors, whatever you want. So what do you think?”

“I think there’s got to be a closer town they could link up with.” Mike said slowly. “The Network already extends three days ride in any direction from Harrisville, so I know wherever you’re sending us is outside that loop. Speaking of- where is this place anyway? What’s it called? What do we know about it? There’s a lot to figure out before we can make a decision.”

“The settlement is about 130 miles west of us if you follow the old logging road and then take the railroad tracks to the river. It’s called the ‘Eagle’s Nest.’” Oscar said, taking the questions in order. “The name comes from the fact that the developer named it that. It started out as a subdivision.” Mike nodded. Most subdivisions hadn’t fared well after the collapse, but unlike medium and large cities, Mike knew of a few subdivisions that had pulled together and come through without too much suffering.

“Any idea on size? Form of government?” Mike asked.

“Size is unknown.” Oscar replied. “Any reports we’ve had have been based on number of houses, and I think we all know that means exactly jack and shit these days. They could be living three families to a structure, or only every fifth one could be occupied. As far as government, you won’t believe this, but the word is they’ve been sticking to the old Home Owners Association by-laws. With some needed amendments of course.”

Mike studied the old farmer’s face for some sign he was joking and found none. As far as most people were concerned, the demise of HOA’s was right up there with the fall of the old tax code and the lack of rap music as one of the silver linings to the collapse of civilization as it had been previously known, but apparently there was at least one group out there who disagreed.

“So you mean to tell me that I carry library books by mule train for a living, that I haven’t used a computer or cell phone in ten years, and that I carry a rifle to work, but somewhere out there is a subdivision that will fine you if you build a shed that doesn’t match your house?!” Tom was speaking for the first time since the small talk during dinner had ended. “I don’t know whether to be deeply reassured, or absolutely terrified. I’m leaning toward thinking that the collapse missed a spot.”

Mike grinned. “What do you think grasshopper? We doing this extra mission?”

Tom shrugged his shoulders. “I guess I’m game if you are.”

“You young guys…” Mike said with an exaggerated sigh. “I guess if I didn’t want to go on a dangerous mission into Indian Territory I shouldn’t have asked a bachelor for his opinion.” Turning to Oscar, he became more serious. “We’re going to need to finish this loop before we do anything else. We’re right at the beginning of a two week trip, and our loop takes us east of here. We can finish the loop here 13 days from today, resupply and head west after that. When do you next have someone going to town? I need my wife to know I’m going to be late for supper.”

“I can send a group at the end of this week.” Oscar mused. “We’ve got some trading we could do, and a couple of these young fellows out here have young ladies in town they wouldn’t mind visiting. We can get word to Rachel.”

When the details of the trip had been hammered out, Mike and Tom took their gear out to the big barn, where they were shown a pair of bunks they could spread their blankets on for the night in the end of the building that had become the bachelor’s quarters for Fleisch’s Keep. Seemingly minutes after their heads hit the saddlebags that they used as pillows, the men were up and getting the stock ready to move. After a quick cup of tea, they accepted breakfast burritos to eat in the saddle, and were on their way just as the sky began to turn pink.

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Over the next 13 days, the men stopped at six more settlements. Some were close enough to reach in just a day’s ride, while some nights the ground was their bed. Most of the journey was through country that Mike considered safe enough to run training exercises with Tom, and they practiced mounted and dismounted team movement, break contact drills, and other skills that Mike hoped would not be needed even as he knew they someday would. At night Mike assigned Tom reading out of The Ranger Handbook, The United States Marine Corps Small Wars Manual, Six Ways In And Twelve Days Out and Jeff Cooper’s The Art of the Rifle. In the mornings Mike led PT sessions to keep the men’s bodies strong and limber while out on the trail. Tom was a quick learner, and Mike was impressed with the alacrity with which he took to the team movement and immediate action drills. “You know, for a cake eating civilian you’re doing ok” he remarked one evening as the two were tending to the mules. “I think I could’ve made a soldier out of you if you’d chosen to darken a recruiter’s door about twelve years ago. Maybe not a major league door kicker like myself, but at least a halfway decent 11 Bravo.”

Tom grinned . “Well naturally not everybody can be a big tough special forces man like you, but I’m glad you don’t just think of me as a pencil necked librarian.”

“I’m big because I eat a lot” Mike said. “If you watch what I do and mimic it perfectly, I promise that someday you can be fat and pretty like me. In fact, tomorrow night would be a good night to pay close attention. The hippies in Flower Run usually put out a pretty good spread.”

The small settlements that the men visited encompassed a variety of worldviews. Some, like Flower Run, were inhabited by idealists who viewed the collapse as an opportunity to live a life closer to the land. Several of the families in these communities had already owned yurts before society had fallen apart, and others had built traditional dwellings out of the natural materials available. Although he poked fun at them, Mike liked the “hippies” and thought they had something pretty close to the right idea. Other settlement’s like Fleisch’s Keep were named after the owner of the original piece of property, although most of these went by –ville or –burg, rather than calling themselves a keep. Government in these settlements ranged from dictatorships to pure democracies, but all paid taxes to The Network, and all sent a representative to town once a month for meetings in which policy for the region controlled by The Network was debated and voted on.

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At each settlement, the librarians were met with enthusiasm. If a fair number of children were present, Mike usually held a story time. Although he was a big man with an oversize black and grey beard and a misshapen nose, the kids either didn’t notice or didn’t care that most of their mothers would have called them inside if he had walked through their neighborhood in the days before the collapse, and they ran eagerly to sit in a half circle at his feet and pet Kelev while he read book after book until he finally had to stop. “Kids my old voice can only take so much before it gives out” he would say as he reached for his water bottle. “Would it be ok with all of you if we took a break while you pick some books to keep until next time I visit?” After a short break, he would resume reading until the children had to leave for dinner. This was Mike’s favorite part of being a librarian, but was also bittersweet, because it reminded him of the way it had felt to make friends with children in Afghan villages as a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant. He had never expected to be running missions to “win the hearts and minds” of American children.