Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

18. Rock ’n’ Roll

Stowing the boys’ tack and moving into the bunkhouse didn’t take long, as they hadn’t carried much gear. The bunkhouse was utilitarian but well insulated. The interior walls were covered with unpainted plywood. It had two narrow rooms that sat side by side, each with its own door, off the foyer. One of them had a window at one end with some gauzy curtains, and two sets of bunk beds that were positioned end to end. The other room didn’t contain much except for about thirty boxes, most of which contained National Geographic magazines that had belonged to Laine’s maternal grandmother. Some of these dated back to the 1930s. Both of the rooms were heated by a barrel woodstove on a low flagstone pedestal in the foyer.

Soon after moving in, and starting their monthly rotating “OP” duty shifts, the boys realized that one of them would have to sleep during the day, but the daylight would make it difficult for that individual to sleep. So Shad asked Lars if they could move the bunk beds to the other room, which could be kept completely dark. Lars gave his consent. But just ten minutes later Shad returned to the house, looking confused.

“Mr. Laine, there’s something wrong with that other room in the bunk house.”

“What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”

“When the bunk beds were in the south room, they fit fine, but now, when we moved them into the other room, they don’t fit. That’s weird, because the rooms are supposed to be the same length. Can you come and take a look?”

Lars pulled a twenty-five-foot tape measure from his desk drawer and followed Shad to the bunkhouse. With the tape measure, they found that the windowless room was six inches shorter than the other. Lars chuckled. Pulling the bunk back from the far wall, he began rapping with his knuckles in various places on the plywood, listening for differences in sounds.

Lars half sang, “Methinks my dad did some creative carpentry here.”

“So it’s like a fake wall?” Rueben asked.

“Yes, I suspect that it is. Give me just a minute.”

Leaving the boys, Laine walked briskly to the shop and soon returned with his Makita cordless screw gun. Starting at the middle of the wall at chest level, Lars began backing-out the Sheetrock screws that held the plywood in place at sixteen-inch intervals. He was surprised when the first screw dropped to the floor after just a few turns. Looking down at the screw, he saw that it was just a stub.

“That’s odd. Must have broken off.”

The same thing happened with the next screw.

“What the…?” Lars exclaimed.

Reaching down, he picked up the two fallen screws. They were both just three-eighths of an inch long. Examining them closely, he observed, “These didn’t break. These were sawed off, with a hacksaw.”

Lars resumed removing the screws from the plywood sheet in front of him. He found that most of the screws had been shortened and installed just to give the appearance of functional fasteners. But only six of them-four in the corners, and two that were at the midpoint of the plywood sheet-were a full two inches in length and went through to the studs behind.

“Oh, Dad! You clever Finn. Take a look at this, guys: this panel is designed to be removed, with only six screws to take out.”

“Here, help me with this,” said Lars as he backed the last screw out of the upper left corner.

Laine and the boys bounced the three-quarter-inch-thick sheet of plywood loose and pulled it away, revealing a cavity behind that was crammed full of stacked ammo cans-mostly U.S. Army surplus cans originally made to hold .30 caliber ammunition-and several odd-shaped items wrapped in heavy black plastic trash bags, sealed with Priority Mail packing tape. Starting with the third row of ammo cans, all of the items were either held in place with hardware wire attached to screw eyes or hung from closet hooks. It was now obvious that his father had added a framework of two-by-sixes at the far end of the room, and covered it to look like the original wall. Given the dimensions of the rooms, the difference in their depths was almost imperceptible.

Lars began laughing as he starting pulling the contents from the wall cache. “You boys may have heard that us Finns are the quiet, stoical type. Well, my dad-his first name was Robie-fit that description to a T. My mom said that my dad would go for days at a time without much more than grunts and a ‘Good morning’ and a ‘Good night.’ He never told me about this wall, and my mom and my brother never mentioned it, either, so I suppose that he kept it all to himself.” After a pause he added, “And since he died suddenly of a heart attack after my mom died, he never got the chance.”

It took the better part of the afternoon for him to inventory the gear. Meanwhile, Shad and Reuben used the Makita to remove other sheets of plywood throughout the bunkhouse, checking for more hidden compartments. They found none.

Starting first with the plastic-wrapped guns, Laine found four Finnish M39 bolt-action rifles, almost identical to his own rifle, except that one of them was built on an early hexagonal receiver, and they had barrels from different makers: One was a Tikka, two were made by Valmet (marked “VKT”) and the other was made by Sako. Always thorough and safety-conscious, Robie Laine had attached tags to the trigger guard of each gun that read “Grease in bore and chamber. Remove before firing!”

Inside one of the plastic bags was a zippered green canvas case that, when unzipped, revealed an M1 Carbine equipped with M2 conversion parts. Lars exclaimed, “Son of a… This thing is rock-’n’-roll.”

Shad asked, “You mean it’s a full auto?”

