*****
“Clark, how do you propose we fortify ourselves? I don’t even know what that means.” Gordon Steinbrink, the Mayor of Strasburg, asked as he sat amongst his peers. Mayors of several small municipalities in and around the area sat around a dusty conference table in the Shelby County courthouse. Scattered coffee cups and plates told the story of another working breakfast, standard practice now when each waking moment counted.
Everyone in attendance now referred to their arrangement as the Okaw Valley Self Defense Cooperative. Dropping the Shelby name helped integrate some of the towns sitting outside of the county borders. Okaw Valley was a local Indian term and held resonance for the entire area. Town borders didn’t matter much anymore; populations fluctuated over the years until the long slow decline of rural communities began about five decades ago. But each community tried to retain some sense of identity by keeping grade schools inside each city limits. The common high school had been built in the last twenty years, and ended up being a much larger facility than was practical for a single small town in the middle of the Midwest.
This meeting of the mayors and Sheriff Olsen occurred nearly every morning since the darkness, or as they began to call it, the Great Reset. These small-town leaders tried desperately to get a hold on what this new world meant for their citizens. After speaking with Sheriff Olsen and Phil when they returned from their trip to Decatur, everyone had been trying to formulate a plan to combine public assets into secure pantries in each community. After Sheriff Olsen’s report this morning, security was now in the forefront, also.
Sheriff Olsen looked over at these four men who agreed to serve in what was a thankless job even in simpler times. Now the life and death of their townspeople rested on their decisions. Not everyone was cut out for crisis, but these men were doing as well as could be expected.
The sheriff replied to the mayor’s question with the thoughtful look he carried nowadays.
“Gordon, I’m not sure what our next steps are, that’s why I brought it up. I thought as a group we might be able to come up with something.”
The office door opened and Phil stepped in. “I think I’ve got it, Sheriff,” Phil said.
Phil handed some drawings to everyone in the room. On the papers were hand-drawn sketches that resembled a collection of squares and circles, arranged in what appeared to be a rough plan for a castle.
“Phil, I appreciate the idea of building forts, but I think I’m a little short of massive stone blocks right now.” The voice was that of the Mayor of Hampshire who wasn’t usually such a cynic.
“I appreciate it’s a little outside the box, but we actually do have the materials on hand,” Phil replied. “Anna talked to Susan Albright when they were setting up the school shelter at St. Paul’s Church. Susan’s husband Mike runs...well, ran the concrete plant down in Windsor. It dawned on her that all those concrete box drains, culverts and pipes could provide protection for Clark’s deputies. When she brought the idea to me, she was thinking about a way to put them around the churches and schools. I think we could use them to put around some of the larger farms, too.”
“But that would take thousands of pieces, Phil.” Sheriff Olsen looked up from over the drawing in his hand. “You’re talking about thousands of feet of concrete just for one farm.”
“That’s right,” Phil agreed. “But we can put them in at intervals, and then use the old bulldozers that still work to fill in the gaps with dirt and rocks. So the wall might include a culvert or box drain every fifty or a hundred feet. That would give cover to riflemen and they could move from station to station without exposure. If nothing else, it would look darned impressive to any of these gangs coming out of the ditches.”
“Does he have enough concrete finished?” Mayor James Anderson of Tower Hill spoke.
“Short answer: no. He’s got enough for several of the farms and schools and that's it. But he also has a lot of raw materials on hand. The company that owned the plant shut it down a few months ago. Same situation as the Greenstem refinery. Not enough profit in building real things anymore. These just locked the doors and left, so there are several months of materials on site. Mike Albright says there’s also enough material sitting at a port along the river to build up the whole county.”
“What would be the test locations to try this out?” Anderson asked.
“There’s an old grain elevator a couple of miles from my farm. On that site, there are three concrete grain silos. We use it for extra storage during harvest. I want to turn it into our first fortress,” Phil told the group.
“I don’t understand, Phil. Why not reinforce Schoolhouse Hill first?” Sheriff Olsen asked, referring to the Hamilton family’s home farm. “Whatever you learn there, you can use on the others.”
