A Glibertarians Exclusive – The Watchtower I

The Knik River Bridge:  November 2032

The two men standing watch on the north end of the Knik River bridge on the main highway were typical of Alaska militiamen following the Great Collapse.

Frank Tippin was twenty-four.  He had a house in Wasilla, where his wife and two young sons awaited him.  Frank was a cheerful man, with the quick humor of youth, even in these troubled times.

Terry Hopp was forty-nine.  He had a cabin on twenty acres of land near Chickaloon, where he had lived alone for thirty years.  He was known mostly for his reclusiveness and his casual disregard for the game laws, reckoning that moose season was open whenever his freezer was empty, but he ate what he killed and was discreet, so nobody around Chickaloon much cared about it.

Both men were dressed warmly against the late Alaska fall.  Both wore the armband of the Alaska Free State Militia; a blue banner on the upper right arm, bearing the gold stars of the old Alaska state flag.

And both, like most of the militia, were armed with their personal weapons, which made logistics a challenge.  Frank carried a Springfield Armory M1A, still in stock livery, with the factory open sights.  Terry had his Browning A-Bolt in .300 Winchester Magnum slung on his shoulder.  His rifle bore a Leupold 3-9x scope; he was expected, if trouble developed, to engage at range.

Both men had, in the years leading up to the Collapse, stockpiled a fair amount of ammo.  That practice was not uncommon in Alaska in the late Twenties – or, as they were known in the Outside, the Harris years.

It was a mild day for late November, but a chill wind was blowing off Cook Inlet.  The highway bridge was blocked at both ends with the big concrete castings that were for unknown reasons called Jersey barriers.  At the north end, where Frank and Terry stood watch, a concrete block bunker had been built to overlook the bridge.

For over a month, no vehicle traffic had been allowed from the south.  Not since word had reached the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of the fall of Anchorage to the People’s Army that had moved up from Seattle.

An old Ford pickup truck approached from the north.  Frank covered it with his M1A until the truck stopped, and the driver got out.

“Wrinkle,” Frank challenged.

“Bait,” the skinny man who had dismounted the truck replied.

Frank shouldered his rifle.  “How’s it going, Pete?”

“It’s done.  This bridge is wired.  The Old Glenn Highway bridge was blown.  It’s in the water.  Railroad bridge is down, too, so this is the only way across the Knik now.  Anyone who wants to get into the Mat-Su has to come through us, or else come in by boat, airplane or come through Canada.”

Terry called out from the bunker.  “We heard the boom a while ago.  Too bad about the old bridge, but it had to be done.”

“Gonna be a bitch moving stuff up here without the railway.”

“Look at the bright side – no tourists,” Frank grinned.

Terry spoke over his shoulder, unwilling to take his eyes off the bridge: “Any word from the Army up at Wainwright?”

“Same as we heard yesterday.  Same as we heard from JBER.  Lots of fighting.  Some of the senior officers wanted to follow orders from the New White House in San Francisco.  Most of the younger guys went nuts.  Lots of people dead in both places.  Long story short – we can’t expect any help from the Army or the Air Force.”

Frank turned and looked south.  “And I hear the People’s Army have landed two more old cruise ships’ worth of ‘troops’ in Anchorage.  They’re building up to something.”

“They’ll have a hell of a time getting through Chugiak and Eagle River.  Lots of retired vets in there.”

“Bro,” Frank replied, “most of those vets are up here now.  Paul, what do you think?”

Paul had served twelve years in the Army, in Explosive Ordnance Disposal, and since the Collapse, he had proved as adept at blowing things up as he had earlier in preventing explosions.  He had left the Army, seeing the writing on the wall, in the months leading up to the Collapse.  “What do I think?  I think it’s a cluster-fuck.  I think they got the advantage of numbers on us.  I think that we may have the bridges blocked, but they can drop people in our rear by boat, anywhere over at Knik-Goose Bay or up the Su at Deshka Landing or half a dozen other places.  I think we have one advantage,” he gestured at the ground, covered as it was with a couple of inches of snow even now in early November.  “We’ve got Alaska.  Most of those People’s Army fuckheads are from California.  They won’t be able to deal.”

“So come summer, we’re fucked.”

“We’ll see.  I gotta run, guys.  They told me to come to tell you about the bridge.  With this being the last one up, they’re gonna double the watch, starting tonight.  Four rifles instead of two.  At least a platoon standing by on five-plus.”

“Makes sense.”  Frank replied.  “Where you off to next?”

“Wasilla.  They’re flying my team down to the Peninsula.  Looks like the People’s Army is trying to drive down the Seward Highway, so we’re going to blow a couple of bridges.  If they want Kenai and Soldotna, no reason we should make it easy on them.”

“I s’pose not.”

Paul nodded, then climbed back in the old F-150, backed around, and drove off to the north.

“Damn,” Terry griped.  He went back inside the bunker and looked south, through the narrow firing slit.  “The one year when the Kenai isn’t overrun with tourists, and we won’t be able to get down there for any fishing.”

“We’ll just have to dip-net in the Susitna, then,” Frank replied.  “Plenty of salmon there.”

“Not as much fun.”

Frank came back in the bunker, out of the wind.  He laid his rifle carefully on the wooden bench that stood against one wall and leaned to look out, to the south.  “Sure do wish I knew how things could go this bad, this fast.  Still doesn’t feel quite real, does it?  The country broke in five, six pieces.  Civil war.  Who’da thunk it?  My old man, he says that just ten years ago, everyone thought the idea was just a nutball conspiracy theory.”

“Ain’t no going back now,” Terry said, sadly.

“Dad said that the big business guys had a lot to do with it.”

“Ain’t that easy,” Terry shook his head, never taking his eyes off the bridge.  “Sure, plenty of people were making plenty of money before the Collapse.  But the bad ones – the big players – didn’t make money by building stuff people wanted.  They made their money by playing around with markets, or by grafting onto government make-work deals.  There was this big solar panel company, don’t remember the name of it, got a big wad of government contracts then never made a damn thing.  There was this other guy, from Europe, made a ton of money on currency speculation then proceeded to fuck around in America’s elections any place he saw a chance.  Assholes like that were a big part of it.  One of them bought up a shitload of good farmland, all over the country, did nothing with it – and now people all over the Forty-Eight are starving.”

“That’s fucked up,” Frank observed.

“You’re damn right it is.  I grew up down there.  In Illinois.  Left when I was nineteen, came up here, and never went back.  Best damn thing I ever did.”

“I bet.”  Frank had been born in Wasilla and had never lived anywhere else.

“Assholes.” Terry repeated.  “Assholes never knew how good they had it.  Never knew what it was all worth, until it wasn’t.”

The two men stood for a while, both staring across the bridge, both lost in their own thoughts.

Then: “Look there.  Truck coming up the highway.”

“You’ve got good eyes,” Terry said to his younger counterpart.  He picked up a pair of big ten-power binoculars he had brought along and looked across the bridge.  “Old Four-Runner.  Painted green.  Flying a flag.  Blue field, bunch of multicolored stars.  People’s Army flag.  Guess they got through Eagle River and Chugiak after all.”

The truck stopped at the south end of the bridge, where the Jersey barriers blocked vehicle access.  Two people, both wearing blue and white “urban” camouflage, got out.  One of them looked across the bridge with… his?  Hers?  Its?  …own binoculars, then both figures climbed back into the truck and drove off to the south.

“Sure as hell,” Terry said.  “Sure as hell.  We’re gonna be in for it, soon as they get their shit together.”

“Looks like.”

***

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,

“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth

None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”