The radio station came in and out, bright bursts of static. Roger in Boise was creaming himself over the Second Amendment. Roger in Boise, honestly, sounded a little nuts.
The truck climbed Saxon Mountain, its old engine chugging. At the top of the ridge was the landmark sign. SAXON COUNTY WELCOMES YOU. In recent years the letters had faded. At highway speed they were impossible to read. The sign was like everything else in Saxon County, a place that no longer looked like anything. You couldn’t see it clearly unless you knew what it used to be.
The letters had faded, or maybe they hadn’t. Victor couldn’t say for sure. A doctor at the VA had told him his eyes were going. “Horseshit,” he told the doctor, but in his heart he wasn’t surprised. Life, at his age, was an escalating series of physical humiliations.
At least he’d hung on to his teeth.
THE WORLD IS FULL OF SIGNS.
The town, Bakerton, was quiet at that hour. Even at rush hour, there was nowhere to go. When Victor was a boy, the place had come alive at the shift change, traffic backed up in both directions along Number Twelve Road. Now the shift change was a distant memory. The mines had closed a generation ago. The old train station was now the volunteer fire department. Unlike most buildings in town, it was at least being used for something. On the hill behind it was another faded sign: BAKERTON COAL LIGHTS THE WORLD. In the old days it had been repainted annually. Riding the train into town, it was the first thing you’d see.
He passed the bank, Saxon Savings—flanked, now, by empty storefronts. Across the street was the old Fridman’s Furniture, a cursed location that had housed a long series of failed businesses: a fruit market, a storefront church, a bridal shop. Recently a new tenant had moved in—COAL COUNTRY TAXIDERMY, according to its homemade sign.
At the center of town, two stores, Dollar General and Dollar Bargain, squared off at an intersection. The sidewalks were empty. A flashing yellow light directed traffic that wasn’t there.
He drove past the Pennzoil station, closed now. The pumps had been removed long ago, leaving craters in the ground. On the side of the building was a hand-painted mural, silhouettes of men in hard hats. TOUGH TIMES NEVER LAST, a caption insisted, in defiance of all evidence. TOUGH PEOPLE DO.
He gunned the engine up a steep hill. Number Twelve Road was high and winding, the pavement crumbling. He turned down the new access road, built by the gas company so the drill rigs could come through. At the end of the road were six wells—drilled at the peak of the gas boom, and still producing. Every month the company sent his stepbrother a royalty check.
He peeled off down a narrow lane. The truck bounced along, scattering gravel. Deep in the forest, dogs were barking. The road ended at a checkpoint, a sturdy gate with cement pillars on either end, each mounted with a camera. The gate was hung with signs he’d painted himself:
YOU HAVE INVADED THE PRIVATE PROPERTY OF A SOVEREIGN CITIZEN
TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT
SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN
SMILE FOR THE CAMERA! YOU ARE BEING WATCHED
He parked on the gravel pad next to the house. Behind it sat the old wooden barn, painted fifty years ago, the letters now faded: CHEW MAIL POUCH TOBACCO. From the glove box he took the .45, his everyday carry (EDC). He unlocked his tailgate and carried the leftover signs to the barn.
The barn was dark inside, with an odor of paint and mineral spirits. He’d tidied up before he left: neat stacks of plywood, paint cans arranged on rough wood shelves. Leaning against the walls were a dozen new signs, the paint still drying.
ALL LIFE IS SACRED
END THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS
ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART
He set down the leftovers he’d brought back from Maryland: three copies of AMERICAN CARNAGE, plus the happy baby waving from the womb.
He had always been a visual thinker. Seeing his work spread out in front of him, Victor understood what should have been obvious from the beginning: AMERICAN CARNAGE was confusing. The babies recovered from the dumpster didn’t look human. They looked like hamburger. The image was powerful, but only if you understood what you were looking at. Barreling along at highway speed, how could you possibly tell?
The realization was disheartening.
The realization fed into his larger frustration, his disillusionment with the entire sign-making operation, which more and more seemed like a vanity project—an archaic pastime like candle-dipping, the useless hobby of an eccentric old man.
THE LOG HOUSE WAS FRESHNESS-SEALED, TIGHT AS TUPPERWARE. Victor had built it with his own two hands. When you closed the front door, the world went silent. When you opened it, you heard a kissing sound. Daylight came from small windows, each the size of a shoebox, set high in the walls. Bedroom, living room, kitchen, a small back room he used as an office. Crucially, the house had a full basement, accessible by a fireproof steel door. A trapdoor in the floor led to the subbasement, where he kept his guns.
The basement resembled a crowded warehouse. Along three walls he’d installed floor-to-ceiling shelves—loaded, now, with jars and cans. Stacked against the fourth wall were cardboard cartons, some labeled: MINUTE RICE. QUAKER INSTANT OATMEAL. COWBOY BAKED BEANS. CHARMIN ULTRA 40 ROLLS.
He stocked six months’ worth of provisions at all times. Six months was the bare minimum, according to Doug Straight, though this advice was possibly outdated. Conditions had shifted since 1999—the year Victor began paying attention, the year the threat became clear. That was the year he acquired his first computer, a Macintosh Plus he’d picked up at a yard sale. With his dial-up modem he’d ventured onto the information superhighway, not understanding that his life was about to change.
In the Usenet groups he was no longer Victor Prine, a backwoods trucker hauling loads across the continent. He became Excelsior11, a renegade soldier for good.
Usenet, in those days, was alive with chatter. Excelsior11 had joined the conversation at a panicky time. The programming of computers had been shortsighted, the dates encoded in two-digit format: 97, 98, 99. As the century wound down, it seemed that the world was heading toward a precipice, beyond which no future could exist.
Doug Straight laid it out clearly: At the turn of the millennium, the world would stop working. Banks would fail, telecommunications, the electrical grid. Citizens would be forced to shelter in place. The End Times were coming, but there would be no conflagration, no sea of fire. Mankind would be undone by simple mechanical failure, the machines he’d trusted to make the world work.
In the spirit of new beginnings, certain preparations were made.
In the final days of 1999, Victor withdrew the entire balance of his savings account. He tested and retested his emergency generator, bought extra batteries for his night-vision goggles. He stocked up on ammo and cleaned his guns.