Clark Stories

[Lbox88]

The Early Learning Years Part 6

The training went on for years – Young Clark had become quite the learned forest person and was now enrolled in WVU to fill in the gaps of Gramps teachings. This was his last semester of his 4th year and graduation day was fast approaching. Gramps was really feeble now and at 94 years of age was hanging on to watch his pride and joy graduate from college and the most important thing of all – Turn over the farm to young Clark. Young Clark’s education courses can be found here - Biology Curriculum – WVU Tech, he would graduate with a BS in Biology and a minor in Botany.

Gramps lived 7 more months before giving up the ghost. He had given explicit instructions where he wanted his body laid to rest. CLark thought it was kind of neat. The burial place was inside the early fenced in and now empty goat pen on the side of the mountain.

Gramps and young Clark had had many discussions on how to handle the business when Gramps passed on. Young Clark followed those instructions to a T. 4 of the 5 working mines were immediately sold. The best mine was kept for a continuous influx of cash. 700,000 new 999 fine silver dollars were purchased from the US mint. Silver spot price was hanging around 3.70 to 3.80 when the purchase was made – gold was around 275 dollars an oz when Gramps bought it - He had just sold one coal mine when he bought all the US and Canadian certified and fractional gold he could lay his hands on. He spent 875,000 dollars on that purchase. Gramps had told Clark the silver could always be used to pay the property taxes if the greenback dollar lost its worth and the idiot county or state people wanted to repo the property. He also told young Clark that there would be no property taxes if the country collapsed as in TEOTWAWKI happened.

They talked about bringing trusted people to the cave shelter if an event happened. Gramps had not really thought about people other than his immediate family. When Gramps thought about having other people shelter on the farm he took immediate action. He asked several construction companies in the city to place a bid for 15 cinder block metal roofed 2 bedroom houses on concrete slabs with the plumbing, metal doors and roll down metal shuttered windows. That was 2 years ago and the unfurnished concrete buildings were standing empty but ready to be occupied. The contractor who won the bid had to renegotiate with Gramps because there was not a large enough septic system to handle the waste from 15 two bedroom houses. Gramps agreed just to keep the construction on track. He and young Clark had mulled over the power problem if the grid went down. It got real expensive then. A solar system was installed for each house and the empty batteries were stored in each house’s battery box. The acid was stored in the cave shelter which would eventually be moved to each house root cellar. The contractor had to be called back to build a laundry room with 10 washers which would be used when the generator was turned on between 4 and 8 pm. The drying could be done on outside lines in the summertime and in the houses during the winter. He also had to have the contractor install a wood/coal stove in the center of each house for winter time warmth and a wood burning kitchen stove beside each house 2 burner propane cook stove and oven. Propane gas hot water tanks were installed and 2 55 gallon black plastic barrels were mounted high on the south side of each house for summer time hot water. The plumbing crew just told Gramps that it was a nightmare to plumb the place but they got it done and handed him the blue prints of how everything was laid out. He had 2 copies made and stored them in 3 different safes. The last thing the contractor did was dig 15 root cellars 12 feet deep, pour a half pad and leave the other half gravel and sand covered with a divider. The cellars were 12 X 12 feet. The walls were cinder block and the roof was another poured pad on 3 metal I beams and then covered with 4 feet of dirt. Gramps thought the root cellars would last longer than the cinder block houses.

The plumbers and the construction crew did some fancy work to get the pipe buried down from the year round creek coming from the mountain to the 2500 gallon water tank. The overflow creek water from the tank when it was full was diverted to the pond. The tank was pressurized by a solar powered compressor during the day and fortunately the batteries had enough power to keep the tank pressure up for several days during cloudy weather.

When the mines closed down they took most of the newer diesel generators that powered the mine operations to other places but left the older high hour diesel generators and some rusting 2 and 3 thousand gallon diesel tanks there. Gramps had the generators rebuilt and the tanks refurbished. He had them hauled to his current location and used them till he was on grid power. The generators were overhauled again and placed on stand-by. The tanks were topped off and preservative put in them. A small diesel generator was hooked into the house power for the times grid power was off line.

Young Clark stayed with Gramps during the summer after his 1st college year and saw Gramps talking to a man he had not seen before. He asked gramps who the man was and Gramps told him one of the fellows I was in the big war with sent his son here. OK Clark said you gonna tell me about it. Gramps said lets take a short walk and I will tell you what I have in mind. The man you just saw has a rather large security alarm company and I asked him to survey my property and see what kind of camera and alarm system he could install around the place to give me some advance warning of people trespassing or poaching on my little area. His Dad and I keep in touch and his Dad told me his boy was a goodun and would do me right on price. That was all I needed to know because I trust his Dad. Clark said fine with me but I betcha it will cost 2 legs and half an arm. Gramps just said I can’t take it with me and you will have enough money left to last you seventy five or more lifetimes. The conversation went on to other topics particularly the one Gramps was paying most attention to. The economy and world affairs; he told Clark that the people running the country were insane and were spending the country into a sewer pit. Fiscal responsibility had disappeared. Multiple generations of welfare recipients; he rambled on about the deindustrialization of the country, the over bloated cost of housing and the crazy people in the mid east. He also hammered Russia and China. Clark had heard a lot of it before and agreed most whole-heartedly with Gramps.

That summer Clark graduated he really noticed the age Gramps was getting on him. His mile long walks were cut to 3 or 4 hundred yards and the 4 wheeler was his trusted transportation. He and Clark would make a run through the property and Gramps would make Clark recite back to him the tree names and the various plants they drove by. Gramps was pleased that young Clark remembered all those plant names because he sure didn’t.


When Clark got back to the farm the next day Gramps was sitting on the front porch rocking chair with a corn cob pipe stuck out of the corner of his mouth. Clark laughed because he knew Gramps did not smoke. Gramps started up the conversation by saying I always had a hankerin to smoke one of these things and now that I have semi-retired I think I will. Now young feller the next time you go to town I want you to pick me some of that apple smellin tobaccy so I can fire this thing up. Clark laughed louder this time and the by play went on for a few minutes before there was a lull in the conversation. Gramps told him he had been thinking some more about taking care of extra people after they came out of the cave shelter. Well Clark asked him what he came up with. Gramps told him they were going to have to level off one of those small sandstone mounds out by the garden field and dump about 300 tons of grade 1 cleaned coal chunks to heat the houses during the winter. Clark said I will get on it Monday morning and we will use the coal from mine number 3 because the superintendent told me they had ran into a really nice seam of quality coal. Gramps said that’s good because we won’t have to pay anything except the coal processing washing clean up plant fee and the drivers truck haul fee.

The Early Learning Years Part 7

Gramps told Clark I want to spend some more of my money on extreme long range preparations. I think this country is going to collapse and I do have a bad feeling about germ warfare, this new pig flu and the bird flu. I don’t even want to think about atomic bombs. After you get that mound leveled off and the coal placed there, I want you to stock up the 1st mine I used in the early 50’s for my shelter. The 1st 200 yards of that mine is extremely dry and is a good storage area. I do not think I have much time on this planet and I want to make sure I have an heir left to take care of my resting place. He grinned at Clark when he said that. Clark just stared at him and gramps said you know, keep the grass cut around my grave and put flowers on it occasionally. He turned his head away from Clark for a few minutes and blew his nose before turning back to look at Clark. Clark saw the damp eyes and the small amount of redness in the whites of his eyes. Gramps just said to Clark – well I am getting really old and I know I don’t have much time. I am like every other person on this planet, I don’t want to die. I have made my peace with my maker and that is about all I want to say about it. Clark walked out to the edge of the porch and wiped away the tears that were forming in his own eyes.

After the mound was leveled and the coal dumped on it, Clark spent a lot of Gramps money on many things. Gramps sat in a summer beach chair and supervised the construction of yet another building. A butcher shop with all the bells and whistles; several large AC/DC freezers and refrigerators were placed in this building and a huge solar system with battery banks installed. The early mine shelter Gramps had used was restocked with modern long shelf-life food items. Gramps had an extensive armory since he and young Clark both liked to hunt and shoot distance targets. He asked young Clark to purchase many more rifles, shotguns, pistols, ammunition and reloading supplies. This resulted in another concrete building with re-enforcing re-barb being built with a steel vault door. Gramps wanted to supervise the dredging of the 2 large creek fed ponds but stayed mostly in the house on the couch. Clark oversaw that project and purchased a lot of fish from the WV fishery department. Both ponds were stocked with large-mouth bass and many thousands of creek minnows to feed the hungry fingerlings. The Cray fish were trapped out of the ponds before they were dredged and put back in with the appropriate amount of plant life before being stocked with the bass.

Clark told Gramps that the place was as ready as they could make it. Gramps just said, “Good”. Clark spent a lot of time everyday with Gramps talking over old times and sounding each other out on what they may have forgotten. 2 months later Gramps was buried just where he wanted to be.

Clark grieved for a long time after his mentor was gone. But life goes on and Clark took over the farm operation just like Gramps wanted him to. He talked with a lot of people that he wanted to bring to the place if things got bad. He had his short list of trusted people and they were informed. He had had 2 girl friends while going to college – The spark was there but they were to busy for it to ignite. He decided he was ready to resume a romance if either one of them was still available.

Dang is all Clark said when he talked to both of his former girl friends – They were both getting married. One of them told him I have a friend you would like because she is into all that hunting and hiking stuff. Clark’s ears perked up when she said that. She told him I will call her and have her get back to you. Clark started to say no but his curiosity was piqued. He told her that would be fine and gave her his cell phone number. All he found out about the girl was she was a college graduate, was 2 years younger than either of them because she was advanced a couple of years in grade school. Ah yes her name was Devony. When his phone rang a few hours later he saw on the caller ID he had mentally misspelled her name – It was spelled Devaney. They chatted for a few short minutes and made an appointment to meet this weekend. He called it an appointment because he really did not consider it a date.

They met at a steak sandwich restaurant at 2pm on a Saturday. His first impression of her was she is too good looking for me. I have no chance of making any headway with this movie starlet looking young lady. She had on Levi jeans, tennis shoes and a pull over blue and yellow sweat shirt with WVU on the front and back. Her hair was brilliant red, hanging in a long pony tail and she was about 2 inches shorter then his 6 foot 1 inch. She shook his hand and the first words out of her mouth, Hello I am Devaney convinced him this was the ONE. She had a light Irish accent, devilish green eyes and a sprinkling of freckles. He was almost thunderstruck, but managed to respond. He was amazed at what she ordered – a foot long Philadelphia steak sandwich with all the trimmings, a large order of fries and a large sweetened ice tea. She talked with many hand gestures like the Italians do but she was 100% Irish. Clark normally was a good conversationalist but he could not keep his eyes from that almost perfect face. Finally after he ate his 6 inch Philly steak and a few fries he hit his stride and the conversation picked up. They went for a walk where he found out why she had eaten so much, she was a runner and was starved because she had not eaten today. He also found out she was an electrical engineer and worked for the power company here in the city. He must have made some sort of impression because she asked him if he wanted to meet again and of course he almost gushed out a response but came to his senses and said yes that would be nice.

The Early Learning Years Part 8

The romance slowly developed over the next several months. They knew a lot of the same people, liked a lot of the same things and generally overall were extremely compatible.

Since the first day he met her Clark wanted her to be his wife. And he set off on his campaign to insure that happened in the near or distant future. That would not be so easy of a task as he found she was an extremely independent woman.

They did everything together on her days off. He found she had a great appetite for mushrooms. He said a small prayer of thanks to Gramps that day as they set off to obtain some fresh mushrooms. He found she had a natural interest in botany and he began teaching her the ways of a mushroomer. He had a little bit more knowledge than Gramps had and they picked many different kinds, even the ones that Clark was not sure of. They took all of them to the small laboratory type room that Clark had set up in the reloading section of the house. The complete database or reference collection of WV fungi had been downloaded from the herbarium at Davis Elkins College in Elkins WV was there with the chemicals and microscope to check the cells/spores on the plants Clark was not sure of. They found they had picked 3 different very poisonous ones after testing them and checking them against the slides in the mushroom database. One example was the delectable honey mushroom as compared to the deadly galerina mushroom which looked exactly like the honey mushroom. They both grew on dead wood and were indistinguishable until the spores were checked under a microscope. The edible honey mushroom has white spores and the poisonous galerina has brown spores. The honey mushroom is slightly poisonous when raw but an extremely delectable delight when well cooked. One more distinguishable difference between the two was the honey mushroom caused the dead wood to be luminescent in the dark and had the appropriate nick name foxfire. They ran a test on 2 white puffball looking mushrooms using a drop of KOH (potassium Hydroxide) one of them turned yellow indicating deadly poison and the other after slicing down the middle showed the structure of an embryonic gilled system indicating another deadly poisonous mushroom from the species called the destroying angel. One of the white poisonous mushrooms did not turn yellow after an application of KOH. He also showed her a mushroom, common name Peck,that was extremely hallucinogenic. She said I thought those types of mushrooms grew in the southwest. He grinned and said nope there are 3 more types like that one that will give you the hallucinogenic trip of a lifetime. She asked him if he had done anything like that and he said no but some of my classmates did. Anyways they had a stir fry of delicious no calorie mushrooms that evening.

The Early Learning Years Part 9

A little more than 2 years had gone by since Gramps had passed. Devaney was still working for the power company and Clark was still taking care of the farm and the deep coal mine that still had by estimate 55 more years of coal left to be mined. Clark and Devaney had been engaged for the past 14 months and were making plans for a next year June wedding. Clark had still been prepping for any event and was in a mountain climbing supply store in the city. He ran into a fellow working the cash register he had taken some Biology classes with and had been in one of his study groups. The fellow was a little older than Clark because he had spent 4 years in the Army as a Ranger or Special Forces person. Clark had never gotten exactly whether he was a Ranger or Special Forces person. He did know the man had training in the medic field and was going to become an MD or Physicians Assistant. The man chuckled when he told them that in one of the study sessions. Clark remembered the man telling them he was going to college as long as what he called the GI educational bill would pay. He had gone into the service because he could not afford to go to college and would take advantage of the military’s educational benefits.

6 of Clark’s choices for moving to the shelter had died or moved away and he had 6 concrete buildings that would not be occupied if anything happened. Clark thought a ¾ trained MD would be better then no MD. He invited him out to the farm to further evaluate him. In college he always thought the man was a cool person and had the right attitude. During the 2 years Clark had known him he admired the man for what he was trying to accomplish with very little funds. If things worked out after the meeting he had set up. Mr. Stanley Elkins also nicknamed, Razor, would get a slot in the shelter and a no interest loan to complete his education. Clark had once asked him about the nickname and Stanley told him he had written a little advertising ditty for a Gillette Razor blade contest while in high school and won a lifetime supply of razors and blades hence the name razor.

The Early Learning years Part 10


A week later Clark and Stanley were sitting at the farms kitchen table drinking iced tea; Clark was impressed with Stanley. He had been in several sticky situations in his Army days but did not elaborate. Clark assumed some of it was classified and did not press him for details. He learned he was a shooter but did not have the funds to maintain his expertise from the military training. Clark hopefully would rectify that problem in the future. Stanley had a live in fiancé who was a dental technician. They had plans to marry in 2 years after Stanley finished the 1st year of his MD internship. Clark invited him to come to the shelter in case of a disaster. Stanley was hesitant to accept because it would be a long time before he could contribute. Clark waved it off and said good people would always be welcomed if there was room. Clark asked him if he knew a few more local good people. Stanley told him yes but he would get back to Clark on that after he talked with them.

Clark touched base with the 2 farm workers. Gramps had hired their dad many years ago and their Dad has passed the torch on down to his 2 boys when he got to old to do the work. He had passed on about 3 years ago. The boys were jack of all trades and took care of everything involving manual labor on the farm; if they needed help they would tell Clark and they would round up a few of their out of work friends to help them with the work. That usually was planting, harvest time and butchering. The 2 workers had been brought into the fold and had placed a few items in the cinder block building they had been assigned. The 2 farm hands were named Bubba (yes Bubba) and Bigun – Their daddy had named them that after 3 years of calling them that. He just made it official a little bit late. The brothers were about 28 years old or thereabouts and lived in their Daddy’s log cabin about 12 miles down the dirt road that ran by the farm. One of them occasionally missed a day of work from a bad hangover, but one always showed up to milk the cows and feed them and the chickens.

