Clark Stories

[Lbox88]

Part 61.

The Clark household had settled into somewhat of a routine. A big breakfast – Chores - 2 hours of school work – Sandwiches for lunch, free time, cook a meal for supper. This basically went on for 10 days until they had thought up a bunch of things that were needed and then after morning classes a scavenge trip was made.

Over the next 3 weeks, Clark and Missy had obtained another four 10000 gallon full fuel tankers, treated the contents and parked them at the 2 farms they were going to plant things at.

One night Missy and Clark were talking and she told him it will soon be time to increase our family size. He thought about having a new baby under foot and all the attention it would need. He just asked her when??? She said probably the end of next summer. Then she said I want to keep our family together and I think you should get 3 or 4 more trailers just like we are living in. He told her a lot of work will have to be done. She said like what. Well off the top of my head he said; cut some more forest down, level some more ground off, gravel it, sewer lines, water lines, increase the leach field, increase the propane storage, build some footers, lay some concrete block to set the trailers on and we are going to need more power, lots of power, probably have to install several wind mills on the top of the ridge where the wind blows. With all the other work we have pending, you are talking 3 or 4 years labor, unless we can barter for some labor from Earl’s farm. She just said let’s go get 3 or 4 trailers right now and park them out of the way. That’s what they did. 6 days later there were 4 new 16 X 82 foot trailers parked on the roadway leading to Clark’s main area. Clark had another little idea and brought back 4 more single bedroom trailers with all the furniture. That only took 2 days because he readied the trailers on his last trip to pick up a 16 X 82 one. He found he could drive 25 MPH with the small trailer hooked up and could move 2 in a single day. He had no idea what he wanted them for but thought someday they may need them and he would eventually get them parked on footers and the water and sewer lines hooked up.

Missy said I am getting tired of walking to the basement to get things out of the freezer. Let’s get some of those DC low electricity draw refrigerators and freezers and replace the ones in the trailers. We can’t use the ones in here anyway because they use too much electricity. That went on the to-get list for the next scavenge trip.

The only security arrangement difference on their scavenge trips was Missy and Sherrie were in a Hummer with the M-60 while Clark followed along in the flat bed trucks with the tow-a-long carrying the fork-lift.

Eventually they had found 18 DC freezers, 14 DC refrigerators and installed 1 of each in the permanently parked trailers. The rest were stored under one of the car ports wrapped in blue tarps. Missy and the kids were happy that they now had convenient cold storage within a few steps.

The end of March the ground had thawed and the farmer from Earl’s arrived to show and help Clark and Missy plow some ground and plant some animal feed crops.

Clark was amazed 5 days later when they were done. He just said that’s it. The farmer said yep. All they had done was use 2 large tractors, plowed eight 200 yards by 200 yard plots on the 2 farms and planted grass 50 yards down one side in 2 fields, clover in the middle 100 yards wide in the 2 fields and alfalfa 50 yards down the remaining side of the 2 fields. The other 6 fields were left unplanted. Franklin the farmer told Clark he would calculate out what to plant in the remaining 6 fields if anything before winter came. He said one other thing that Clark thought was interesting. The farmer said I am planning for a long range community here. The children you have will grow up become couples and have more children. In 20 or so years with the right help this place I am designing for you will support a fairly large community.

The farmer told Clark that he had a degree in agriculture and before the nuclear explosions he had completed a lot of research on plain old grass, alfalfa and clover fed beef. The results proved conclusively that cows were healthier when allowed to free range on just those 3 items and the harvested beef had many more nutrients in them then feed lot grain fed beef. Clark asked about winter time feed – the farmer just said hay and alfalfa and until the mineral blocks are gone that’s all they need. The cows should be slaughtered in late October and middle June. Without me giving you 3 months of classroom work, that is really all you need to know. And the cows rarely get sick when treated this way, after all they are strictly a grass eater. Clark and Missy just looked at each other with a half open mouth. Clark said well so much for animal anti-biotics and supplements. Missy said well I guess if we keep the cow herd down to about 8 or so we should be alright. They were upset they would not get any pigs this year until the farmer had told them we will give you the pork this year and that includes ham and bacon. Next year we will grow some barley, peas, a small patch of corn and some winter squash for the 4 or 6 pigs that you will get mid summer next year. There will be a lot of training you have to have to keep pigs healthy and that can be done on the weekends this coming summer when you visit. You are lucky that one farmer used to have pigs and had installed some nice pig pens and housing for pigs. He said come see me if you have any questions and I will stop by every 2 or so months to check on your fields. He left for home.

End of April the weather had warmed up considerably. Missy said it is fish aquatic plant pick up time. They went to 4 farm ponds that had creek water feeding them and raked up a bunch of plants growing around and in the ponds and Clark used a huge swimming pool rake to rake plants that were growing on the bottom of the ponds. Missy made all of them wade out in the ponds in the mud and shovel up 20 or more full shovels full of the mud from the bottom. They had eight 55 gallon drums full of ucky looking stuff. Clark had to use the forklift to travel around their fish pool and dump a barrel full every so often. All the barrels were brought back to the shallow end and rinsed out. She asked him the big question, when we gonna put some big fish in our pond? He said how about July the 4th. She thought about that for a minute and said no – I have plans for that day – how about July 15. He said whatever floats your little boat in our pond. She laughed at that little play on words.

The farmer whose name was Franklin and 3 other men showed up in mid June at 7am. They had two 26 foot tow along trailers that were full of barbed wire, aluminum fence posts and at least 200 bags of ready mix cement. He told Clark and Missy that they could help put up the new fencing that was going around the new growing fields. He also told them that it would take them maybe 6 trips to do the job. Clark had been told over the short wave receiver to have a full 200 gallon water tank with a hose attached to it mounted on to one of the flatbed trucks. The men ran a red line straight down beside the growing plants about 10 feet on the outside of it. Missy was tasked with running the back hoe and auger. All she did was follow the string line and every 10 feet dropped the auger to dig a 3 foot deep hole. The corner posts were 10 feet long 4 inch steel pipe. They were buried 5 feet deep and 3 bags of cement were dumped in each hole. She and Clark started at opposite ends, did this all day and dug about 485 or so holes. The other 3 men dropped an 8 foot pipe in each hole, dropped a half bag of graveled cement in and half way stood the pole upright. The men left at dark and told Clark that he and his family would have to use a level to make the poles level and dump in a gallon or more of water at each hole. The day after watering the cement would be where the work came into play. They would have to go to each pole and push the dirt back over the cement. The men said they would return in 4 days to string the wire. Clark just thought to himself it would be December before they got the wire strung on that many poles. He found out he was wrong. He had never heard of a 3 barbed wire pole stringer and automatic post wire clamp that attached the wire to the poles.

Clark thought his idea of using the backhoe and pushing the dirt back in the holes by driving down one side and then reversing when he got to the end would take care of pushing the dirt back in the hole. He was wrong again. It was easier for the 6 of them to take a shovel and start at different places around the area and shovel the dirt back in. With 6 of them doing the job it only took a half day of labor. He had an idea of why the farmer wanted these planted areas fenced in but was not sure.

Finally the middle of July that job was done and he still had not caught fish for his tank. But what made it really bad is he was given another job. 2 of the men had run a string line 1200 feet across a slope on the farm. Clark was told to dig a 4 foot deep hole using the 12 inch auger every 25 feet and fill it with manure. After that was done he was to dig a 1200 foot long 18 inch deep trench 2 feet from each hole. Franklin finally told him you are going to plant 50 some apple trees for your use and to feed the pigs we are going to give you. We have 300 apple trees growing at Earl’s farm that will be 6 or 8 feet tall by October and we will transplant 50 or so here. Clark asked what the 1200 foot long trench was for. Franklin said for the 1 inch plastic pipe you are going to glue together and lay in it to water the tree roots for the 1st 2 or 3 years. Gee Clark said that is 50 some T splices. How am I going to keep the dirt from clogging the T splice up. Franklin said each splice will have a 3 inches or so of pea gravel dumped on it and under it; that will last 2 or 3 years until the roots grow into the plastic pipe. But that will be OK because the roots will be established by then and you will not have to water the trees any more unless a drought like has never been here in WV hits us. Clark said what about pruning the trees. Franklin said not necessary for at least 3 years. I will come show you what to do next summer when the trees have started putting out suckers. It will only take about 2 minutes a tree to take care of it. Also these are standard 18 to 25 foot tall non root grafted heirloom trees and will last if nothing happens to them and they are taken care of for at least a hundred years. He laughed and said a cutting taken from them a hundred years from now will start the cycle again.


What really surprised him is when farmer Franklin told him we will make 6 more fields like the ones we just made next year, but 2 of them we will have to put up an 8 or 10 foot chain link fence around it and that will take 10 days of our time with you doing the basic work.


All Clark thought was a future of work, work, and more work.

Part 62.

Camron and Francine were the gunners with Missy on a scavenge trip to the city to get some more water pipe for the farm. Missy told Clark on the hand radio there were 9 or 10 motorcycles parked across the roadway with long haired men with rifles standing in front of the bikes. He just told her to have Camron shoot them if they fire on you. Camron was watching them on the monitor in the crows equipped Hummer Missy was driving.

Missy was about 75 yards from the blocked roadway when she saw the little red fire winks coming from the rifles pointed at her. The windshield got teeny marks on it as the bullets were deflected from the bulletproof glass. She told Camron to shoot the idiots.

She heard the M-60 open up with its 600 rounds per minute rate of fire. Camron used the joy stick to control the raking fire he directed at the stupid people standing in front of the bikes. They had found that after the apartment complex shooting that 200 rounds was really not enough and changing to another load was a pain, so they linked together a 1000 rounds in one ammo box with another 1000 round spare beside it. Camron really did not mean to destroy the pretty painted motorcycles but he did not have any choice as a man was standing in front of each bike. After about 300 rounds of 308 caliber bullets raking across the blockade there were no men standing and 5 of the bikes were on fire. He stopped firing and kept watch on the downed men. He saw no movement. Sherrie was the lookout with Clark and she was watching a 180 degree section of land on the right side and David had the left side. Neither saw movement from the direction they were watching.

Clark took his M-16 and walked towards the downed men – He was 10 yards off to the side to give Camron a clear line of fire to the downed men. After about 5 minutes he arrived at the men and started shooting each one in the head from about 10 feet away. None of the bodies twitched after he shot into the head. They waited 25 or so more minutes till the gasoline in the tanks burned up. He drove the forklift up and using the tines pushed bikes and bodies off to the side of the road. They continued on to Lowes to load the 2 flatbed trucks with piping and fittings.

Clark asked Camron how he felt about shooting people. Camron said those were not people. And I taught them idiots what it was like to shoot at me and I think it was cool, just like playing video games. Missy and Clark looked at each other wondering if they had created a cold blooded 11 year old killer. Camron asked Clark why they did not move when I started shooting at them. Clark said probably drugged out of their mind and thought they were bulletproof. Clark was right on in his assessment of the motorcycle people.

They had nothing to do for the next week except milk the cow and glue the pipe for the apple trees together. Clark and the family took their time and added a 6 inch pipe from the out going tee on the apple side. That job was really easy just a little time consuming making sure the pipe was properly glued together and the cleaning solution was put on first before the glue. He made sure everyone knew that this was only a one chance job and it had to be done right the 1st time. They had already used an end loader and put a scoop full on the back of a flatbed. They then straddled the ditch and took turns dropping a few shovels of gravel where each tee was going to lie. Using the same flatbed they all took turns dropping 4 or 5 inches of gravel on the tee after the pipe was in the ground. Francine used the small dozer and pushed the dirt back over the pipe about half way down before she let David finish it up. They had to dig another trench to the water tank to hook the water up which was about 800 feet but they would do that in a couple of days. Clark had thought about it when he was digging the trench and he sloped it so it was about 6 inches deeper at the end so the water would run down hill to water all the trees.

Missy had been watching the flocks of turkeys roaming all over the cow farm area and wanted Clark to shoot a couple. She then said we could smoke them if you build us a smoker. He said I have a better idea, we can pick one of the high dollar barrel smokers already made at Lowes. That went on the scavenge pick up list.

The water pipe was finally installed from the water tank to the future apple trees. The farmer from Earl’s called Clark on the short wave one night while they were watching a movie. He told Clark that it would be a good idea if he had another 32 by 32 foot pig pen in order to clean the main pen up, plant some grass in it and change the dirt in the mud hole section. He told him one of the men would drop off instructions on how to do it simply to prevent any escapes.

Several days later after Clark looked over the instructions on how to build an easy pig pen, said out loud a cuss word. Missy asked him what was the cussing about. He just said the farmer always builds stuff to last a hundred years. He was told to pick up the fencing at the Tractor Supply outlet

It was getting close to harvest and canning time when he told them we may as well do this pig pen now because I see it is going to take 2 days with all of us working. He used the red twine to mark out the 32 X 32 foot section and had Camron and Sherrie use the back hoe to dig the 6 inch deep trench and every 4 feet use the auger to dig another 12 inches down for the 5 foot fence posts. He was going to do this job a little differently. He cemented the poles in and then filled he trench with cement with the bottom 2 inches of the 4 foot high 4 gauge hog panel fence buried in the cement. When that hog panel fence had set up in the cement he was told to put 4 foot high chain link on the outside of the poles to stop any piglets from escaping. They were done except for building the gate. He had specific instructions on how to do that also. The job was done 4 days later instead of the 2 days he thought it would take.

Harvesting and canning took up the next several days. Finally Clark said that is enough food for us for 50 years, everyone laughed but was glad the intense harvesting, canning and dehydrating jobs were done. Missy said tomorrow I want a turkey or 2 to smoke. The seven of us could probably eat a couple of 10 or 12 pounders.

The next day he took David, the 22’s and some subsonic ammunition. David said Dad these bullets won’t kill a turkey at 40 yards, why don’t we both shoot one at the same time with regular 22 bullets. Clark thought about it and said let’s try the subsonic bullets first – I really don’t want the turkeys to become frightened of us whenever we shoot off a bullet, at least for a few years. They went to the tree line beside a field the turkeys gathered in every morning to eat the bugs and seeds. They were lucky 2 bearded young turkeys came within 20 feet of them and they shot both of them in the head. The turkeys did not flap or squawk they just fell down and quivered a little bit. Clark and David waited 15 minutes before they eased down to where the dead birds were. They put them in an old 100 lb feed grain bag, went back into the tree line and walked home. The 75 or so turkeys in the field just watched them until they left the field. The birds began foraging for food after they had left.

Missy told the great hunters that she would boil the water and they could have a good ole fashioned turkey plucking. What a mess Clark told her after wet feathers were thrown everywhere and the smell was not good either. She said we can broom all the feathers up after I am done gutting the birds. She asked if anyone wanted gizzards. She got a dead eye look from everyone. OK, I will soak these things in a little salted spiced water with ice in it in the root cellar for at least one night and tomorrow I will lightly smoke and bake them. Sorry we do not have any fresh celery, everyone said use lots of carrots.

Clark told her next year they would grow 30 or so stalks of celery and dehydrate it. The celery could be used in stuffing and soups all winter.

The next evening after a huge turkey with the trimmings meal; Clark told them there is just too much work for us to do as a group, we are each going to have to do one job and we can rotate on that job every week so it will not get boring. Here is what I have planned for us in the next 2 months – We will take Saturday and Sunday off except for taking care of the cows. The first thing I want to get done is prepare the lots for each trailer. The laying of the footers and cementing the cinder blocks for the trailers to set on will probably be a next summer job. Camron will do the first job of leveling the forest off, we will not saw any trees down this time but if you can push them into a pile we may be able to get some fire wood from them this winter. I will string out the lot so you will know how much dirt to remove or place back in the area. After that I will dig the ditches for the sewer drains and the incoming water pipes. David asked why do you have 2 sewer drains. Clark told him the commode waste goes into the leach field and we do not want to over tax it because if we do – someone is going to have to dig it up and you know the rest of the story. One more thing when it comes time to redo the leach field you better hope the backhoes are still working. Sherrie said that sounds like one gross job. No one said anything after that for 2 minutes, they just thought of digging into raw sewage. Clark said the other drain is for sink, washer, and bathtub water. it is dropped off onto that 30 foot long 2 foot thick graveled area before it works it way down through 200 feet more of rock and grass and then into the creek.

He handed out the proposed lay out of the new trailer locations. He told them that 2 of the smaller trailers will be set up at the 2 farms in case one of us has to stay overnight there. If you can think of any changes or have any ideas about setting up the trailers, jot them down and we will talk about it in a few days.

Part 63.

At 2am Saturday morning Clark sat straight up in bed. Missy mumbled what is wrong. He told her I was really stupid and now I hope I am not too late to fix the problem my not thinking about may have already caused. She said what on earth are you talking about. He said get dressed and I will tell you about it on our way. Missy was dressed and drinking a quick boiled strong cup of hobo coffee when Clark came running into the kitchen with a sack full of things. He said leave a note on the table we will be back in 2 hours. She said slow down and drink this, she handed him a milked down cup of the super strong boiled coffee. He took 2 gulps and said we are going to take a chance and drive the flatbeds without the Hummer. She said well unless some other people have some night vision we should be OK.

He made sure he swept the roadway when he pulled out of their entryway. She said can you tell me where we are going at 2 am on a dark rainy Saturday morning. He said yep. We are going to get those motorcycles and bodies we so casually left by the road on our way to Lowes. She asked, why? He just said what if that was the scouting contingent for a large motor cycle gang. She said, oops.

He used the forklift to lift all the cycles onto the flatbed and then had to use the gas mask and gloves he had brought along to place the animal chewed, bird pecked, burned bodies onto the tines to lift them on the truck bed. He turned around and turned the headlights on to the area all the body parts and cycles had been pushed. He found several scraps of leather and 3 dull colored German style helmets. He backed up and using the headlights to see he swept the roadway. Turning the headlights off and the night vision back on he drove slowly to their entry way. He again swept his entry roadway, placed the fence back in the pipe hole and crept slowly up towards his house. Fortunately he had put the cycles on the back truck bed. He disconnected the hitch and drove the bodies to his favorite dumping ground and tilted the bed to let them slide off in the middle of the brushy area. He used some kerosene, called Missy on the hand held radio to bring him a couple of gallons of used motor oil. She showed up in about 5 minutes in her pick up. He poured the motor oil on the bodies, sprinkled a pint or so of gasoline on top and threw a burning branch onto the bodies. He said tomorrow night I will burn some more brush over these bodies and bull doze them into a hole the following morning. She said, what are you going to do with the motor bikes. He said dump them on that old abandoned logging road where I did that pickup truck not to long ago.

He did not get out of bed till 1230pm and decided to laze around the house today. That was not going to happen. Missy looked as chipper as a 2 year old with the terrible twos. She said let’s go get some fish. He groaned and surprising even himself he said OK. He threw a 55 gallon plastic drum in the back of his pick-up, loaded some trot line with the hooks already on it, some fishing poles and then asked Camron and David to dig him some worms. He also told Missy we should set the minnow traps and catch 15 or so minnows. It was 230 before they headed off to the closest fishing pond. Missy was in the Hummer leading the way with Sherrie and David as gunners. The rest of the family was with Clark. They baited up the trot line with worms and minnows after tying a large rock to the middle of the line to sink it to the bottom. Camron and David walked around the 70 foot wide pond dipping the minnows in the bucket in as they walked around the pond to keep them alive. They had a hundred feet of line to play with so they tied the line to an old stump on their side and Clark drove a stake on his side and tightened the line up enough that the rock stayed on the bottom in the middle. Sherrie and Francine were given 2 fishing poles with bobbers on the end. Missy said what are we trying to catch. He looked at her and said you read the same library book I did. She said humor me. He said channel catfish and bass for the 1st 2 years. We do not want mud cats or carp. Later on we can put some walleye pike in. She just said sounds simple, he rolled his eyes at that comment. Sherrie and Francine caught 5 bass which they hurriedly dropped in the 55 gallon barrel which had been filled with the Clark pond water. They raised the trot line and had 8 more bass and 3 mud cats. Missy kept the mud cats even though Clark told her they tasted like mud. She just said not the way I am going to fix them. He made her put the 2 pound fish in the minnow bucket and they headed home at a little after 5pm.

Clark tipped the 55 gallon barrel over at the edge of their pond and watched the fish swim off into the depths. He watched Missy use a pair of pliers and pull the skin off the mud catfish. She then cut that little brown streak that ran down the side of each fish out and washed them in the pond. He would not let her throw the guts or skins into the pond, not yet he told her. Next year after the Cray fish get a good hold down in the mud. She said OK.

Clark was surprised at the taste of the mud cats. They tasted just like fresh fish. He would remember that little trick of cutting that brown vein down the middle out.

Late that night he dumped another load of brush over the mostly bones, poured a little used oil on the brush and set it on fire. Tomorrow he would bury the bones using the dozer.

At daylight he hauled the motorcycles to the area he had pushed the truck into the brush and backed up 15 yards into the brush and dumped the bikes. He got out and pulled the small brush and trees back to a standing position that he had ran over and kind of covered his tire tracks by brooming the road before leaving. When he got back he buried the remaining bones in a 5foot deep scooped out hole and ran the dozer over the filled in hole a couple of times.

He and Missy checked on the progress of the kids on leveling the forest out for the trailers. He was surprised, it was almost done. That night he bragged on how great everything was coming along and the super job the kids were doing. Every body looked happy at that pat on the back. He told the kids tomorrow after classes to take an hour and do a little target practice. Everybody clapped their hands.

He had a bad feeling about future events and told Missy so. She said what should we do. He said let’s get everything we need till next summer in the next few days. She said we going to do this in the day time or night time. He said day time with one of the kids in the high rise to watch the incoming high way road.

For 3 days they worked feverishly loading tractor trailer after tractor trailer. That 3rd night he said I want to go to the military base with just the one flat bed with the forklift on it. She said what are we going to look for. He said a 3 phase 220volt 400 amp generator preferably on a tow along trailer. She asked what do we need one of those for. He said I am getting tired of mixing cement up and I want to go to the cement plant and drop the mix in a cement truck and all I will have to do then is add water to the truck. She said do you know how to run the cement factory. He said no but one of the men at Earl’s does and he told me that I would need that type of generator to get the plant running. Why do you need a cement truck, we have been doing pretty good with the gasoline mixer. He said I want to pour the cement for the 4 trailer footers here and the 2 footers at the 2 farms all in one day and save a few weeks of work. She said OK.

