The Ice Auger
I shared Mike's sense that we couldn't stay at Tahoe forever, but I couldn't bring myself to look away from the calm sitting right in front of us.
"Even so, the fact remains — for gathering our strength in the situation we're in, there's nowhere that compares to Tahoe."
"I agree with you there."
Mike nodded and went on.
"The problem is timing. How long we stay, and when we mark as the time to leave… we have to get that right."
"How much longer do you think this city can hold out, Mike?"
He gave a dry chuckle and shook his head.
"Don't take that trailer salesman's 'year's worth of stockpiles' at face value. That was a political declaration meant to keep the citizens calm."
"…"
"That's how it always is. Politics is a business that sells hope without a plan, especially in a crisis."
"And the problem is that hope has an expiration date."
"Exactly. It's like having a decent amount saved up while you're out of a job."
He gazed out across the frozen lake.
"In the end, a city with no new supplies flowing in from outside is just a pond slowly going dry. Sooner or later they'll have to take some outside power by the hand, and nobody knows what kind of trouble that process will kick up. Still… they should last three or four months, easy."
"And by outside power, you mean striking a deal with the federal government."
"Doesn't have to be the feds."
Mike's answer caught me off guard.
"Could be the Southern Confederacy. Could be an independent alliance with the Nevada or Utah state governments. If things get worse… this is a world where it wouldn't even be strange to see them trading goods with the raiders over those mountains."
"Raiders?"
I asked, and Mike gave a bitter smile, tapping my shoulder.
"Don't look so shocked. Tahoe itself is already a giant independent survival faction, isn't it? No law says more groups like us — or like them — won't spring up across this wide American land."
And so, in that uneasy peace, our days grew busy again.
The chicken trailer fell to Cody, Carlos, Damon, and the kids. They'd haul it down to a clearing by the lake, throw up a fence, and let the hens out to dust-bathe and peck for their own food, working the stress off. The Anderson family lent a hand from time to time.
There was the occasional grumbling, sure. But they knew how precious fresh eggs were in the middle of a catastrophe, so they did their jobs without a word of real complaint.
Mike and Jed set to work converting a newly acquired trailer into a second chicken trailer, building it to a more refined design after complaints that the first one was a pain to clean.
Frank and Dave hit the market every day, carving out new business. They dribbled out fresh eggs in stingy little batches to keep people desperate for more, and successfully offloaded the nuts and dried fruit we'd been sitting on. They bought up every scrap of chicken feed and medicine they laid eyes on, and Frank even worked his hustle buying spent casings and live rounds at fire-sale prices and flipping them for a profit.
Nobody else sat still either. Raven and Sarah worked without pause, turning the ingredients Dave brought back from the market into preserved foods — jarred goods and the like. At the same time, we timed the designated gas station's opening to the minute and bought fuel, which let us keep living without touching the enormous stockpile we'd already laid in.
A few more days passed like that, and then Frank came back from the market with his face flushed, calling everyone together.
"Listen up, everybody! I scored something incredible today."
He threw open a cooler with a flourish, and three fresh salmon gleamed with silver scales. Cheers erupted from everyone.
"Good lord, that's salmon. We're finally getting a real fish dinner?"
Dave was the first to shout with joy. Frank shrugged.
"But from now on, we catch 'em ourselves."
Someone asked,
"There are salmon in this lake?"
"I just found out myself. Apparently there's something called Kokanee salmon. Landlocked sockeye that never made it to the ocean — they live trapped in this lake."
Mike stroked his beard.
"Then we'll have to break through that thick ice first."
"Don't you worry about that."
Frank pulled a long, heavy screw drill — an Ice Auger — from the truck.
"All we need is an adapter to hook this thing up to an engine or a power drill. I've already got jigging rods and bait, so let's do this right!"
Bill's eyes lit up as he stepped forward.
"I know my way around a fishing rod. Wouldn't mind picking up a few more poles, though."
"That's the easy part!"
Frank answered with total confidence. That evening, salmon was the undisputed star of the motorhome dinner table.
"I can handle a salmon, no problem."
Bill stepped up and, with practiced hands, filleted the fish — separating bone from flesh, peeling off the skin. The rose-pink fillets passed to Raven and Sarah. Before long the table held lemon-garnished salmon steaks, a fragrant dill salmon salad, and a rich fish soup simmered from the leftover bones and heads.
The moment Eleanor's prayer ended, everyone reached for their forks. The salmon melted in our mouths, and murmurs of amazement rose all around.
"Wow. I thought this town was just a bunch of consumers, but look at this. Amazing."
Dave said, and Mike replied with a wry smile.