They told Clark that they were gonna have to hatch out 15 or so eggs because production was way down and some new hens were needed. The farm had 60 more or less layers at any given time. Most of the eggs were sold to 2 large grocery stores and the milk from the 12 mid size Dexter cows was delivered to a creamery in the city every 2 days. The Creamery furnished the farm with butter, milk, Half and Half milk, sour cream and heavy whipping cream as a partial payment. The grocery stores that sold the eggs gave Clark a credit on their groceries. Gramps had set this system up many years ago and it worked extremely well. The farm had the equipment to process the milk but the work was labor intensive and Gramps did not want to keep a crew around just to process milk when the creamery in the city could do it much more efficiently – plus they had to take care of the health department’s mega paperwork and regulations that Gramps thought was ridiculous. The cows were on a cycle that always had 6 cows giving milk. Gramps had spent a lot of money on the barn that housed the cows with automatic manure removers and automatic milk machines. The chicken and cow manure was placed in a large pile by the expandable 2 acre vegetable garden and was spread out and plowed into the garden after the vegetables were picked. It was an extremely efficient farm and held its own making money as far as veterinarian bills and feed for the animals was concerned. The orchard picking needed help when the apples, peaches and pears were ready to be harvested. Bubba and Bigun had a regular crew they hired when that was necessary – The 2 large grocery stores took a lot of the apples, peaches and pears. The remainder was split up between the pickers and was sold at the farmers market which added to the pickers, Bubba and Bigun’s pocket change. The nut trees gramps had planted back in the 1950’s were a bust except what the crew and Gramps picked for themselves and sold at the farmers market. The squirrels loved the place. Gramps kept the small overhead fenced in blueberry patch small because of the labor intensive picking. He usually picked the 2 or 3 gallons himself and threw them in the freezer for winter time snacks and cereal toppings. There were so many blackberries and raspberries that they could not all be picked. Usually Bigun, Bubba and their current girlfriends made the jellies and jams for Gramps and they would make enough to last 3 or 4 years before they had to do it again.

Bubba and Bigun were told to tell anyone that asked that the farm would eventually be turned into a Dude Ranch and that covered the 15 cinder block buildings. No extra workers were ever allowed into the shelter caves. The steel vault doors on the caves had 2X12 rough oak planks glued onto the surface of the steel doors and were just hid in plain sight.

[Lbox88]

The Early Learning Years Part 11


Gramps and Clark had not yet figured out what to do with the cows and chickens in case of a nuclear attack. They had a solution but did not want to spend a million bucks to do it. Clark mentioned it one day while walking through the mine with the superintendent. The super knew about Gramps shelter and had been invited to take one of the cinder block buildings. The super told gramps that he had his own bomb shelter and thanked him. Anyway the super told Clark a place could probably be carved out of the sandstone mountain beside the new shelter. He figured how many square feet it would take and said it could probably be done on 6 or 8 weekends using the new miner that you just paid 1.4 million dollars for. All it would cost you is some labor. The super drove out to the farm the next weekend and said this will be easy we can just set the miner to dig 1 or 2 degrees uphill and dig into your other shelter from the side so no one would have to go outside in case of NBC (nuclear, biological or chemical) attack. Of course you will need a new blast door – NBC filters some extra solar panels to power the ventilation intakes and exhaust. There will have to be a system on the bottom entry vault way or beside of it to wash the manure out without letting contaminated air in the shelter. That is beyond my knowledge though. Clark told him to set it up and he would find out how to wash the manure out or have a 100 foot deep 3 foot diameter hole drilled to shovel it in with a lid over it.

The tunnel was finished and the side tunnel to the main shelter was punched through on the 9th weekend. The superintendent did the last bit of mine side tunnel drilling to keep the main survival cave shelter a secret from the other miner operators. It was Devaney who came up with the solution on how to complete the job. She just told him since you cannot get a drill rig into the tunnel you will have to drill the 100 foot deep manure hole outside the cave and have a vaulted concrete entry way poured and cover it with 4 or so feet of dirt. This will make it easier to hang the air tight blast door. A special crew was flown in from Utah to install the blast door and the air tight door between the animal cave and the main shelter. Clark laughed at what he and Gramps had figured it would cost – It did not cost a million dollars only 105,000.

Stanley had brought 3 married men he had been in the service with for Clark to evaluate. They were in the local National Guard and worked locally, Stanley had good instincts. They were all acceptable to Clark. Clark found one more classmate (Danny Davis) he had gone to college with but rejected him because he thought the man was not stable.

Another year had gone by; Clark and Devaney had been married 3 months, Stanley had been an intern for 5 months when things in the world and the USA started rapidly going downhill.

Gramps prognostication had been spot on. It was late August, Clark and Devaney were sitting down to eat a snack when the Fox News Channel started flashing that red alert they have across the screen.

The early Learning Years Part 12

Hans Dietrich from Bonn Germany got off the sight seeing tour bus which had parked in one of the parking lots in front of the Eiffel Tower. He had never been to Paris before and was on 2 week holiday to visit Paris and the surrounding Parisian countryside. He saw a group of people looking at something on the ground and moseyed over to see what it was. There were several pigeons just sitting in a cluster and not moving around. One of the young girls about 5 or 6 had picked one up and was petting it. Hans just thought these people were stupid; had they not heard of the bird flu. He was down wind of the group when the young girl sneezed. Hans circled the crowd and entered the group for the elevator ride. 2 hours later he sneezed in the elevator which was full of other country visitors. He sneezed again in the tour bus. 1 hour later he decided to go to a drug store to get something for either an allergy or coming summer time cold. He was on a busy street when he sneezed again. Some of those people downwind were headed for the subway and rail line.

14 people on the elevator with Hans were on their last day in Paris and were scheduled for an evening international flight to their home country. The airport was packed with travelers heading to all parts of the world. 12 to 16 hours later some of those travelers that were in the Paris airport landed in the busy airports of Tokyo, Seoul Korea, Hawaii, Beijing, San Francisco, Denver, New York, Mexico, Atlanta International, Miami FL, Kenya Africa and Moscow.

Meghan’s nose started running about an hour before she landed at Atlanta International; she sneezed several times before getting off the plane. She had to hurry to catch a connecting flight taking her to Raleigh North Carolina. She sneezed all through the crowded concourses on her way to her flight. The plane stopped, discharged and picked up some passengers at Myrtle Beach SC, Raleigh-Durham NC and final stop Dulles International in VA, where the plane made its turnaround for the trip back to Atlanta. Delbert got off the international flight in Denver and rode a crowded Greyhound to Colorado Springs. Army Sgt Thomas was on that bus heading to Fort Carson, Airman first Class Barnes was going to Peterson Field where he would be assigned to Cheyenne Mountain the next day. Missy Shannon got off at San Francisco where she would head to Disneyland the next day. AF SSgt Reimers got off at San Francisco and caught a bus to Travis AFB. The infected passengers did this all over the world. Within the next 96 hours the world wide killing epidemic will begin.

The Early Learning Years Part 13

The young girl who was petting the bird flu infected pigeon was already infected with a mutated form of the swine flu. The RNA and DNA of the 2 viruses entered a cell at the same time and mixed together, the cell exploded with the 2 meshed virus inundating her lungs with the rapid growing mixed mutated virus. This was the super flu that scientists had been worried about for years. The evolving protein coated long lived virus was quickly taking over every cell in the young girls body. The bodies’ immune system was throwing everything it had into fighting this infection. Fluid was forming in her lungs and the cough and sneeze reflex was activated to expel the fluid of this violent raging storm in her young body. It would take the virus about 96 hours to invade every cell in her body. The result would be a slow drowning death. Her body exterior was infectious and the cough and sneeze particles that had been expelled would be viable in the outside environment for 48 to 96 hours before it would devolve into its original molecular or atomic components and die.

It would be 86 or more hours before the CDC received some fluid from a contaminated victim who had trouble breathing and went to a hospital where a sharp General Practitioner thought this was a form of flu. He was the one to send the CDC a sample of the fluids, but it was too late. There was no vaccine available for this strain of super flu. They would send out the warnings of a possible epidemic, again it was too late.

A large flock of healthy pigeons landed on the spot that had the bread crumbs and cracked corn that the young girl had sneezed on. They would fly to their roosts that night and infect the entire population of all birds in the city. Some of the birds died in the water where the migratory ducks and geese were swimming. All the birds except for pigeons had a small immune response and would not die for at least 90 days. The forest the birds roosted in caused the distance flying other birds to become infected. The bird populations in the US cities were infected the same way and that resulted in the forest dwelling birds to cause the feral hogs to become infected. Many birds flew over and into the large pig farms. Within 2 weeks 90% of the US pigs were infected. The pig’s immune system would fight the virus for 21 days before they died. Their bodies would remain infectious for 25 to 30 days before the killer virus died off.

On the 5th day CDC did report the death rate was 90% or more. After they had talked with the hospital employees in Europe they knew it was extremely people to people contagious. All travel into and out of Europe was immediately halted. Devaney looked at Clark and said I bet it is too late for travel restrictions. Clark hit his speed dial to contact Stanley. All Stanley said was we are on our way and hung up. Clark got on his CB after he had drove to within 5 miles of Bubba and Bigun’s cabin (they had no phone service) and told them to come to the farm immediately. He wished he had put the shortwave receiver he had been planning on at Bigun and Bubba’s cabin but it was always on a backburner and never got done. Stanley’s fiancé contacted Clark back and told him we are coming as quick as we can and I have already contacted Stanley’s 3 friends. So Clark went ahead and contacted the remaining people on his list and asked them to report to the farm.

3 hours later everyone was in the main house. Clark sent Bubba and his long time creeker girl friend to lock both the 4 inch steel pipe entry gates. Stanley took the floor and told Clark what he had learned at the hospital from the hospital director. The main stream media is not reporting thousands of deaths on both coasts and the center of the US. He continued by saying this virus is airborne and if we are lucky none of us have been contaminated yet. I think we should put the animals in the shelters and button the place up. Just as he said that grid power went off.

It was a controlled stampede to get everything done before the shelter cave doors were sealed.

Clark followed his check list and turned everything off, unplugged and disconnected the satellite TV, CB, Shortwave and unplugged the cable from the monitoring cameras spread out through the property in the house. He then took the fridge contents with him in a large cooler to the shelter.

Everything in the shelter had been earlier disconnected except for one battery that powered the 40 watt florescent pull chain screw in light bulb. They sealed the shelters up 2 hours before the first infected birds arrived in the surrounding forest and on the farm.

The Early Learning Years Part 14

It took them about 3 weeks to get totally organized in the shelter. Work lists were made, cooks decided on, dishwashers and just a whole variety of jobs that needed to be done when 40 people needed to be taken care of. They had watched events unfold on the shelters satellite TV. The internet was still functioning but was super slow. They listened and watched while the death count went to the millions. There were no live broadcasts. The government was broadcasting from NBC protected shelters and were using prepositioned cameras on buildings to monitor the final death throes of some of the major cities. There were survivors walking around in the cities. They were the lucky or soon to be unlucky ones that had contracted the virus and for some unknown reason survived and could not be re-infected. Finally on the 22nd day there was no more TV broadcasts. The internet quit working the next day.


Clark said well we have 8 portable battery powered or AC powered SW radios and I am going to hook the outside antenna to one to see if we can pick anything up. The 50 foot antenna was mounted at the very top of the 1800 foot mountain. They ran through the channels and could hear some talk from Japan, Korea and the Philippines. It was a good thing they were all sitting down when the announcer came on and said world wide thermonuclear war has broken out and earlier today the scientists were reporting massive solar flares on a scale never before seen on earth. This new deadly virus is wreaking havoc world wide - and that was the last they heard from the radio except static. They did not know that the broadcast they had just heard was a recorded repeating one.

Fortunately for the remaining human population all bats were immune and the mosquito population would not take over the world. There were a few remote locations in the world that migratory birds did not travel to and it would take a long time for humans to trap some of these birds, chickens and swine in those areas to repopulate the USA. It would be many, many years before pork would be on anyone’s menu.


Stanley asked Clark where the drinking water was coming from. Clark said there is a 4 inch schedule 40 pipe 60 inches back inside the mountain where the year round creek flows out and will not be contaminated by virus or radiation unless those 2 aforementioned items can penetrate 5 feet of sandstone and travel upstream. Stanley said that is wonderful that we have a clean supply of water.

The outside radiation detectors were turned on. The assigned people went to the animal cave and fed the animals, cleaned the stalls and put fresh straw down. Plans had been made to drain the extra milk out through the 8 inch drain pipe with a screw type shut off valve and J trap to prevent any backward air contamination. This pipe had been installed in the lowest corner of the cave beside the blast door enabling the floor to be washed down and out through the wide scoop on the front of the drain. Most of the manure still had to be put in the 100 foot deep hole because there was too much to wash out the drain pipe, but a lot was washed out. There was a commercial type roto-router available in case the pipe got stopped up. The roosters had been penned separately so there would be no fertilized eggs to hatch out. They would eventually have to kill and eat 40 or so birds and keep the remaining stock to repopulate the flock whenever they left the cave. The guts and feathers from the chickens would be flushed out through the 8 inch pipe which dropped off 5 feet above a 12 foot deep and wide dirt pit which allowed the fluids to percolate down through the dirt and if there was any surface water/fluid buildup hopefully it would evaporate.

Clark had read somewhere, perhaps in another story about using UV lights in front or behind the NBC filters to kill virus. Both caves had those installed in the intake air pipes. Due to the amount of manure and animal urine they expected in the animal cave, two NBC filtered 6 inch intake and exhaust pipes had been installed to alleviate the odor. The exhaust pipes had a double unique flapper to insure there would be no back flow of contaminated outside air. They were told by the experts that as long as a slight overpressure was in the cave there would be no back flow through the exhaust system. They would wait a while to see if both intake air fans needed to be turned on at the same time.

[Lbox88]

The Early Learning Years Part 15


As soon as they entered the shelter Stanley had broken out the Tamiflu, Elderberry and several other herbal items to use if anyone showed any sign of getting sick. The garden sprayers were filled with 50% bleach and water to decontaminate anything. Hopefully it would not be needed.

Bigun and his live in creeker girl friend who was the sister of Bubba’s girl friend had first watch on the radiation meter. He called to everyone and said the meter needle is rising. Wasn’t too much anyone could do about it but wait to see how high the outside radiation rose to. 5 hours later it was still rising. Devaney just said a nuclear explosion or more then one was detonated fairly close west of us, which is the only reason we are getting such a high amount of radiation. Clark said I am not worried about radiation; I am worried about that virus floating around in the air with the radiation. Stanley just said maybe it will kill the virus. Stanley did not know how mostly right he was and the bad part was he would never know.

Every country that had a grudge against the US launched all their nuclear missiles at the US. There was no coordination between the launching countries - so; many large cities were hit by sometimes as many as 9 or more nuclear weapons. The US struck back with every land based multiple warhead ICBM in its arsenal. Many B1, 2 and B52 bomber crews were incapacitated due to the quick acting virus and the planes either crashed on takeoff or crashed when both pilots could not pilot the plane any longer. The nuclear submarines all launched ½ of their pay load and kept the other half in reserve in case the initial land, sea and air bombardment did not do a good job.

There were 4 new top secret nuclear submarines that had snorkeling sniffers to check for NBC along the US coastline, but the orders to use those highly sophisticated machines were not to be used until 30 days after an event.

Not counting Clark, Devaney and Clark’s parents, there were 14 paired adults and 8 children aged 2 to 4 in the shelter for a total of 40 people. The living portion of the shelter was 250 yards long by 8 wide by 8 foot high. The abandoned mine was about 1400 yards long and it had followed a seam of coal until the seam petered out and the mine was abandoned. There had been one overhead roof air vent 800 yards back in the mine that had been drilled 40 feet down on top of the mountain. That vent had been cemented over. This mine did not have any standing water and was considered a dry mine. The 2 fresh air 6 inch filtered pipes ran along the ceiling 1100 yards back inside the cave where the air was released. The two 6 inch exhaust pipes had been placed inside one was 100 yards in and the other was 20 feet inside right over the 60 220 amp hour golf cart batteries that were charged by 32 280 watt panels on the south side of the mountain directly over the battery box. The propane cook stove was 100 yards inside the cave directly under an exhaust vent. The emergency propane generator sat beside the stove and would only be used in a real emergency. There were 2 energy efficient washers and 2 low water volume toilets at the end of the living area. The long shelf life food was stored beyond the toilets.

Clark had planned well for an extended stay in the shelter. There was a DVD library with several thousand movies. Thousands of cartoons for the children, folding card tables, folding lawn chairs and hundreds of board games. Thirty 21 inch 250 gigabyte hard drive laptops that had been loaded with 200 gigabytes of information that Clark himself decided would be pertinent to the members in the shelter It took him 3 days to transfer the information from one laptop to the other 29. A 10 foot long table sat beside the battery bank and 15 electrical plug receptacles were mounted on the wall behind it to recharge the laptop batteries and any rechargeable batteries needed. All other AC electrical appliances were run from an 8 gauge wire directly from the solar powered batteries electrical box inverter.