8 days later a man and his wife from Earl’s farm met Clark at the cement factory. Clark had made plugs for the generator and had 8 gauge wire in a roll ready to have the man whose name was TI hook the wiring up. Clark asked what the TI was and the man just said my parents named me Theodore Ignatio so I kind of shortened it. Clark did not even grin and he had no idea how he kept from chuckling. He just said well TI let’s get to it. After TI hooked the electric up and showed Clark what buttons to push; it was easy since the plant was semi-automated. Clark filled 2 concrete trucks up with the automatic pre-measured concrete, sand and gravel. TI had cut the water valves off in case there was any water left in the fill tank. He then drew a connection diagram for Clark so if he ever needed to use the plant again he could easily hook the wiring back up. TI told Clark to please park the generator over under the structure that covered the cinder blocks in case he needed to use the place sometime in the future. They looked around some more and loaded some rebar and a pallet of 80 pound sacks of cement. Missy drove the Hummer, Clark drove the flatbed and the man drove one cement truck and his wife the other. They made it to Clark’s residence with no problems. TI said to Clark, OK take us back to our automobile and if you need any more information or help please use the shortwave. Missy and Clark drove them back in the Hummer and said their goodbyes and their thanks.

When they got back from dropping TI and his wife off Clark took a coffee can full of ready mix concrete and poured it down the hole holding the fence posts in and then mixed a quart of water in and stirred it, then threw some dirt on top of the cement. She said why did you do that. He said we are not leaving the place till next March and I told TI to tell Earl that we do not need any visitors till next spring. She just said you are really spooked and he said, yep. He then pulled his .357 out and shot 3 holes in the dead end sign. He saw immediately he had made a mistake. He said let's go home, I have to fix another stupid thing I did. He came back with a gallon of salt water and poured it on the metal that was exposed from the newly shot pistol holes. He swept around the sign and said we will come back tomorrow and do it again. She just looked at him with that questioning look. He told her the salt water will rust the exposed metal in a day or so, but I want to make sure it is rusted by tomorrow evening.

[Lbox88]

Part 64.

23 days after Clark had finished dumping the motorcycles off at the abandoned logging road 450 motorcycles, some with women driving, some with women behind the male driver, some with females behind female drivers and some with just a male rider and the male driver with another male hugging the driver rode up to the sign leading to Clark’s city. The sign was 1200 yards past the spot Camron had killed the 9 motorcyclist’s gang members. All of the motorcycles either had a side car or the 2 wheel tow-along to carry their personal stuff and 3 or 4 mostly different military weapons – M16’s, M-4’s – M14’s – There were some grenade launchers for the M16’s and M4’s but coming along behind the motorcycles were 2 deuce and a half’s one towing a 105mm cannon. The truck towing the cannon was loaded with shells for the cannon and various other anti-tank weapons. The other truck was loaded with military equipment and ammunition that had been taken from an Army base. A lot of the members of this gang were ex-military and were a force to be reckoned with. When they raided a town they only took young pretty females and killed everyone else including babies and young children. They used the females for a few weeks and then killed them. Every now and then one of the women pledged a vow to the gang and was put into the community pool for men who had no female or just wanted a female occasionally. Some of the women gang members also used the young females in the community pool.

Junkyard who was the leader of this mixed group of insane drug addicted killers mumbled to himself, I told those idiots to meet me here at the city limit sign on this highway on this day. He waited a few minutes and pulled his hand across his throat signaling everyone to kill their engine. 2 minutes later all you could hear was the ticking of the cooling down engines.

Junkyard had that commanding drill sergeant voice that could be heard all over a parade ground field. Everyone had assigned tasks, some to get petrol, some food, some to find the best sleeping places. He had another set of instructions for his scouting troops. He told them to find my 2 brothers and their 7 helpers and tell them I am extremely disappointed with them for not meeting me here. The bikers just leaned back on their bikes or lay on the ground waiting to be told where they were going to sleep for the next 30 or so days. Anyways that was the original plan before heading south for the winter. Some of the bikers had a grin on their face because they were going to get to see a Butt whoopin when the 9 people showed up. Those 9 people were supposed to have scouted the city already and had most of the information the gang needed to live comfortably during their travels.

They knew Junkyard was meaner than a junkyard dog and ruled the gang with an iron fist and had in the past not hesitated one microsecond to kill anyone who displeased him. The most recent killing was about a week ago when he shot 4 members of the gang down who would not shut up while he was talking. He was not an overly large person – 6foot 4 or so and 275 pounds, but he had arms like a gorilla and the broad sloping shoulders of an NFL lineman. The scariest thing about him was no one knew exactly how strong or how fast he was. Lots of stories were bandied about his strength and speed but as far as anyone knew he had never been bested in any type of fighting or arm wrestling activities. The arm wrestlers either ended up with dislocated, broken shoulders or wrists as he smashed the opponent’s wrist down on the block.

Clark had been lucky when he picked up the dead bodies and motorcycles because there had been several hard rainstorms since he had done so and the roadway had been washed clean by the rains and baked by the sun so the blacktop just looked like an old oil spill had happened at that spot. The tracks he had made using the forklift off road to pick up the bikes and bodies had also been washed away and new grass had already grown an inch or so. For all practical purposes there were was no evidence remaining of the 9 bikers that Junkyard’s scouts would ever find. The grass had also sprung back up on the old logging road and the deep mud holes were overflowing from the heavy rains on that road Clark had used to dump the bikes and you really had to know where the road entry was to find it; and that was another lucky thing Clark did by using that old abandoned logging road. He would never know of the intense search that was about to begin for those 9 people.

3 days of looking for the missing bikers had not turned up any clue of where they may be or had gone to. Junkyard called a meeting and assigned 75 people to completely scour this town, the surrounding country side for 20 miles and the 2 small towns they had came through getting here for his 2 brothers and the other 7 men.

These searchers followed instructions fairly well because Junkyard always gave them whatever drug it was they used and enough to keep them constantly drug happy so they did an excellent job searching.

Missy was sitting in the kitchen when she saw movement on the monitor from the camera watching the entry roadway. There were 3 motorcycles parked in front of the dead end sign and men were looking at the fence intently. One man walked the fence line and tried to pull each pole out of the ground. When none of the posts lifted out of the ground they drove off. She had already called Clark who was standing outside the door way and the kids were just finishing their lunch. Clark watched the men and breathed a big of relief when the posts he had cemented into the larger ground pipes did not pull out. Clark told everyone not to run any equipment until further notice. He also said do not use the hand held radios either.

Garpel was a sharp eyed former marine long range reconnaissance patrolman and his constant moving eyes spotted the old logging road. He beeped his horn and the other 2 stopped. He parked his bike in the middle of the road, walked over to the rutted logging trail and saw there had been no traffic or tire tracks leading into the mud holes on this road for what he thought was years (Clark was lucky again because the heavy rains had washed his tire tracks away). He told the other 2 that this road ain’t been used in years and I don’t wanna ride through big old mud holes on a wild goose chase. They all started their bikes and rode off. They checked every house, every side road, paved and unpaved for the next 10 miles before one of the others said looks like we done went and gone 20 mile. The other 2 agreed. They went back a few miles to a farmhouse that they had already searched. They had spotted the hand pump well and tested it the last time and the water was cold and sweet as one of them said. They went into the house, settled down on the couch and chairs. Garpel rolled up 3 big fat marijuana joints and the 3 slowly got a little high while drinking the clear cold water. None of the 3 were alcohol drinkers, but they would drink a can of beer if there was some pizza or a good spaghetti dinner available. After an hour or so of just laying around enjoying the mild high from the joints when the munchies hit them and Garpel just said lets go back to the city and get something to eat. All 3 of them were eating a stale Snickers bar as they rode to the city.

So far Clark had dodged the big bullet and had maintained hidden and out of sight with almost 500 armed to the teeth killers less than 20 miles away. Clark’s premonition of great danger has paid off so far.

Part 65.

Missy never took her eyes off the road monitor for the next several hours and she saw the 3 bikes go roaring past at a high rate of speed. She told Clark and he just said OK. He had no idea there was a massive hunt going on for those 9 men Camron had killed. He just told Missy we will keep a low profile out here for a month and then I will do a little scouting trip on a bicycle at dark. At 6pm Missy had used the transmitter and hit the talk key 2 times then 3 times – that was the message to Earl’s camp to not transmit. She got back a 2 tap.

Junkyard had a small rotating crew monitor the airwaves with a scanner every evening when they parked or were set up for a long term stay at one of the dead people cities. They had found a lot of small communities that way and done their deadly damage to the survivors of the community when they found their location.

That evening a man named Plank, he was called that because he was skinny as a board. Anyways Plank had his back to the scanner, was leaned back in a comfortable swivel chair and was smoking some crack cocaine. He heard the 2 and 3 taps on the scanner speaker and thought atmospherics or one of the biker boys playing around with a hand held radio so he never turned around to check what frequency the taps came from. He also heard the 2 tap response but still did nothing. He told himself if it taps again I am going to look to see what the frequency is. But there were no more broadcasts so he just lay back with his feet propped up on the other chair in a drugged haze until his relief 2 hours later. He had forgotten about the taps by then and did not speak of it to anyone.

The weather was still nice at this time of year but a rain front had moved into the city and Junkyard moved into a motel on the main highway and opened the screened windows. The canned food that was going to be used for that evening meal had been gathered by the food crew and placed under the port of a gasoline station on large tables. Everyone could go to the station and pick up what they needed instead of scavenging the town.

Bam, who liked Emeril LaGasse was one of the food gatherers. He told Junkyard that this town had been hit hard by a rather large group of scavengers because the warehouses and the warerooms of both Wal-Marts were just about empty. Very little food was left in the town and they could find no weapons or ammunition. Junkyard said let’s talk about it tomorrow because I just took a small shot of Crank and I am going to the community pool of women right now. Bam wandered off to do his own thing. 2 other gatherers had noticed the empty shelves and they knew a group had come through here and had taken enough stuff to set up a survival community somewhere.

Right before noon the next day Junkyard used his hand held and called the food and equipment gatherer crews. He listened to the report that there was not enough food in the town to supply them for an extended stay and they had found no living people within 20 miles. He made an instant decision and told them to pass the word we will be leaving in 2 days to Key West FL. He picked several people to get a 10000 gallon diesel tank and a 10000 gallon gasoline truck and to make sure the truck that pulled the tanks was a new one with low mileage on it. He then called 3 of the ex army troops off to the side, gave them a 40 day supply of drugs and told them to pick one woman for each of them to keep them company. They were to keep a low profile and keep a watch on the city to see if those 9 idiots had went off on a drug rampage somewhere. To keep you busy for a day or 2 go to the radio store down on the main street, get a short wave receiver and transmitter; then put an antenna on top of that high rise. You can keep in touch with us until we get out of range. Garpel was one of the picked gang members to remain in the city and he made a stupid statement. He said Junk we can’t get no truck up on that building to power the radio. Junk hit him right in the middle of his forehead knocking him out. He told the other 2 that Garpel was to carry the batteries up to the roof and to carry them back down to charge them in an automobile that they were going to get just for that purpose. The other 2 snapped to and said yes sir. One of the men started to say we will find a generator and carry it up to charge the batteries but decided not to say anything when he glanced at the knocked out Garpel laying on the concrete.

Later that night Garpel rolled over onto his stomach and startled mumbling nonsense. One of the other gang members standing near by poured a glass of water over the back of Garpel’s head; this brought him out of his stupor. He asked the other man what had happened. He listened to the story through an extreme thumping, pounding headache and just said stupid. He drank a glass of water and rummaged around in his bike pack and found a half bottle of Advil – took four, lay down on the couch in the motel and passed back out.

Garpel the 2 men and 3 women just lazed around the city looking at things in different shops. They maintained contact with Junkyard’s radio man for 3 days until the signal faded out. They still listened to the radio every evening at 9 pm in case a message came through but nothing did. 30 days had gone by and they had seen nothing except for some stray animals. They packed up and rode south.

Clark rode into the city that night on his bicycle after the 6 gang members had left. He noticed the table with some canned food at the gas station and noticed 2 of the 10000 gallon tankers he had parked by the fuel tanks were missing. He laughed and thought about the keys to the tanker trucks he had hanging on a peg at the farm. He went to the look out in the high rise and noticed the short wave radio, transmitter, a scanner, four 12 volt batteries, an inverter and the 20 foot antenna that had been bolted to the 4 foot high concrete that rimmed the building. He immediately de saddled the area, thinking these people may come back. He would keep a watch on the high rise from a safe distance for a few days to see if anyone was manning the radio.

Part 66.

Clark had lucked out this time just on the hunch he had. 5 days after the main gang had left he got a transmission on the short wave from Earl that told him about 4 or 500 motor cycles had roared past his farm gate. Earl did not have any fires going at the time they rode past. The watchers had reported a huge convoy of the motorcycles, 2 deuce and a half’s with one of the trucks towing a large cannon and 2 fuel tankers going south on the main high way. Earl also was lucky because all the cows had been moved to another pasture behind one of the hills hiding them from observation by people on the high way. 23 days later is when Clark made his foray into the city and found the radio on the high rise.

Cuttings from the tomato vines that still had green tomatoes on them were planted in the green house and the dried heirloom seeds that had been saved were started in small trays.

3 more days of surreptitiously watching the high rise and the city got Clark to thinking that the people that had spent time here were gone.

The trailer footers were dug filled with rebar and cement fencing. The cement truck was filled with water and the 6 trailer footers were filled and leveled off by the 6 of them. He filled the cement truck with water and drove to the end of where the gray water was being run through the gravel and dumped the watered down cement. He washed the interior of the mixer 2 more times before parking it. The other truck was loaded with the cement, gravel, sand mixture and was ready for the next job requiring a large amount of cement. Clark had a laugh when he found out Kimberly the soon to be 5 year old had drawn a picture of a stick cow on one of the footers. No one had told her to wash her hands after playing in the cement and she got a real nice burn with a few blisters. Clark just thought there is nothing like experience to make it through life and the little girl now knew never to put her hands in wet cement again.

Missy asked him how many chickens he wanted to keep alive through the winter. He did not hesitate on his answer. 2 of the new roosters and 14 layers; she asked him why such an odd number, he said the over hang chicken coop has enough laying boxes in it and it will be roomy enough for that many chickens without over crowding them; and I have already fixed it up with 2 overhead LED lights on a 14 hour timer to keep them laying and one 60 watt infra red bulb for a little warmth. I am not putting them in the overhang coop till the ground is covered with snow. The place is tightly constructed, out of the wind and their bodies will generate a little more heat in addition to the infra red heat to keep them warm in that enclosure. She just said OK, and asked when they were going to slaughter the other 33 chickens. He said pick a day or 2 in the next 2 weeks and 2 weeks later we will slaughter one of the cows. She said I was going to mention we are almost out of beef, but we have plenty of pork. They talked that night on how many chickens they were going to leave whole and how many to cut up. They decided on 14 whole ones that they would do the 1st day and 19 cut up the next day. He said we may as well decide on what we are going to do with the beef. She said let’s keep it simple – chuck roasts, T-Bones, round steak to make cubed steaks and the rest hamburger. He said sounds like a winner to me except we are going to keep the fillet mignons, she laughed. The kids are gonna have fun wrapping that meat up and making hamburger patties. He said I want to take my time butchering that young cow so we will wait for a 35 or 40 degree day before killing, skinning it and then hopefully we can let it age several days before starting the butcher job.

Garpel caught up with Junkyard somewhere a little north of Savanna GA. He had not really expected to catch up with him at all, but they had been doing some high speed travelling, only stopping to pump some gas out of underground gas tanks, eating and sleeping. Of course they were all interrogated by Junk separately. But Garpel and the other 5 had gotten their story straight long before they caught up to the convoy. Junkyard after listening to their stories came to the conclusion that something bad had happened to his 9 biker friends. He went over their story again and after finding out for sure they had not seen a living human he began to wonder if they had been ambushed before they got to the meeting place. He told them next summer we will go back through that town and see if anything else has been disturbed after we left. There may just be a survivalist community somewhere near. One of the reasons Garpel had caught up with the convoy was they had stopped at 2 small towns they had seen people in. They had a little fun with the population and took seven 13 and 14 year old girls that they abused for a couple of weeks before drowning them in a river while washing up. The other reason was one of the deuce and a half’s had tire problems so Junk sent his equipment gatherers out to find enough tires to replace all of them on both trucks and any other tire that even remotely looked bad.

Clark broomed up the last of the stray chicken feathers after the plucking and pitched them in the burning barrel. Missy said to all of them that was not so bad now was it. She got an eye roll from everybody except Kimberly who just clapped her hands. Clark said to all of them before they took a shower, 2 more weeks and the big job on the cow. He waited to hear some bad remark but no one looked at him they just wandered away. Missy laughed at him and accused him of trying to create discord amongst the troops. They walked down to the fish tank and Missy surprised him by having a handful of fish food which she threw in. There was a big swirl of water and she said I think some of the minnows got eaten. He said that sometimes will happen in the jungle. She just looked at him as if he were a talking idiot. They chit chatted for a while before heading back to the house. He asked her what was on the menu for supper tomorrow. She looked at him and said jungle food and started running in the door laughing.

116 men had ridden in the motorized rubber rafts to a dock on the back side of Key West Naval Air Station. 24 of them were navy seals. The nuclear submarine they had just left was partially submerged with just the conning tower above the ocean surface. There were 2 destroyers about a half mile out on each side of the sub.

[Lbox88]

Part 67.

The Navy Lt Seal had been placed in charge of the 116 man shore party. The job coming up was one no one wanted to do. Get rid of the bodies and ready the base for the sub and destroyer crews. The Seal Teams were designated Base Security and were to fortify or upgrade the defensive positions. Communications were established with the 3 vessels out in the ocean using secure encrypted communication links. The submarine captain who had just recently been promoted to 06 (Navy Captain or Army full Colonel) had decided to set up a land based operation and Key West NAS was just large enough to support the 3 crews and should have enough supplies to support them for several months. Future decisions would be made after scouting areas further north.

3 days later the bodies had been removed from the base, buildings aired out, cleanup crews were in the base commissary cleaning the rotten meats, produce and various items out. The Navy Seal Chief told the LT that there was no way they could secure the base. He did give the LT something to think about. The only place on this base I can reasonably secure is the concrete covered air craft revetment by the airfield. The LT just shrugged his shoulders and said well you can tell that submarine Captain that when we go back. The Chief laughed and just said Sir, I distinctly heard him tell YOU to report everything to him. The Chief chuckled as he walked off.

Junkyard had spent 4 days in Miami and had had 9 or 10 running gun battles with various surviving Miami gangs. Several of the gang had told Junk that they could probably eliminate these guys if they went all out. Junk told them nope I always wanted to go to Key West and that’s where we will spend this winter. One more thing he said – you can tell everyone here it is warmer on the southern most part of the continental USA so have them get the proper swimwear when they go clothes hunting. He grinned a death looking grin when he said that.

Part 68

Clark had just skinned the calf and it was hanging on his meat rack over the butcher block in the 37 degree weather being buffeted by the 10 MPH breeze. Missy said it is chilly out here. Clark just said, gonna get chillier. They washed up and hoped for a good 3 days of the same weather. The 2 weather barometers he had all showed the same, steady barometer and clear skies. Missy asked him if they were going to try their hand at making cheese. He said yes if I cut the right stomach up off that cow, we will have some Rennet to curdle the milk. She asked him if he was not sure. He told her I went by the picture in the butcher book; I think I got the right one. She asked another question, how many feet of guts did we get. He said enough to make sausage from a 300 pound pig. She said that was one of the nastiest jobs me and the kids had to do cleaning those guts out and turning them inside out. He asked her where she put them. She said in a tub of salt in the fridge. He said good, they will keep for a couple of years in the salt and we can use them this coming summer or fall when we butcher a hog. They went to bed.

Francine and Kimberly came in with 9 eggs for breakfast. He said sure makes a big difference when you don’t have 33 more chickens laying eggs. It was too cold to lay cinder block on the footers for the trailers so he decided they would go check on the apple trees. They checked the trees and saw that some of the tips of the trees had been eaten by deer. He was glad that Earl had had the trees wrapped in that expandable plastic wrap or the trees would have all been eaten. The farm looked peaceful in the bright sunlight. They went into the small trailer to warm up for a bit since they had ridden their motor bikes. Missy asked him if he liked the farmhouse here. Clark said it was OK but awfully big and it would be a beast to keep heated in the winter without natural gas or electricity. He asked her if she was making more long range plans. She said I was just wondering who would move into it on down the road of life. He said that is too deep for me. She punched him and got a gleam in her eye. She said wanna fool around big guy.

Later on that evening they checked the hanging calf and it was chilled down good. He said hope we can get at least 2 more days, 3 would be better. They all went to the greenhouses and piddled around for a little while.

That evening after supper she said Earl called and wants us to come up this week end, he wants us to stay through Sunday. He said we can’t do it this weekend because of the coming butchering. But we will have nothing to do the following weekend. We all will not be able to go, someone will have to stay and keep the fire going in the greenhouses and milk the cow. I imagine we can rotate off if we start going to Earl’s regularly leaving a different person here each weekend. She said I know, Maybe when we get the other trailers fixed up they can come here for a weekend. He said we have 2 fixed up already. I know that but I am talking when the other 4 are fixed up. He said all we can do is ask.

They got 4 perfect 35 to 40 degree days and nights which aged the calf enough to where they would not be eating tough hamburger or as Clark remembered one cow he had bought, even the soup was tough as he often told the family.

Part 69.

Clark was sitting by the fire thinking all kinds of thoughts. The wood in the wood/coal stoves in the green houses were not keeping the places at the optimum growing temperatures. He just said out loud, coal for the night when everyone was asleep. More work he thought. The next day he took the dump truck he used for gravel and drove it with Missy in the Hummer in front of him back to the strip mines he had originally gotten the flat bed trucks. He used the diesel end loader to fill the dump truck with coal. He did know a little bit about coal, not much – but enough to pick up the cleaned and graded coal which was high quality bituminous (soft coal as compared to hard anthracite) and would produce a lot of heat for an all night burn in his stoves. The pile of coal that had been cleaned would last him several hundred years if he just used it in the green houses and his trailer stoves. He would have to make several trips here with the dump truck and insure he had enough for several years. He had already picked out a spot 20 yards from the green houses to pile it up. His other thought was why not get a solar pool heater and dig an in ground pool, cement it, rubberize the inside and use it in the winter time for a type of hot water steam bath or heated swim pool – I have enough free water and he grinned at that. It was just a passing thought, but he wrote it down on his things to think about list.