"Used to be a weekend leisure activity. Now that the world's changed, this might just become a livelihood."
"And our rest stop sits right on the lakeshore, so we've got every advantage."
Frank jumped in, never one to miss an opening. I took a spoonful of soup.
"We haven't found anywhere this safe with this much to gain. If nothing major comes up, I wouldn't mind staying a while longer."
As the meal wound down, Dave spoke up, looking pleased with himself.
"Oh, and while I was haggling with the rest-stop manager over parking fees, I cut a deal to get a cable TV line run in. We can watch TV starting tonight."
He added that he'd agreed to bring the manager five pounds of produce every day for as long as we stayed. Frank clapped Dave on the shoulder and laughed.
"Haha, hanging around me's paying off. You're getting good at this, Dave."
After dinner, the women and children stayed in the motorhome to watch TV, while the men gathered in my trailer with beers and whiskey glasses in hand.
The evening news was just starting.
"Man, after nothing but static-filled radio, seeing a clear picture… finally feels like I can actually see what's going on in the world."
Bill's joke got a round of chuckles.
The anchor first gave a brief rundown of The Great Winter. Nighttime temperatures across Oregon, Montana, North Dakota, and the rest of the northern states had plunged past thirty below, and even northern California was dipping below zero after dark.
Then an in-depth report on the North-South standoff began.
"So neither side has the juice for a total war."
Gunner set down his glass, and Mike picked up the thread.
"In the end, the great earthquake made Texas independence a done deal."
The screen showed militiamen trading fire in a ruined small town.
"So they're just choking each other out. Doesn't that just make it harder for people like us on the road?"
Dave said, sounding worried, and Mike answered him.
"Not necessarily. This is better than one side having a clear upper hand. At least this way, we've got a choice."
The anchor's voice continued.
The gray zone the anchor was talking about was us — and we were a group that controlled a specific resource, too.
At that last line, every pair of eyes in the trailer turned toward me.
"Hell yeah, Chan. Our boss called it right. Haha."
Damon practically shouted it, and everyone else piled on in agreement.
"That's right — when we first left the farm, people were split over heading north on Highway 99."
"This place really is a perfect little safe zone. Haha."
They weren't wrong. The anxiety had been about hugging the San Francisco coast — still a wreck from the great earthquake — versus crossing the Sierra Nevada. But I'd figured the routes people thought of as easy were the ones with the bigger variables. In the end, the dangerous road we'd taken had led us into an isolated pocket that guaranteed our safety.
Circumstances themselves were settling us in at Tahoe.
The next morning, Jed and Mike were working on the Ice Auger at first light.
"This engine's got some decent output."
Mike said with satisfaction, looking over the two-stroke he'd pulled from a broken chainsaw they'd brought back from the logging site. Jed knocked together a custom adapter with a grinder and a welder, joining the little engine's output shaft to the Ice Auger's drill bit.
A moment later, the modified auger roared to life with a ragged vrrrrrm and spun with real force.
We packed up the gear and headed for the frozen lakeshore. Frank picked the spot, and Jed set the Ice Auger on the ice and leaned into it. White ice shavings fountained into the air, and in a matter of minutes a clean circular hole had been punched through the thick ice sheet.
Frank was the first to drop a line and start jigging.
But an hour passed without a single nibble, and the faces that had been bright with anticipation began to fall. That was when it happened.
"It's on! I got one!"
Frank shouted and yanked the rod. The line went taut, the rod bowed hard, and a flash of silver flickered inside the hole. After a brief struggle, Frank hauled a decent-sized salmon up onto the ice.
"Wooo!"
Everyone rushed in, cheering as if it were their own catch.
"Heh heh. Looks like we ought to punch a few more holes and all pile in together."
Mike said, laughing. Bill shook his head, looking worried.
"Fishing's not the problem. The problem is sitting there staring at a hole for hours in this cold."
That gave me an idea.
"I've got plenty of tarps and thick roll plastic. We could throw together a little windbreak tent over each hole and take turns fishing inside."
"That's a fine idea!"
Mike snapped his fingers and went on.
"With the scrap lumber and plywood we've got lying around, we could knock together a few simple A-frame tents in no time."
The words were barely out of his mouth before Frank tossed his rod to Bill and jumped to his feet.
"What's going on, Frank?"
"This is no time to sit around. I'm going to the market right now and buying every fishing rod they've got!"
"Haha, yeah. Two of us'll be faster than one."
"That's not it!"
"I need to buy up every last Ice Auger left at the market."
"Huh?"
"We have to be the only ones who can punch holes in this ice!"
Frank was already shouting after Dave, who had started walking ahead.
"Dave! Don't just stand there — get that pickup started!"