The Early Learning Years Part 16


8 non college graduates were in the group which would be Bigun, Bubba their 2 ladies and 2 of the National Guard troops and their wives. But the 2 National Guard troops brought a wealth of combat and weapons experience. The farm actually would have a hard time operating without Bigun and Bubba. 2 of the group not counting Clark had advanced degrees in Biology, 2 had advanced degrees in (what Clark called ordinary cook book chemistry), the next 2 were organic and inorganic chemistry major graduates and the last had a masters degree in molecular biology. Clark’s selection of the group was picked from his fellow classmates.

There was long term food for 50 people for 2 years. Gramps 1st shelter had enough long term people supplies for 100 people for 10 years. Clark, Gramps, Bigun and Bubba wore themselves out putting the pallets of food in the 2 shelters using a small diesel forklift and an electrical forklift. The two 3000 gallon propane tanks were mounted and semi buried above the entry way. The piping had been run through drilled holes with the solar electrical wiring and communication cables in the cave roof and then cemented over. One 100 gallon pressurized hot water tank would be heated up every 2 days for a 2 or 3 minute quick Navy shower – Of course a person could take all the cold water showers they wanted. The shower drain water had been hooked into a separate 3 inch sewage line that was mounted on the wall above the main 6 inch sewage line. They were boxed in with plywood to eliminate any damage to the schedule 40 pipe. The shower and sink water drained out and through a j bend and dropped down 6 feet onto a gravel and sand pit. The 6 inch sewage pipe drained into a special over size septic system and if the septic system was full into an overflow leach field. The toilet and showers had been installed 18 inches above the cave floor to allow for proper drainage. When this mine had been dug out by the tunnel miner it had followed the seam of coal which ran about 4 or 5 degrees upward to where it petered out so the drainage pipes were able to be placed without any major problems. The animal shelter had been specifically dug with a 4 degree upward slant which solved that cave drainage problem. Gramps original shelter went downwards for 8 or 900 yards before the tunneling miner machine made a sharp left hand turn following the coal seam for another 3 miles.


There were double bunk beds down one side of the cave opposite from the drain pipes and Clark had mounted those curtains you see in a hospital that can be pulled closed around each set of beds. The people that had kids just left one inside end open of their double occupancy.

There were 2 small pool tables, 2 ping pong tables and a weight lifting section beyond the toilets. If any one wanted to run (they all ran) they had 1000 yards of LED lit up 6 foot wide flat cave flooring to run on. The running part of the cave was where the triple stacked hay and barrels of food for the animals were lined up against the wall in a single row leaving almost 6 feet to run on. The end of the cave was where the doubled trash bags containing the 40 occupant’s trash was hauled to on the electric fork-lift. 100 yards of the cave beyond the kid’s play area was where the triple stacked cases of toilet paper was stored against the wall. The animal’s cave also had tons of hay and barreled grains.

Right beyond the last pool table was a small play area for the pre-kindergarten kids. It was funny because they did not need to be watched – there was nothing for them to get into but solid sandstone. However, they were always supervised. Clark envisioned one of the 4 year olds becoming a Boston Strangler against the defenseless 2 year olds.

The nuclear submarines were told to stay clear of land and submerged when the worldwide pandemic swung into full force. The northern arctic bases like Thule Greenland had all been infected by new arriving troops. One infected person went to the Antarctic base. The worlds standing military had similar troop movement pattern that the US did and 100% of those troops were infected. 3 to 8% of those would survive the flu. Less then 9% of the world’s population would be alive after the radiation circled the globe 30 or 40 times before it fell onto the ground, streams and ocean causing another ecological disaster with wild life.

Unbeknownst to anyone the protein coated super flu virus was extremely sensitive to cobalt 60 and strontium 90. These 2 particles contaminated the world but some places received an extremely small dusting. This was enough to kill the entire world’s super flu virus. No one would ever know this since the only viable samples left were in the Atlanta CDC which was destroyed by a nuclear blast. One good thing about the wipe out of the birds and pigs was there would be no more swine or bird flu for hundreds of years, if ever.

When the nuclear submarines raised the snorkeling device to sample the air 30 days after the world thermo-nuclear war was over. They found no traces of the virus; only radiation which would eventually drop to a safe level in most places. The scanning electron microscope in the submarines level 5 containment cubicle found only dead non viable particles of the super flu. The military science officers on the submarine had an idea what it was, but since the nano-particles were completely dead and could not be activated in human blood they decided that the virus had run its course and died a natural death, just like the 1918 flu pandemic had.

The Early learning Years Part 17

The submarine Captain’s had put the boat crews on ¼ rations until it was safe enough for them to venture out on land to resupply the boat. It was a good thing they did because there were a bunch of evil country’s who had used extremely dirty bombs. This type of radiation would linger for about 10 months. The submarines used their sonar to find schools of fish; they then sent out navy seal divers thru the underwater exit areas to spearfish which added to their food supplies. The fish were checked for radiation and super flu virus before being processed. They were free of radiation and virus.

Clark had talked to everyone in the shelter numerous times and found that the college graduate National Guardsman was a Captain and was qualified to fly aircraft up to 4 engines. Clark did not know whether this would come in handy because of the maintenance required to keep a plane flying.

Of course there were arguments caused by cabin fever – After a long briefing by the National Guard Captain who had spent a year on a remote tour where it was totally dark for 4 months of the year explained the situation; the people settled down and worked with each other to work their problems out. A lot of tongue biting was done during the 4th month in the shelter. The other 2 National Guard troops who had spent 4 years in the active military did just fine and acted like professional military people.

Clark and his group kept a scanning shortwave radio on connected to loud speakers near the sleeping area. On the 11th month the radio became active. The outside radiation was just about safe enough to go out without protective gear. One of the Navy submarine Captains had ingeniously connected his communication system into a working broadcasting satellite over the US. He had been in contact with 2 of the special submarines that had analyzed the air quality off the coasts of the US.

He had a simple message to survivors on the US continent – In about 3 weeks the radiation will be low enough to leave your shelter.- Be careful of dead bodies and animals including birds. We do not yet know if any of the animals or bodies are contagious. We will broadcast on this channel as soon as tests are made of the remains. We will broadcast once a day at 6pm – 1800 hours – West Coast Time. We do not know any more than what I have said. Be patient. We can be contacted on Frequency XXXX – That is all.

There were 16 satellites still working in geo synchronous orbit. The broadcasting military top secret satellite the Navy captain had used had ¼ inch of lead surrounding its electronic parts as did the other working satellites. The massive solar flares in conjunction with the nuclear detonations EMP had just about totally destroyed the infra structure of any country that was computerized. The long electrical wires of the US reached into most areas and any connected electronic device was zapped. The electronics of most automobiles were fried from the massive EMP bursts. The 246 nuclear power plants in the USA and other countries that had built in safe guards to keep the reactor from being called a runaway were automatically scrammed (shutdown) when the electronic controlling modules were destroyed. This did not apply to the ones that were destroyed by a nuclear detonation on or near the site. These areas would be radioactive for hundreds or maybe even thousands of years.

The Early Learning Years Part 18

They came out of the shelter after 11 months and 18 days. They were glad to see the sun but the outside temperature was not what an August afternoon should be. It was rather chilly. 4 people using Tyvek suits, masks and hand held radiation detectors did not find any radiation worth mentioning. So far they had only checked a small area including the house and cinder block buildings of the farm.

The plans they had made in the shelter for when they came out were dusted off.

All of the biology graduates knew they were in trouble. It would take no less then an absolute minimum of 50 childbearing couples (more would be preferable) to repopulate to keep from inbreeding; and careful records of the new births would have to be kept to keep that from happening.

55 deep mines in WV had been used as shelters. It was really a simple solution to use them. The experts had reasoned out if a person was 1200 or more yards (¾ of a mile) inside a deep coal mine the radiation and virus would fall out of the air before reaching them. They were right. But, the people who sheltered in these deep mines had used some type of Hepa filter to bring in fresh air. This worked fine till the batteries running the small DC fans discharged and they ran out of fuel for the small generators they used to recharge the batteries. But the actions they took lasted just long enough that the virus had died out and the radiation was not a factor that far underground. The problems that 7 or so mines had was the rats that ventured out in the night and stepped in bird droppings and returned to the caves in the 1st 3 weeks was enough to kill almost all those occupants.

Clark almost did not take the 24 pigeons into the shelter – Fortunately he did. They would not let any of the pigeon eggs hatch out and always used them mixed in with the chicken eggs for scrambled eggs for breakfast.

The search for good survivors would begin as soon as Clark’s group got organized. They knew it was too late to plant a garden this year so they followed one of the plans to build greenhouses for some winter time produce.

The 3 National Guard troops would start the survivor search as soon as they retrieved some military weapons, a few up-armored Hummers and some communication gear. They also went to the military Disaster Preparedness Unit and retrieved some military gear for checking on radiation.

After everyone was issued a radio and communications gear was placed in several older diesel pick-up trucks; a party of 7 descended on Lowe’s to gather the greenhouse building supplies. 4 people were sent to get some diesel dump trucks to load the sand and gravel for the green house floors. Portable generators were set up around the building area to run power tools.

They could not get any new gasoline automobiles to run without changing out the computer and if it was an automatic transmission the module to shift the gears. They decided to stick to older model diesels and the military diesel Hummers and trucks on the National Guard Facility military parking area.

9 days later the 28 working people had the three 48 foot long 16 foot wide greenhouses up and ready to plant in. They would heat the places up with coal stoves since Clark figured they could replenish the coal pile with ease. The cleverly hidden cameras around the property were plugged back in and a rotating watcher was assigned to monitor the surrounding forests and entry way during the daylight hours. Weapons training began after the previous items had been accomplished. The Captain wanted that to be given first, but Clark for some reason vetoed that idea. It did not make any difference about the weapons training as nothing happened for the next 2 months.

The people went back to their houses/apartments and gathered their private personal property and decorated their new cinder block home with knick-knacks and doo-dads. A big sigh of relief could be heard from everyone when they moved into their place and had a whole bunch more privacy.

They did some things in a not so organized or orderly fashion but everything would eventually get done and work out OK. The trash was hauled out of the shelter and the cave was thoroughly cleaned. New supplies were hauled in from Gramps original shelter to restock the cave. The animal shelter was thoroughly cleaned but the hay was not replaced. The empty barrels of sterile grain were replaced. The water was turned off in the 2 caves after the sewer and drain pipes were flushed, the toilets and hot water tank drained. The batteries were topped off and only one was left on to run the entry way lights. A small trickle charge was sent to the other batteries to keep them fully charged. 32 adult workers can get a lot accomplished when their very existence depended on it. Bug bombs were set off in each place to kill any bugs that may have gotten inside. Both caves were then flooded with carbon dioxide to make sure there were no bugs or bug eggs to hatch out in or on the remaining hay. Someone would enter the main shelter to check on the batteries during the dead of winter when there was no outside bug or mouse activity. New empty batteries with the battery acid stored separately would be obtained in case they were ever needed and the group had to take shelter again. The Captain drove a propane truck back from the city to top off the two 3000 gallon tanks over the cave.

Next item on the list was treated diesel fuel. There was about 125 gallons of Pri-D in the cinder block storage area. They decided to bring 10 10,000 gallon tankers here and treat the fuel and then treat a few underground diesel tanks at a few out of the way gas stations. That job took a few days. But there were many other things going on while that was being accomplished. Teams were raiding Wal-Marts, Gun Stores, and Lowe’s. They had to do what many other people in PAW stories did. Fill up empty tractor trailers with supplies and log what was in the trailers. Clark wanted a central meeting place other then his house. So some type of easily put together large aluminum bolt together structure was put on the list.

[Lbox88]

part 18A
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The Early Learning years Part 18A

It was 61 days after they had come out of the shelter. There were 2 Hummers and a flat bed ton and a half at the (for lack of a better name since the place had no name) build your own aluminum building warehouse. They had just about loaded enough parts of a do it yourself 10 X 60 X 60 foot aluminum structure when gun fire erupted several blocks away. The captain was manning the SAW on one up armored Hummer and one of the Sergeants was manning the 50 caliber on the 2nd Hummer. The captain got on the radio and said Search 1 to Base are there any of our people in the city besides us. The response came back instantly – Negative. Ah Ha the captain thought – other survivors. Now how do we go about contacting them without us getting killed or us killing them?

He relayed the information to the farm and was asked by Clark to proceed with utmost caution. Yes, Clark also had to pull his time in the radio and forest camera monitor room. They finished loading the building onto the flat bed and escorted it out of the area then returned in the buttoned up armored Hummers to have a look-see.

They slowly approached the area the gunfire was coming from when the bullet proof wind shield started taking some small arms fire. The captain could see where the shooter was firing from and stitched 15 or 20 rounds of 308 armor piercing rounds over top the window the firing was coming from. 10 seconds later a white sheet was stuck out the window. He heard more gunfire and saw across the street more small arms fire coming from another window aimed at the sheet. He thought this is weird they are not shooting at me – Whoever is firing must really be mad at whoever is hanging the sheet out the window. He fired at the 2nd shooting position above that window and the small arms fire stopped.

Captain Elmo T. Gadd (T for Thomas) directed the other Hummer to pull up under the window on the left that fired the last shots and he would make a U-Turn past the one on the right, return and park under the window with the sheet hanging out to see if they could get some communications going with these people who were shooting at each other.

Part 18B
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The Early Learning Years Part 18B


The Captain stared calmly out his rolled up window at a small girl in her teens that came up to the side of his Hummer from the street doorway. She stayed hunched down to keep out of the line of fire from the 2nd story window across the street. He cracked his window an inch and asked the girl why all the gun fire. She said there are 5 men over there that have been chasing us for 2 days throughout the city. Me and my girl friend shot 2 of them to keep them from dragging us off to some shelter they have to do not very good things to us. Captain Gadd said bring your friend down and you can visit with my wife and the other women for a spell and if you like our place you can stay with us. She just looked at him with that I don’t believe you look. He said well that’s fine with me – We will be on our way in 5 minutes as soon as the Sergeant finds out the story from those men he is talking to across the street. She said you would just leave us here to fight those men off. He said yep, seems like ya’ll been doin a purty good job for the past cupla days. She gave out a Grrr and said let me talk to my friend for a minute before we go with you. The Captain had deliberately put the WV Hillbilly twang in his voice when he was talking to the girl hoping she would calm down after hearing he sounded like a local.

30 seconds later the Captain heard and felt that unmistakable carrumphing sound of a fragmentation grenade going off within close proximity and the pinging sound of metal ricocheting off the Hummer. He said a cuss word and looked across the street. There were 4 men down on the sidewalk beside the other Hummer. He swiveled the SAW in that direction and heard the calm voice of the Sergeant on the radio say everything is under control here. The 2 females saw the men down on the street and ran to them. The Captain thought they were going to tend to them but he heard small arms fire as in pistol fire. When he finally got out of the Hummer and walked across the street he saw the 2 females (teen ager’s he thought 14 maybe 15 years old) had executed the 2 men that were laying on the sidewalk wounded and just for good measure had put a couple of rounds into the heads of the 2 dead people. After they did a quick room search of the building the men had come from, because the girl had told him there were 5 men, the 3 military men found a severely wounded man lying in the corner of an empty room. After a quick check of the man the captain did not think he would live more then a few more hours. He would make a decision on whether to give him to the girls after he talked some more with them.

It would take 10 minutes for the Captain to get it all sorted out about the grenade from the Sergeant who had been talking to the 4 men. Sergeant Wilson who had been talking to the 4 men immediately saw these guys were trouble from the instant the 1st one opened his mouth. Sergeant Lewandowski the 50 caliber operator heard it all. He rolled his window down and after counting to 3 lobbed the fragmentation grenade up and over the Hummer. The grenade detonated directly over the 4 men eliminating that problem. The conversation went something like this – Sgt Wilson asked what all the shooting was about. The smart aleck man who responded said, look here fellows – As soon as we take this fancy jeep away from these 2 Army dudes we will go get the girls. That was the gist of the conversation and the end of the 4 bad guy’s lives. The Captain told the girls where the wounded man was – 20 seconds later he heard 4 or 5 pistol shots.

The early Learning Years Part 19

Later on that day Sgt Wilson cussed Sgt Lewandowski severely up one side of his body and down the other. He asked him – Why didn’t you tell me you were going to throw that grenade so I could have rolled that window up the one inch I had it down and eliminated a lot of that painful noise – I thought for a minute or so my eardrum was busted. Lewandowski just said sorry Wilson. The combat veterans laughed after that. Wilson just made a comment on how it was a crying shame 4 young Americans had lost their life for being so stupid. Lewandowski said – The times have changed for us and I believe we will have to be on our toes for a long while until the good guys get a handle on the people left alive in the country.