Dang Missy this is the best spicy potato soup I have eaten in my life. She smiled – well he said what went in it. She said why do you want to know – He said well if you die I can make it again. She pummeled him for 20 or 30 seconds before he just said I give up. She said its simple, an onion chopped up 3 or 4 big potatoes chopped up – it gets tricky here according to how spicy you want it, 1 table spoon black pepper, 1 tablespoon hot sauce, 1 tablespoon salt – big can or 28 oz tomato sauce, 32 oz water, 1 lb browned ground chuck – cook it for 45 min till taters done – He said write it down – she said I took it out of this cook book – he smacked her on the butt. She laughed.

In Key West, things were starting to happen.

The Seal LT said what all military people say, Chit. OK Chief what is our security status. The Chief looked him squarely in the eye and said we ain’t ready for no kind of attack, BUT, we will be in about 2 minutes. The Seal team had all kinds of neat destructive devices the civilian population would drool to get their hands on. Hundreds of pounds of C4, remote radio control detonating devices, suppressed automatic weapons and some long range firepower.

OK Chief have the watcher on the water tower post to lay down, keep a low profile and not expect to get relieved till after dark. The sub captain was informed. Of course he told the men not to fire on the civilians unless they fired first. Chit the navy chief said – the world has collapsed and we still got politically correct people in charge. The chief was a firm believer in pre emptive strikes.

It would be several hours before Junkyard and his minions made it through the small town to the naval air station. This gave the seal team enough time to scout out the incoming people.

The LT told the chief to send 6 men out to find out what this group was up to and to take the 3 big ear listening devices (small highly classified cone shaped device that receives and magnifies sound to enable a covert operator to listen in on peoples conversations from 100 to 150 feet away) with them. Each team had one.

The tower watcher reported to the LT that the convoy had stopped on the outskirts of town by what he thought was the visitor center. This information was passed on to the 6 man team that was to find out about the convoy. 2 of the team proceeded on to the visitor center, 2 stopped and set up on a 2 story building on Duval Street, the center of the tourist attraction. The other 2 were a roving patrol.

Petty Officers Cavalier and Reimers had gotten set up about 30 yards across the street in a one story house and were listening to the chatter of the parked cyclists. Junkyard finally came out of the visitor center with a handful of city maps. He stood up on the back of a pickup and told the gang that he was going to sleep in the Hemingway House for one night and for the rest of the people to stay on Duval Street so they could be briefed in the morning. He then told them if you find any survivors to kill everyone except for a few young girls.

Petty Officers Riemers and Cavalier reported word for word what the big guy had said back to the LT. The LT relayed that to the sub captain. The Chief told the LT if we don’t take these guys out right now we will have a major house to house combat battle going on in this town. The LT told the Chief I know that but I have a small problem. I am not in charge of this operation.

Junkyard said one more item of interest that the 2 watchers heard. He said to the gang I will meet you on Duval Street in front of a place called Sloppy Joes in about 2 hours and after that meeting the food gatherers can go to work.

The LT told the roving patrol to set laser markers up on the roof of Sloppy Joe’s and for the 6 man team to report back to the base. 2 laser markers were placed on top of the popular eatery and pointed out towards the submarine; the batteries had a life span of 24 hours.

Part 70.

While everyone was starting their machines to go into town, Garpel walked over to a lady biker that he had taken a shine to and asked her to stay here with him for a few minutes. She liked Garpel and decided to do just that.

After everyone was gone she asked Garpel what he had in mind. He told her when I was in combat, I had these feelings and I paid attention to them and I didn’t get killed. AND, she asked. He said I think we should ride 10 or 15 miles back north towards Miami on Highway One and just wait an hour or so and if nothing happens we can ride on into town. What kind of story are you going to tell Junkyard she queried? He said I will tell him your bike wouldn’t start and I helped you to fix it. She said OK.

Back at the farm, Clark and Francine were playing a game of Jacks. She was beating him badly, he just thought, young reflexes. Sherrie and Missy were yakking up a storm about cooking some kind of squash soup. The boys were using the controllers on their game boxes and shooting down space ships. Kimberly was drawing in a coloring book. All was well on the farm.

The snow started again in the morning and did not stop for 5 days, when it finally tapered off, there was almost 4 feet of snow. Clark grinned at everyone at breakfast and said Ta Da – Missy said what on earth the Ta Da is about. He said its snow machine riding day. The kids leaped away from the kitchen table. Missy said everybody Stop. Clean the table, dishes, and cooking pans up before you do anything else.


Clark laughed as they made a walking path to the car port that had the snow machines under it. The kids picked Kimberly up and carried her out in the snow and dropped her. The snow was over her head and she tried to swim back to the path the bigger people were making. She would get about 6 inches towards them and slowly disappear under the snow. Missy put a stop to it and pulled Kimberly out of the snow to the trail. Clark placed Kimberly in front of him and they went riding. The instructions had already been given to the kids; stay on the road and the only place to do tricky riding was on the small down sloped hill on the cow farm.

Clark gave everyone a break and cleaned the cow stalls out; Kimberly said it stinks in here. He just said yep as he wheel barrowed the droppings out the side door and dumped them.

2 hours later everyone was in the small trailer and the propane furnace was running full blast. Everyone was frozen and Missy made Co Coa with powdered milk. They rode past the apple trees and out to the planted fields. There were no deer tracks; Clark surmised the deer were staying in the forest where the snow was not so deep. They headed home and put the snow machines away. Clark told them we will do it again tomorrow, everyone screamed yes, yes, yes.

All good things come to an end, after the snow ball fights, the snow man building and riding the snow machines; the snow started to melt away and turned into slush. The cow was only giving about 2 gallons of milk a day and the pregnant one looked like she would have the calves any day now. The cheese they were making was made into wheels, sheathed in melted wax and stored in one of the root cellars. Clark told everyone we have 200 pounds of cheese aging and 250 pounds of butter frozen; all we need now is plain drinking milk. So the cheese and butter making operations were shut down for a while.

Back in Key West on the nuclear submarine; the Captain may have been politically correct but he was not a fool. He contacted one of the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyers and told the destroyer captain he had 15 minutes to get within 8 miles of Key West City for a fire mission. The destroyer had 96 Tomahawk missiles on board and two 5 inch guns. The submarine captain well knew the capabilities of the destroyer because 2 years of his military career he had been assigned to one.

He gave the destroyer captain the information about the laser markers and requested 5 Tomahawk missiles be fired. The 1st one he wanted 10 yards east of the laser designator and the other 4 to impact 3 seconds after the 1st one detonated; 2 of them 300 yards south and the other two 300 yards north of the first missile with a 200 yard east west gap between the 4 missiles.. Then he wanted twelve 5 inch HE high explosive shells to saturate the area. The firing data for the 5 inch guns can be obtained from the 1st Tomahawk’s telemetry. The firing of the 5 inch guns was the reason he wanted the destroyer to move within 8 mile range, this distance gave 99.999% accuracy to the big guns. The last instructions he gave the destroyer captain on this fire mission was he wanted all the detonations to take place 50 feet above ground he did not need big craters on the ground or roadways to be filled in by his ground forces. The 5 inch HE shells had altitude sensors in them and could also be set for a ground detonation or airburst. He also told the destroyer captain that these were all soft targets. The sub captain knew this was super overkill but he had listened to the on scene report of the Seals and knew these people were scum of the earth and should not be allowed to roam the streets of his America. Continuing his instructions to the destroyer captain; I want both multi mission M60R helicopters configured for ground combat operations and launch them 5 minutes after the 5 inch shells have impacted. There are no friendlies in the fire mission area; I repeat there are no friendlies in the area. Use the machineguns on the helicopters to eliminate any remaining targets in the affected area. The destroyer captain responded with a simple yes sir instead of the traditional navy response of aye aye.

Orders were passed down to the fire control center on the destroyer, the helicopter maintenance crews hurried up to mount the 50 caliber guns. This job normally took 45 minutes, but they were told they had 1 hour to get the job done. 12 five inch shells were pulled from the stockpile, inspected and the sensors set for 50 foot air burst. 40 minutes later the ship was floating 8 miles off Key West waiting on the fire command. The destroyer captain and the sub captain knew the armaments being expended now could always be replaced from one of the designated 60 bunkers that carried resupply munitions at Key West NAS or any of the surviving submarine pens on the eastern seaboard.

The Sub Captain gave the order to fire when the water tower watcher reported as far as he could tell the motorcycle gang was massed up on Duval Street in front of what he knew was Sloppy Joe’s eatery.

[Lbox88]

Part 71.

It was a nice 75 degree, sunny, light breezy day and the steam was baking off of the blacktop after a quick rain shower passed through the area. Garpel was sitting on the blacktop leaning back against his bike looking south towards Key West quietly talking to his new mate. All he said was holy chit as he watched the 5 missiles reach the top of their flight and speed downwards towards the city. He did not wait for what he knew would be tremendous explosions. He told the female let’s haul butt now and don’t look back. That Navy base a ways past where Junkyard is having his meeting is occupied by active military troops and there are warships or submarines out in the ocean. She had seen the missiles on their downward trek and did not believe anything like this would ever happen to her gang.

Junkyard was having fun killing cats in and around the Hemingway house and was 2 minutes late going to Duval Street to meet with his gang. There were 11 gang members watching Junk kill these cats and they were grinning like some sort of mad men. The Hemingway house was 600 yards from the bracketing incoming missiles.

Junkyard and his 11 minions escaped the initial explosions of the Tomahawk missiles and the HE detonations of the 5 inch shells. However they were knocked senseless to the ground and their eardrums had all been burst from the massive explosive concussions. They were just rousing themselves from the ground when the helicopter which they could not hear dropped down to within 350 yards of their location.

The FLIR (forward looking infrared) picked up the heat signatures from the 12 bodies around the mostly up to now lightly damaged Hemingway residence. The 50 caliber machine gun mounted to the helicopter which was linked into the FLIR sensor was activated by the co-pilot. The 12 live humans on the ground were turned into something resembling chopped hamburger chunks. Junkyard and his gang were no longer members of the living human race. The Hemingway house had more than a hundred 50 caliber ricochet holes punched through it but it was still standing.

Garpel and his girlfriend were 50 miles north on US Highway 1 going 90 MPH before the dust settled in Key West. They planned to bypass Miami and hide out for a few days before heading anywhere northwest.

30 minutes after the 2 helicopters completed their fire mission and returned to the destroyers the entire 24 man Seal team filtered back into the city looking for survivors. They were armed to the teeth and had flak vests on to hopefully stop any bullet fire to a critical part of their body. The flak vests were not designed to stop gunfire as bullet proof vests were but they had no bullet proof vests so they used the destroyer flak vests as a weak substitute. The flak vests were hot and heavy but no one complained. They counted 476 skulls; a body count was not possible because some of them had been fused together or blown apart so violently that an accurate count could not be made by counting bodies.

Back at the farm Clark had left Camron in charge while the 6 went to Earl’s farm for some 2 day pig training. He and Missy always laughed when that came up.

After the pig show and tell lectures around the pig farm Missy and Clark learned there was more to raising pigs then throwing them in a mud hole and giving them slop. They took lots of notes.

Later on that evening Clark asked Earl if anyone here knew about wind mills or more appropriate wind turbines. Earl said yep. Clark got to talk to the windmill man and laid out what he wanted to do. The wind turbine man whose name was Jethro told Clark as soon as he picked up the turbines which were 70 miles in the opposite direction of the solar plant to call him and he would come down and show Clark what needed to be done. He also gave him the information and sizes of turbines he would need for the coming future.

One more day of pig lectures then Clark and the 5 headed back to his place. Camron told everyone that he shot a dog that was snooping around the barn and he had dragged it off to the edge of the forest. Clark told him it may have some disease on it and they would take the backhoe over to where it lay and bury it. He patted Camron on the back for the good work. Francine asked why they did not have lights in all the places at Earl’s farm. Clark told them they were working on it and by the end of this summer they would have plenty of electricity.

Garpel told his new woman that they needed to refuel somewhere around Fort Meyers. He said I know we have the 5 gallons on our tow-along but that will not be enough to get us out of FL. He told her we need a pickup truck so we can carry a generator and a pump with us to get gas from gas station tanks. They checked out a Lowe’s in Ft Meyers and it had not been totally scavenged. He got all the parts and the hose to pump gasoline from gas stations. Now they needed a pick up and a tow-along to carry their motorcycles. They drove by a U-Haul place and kept it firmly in mind as they went to a new truck dealership. The doors to the place were wide open and desiccated bodies were laying everywhere. Finding a Chevrolet 3 door pick-up with a 60 gallon gas tank he looked for the keys. He knew it had a 60 gallon gas tank because it said so right on the new truck information sheet glued on the door window. He had to jump start the truck using his 12 volt motorcycle battery. He and his woman both rode 2008 Harley Electra Glide Classic bikes because they got tired of the noise coming from the straight pipes most of the bikers preferred. In reality they were stealthy when they rode the bikes because of no muffler sound. This had saved them a lot of grief while they were travelling from Key West. They now had to go back to Lowes and pick up 15 or as many 5 gallon gas cans as would fit in the tow along beside the bikes. The generator would ride in the back of the pickup.

Finally Garpel had the gas cans, the bikes and the pickup full of petrol. She asked him why not stay here. He just said you do not want to be here or anywhere near here when those military people come north and I know they will. This place is loaded with military installations and they will be sure to check all of them. She said we can hide. He told her NO, you can hide; I am going back to a place we stayed at in West Virginia it is remote and the 30 days I spent there I saw no other humans. Also, there is enough food for the 2 of us to live comfortably for 6 months or more.

Part 72.

Jethro called Clark on the shortwave and wanted to know if he had deep cycle solar or golf cart batteries. Clark had hundreds but only told him yes I have several. Clark had gathered all the wet cell batteries that had not been activated with electrolyte and stored them. He also had several hundred new wet cell mine buggy batteries that he had dumped the electrolyte out of and stored it in gallon glass jugs. He had read somewhere to wash the batteries out and fill them with distilled water and dump that to stop or slow the chemical reaction on the lead plates; 50 of the mine buggy batteries he experimented with and filled them with transmission fluid to coat the lead plates to try and stop the inevitable corrosion of the lead plates. He had no idea whether this would work, but since he had so many batteries it was worth a shot. He had decided later on when the batteries were needed to wash the batteries out with gasoline, kerosene or alcohol and then use the air hose to try and completely eliminate any oil residue. Before the WWW went down he could find no reference to what he was going to try. If it didn’t work then he was out 50 mine buggy batteries which was a small portion of what he had stored. The way he looked at it was he would be dead a long time before he ran out of working lead acid batteries. It would fall on some one else’s shoulders to figure out how to store energy after he was gone.

He now had 29 tractor trailers lined up on his gravel parking lot which reminded him of the plane that had flown over a while back. The tops had to be painted with that ucky dark green Lowe’s paint when the temperature got up into the 60’s for a little camouflage. He still had room to park 11 more empty trailers.

2 days after talking to Jethro, Clark and Missy headed to the wind turbine factory. She leading in the Hummer with Sherrie and him following in the flat bed towing the forklift; they spent all day loading 8 windmills of the type Jethro had told him to get plus all the accessories and several 300 foot rolls of electrical wire. They made it back just at dark, left the flatbed parked under a car port, ate supper and went to bed.

Garpel and his woman had been travelling on I77 north on their way to West Virginia when he decided to go due west on US 40 for a while. He travelled on 40 for about 15 miles and took a gravel road north where he started looking for out of the way farmhouses. On his 3rd turn off onto another graveled road they found a nice looking farm that was about 800 yards from the turn in and could not be seen from the original graveled road. The time was about 2pm and they decided to look around. There were 4 bodies in the entryway to the house but they were lying on a tile floor and the fluids had just dried up. Further investigation showed the place was powered by 16 solar panels on a rack out the back door with a large battery bank. They found the food storage in the basement. Several hundred jars of home canned meats, vegetables, jelly and preserves all nicely labeled and dated. He asked her what she thought about the place. She told him I always wanted to be a pioneer woman. He snorted. They talked it over and decided to stay here for a few months and make a few scavenge runs back towards a mid size city they had driven through. He told her this may be a better place for us to stay then going to WV. I remember someone had hit that town hard and there may be a lot of them. We could run into trouble there. Let’s just play it by ear for a while. She said yes I am in no hurry to get killed or snatched up by a vicious gang.

Garpel and his woman were excellent mechanics and both had a rudimentary knowledge of how solar panels worked; the first thing he did was check the battery fluid level. Some of the batteries needed to be topped off and fortunately he did know how to read the meters attached to the battery bank. They continued their search the next day and found the 12000 watt diesel generator. Just my luck he told her we have gas and this thing runs on diesel. She pointed out the large tank behind the generator enclosed building. He looked at the gauge and saw it was ¾ full. Well we are having some luck Miss Abigail Tiner. She smiled, that was the 1st time he had used her full name. She thought just maybe this will work out into a permanent type relationship.

Clark had called Jethro on the shortwave a few days ago and Jethro said he would stop by tomorrow morning. When Jethro arrived he opened one of the wind turbine crates and pulled the instructions out. He then asked Clark to show him where the wind blew. They rode 4 wheelers about a hundred yards to the crest of a ridge behind the trailers. Jethro said this is nice you are lucky to have this much wind blowing through this valley. OK Mr. Clark here is the directions on the spacing of the cement pads you are going to have to pour to hold the wind turbines up. When you get the pads poured and the bolts embedded in the cement for the wind generator and tower cables call me 3 days after the cement has set up. It will take 4 of us to put them up and run the wire down to the power relay center shack you are going to build. Clark just said sheesh.

It took Clark and his 5 helpers the better part of a week to dig the holes, pour the cement and level the pads for mounting these 5Kw turbines. He wondered how they were going to put the things up until he saw that the towers he had were the tilt-up ones. Jethro told him he was going to put all 3 towers up on the crest and he would manually feather 2 of them until Clark needed more power than one turbine put out. They finished that little job and moved operations to the cow barn area. He poured the pads for 3 1Kw towers then started relocating the battery power control center right behind his trailer which was a 20 X 12 work construction trailer. He mounted the work trailer on a 12 inch footer with one cinderblock on top of the footer to keep the bottom of the trailer from rotting out by being placed on the ground.

Part 73.

Sherrie came running in the trailer the next morning screaming we have baby cows. Everyone hastened to the barn to look and sure enough there was a baby girl and baby boy sucking milk from the proud looking worn out Momma cow. Clark told Missy Ok we have to figure this out now on when to take the other milk cow back to get her serviced so we will always have a continuous supply of milk. He called Earl that night just to make sure and Earl told Clark to bring the other milk cow to his farm now to get her serviced. The other calves will be just about weaned by then and you can separate them from the momma cow. Clark wrote it down and put it on the fridge so everyone would know. It was explained to him that one of his 3 cows would have to be serviced in time to keep an overlap of milk and of course Clark got a 2 hour lecture on everything concerning the overlap.

The next morning at 6AM Jethro and 4 men showed up to help install the wind turbines. Since Jethro had done this before it only took 4 hours per turbine. They got 2 that day and Jethro said he would be back in 3 days to do some more. Jethro told Clark those turbines you picked up with all the extras run almost 24000 bucks each, but everything is here I need to give you AC power right off an inverter. If what you have told me about the wind always blowing on that ridge you probably won’t need to ever use the battery bank unless the blades furl in a high wind. Don’t worry we will wire it up so you will not have any problems unless an electronic component fails or the bearings wear out in the turbine. Clark always followed them out and after they put the fence back up he faithfully swept the roadway and poured the always full gallon jug of water on the road that he had in the pickup.

3 days later 2 more turbines were installed. He told Clark it will be a few weeks before I can get back we are installing one of the megawatt and several 5000 Kw turbines on Earl’s farm to power the whole place. Clark just said no hurry; I have enough solar power to run everything now except when I turn the big washer on I have to turn the generator on. Earl said you will not have that problem in a month or so.

End of February, Missy asked him if he wanted the last ripe tomato, he said yes. She said there are about 40 more just starting to turn but it will be a week before they are ready. He used a salt shaker, sat there in front of everyone and ate it. Kimberly had a look on her face that Clark thought was astounding. He thought she was going to cry because he ate the whole tomato. He asked her what the matter was. She said I never saw anybody eat a whole tomato. Everyone laughed. She would be 5 next week.

Clark had paid extreme attention to what Earl was doing while he wired up the battery bank and all the other electrical equipment. He was a fair to middlin electrician and thought he could have muddled his way through it but he learned a few things. He now had power to spare. The output from the single wind turbine was a constant 4200 watts; he guessed that was because of the 20MPH wind that always blew on that hill crest.

Missy had picked up 200 or so videos from a Christian book store that was the Gaither Gospel band and he enjoyed taking an hour every evening with her and some of the kids watching and singing along with the singers. Things were again all well with the Clark tribe.

The end of March the weather turned warm and Earl called him to remind him to turn the water on to the apple trees and told him Farmer Franklin would be down to look over the fields in 2 days. Clark thought there was going to be a massive amount of work when Farmer Franklin got through with his visit. He was right on about that. He had given instructions to Clark to plow 2 more 200 by 200 yard fields. Clark didn’t think that was too bad as the kids could take turns driving the tractors. But that was just the beginning. He asked Clark if he still had the red twine they had used to square off the other fields, of course Clark did, he never threw anything away anymore. Well make sure you use it and leave the 10 feet perimeter around the plowed up field and then he dropped the bucket on him. Drill the 3 foot holes every 8 feet around it with the 5 foot deep ones on the corners. We will be back with the pipe and chain link. You do have enough reddi mix concrete to take care of filling in the holes. Clark said yes he had plenty. Franklin got in his vehicle and left. Another loud 4 letter cuss word was uttered by Clark.

The middle of April Franklin and 3 men showed up and told Clark it is time to put some poles in the ground. This time everybody helped putting the cement around the poles, watering them, leveling them up and putting the dirt back on the cement. With 10 people working they got both fields done in a single day. Earl said they would be back in 4 days to put the fence up. Clark noticed that the poles were 9 feet high and wondered about it. He would soon find out about the 1 foot extra height above the 8 foot chain link fence. There had been a 4 inch deep trench dug in front of the poles for the chain link to drop into, he guessed that was to keep rabbits out or small burrowing animals from digging under a fence that just sat on the ground.