“Well, technically the term is ‘selective fire,’ ’cause it will shoot either semiauto or full auto.” After checking the gun’s chamber to ensure that it was unloaded, Laine thumbed the carbine’s selector lever on the left side of the receiver, explaining, “The rear position here is semiauto, but when it’s flipped forward, it’s full auto. A lot of guys converted M1 Carbines into M2s back in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, since the conversion parts were pretty widely available, and it doesn’t require any modification to the receiver.”

Shad grinned, and said, “Oh, yeah, I read about M2 Carbines once, in a gun magazine. But that’s a major bust if you get caught with it.”

Lars went on, “Yes, legally it’s a contraband gun, but given the present circumstances, I think that’s about to become a nonissue, if it isn’t one already. But just the same, I don’t think that I’ll go around advertising that I have an unregistered Class 3 gun. I’d appreciate it if you’d also keep your lips zipped.”

Shad said, “Yes, sir!” The other boys gave exaggerated nods.

In another canvas case, this one reinforced with green leather at the ends, was a Valmet M62, the Finnish equivalent of the Russian AK-47, with a tubular stock. Laine let out a whistle when he saw the gun. He knew that the Valmet was considered the Cadillac of the AK family, and very valuable.

One ammo can held eleven spare magazines for the M2 Carbine, and another had seven green plastic “waffle” magazines for the Valmet M62.

There were also various slings and pouches for magazines, and an odd-looking bayonet for the Valmet M62, in a green leather sheath. It was marked “FISKARS.” To Lars, it looked more like a filleting knife than a bayonet.

Later, after the boys went into the house to help get dinner ready, Lars was examining the Valmet M62 and realized that it, too, was selective fire. Looking closely, he saw that instead of just two positions, the safety/selector had three positions, with one in the middle for full-auto fire. He concluded that it was an original Finnish Defense Force M62, rather than a converted civilian-production Valmet. Later he told Beth that the gun had probably been smuggled into the U.S. by his uncle Aki, who for many years was an engineering officer on a Finnish merchant marine ship.

The last of the guns was a Lahti 9mm semiauto pistol with five spare magazines wrapped in brown waxed paper, along with an original Finnish military holster. The pistol had a single-column magazine and looked vaguely like a Luger. It had plastic grips marked “VKT.” Lars chortled when he saw that, and put on a deep radio announcer’s voice: “Yet another fine product from the industrious workers at Valmet.” He explained to Lisbeth that since the end of World War II, Valmet had expanded into a conglomerate, branching out to make everything from log harvesters to military aircraft. Lars had read about Lahti pistols, but he’d never handled one.

Finally, Laine began to inventory the ammunition in detail. In all, there were 1,100 rounds of 7.62x54r for the bolt actions, almost 1,500 rounds of .30 Carbine, 1,280 rounds of 7.52x39 for the Valmet M62, and 650 rounds of 9mm for the Lahti. He was thrilled to find that one of the .30 caliber ammo cans was filled not with ammo but with rolls of pre-1965 silver quarters.

It was not until the next day that Lars had the opportunity to examine the can holding the rolls of silver quarters. When he emptied it out to count the rolls, he found a sealed envelope tucked in alongside the rolls. It was marked “Lars and Andrew” in his father’s handwriting. He opened it and found a typewritten letter. It read:

As Andy tucked the letter back into the envelope, he said resolutely, “Yeah, Dad, you were right.”

Each of the Phelps boys was given one of the M39 bolt-action rifles in lieu of their first two months’ wages. The next day a few precious rounds of the hard-kicking 7.62x54R were used to sight in each of their rifles. Because that ammo was corrosively primed, Laine showed the boys how to carefully clean the rifles’ bores and bolt faces, making sure that they cleaned their barrels for several successive days, to be sure that all traces of corrosive priming salts had been removed.

The bunkhouse was soon decorated with a Monument Valley poster and maps from National Geographic magazines. The boys settled into a routine of guard shifts, caring for their horses, some house chores, and reading-lots of reading.

Having the Phelps Boys at the ranch was a great relief to Lars, Beth, and Kaylee, who up until then were starting to feel the strain of guarding the ranch by themselves.

Lars’s morning routine was to first pray at dawn silently and then cuddle with his wife. Then he would sit up and put on his eye patch and his prosthetic hand. As needed, he’d put some silicone cream on the stump first. Lars had learned that the size of his residual limb changed during each day. Fluid pooled in the limb at night when the prosthesis was off, and was pushed back out when “Mr. President” was strapped on. Thus, the fit was slightly tighter in the morning than in the afternoon or evening.

Still in his pajamas, Lars did twenty rapid push-ups and forty sit-ups. Then he’d shower and get dressed. Before the Crunch, he would also read his e-mail and have a cup of coffee with breakfast. But both of those diversions soon became just memories. In recent days he would eat at the kitchen table with Matthew Phelps, who was the early riser of the Phelps trio.