The Captain had the 2 girls in his Hummer. He asked them if they needed to pick up some supplies. All they had with them was a ruck sack full of loaded and empty magazines, an AR 15, 9mm pistol in a holster, and a canteen with a small water filter attached to the side of the canteen cover on a military style web belt. They said we were going to get some stuff when that group tried to capture us and a shoot out started. He listened to their story as he stopped at a department store and told them to get some clothes and health supplies like shampoo, deodorant, Kotex and tooth brushes. He had found out they had sheltered in a deep mine. Their group all became infected with the Super Flu and they were the only 2 survivors out of 41 people. They shuddered as they told him they had to put each body in a 2 plastic trash bags and drag them up to the front of the mine where their radiation detectors showed where the danger zone was; because the bodies had already started to smell when the 2 had recovered enough to do that. They were the only 2 that slept in a hammock and were fortunate enough to have 4 canteens of water hanging and some snack items attached to the sides of the hammocks. They would surely have died if they had to get up to get food and water because they were so weak. They had lain in their own excrement for 4 days before they could get up to clean themselves. They both giggled at how good it felt to take a sponge bath and throw the dirty clothes away when they were able to get up.

The 5 bodies were wrapped in sheets, slung on top of the Captain’s Hummer, taken out of town to a side dirt road and carried out in the woods a ways where they were dumped naked. Their weapons, clothes and personal property/wallets were piled in the back of one Hummer where they would be looked at by Clark and then disposed of. The only reason the Captain hauled the bodies out of the city was they were freshly killed bodies and would draw attention to anyone searching for them.

Clark found out after talking to the 2 girls that they had come from military parents who were preppers and the girls had been trained to take care of themselves since they were small. Clark thought yes they had really been trained well or they would be a sex slave in some bad people’s camp right now. He asked them if they wanted to live with one of the couples or take the last remaining cinder block building. They decided to stay together and live in the cinder block building. He assigned them a job and told them to ask any of the group questions. They would be given supplies and trained on the systems in their house. Other then that they were on their own until a suitable male mate could be found for them that is if they wanted a male mate. Clark thought time would mellow the girls out as they integrated into the group. He had a feeling everyone would try to mother them.

The Early Learning Years Part 20

The big aluminum meeting place building was erected on a 3 inch pad of cement and would be used for group meetings, recreation center and movie house. Sgt Wilson told the Captain that the building would be awfully cold when winter came so the Captain mentioned it to Clark. They had a meeting and decided on the best way to insulate the place would be 6 inches of fiber glass on the inside and ceiling and that would be covered with ¼ inch plywood to be painted white for cheeriness and to brighten the place up for the coming cold winter. 16 of the group finished the job in 4 days. The place had 40 or so folding lawn chairs and heavy folding card tables to be used for any future event. 2 wood/coal stoves were centrally located for winter heat. 2 toilets and 2 deep double sinks were placed in one corner in case a food event happened.

Clark called the captain in and asked for his opinion on the group that attacked the 2 girls. The Captain just said if they are all as ignorant as the 5 we had dealings with; I see no recourse but to kill them if we want to be safe in our scrounging trips to the city. We have taken all the military weapons from the National Guard site, but there is a military base 40 miles from here that will have a lot of dangerous firepower. I recommend we relocate some of that equipment here to keep it safe. OK Clark said the military equipment first and then plan a strike on our potential enemies after we find out where they are sheltered.

The 3 military people and Clark scouted out the military base before bringing a crew to gather up equipment. The base was deserted except for the thousands of mostly mummified skeletons wearing military uniforms with strips of dried flesh hanging onto the bodies laying everywhere. They found most of the weapons were in armories behind steel vault doors and bunkers. They would need torches to cut into them before any gathering could begin.

They returned the next day with 20 people, 8 pickups with tow-along trailers and cutting torches. The 2 Sergeants were sent to search out military Hummers and other running diesel vehicles that could be used by the group. It would take them 9 days, 11 tractor trailers and 4 forklifts to empty the base of the military firepower. 11 more up armored Hummers were brought back, 2 armored personnel carriers; Sgt Wilson told Clark and the Captain that there were 24 new M1A2 tanks and 4 were on low boy tractors ready to be delivered to another base. They decided to take the 4 that were already loaded and disable the remaining tanks. Sgt Lewandowski had worked as a gunner in a tank for a short while and knew how to completely disable them. Clark laughed when the Sgt told him how easy it was to permanently disable the tanks. He said take the fire control computer and the engine computer and the tank was nothing but a big piece of metal that would not move.

The Early Learning Years Part 21

The 4 tanks were taken to the farm got running and camouflaged in strategic locations with the netting from one of the bunkers. The fire control and engine computers with exception of 4 were all stored in the dry cave. The Sgt trained 12 people how to operate the tanks and many dummy rounds were fired from the 120mm cannon. All the tank trainees were impressed. They all were informed that Lewandowski could do minor maintenance on the tanks, but if they broke a tank track that was the end of that tank because he did not know how to fix it.

2 weeks later the bad guy group was observed scavenging in the city and followed back to where they were sheltering.

Sgt Wilson who had observed the bad guy group told the Captain and Clark that some of the scavengers were teen age boys. Clark and the Captain thought about that for a while and came to the same conclusion, give the group a chance to surrender or at least turn over the young and any women before a fight ensued. They knew this was a stupid decision but the entire group went along with it. They had decided to maintain a semblance of civil society unless it put the group in danger.

The bad guys were still staying in a coal mine and were using generators that were hooked up to large tanks of diesel fuel with many tanker trucks parked nearby to refuel the tanks.

They changed the plan again before taking any action. There were 3 exits that Clark’s scouts found several miles away to the mine the bad guys were staying in. After looking at the exits the Captain saw that the exits had not been used in a long time. Most deep mines would flood after a period of time if they were not continuously pumped out. And they had decided that the occupants could not access the other exits. They had a contingency plan to use explosives to seal them shut if necessary. They were going to capture each scavenge team several miles from the mine on a straight stretch of highway leading to the city. They were going to shoot the tires off the scavenge team vehicles with the up armored Hummers, disarm and interrogate the people. After the interrogation more plans could be made to decide what to do with the bad guys.

Clark was not on the stake out that was waiting for a scavenge team from the bad guys shelter to come to the city. The plan was flawless, the 2 pick up trucks tires were shot off with the SAW machine gun mounted on the Hummer. Now the item that the 3 military men had been working on for a few days came into play. They had removed the microphone and loud speakers that were on a police car and installed them on one Hummer. Wilson spoke through the loud speakers from 50 yards away and instructed the people to dismount the vehicles with their hands in the air or he would kill everyone in the vehicles. 3 seconds later 12 people dismounted the two 6 passenger diesel pickups with their hands held high. Lewandowski told Wilson I see 3 young girls, 3 young boys and 6 men. Wilson said I see them. He broadcast to the people you can put your hands down. He told the group to send one young girl, one young boy and 1 man to each Hummer.

The Early Learning Years Part 22

The Captain and one of the farm groups men were standing behind the Hummer with their M-16’s cocked and locked. The Captain told the man to advance to the side of the vehicle, the girl to sit where she was and the boy to come to the rear of the Hummer. Lewandowski and Wilson had done the same at their Hummer location. Captain Gadd then told the man to walk about 15 feet in front of the Hummer and the boy 15 feet to the rear of the Hummer and sit down. The captain told the man with him to just keep an eye on the man and the girl; he was going to talk to the young boy. The boy was so scared from being shot at with a machine gun he had peed his pants. The captain thought this was good he always liked to interrogate a scared person because they mostly would tell you everything.

He interrogated the boy for 15 minutes, the man for 10 minutes and the girl for 10 minutes. He had a small cassette recorder that he recorded the conversations and took notes while questioning the people. All the stories were the same. Lewandowski and Wilson had learned the same thing the Captain had. They sent the 6 people they had been questioning back to the shot up vehicles and talked a while to decide what they were going to do. Clark was contacted on the military encrypted SINCGARS radio and informed of the decision. He agreed with the captain.

Wilson and Lewandowski took 2 of the people back to what was formerly known as the bad guys shelter to bring 2 running vehicles back to pick up the people beside the shot up vehicles.

The 10 remaining people were picked up by the 2 men who had been taken back to their shelter. They all returned to their shelter to change clothes and take a quick bath because a lot of them had messed in their pants they had been scared so bad.

The leader of the group was asked by Captain Gadd to have a meeting in the next day or so to join forces for better security and exchange of work help and information.

Clark’s group was briefed by the Captain in the new meeting building on the events that had unfolded at the truck shooting location.

Captain started his briefing like a military incident report.

At 1300 hours (1PM) Vehicle #1 (Captain Gadd) fired at the wheels of approaching red 6 passenger pickup to stop its progress – At 1301 (101PM) Vehicle #2 (Sgt Wilson) opened fire on green 4 door pickup which was directly behind the red pickup.. Both vehicles came to a stop 10 or 15 yards down the road after the firing. The occupants were ordered to vacate the vehicles where it was found the firing had resulted in no injury to any of the occupants.

After I questioned 3 of the vehicle occupants I had reason to believe these people were not bad people; they were survivors like us.

These survivors had ejected the 5 people we had a run in with and eventually killed. They were the only bad people that had sheltered with the other cave occupants. The 5 ejected people had to be forcibly removed from the cave at gun point. They had attempted to rape many of the young girls in the cave. A meeting was held and a unanimous vote to remove the 5 was the result. There are 61 people in the cave – a breakdown by age, sex and marital status will be forth coming after we have a meeting with the shelters leadership people.

Sgt Lewandowski gave just about an exact copy of the Captains briefing. Questions were to be held off until Clark the Captain and a few of the farm group met with the cave survivors. After that statement the meeting broke up and everyone returned to their assigned duties.

[Lbox88]

The Early Learning years Part 23


That night Devaney said to Clark you may as well tow 20 or more mobile homes here and set them up. He just looked at her. She said some of those people are going to be needed here for milk processing, cheese making, extending the garden, harvesting hay for the growing cow population, growing corn for the soon to be large chicken flock, pigeons and a 100 other things I have not thought of yet. He said we will make that decision after we talk with them, some of them may want to move to a warmer climate. She said I bet you a nickel none of them will leave. In his heart he knew she was right, but he did not want to assign that much work out until he had an agreement and commitment from the other survivors.

At the cave shelter Jethro (Kroger Manager) and Bardley (Mine Superintendent) were discussing the shooting situation that just happened earlier that day with several other occupants. They were ready to leave the cold damp mine and set up someplace else. Even though the 61 people’s body heat in a small closed off section of the mine warmed it up to almost 70 degrees, it was still damp, dirty with coal dust and not a healthy place to live for much longer before people started getting sick. The decision was made to join up with those Army people before they even had a meeting.

When the news was learned about the spreading virus that was killing people; Jethro got with his friend Bardley and the 3 just delivered Kroger tractor trailers loaded with canned goods was diverted to the mine which would be used as a shelter. All of the Kroger employees, the 13 miners that were working the mine and everyone’s family were invited to move into the mine until the raging pandemic died out. The five 25 some year old ejected people were no good riffraff kin folk of the people that moved into the mine. The mine buggies and their tow cars were used to haul the goods from the Kroger tractor trailers back 1200 and some yards into the mine where cots were set up. Mine water was used for drinking and cleanup water, the small mine tunnel borer was used to drill six 15 feet deep out house holes that had the outside mine porta toilets set on top of the hole. The fire chief had used 1200 yards of reinforced synthetic fire hose to run the diesel fuel into the cave. The large diesel unit was vented to an over head vent and sealed over to prevent any fumes from re entering the living area. Several mine buggy batteries were charged using the generator and 40 watt florescent lights were used to light up the living area. Cooking was done on several camp sized Coleman stoves. Showers were taken using 5 gallon shower bags that warm water was poured into. The mine sprawled out about 14 miles underground and air fortunately came from the 3 distant entry ways. The 14 miles of air travel eliminated any radiation or virus. The air travel was in the direction they had entered and the cooking and porta toilets were placed 25 yards towards the front of the cave which resulted in the cook fumes and toilet fumes being blown out away from the occupants.

The Early Learning Years Part 24

In one regional jail at Beaver WV 4 days prior to the super flu going on its total rampage throughout the entire USA; the prison guards had a hurried meeting with the warden. A decision was made to release all the prisoners except the most violent inmates and the ones on death row. All the prisoners were immediately put on lock down. The extremely violent prisoners and death row inmate’s cell door electronic manual opening switches were removed and shorted out to prevent any easy way of opening their cell doors from the panel. The keys to manually open those cells were carried out of the prison by the warden. The last guard leaving hit the working cell door release switches smashed the 2 controlling switching action computers and left the prison. The front gates were left standing open. There were no weapons or running automobiles left on or near the prison. The closest houses were 5 miles down a double lane paved blacktop road. The warden had informed the members of those houses that all the prisoners had been released. They could either stay if they were armed or leave, he did not care because there was nothing he could do to stop the spread of the virus. At the gas station 3 miles further on he slid his key into the surrounding communities’ siren system and turned the system on warning the county residents of a massive prison break. The siren would cycle for 3 times stop for 1 minute and cycle 3 more times for the next 2 hours. He then drove 31 miles further and followed a dirt road up a hillside to where his family was waiting for him by their shelter. They locked the steel vault door and settled down for a long wait.

All the locked down prisoners heard the click of the cell door lock being released, but they were not stupid and did not leave their cells yet because they had not been told to leave.

The action taken by the jails had been discussed at high levels for 1 day and the process to take was passed along to the state detention centers and the other federal, regional, county and local jails did the same that the Beaver Correctional location had done. The powers that be reluctantly took this action because they knew all the guards would soon vacate their posts and the prisons would become a large unguarded battleground. They did not want to leave the prisoners locked down and die from thirst which even the hardest core prison administrator knew would happen when the water system quit running. They justified their action by telling each other they would keep the most violent prisoners and those scheduled to die locked down where they would die a horrible death. This was the best plan they could come up with without killing all the inmates.

Little did they know what would eventually happen because of this massive prisoner release; and if they had known, would they have had the guts to keep the prisoners in lock down where they would have all died? That question will never be answered because the prisoners were turned loose on the general public.

Prisoner 322178, Josh Williams was evil incarnate. His IQ was so high that it was difficult for the test administrators to rank him among the prisoner geniuses they kept tabs on.

The Early Learning Years Part 25

Josh had been sentenced to 650 years for torturing college women, men, small boy and girl kids before raping and murdering them; under normal circumstances he would never set foot outside of this concrete palace. He was one of the violent ones. His cell was on the corner of Block D and fortunately for him was 2 feet larger then the rows of cells adjacent to him. These 2 feet would give him the means to escape if his adjoining cell mates would give him a little help. No one yet knew the guards had left. Josh had figured out that the desertion of the prison by the guards was the only option but he had not figured on being permanently locked down to slowly die of thirst or starvation. The Beaver correctional facility had a portion that was considered a super max prison. Block D where Josh was housed was part of the super maximum security prison. The cell bars were hardened stainless steel and would take longer then forever to saw through with regular hack saw blades. When his cell door locked there were 4 one inch stainless steel male locking lugs that went into a similar female stainless steel receptacle – 2 on the side 1 on the top and bottom. Without special cutting torches or similar grade hack saw blades the cell was for all practical purposes escape proof unless you were very, very smart and Josh was that. Instead of a solid steel door like the rest of the prison had his door was the aforementioned stainless bars that were covered with a ½ inch clear bullet resistant glass with the hand cuff slot and the bottom hole for passing in or out a food tray or getting a library book. The clear plexi glass kept the prisoner from throwing things at the walk by guards and enabled a centrally located guard to visually observe the prisoner.

Not all the prisoners in the super max prison were deemed extremely violent. The crime they had committed was what caused them to be locked up here. There were many murderers here who had committed a revenge type of killing and the powers that be in the prison system knew these people were not dangerous to any one else. They had killed to right a wrong and their rage was over. Another type was the kidnapper who did it for ransom money and when no ransom money was paid they released the unharmed kidnapped person. Another type was gang members who had defended himself against 2 or 3 other gang members and came out on top by killing his attackers. That made no difference to the justice system because he had been tagged a gang member and was duly charged with double or triple homicides.

The prison grapevine was an active component of passing information along and the prisoners kept in contact with each other. The contact was not like having a conversation but it made them feel like they were getting by with something. Notes were passed along in the food trays or library books.

Josh had a radio and TV that got several news, music, and Disney type channels. He was extremely aware of what was going on in the world.

Finally 4 hours after the guards had left prisoners whose cell doors had been unlocked began to vacate their cells. Several people knew Josh was extremely smart moseyed over to his cell for a gab fest. Josh knew what had happened and told 5 of the people he would tell them everything and how to escape without being picked back up if they would do a couple of things for him. 3 of the prisoners agreed with his terms and went to the prison machine shop to retrieve a sledge hammer and a hack saw with a few extra blades or better yet a reciprocal saw with some metal cutting blades and a small extension cord.