4 days later Franklin and his crew arrived with the fence and several rolls of single strand barbed wire. The chain link fence was a beast to install and attach to the poles; each aluminum tie wire tying the fence to the poles had to be done by hand. Franklin finally told him the single strand of wire that was tied to the top of the pole was to insure deer did not jump into the fields. We will tie some blaze orange streamers on it after we finish up so the deer can see it. That brought up the next question of what was to be planted in these 2 fields.

Franklin gave Clark another job before he left. It was an easy one. He told Clark to run a buried ½ inch water pipe to all of the fields and he handed him a map of each field. Clark knew this was to water the cows they were going to eventually some day turn loose in these fields or maybe even water some crop that needed close attention. That job would take a considerable amount of time gluing the joints of schedule 40 pipe together. He would draw out the line he wanted to take to dig the trench for the pipe and have one of the kids start on the 18 inch deep trench. Franklin was not through with giving him jobs as he would find out about on the next trip he came. Ah well Clark thought it was something for all of the family to do.

Part 74.

The 20th of April Franklin, 5 men and eight 11 to 13 year olds showed up with 6 loaded 24 foot tow-a-longs. He had already briefed the people that were with him on this one day intense work job. He spent 15 minutes giving Clark and his group their assignments. The 4 new fields were planted – Six 100 gallon drinking water tanks for the cows had been placed under the faucets – six 10 X 20 car ports had been placed on the 10 foot wide sections separating the planted part of each field, Earl told him shade for the cows since you don’t have trees – A new feed and water trough was placed in the new pig pen and a 6 foot wide by 10 foot long thick plastic bottomed dog pen like house with a raising lid was put in the pen for the pigs to have a sleep place when moved into the new pen to allow the original pen to be cleaned up and grass planted. Each field fence had a new electric generator hooked into a 2 X 8 foot long solar panel and a new solar battery in a plastic weatherproof case to electrify each field fence. The panel was mounted to the fence on the south east corner. Clark said how am I ever going to repay you for all this help. The farmer said don’t worry after we harvest your fields you can help us with ours, we have 10 times more to harvest than you do.

Clark asked him what was planted today. Earl pulled out three 3 by 3 foot pieces of plexi glass and said come into the barn, this is where you will keep track of the planted fields. I also have a copy. Earl taped the drawn maps onto the barn wall and covered them with the plexi glass by screwing the plexi glass to the wall. The 3 maps each had 2 fields drawn onto them. Franklin took out a black crayon and wrote what was planted in each field. Why do we have so much summer and winter squash planted Clark asked? Franklin told him to feed the 4 pigs you are getting in late July. If you have too much of an overage, we will come pick it up to take care of our much bigger herd. In 30 days you can take the cows down to this field and turn them loose. You can use that field for a week or so before you move them to this field. You will then rotate them back and forth between these two fields until we pick the corn and squash, then you can turn them loose in those 2 fields. We have it set up so you can take care of 12 cows summer and winter, but that increase won’t happen for a couple of years. Earl wants to talk to you about moving 2 families into the other 2 farmhouses. He wants you to keep the farmhouse by the cow barn for your own personal use, The 2 new families can help you with the livestock and the fields. You will not have to furnish food, fuel or power to the other families, we will supply that. But that will not happen till either this winter or next spring so you will have plenty of time to think about it. Clark could already see without more help he and his family would be snowed under. He would talk with Missy before he talked to Earl about this. As Farmer Franklin was leaving he told Clark to not enter the other 4 fields for at least 30 days. A few good rains will get everything growing. See you soon he said as they all piled into their vehicles and left. He of course followed them out and cleaned the roadway.

After Clark got through telling Missy what Earl had said - Missy said that’s wonderful, we can have visitors, picnics, the kids will have new playmates and best of all we will have help working the fields, cows and pigs. Clark agreed with her and told her he would tell Earl that it was OK. Clark had an idea that Earl was going to repopulate this little section of WV heaven.

Unbeknownst to Clark and family several small groups of people had moved into what he thought of as his city. Most of these people were extremely bad people. But Clark had not let down his guard. A week later he saw the people moving around in the city on one of his late night look-sees at the city. The next evening at 6pm he tapped 3 times on the transmit button. This told Earl’s radio person to go to voice encryption. Clark had already plugged his laptop in that had been set up by Fred with something called a voice coder that both digitally enhanced the analog signal to encrypt it at transmission or something like that and then reversed the signal back at the other receiver. Fred had picked the equipment up at a high class radio store in the town next to them and set both of their short wave systems to encrypt their transmissions through the laptops and voice coders when needed. Clark thought this was one of those needed times. This was a low level encryption security (Fred called it level 4) and any military monitoring system could decrypt it with ease, but the people he saw were nasty looking and definitely not military.

[Lbox88]

Part 75.

He decided not to do anything about these people for the time being as far as he could tell there weren’t but 14 or 15. – In reality he had to much work to do. He and Earl decided to keep the radio chatter to an absolute minimum. They set up a procedure if anyone visited; Clark would post himself on their incoming roadway 5 miles away to see if anyone was following them.

Farmer Franklin and 3 men showed up about 9pm 2 days later. Clark followed them home an hour later. They were going to spend the night and do some different things tomorrow. Franklin told Clark they had to kill 7 men in their town but left 3 women and 2 men alive who soon departed the area. He chuckled and said looks like we gonna have to do some house cleanin again in your city.

The next day 2 of the men with Franklin went straight over the hill beyond the new field and erected a small carport by the mid size creek. They waited a while and the other man towed a large Diesel generator with a 5 horsepower water pump - they all set it up under the sturdy carport on pre- cut concrete pads and bolted both down. Farmer Franklin studied the bank leading down to the generator. He sent 3 of the men off to gather some more heavy equipment. The bulldozer was used to cut the bank down to where the flat bed could be driven down beside the generator. Next the dump truck loaded with gravel dumped a load of gravel on the newly made 10 foot long and 10 foot wide road. One of the men used the bull dozer to level the gravel off. Franklin and another man drove the 2 back hoes down into the creek and proceeded to dig the 2 foot deep section of creek out to 6 feet deep where they hit bed rock and 10 feet in diameter. They then took the extra 100 gallon plastic diesel tank Clark had, mounted it on 4 more pre cut concrete pads and bolted it to the leveled off pads. The men then took the heavy equipment back to where it was normally parked.

Clark was told to have Missy and 2 of the kids go with the 3 men. Clark got some more instructions and said 4 or 5 cuss words. The 3 men had 7 or 8 sixteen inch by 20 inch long schedule 80 pieces of pipe with a ½ inch thick metal lid that would fit perfectly over the pipe. Clark was told that he, Franklin had forgotten a few things but was now fixing what he had forgotten. Clark asked him if he needed him to do anything other then stand around looking useless. Franklin said come with me; we need to wait till the men get through with the 2 back hoes that are using the augers. Clark finally saw what Franklin was having done. Clark kicked himself for not thinking of it. The men were digging down beside the field water faucets and cutting the faucet pipe under ground off. The underground pipe was put in the 24 inch pipe that had a 4 inch slit up the side where the ½ inch feeder pipe slid into it. The faucet pipe was slid down through the ½ inch hole in the center lid cover and the faucet pipe re glued back to the underground pipe through a bleed off valve to drain the pipe in the winter. Clark looked and saw there was enough room to slide the lid up at least 48 inches to drain the water in the pipe to keep the PVC pipe and plastic faucet from freezing and bursting. Franklin drove one of the augured dozers to where the T was that fed the apple tree soakers. He did the same there but just put a shutoff valve there. Clark asked him why. He said in a few years you will not need to use any water for the apple trees and the water can flow directly to the 6 fields.

Franklin told him I sure hope this is the last job of pipe trenching you have to do. But he told Clark this is an easy one. Yeah, right Clark thought. He said since we already planted the fields we can’t go digging them up to put soaker pipe in the ground. The 1000 gallon water tank you have that is being filled by the well won’t be enough to water the fields in a drought anyway. So here is what we are going to do. You will have to use 2 inch schedule 40 pipe to each field from the creek water pump. We will put a 2 inch fire department hose nozzle on a mount and spray it straight up. It will take a little while to do an entire field but that is the quickest way we came up with to do a little watering if you ever do have to water the fields this summer. We only had to turn our soakers on 3 times in Earl’s fields in the last 5 or 6 years. The manual for the water pump says it can generate 100 pounds of pressure and that is enough for the 2 inch hose to cover the 2 hundred yards of the field from where we are going to mount the nozzle; just in case it won’t cover the field you will just lose whatever is planted out of reach of the water. We have too much to do to worry about 50 or so yards of clover or hay. This coming winter you can trench the fields and bury the soaker hoses. Clark hoped there were no drought conditions for many years. Earl told him that night before he left – Think horses down the road from now. The next 2 fields we make next year will be enclosed by 8 foot chain link, left fallow and will be strictly for horses 25 or so years from now. We are going to use that plasticized chain link and Teflon coated black steel gas pipe so it won’t start to rust for at least a couple hundred years. Wow Clark thought Earl is thinking extreme long range.

Part 76.

Early May, Earl called Clark and said Hank and Fred and two other men would be there tomorrow night at 730. 930 pm Fred asked Clark how many suppressed rifles he had. Clark saw no reason to lie to him so he told him. Hank said good - tomorrow the 4 of us will zero 4 in for us and we will eliminate some vermin in your city. Clark grinned and asked what brought this on. Fred said Earl thought you may want to pick up some things from the city like we do occasionally and he does not want to lose or have any of your group injured again as you did. Clark agreed with that thinking wholeheartedly. He was still holding some things back. If he only knew that Hank and Fred had killed Jeff for wanting to harm Clark and Missy he would have jumped on Earl’s bandwagon quickly.

Fred saw that Missy was a better shot then anyone in the group except maybe for Hank. So he took Clark with him, sent Missy with Hank and the other 2 men had already proven they were an excellent sniper team so they stayed together. Fred asked Clark where these people stayed. Clark said on nice evenings like tonight will be, they hang around the front of Wal-Mart and the shops close by. A lot of them usually set around on a couple of benches smoking whatever it is they smoke around an outdoor fire.

Fred said OK simple is always better on these types of night time attacks. The longest shot will be from the metal trash dumpster straight across from the front of Wal-Mart, Hank and Missy will take that position. Clark you and me take the right side and you boys got the left. Make sure the batteries are charged for your radio and your ear piece works. Clark you and me will be 15 yards back out of the line of fire from Sammy and Monto on the left. Missy and Hank will have a straight shot across the parking lot. What we have here gentlemen and lady is a 3 position sniper assault. The bad guys have an exit of escape but we 6 will not allow any to make it to the doors of the Super Store. Hopefully Missy and Hank will take out 4 to 6 before anyone knows they are being attacked. We 4 should theoretically be able to get 4 to 6 more. But we won’t know how many people are there till we set up right after dark tonight. Normally a squad would open up with the SAW and the rest of the squad would be the designated marksmen. But tonight we are not using a SAW so all of us are designated marksmen.

There was no moon and at 710pm there was total darkness. They rode the bicycles slowly from a side street 2 miles away. The Generation 5 night vision brightly lit up the area in a bright greenish glow. Clark and Fred were in position first. They were just waiting on the 2 and 3 clicks to let them know the others were ready. Hank would give the command to fire. It was just about a hundred and 40 yards from where Clark was to the small fire in front of Wal-Mart. There were 7 people sitting on 2 of 4 benches around the fire talking loud enough for the snipers to hear an occasional word clearly. Hank said into the radio. We wait a while hopefully more will show up. 30 minutes later 6 more people showed up bringing a load of sticks or those fire logs for the fire; the snipers all saw the rifles slung over the people’s shoulders. Hank said me and Missy are taking the 6 people with their backs to us. Fred you and Clark take the 4 on my right. Monto you and Sammy got the rest. Settle down people on my count of 3 - Fire. 1 – 2 – 3.

5 of the 6 people with their backs to Hank and Missy fell over seconds apart just like the 4 that Clark and Fred’s targets did. The 3 that Sammy and Monto fired at also slowly slumped down in their seats. Sammy shot the one guy that Missy and Hank had either not killed outright or missed; he had jumped up and was looking towards where Clark and Fred were when he was hit in the back. Hank said everyone hold your position there is either 1 or 2 people somewhere out in the city. The suppressed fire from the 308’s from the other shooters could not be heard by any of the other snipers. 20 minutes later Clark’s crew all heard the raucous yelling of 2 people screaming we found the beer. They were coming in from Monto and Sammy’s side so Hank told the 2 to take them out. Hank said shoot all the body’s again. After that shooting they stayed in position for another hour. Fred and hank made an outside circuit of the Super Store then walked through the Mall. They saw and heard nothing. Missy said I want to check the bodies. Clark just looked at her. Hank said I’ll do it. All of the downed people’s arms were checked and there were fresh oozing and scabbed over needle marks on everyone’s arms. Missy said I feel so much better now. Everyone agreed with that comment.

Fred asked Hank if he wanted to do the deed tonight or tomorrow. Hank said tonight, I’ll get the truck. They dumped the bodies in the large metal trash dumpster, Clark poured 5 gallons of diesel fuel over them and about a half gallon of gasoline. They backed off a little ways and a shirt from one of the dead bodies that had a rock wrapped in it was set on fire and pitched into the dumpster. Clark said I’ll put some more used motor oil and gasoline over the body’s tomorrow night. The rifles, pistols and ammo from the dead people were thrown into the pick-up and would be looked at in the morning. A decision would be made whether they would keep any of the guns at that time.

They stopped on the way back to the farm where Missy had parked the Hummer. She fired it up and drove it home. Clark got off 2 miles from the farm turnoff with his bike and watched the back road for 45 minutes. Everyone was asleep by 1130pm.

Part 77.

6 days later Clark was told on the radio that since things were slow there would be a crew down tomorrow morning to upgrade the 2 farmhouses for off grid occupancy. He found out when the 14 people crew came that they had plans to also fix-up the farmhouse that he was going to keep. All he and Missy were doing was watching the grass and plants grow so they jumped in to help. A lot of work had to be done on the 2 farms that earl’s people were going to occupy. But with 14 people doing the work it would not take long. They had brought new wood/coal burning stoves and triple wall stainless pipe which only took the stove crew one day per house to install. One roof was recovered with a new metal green roof. New diesel generators were wired into all 3 houses and a shed built to keep them out of the weather. Battery boxes for the out behind the house solar racks and panels were built right beside the electrical inlet. A 50 foot garden was plowed and a 4 foot chain link fence put around the garden. Franklin had a new twist on these gardens to keep the deer out. He had used the 12 foot aluminum fence posts and ran 3 strands of barbed wire upwards every 2 feet around the gardens to keep the soon to be humongous herds of deer from eating everything. Farmer Franklin told Clark and Missy they were going to have to start killing hundreds of deer or they would eat everything. He continued by telling them that Earl had set a small brain tanning operation up to use the hides for clothing. Most of the meat would be made into jerky except for the back straps and some rear haunches to mix with pork for sausage. When it is time to slaughter a great number of deer here, an assembly line will be set up to save the meat for jerky and the hides for jackets, gloves and whatever. Since there were 3 wind turbines at the barn no extra ones were put beside that farm house. 2 small 400 watt ones were placed at each of the other farm houses.

Most of the crew returned every other day to do the small things that were time consuming. 20 X 20 foot green houses were built – 1 at each place – Transmitters and receivers were installed so everyone could keep in touch. A 5 year pile of coal was placed in between the green houses and the house. One not so steep mountain about a half mile from one of the farms had all the trees cut on it for firewood. The brush was left to keep erosion from taking place. The next year the stumps would be bull dozed out and the hill partially leveled. Grass or wheat would then be planted again for erosion control. This was another long range plan Earl and his planners had decided on.

The 3 empty farm houses were finally completed and awaiting an occupant.

The end of July 4 pigs were delivered to Clark, What Earl and Farmer Franklin did not tell Clark was one of them was ready to have piglets. The kids loved the little ones. Clark just thought to himself, wait till they get to be 250 pounds and that cuteness they think they are now will disappear. Clark cussed Farmer Franklin every time he bent over to pull a summer squash from a vine. He told Missy that this was a real pain to pick squash to feed the pigs. She and the kids all said the same thing, yep. They stored what seemed to him a million squash in the root cellar. Missy said cheer up we get to do it again in a couple of months for the winter squash. That night they talked about how much easier things would get when the other 2 families moved into the other farms. She said yes it will be because they will help us feed the pigs here because this is where the future pigs will always live and they will help us keep the pig pens cleaned up and the cows milked and fed.

Early August Farmer Franklin and his wife delivered eight 55 gallon drums full of bass and walleye pike and each barrel had one of those fish tank oxygen generators stuffed down in the water. Clark asked him how many fish were in the barrels. Franklin told him about 400 two pound or bigger bass and 150 two or 3 pound walleye pike. Clark asked him where he had gotten so many fish – Franklin said we seined them from one of our ponds that we had to drain and repair. As Franklin was leaving he said I would feed them for a couple of weeks with some of that fish food and go to your creek and get a couple of thousand more minnows for them to chase. Missy was ecstatic; she said I am going fishing next week. She thought about it for a bit and said nope I don’t like the taste those fish food liver pellets give the fish. I’ll wait till they start eating the minnows, bugs and crayfish. Clark told her the catfish should be OK to catch and eat now. She said good thinking – let’s go fishing tonight.

After chores and classes the next day - Clark and Missy had an outdoor fish fry. Missy said this winter we are going to have a lot of fun freezing our butt off fishing by the pond. Clark told her no she may freeze hers off but he was going to park his pickup by the pond and set in the heated cab. She laughed and called him a wimp.

On one of their summer weekend trips to Earl’s place, Clark and Missy got to meet the 2 families that were slated to move into the 2 farms by Clark’s empty farmhouse building. Missy and he talked about them all the way home. Clark liked the men they seemed like no nonsense kind of people who wanted to insure their children had some kind of decent future. Missy liked the women as they were the same age and had some of the same intellectual interests. The children were well just like children.

Part 78.

Missy asked Clark if he knew what freemartinism was – He said no. She said the woman lab technician and the nurse gave me the information to pass on to you. She then explained about how the female twin calf was usually sterile 90% of the time and a simple test in a lab could tell if the calf was sterile. He laughed and said yeah, right, we can mail a blood sample to a lab. She told him no, remember when Earl’s crew went and killed those last people in the city close to them. He said yes. Well the nurse and one of the women who worked in the DNA lab at the city have been working there trying to figure out how to do the tests on Earl’s cows. Earl had his men take a diesel generator to that lab and put electric to it so they can work in the lab. Ah Clark said that’s why he ran those druggers out of that town. She said yes, that was one of the main reasons, the last time I talked to the nurse, she told me they could do the blood test for several more years to test for that and a few other things until the testing supplies to do the tests ran out or degrade so much the tests would not be viable anymore. She said they will always be able to test for freemartinism though by counting and looking at the chromosomes from the cow blood. We are supposed to take a fresh blood sample to her on the morning we leave to go visit and the lab technician will test it. Clark said that’s nice to know – it will keep us from feeding the cow for 2 years and then just have to slaughter it for meat instead of having another milk cow to rotate with our other 3 milk cows.

The Submarine captain had 2/3rds of the destroyers and the sub crew gathered around him on a football or soccer field at Key West Naval Air Station. He was telling them that the communications people were in contact with a sub crew at Port Hueneme NAS in CA. The questions were flying at the Captain faster then he could answer them. He told them he would have a plan for them in a few days. He wanted the Chiefs to set up work parties to clean the town up and scavenge the supplies. He had a stern look on his face when he told the gathered Chiefs that he did not want the work parties to turn into looters just for the sake of looting. He also let it slip out that 95% of the USA was uninhabited and the parts that were occupied were with crazed killer drug addicts.

Garpel had had one long store to store running gun fight with some crazies while they were gathering up supplies for their place. He and Abigail won that battle. Miss Abigail asked Garpel about what he thought about staying here or moving elsewhere. He told her I think we should stay here – we are well stocked for food, we have a garden and I can shoot a deer, pig, turkey or rabbit any day of the week for meat. We have the canning supplies that we can can our vegetables, apples, blackberries and numerous other things here. That Ball Book on canning shows us how to can meat. We just need to get some spices and neat things to make our life comfortable. Eventually we will have to find other people who are not current drug addicts. She laughed at him and said I thought we were going to die when we ran out of drugs. He said yes that was a bad scene. We need to get a couple of fuel tankers out here and go to the many marinas around here to get that stuff to preserve the gas and diesel fuel. After we get that done we can keep an eye out on the travelers and maybe approach some of them to see if they will make a good neighbor. She said I am 26 years old and may accidentally get pregnant. He said that’s all the more reason to have good neighbors. We need to make a list of what we should be gathering up for long term. I have a book on this part of North Carolina and we will have good weather most of the year. There will be some cold snaps but not like several hundred miles further north. So, he said we will become homesteaders. She had a gleam in her eyes and a smile on her face that he did not see. He said these people that lived here were some kind of survivalists. I have went over their library and there are how to books on everything from A to Z. He said there is a lot of stuff we have to learn how to do. She said well let’s get to it. They held hands as they walked back into the house…

The Sub captain had a meeting with the Chiefs the next morning and hashed out a plan for the next few months. He learned that there were 307 women of child bearing age on the destroyers. He thought repopulation but did not say it out loud. It would take the 800 military people several months to clean the city up and make it habitable. He threw out a comment on cleaning the state of FL up of drug crazies before moving northwards and westward. One grizzled chief just said – gonna take a lot more people than we got to do too much northward movement. The captain agreed with him, but did say we will clean Miami up in the future.

To feed this many people was going to be a big job. He tasked 3 Lt’s and 6 Mess Hall Chiefs to it. One of his favorite food items was fish. He let that be known to so there would be fishing parties sent out. The lists grew bigger as they made plans for the future. Security was never far from anyone of the Navy people’s minds and the Seals were tasked to set up a training program for everyone including the officers.

Part 79.