“I think we’re going to have to get people out of the shelters in town and out to the farms as soon as possible, Clark. Anna is really concerned about contagious diseases that seem to thrive in close quarters like we have at the Schools and Churches. They’re trying really hard to keep the sanitation and nutrition up to par, but we’re dealing with less than ideal conditions there. So we need to get people out of town and into the country. To do that, we’re going to need space to house a lot of people.
“Most farms aren’t set up to handle extra people. The house might hold ten or fifteen people and it would be hard to hold out against a big bandit raid. What I’ve got in mind is something like an old castle. Now in the past, those castles had a big tower in the middle. It provided great visibility to see bad guys coming, and if attacked and surrounded everyone could go in there and be safe. See what I mean?
“We’ve got these big concrete grain silos all over the county. Five or six stories tall, some a lot bigger than that even. From the top you can see for miles! The walls are reinforced concrete several feet thick, and they could withstand anything short of tank cannon or heavy artillery,” Phil said, watching the men nodding in agreement.
“My thought is that we’ll pour resources into fortifying these, and then build dirt and concrete walls around them. People can farm the surrounding fields during the day, and then come in behind the walls at night for safety. We’ll keep the towers staffed with lookouts, and should be able to see any bandits coming for miles. The lookouts will sound the alarm, and get the workers safely in from the fields. Or fight them from the walls, whatever is best,” Phil concluded.
The faces around him were a mixture of disbelief and excitement. Phil could see each man at the table taking a mental inventory of all the big towers he remembered seeing dotting the Midwestern landscape. If those could be turned into fortresses, people could safely go about rebuilding civilization. More importantly, they could farm in peace and start rebuilding the food supply. Phil had been working with local farmers to find any stored grain that could be spared as food. Also, the farmers had agreed to plant crops that could be used as food without processing. Soybeans would be the staple crop, as they could be easily converted to protein or the biofuel needed to run their generators. But that was a plan for the future and immediate food remained the primary concern.
“Phil, I think I can speak for everyone here in saying that this is an amazing idea. I don’t know how to explain the hope I’m feeling in my heart right now. Can we really pull this off?” Mayor Anderson asked.
“Well, can I have each town loan me their public works employees and equipment?” Phil asked. “We won’t be replacing any roads or bridges soon, so I was thinking if we got every bulldozer, track hoe and bucket loader we could find, we could be working on as many as four projects at once. Because even with these 'fortress farms,' we’ll still need to be fortifying the school shelters and fortifying the Churches.”
“Materials, though,” Sheriff Olsen interjected, “you’ll be out of materials within a few weeks.”
“We’re going to need an expedition to that port to get the materials Albright was ta
lking about,” Phil agreed.
“I guess that’s where I’m supposed to volunteer, right?” Olsen laughed and checked his old windup pocket watch. “I’ll have a couple of my deputies start recruiting volunteers to go on this quest. Whatever heavy trucks still running will need to be ‘volunteered’ as well.”
“Ok, that’s the end of our municipal maintenance programs, gentlemen. Phil and Clark, those vehicles are now officially on your budget instead of ours,” Anderson said.
Everyone chuckled nervously. What they were doing was so far from legal it wasn’t even worth discussing anymore. Survival took precedent over rule of law, even though the idea of fighting for your life in your own hometown still seemed absurd. Americans always expected the government to show up at some point and help, even rural Americans who had been let down by the government time after time. If people couldn’t get their minds around the fact that no one was coming to save them, though, they soon wouldn’t have to worry about what was legal.
Olsen needed Phil to understand how important he thought this was. This was a glimmer of hope for the group and now the sheriff wanted to make this fort project his mission.
“Phil, I appreciate all the work you’ve done getting the biofuel plant up and running. And what you and Anna have done to bring the county farmers on board with our food plan is unbelievable. But I need you to ramrod this castle project. Paul and The Wizards can handle the Greenstem refinery, and everyone knows Anna is the real brains behind your family.” Olsen smiled at Phil. The way to truly get to this man was to compliment the woman that he adored. Phil wasn’t fooled, though; he knew what Olsen was doing.
“I understand, Clark. If we can protect our food production and give our people a place to call their own, that will go a long way to keeping morale up. We’ll make this work,” Hamilton assured them.
The mayors filed out of the room one by one. No one spoke it aloud, but people noticed a certain confidence carried lately by the group. The time for real leaders was back.