Josh was about 5 foot 11 inches and 185 pounds – all muscle. He had done his obligatory 1000 sit-ups, pushups, jumping jacks and ran in place for 30 minutes every day to kill some time and most important make him tired enough where he could sleep 8 or 9 hours at night.

Josh began to worry when the 3 people had not returned 2 hours later. Finally 3 hours later the men returned and apologized for having to use the sledge hammer to get into the steel tool box that had the hack saws and reciprocating saws, they even brought a 36 inch heavy crow bar and a 48 inch pry bar. The equipment was passed through the bottom slot and Josh kept his promise and told the men what to do. His best advice was to steal lots of food, some water filters and hide in a coal mine at least a mile in and wait out the coming killing from the virus. He did not mention to them to take sleeping bags, soap, extra clothes and portable cooking stoves/ utensils. He thought they would figure that out on their own.

Josh took the sledge hammer and immediately began to pound on the 2 foot section next to the corner wall that was not covered with the 1/8 inch stainless steel paneling that covered the rest of the cell including the ceiling. The floor was hardened concrete and probably 4 feet thick and was not an escape option.

12 hours later Josh had broken the super hard concrete to a depth of 3 inches and 28 to 30 inches tall and had 9 more inches to go plus cutting the 3/8 to ½ inch rebar that he had not gotten to yet. He had 12 foil packs of tuna and 8 of roast beef and gravy, 9 coca cola 12 oz bottles, 12 bottles of water and various bags of chips and candy bars. He thought to himself that should give me enough energy to complete this job.

The Early learning Years Part 26

Back at the farm there were 16 people in the meet building. They were from both groups and an agreement had already been reached. They were just tidying up some small details. They had decided that everyone should live at the farm and share in the entire workload. The cave sheltered people would live in the cave until a small new town with water, sewage, and energy was built. Mobile homes were on top of the list for the 61 people. Construction of the site would start tomorrow which would be 500 yards from Clark’s group on a soon to be leveled out mountainside.

The miners used dynamite to blast the mountainside level and heavy equipment was used to dump the dirt and sandstone into a gulley that had no useful purpose. After looking at the leveled side of the mountain they decided for safety to terrace a 16 foot wide section above where the trailers would be parked in case the upper mountain started sliding down.

3 days later the septic tank holes and humongous overflow leach field was started on. They had calculated how big the field would have to be and how large of a septic tank for 60 trailers. The farm was as busy as a honey bee hive. The area that was leveled off was one mile by one mile. The group had planned on expansion over the coming years. Initially there would be 60 trailers separated by 100 feet with 150 feet separating the 2 rows of trailers for a gravel access road. Power would be solar and wind. 2 tractor trailers were driven 97 miles away to the solar distribution factory and enough panels were absconded with to power 120 or more trailers. The 2nd tractor trailer stopped at the solar battery plant on the way home and the appropriate amount of dry batteries were loaded. Another trip would have to be made to pick up the 55 gallon specially made drums of battery acid.

When they started burying the sewage and water pipe they ran into one of those “might as well situations”. They ran the 8 inch sewage and water pipe the entire length of the 1 mile gravel road and capped it off at the end of the 30 trailers. Some more calculations and it was determined that the original septic system would not handle waste from a hundred trailers so they installed another septic system and leach field midway down the mountain to take care of expansion. The original design was for 65 trailers so now the place was ready for the hopefully planned future expansion. The water coming out of the mountain could handle 4 more 4 inch pipes to fill the planned on 3000 gallon solar pump pressurized tanks – The 2nd tank was not hooked up to water until it would be needed. When they thought they were finished with the 3000 gallon tank installation they had forgotten to plan for overflow. Another 800 yards of 4 inch pipe was trenched in and routed into Clark’s 2nd fish pond which was closer to the trailers.

16 days later the first trailer was hooked up to water and sewage. The workers had to slow down to get the measurements of where to put the cement footer piers. They did not make a12 inch footer the whole 80 feet they installed 12 three foot tall cement piers to set the trailers on and they did not use gravel under the trailers because most of the parking areas were solid sandstone. Top soil for planting of grass and small vegetable or flower gardens would be trucked in over the next several months. Travel was extended to 300 miles to get more than 100 air tight wood burner/coal stoves and the chimney pipe to install in the trailers. Each person was responsible for removing the central heat unit in their trailer and small DC fans were placed in the duct work to move the winter time stove hot air throughout the trailer. Each trailer had two 30 gallon propane tanks that could be refilled easily from the roadway. Propane was only used for hot water and cooking during the summer months. Cooking would be done on the wood/coal stove during cold weather. Everyone knew that if they abused propane usage they would be put on strict rationing because propane was a limited commodity and would be gone in the near future.

The Early Learning years Part 27

Josh made it to the 6 inch mark on the 2nd day and ran into the rebar; it was 3/8 inch iron and he grinned at that thinking the contractor had gotten cheap. Even though his arms were tired and blisters were forming on his hands he continued working till about 2am before taking a sponge bath and falling asleep naked on his bunk. The power went off sometime while he was sleeping and the water was barely trickling into his sink. He just thought I better not take any more breaks. He started cussing and cussing about noon that day. The sledge hammer had busted through the outside wall and was stuck and he could not get it to release. He sat a while and thought about it. He tied a piece of sheet around the sledge hammer handle to keep it from falling to the outside where he would never retrieve it. He then proceeded to stab at the small cement section that held the head in it. Finally after 2 solid hours of stabbing the pointed end of the pry bar beside the sledge hammer head he broke through and he could pull the hammer back into the cell. He was glad he had used the reciprocating saw to cut 4 of the 5 pieces of rebar out before the power went off. He had broke one blade but he had 5 more replacement blades. He was so glad the saw had the easy flip up the lever extraction method instead of having to screw loose the broken off piece inside the saw or he would have been outta luck using the electric saw. He had to use the hack saw to cut the last piece of rebar because the electric was out.

The sun had just set and the shadows were getting long in the cell when he squeezed through the jagged hole in the cell wall corner. He had placed everything he wanted from the cell outside before squeezing through and scratching himself severely on the sharp pieces of rebar. He washed off the bloody scratches and wrapped some more of his sheet around the worst of the wounds. He heard the locked down inmates who were still in their cells screaming for some help. If they have a gasoline powered jack hammer in the machine shop I may be able to get some of them out. But he thought the inmates he had helped would have brought one if there was one available. He went over to a few cells and talked to the fellows he had communicated with over the past 3 years. He told them he was going to stay in the prison tonight and bring some food and if he could find any water from the kitchen prison to them tomorrow morning. He wanted to get a good night sleep so he did not give the prisoners any of the tools he had used to escape with. He slept in an opened cell on D Block that night.

Daybreak he used one of the guards swivel chairs and a notebook to hold the kitchen double doors open to get enough light inside so he could see. He had already looked for a jack hammer in the machine shop and did not find one he did find 3 more sledge hammers, regular claw hammers, screwdrivers, chisels and 2 more hack saws with extra blades. He used one of the kitchen dollies to load up the green beans, corn, spaghetti meat sauce, and other #10 can of vegetables that were water packed. There was no water in the kitchen. He went to 4 cells and passed the sledge hammers and tools through the bottom slit. He told the inmates to bust out the bullet resistant glass near the bottom so he could leave the food for them against the bars. They could then use a hammer and chisel to open the cans to keep them alive maybe long enough to pry the stainless steel panel off and beat through the cement. He knew they would not be able to do it but he gave them a little hope.

He spent 10 minutes looking at the panel that was used to open the cell doors. He thought if he had the time and a working 12 volt battery he could probably open some cell doors. But he did not want to linger. As he walked out of the super max section he heard the screaming cussing he was getting for not helping the other 163 locked down prisoners. His last stop was the kitchen pantry storage room. He had a push cart similar to a Kroger large shopping cart buggy, 4 pillow cases and he was going to be selective. He had already placed the remainder of his food supplies, soda and water bottles in the cart. 30 pounds of pinto beans, 50 pounds of rice, 3 pounds of salt, 2 lbs of black pepper, 2 pounds of red pepper flakes, 5 pounds of dried chicken soup powder, 25 pounds of honey, 6 jars of 8 oz Texas Pete hot sauce, 15 pounds of flour, 2 gallons of cooking oil, 500 one oz breakfast peanut butter, strawberry and grape jelly plastic containers, one 3 quart heavy steel sauce pan with 30 Brillo soap pads, 3 soup spoons, 3 forks, 12 rolls toilet paper with the cardboard insert removed and three 22 oz Dawn dish liquid. The prison did give each inmate a generic mult-vitamin/mineral tablet to each inmate each day and he took a jar that had 1000 tablets in it. He picked up one 14 inch nice butcher knife, one 6 inch boning knife, one 7 inch fillet knife and one medium size meat cleaver. It took about 30 minutes to make 2 scabbards out of some canvas from the tool room and he cut a nice piece for a belt to hold the scabbards which held the meat cleaver and the butcher knife. He split everything up into the 4 pillow cases and put the 4 pillow cases in a wool blanket that he wrapped in a blue waterproof tarp which he then placed in the buggy. He made one more stop at the machine shop and picked a 3 pound sledge hammer, a 24 inch crow bar and some screw drivers up. As he was walking out past the guard shack he saw a black prison guard baseball cap on the desk, he picked it up and stuck it on his head, he felt it matched his orange prison jumpsuit. Exiting the front double sally port chain link gates he picked his pace up when he got out of the parking lot and hit the double lane blacktop road.

Josh had figured there would be no police left on duty to patrol the roadways. He was going to follow the advice he gave the 3 inmates that helped him; find a deep shelter with water, food and a lot of amenities. His analysis of the airborne virus that had a 90% plus death rate led him to believe there would be a firestorm of nuclear weapons launched by every country that had them towards any country they perceived would be a threat after this virus died out.

[Lbox88]

The Early Learning Years Part 28

The heavy buggy was a beast to push but the thought of abandoning it never entered his mind. 3 hours later he came to a graveled drive way leading up around a bend. He pushed his buggy off the road behind some bushes and took to the woods to see what he could find. A few minutes later peering through the trees he saw a red brick house that had an elderly man asleep on the front porch in a rocking chair. Surely this is not going to be this easy he thought. Another thought hit him – Is the man infected. He mulled that over for a minute and decided the virus had not yet reached this desolate place. Looking in the windows as he made his way around the house he did not see any other occupants. Not wanting to kill the old man right off the bat because he needed some information. He eased around the side of the house to where the old man was closest to the edge of the porch. Leaping over the banister he choked the man out quickly then tied his arms and legs to the rocking chair. This will be fun he thought.

Checking the house out he found there were no other people around. One bedroom was all that appeared to be used, the other had boxes on the bed. 5 minutes later the man woke up looked around and told Josh he had a tremendous headache. Josh told him he was not going to hurt him – If the man had any sense at all Josh was thinking he would know that was one of the biggest lies he had ever heard. Josh wanted knowledge of the surrounding local area, particularly abandoned and working mines. He did not even have to threaten the man because he learned all he needed to know in the next 30 minutes. Josh choked the man out again but this time he held on a lot longer then he did the 1st time. He dragged the body about 50 yards into the woods and dumped him after he searched him. The keys to the 4 wheel drive pick up truck were in his pants pocket and the truck had a full tank of diesel. Josh drove down to the buggy and pushed it up into the truck bed using some 2 X 4’s as ramps that were in the garage.

Searching the house he found the old man was well organized and had a pantry that would make Emeril Lagasse or Alton Brown proud. The basement would probably be adequate for a bomb shelter but Josh knew he could not stay here. He had also deduced the virus was probably air borne and since this place did not have any thing that looked like air filters it would probably not be safe.

There were 3 guns, a Remington 12 gauge pump, a Remington bolt action scoped 30-06 and a S&W 357 six inch barreled revolver plus reloading equipment. An adequate supply of ammunition was available for each gun. The old fellow was some sort of prepper Josh thought. There was a severe amount of long term food, water filters, fishing equipment, 55 gallon barrels of water, 5 gallon buckets marked pinto beans, rice, dried potatoes, powdered milk, dried eggs, and assorted dried vegetables. Josh loaded everything except the water barrels on to the pick up. The old mans clothes were a reasonable fit as were the boots which were a tad to large but he figured that was better than too small. He found the crank radio, the rechargeable batteries, a solar charger, head band LED lights, cigarette plug in chargers and crank LED flashlights.

The old retired coal miner had told him about several abandoned mines and some working mines in the general area. One mine had been closed for several years and had not yet been cemented shut because the owners could not decide whether they wanted to start mining it again. It was off the beaten path and needed a 4 wheel drive vehicle to get to it. The only problem was the gate was 6 inch steel pipe that had a giant padlock hidden up inside of a steel enclosed cover and was impossible to cut off. The old man laughed when he told him that and proceeded to tell him how they used to bypass the lock. Since Josh never forgot anything he locked that one in the front of his mind to take action on that gate. He was going to leave as soon as it got dark if he could get everything loaded onto the truck. He surely did not want to make 2 trips.

He finally got everything loaded onto the truck and had to tie the 2 wheel dolly holding the acetylene cutting and welding torch onto the bumper. He thought about the old man in the woods and dragged him back to the house and laid his head sideways on a large ant hill in the garden. He poured a small amount of honey on the old mans face/eyes, other body cavities and called it good.

He left the red brick house at 930pm – he almost set a timed fire bomb to go off 3 days from now but decided that would cause more questions and he wanted no one to be on the lookout for the truck. He did not know for sure if there were any police working in the entire state. There weren’t. Everyone was hunkering down in their houses or shelters hoping to ride this pandemic out. Finding there was no traffic on the highway he drove 30 to 40mph to the road leading to the shut down mine. He backed up to the steel pipe gate unrolled the cutting torch hoses and cut the post attached to the gate off at the bottom. He drove inside and pulled the gate back and tack welded the bottom of the steel post in several places and covered the torch cutting and rewelding job over with mounded dirt.

The Early Learning Years Part 28A

The trip on the rutted half graveled road that had been washed out over the years was difficult and several times he did not think he was going to make it to the mine entrance. 45 minutes later he was parked in front of the heavily boarded over mine entryway with the truck headlights pointed at the boards. He did not think he had much time before something happened so he pried the boards off - The outward flowing cold air made him feel better about this choice. He backed the truck in and hurriedly put some of the pried off 2 X 12 boards back over the entry way leaving a 24 inch gap at the top so he could crawl back in. He backed into the mines at least 3/4 of a mile before deciding this was far enough. He walked further back and found that the mine was slowly filling with water and that was the number one item he had been worried about. 3 minutes no air – death – 3 days no water – death – he had food and shelter so that did not factor into the equation. The first thing he unpacked was the radiation detector. He set it off to the side and checked the batteries. Next he set his living quarters up – A 4 man tent with a cot and outdoor heavy duty lawn chair. He wanted to bring the rocking chair of the old mans but could not figure out where to put it on the truck. He would inventory his supplies tomorrow when he got up. He warmed some water up on the Coleman stove, took a sponge bath and lay down on the cot


Part 29
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The Early Learning Years Part 29

Clark was talking to one of the coal miners who used to work for the Southern Natural Gas Company. The miner had told him that there was plenty of natural gas in the mountains and the automatic shut offs had all kicked in when the natural gas run pumping generators in the woods had shut down for lack of maintenance. He told Clark that there was a pump station about 11 miles down the main road and up one of those hollows. A month or so to pull some of the pipe and run it to the Clark Farm and the farm would have natural gas; Clark thanked him and told him it would be brought up at the next group meeting. He thought that would sure save the propane they were using and make things a little more pleasant during the winter.

Electricity and lots of it was his main concern. The world revolved around electricity and every one knew it when there was none or not enough.

Devaney told him one day out of the blue – We need a gasoline or diesel powered wood saw mill. He again just looked at her. She said eventually we will use up all the wood at the lumber centers that use huge amounts of electricity to mill wood. He said so? She said we need to cut it now and air dry it so it can be used on projects we will eventually need several years from now. He grinned and told her, I guess you are probably right in the long range planning thinking arena. She gave him a million dollar smile and walked off. He put that on his list with the natural gas.

Clark decided to take a break and walk the perimeter of Gramps’ Farm and check out the video cameras amongst other things. He asked Devaney if she wanted to take a 3 day stroll through the woods. She politely declined saying it was her time of the month.

The first night under a full moon the weather was a perfect 73 degrees and 40% humidity he lay watching the millions of twinkly star points in the heavens as he slowly drifted off into dream world.