Clark and his tribe were again cussing as they pulled corn from the stalks. They only had to hand pluck about 240 ears for themselves. They shucked the corn, cut it in 2 pieces, blanched the large ears for 11 minutes, cooled it down, vac packed it and froze it in one of the trailer deep freezers because he knew there was no way on this earth they could eat that much corn before it rotted. That was how much premium corn as Franklin called it was for Clark and his family. The rest was field corn for the pigs and cows. It would be picked by the small combine parked under the pole barn. Farmer Franklin had briefly showed him what all the equipment was for. The combine, a hay baler, a silage plastic wrapping machine which was not going to be used for 2 or more years from now, 2 bull dozers, 2 John Deere tractor plows and several other machines for small scale farming. There was a 24 yard wide and 190 yard row of field corn and a 24 yard wide and 200 yard long row in the 2nd field that the combine would take care of. The combine would also take care of the hay and straw. Earl had told him that 2 of his men were excellent mechanics and would help Clark keep his farm equipment going until extra parts were no longer available to repair his equipment. He also told Clark he had taken steps to standardize his and Clark’s equipment so there would be a large parts supply available. One other thing he told Clark was a couple of men would go with him to the 2 tractor supply stores in his city and either remove the equipment or disable it so no one else would take it. Clark knew he was not cut out to be a farmer, but he would give it his best. He had started reading library books on farming and talking to Franklin about it. Things will work out is what Franklin told him. You will learn as you go along what to do. We will always be a radio call away and this fall or next spring one of the couples who are moving here are real farmers so you will have access to a lot of information.

Miss Abigail had to shoot 2 of the people Garpel approached to talk to. She always stayed back in hiding when he approached the travelers. So far they had had no luck, but there were always people traveling through the town they had thoroughly scavenged.

The Submarine captain had sort of dry docked his submarine in one of the sub pens. There was 17 years more nuclear fuel on board. He had resupplied all the long term items on board and left a small 2 man watch crew. The 2 destroyers were docked at the wharf, resupplied and refueled; a 2 man watch crew was left on each destroyer. This left the captain with close to an 800 troop ground crew on the base. He was extremely lucky each destroyer had a surgeon and a dentist. He had thought long and hard why a surgeon was on a destroyer and came to the conclusion that only major injuries like an arm cut off or a massive body injury was about the only thing that would happen on a destroyer, the troops were normally healthy so a GP (general practitioner) was not required. He also had 19 jet and propeller engine pilots that had been grounded by the flight surgeon for various minor reasons; this number did not count the 6 helicopter pilots. All in all he had a pretty good spread of talent. He was short a few hundred M-4’s after he raided the Navy base armory and the small secret Air Force communications base across the street from the key West Naval Air Station. The Air Force base armory had 36 M-4’s and 40 9MM pistols and thousands of rounds of ammunition. He would send a small seal team to Homestead AFB in the near future to obtain more small arms and some heavy weapons. He really did not think he would need to go all out on arming everyone immediately because the destroyers could control or annihilate any huge influx of raiders from coming down highway one from any point north..

It was getting close to harvest time again when Clark got a call that a 4 man team would arrive tomorrow to install some special equipment. Missy and Sherrie had gone out to watch the back trail of the people coming from Earl’s. She came back to the trailer an hour later and looked for Clark. He was down at the butchering area by the creek. 4 men were installing a double wide car port over a large Ryder truck. Clark just told her that’s our new ice box for our slaughtered deer, pigs and cows. She saw the men attaching a large diesel generator to a large compressor that had the big 3 inch thick rubber covered charging Freon coil leading into the top side of the truck. The compressor and generator were bolted down on 3 inch thick pre made cement slab. They looked inside the truck and saw that 6 inches of styro foam insulation covered the walls, ceiling and doors. The floor looked built up and it was. Industrial grade tile had been placed over what she thought was 4 inches of wood and plywood. The ceiling had 2 steel hanging rods running down it about 3 feet from each side and there were what Clark told her meat hooks hanging on the steel rods. The back wall of the truck had the refrigeration coils attached to it with the fan behind the coils to circulate the cold air. The other 2 men with Clark’s help were bolting together a 12 foot long steel ramp that the fork lift would be able to drive the carcass up on and hang it to one of the steel rod meat hooks. All she said was neat; we won’t have to worry about the weather now when we slaughter something. The man who had just finished hooking up the compressor to the truck told Clark. We have had to kill 500 deer so far to make sure we have enough hay to feed our cows and we believe you will have to start really soon or you won’t have any grazing for your own cows. Clark had seen the large herds of deer in the evening grazing in and around his fields. They had not yet got to his garden. He just told himself I am going to have to put a fence up around our garden. After he had that thought the man said in the next few days another crew will arrive to help you put a fence around your garden so you should dig the holes and put the poles up. You should not have to run this generator for more then 5 days when you do your slaughtering or age the meat which I know you will soon have plenty. Earl said not to save the skins this year; he is overwhelmed with deer skins at the moment. Clark asked him why they did not just use refrigerated cargo containers. The man laughed and said it was more efficient to use several of the 500 diesel generators, insulate a 26 foot Ryder truck and install some of the more than 200 compressors laying around in that factory. And probably the main reason is Earl wanted to keep us busy.

The men left after testing the generator and the automatic temperature shut off which was set for 36 degrees.

The 2 families that were going to move in to the 2 farms showed up on harvest and canning day. Clark was super happy that he had 9 more hands to help and he and Missy were overjoyed when they stayed to help harvest the winter squash. The farmer of the 2 families checked the corn out and said we will be back in 3 days to harvest this corn and help bale up some straw and hay. As they were canning the vegetables, the farmer noticed Clark was cutting open vacuum packed lids for the jars. He told Clark I never thought of doing that it probably extends the life of the rubber on those lids for many, many years. He asked Clark where he had gotten the lids and Clark told him everywhere in the city that sold them. He did not tell the man that he had 80,000 lids vac packed in the root cellar. The only reason Clark and Missy had vac packed the lids was he had read that the rubber degraded in 2 or so years and would not seal so he did something else he could find no information on and vac packed the lids and stored them in the 47 degree root cellar.

3 days later the 2 families showed up again and the farmer showed Clark how to run the combine. The farmer used the hay baler and his wife used a fork lift to put the bales on a flat bed truck. She had plenty of help at the barn where the bales were fork lifted to the hay loft. As far as cow food, pig food, hay and straw for the winter they were set.

Another crew helped Clark put his garden fence up. He thought he was done for the summer – boy was he ever dumb. It was payback time now and Earl needed his 6 family members to help him. They left Sherrie to watch the farm while they were gone. They would come back every other night and have one of the others replace the kid that was watching the farm and feeding the pigs and cows. Clark and Missy were completely worn out 11 days later when they finally were told their help was appreciated and they could now go home. All Clark told Missy was maybe we should run off and live in a cave like cavemen did. I never worked so hard in my life and I even got blisters through those leather gloves. She just stuck both of her hands in front of his face and showed her blisters off. I sure am glad this is only a once a year thing. That was another dumb thing he told Missy. He had forgotten spring planting and cow slaughtering.

Missy said it is time to do some deer killing they are eating all the clover and alfalfa the cows need.

That night he and Missy used the suppressed 308’s and killed 21 deer. He told her this is going to be a huge job. All 6 of them gutted the deer and left the guts for the possums, birds and other predators. He hung all the deer on his butcher pole rack and left them to skin in the morning.

The next morning since he did not have to worry too much about how he skinned the deer because they would not save any of the hides. They made short work of the skinning and hair removal on the deer. The fork lift was used to hang the deer in the new ice box and the generator was started. It was just about 5pm when they got that done.

That night Clark asked Missy what are we going to do with at least 4 or 500 pounds of deer jerky. She said I don’t know but we sure have a lot of deer fillet mignon to nibble on. He laughed at that. The 6 of them could trim 5 deer a day into slices, soak them in the jerky brine for 4 hours and put them in the four 9 tray Excalibur dehydrators they had.

The deer job took them 7 days. He told Missy I will just have to kill the deer and dispose of them some place I can dig a hole. There is no way we can get anything else done if we keep on killing the deer and try to salvage the meat. She said call Earl. Earl told him to dispose of the meat but freeze the back straps for future use; so he killed 364 deer in the next 2 weeks and had 728 fillet mignons frozen. She said you should take the deer and dump them on that logging road where you got rid of the motorcycles and we won’t have to dig holes to put them in. That is what he did. What a waste of meat he told her. She said if there are no people hunting the deer there will be a massive die off some day when they eat everything in the forest. He told her well I hope we can keep the deer herds around us small enough that they will be OK. She said that’s all we can do. She asked how many bullets do we have for deer killing. He thought a minute and said about 400,000 308 rounds and maybe 100,000 30-06 rounds. He said we could use the suppressed M-16’s because I don’t think there are enough deer in the USA for us shoot all those bullets up. They started using the suppressed M-16 to kill deer at night and it was an every evening ritual. He asked the kids to do the nasty deed and they balked at just slaughtering the deer. He and Missy told them what would happen if the deer were not killed. They started killing the deer every evening and he had to make a trip to the abandoned logging road every day for 3 more weeks. He guessed they had killed enough deer to thin the herds out around their area because they only saw a deer every now and then. He called a halt to the deer killing until next spring. They had over 1500 deer fillet mignon and 570 pounds of 1st class deer jerky to eat. He just froze everything that way he knew nothing would go bad. He laughed because everyone had a little pouch they carried around with jerky in it and deer fillet mignon was usually on a breakfast plate for anyone who wanted it.

[Lbox88]

Part 80.

Clark had 3 dump truck loads of cow manure, some of it had aged and some of it was still wet. He told everyone it made no difference how aged it was. They dumped it over where the corn and squash had been planted and then they plowed it into the fields to break down over the winter. He went back to the feed stores in town and picked up several tons of 10-10-10. That was spread over the cow manure, the alfalfa and clover. Those fields were locked down for the next 30 days from cow grazing. The other 2 fields were put back in use and rotated. Clark told Missy our cows look healthy and fat. She said they do seem to be happy. The lab technician had told Missy that the female cow they had was not a freemartin cow and could be used for breeding next summer. That made the Clark family happy.

Clark was leaning back against a big oak tree daydreaming when Franklin the farmer drove towards the Clark farm. He leaned back to daydream a bit before going to see what the farmer wanted. He barely heard the mufflered 750CC motor cycle as it eased along behind Franklin. Chit he said. He pointed his 308 at the bike rider’s leg and fired. He had just meant to nick the upper part of the bike riders’ leg when the bike exploded. He had hit the gas tank. The bike fell to the middle of the road and skidded a few feet. He estimated the speed at about 5 MPH. The rider was lying beside his bike and was dead. He did not have a helmet on and the flames had exploded directly into his face. He looked at his arms and they were needle tracked from the elbow joints down to both wrists. Another triple set of cuss words came from Clark’s mouth. He got on his radio and just said Clark here - bring #1. Everyone in the Clark family always told someone else where they would be and a few cryptic phrases had been memorized by everyone. The code he had sent to Missy was to bring the flatbed with the forklift. She knew where he was because he had told her before he left.

The bike and body were lifted onto the flatbed and the road watered down and swept.

Missy drove the flat bed home and he swept up outside his gate. He took the weapons which were a suppressed day night scoped M1A and Beretta 9mm pistol. The weapons had Property of US Gov’t stamped on them. They also found a small 4 or 5 mile range hand radio.

Franklin said I guess we have a sneaky gang somewhere between here and Earl’s farm or this was just a lone person. Clark and Missy both said it at the same time. No, he is not alone he has a radio to talk to someone.

The shortwave was turned to encrypt the transmission and Earl was told what was happening. Another simple plan was devised.

Fred and Hank drove towards Clark’s city in a 4 door pick-up. Fred was hid on the back seat. Hank drove around the high rise where Fred jumped out and made his way up to the high rise lookout. Hank continued driving around in town for a while before stopping behind a feed store on the outskirts of town.

Fred called Hank and told him there are 2 motorcycles riding through town looking for you. Hank said I will just stay hidden here and see if these guys give up trying to find me. Fred said they came in behind you on the main highway so they are not staying in town. We may have to go stealthy tonight to see where they are holed up and take the whole bunch out at once or we can kill these 2 and see what develops tonight.

Clark and Camron were parked 3 miles out of town behind a farm house listening to the chatter between Hank and Fred. Fred said I can see them talking on their hand held radios. They are splitting up one is heading back out of town but he has stopped about a half mile out on the highway and pulled in behind a highway advertising road sign. He has taken his rifle and set up about 20 yards on a small knoll overlooking the highway. The other person is slowly driving around and taking a different block every turn. Seems like we stirred up a little activity Fred told Hank as he laughed over the airwaves. Fred told Hank that the rider would be coming in his range in about 10 minutes and that is how long it will take me to wound this person on the knoll. I will wait till you kill the rider and then I will shoot this person and we can get some information. Hank said OK. One more thing Fred told Hank – Do not take this guy out like Clark did the other rider that was following Franklin. They both chuckled at that.

Fred told Hank about 15 minutes later I am in position. Hank said I can hear the cycle coming around the block. Hank told Fred the biker is down. Fred shot the person on the knoll in the upper right shoulder. The way the biker was laying Fred could hit him in the center top right shoulder with the bullet angling outwards into his arm. Fred thought that the bullet was really gonna hurt this guy. He hoped it didn’t kill him outright because they needed information more than they needed another dead body. Fred had changed the magazine out that held the 168 grain hollow points and inserted one that held brass jacketed military ammo. He wanted an incapacitating through and through not a massive expanding hollow point lead bullet wound. The shoulder shot went true and the laying down man grabbed his shoulder with his left hand and stood up. Fred said to himself that was a dumb thing to do. He shot the man right below his knee cap. This time the fellow stayed on the ground. He covered the 90 yards to the person on the ground and heard him cursing and yelping in pain. Fred plastic cuffed the man’s hands behind him and looked at the wounds. He used his military bandages in the pouches on his web belt and stopped the bleeding. Saying to the wounded man, well since I shot you I think the least I can do is let Hank talk to you and grinned a deaths head grin while he thought of that.

Part 81.

WARNING – VIOLENCE & TORTURE in this chapter.

He radioed Hank and told him where he was. Hank had Clark come pick the body up and he helped Clark throw the body on the roof of the Hummer and tie it down. Hank had Clark help him get the bike on his truck and told Clark to dump the body where he had been dumping the deer and meet him and Fred back at the high rise.

Fred helped Hank put the other bike in the truck beside the other one. Hank said well what have you found out. Fred was grinning when he told Hank I thought I would let you question him. Chit is all Hank said. He walked over to the man on the ground and kicked him on the bandaged leg. He got just what he expected – a loud scream. The man on the ground started blubbering and crying. Hank said ain’t you pathetic. He kicked him again but not as hard. He then set down beside the man and asked Fred if he had any chewing tobacco. Fred said nope, you asked me that same question 2 hours ago. Hank said we should go to one of the stores and find some. Fred said I suppose if you want any we should do that. Hank took his knife and cut the sleeve off the left arm and looked at his arm. He saw hundreds of needle track scars. Whooee lookee here Fred - Fred said I saw the marks on the other arm that I already took the sleeve off. Ah come on Hank said you should have told me that before I cut this mans sleeve off. Fred walked off holding in a horse laugh.

Hank looked at the man who was crying and gulping great breaths of air. Hank said do you want me to kick you again. The man tried to scoot backwards away from Hank. Answer the question idiot or I will kick you in the shoulder. He said no please don’t kick me. Fine Hank said, we are now making progress. Now my next comment is if I think you are lying to me I will kick you somewhere on your body. Do you understand that? The man breathed out a shaky hoarse yes. He was hoarse Hank thought because he had screamed for at least 2 minutes. My first question is how many of you are there. The man said 2. Hank shook his head and said let me rephrase that. How many people are in your group? The man said 11. That’s nice, now where are you 11 staying. The man did not say anything. Hank did not hesitate he kicked the leg well below the wound this time. The man let out another scream and started shaking all over like he was fixing to have a fit or something, then he passed out. Fred came back and said I hope you didn’t kill him. Hank said I didn’t kick his wound; I made sure I missed it. He probably thought I was going to kick his wound again and the thought scared him so bad he passed out. Fred laughed.

10 minutes later after Fred poured some water from his canteen over his face he woke up. His eyes had that insane look that people in insane asylums have. Fred said crap, Hank look what you did. Hank said 15 or 20 cuss words. Fred said let’s take him to Clark’s and maybe after we drug him up a little he will snap out of it. Hank said well we got nothing to lose. They carried him to the pick up and lay him in the back beside the cycles and drove to meet Clark.

Missy gave the man a shot of Demerol while he lay in the back of the pickup. Hank told Missy to give him some penicillin pills in a bottle and some new 4 inch surgical pads and a tube of Neosporin. Hank and Fred removed the wounded mans partners motorcycle from the bed of the truck. They drove down towards the place Clark told them where he had dumped the deer. Fred and Hank smoked a cigar and drank a cool beer while waiting on the man to regain consciousness. About 20 minutes later the man opened his eyes and that insane look was gone but was replaced by the glassy eyed look of a person high on downer drugs which was the Demerol.

Hank again asked him where the 11 of them were staying. The man asked what is in it for him. Fred showed him the bottle of penicillin and the new bandages. He said just tell us what we want to know and you can have the medicine. The doctor looked at you and said if you keep that arm in a sling and the bandages on your arm and leg changed while taking this medicine you will be OK in about 7 days which was a huge lie. If you don’t tell us I guess we can leave you out here on this road without your motor bike and no medicine. The man said those people at the camp will kill me if I tell you where the camp is. Hank just said to Fred, dump him on the road, I got other things to do. The man said wait, wait, wait – will you give me my motor bike. Fred was a great liar. He said I will but he probably won’t, pointing at Hank.

Part 82.

The man told Fred where the gang was holed up on mile marker 684 on the left going north. They are in 3 farm houses on that road about a mile back from the highway and there is a lookout beside the road watching the traffic in both directions. What kind of weapons do they have? The man said everyone has an M1A with day night vision but no other night vision. Are there any grenades? The man hesitated and said no. Hank and Fred picked up on the hesitation. The next question was – Is anyone not a drug addict. The man hesitated again. Another question, are there any children or female captives. Again he hesitated before he said no. Hank asked the man 3 more questions in different ways about what the mile marker the farm road was on. The man never hesitated on telling the same location all 3 times. Hank shot him in the back of the head. They dumped his naked body on top of about 38 rotting deer 2 miles back on the logging road.

Fred said tonight. Hank said yes.

The way I look at it Clark said is they are 17 miles north on the main highway and there is an overlook if I remember correctly at that exit. We can come in behind the farm on this dirt road here Clark showed everyone on the map. But we will have to walk about ¾ mile through some fields and forest to get to that place. I have travelled those roads many times in the past and if it is the same place I am thinking of I did some dry wall and carpentry work for that farmer in one of those 3 houses about 10 years ago.

Fred said when those 3 people do not return that group may pull out and we may never find them again. Hank said we should get a little help before we go after 11 armed people. Clark got on the still set up encrypted radio and contacted Earl. A prior quick study of the map showed many secondary roads from Earl’s that would hook up with Fred on the road behind the farmhouse.

Missy said I can drive the hummer right up to the farmhouses and blow them all up. Hank said I don’t think we should do that because I think they have many innocent women and children held captive and we may blow up the wrong house and kill a bunch of innocent people. Fred said me and hank will sneak in and scout the places out as soon as it gets dark. There should be no reason for those people to have a guard looking outwards into empty fields and forested area behind the place. They probably think the only way in is through the highway overlook guard.

Missy was parked in the Hummer at mile marker 681. She was told that her radio should pick them up since they would be elevated and would have a direct line of sight to her on the highway. If she was needed she and camron were to come in with guns blazing.

Monto and Sammy were tasked to take out the highway overlook guard. Hank and Fred would scope out the 3 farmhouses and find out where the bad guys were staying and if there were captive innocent women and children at their location.

Clark and 2 other men were to stay 75 yards behind Fred and Hank as backups and after the shooting started they were to move up and fire on the locations Fred and Hank told them to.

Monto and Sammy shot the highway guard several times with the suppressed rifles. They checked the body and found the handheld radio and saw it was set for channel 3. They called Missy and told her to move up to the entry road to the farm and everyone’s radio was checked to make sure they were on channel 11 which they were already on anyway.

Sammy and Monto took up the guard position overlooking the highway in case some of the gang was out of the area doing something else. Missy parked her Hummer behind some trees about 20 yards from Sammy and Monto.

The first place Fred looked was through a crack in the back of the barn. Using the night vision he saw 20 or so women tied or cuffed together and about 14 children tied together. The people were sitting and lying around on some straw in the dark. They were all naked. BINGO he said to himself.

Hank had used his small spotting scope and looked in all 3 farm house windows from about 40 yards away. He saw a bunch of long hair White, Mexican and Black people – He cussed that guy he had shot in the head there were more than 11 people in those 3 houses.

Fred got with Hank and verbally told him what he had found in the barn. Hank said OK this is going to be another easy ambush killing. Get Sammy back here. We need 6 people to do this right. The M1A’s did not have grenade launchers on them, but an old single shot M-79 blooper from the armory they had raided was available to each member. He told all of them they were each to fire one grenade in a window on each side of the house on his count of 3 and then move to the other side of the house and fire another grenade through the front and back, a firing command count would not be needed for the 2nd firing. He told them to do the 2nd firing quickly. Hank and Fred both figured four 40mm grenades in those small houses would more than likely kill or momentarily stun everyone inside. After they had fired they were to stay 50 yards back from the houses on opposite corners so they could cover all 4 sides of the houses in case someone dived out a window. Missy was told to drive up to 375 yards from the houses after the 1st explosions and wait to see if any firepower from the Mk 19 was needed. Monto was told to maintain a watch on the highway until they picked him up. Hank said over the radio on my command fire on 3 - 1 - 2 -3.

Part 83.

When Fred had looked through a crack on the back side of the barn and found the naked people; he did not know there was a guard in the barn. Fortunately the all night drugged up posted guard was in the hayloft napping on a big pile of hay in his sleeping bag.

Missy heard the explosions and drove around the curved road to where she could clearly see the 3 houses and the barn. This placed her about 375 yards from the action. She waited on instructions from Hank or Fred – Camron was looking at the 3 farmhouses on his monitor and his trigger finger was itching to blow something up.

Fred was hunkered down beside the concrete well surround about 60 yards from the corner of the house closest to the barn. He had one eye on the barn door and one eye on the house that was on fire from the 4 grenades that had detonated inside. The area on his side of the house was well lit up from the fire. Everyone had been trained on cover and concealment and right now cover was the name of the game in case anyone opened fire on them they would not be killed outright by hiding behind a bush.

Hank was on the back corner of the middle house behind a boulder and could not see the barn. Sammy was in a depression about 3 feet deep and was peeping over the lip watching his 2 sides of the last house. Clark was on the opposite side of the house from Hank and could see Fred and the upper portion of the front of the barn. He was behind a 5 or 6 foot thick pile of dirt.

Gunfire erupted from the 3rd house directed towards Sammy’s position. Fred contacted Missy and told her to put 6 or 8 grenades in each house and standby.

Camron had a look of glee on his face when he was told to open fire. His first shot took the front door off the 3rd house and 7 more spaced out grenades went through 2 windows and through the now missing door. The gunfire from that house ceased. Camron continued on his rampage of blowing the other 2 houses up. Before Camron could take out the 2nd house Hank was eating dirt hiding from the massive amount of firepower directed at his position.

Clark happened to glance at Fred’s position and he saw the hay loading door on the barn being opened up. He hesitated because he did not know if one of the captives had gotten loose and had decided to watch the fireworks. That thought ended abruptly when he saw the red winks from an automatic weapon open fire on Fred’s position. He turned his body slightly sideways so he could get his rifle into position to fire on that upper doorway.

Fred took 2 bullets in his foot and leg which was visible to the shooter in the barn before Clark opened up on the shooter. Clark used controlled 3 round bursts and emptied a 20 round magazine in short order. The shooting from the barn stopped.

Missy could also see the automatic weapons fire coming from the upper portion of the barn and was about to direct camron to blow the barn up, but she decided to ask Hank or Fred first. Hank just said no Missy do not shoot the barn.

Fred performed some self first aid by using some combat wound pads from his web belt that he had fortunately replaced after using 2 of them on the now dead biker. He was extremely mad that he had gotten shot and his temper was boiling for revenge. Everyone held position for 15 minutes until Fred said to himself I believe I am going to need some better medical treatment because I am leaking blood.

Fred called Hank and gave him his situation. Hank Called Sammy and told him to see if he could get one of the motor cycle gangs vehicles started which consisted of several pickups and 2 vans parked by the barn. He called Missy up to take over the position Sammy was watching.

Sammy radioed back to Hank that the keys were in one of the vans and he would pick Fred up and tend to him in the van.

All 3 houses were blazing out of control by this time. Hank had a thought that there may be a basement under one or more of these houses and some of the gang members may have had time to shelter there. He grinned and said to himself I betcha after tomorrow morning if there are any survivors in a basement they would wish they had not holed up there. Now all he had to do was take care of Fred and those captives.

Fred was Hank’s 1st priority so he moved everyone around to where 3 people could watch all avenues of exit from the houses. He placed them in a triangle and went to assist Sammy. Hank told Missy to back off about a 100 yards and just keep an eye on everything.

Hank and Sammy got the blood leaking from Fred’s 2 wounds stopped and left him lying on an old mattress that was in the back of the van.

Hank and Sammy entered the barn in a combat mode. Hank ran and rolled to the left through the big door they had pulled open and Sammy did the same on the right. The night vision lit up the place as if it were a full green sunlit day. Hank crawled over to the first woman who was trying to burrow under the small amount of hay she had been lying on. He whispered to her, I am a good guy and will soon turn all of you loose. She tried to hug him but the one arm that was handcuffed to the next lady kept her from moving into his range. He asked her if there were any more guards in the barn and she whispered back they only leave one man here at night and he usually takes one of us women sexually in front of the others and then goes up to the hayloft to sleep.

Hank sent Sammy up into the hayloft while he maintained a constant vigilance. Sammy called back down and reported there was one shot to pieces dead drugger up here. Clark’s aim had been good. He searched the man and did not find a handcuff key. There were 2 older men handcuffed to the women and one of them said there is one on the key ring in the ambulance. Fred had seen the ambulance parked under a pole barn beside the main barn but had forgotten to mention it to anyone since it was empty of people or bodies.

Hank got Fred on the radio and told him the ambulance was about 25 yards away on the back side of the barn.

[Lbox88]

Part 84.

Fred was going to get extremely lucky on his shattered foot and leg wounds as we shall see. Hank decided to have one of the men on the 3rd leg of the triangle go with Missy to retrieve one of the 6 passenger pickups on the dirt road behind the farm. This was an 11 mile trip and would take 30 minutes or more. Hank refused to totally eliminate the watchers of the 3 burning houses. He had seen the 1000 gallon diesel tank about 50 yards from the burning houses and he had an evil plan to use that diesel fuel.

The naked people were finally un-cuffed from the police handcuffs they were attached to. Hank had another 2 problems all the food that the captives were given was burned up in the houses. The 2nd problem was they had no utensils or water bottles to give the released people for fluids. He just cussed some more and thought about the problem. Clark’s place was the closest that had enough food and water to take care of these people. But it would take at least 4 or maybe even 5 trips to solve that immediate problem.

Missy came back about 28 minutes later with the 6 passenger pickup right behind her.

Hank and Clark had checked the other passenger vehicles out while Missy was gone and found the keys were in the ignitions and all of the vehicles had at least a half tank of gas. Hank thought this would solve one of the problems on transporting the naked people to give them some food and shelter.

Clark walked over to the group of people and asked the 2 older men why they were kept alive. He found out both of the men were medical doctors and their live in mates were chemistry professors at the college the doctors gave lectures. Unbelievable Clark thought until he talked to one of the older college professor women. The medical doctors were kept alive to treat any injuries the gang may have and the 2 women chemist were tasked to make pure drugs for the gang. There has to be a story here Clark thought and there definitely was a story on why so many women and children were alive with no tells or drug punctures on their arms after the virus had floated through the air in the USA.

When Hank found out there were 2 medical doctors in the group he beamed. He asked them to take a look at Fred. One of the doctors was an orthopedist and a podiatrist. He was really a professional student and just stayed in college to have something to do, but he had passed the board certifications and had a small practice on the side while his main objective in life was to remain in academics. The older man was a general practitioner and had a thriving practice in the city that Earl had taken under his protection. The GP was one of the better diagnosticians in the country and had built up his practice. He also had made a lot of money and had spent it judiciously on preparations as we shall find out later.

The podiatrist looked at Fred’s foot and said we need to take him to a surgical unit and I may be able to save his leg. Hank laughed and said there are no surgical units available. Clark interrupted Hank and said we have most of the equipment from a surgical unit available. Hank shut up. The doctor said the sooner the better. Hank asked if a several hour delay would make any difference and the doctor told him he did not think so.

The fires of the 3 houses were just smoldering ruins by now and Hank left Sammy and 2 of the other men to implement his plan.

Everyone else headed to Clark’s farm with one stop at Wal-Mart to gather clothes for 43 older and young people. There were cans of juices and small meat cans that had not burst during the cold weather that the 43 people were able to make do on that stop.

Clark knew he could only feed this many people for a really short time until his own supplies would be seriously depleted. So he took them to the 3 farm houses that had not been moved into and would make scavenge runs to feed them for a short time until they decided what to do with this many people.

The surgical doctor and Fred were brought to Clark’s trailer. They quickly activated the 2nd trailer to use as a surgical ward. Sherrie was put on the computer with the doctor behind her telling her what he needed to repair Fred. This took another ½ hour to find the location of the materials. The doctor told Clark and Hank he was really weak and tired from his capture and would temporarily treat Fred till he got at least 10 hours of sleep and some food. He said he needed that much time to make sure he got rid of the tremors in his hands to do any fine surgery. Clark and Hank had no choice but to agree with him. The doctor took a quick shower and went to bed. Hank said he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

It was 14 hours later before the doctor woke up. He was given a large bacon, egg, oats and toast breakfast. Missy wanted to make pancakes but Clark vetoed that. She asked why? He just said to much sugar with the maple syrup, it may give him the shakes after he has been off it so long. She just looked at him as if he were stupid. He smartly did not say anything.

Clark and Hank had slept about 6 hours while the doctor was asleep. They had no idea what would be required on the surgery of Fred’s foot and leg. They knew his leg and foot bones had been shattered. They went to the 2nd trailer where the surgery would be performed and ran a 2 X 12 across the ceiling so wires and cables could be attached. The surgery table with the still wrapped sterile pad was laid on top of a new blow up mattress that had not been taken out of the plastic sack it was in. They sprayed the mattress covering with a light solution of bleach water. Every tool the doctor had requested was placed on a table beside the operating table. 100 watt fluorescent lights were hung over the lower part of the operating table. The 24 inch ultra violet light was hung beside the fluorescents. There were eye bolts stuck in the 2 X 12 to hang wires or ropes or whatever the doctor needed to hopefully repair Fred’s injuries.

The doctor asked Fred what his blood type was when he entered the trailer. Fred told him. Clark had the same type as Fred and told the doctor. The doctor said I would like to have 2 pints but I see we have the instant Eldon blood card checks. Let’s check a few people. That was done and 3 other people had the same blood type. The doctor said OK lets get some blood in the bags.

An hour later 3 pints of blood were hanging over Fred on the 2 X 12 with the neat little plastic tubes hanging down.

The doctor said this will work; he injected some Demerol into the Saline IV that he had started in Fred’s arm. He waited about 2 minutes and Fred was out like someone had turned the switch off.

Clark almost turned his head when the doctor sliced open Fred’s foot down to where he could see all the bones. Missy was there with a hundred sponges soaking the blood up. The doctor stopped for about 10 seconds and took a stretchy rubber hose and placed it around Fred’s upper leg stopping most of the blood. He just said old time battlefield trick. Just makes the doctor work faster before any damage happens.

Hank and Clark had on those cotton masks everyone in an operating room wears. The doctor looked at the UV light and said to anyone listening – Good thinking on this germ killing light.

Clark and Hank had no idea what all those electrical devices were on the table but they would soon find out.

He told Missy to divert the blood into the IV. He pulled out all kinds of bone splinters from Fred’s foot and dropped them in a plastic sterile cup. He then removed the rubber hose from Fred’s leg and watched the blood drip onto the table for about 30 seconds before he put the hose back on.

He poured saline solution over the bloody bone fragments and rinsed them off. He threw the bone fragments into something that looked like a blender with some kind of germ killer liquid and ground them up to a thick pasty looking solution. Special oxygen porous plastic tubing was placed on the broken ends of the bones in Fred’s foot and one end of the tubing was held up while he poured the bone solution in. He connected the tube to the other end of the broken bone and did some fancy sewing up and sprinkled all kinds of what Clark thought was Sulpha anti biotic drug or something over the cut up foot. He covered the sliced open foot over with some plastic covering that looked like saran wrap and removed the rubber hose stopping the blood flow. He walked over and sat down and asked for a cup of chicken soup. Missy ran home to get it. Clark saw that about half the blood had trickled into Fred’s arm. 15 minutes later after he had drank the chicken soup he put the rubber hose around the upper part of Fred’s leg again and sliced open the sterile shaven leg.

Ah shucks but good said the doctor. They did not yet know that the doctor was a deeply religious man and did not use foul language. He said if this little section of bone was not here connected to the upper bone I would have to make this leg 2 inches shorter. But maybe our patient will be lucky. He picked out all the bone fragments and again made the same thick sterile pasty solution. The plastic tubing was inserted around the lower leg bone, the thick pasty solution poured into one end, slid around the upper bone and some fancy meat sewing after the antibiotic powder was sprinkled over the wound; he stuck a piece of surgical plastic over it and covered that with some triple antibiotic salve slathered 4 X 4 inch surgical pads.

He said now we wait a couple of weeks. Just do not turn off that UV light. I will let him have another pint of blood and we will keep the anti-biotic drip going off and on for 5 or 6 more days. Since I don’t have access to a full blood testing laboratory here we will just have to watch him like they did long ago. The nerves in his foot and leg were not damaged that much and will regenerate in a year or so. I just hope the small blood vessels establish themselves through the bone paste. He should not get an infection with the UV light and the anti biotic drip. So we wait. I will sew the foot and leg up in a few days. I will have to cut a slit open again in a few months to slide out the plastic tubing. I have found out from a lot of research that it is best to take the plastic out. It hinders bone breakdown and re-growth after several years. If we are lucky and the bone grows back as it should he won’t need any stainless steel screws or rods since the big bone was not broken. The small bones will grow back together and the big bone will take most of the body weight. Clark vaguely thought he knew what the Dr. said but did not ask any questions.

Part 85.

Sammy and the other 2 men had listened to what Hank wanted done after the fires went out. They kind of grinned at the evilness of Hank’s thinking. They used a large metal bar found in the barn and punched down into the rubble 3 or so feet. They then poured at least a hundred gallons of diesel fuel into that hole and 7 others that were made over the 3 burned down houses. They waited an hour and set the 3 burned down houses on fire again. They were to maintain watch on the houses for 2 days. They had decided on 8 hour shifts so only 1 man at a time would be tied up. One of the vans was driven to about 40 some yards away beside the place where Fred had gotten shot and a watch was set up in the van. Since all 3 buildings had burned to the ground the houses were all visible from that spot. They removed the body from the barn loft and the other 2 off watch men used the loft for a sleep area.

Fred was crying the blues when he woke up mostly from the pain and then he saw his leg laying there in all its cut up glory. The doctor had just walked in to check on Fred when he woke up the next morning. He asked Fred if he ever had the tendency to be a drug addict and Fred said the thought had never crossed his mind. Well I am going to let you self medicate yourself since the help seems to be tied up doing 3 or 4 hundred other things. He gave him the bottle of narcotic pills and put a large pitcher of water next to him and laid 2 bed pans and some toilet paper beside him. He said I think it will be a whole lot easier on you if I catheterize you. You will not be getting off that hospital bed for at least 30 to 40 days. The doctor just said that is if you ever want to use that leg again. Fred had taken one of the pills and was in half la la land. The doctor thought about that a bit and left just 2 pills in the bottle in case Fred woke up in a drug stupor and kept taking the pills. He put the remainder of the pills in another bottle on a table 10 feet out of reach of Fred. There would always be some one coming in and out of the place every 2 or 3 hours. The 3rd sack of blood was now running into Fred. The doctor said to himself I can always get more if he needs any.

Missy came into the trailer about an hour after the doctor had left and saw Fred was just staring out into space. She knew he had taken some powerful pain medicine so she went and got Clark. They hung a small blackboard from the board over the bed with instructions on it when Fred needed help. It just said reach over on the night stand and turn the radio on then call us. They left all kinds of snacks that Hank told them Fred likes. Beanie Weenies - it was one thing Fred dearly loved. The doctor said his stomach is not hurt – he can eat anything he wants. We will give him a mild stool softener once a day for the next 3 weeks.

The Sub Captain had had the city of Key West cleaned up of bodies and was just sitting there thinking on which one of the 15 plan options to do next. Even though they had been prioritized he was not obligated to follow them. What was really on his mind was how to keep these 800 people together. He had no authority to make them stay because there were no military any longer – just scattered remnants. He called the enlisted chiefs in to talk it over with them and find out what they had been hearing from the troops.

He found out that the word had already been put out that they could leave anytime they wanted to. They had decided to stay a unit because there was safety in numbers. About 30 or more people wanted to travel to different parts of the US to gather up some personal mementoes and just make a check to see if their families were truly dead. The captain thought this was great. He called in several of the transport propeller pilots and told them to make ready several planes for some short trips and one long one to meet up with the sub crew in CA. He knew he could ask the crew in CA to come here in their sub but he wanted some eye ball intelligence on the sailors before he asked them to do that. OK the sailors not leaving was one big worry he could forget about.

The one thing Clark had forgotten to bring home when he was cleaning out the surgical ward and supply rooms was a wheel-chair. He and Missy were going to rectify that problem today because in several weeks Fred was going to need one. The doctor was going with them. Clark would find out a lot today during the ride about the 2 doctors story. Hank would keep an eye on Fred while they were gone.

Hank had taken one of the flatbeds with the tow-a-long attached and parked it at one of the farm houses. The 3 farm houses had communications and were maintaining contact with each other. One of the females at the farm house had been in the military and was a motor pool/transportation specialist and could drive the 2nd Hummer. Camron was going with her to man the machine gun and watch over the trip to the city so the rescued people could gather up supplies for the 3 farm houses.

Part 86.

Clark kind of chuckled when the doctor told them how he and his 3 other shelter mates had been captured. They had gotten bored at the shelter and they drove into town to look around and pick up some things. They were walking around in Wal-Mart with their head band LED lamps looking at everything like they had not a care in the world. They were armed but not very vigilant. All of them had a buggy and were just on a shopping trip he said. That’s when their world got shattered. They were all captured as they left the building pushing their buggies towards the SUV they had driven into town. The leader of the gang had decided to question them before he killed them and found out that he had captured a gold mine. They were all handcuffed together, stripped naked and brought back to the barn where they were handcuffed to the others. His wife, the chemist and the other doctors live in chemist mate were forced to make pure drugs in one of the farm houses that had burned to the ground. That is where they were when Clark and his friends rescued them.

He told Clark and Missy that he would stay with them for as long as it took to repair Fred. He wanted to bring his wife and the other doctor and his mate to the trailer that Fred was recuperating in and take care of him. The trailer had 3 bedrooms and Fred was in the living room. Clark grinned and said as soon as we get back we will take care of that.

Garpel and his woman finally met 4 young couples that had gone through the same detoxification process that they had. The young couples were all about 19 years old and were just wandering around looking for a place to settle down and had no more desire to use drugs again. Garpel found out these were decent people and told them there were many farms close to where he was and he would be glad to have new neighbors and maybe they could all help each other. Miss Abigail that night told Garpel she was pretty sure she was pregnant. Another small community was started up.

2 months had gone by and Fred’s leg and foot were in a steel brace hooked up high on his thigh in case he made a mistake and tried to put his foot on the ground. The brace would not allow that and all his weight would be transferred to his upper thigh.. He was allowed to ride around in his electric wheel chair but could only stand on one leg if he ever needed to get out of his chair. The doctor had used some fancy metal rod braces to insure Fred never put any weight on that leg for at least 8 more months. Fred was chomping at the bit to do something but knew he would just have to wait till he got the green light from the doctor.

Hank and Clark found out where the doctors shelter was and they all drove there to check it out. It was fine. The 2 doctors and their women had adopted 2 and 3 young children each that were either brother and sister or cousins. The rest of the children were adopted by the single women or by Earl’s group. Missy and Clark had taken 1 more male child that was 6 years old and would be Kimberly’s mate or friend for life only time would tell.

The children and the women had survived in a state of the art shelter in a private female only school and that answered the question Clark and Hank had wondered about. Most of the women captives were teachers and that would be a big bonus in the years to come.

Earl did the same thing that Clark did and set up about 20 large trailers. They were all electric since earl now had power to spare. The females and their adopted children were welcomed into the life of farming.

The orthopedic surgeon/podiatrist and his wife and newly acquired family of kids decided to stay in the trailer that he had treated Fred in. The other GP doctor, his mate and recently acquired children moved to Earl’s farm in a new 16 X 82 all electric mobile home.

Earl and Clark knew they would need a new medical building for the doctors so a team of workers including the women erected a large cinder block building at each place that would be as state of the art as the equipment they could acquire would make it.

School buildings were put on the work agenda for the next year.

The sub captain had sent half the seal team to Miami to clean the city of undesirables. The team found that most of the gang members had died from bad home made drugs and the ones left were in such a bad state of health that they killed the diseased people they had found to put them out of their misery.

Finally Sherrie was monitoring the radio one evening and heard the plea from the Navy spokesman about what was going on in the lower section of the south eastern US. She told Clark – Clark called Earl and they made a decision to contact the Navy people.

A propeller driven airplane landed at Clark’s city airport. Clark, Missy, Earl and the 2 medical doctors were there to meet the occupants of the plane. The submarine captain found out there were over 20 mating age females with out a man. He was ecstatic and told the 4 men and Missy that he knew where they could find a mate and the ladies could pick and choose from several hundred men. Missy laughed and made a joke by saying I wish I could be so lucky. Clark smacked her on the butt when she got up.

The materials to make easy methamphetamines by the local un-educated meth makers were disappearing from the easily accessible over the counter stores and some were aging beyond their useful limits. The almost 20 million crazed drug people in the USA had trimmed down to less than 2 million and they were either off the drugs or so sick they were useless and the useless ones would not survive much longer. The 17 or 18 million good people survivors were now making headway on repopulating and resettling the huge US empty territory.

Untreated fuels in containers were rapidly going bad. It would take a huge effort to start processing available off-shore oil. A lot of the infrastructure to do the refining was intact but would take a massive effort on the part of the survivors to get it up and running. The population of the USA was at around the late 1800’s level and there was a vast emptiness between survivors.

The Navy sub captain and his unit had stuck together even though some of the people were making long trips away from their main base of operations, Key West and Miami. They always returned and sometimes brought survivors with them.

The Key West operation would eventually move to Miami because of the water supply. The brackish water they were getting from the wells and the lack of the main water supply from up north through the 36 inch waterline from Miami was causing major problems. Even though the submarine and the destroyers could distill ocean water it was a real hassle to get it delivered to where it was needed. The sub captain said just like Hank, Fred and Clark did – simpler is better. In the far future the water supply to Key west would be reinstated but that would be many years in the future. The other problem about living in Key West was the constant needed major repairs on the bridges on highway 1 leading to the city. That also would have to be addressed when the population expanded enough to send workers to do that job.

Fred finally got to walk on that atrophied leg 14 months later. It took another 3 months of physical therapy to make him about 99% again.

The satellites to navigate had drifted and were not to within the 3 feet of accuracy they used to be. They would eventually be worthless as navigation guides. Sextants and star locations would again be taught to any person wishing to navigate on the open oceans or fly great distances.

Of course there were more confrontations with crazy drug people. Some deaths and wounding on Clark and Earl’s community people - The doctors healed the wounded and the community buried the dead.

It would take 3 years but all of the submarine and destroyer sailors would eventually find a mate and the repopulation would begin in earnest.

The west coast submarine crew had decided to stay there and had found many small pockets of survivors, they to would eventually find mates.

Clark and Missy had 5 children. The GP doctor had delivered them all and they were as healthy as could be for the times.

Clark had many headstones inscribed on marble and built a nice cemetery close to where his first evil wife was laid to rest. Several times he almost bulldozed over where she was buried but that may have caused problems with his 2 original kids – so he let it go.

Both doctors had been dead several years but they had taught their pupils well and the medical profession was flourishing in the Earl/Clark communities.