Gramps smacked him upside his jaw screaming at him to spit the nut he was chewing in his mouth out. He thought he was eating a Chestnut when in fact he was eating a poisonous Buckeye which looked exactly like a chestnut. He had already eaten 2 of the delicious tasting nuts when he felt Gramps finger being pushed down his throat causing him to vomit. Gramps made him drink a whole canteen of water and stuck that big finger down his throat twice more making his stomach cramp when he ran dry of the water he just drank. That night he had extreme diarrhea and gramps kept making him drink Gatorade and water which squirted out of both ends of his body. He quickly learned the difference between a Buckeye tree and a Chestnut tree and would never forget it. When he was 10 years old he just assumed if a squirrel, a chipmunk or a bird could eat those nuts he could also. He lay there and dreamed of how bitter the white oak and red oak acorns were unless they were soaked in a running creek for 4 or 5 days before they lost that bitter taste and then were just barely edible without sweetening. So many edible survival tree nuts and bark of some trees were indelibly inked into his brain cells. He often wondered how he had survived those early learning years after eating some of that stuff. A large brilliant bright red cardinal that was whistling/chirping its morning mating call and gray squirrels barking at each other in the surrounding hickory trees woke him from a deep restful sleep.

The Early Learning Years Part 30

Josh got up around 6am which had been his normal prison wake up time. Taking the trenching tool or short shovel, the Coleman lantern and the crow bar he went along the side of the mine punching the crow bar down until he came to a long stretch of dirt instead of sandstone. He began digging a 4 foot deep and 20 or so foot long trench for body and food waste. About 1pm he rinsed his hands off, heated up and ate one of the roast beef and gravy pouches he had left. Walking further out 4 or 5 yards more towards the cave entrance he found another stretch of dirt and a few yards beyond that on sandstone is where he hung the 5 gallon portable shower, hopefully the draining shower water would flow from the sandstone, seep into the dirt and not cause a standing stagnated waste water problem. He hoped he did not have to stay in this cold damp place for long but he had an educated guess he would have to stay at least 6 months and probably longer. He organized his kitchen setup glad the old man had the Coleman stove with extended tray table. Knowing he would spend a lot of time in the tent because his body heat would keep him warmer in the tent then out in the cave. There were 3 types of lighting other then battery power that he was going to have to use unless he constantly wanted to run the pick up to charge the batteries.

There was a pump up gas Coleman lantern, 2 kerosene lanterns and the piece de resistance Aladdin lamp he had taken from the mans house. He thought he would use the Aladdin lamp to read by in the tent and the Coleman pump up gas one outside to light up the cave like daylight to cook by. There was also a large box of 108 or 120 hour candles he thought he may have to use them to keep the tent warm while he was sleeping. He was glad the man had Teflon pots and pans for cooking which would save some clean up time. He had not yet made his mind up on how he would use the radiation detection equipment. The thought of once a day at noon kept going through his mind and then there was the trip outwards towards the entry way once a week or every 2 weeks. He decided to wait 3 months before he went near the mine entrance.

Clark had the locations of the 2 surveillance cameras that were transmitting blurred pictures. The group had decided the lens had gotten splashed with rain water or the solar panels were covered with leaves. He had a small extendable aluminum pole that would extend to 12 feet and the apple plucking device had been modified to hold a cleaning rag that could be sprayed with a cleaning fluid to wipe the lens and there was a small extendable 12 inch limb wrapped in a towel that could be used to rub across the top of the solar panel. The 1st camera that was blurred was some 11 miles away on the top of a hill that surveyed a long section of the 30 foot wide clearing around the perimeter. After cleaning the lens and the top of the 3X3 foot solar panel he got on his portable radio and queried the monitor watcher if the view had become clear. The response back was yes but the signal was weak. Clark looked some more at the set up and saw a limb with many leaves 4 feet over top of the camera was blocking off most of the sunlight going to the solar panel. The modified apple picker was again put into play. He attached his diamond coated limb saw chain to the pole and after an hour he had sawed the tree limb off. The response came back a few minutes later that the picture was crystal clear and the signal was strong. He continued his trek through the mountainous terrain still amazed at the different flora and fauna that made the place so unique. He was glad to see some of the small wildlife (a few birds and squirrels) had survived the radiation but he had not yet run across any deer or bear sign

The Early Learning Years Part 31

Clark reminisced back to Gramps proudly showing him the monitor room and the visual coverage of the farm property. The only places not covered were the sections below the 80 feet high vertical cliffs that would have to be scaled by a professional mountain climbing team. Clark’s Gramps never did tell him how much the 87 solar powered transmitting cameras cost. He bet it was a huge amount. The man that installed this security monitoring system really knew what he was doing; the equipment he had used was 1st class and would probably last as long as the advertised life of the 25 year solar panels. The cameras were only good for day time viewing. Gramps had told Clark the security man had told him he could put night time viewing cameras up but Gramps had decided that day time coverage would be good enough. Clark knew there were 200 extra dry solar batteries for the system stored with the battery acid in one of the sheds. He just wondered how long it would be before he had to start replacing the batteries. He had looked over the information on the 20 mile transmitting pan and tilt camera system but never found out the life of the batteries. He made a note to check the fluid on each battery on his next trip. That would require 2 or 3 of them to do it because a ladder and battery acid would have to carried along. He also made a note to clean the battery terminals on each battery and coat them with the stuff that prevented battery acid corrosion.

Walking along the top of the 30 foot cleared area where the blackberries had been planted so many years ago he saw the 8 or 10 foot thick berry patch could only be traversed by a tank. He thought a determined person with large pruning shears could make a path through but this was as good as it was going to get. Anyways the hidden camouflaged cameras covered most of the bramble blackberry area and a large length of the 30 foot clearing below. The 2nd camera was at the extreme end of the property about 27 miles into his 40 mile trip he found it. He had to do the same thing to this camera that he had done to the 1st one. The person monitoring the camera called Clark and told him on the radio the picture was now crystal clear. The radio repeater centrally located on top of the middle mountain was working super fine. Clark also made a note that the 30 foot clearing was starting to grow over and would need to be sprayed with Round Up brush and weed killer soon. That was a job he did not want to do but if he wanted to maintain good day time visual observation of the area for security he would have to assign a couple of people to make the 40 mile walk and spray the clearing. He knew there were eight 55 gallon drums of the brush killer in the shed with the batteries. An additional plan to use gasoline or diesel in sprayers to burn the 30 foot wide area was on the list, but he was afraid of causing a forest fire. He or someone would address that problem when the drums of brush killer were used up many years from now.

[Lbox88]

The Early Learning Years Part 32


3 months had gone by in the mine where ex-prisoner Josh was holed up. He had the patience of a stone statue and had continued his exercises while holed up. He picked up the radiation detector, a crank-up shortwave radio and headed towards the entrance. About 250 yards before he reached the daylight lit up entrance the radiation detector started ticking out a staccato sound. He stopped and backed up quickly. He had been right in his assumptions of a nuclear attack. I just guess I will spend a lot more time in here according to what this meter is showing. Patience was one of Josh’s strong attributes. He had not yet read through the 19 Shakespeare paperback books. He had taken out the old man’s notebooks on survival and had been memorizing them, he had no idea there were so many ways to cook beans and rice. It made no difference how long he had to spend in this damp cold place. He was like everyone else alive on the planet; he wanted to live to see another sunrise or sunset and continue his past evil ways. The only way he got caught was DNA – A burst condom left semen that he did not completely wash out of the victim.

He went over in his mind of what he knew about radiation. Since the mine had not collapsed around him there had been no nuclear detonations nearby or some of the roof would have collapsed. So the radiation his meter was detecting had to be massive fallout from a whole lot of explosions west of him. Surely the levels would start falling off in 9 months to a year. He would make another check 4 or more months from now. He wrote the numbers down his meter had detected and rolled up the sheet, dated it and stuck it under the meters carrying handle. He was aware of the 7/10 rule but this was such a big radiation reading 3 months after a nuclear event he had trouble believing it. The meter had a tag on it saying it had been calibrated within the past year so he had to believe what the numbers were.

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The Early Learning Years Part 33

Clark got back to the farm mid-morning of the 4th day. He had been lucky the weather had held and no rain or stormy weather interrupted his 40 mile stroll. The next time he would take a few other people and a couple of 4 wheelers to check the solar batteries. One scavenge team reported they had seen a group of men with orange uniforms in town. The orange clothed people had ran and hid when the armed team tried to contact them. Everyone knew what the orange uniforms were. Clark wondered why the prisoners had not changed into civilian clothes. They did not know this group had just arrived in town from a cave they had holed up in.

They were part of the group of prisoners that were in D Block that were not locked down and had walked out like the hundreds of other inmates in other sections of the prison. This group of 76 had raided a Costco and loaded all the wareroom food in stolen pick-up trucks when the bombs started going off west of them. One of the inmates was a local and he knew where a working coal mine was and they all made it inside before the radiation got too bad to hurt them. They did not have water filters and constantly stayed sick drinking the polluted mine water. Finally some of them used some coal they chipped from the seam running down the mine wall and started boiling the water in #10 cans. Several of the inmates who had been in the military started using some of their training and the food was rationed which enabled them to live in the filthy coal dust covered place long enough for the radiation to dissipate. They used emptied 4 and 5 gallon food pails with warm water to wash themselves and their prison uniform. One side of the cave was used as an open latrine 100 yards towards the entry way of the cave and the outwards flow of air kept the horrendous odor from them. They were quite bearded and raggedy after a year.

One of the inmates told the other inmates he knew a little about radiation and calculated out it would be 14 or so months before it would be safe to go out. 2 of the holed up prisoners did not believe him and went outside at the end of 4 months, they died a horrible death from radiation poisoning after their return to the cave 2 days later. That little lie the prisoner had told about 14 months resulted in him and the rest of the inmates surviving. They had only gone in about 400 yards and were lucky the outward flowing air was strong enough to keep the radiation and flu virus out. They were close enough to the entry way that the incoming daylight lit up their living area in a really dim sort of way. 32 food laden pick-up trucks had been driven into the mine and they slept on the truck bench seats or the 2 layback truck seats. Some of the card board boxes from the groceries were cut into sections and the beds of the trucks were also used for a sleeping area. It was a miserable cold damp time for the inmates. 17 died from pneumonia.

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The Early Learning Years Part 34

Clark had been having flashback dreams the past few nights and this night was no different.

He was 12 years old before he and Gramps camped out in the woods for an overnight stay. They had a knife, small camp hatchet, snare wire, canteen with steel cup, small back pack; each had an 10X10 foot light weight plastic tarp for their shelter. One was the ground cover and the other was the roof. The remainder of the pack contained salt, pepper, flint and steel, bug repellant and Gramps had a secret item in his back pack which Clark would find out about later that night. They had snared 2 rabbits and were roasting them over a hard wood fire that Clark had to start with his flint and steel, even though he had a lighter and water proof matches. Gramps just told him it was an early learning exercise and he had to use the flint and steel. Clark had eaten rabbit many times but it was always basted, broiled, or boiled in a pot with many different vegetables. Gramps brought out the secret ingredient after the rabbits were fully cooked and had that blackened fire burned crust on the outside. He just handed the Tabasco bottle to him and said makes the dry cooked meat better tasting. That was Clark’s introduction to mouth burning goodness.

The next day a little time was spent gathering some wild greens, leeks from a marshy area and mushrooms. They had snared 1 rabbit and 3 squirrels for the evening meal. The meat was chunked into bite size pieces and boiled in the steel canteen cups with the leeks, when the meat was almost done, the greens and mushrooms were added to the stew and Gramps again used the Tabasco sauce by shaking a few squirts into the boiling brew. Clark thought the stew with the hot sauce a little salt and pepper was pretty good but it was not as good as the pure hot sauce on the blackened roasted rabbit. This time of the year some edible berries, butternuts and hickory nuts were available and they spent a lot of time using the hatchet to break open the nuts on a flat rock.

This was the time he learned about dental hygiene. They each had a toothbrush but no toothpaste. Gramps told him it was ok to go a while brushing your teeth without toothpaste but he made it mandatory for young Clark to use dental floss after every meal for the rest of his life that day. Clark listened to several horrible stories about gingivitis, plaque buildup, infected jaw bones and a few painful deaths in a combat zone from infected jaw bones and gums caused by rotted teeth. (When Clark started college he would discover Water Piks).

Next was the training on foot health and how important it was to keep your boots dry, socks dry and your feet clean. The stories on trench foot came right after that.

He woke up just when Gramps was getting ready to teach him WW11 squad hand signals and combat patrol techniques.

The Early Learning Years Part 35

The 6 convicts that were spotted by the farm scavenge team had seen the armed people and immediately hid in the surrounding neighborhood. Their purpose in entering the big city was clothes and guns or guns and clothes. The 50 some prison survivors had had enough of living in a cave to last them forever. They had split up to keep arguments to a minimum and were fanning out through the city looking for the aforementioned items. They would rendezvous at 8 pm at a designated spot.

The farm scavenge team broke off the scavenge run and headed back to the farm with one of the Army troops (Wilson) hanging back as a rear guard to eliminate the possibility of being followed.

Clark and Captain Gadd called the meeting together 2 days later to discuss the people who were seen in the city in orange prison uniforms. The best they could agree on was to maintain a watch on the city and if one of the people who by now had probably changed into civilian clothes could be captured. They would find out more information. The consensus was these people had either escaped or been turned loose from prison and had probably holed up long enough in one of the hundreds of closed down mines within a hundred mile area to survive.

That evening the prisoners met behind a large McDonalds and compared notes. The leader of the 6 man team that had been spotted by the fatigue clothed armed farm team in the Hummer reported that he was not going to go into battle with superior armed military people and would soon be leaving the area for greener pastures. About 23 ex-prisoners decided that would be a prudent thing to do and also decided to tag along with the departing people. That left the not so cream of society to scavenge around the city until they decided what to do. The foremost thing in the prisoners mind were women or young girls or young boys they did not care which. These were dangerous people just not the extreme violent ones that had been locked down in the prison. The prisoners who had searched a large portion of the gun stores in town had not found any long arms or pistols; so they had resorted to searching private dwellings where they had found enough rifles, pistols and ammunition to arm all of them. They all knew what they needed by living without certain items for 14 months and had searched out those items and loaded their pick up trucks with the equipment. The 23 prisoners who had decided to leave this city had convoyed 40 miles past Clark’s farm and set up a late night camp by a small creek near the main highway. The remaining prisoners had taken their equipment back to the mine they had stayed in and pitched tents outside the entryway to party with the alcohol they had found.

Josh had left the cave right on the 11 and a half month mark when the radiation was not detectable on the equipment he had. He had hung around the 4 or 5 communities near where he had ended up and had found no survivors yet.

The Early Learning Years Part 36

The 23 ex prisoners that left the main group had been spotted by a farm watcher near the main highway. The watcher reported back to the farm and a small group led by Captain Gadd had followed them to where they had set up camp by Loup Creek. Gadd sent Lewandowski and another farm resident to get close to the drunken fools and listen to their conversations. What he heard from the 2 listeners upset him to no end. He was just out of radio range and had to go back 15 or so miles to where he could contact Clark. The mountainous terrain severely limited radio communications unless repeaters or satellite communications could be used

Clark told Gadd that he would bring a strike force to eliminate these scum so they could not bother any other decent people.

2 hours later the 14 member strike team met up with Gadd on the highway. A small plan was made that would use the enormous firepower of the Mark 19 grenade launchers on 3 Hummers from a 350 to 450 yard range which would bring intense grenade firepower onto the tent living animals. Men were sent upstream, downstream and into the surrounding woods to eliminate any escaping survivors. Night vision would be used to eliminate any of the prisoners from seeing the attacking force. The time was 315am. There was only 2 prisoners left standing out by the big fire they had built. Each Hummer fired 3 grenades into each of the 6 tents before any of the drunken prisoners could figure out what was happening. 2 snipers on the hillside behind the tents had targeted the 2 standing prisoners. There were no surviving prisoners.

The attacking farm team returned to the farm where plans would be made to find and destroy the other prisoners.

Josh on a whim decided to go back to the prison to see if the sledge hammers had helped some of his friends in escaping. The first inmate that he had decided to help had half of his body stuck in an exit hole that was not quite big enough for him to wriggle through. Josh had no idea of what had killed him before he could escape. The other inmates he had given tools to had not broken out of their concrete tombs. He just shook his head and left the prison that smelled of death.

He went back to the old mans farm house and decided to stay there for a while. The old man’s remains were drug to the roadside and dropped into a ditch. There were only bones and clothes left. He drove back to the mine and loaded the remaining supplies up including the water filters and partially emptied 5 gallon buckets. The empty buckets were left. Several stops were made in the small Mom and Pop grocery stores and his larder was refreshed. The main reason he went back to the old mans house was electricity and a refrigerator. After reading the old mans instructions he knew how to use the generator that was hooked into the house and would not have to find another place to rig it up. He had many reasons for needing electricity and the number one was he wanted to watch pornography on either a lap top or the old mans DVD TV set. He had picked up hundreds of porn movies in the XXX DVD movie rentals. Ice cubes in a mixed alcoholic drink and iced tea were also on his agenda.

The Early Learning Years Part 37

All the occupants on the Clark farm had heard by word of mouth what the listeners had learned from the conversations of the killed convicts. Needless to say everyone was upset. Captain Gadd had been tasked by Clark to come up with a plan for taking care of these people in the city and to give a speech on what was being done to take care of this problem. The attendees in the big aluminum building asked many, many questions and Gadd and Clark were pushed to the limit to answer most of them. Gadd repeated that everyone had been trained in combat techniques and had had extensive weapons training. He finished his question and answer period by telling all the trained personnel to never go anywhere without a long arm, a sidearm and to be extra vigilant.

Clark and the Captain hashed over a few plans to take out these dangerous people. They knew that these people had supplied themselves with weapons from private dwellings and were now an armed force to be reckoned with.

In front of the cave where the prisoners had set up tents and congregated, many conversations were going on. 4 of the meanest people in the escape group had gotten together and decided they needed to find some ex military men to help them out in taking over this city and capturing some females and young boys. They found an ex Air Force jet mechanic, a regular army clerk, and 2 youngish combat trained Marines. These 4 military men were tasked to come up with a plan to maintain a hold on the city which was full of things needed for long term survival of the group. The first thing that happened was the 2 Marines got in a fight with the Army and Air force guy. This resulted in some bad facial damage to 3 of the people. Keystone Cops here now, the 4 bad prisoners finished the fight by severely damaging all 4 of the ex-military people. 5 days later the prisoners and the military people had another meeting and it was decided that fighting amongst them was a bad idea. Some of the prisoners had surreptitiously been making trips to the city to gather up needed supplies; what the prisoners thought was surreptitious was observed by Lewandowski and Wilson.

Clark and Captain Gadd laughed at how Lewandowski and Wilson had followed the prisoners back to the mine. They had used two quiet camouflaged color 250cc trail bikes from a cycle shop and stayed way back on the highway following the pickups back to the cave. Gadd asked them why trail bikes and they both answered they could get away off road and through the forest if they were spotted.

Josh was happy as a tick on a bear, he had found out the generator ran the well pump and he had running water. He had filled the bath tub with hot water and scrubbed the year of filth off his body. He had to take 2 baths before the water in the tub was clear. He enjoyed using the old mans straight razor and shaved. He found the electric hair cutter and used the 1 inch thick guide to cut his head hair. He figured he now could pass for a normal human. Planning ahead for himself to mesh himself into a group of survivors he went to the local library and memorized the history of the small towns surrounding this place. He read the past year of the 3 newspapers and memorized the streets in the town. Next he searched several male bodies for their wallets; finding a man with the same height, weight and eye color he kept that wallet and went to the address on the driver license. He stopped and thought this is a lot of work to do, but I have nothing else planned for the immediate future so I may as well make me as foolproof of an identity as needed. Setting a generator up to power the house he spent 3 days going through everything in the place including all the personal papers of the man and his wife. He removed all the pictures and discarded the family photo album. Using a photo shop program and a nice photo copy printer from the department store he inserted him and the now missing and dead wife’s picture throughout the house after he let the pictures age in the sun for 2 days.

The houses surrounding him were searched to find out who the occupants were and their descriptions memorized. In the next large town there was a DMV (department of motor vehicles) building that issued drivers license. The doors were open when he entered. He spent 3 days in that building and made great use of the generator. He plugged in the camera that took the persons picture for the license and took his. Next the computer that generated the drivers license gave him fits until he looked in a desk drawer and found the password to start it. He disabled the computer by deleting the commands for it to make a license when he departed and left the place exactly as he had found it except he locked the doors using the keys from a body inside the building. OK he thought I will age this drivers license in the sun for a few days, scratch it up a little bit and put it in the wallet with a picture of me with my arm around the dead mans wife in a drawer. He took the man’s Kroger Card and library card wrapped a rubber band around the 2 and put the bundled cards in his pant pocket with the house keys.

Josh knew he was using a lot of the old mans diesel fuel and wanted to keep a large supply for future travels. He went motor bike and bi cycle shopping. Checking out the gas stations he found one that had a tank showing 3000 gallons on the dip stick. He went Stabil and Pri-D hunting for enough to treat this tank for his personal use. He stopped before he dumped the treatment into the tank and thought that if he found a diesel running tanker he would pump it into the tanker and keep the tanker at the old mans house where it would be more secure and handy for him to use. 2 days later he had found a gasoline tanker and a diesel fuel tanker that would run. When he was through he had 3500 gallons of treated gasoline and 3000 more gallons of treated diesel fuel. Now all he needed was to find a survivor group worthy of his attention.

[Lbox88]

The Early learning Years Part 38

Clark knew there would be problems with that many people in this small of a territory. The first problem that popped up was the 10 washers in the wash room – The women just could not get everything washed in their allocated time. The amount of electricity the solar cells for the trailers were just not enough to run a washer. He called a meeting with just the men. He laid the law down and told them until more electricity was available the people would just have to tough it out and if they could not abide by those rules they were welcome to leave the security of the farm and start their own small community. The mention of a dictatorship was made until several years from now an election process would be made and a mayor and town council could be elected. But there was one caveat, this was his property and at the time of the future elections the people should be able to move back into the city where they could make their own life. He went on to tell them the world and its rules had changed and there was nothing he could do about that. It was going to take a long time to get some infrastructure built up to service this place and maybe help others. Devaney would give the same speech to the women a few hours from the finish of this talk.

No chicken eggs were eaten for 2 weeks, Clark had decided every household would have a minimum of 30 chickens and that would be their poultry meat until several cows could be butchered. No one would go hungry at the farm and a fairly balanced diet would be maintained; vegetables would be culled from the massive garden that had been expanded to 5 acres. Adjoining farms would be used for wheat and farm animal food. There were now 47 cows and 12 would be butchered for community meat. The pigeon rooks had been expanded to 800 pigeons. Soon there would be enough pigeons for everyone to have pigeon meat every other day to supplement chickens and the small amount of beef each family would get. Clark knew from his biology training that more cows and hopefully deer would be found to add to the small NOT sustainable cow breeding program he was doing. If no cows were found the lineage of his Dexter cow and chicken program would soon come to an end, but that would be many, many years in the future. He had no idea about what would happen to the breeding pigeons.

Josh had made a circle on his motor bike of about 45 miles poking into every hollow and grocery store. He knew there were survivors because he had noticed the broken into grocery stores and empty shelves of food. He decided one day to tow a bicycle behind his motor bike and camp out near a small town that a lot of groceries were missing from the small stores. 3 days later he struck pay-dirt. He was salivating on his binoculars when he saw the 2 small people – one 11 or so year old boy and a 14 or so year old girl on bicycles. He was like a lion in waiting. The 2 small kids gathered up a bike basket full of groceries and headed down a dusty dirt road. He rode his bicycle to where they had taken off onto the road and slipped into the woods paralleling the road on foot. He cussed himself for not following on his bicycle after ¾ of a mile following the road through the forest. Another mile and he walked out to the road and headed back to his bicycle. He marked the place where he had come out of the forest and decided he would come back to that spot after dark and pick up the trail.

The early learning years Part 39

The evening before the farm group had decided to take out the prisoners Clark was walking by the aluminum meeting building. He heard that hauntingly familiar tune on an organ of Amazing Grace and an alto voice that was really nice. He ambled into the building and saw Devaney with a microphone in her hand singing. There was an organ, a piano, a set of drums and a piano in one corner of the building that had been salvaged from somewhere. The group backing her up sounded like some of the commercial band he had heard on the radio. He sat in a chair and enjoyed the impromptu show before him. About 20 minutes later he left when the bluegrass music after dueling banjos got too much for him, he really did not like bluegrass music. Walking outside he thought there are some talented people here and a show every now and then would be something for the people to enjoy.

Next morning, Captain Gadd told Clark that the watchers of the mine reported the prisoners were having a meeting out in front of the mine and had no guards out. Gadd recommended that 36 sharpshooters take them out. Clark had a few reservations about cold bloodedly killing the inmates but endorsed the plan. Each member had a portable radio and targets would be assigned when everyone was in position. 3 hours later the sharpshooters were in position but the meeting had broken up and the inmates were wandering around in small groups and some were in the tents. Lewandowski told the captain and Clark that 90% of the inmates could be taken out in just a few minutes if the word was given.

Josh had finally gotten back to his bicycle and slowly eased down the dusty road following the tire tracks of the 2 young people. He had started walking beside and pushing his bike when he could see a cabin through the trees on the curve. There were people talking and barking dogs. He backed up a hundred yards and eased into the woods to see what the situation was.

Dudley was mad at his wife for sending the 2 kids scavenging and he was mad at the 2 kids for going scavenging without an armed adult. He knew the kids were armed with 9mm concealed pistols but he had told them not to do it and that was what was making him mad that everyone had disobeyed his instructions.

Josh saw there were 4 adults or an adult man, woman and 2 older rifle armed teenage boys milling around in front of an outdoor BBQ grill burning nice smelling hickory and a hint of meat cooking. He decided this was not the time to do anything rash and headed back to his house. Unbeknownst to him his different bicycle tire marks over imposed on the 2 young ones bike tire marks were clearly visible to an observant looker. The 2nd error in his long crime spree of killings the killer had unknowingly made.

Luckily it had not rained that night. Renfro was sent out at daylight to check the minnow traps in the large 6 acre creek fed pond on one side of the road. They had quite a large cotton mouth and water snake population in that pond and they had been thinning them out hoping the fish population would increase. Renfro loved grilled snake meat and his mind was on what would be in the minnow traps as he slowly walked the road towards the pond. He was about a hundred yards from the pond when his brain kicked into gear. His Paw always told him to take note of his surroundings. Well the taking note was a little slow in coming but he finally got around to realizing that one of those bicycle tire tracks did not match anything he and his family had used recently. He ran all the way home and was completely out of breath when he tried to tell his Paw what he had seen. Dudley did not know what to make of the new bicycle track. He wondered if it had been a traveler that had came across them and departed, or whether someone was scouting them out to take what little bit they had to include children and women. He rode his bike over to the next farm to talk it over with one of the old woodsman hunter trackers that had holed up with the 16 of them in the 900 yard deep mine they had all survived in.

Jirco, short for Jericho arrived back with Dudley about 2 hours later. He sent Renfro back to get his friend, Spangler, another long time hunting friend of his. Spangler rode back on his bike about 45 minutes later and He and Jirco followed the new bike track back to where they found the person had initially came out of the woods and walked back to where Josh had gotten his bike. Jirco had gone into the woods where Josh had come out and followed that track back while Spangler stayed on the roadway. They met up at where Josh had hidden his bike in the woods and followed the 2 young ones. Jirco just said as he spit some tobacco juice off into the woods that whoever was following young Winny and Herbert had no idea how to travel around in the woods. The trail almost ended at the blacktop but the 2 canny oldsters decided to have a look-see where Winny and Herbert had been scavenging. In short order they found where Josh had been camped out on the side of the hill watching the small town. Jirco looked at Spangler and asked him if he was thinking what he was thinking. Spangler said yep, this fellow has been looking for survivors and the way he is doing it ain’t a good way to make friends. Jirco said that’s just about the way I see it. Spangler asked his friend Jirco if he had any ideas on what to do about this problem. Jirco said yep I do, but I ain’t got the time to give it any justice because of this small problem I got trying to stay alive and survive on that piece of ground I settled down on. Spangler said well I think it’s about time we had a community gathering again and pool our manpower resources. Jirco just said, yep.

Meanwhile back at the convicts cave, Gadd made a few battle plan changes. Everyone was assigned a walking around target and the tents with occupants were to be hit with 2 40mm grenades as soon as the shooting started. Everyone would lie back for 10 minutes and shoot anyone lying on the ground 2 or 3 more times. Grenades would be thrown into any standing tents and another 5 minutes would pass by before any bodies were approached. He reemphasized that no convict was allowed to reenter the mine. All shooters would break off their designated target to insure no one made it to the mine. The killing went like clockwork. The convicts never had a chance and did not know they had been targeted for assassination.

2 hundred miles away near the large maximum and medium security prisons. The bad boys were finally meeting up with each other. These people had known the same thing their deceased brethren south of them had known and had murdered quite a few good people who had decided to hunker down in the local mines and taken over their supplies and mines.

Chapter 40

Clark’s dreams that night were vivid as Gramps made him learn the old time letters to words phonetic alphabet – able, baker, Charlie, dog and so on – The interesting part of this dream was he remembered the phonetic alphabet and the squad hand signals. Clark remembered asking the question which after he thought about it was dumb. The question was what do you do if it was really dark and you could not see any hand signals? Gramps just looked at him and said all squad members are an independent unit. Ah yes, the question, he continued. Normally you would wait to see what was happening or you would slither up close to the squad leader and ask what the next action to take was going to be, this was really a bad idea in the middle of a fire fight or scouting mission. The squad leader should have informed everyone what was going to take place before the action if he was any good. But, sometimes things happened which were not covered in the briefing. That is where the American soldier had it all over the Japanese soldiers who were not capable of or allowed to have independent thought. Clark woke up and thought about that for a bit before he got out of bed.

Josh decided to leave the 2 young ones he had observed near the grocery store alone for a while. He decided to expand his search for other people to a hundred or more miles in a circle. This would bring josh to Clark’s farm area.

This was a Saturday night and there was going to be a music show in the aluminum building – He asked Devaney if she was going to sing and she said yes I have 3 gospel songs in the 1st 30 minutes of the 90 minute show. He did not ask what she was going to sing he would find out during the show, or if they had a handout on what the program would be.

7 pm Clark had front row seat – he listened to the band as they strummed and the piano ran through some chords. The show started with a rather large man with graying hair and he had to look at the man to make sure it was not the country singer George Jones singing Precious Memories , he got a standing ovation and clark was standing and clapping right along with the rest of the crowd – Devaney sang Amazing Grace and got another standing ovation – Things tapered off for a bit while some instrumentals were played.

Clark took a bathroom break and looked at the program and noticed the lineup – some more gospel – a few 80’s and 90’s popular songs and back to the gospel songs ending with a rendition of The Eastern Gate which had an elderly lady singing the lead in the 2nd half of the song. Clark got misty eyed as the woman finished the song. All he said to devaney as they walked home was outstanding and we should do this at least monthly. She smiled and looked at the stars in the sky.

The next morning Josh was spotted by a watcher going into the city.

Chapter 41

Josh did not know he had been observed and took his time going into various shops in town. He noticed that the places had been scavenged and came to the conclusion there were people in the immediate vicinity. He could not make his mind up on whether to watch for the people who were scavenging or actively seek them out. He chose the latter.

The watcher had reported the lone rider on the motorbike to the Captain. Clark and the Captain decided to send a Hummer into town to talk with this person. Of course Sergeants Lewandowski and Wilson were tagged for the job. They ran into Josh after about a half hour of driving through town. Josh was no dummy and when he saw the armored Hummer with a machine gun pointing at him he immediately stopped the motorbike and held his hands over his head. Wilson said to lewandowski the man got a little bit of sense and looks kind of clean cut. You talk to him Lewandowski and I will keep an eye on him. Josh immediately started the conversation by telling the Sgt that he had been looking for survivors for a long while and that they were the first humans he had seen. He continued on with his made up story and told how he had been a semi prepper and had stayed in a mines in so and so town. Lewandowski told him he would check with the farm people and see if they wanted to take in another person.

Lewandowski told Wilson I do not trust this guy he radiates an evil persona. Wilson just said do ya want me to kill him. Lewandowski thought about it for a minute and said no we will turn him over to the Captain and Clark and let them talk to him. They had made up their mind that they would not let him know where the farm was. After a short radio talk with the Captain it was decided Clark and the captain would meet them in town and have a talk with this fellow that Lewandowski did not trust.

Meanwhile about 180 miles north of the farm several hundred convicts had gotten together and taken over a few small towns. They also raided some national guard Armories and picked up some automatic weapons and a bunch of ammunition. Most of these convicts were medium level prisoners as most of the hard core convicts had not been released and had died in their jail cells. But there were a lot of child molesters and sexual deviants in this group. This group of convicts had decided to travel west for a while before heading south to a warmer climate. This was lucky for the farm inhabitants.

Clark and the captain talked with Josh for about half an hour they then walked off to the side leaving Josh standing by his motor bike. Clark asked the captain of his impression of the bike rider. The Captain said I get bad vibes from this fellow, Clark said me too. Lets check out his story some more – The Captain looked at his notebook said I have his home address and the location of the mine he stayed at. They walked back to Josh and Clark told him the committee would have a meeting in a week or so and if he would meet them back here at this location about noon 10 days from now they would let him know the group decision.

Josh rode back to where he was staying and thought about how it would be nice to slowly strangle that Captain to death and that man Clark and take over their little hidden compound.

The Captain called Lewandowski and Wilson over to him and just said I have a little long range reconnaissance job for you 2 boys. Wilson laughed and said to the Captain you want us to spy on this dude and check his story out. The Captain grinned and said dang Wilson you got it on the 1st try. The 3 laughed as they walked back to their separate Hummers.