Earl and Fred had passed on; only Hank and Clark were left to act like they were the big bosses of the 2 thriving communities. None of the original group – Hank, Earl, Clark, Fred or Missy liked to ride the new transportation – Horses.

Hank was 91 when he passed but he got to hear about the 1st wood powered steam locomotive that had made the journey from VA to CA. There was no more long distance trucking deliveries. The amount of fuel being processed was precious and only used for farming and critical operations. Police were not yet needed. The community took care of all infractions. It did not need to be taught that a person had the right of free speech or any of the constitutional rights the original framers of the constitution had laid down. It was a normal part of life and teachings. The pursuit of happiness was all that mattered these days. A drive by or walk-by shooting was unheard of. There were the occasional events when a persons mind would snap and bad things happened. That was also expected.

Life went on and the US was gradually recovering from really dark times.

End of Clark Story #12 – The Cheated on Prepper

That story was 80,000 words long just enough to qualify it as a book - thanks to everyone for reading and commenting

[Lbox88]

Clark Story #13 - The Man who lost his job

Part 1.

That should do it he said to himself. He had just sprinkled about 500 old metal and new aluminum beer caps over his 2nd buried stash. He drove the backhoe back onto the tow-a-long trailer and headed back to the city to return it. There were 11 industrial grade screw on lid 55 gallon plastic drums buried in that spot and 9 in another spot 200 yards further down hill exactly 25 yards from the rock cliff wall. He made it easy for him to find the places again by leaning the 8 foot ladder he had with him and going up above the ground to about 12 feet and spray painting a single 1 inch long brown line that almost but not quite blended into the cliff wall coloring. The other 9 barrels were straight across from the 2 foot wide slit in the mountain that was 5 feet tall and ran back in the mountain about 35 feet the widest part was 7 feet and the ceiling rose to about 15 feet. He next used his portable drill and drilled 2 starter holes 6 feet above the cave slit and screwed in 3 inch long ½ inch thick self tapping cement bolts a few feet apart that would rust over in a month or 2 and would blend right in with the rock cliff. He knew the place was perfect. Now only if he had time to get here and do what needed to be done he would have a nice ready made fall out shelter. The only reason he even considered it as a shelter was the trickling of water running down one wall and seeping into cracks in the cave floor.

He had found the place while out scouting for a hunting stand. He quickly noted that he could drive to the place in a 4 wheel drive vehicle or if careful a 2 wheel drive. He had noticed the relatively flat area running beside the 150 foot tall rock cliff for several hundred yards. He never did see any deer sign but indelibly locked that location in his mind. He was not worried about moisture getting into the barrels because everything in the barrels was wrapped up in heavy duty vacuum packed plastic bags. The lid threads were coated with Never Seize grease and carefully threaded back on. He had thought of the ground sinking in after a rain storm and wanted to do the digging right before rain was predicted. The place was isolated in the national forest and he had seen no human tracks within ¾ of a mile from where he had buried his stash. Nope he wasn’t worried about anyone finding it. The hardest part about the 2 day job was cutting the sod out and replacing it like it was before. Re-growth of the ground weeds would hide his cuts quickly and the leaves falling and blowing around from the trees would totally hide everything. He laughed thinking about someone walking along searching with a metal detector. He buried one shovel that he had taken to an auto paint shop that spray painted the preservative rubber paint on the beds of pick-up trucks and had the one he buried under three 2 hundred or more pound sandstone boulders close to the cave slit coated with the rubberized paint. He carefully drove over the dirt on top of the barrels many times and had to keep filling in the compacted dirt before he recovered the ground with the cut out sod. The extra dirt was put on the pickup and dumped at the end of the flat area down the side of a hill where he noticed a rather large creek. After he dropped the beer caps down he carefully raked a 25 foot area and picked up the loose debris and sprinkled it over his cut sod.

He came back 3 months later and left about 80 empty sterilized and washed out glass quart bottles of beer and 15 quart bottles of liquor with a few drops of alcohol still in the liquor bottles lying around about 10 yards into the woods from where each stash was buried He left the tightly screwed on aluminum screw on lids on the beer bottles and the plastic caps on the liquor bottles.

About 10 months later during deer season he checked the area again and the place was pristine. The weeds had grown up around the empty bottles he had left and hidden them just fine. He patted himself on his back for a job well done and left the area.

2 years later he smiled at his latest completed job. The fully restored mini VW van was languishing in the setting sunlight under his carport parking spot. He stashed the extra new carburetor, coil and voltage regulator in the side panel of the van. Admiring the dull green forest color paint job the paint shop had painted a few days ago. He said to himself I am going to keep this one forever. Everything was new except the restored frame and body which had taken the body shop 2 months to sand it down to bare metal and weld new panels where the rusted out ones had been cut out. The same rubberized or plastic type paint he had put on his buried shovel was painted on all the under panel metal and the interior hidden metal had also been covered with the paint. On his days off he had helped the metal shop crew and learned a few things. Anyways it was now done and the expensive job was history.

He took his VW out for a spin and said why not to himself. He went back to his luxury pent house apartment and loaded up his camping gear. Driving close to where he had buried his stash he folded down one of the 2 cots that were hanging on each side of the panel wall. The floor was 7 feet long and a lot of stuff could be put in the van. The cot was great to sleep on and he had an enjoyable night out camping in the woods.

Part 2.

The high paying job he had been working at disappeared several months later. He could not afford the exorbitant rent he was paying for the pent-house apartment he was staying in. The stocks he had so prudently invested in over the years became worthless overnight. The company he worked for 401K plan plummeted to 5% of its original worth. He just shook his head at that thinking he maybe should have put a little cash in the savings plan but he opted out of that thinking he was stock savvy enough to make more money on his own. He did too for several years until yesterday. He always kept telling himself he would buy a small place out in the country but he never did. The very first thing he did when he got the last big paycheck was to take 2500 dollars, a copy of the title and an extra key to the VW to a lawyer he had struck up an acquaintance with several years ago. He signed the appropriate papers and the lawyer would take care of the license plate fees and his insurance payment for the next 7 years. The only thing moneywise he had to do now was come up with the 15 bucks a year for an inspection sticker, oil and gasoline. He sold his big 8 cylinder gas engine pick-up for a slight loss. He knew he could not afford to drive it with the 12 MPG he was getting, but he could afford the 41 MPG the brand spanking new engine in the VW got. He laughed when he saw that just about everything he owned would fit in the plastic storage container on the roof rack and inside the VW. Most of his weapons were buried in the forest. He had an over and under breakdown 20 gauge shotgun with a 30-06 barrel and a single shot 22 rifle. Pistols were frowned on in the place he stayed. There were 550 22 rounds, fifty 20 gauge slugs, fifty #4 lead shot shells and 100 rounds of 180 grain hollow point 06 bullets. His tool box slid into a bracket right under one of the cots where the cot dropped down. His camping gear fit on the other side under the other cot. The rifles were put in the over head lockable container to keep them out of sight. He was now homeless and almost broke. He had had no nibbles on the 279 job applications he had put out. The unemployment checks he had sent to the lawyer’s office to pick up as he was now using that location as his permanent residence address. The lawyer almost balked when he told him what he was going to do. But 300 dollars more solved that problem. He made good use of his food stamp card and loaded the VW down with quick eat items like on-sale canned meats and vegetables. He had to pay 50 cents to take a shower at a truck stop if he could not at one of the shelters. A laundry mat was sometimes used to keep his wardrobe clean. He moved his van every night to a new parking spot. Times were getting hard; the economy was just about buried by the massive spending the federal government had implemented for welfare programs. He wasn’t complaining yet because he was also on the dole for unemployment and food stamps. He learned quickly which shelters were clean and trouble free. He would need a warm place to sleep when winter came. It was a shame he had no living family members or kin folk that he knew of. Somewhere there were distant cousins on his mom’s side but she never kept in contact with them and he had no idea where they were. It just sucked to be all alone in this huge world. He never had time to make friends because he always had his head stuck in front of a computer monitor or working on his hobby restoring old automobiles.

He was in a panic now the last unemployment check was coming. He had saved most of that money for gasoline and minor upkeep on his automobile which he drove less then 15 miles a week. There were untold millions of people out of work – the streets were crawling with bums. One night he got fed up with his life decided to join them. He became a wino and turned into a real street bum. He had enough sense to take his auto to the lawyer’s office and park it in their secure parking lot. When the lawyer saw what kind of shape he was in he gladly took the VW and secured it. He ended up sleeping in gutters and carrying his spare clothes around in a tough garbage bag. His health was going down hill, fortunately he had had all his teeth repaired and cleaned a few weeks before he lost his job. The only thing of value he had with him was his VW auto key on a chain around his neck and food stamp card that kept him eating and alive. The people that ran the shelters would let the bums in twice a week to take a shower and wash their clothes. You had to be extraordinarily lucky to get a bed in one of the shelters. The lines started forming for a bed at noon and he was always too hung over and mostly never remembered to be at one of the shelters early enough to get a bed. He had learned from the other street wise bums where the safe places out of the weather were and he spent many a night behind a garbage dumpster under an overhang on a few card board boxes to keep dry from the down pours.

9 months later the cheap alcohol the street people were drinking dried up. He went to the grocery store and bought several items – when he used his card to check out, the cashier told him the money for the food stamp cards had run out and he could not buy what he had. OK he told himself it has been 8 days since I had a drink and I am now dried out and alcohol free so I will go get my van and camp out where I have my supplies. He got to take a shower, shave and wash his clothes at the shelter.

As he was leaving the shelter he met his female friend that he had talked to in the lobby waiting room of the shelter where everyone that had a bed for the night hung out. She was a year or 2 younger than him and the exact same thing had happened to her, only she had not become a drunk. She asked him where he was going and he told her. She said have you not been listening to the news. He just looked at her with a blank look on his face. She said the economy of the US has collapsed and we are under threat of nuclear attack. He just said I have a shelter and enough food to live for 18 or more months. She said have you quit drinking. He told her yes I am through with that part of my life. She then asked him if he wanted some company.

Part 3.

When they got to the lawyers office the chain link gate was locked up tighter than a bank vault. The guard shack was also empty. He could see his VW about 75 yards away in another locked up chain link section of the parking lot. She looked at him and asked him what he was going to do. He said climb the fences and get the bolt cutters out of my tool box, cut the locks and drive us out of here. She laughed for a few seconds and said give me the VW key. He asked why? She said the shape you are in I do not think you can climb that fence. He tried and she was right he was so far out of shape he did not have the arm strength to make it over the fence.

Ten minutes later she had cut both locks on the gates and he followed her to the van. She said will it start. He said I hope so there is a 5 watt panel solar trickle charger hooked into the lighter plug that keeps the battery topped off. What about gasoline she asked. When I brought the van here to the lawyer both tanks were full and I had put Stabil in the two 20 gallon tanks. We should be set to go. He was wrong. The one 20 gallon tank was empty – someone had siphoned all the fuel out. But the other tank was full because a crossover valve had to be manually opened to use it. He was glad he had done it that way or they would be sitting here with just the 5 gallon GI can that was inside the van.

Do you have any money he asked her? She said $11.27 cents. That won’t help us she said the last time I walked by a gasoline station gas was 16.50 a gallon. He told her no we have plenty of gasoline – I wanted a Coca Cola for some energy. Do you want me to buy some food – He said no we have food. I just want a non-alcohol sweet tasting coke. The van started right up and that surprised her because she had watched him over the past several months and he had really went down hill. But she could see there was a spark in his eye now and that made her feel better. They stopped at the only gasoline station she knew was open and she ran in and got a 2 liter coke and a cup of ice. He asked her if it was expensive. She said $7.35 cents. Dang he thought that was expensive. He said I will pay you back - there was $300.00 in cash and silver coins under the van in a small iron box – but 4 bolts had to be unbolted to get into it.

It was 92 miles to the turn off to where his stash was. 3 hours later at 30 MPH they were at the turn off of the gravel road. He told her to hold her breath and cross her fingers. He eased out into the untracked forest. He did not get far. He stopped and got his electric chain saw out – it was really a tree limb pruner but it would cut down the 2 and 3 inch trees that had grown up since he had been here the last time. He used the small inverter and clamped it to the battery. It did not take but a few minutes to clear those 3 trees out of his path. He had to stop 3 more times to cut trees out of the way. He made sure he covered the cut off stumps over with the cut down trees. He was glad it had not rained in a while or he did not think he would have made it.

He told her it would take about 2 or more days to make the small cave habitable. She did not say anything just waited on him to tell her how they were going to do all this with no supplies. The 1st thing we have to do is get the shovel and use the tape measure in my tool box to measure from the front of the cave exactly 25 yards out. It was a good thing she was with him because he could not move the boulders he had put on the shovel. She helped him and they un-wrapped the plastic from the rubberized coated shovel. She said neat. I had great plans when I set this place up he told her but I am not sure I want to follow my plan. What was your plan she asked. He said I wanted to remove the sod and take my supplies from the barrels and cover the empty barrels back over but that will be an awful lot of work. She just asked him where he had to go and what else was he planning on doing. He said OK we will take the sod off and put it back. We need the contents of the 1st barrel to light the place up and clean out the cave. Let’s eat something before we start. She said and what pray tell are we going to eat. A heated up can of Dinty Moore beef Stew and if the canned bread is any good some buttered bread. We don’t have time to grind up some wheat and make drop biscuits. She just looked at him. He opened the back of the van and pulled his camping box out, set up the Coleman stove, opened up a can of Coleman fuel, pumped the stove up and set each of them a can of stew in a small round pan of water to heat up. There were 2 gallon jugs of water in the cook box. Next he opened up a can of bread, smelled it and just said smells good to me. Next he opened one of the tins of butter and spread 4 slices of bread with the butter, laid 2 silverware soup spoons on a bounty paper towel and said it looks like steam is starting to come off the top of the stew. He stirred both cans and said just a few more minutes.

[Lbox88]

Part 4.

They finished eating and then they had a hard time screwing the lid off the 1st barrel but the Never Seize grease he had used worked extremely well. The contents of the barrel were just like he had put them in. The first thing taken out was the 12 slot double AA battery charger and the bag of rechargeable batteries. He plugged the charger into the inverter clamped to the VW battery and started a quick charge on 12 Eneloop batteries. The two 25 watt solar panels he would hang on the south side cliff wall from the bolts he had so long ago screwed in there would charge everything in the future. He next set off 4 bug bomb killers every 8 feet apart inside the cave and walked out to wait till the smell dispersed. They screwed the short section handles on the street broom and the rake while waiting on the bug spray smell to leave and the batteries to charge. He raked and she swept. They had to leave and change the N-100 masks every 15 minutes to let the dust settle.

He said I sure hope you do not snore. She said why would you ask that. He said I am going to bed. Where are we sleeping? He said the van – there are 2 cots in there. We will not be able to take a shower for a while till the sun warms up a shower bag or we heat some water up. She had no where else to sleep and she sure wasn’t sleeping in that cave so she crawled into the sleeping bag he gave her and went to sleep. They had rehydrated scrambled eggs and fried spam for breakfast. He said maybe by tomorrow or this afternoon we will be set up with the extra pots and pans from another barrel to have hot coffee or tea.

She watched him as he carefully poured the battery acid into 2 large empty solar batteries. She had to climb the makeshift ladder he had made to hang the 2 solar panels over the cave entrance and unroll the dark brown wire down the wire blended into the cliff side extremely well and was just about invisible. The solar panels could only be seen if a person walking by looked up and most people never did look up while strolling in the woods. He plugged the 2 new batteries into the charge controller just inside the cave entrance out of their way. He said we will string the LED lights this afternoon in here and that will light the place up. She said I hope there are no snakes in here. He said me too. He had carefully checked the cave the 1st time he entered it and saw there were no cracks or holes for snakes to hole up in so he was pretty sure there had been no change in the several years since he had first been here. He did tell her there will probably be field mice running in and out until we lock ourselves in here. She said why would we lock ourselves in here. He told her you were the one that said we were under threat of nuclear attack.

She noticed the black rifles leaning against the wall inside the cave with large magazines sticking out of the magazine wells. She said expecting trouble. He said no I just want to be prepared in case you attack me. She let out a loud laugh and continued to laugh on and off for a few hours.

Finally on the 5th day he had walked about 300 yards and made his way up to the top of the rock cliff. He dropped down the para-cord and after she hooked on the antenna wire he started pulling it up for the short wave radio. She said you going to turn the radio on. He said no I want to make sure we have the radiation detectors set up and the door ready to install before I do that. Why would you want to wait? He just said because we are not ready to take shelter yet and if we found out nuclear detonations were eminent or had already detonated close by we would just die anyway. She just said well that would sure light a fire under my bottom if I knew that. He chuckled and said and then you would still be dead with a burned up butt.

He said I am now going right over there by that tree and take a shower. Don’t peep. Another day had gone by and he still had not turned the radio on she was getting exasperated. He said don’t worry the radiation detector is now up and running and we will be warned if anything happens by the buzzer sounding off.

________________________________________
Part 5.

On the 8th day they had the place ready to live in. He laughed at the thought he would have had it ready in 2 days – He had not factored in him being hurt or weak. Anyways the door was ready to be placed in position and checked for fit. His measurements he had taken many years ago were right on. The door fit perfectly. She again asked him when he was going to turn the radio on. He really did not want to hear bad news. He said right now. He told her to take the collapsible canvas fishing seat he had and he sat on the van bed with both back doors wide open. The van was parked about 4 feet from the cave entrance. Next he brought out the radio and plugged in the antenna which was hanging down from a tree above the cliff. Using the clamp on inverter and an extension cord he plugged the radio in and turned it on. Finally after gong through the FM tuner and then into the short wave frequencies they started hearing lots of talk.

There had been short nuclear exchanges in the Far East over Taiwan and something was going on between Iran and Israel. This was about to go nuclear was what the reporter was saying. A short story about the chaos going on internally in the United States about no food, the riots and city burnings was listened to. He waited a minute after he heard that and asked her if she wanted to ride into town. He could have driven his van into her mouth as she started to speak. He stopped her and said it was a joke. She still sputtered for a few seconds.

Let’s cut some logs and make a few log tables and some benches he told her. That took another 3 days and he did use the pruning saw to somewhat level off the tops of the logs as best he could. They had just got the inside log table parts and the bench parts into the cave when the radiation buzzer went off. He looked at her and said I guess that will be all of our outside activity for a while. The doors on the VW were shut up and using the quick disconnects he grabbed the VW battery and carried it inside. It took both of them about 5 minutes to get the door in place and the 24 inches of dirt shoveled onto the 3 shelves built on it to give them a decent radiation protection factor. The 6 inch entry and exit pipes came in for 6 inches and made a 6 inch U turn and then another 6 inch U turn pointing them back into the cave; this also gave the pipes 6 inches of dirt behind them. The outside down turned pipes had a 6 inch wide 4 inch long Hepa filter in them as did the pipes pointing into the cave. Both pipes had DC fans in them – 1 pointing out to exhaust the cave and one drawing outside air in. She asked him why he had 30 feet of that 6 inch silvery flex vent piping at the back of the cave hooked into the exhaust pipe. He said I read somewhere that this helps draw the air into the cave and takes the stale air out from the furthest point in your shelter. This is also where I am going to set up the Coleman stove. The cave was large enough that he knew he would not run out of oxygen for 2 or 3 days unless he built a huge wood fire which he was not going to do. If he had spent some time really investigating the cave he would have found there was air coming up through the cracks where the water drained. This would have eliminated the DC fan, Hepa Filters and pipe for drawing in fresh air. He had used 2 tubes of caulk to go around the inside seam of the door to make it airtight before covering the door shelves with the dirt. The door fit flush on the outside and had 3 internal sliding 1/2 inch bolts to hold it against the rock. Earlier he had used his rechargeable drill to drill the 1 inch deep holes to slide the 1/2 inch locking bars into. The door was nothing but ½ inch thick 24 inch wide aluminum cut in 3 pieces with metal dowel pins to put it back together. The inside shelves to hold the dirt were 24 inch by 24 inch ½ inch aluminum that fit into pre bolted on slide on heavy duty bracket holders on the inside of the door. There was a one inch gap at the back of the shelves to allow at least one inch of dirt behind the shelving. He had done his research using public technical reports a long time ago using the radiation protection afforded by residential sources and thin walled aluminum structures from the unclassified 1950’s Nevada atomic tests. With the ½ inch of aluminum and the 24 inches of dirt he had a 1024 PF (protection factor) which at the time he thought would be sufficient in this mountainous isolated place.

Part 6.

They kept an eye on the outside radiation level – She asked him a few hours later what it was – He just said if you are not in a shelter you will die in a few days. She got huffy and said that is not what I asked - he grinned and said old time measurement scale says 980 Roentgens. She said what is new scale – he said I don’t know, never did bother to learn to convert it. I think enough roentgens will kill or damage you just like a rem or whatever the new count is.

He asked her to help him put the log table together. She said do you have bolts to bolt it together. He said no I have 8 three foot long 3/4 inch dowel rods and I will use this large plastic container of wood glue which I hope is still good and the ¾ inch drill bit to drill the holes.

She said why do you have 15 five gallon buckets spray painted with that rubbery stuff that goes on the bed of trucks. He said I did not know if the buckets would break down in the soil so I had them spray painted with the lids on so I kind of figured they would last for a 100 or so years. I did not put anything in them but toilet paper, bounty and 30 gallon trash bags to hold human waste. 2 of them we will use for our personal toilets the attaching 5 gallon bucket camp commode lids are over in that pile. I am not sure whether I want to dump our pee where the water drains down into the cave cracks. If we are in here for a long, long time we may have to do that.

They had brought both cots into the cave and set them up. The cots had the 4 legs on them and would be a great help in keeping them off the cold rock floor. With a 10 degree sleep bag on top of the cot, sleeping and comfort would not be a problem in the 51 degree cave. When they went to bed he turned off all but one set of 3 LED lights and he also turned off the DC fans. He would turn the fans back on every morning around 9am when the sun hit the solar panels.

The next morning he told her the glue should hopefully be set up on the table, bench and I want to mount the grain grinder to make some flour for drop biscuits or again hopefully bread, there are 4 jars of unopened yeast, but I don’t think it is any good anymore. We can proof it later to see if we can get a little activity out of it.

She wanted to wash clothes and asked him about it. He said I have to drill a hole in one of the screw on lid 5 gallon buckets. There is one toilet plunger with the handle in another pile. We will find it and use that and you can help me run a clothes line close to where the Coleman stove is. I don’t think anything will dry in this 50 degree temperature without the stove being used when we cook. We will have to dump the soapy laundry water where the water drains down in the cracks very slowly to keep it from running all out in the cave. There are two 2 gallon containers of cold water clothes wash detergent. I think we should add a little warm water to the bucket. Just makes sense to me that warm water washes better than cold. I wish I had thought of making a 4 or 5 foot 3 inch tall little hill around where the water drains that would make taking a shower real easy. We will just have to be careful when we take a shower to insure the water drains out. I never thought of storing a bag of cement to do that.

One of the things they had done while they were outside was retrieve the beer and whiskey bottles. They boiled the cave water in a big cast iron pot he had over a wood fire and funneled the sterilzed water into each beer and whiskey glass bottle. That gave them about 25 gallons of good drinking water. They would use the Coleman stove to sterilize more of the cave water as needed. He did not know then or ever that the seeping water in the cave was excellent drinking spring water and did not need to be sterilized.

Part 7.

They found out that when he took a shower there was no problem with the water draining through the cracks rapidly. That was a big relief. On the 14th day he checked the outside radiation and just told her it is over 300 Roentgens, the war must still be going on and the way I figure it is we are probably going to be stuck in here several months. I hope you like old time rock and roll, country western and gospel music. That is all I have because that is what I like. She said I am an Elvis fan and Elvis Gospel is my favorite music. He said you are in luck because I have all of his music.

Her clothes fell apart when she washed them. He wanted to laugh but didn’t, he just said take a pair of my pants and one of my pull-over cotton sweat shirts and cut them to your size or leave the pull-over alone and just roll up the sleeves. There are loads of needles and thread to make you something to wear. That night they cut a pair of his Levi’s and one of his pull over cotton sweat shirts down to her size. They both sewed on them for that night and the next day before she was outfitted again. He told her I have dozens of one size fits all socks and 2 pair of Viet Cong rubber tired shower clogs and all we have to do is trim one of them down to your size and you will be set. She said I don’t have any panties. Well you can try to cut a pair of my Haines BVD briefs to fit you I have 3 packs of 5. She turned beet red when he said that. She just said I’ll think about it. What about Kotex or tampons – He said no I do not have any – But you can take 6 or 8 of the 20 cotton wash cloths I have and use a pin to attach them to your panties you are going to make. They should be easy to wash in some warm water in the 5 gallon bucket and dried on the clothes line.

She asked him if he had an extra razor for her to shave her legs and under her arms. She had noticed he was always clean shaven and noticed that he used something that looked like an old timey single edge razor. She was afraid he did not have many blades and put off asking him. He said yes you can borrow one of my razors. I bought these lifetime Rolls Razor Imperials a long time ago on EBAY for about 10 bucks each because I thought they were neat and would be easier to use than a straight razor. She said you have a single edge lifetime razor blade. He said yes I will show you how to sharpen it up after you use it a few times. He handed her the razor and a mug of shaving soap with a shaving brush. He told her it is not necessary to shave your legs and under your arms while we are stuck in here. She told him I know that but it just makes me feel better. She also told him I am going to cut your head hair with those nice scissors I saw in one of those buckets. He said no I have a rechargeable hair razor cutter for that. We can use the scissors to keep your hair short and squared off at the bottom. She said good, I don’t like for my hair to grow longer than my lower neck.

Usually when one of them took a shower the other would lie facing the other way on their cot. She said to him that night – you can watch if you want because I am going to use your razor. He said do you want me to shave you. It was on from there.

They moved the cots together that night and sexual tension floated out of the cave not to be found again.

They were still opening 5 gallon buckets up that they had thrown things into to get them out of the way. He just said I am going to start taking a vitamin a day. I opened each one of these vitamin bottles and vacuum sealed them and after I got an almost perfect vacuum on the bag and then I put the lid back on the vitamin bottles. They have been stored in an almost perfect vacuum at 51 degrees for all those years. Unless there is a chemical breakdown or some kind of reaction I have not read about they should be alright but probably with diminished strength. She just said well I will wait 5 days before I take one. If you die I will know what caused it. He laughed but worried about it for the next 5 days. Nothing happened so she started taking the years old vitamins. A month later he started feeling really good and thought to himself I probably had a micro nutrient deficiency and the vitamins corrected it. She told him that she also was feeling better.

They started dancing to the old slow time music and acted silly on the fast ones. Neither of them knew how to Jitter-Bug or Charleston so they just did what modern day dancers they had observed on TV did – they moved around the cave floor quickly using outrageous arm and leg movements. Anyways after they stopped fast dancing they both agreed it was good exercise.

They really got creative on the beans and rice that was the main staple. She was so happy he had 36 tins of real butter and 2 #10 cans of powdered cheese. He only had 72 cans of Yoders chunked beef and gravy and they saved one can for every other day to mix with the rice. Some days they just ate rice, spam and drop biscuits with a small can of vegetables they shared. They always commented on the tinny taste the canned vegetables had but they ate every little piece. He had 36 cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and that was a real treat because of the enameled coating inside the cans the flavor was just like it had been canned. He had read on one of the survivalist boards that Dinty Moore had an indefinite shelf life and it sure tasted like it. He knew spam was probably good as long as the can did not rust through or get bent. Their food selection and desserts of dried apples, apricots, blueberries, strawberries and many other #10 cans of dehydrated fruits was enough to keep them happy in the world of comfort foods.

There were 9 gallon cans of Coleman fuel and four 5 gallon cans of treated gasoline. So it would be many years before they ran out of fuel for the 2 Coleman stoves. Things were kind of idyllic for the 2 holed up former jobless people.

They had heard nothing on the radio. They turned it on the 28th day in the cave and monitored it every night for an hour.

On the 168th day the monitor read 1 R. He said in another week or so we should be able to see if the trees are alive outside. She looked at him funny. He said it was another one of my jokes. They heard talk on the radio the next evening but it was so faint they could not understand it. The following night they heard a broadcast telling everyone in shelters to wait just a few more weeks before venturing out. They heard the man say a large part of the USA was a smoking radioactive ruin as was the rest of the world. They just sat around that night not talking much and listening to gospel music because that was the mood the radio talker had put them in.

Part 8.

Finally 12 days later the outside radiation monitor bottomed out on the peg stob. They had talked many times about what the first thing they would do when they got outside. They were not going to do anything today after they opened the door. It was pouring down the rain and he knew the VW would not make it to the gravel road without bogging down. So they just sat close by the opened cave door and watched the cold rain fall. The VW battery had been trickle charging off the solar panels for a few days and was ready. They went out and put the battery in and the van started right up. Good thing about stabilized gasoline he told her was it did not let the gasoline gum up injector’s, gas lines or carburetors.

3 days later they barely made it to the gravel road. 1st stop was Lowe’s; they needed a large heavy duty come-a-long, a small generator and a pump attachment with hose to siphon some gas. Next would be a small 4 wheel drive 4 cylinder pickup to make access to their cave easy. After they had those things the off-road motorcycles and 4 wheelers were on the top of the list.

They saw no one during their 2 days of scavenging but he was sure there were good people and bad people alive somewhere. Now they needed an out of the way place with farm land to make their new home. They started cruising the gravel roads and taking rutted trails looking for that perfect spot. They had an option to put a trailer on a lot but wanted a brick or cinder block home with the amenities already in place.

The 5th day after filling the small 4 wheel drive pickup with gasoline and adding a little Stabil to it they continued the search. They found the place they wanted about 2pm on the 6th day. It was 11 miles off a secondary gravel road and was perfect. The people who had lived there either came out to early, ran out of food or the shelter was not built to handle the tremendous amount of radiation. He almost turned around before they got there but she asked him to go a few more miles. He was glad he did. The bodies were in the basement and had partially liquefied before drying up. They left the metal basement door open and would clean the place later. It was a 4 bedroom brick home with one of those lifetime metal roofs, but what was on top of that roof sold him, it was completely covered with solar panels.. It sat on the southern back side of the mountain he did not want to drive around. 30 or 40 acres of farmland was directly down the hill from the house and a large picture window showed it all. A big orchard was on the opposite side of the house. A windmill sat on the very top of the mountain behind them and the blades were slowly spinning. He did not know if it was a wind turbine for electricity or just a water pump. He would find out in the next several days. They found 2 cows dead in the barn. What had to be a pig pen behind the barn had one corner of the fence torn down. He assumed the pigs had escaped and died. A well was beside the house. He told her to turn a faucet on and he heard the pump whirr. This is what we are looking for. There was diesel farm equipment under a large pole barn. He checked the large tank and saw it had about ¾ tank of fuel in it. He just thought Pri-D. OK he told her this is it.

1 year and 1 baby later they ran into a fellow on a horse who told them he lived in a commune with a doctor and dentist. They did not move to the commune but did visit often. A little trading was done and they had access to the doctor and dentist and playmates for their first son and coming second child.

End of Just Another Story #13.

[Lbox88]

Clark Story #14 - The Early Learning Years


Early Learning Years Part 1

Clark’s Grandpa almost slung the cell phone through the wall. He came to his senses, those 100 dollar bills for a good cell phone was just a little bit much to waste on his minor temper tantrum.

He had been waiting on his son to bring little Clark, the (grandson) to the farm for 2 days. The boy had just turned 4 years old and Gramps thought it was time for the young one to begin his education. The young boy was Gramps last chance at having a family member take over the sprawling mountain farm that he had built up for the past 50 years.

Little Clark arrived at the farm bright and early the next morning. Gramps told his son and wife that he would take over and they could take a vacation for a few months. The son had finally convinced his wife that it would be in the best interests of the boy and it would make his dad (Gramps) happy. They stayed at the farm for two days just to make sure Gramps knew how to take care of such a young feller. They saw the love and pride in Gramps when he was near the boy and how he took young Clark’s hand and walked off with the young one talking and telling stories. The lessons had begun.

Gramps had worked hard from 1945 when he returned home from the big war to accumulate some wealth and buy the property he knew was for sale. The property had 29 mountains on it many valleys, 28 creeks, 15 large ponds and was just about 10 miles by 10 miles in area. The mining company that owned the property had mined all the coal that could be gotten to cheaply and easily. There were still a few seams of coal but the expense to mine it did not make good business sense. So they closed up the mines on the property and put it up for sale. Now 100 square miles in the wilderness of central West Virginia was not going to be given away for a few dollars and Gramps knew this but he had worked for that company for a few years and socked his salary away into some blue chip stocks that rose in value rapidly over a 4 year period. He had his down payment but the payments would be just a little too much for what he was making now. The local banker had been Gramps Commanding Officer during the war and he would bet his life on Gramps, he had many times done just that.

Early Learning Years Part #2
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The banker told Clark that there was a mine property for sale that had been estimated to have 10 or more years of coal in it and could be mined easily. The owner had fallen on bad times from other ventures he had dabbled in and wanted some rapid cash. The bank did float the loan using his stocks as collateral for Gramps first big business operation. Clark paid the loan off in 18 months and used the mine as collateral to buy the property he had dreamed of owning ever since he was a young boy who had hunted and fished the area.

3 years later Gramps was debt free and had heard about another mine that was for sale. The bank again floated another loan for the purchase of the mine and Gramps was on his way to becoming a multi millionaire before he was 30.

The Cold War was beginning; Coal had increased dramatically in price. The 1st mine was sold for basically what he had paid for it 7 years ago. 2 more mines had been purchased and were running 24 hours a day bringing Hard Black Gold out to industry. Gramps was sitting pretty.

Gramps wife had died when his boy (Joe), was 3 years old from a hysterectomy. Gramps had raised Joe and taught him what he was fixing to teach young Clark – Joe did not want to be a farmer and live semi-off grid. He had finished college and took a job at the Alloy Plant many miles from where he was raised. He was the metallurgist who tested the silicone and other melted products for purity as it came from the electric blast furnaces and made a huge salary.

Gramps found out he had a WVU Forestry/Biology graduate working in one of the mines, the mine job paid more than a teaching job. He pulled the man aside and asked him if he wanted another job with a pay raise and guaranteed him he could have his job back at the mines when he finished with the job Gramps had in mind. The job of course was to teach Gramps everything about the local flora on his property. The man liked the idea of using his education and agreed to work for Gramps at the farm.

Computers had not yet been invented and Bill Gates had not yet been born so everything had to be learned from a book, classroom or the way Gramps was learning from his personal tutor.

The Cold War and threat of Nuclear War was foremost in Gramps mind and he wanted to be able to survive a nuclear attack. Information on how to do this was scarce. But the US Civil Defense was finally getting around to talking about bomb shelters. Of course we know what Gramps did. Stocked up an abandoned mine with supplies.

It was a 2 and half year learning period for Gramps. He finally had a good handle on the flora at his farm. 3 to 5 days a week they wandered the mountains and farm going over and over the same material until it stuck in Gramps memory cells. He had taken notes and drawn pictures of the flora in all 4 seasons and had his notebooks to go back to if his memory started to fade. The scientific names he made a small and I mean really small side note of that. He was more interested in the common name instead of Latin college talk.

Early Learning Years Part 3

During the learning period Gramps had set into motion a program to secure his property, not with fencing but with a 5 foot deep, 5 foot wide ditch with the dirt placed on the inside of his property to a depth of about 4 or more feet high. This made it difficult if not impossible for anyone on a motor bike to ride onto his land. A person could climb up and over but there would not be large groups of people wanting to dirty themselves up climbing over the obstacle. The next plan after the ditch was dug was to plant wild blackberries on top of the dirt mound - He figured the ditch digging and planting of the berries would take 3 or 4 years and probably cost about 20000 dollars. The reason it was so cheap was he only had to pay labor because he owned the heavy equipment to do the job. He did not need to dig a ditch 40 miles around the place. After it was measured he only needed a 17 mile long ditch in places. The mountain cliffs butted down to the edge of the property and were a fine barrier. He did one more thing by killing the bramble and cutting the trees down on the outside of the ditch to a 30 foot wide clear strip, the deer loved it and the hunters on the outside ambushed them in this clear cut area. Every 5 years he had it clear cut again and when the chemicals to kill it all like Round Up Brush killer came on the market. He had 2 men spray it to keep it cleared. He found out the hunters were using the clear cut area to ride on, so he had 5 foot deep and wide ditches dug every 500 yards with a 30 foot long 4 foot high chain link fence on the top edge of the ditch to stop this nonsense. That cost another bunch of money for labor and fencing, he already had the 2 inch iron water pipe. He thought the aluminum spray painted private property/no hunting sign cost was outrageous, but after talking to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) people he did it for legal purposes.

He had hired several people to cut or pull up all the power poles on the property the former mine had used and save the electrical line; he used the poles to string the #4 guage line to the hard road where he could be hooked onto the grid. There was 3 miles of line left rolled up in a pole barn type structure. The electric company wanted something like 80000 dollars to do it. Since he had the poles and the wire, it cost him just labor about 2000 dollars. The power company griped and balked but finally after a call from Gramps lawyer he was hooked onto the commercial grid.

Lots of things were done on the mountain farm over the next several decades as we shall see.

Gramps was glad it was early spring and the weather was nice. He and young Clark took the kid size Red Ryder BB gun and went off into the forested area. Gramps made a game of everything. If young Clark could remember the name of cat tails or whatever 30 minutes after he was shown them they sang a little ditty about them and what they were good for. Some were picked and put in the basket. The BB gun shooting was the prize. They returned home and ate some of the peeled 1 foot tall raw shoots. Next they made a game and boiled the shoots for 20 or so minutes and put them on toast and poured a little melted butter on them and had a sandwich. Next they took the roots and washed them off good and placed them on a screen outside to dry in the sun for a few days. They went BB gun shooting and came back and took a nap. They did the cattail thing again that afternoon but this time put honey on the sandwich and young Clark really liked that.

Gramps knew this was going to take several years and was in no hurry to push the young boy who by the way had a really sharp and retentive mind. He wanted to get the early spring time flora out of the way before summer and the berries came along.

Part #4

Gramps wasn’t sure whether the young boy would like onion flavored things so he gently led him into the flavoring of things with onions and explained a big boy would eat lots of things to keep him healthy even if they did not taste too good at the first eating. They went ramp (small onion) hunting – he let Clark shoot the BB gun at the tops of the green shoots they were going to pull out of the area close to the creek. He put his nose on the plant and told the boy – this is a fine smelling plant and will make a good meal if cooked right. We can also add it to our bean soup and even some mashed potatoes, and scrambled eggs, but we will do something special with them the first time. They shot the BB gun some more and made up names that rhymed with ramp. The 1st batch of ramp bulbs with the tops were parboiled and then fried in bacon grease. He gave young Clark a teeny bit to see if the boy liked them. He did. The next morning he fried them up in bacon grease and threw some eggs on top with some almost crispy fried bacon on the side. The boy ate like he was starving and smiled after he spooned the last bit of scrambled egg into his mouth.

They made a song up with Elvis singing in the background on the portable CD player about Poke Salad Annie as they boiled up a bunch of 6 inch young Pokeweed stalks in lightly salted water and sprinkled a drop or two of vinegar over it. Young Clark said Popeye food – It tasted to him as well as Gramps like spinach. So far Gramps was batting a 1000.

The next day Gramps went by himself (it was a little early to show the boy about killing birds) to the pigeon coop and snatched 4 pigeons. He cut the pigeons heads off and held them over a barrel while they bled out and dipped them in a pot of boiling water to quick pluck them. He got lazy and used a propane torch to make sure he got any pin feathers. He cut the breasts and legs off, rolled them in egg, floured them and fried them in corn oil. This went with the small salad they had picked earlier. The salad was parboiled mustard, chickweed, quick weed, bracken/cinnamon fiddleheads and fresh cut young dandelion leaves with a little sweetened corn oil. Gramps laughed out loud as young Clark tried to make something rhyme with pigeon. They took a nap and planned out what they would do after they played a game with the toy metal trucks all over the floor. The electric train was only run in the evening and they both made a wooo wooo sound as the train went through a traffic crossing. Things were on schedule, Gramps was thinking.

The summer went by slowly and little Clark was picking up so many new things.

The parents of young Clark were amazed at his new knowledge and went along with Gramps suggestion that he stay at the farm for a few weeks every month till he was required to go to the 1st grade. The parents readily agreed with that and just shook their head in amazement at how rapidly young Clark was progressing under Gramps tutelage.
It was still early spring and the Morel mushrooms were popping their heads up everywhere – young Clark and Gramps were having a hard time not picking 3 or 400 of them when they stopped. Gramps told the young one lets eat some of these after we cook them – they can be eaten raw but are so much better when fried in some good butter. They shot the BB gun and rhymed a morel tune – On the way back young Clark spotted what looked like a ping pong ball sprouting in several areas – Gramps told him they are called puffballs and we really have to be careful when we pick them because some of the poison ones that hurt you look like them. He took a lot of time showing him the difference in poison look alike white mushrooms and they took some small ping pong ball mushrooms to mix in with the morels. Young Clark liked both types of mushroom. Just like his Gramps the old man thought.

The Early Years Part 5

They waited 2 days before doing some foraging. They went grape vining – Gramps cut a few sturdy tree vines loose and young Clark swung out over a 2 or 3 foot deep ravine and screamed all the time while hanging on after a big push from Gramps.

Young Clark jumped head first into muddy bogs and just wiggled all around while screaming it is warm. Gramps laughed and pulled him out. He made young Clark jump into the 2 feet deep end of the creek fed pond 50 yards from the house and get most of the mud off before running into the concrete shower room in the house.

Gramps got mad at the goats he had. They were eating things they were not supposed to even after being herded 7 or 800 yards away. They always ran back and started eating the berries and deforesting the mountainside by the house. He called a fence crew to come build an 8 foot tall fence 500 yards by 500 yards with the bottom cemented into the ground 6 inches deep all the way around. He had 6 of them taken to the butcher and kept 2 females and a really young male for later breeding. The goats had eaten a small part of the large garden he grew specialty things in like white heirloom beefsteak tomatoes, some really mild oriental super flavored banana peppers, Romaine/Butter head lettuce and 12 inch long Burpless Asian Cukes.

The next trip was to teach him about those really easy to identify early spring mushrooms. On the way to gather the mushrooms he had a change of mind. He did it the way the forestry man taught him- He would show young Clark the poisonous mushrooms first. He did not have any trouble making up stories about how little boys that did not know what they were doing in the forest ate some of the poison mushrooms and died – Young Clark’s eyes got great big when he was told that. The Amanitas, Death Cups or Destroying Angels were pointed out and studied closely for 2 day trips. He knew Clark would not remember all the rules about how to identify the poisonous types of mushrooms for at least 3 or 4 years – So they were lightly touched on. There were over 300 different mushrooms in this 10 mile mountainous area and 50 were poisonous or had not been tested for toxicity, some more deadly than others.

10 types of easily identifiable early edible shrooms were going to be taught over the next 10 days. Summer and fall would bring in another 40 or 50 more. That was all Gramps felt comfortable with in his identification and personal pickings over the last 40 some years of gathering and cooking them in many different ways.

Gramps had to devise his own system with a little note on taste of the easily identifiable edible mushrooms. Some had no common name so he just shortened the Latin name to its initials LL (lactarius luteolius) was the 1st one they played around with and studied for an hour or so – it had a fishy smell to it and stained your fingers brown when you pulled it out of the ground. Found on sandy creek sides around oaks and broad leaves. When cooked it had that spongy mild taste a good mushroom has and if a large group were growing in the area he dried a bunch of them, bagged them and put them aside to add to winter time foods. They were about 2 and half inches across. The next one was cinnabar chanterelle (he just loved that name chanterelle) this one was also found alongside streams and especially in mossy areas. It was bright red to a pinkish orange and was no bigger then 1 and half inches across. The taste was nothing spectacular but it was one of the early mushrooms and he always picked a small basket of them for drying. The 3rd one for the day was a 2 and half inch one named Salmon Waxy Cap, the color ran from creamy tan to a reddish orange. This one had super white thick flesh in the middle and was a delight to eat. The flavor was really mild and was also a good one to dry to put in a plain soup. It was usually found in small groups in the woods and sometimes near but not to close to creek banks. After they had a lunch in the woods and lay down in a sunny place on a big blanket for a nap. They returned to the cabin singing songs and shooting the BB gun. They collected the same mushrooms for 2 more days until little Clark could spot them from 50 feet away. He never broke young Clark’s train of thought when mushrooming – If the boy would ask him about what kind of tree this or that was, Gramps just gave him the name and said trees will be talked about after the mushrooms are learned.