Chapter 42

As Josh was driving along the curvy 2 lane blacktop road headed to his house (well it is my house now) his thoughts were on those 2 young people he had seen in that small town. He just said to himself, I have 10 days to kill I may as well kill some young people.

Lewandowski and Wilson were travelling about 75 mph on their quiet camouflaged loaded down motor bikes on the same road Josh had left on. About 2 hours later Wilson caught a movement on the road far ahead. It was Josh and his motor bike topping a small rise on the road before dipping down to another straight and level stretch of road. They both stopped and had a short talk on how they were going to proceed. Wilson told the other Sgt that maybe they should wait till dark before continuing. Lewandowski just said what if he lied about where he lived. Wilson said OK but it will be hard for us to keep him in view without us being seen if he looks thru that small mounted rear view mirror he has mounted on the handle bar. Wilson looked at the road map and saw they were about 15 miles from the town Josh had told the Captain he lived. Lewandowski told Wilson they should try to keep him in view till they hit the outskirts of the town. They did just that but Josh made a left hand turn onto another road heading away from the town instead of heading into the small town. Instead of following him they went to the address he had given the Captain.

Josh had decided to take a shower and rest for the remainder of the day.

Wilson found the street that Josh said he lived on and looked for the house address on the houses. Finding the address that Josh had told the Captain he lived at they entered the house through a side window and began a slow search of the place. They did not comment on the picture of Josh and a woman on the mantle. They just about quit searching when they found his drivers license in the chest of drawers. Lewandowski just kept on searching until he found a hand written love letter dated 10 years ago in the bottom under the velvet of a jewelry case. He stored the letter in a large brown envelope and put it in his pack. They left the house in search of the mine he said he had stayed in. They made a wrong turn and ended up in the small town that Josh had seen the 2 young people. Stopping to pore over the map someone said.

Boys I think you should put your hands in the air. Jirco and Spangler approached the 2 men in military fatigues. Jirco whispered to Spangler I don’t think these are the people who followed young Winny and Herbert on a bicycle. They look kind of lost the way they are poring over that map.

Jirco and Spangler had been going to an over watch keeping an eye on the place the unknown person had watched the town when Wilson and Lewandowski stopped in the middle of the road. They had stealthily came down the mountain behind the 2 soldiers and as easy as 1 2 3 captured them.

Wilson said softly to Lewandowski, I think we are in deep brown stuff here – all Lewandowski said is yep.

Jirco asked them what ya’ll boys doing out here in the country. Lewandowski keeping his hands over his head slowly turned to look at the questioner. What he saw was an older rough shaven kind of medium hair length fellow and another older person who looked just about the same. The men had on old Levi trousers, green checkered wool button up shirts with big front flap pockets, green camo ball caps, brown hunting boots and most important of all one had a semi auto shotgun aimed at his mid section and the other had what he thought was a 30-30 lever action rifle aimed in his general direction. Lewandowski did not sense any bad vibes from these 2 men – All he sensed was curiosity. He decided the truth would be better than trying to make up a lie on the spot. He also believed either one of these men would sense a lie immediately.

Chapter 43

Back at the farm Clark dealt with mundane day to day activities. Captain Gadd approached him and Devaney where the 2 were sitting outside at a picnic table. Clark saw the captain had something on his mind and asked him to sit down. Gadd as usual came right to the point. The place is not big enough for a large expansion. Clark said yes I know that and I have been thinking how to get some power to that valley 6 miles down the road in that valley. He continued by saying I am pretty sure we can get natural gas because one of our farm members has already told me about the gas wells up the road a ways. Gadd said there must be thousands of those natural gas generators strung out through the state that pumps the gas out of the well heads. Clark said you may have hit on a major solution to powering and heating a new mobile home community. Clark went back inside and got his to do list for the community and logged in Gadd’s idea.

Clark was ruminating some ideas over in his head and asked the Captain about some really long range reconnaissance trips. He said we need some different cow and bull breeding stock. We have been about 300 miles away scrounging wood/coal stoves but I believe we will have to go further afield for live stock. We have 5 or 600 new mobile homes within a hundred miles we can tow here and set up. Loop creek runs right by that valley so water will not be a problem. Let’s set up a planning commission the next meeting we have for this big project. There is no way we can get the city up and running. Sewage would be a major problem with no maintenance crew to keep the system in running order. After that little chat Clark and Gadd talked about moving off into the wilderness to live where life was much simpler.

Lewandowski started talking about the farm he and Wilson had come from and the fellow they had met. Jirco told him to put his hands down and they all sat down on the hard road for a chat. After hearing Lewandowski out Jirco told the 2 soldiers about the person who had staked out an overlook position and followed the 2 children back to their house.

2 hours later Lewandowski invited Jirco and his community to come meet Clark and the people at the farm. Jirco said that would be nice but we have no means of transportation. Wilson chimed in and said they would deliver a school bus to their location and as many people as wanted to come could visit the farm. Jirco and Spangler shook hands with the 2 soldiers and set up some meet dates right where they stood. As Wilson and lewandowski were leaving, Jirco said we are going to keep a watch here for a while and if I was you I would keep an eye on that person you followed here.

Lewandowski told Wilson I think we should watch that road that that fellow drove off on. Wilson said gee boss that is a brilliant idea, Lewandowski smacked him on the top of the head as they laughed while starting the motor bikes up.

They saw the sign on the road that said Beaver maximum security correctional facility 9 miles. They eyeballed each other when they read that sign. They found a house about 400 yards back from the turn off and decided this would be a good camp and place to observe the exiting road. Studying the map this was the only paved road leading to the correctional facility – So for all practical purposes they had the man bottled up unless he went on a hiking trip over the mountains. They looked around the town and found a Coleman camp stove and a half gallon of Coleman fuel. That tickled both of them as they set up the watch.

[Lbox88]

Chapter 44

The gathered prisoners a few hundred miles north of the farm decided not to kill all the townspeople. They decided to do something worse. The sexual deviants took all the young boys and girls and left the surviving sheeple parents in a state of dismay. Some of those parents were not sheeple and that was a big mistake on the part of the convicts.

The convicts had a convoy of busses, tractor trailers and diesel pick ups and were on their way in a kind of south west direction. The leaders of the group had decided to go south after travelling a hundred or so miles where they would access a south heading 4 lane interstate. The crazed sex deviants now under no civilized control had their way with the young children seriously damaging the young people’s mental status, not to mention the young people’s bodies.

Meanwhile Lewandowski and Wilson were on 4 or 6 hour shifts, whatever pleased them during their watch of the road.

Josh had changed his mind about looking for those 2 young kids and decided to get drunk and watch porn movies this day. After a huge breakfast he started drinking whiskey and coke. By 2pm he had drank himself into a stupor and passed out.

Jirco and Spangler changed their surveillance position to an abandoned shack 300 yards on the road before the mountain side over watch area. They decided to be more comfortable. They cleaned the shack up and checked it thoroughly for snakes. Since the community had pitched in and freed up their daytime work chores this allowed them or one of them to maintain a dawn to dusk observation of the area Josh had set up a camp.

Wilson asked Lewandowski how long we gonna watch for this dude. Lewandowski just said about 4 or 5 more days before we head home. Wilson nodded in compliance and told Lewandowski he was going to look for a sun bag shower or something to make one so they could clean themselves up. Wilson decided to just look for a couple of buckets a hammer and some large nails to punch some holes in the bucket bottom and pour a few gallons of heated up water into the holed bucket.

215 pm Wilson woke up with 30 or so mosquito bites on his hands and face. He cussed for 3 or 4 minutes, heated up some water and took a shower. He made another trip to empty houses, found some fly spray and cut out 3 window screens to replace the missing ones in the house they were staying in. After installing the window screens and thoroughly spraying the house they were in, they waited outside for an hour to let the fly/mosquito spray smell dissipate. He and Lewandowski started talking and were wondering how the man had gotten a bicycle to Jirco’s location. Lewandowski said he probably has a truck and carries it in the back until he gets close to an area he wants to observe. Wilson said that is not a bad idea for us to use sometimes. They both made a note of that idea for a future tactical reconnaissance

Chapter 45

Clark and Devaney were talking with several people in the aluminum building about a wide variety of topics. One important subject was how many people were left alive in the world and the USA. One of the mathematicians said the last broadcast he had heard from one of the CDC operations was 94% fatality rate without sheltering. His rough and he emphasized the word rough estimates were 50% of sheltered people were alive after 11 months. That was with a supposition they were in a deep mines or in a military type shelter with supplies for 1 year or more. The USA now had a population of 100,000 plus or minus 25 thousand. His calculations for the rest of the world’s 6 billion people were bleaker. His rough guess was 25% of the 500 million were alive. He stated one more time that 25% was probably too high. And revised that downward to 10%. So he said there are about 50 million people left alive in the world and roughly 100,000 here in the USA. His guess was actually a little bit high. There were 14 million people left alive in the world and 77000 in the continental USA. This was almost an ELE (extinction level event). What really made the situation worse was 10 or more per cent of the survivors were people who should not be breathing air ie., surviving prisoners, worthless bums and criminals. That ended the discussion with those chilling facts.

The convoy of prisoners was travelling about 45 mph around a mountain road when 2 of the sex deviants got into a fight over a 6 year old blonde headed boy. They started shooting at each other and bullets were flying all over the bus. One of the bullets hit the bus driver in the back of the neck instantly killing him. The bus clipped the back of the bus in front causing the rear end of that bus to drift or skid to the left which resulted in that bus flipping over the guard rail followed by the bus with the dead driver. It was 900 feet almost straight down. 49 children and 35 convicts died in the 2 busses. This was a major tragedy to lose so many young people who would reproduce to get the nation started again.

The rest of the prisoner convoy stopped and looked down at the flaming wreckage over 200 yards below. The 6 leaders of the convoy, these were the biggest and baddest of the bunch made a special trip to the rest of the busses and warned every prisoner riding on them. They just told the occupants they better hope they were dead after another crash because if they weren’t they soon would be. There were no more bus crashes.

Wilson hollered at lewandowski to wake up. The dull gleaming of the sun that had not yet crested the mountains in the east indicating it was dawn. Wilson said you ain’t gonna believe what I just saw. Lewandowski had lit the Coleman stove and was rapidly boiling some water for hobo coffee. He said OK, tell me what you saw. I just saw our man on his motorbike with a bicycle on one of those tow along carriers. Lewandowski said I have no idea what you are talking about. Wilson said Ok I will make this simple for an uneducated Sgt – the front tire of the bi cycle was up on the rear of the motor bike and the rear wheel of the bicycle was on the pavement. Ah, said Lewandowski, so that is how he is moving his bicycle around. Wilson patted himself outrageously on the back and beamed. Lewandowski threw the plastic jug containing powdered milk at him hitting Wilson in the chest and said well we know where he is going so there is no great rush to follow him. Let’s drink a cup of coffee and tag along. Wilson was rubbing his chest acting like he had been severely injured. Lewandowski said a few cuss words to him and they both laughed.

Chapter 46

Back in the city the young children had been taken from. There were 7 ex military people who had children taken from them. They were sitting at an empty McDonalds making plans to retrieve their kids. They did not know that the children belonging to 4 of them had perished in the bus crashes. One of them was ex Army Sgt Frank Carelli. He had been dismissed from the Army Sniper School because of his non existent skills in cover and concealment. But he sure could shoot all manner of firearms and was exceptional in distance shooting with the military sniper rifle. Of the other six 2 were more than adequate shooters with a rifle and the other 4 could hold their own at a hundred yards with an M-16 or 223 caliber type rifle.

It took the 7 ex military members 2 days to gather up equipment, firearms and supplies. The convicts had not taken all the military hardware and firepower from the National Guard armories. Ex – Sgt Carelli found 2 each brand new day/night scoped 308 and 50 caliber sniper rifles. It took him 2 hours to zero the guns in. The rest of the ex military members were armed with M4’s with grenade launchers, M1A rifles and various pistols. They loaded two 6 passenger diesel pickups and towed a 250 gallon diesel fuel tank on the trailing truck and the lead truck had their supplies on a canvas covered 6 foot tow-a-long. The pickup trucks had the cross bed 100 gallon tanks installed. They left at daybreak on the 3rd day.

Jirco had too much to do to accompany Spangler on this days stakeout of Josh’s over watch area. Spangler arrived a few minutes before daylight and settled down in a rocking chair to drink his coffee. His shotgun loaded with double 00 buck leaning against the wall within hands reach. Finishing a cup of coffee he loaded his mouth with a handful of chewing tobacco and used the open window to spit out.

Josh parked about a half mile before he reached Spangler’s position, removed the bicycle and hid his motorbike behind a clump of evergreen bushes slung his day pack on his back and casually rode to where he had set up his watch postion.

Spangler almost swallowed his tobacco as Josh rode by on the hardroad. It startled him so much that the bicycle man showed up that his first shot at Josh missed him completely. Spangler settled down for his second shot but Josh was just about out of range. One of the 32 caliber pellets struck Josh in his right buttock but penetrated only a half inch.

Josh almost had a heart attack when the 1st stream of pellets flew past his head followed by the blast of the shotgun. The impact of the bullet in his right butt cheek hurt like the ****ens. He furiously peddled on by passing his set up on the mountainside. He had no idea who had shot him and was not going to stick around to find out. Rounding the bend out of sight of the shooter Josh stopped his bike and hid it 15 or so feet in the bushes on the side of the road. He took to the woods on foot heading back to his motor bike. Travelling on the back side of the mountain he was going to circle and come out close to where his motor bike was. He stopped about 800 yards away and stuck a wad of T-Shirt into the now seriously hurting and bleeding hole. Stopping the bleeding he continued at a fast paced half-trot. He was really scared but was still thinking rationally.

Lewandowski and Wilson arrived just as Spangler was pulling his bike out from behind the shack. They had a hurried conversation. No one knew whether the bicycle riding man was armed so Wilson and Lewandowski went into combat mode. They rode up to the curve and dismounted. They both knew that a wounded person was a dangerous opponent and they had no idea of how serious the mans wounds were. They leapfrogged each other off the road in the woods on the opposite side from where Josh had hid his bicycle.

While Lewandowski, Wilson and Spangler were doing a slow search for Josh, Josh made it to his motor bike and headed back to his house vowing never to come near this place again unless he was in a tank.

2 hours later the 3 searchers made it to the first occupied house where people were in the yard. It was young Winny and Herbert and they told Spangler that no one had ridden by the house on a bicycle.

Lewandowski and Wilson told Spangler they thought the man had escaped through the woods and made it back to where he had hidden his motor bike but that they had a real good idea of where he may be hiding out. Spangler asked the 2 Sergeants if they needed his help. Wilson told him that they thought they could handle it from here.

Josh made it back to his house and using a mirror and a pair of tweezers pulled the lead ball out of his body. He let it bleed for a minute before he used some peroxide and using a large bandaid with some gauze on it put a patch on it. He did not think it was safe to stay in this place any longer and made plans to leave tomorrow night or the next night after his wound scabbed over.

Chapter 48

there was no chapter 47

Ex Army Sgt Carelli saw the fresh skid marks on the road and the flattened guard rail. On a hunch he radioed back to the trailing vehicle he wanted to stop to check out the guard rail. The 2 pickups drove several hundred yards before finding a place to turn around. All seven of the ex military people saw the blackened school busses below. Using binoculars they saw some of the small objects which were obviously young children. 5 of them wanted to climb down and look. Sgt Carelli vetoed that idea; he just told them if it were any of their children they would bury them on the way back because there was nothing any of them could do about it right this minute. And if they did find it was one their own they would not be of any help to the remainder because of their grief. He added let’s just hope and act like none of our children were on those busses. They continued on their trek.

Lewandowski and Wilson were back at the house and eating a bowl of some kind of goulash that Wilson had cooked on the Coleman stove. Wilson just continued to look at Lewandowski. Lewandowski finally got tired of Wilson staring t him and asked him what was on his mind. Wilson just said what’s the plan boss man?

Lewandowski told him I ain’t made one up yet I am still thinking about what to do.

Lewandowski asked Wilson if he had any ideas and Wilson grinned at him and said I have a bunch of em.

Lewandowski said well spit em out and let’s see if any of em are any good.

Well Wilson continued, one idea has us walking down that road after dark using our night vision and the other has us riding a bicycle down that road after dark using our night vision.

Lewandowski said getting lazy are ya?

Wilson said nope but if I remember correctly that sign said 9 miles to that prison and I ain’t really in the mood for a 9 mile hike in the dark.

Good thinking Lewandowski said. Let’s round up a couple of bicycles. They both hit the neighborhood looking for functional bicycles.

Josh again changed his mind about leaving after changing the big band aid on his butt. He saw there was no fresh blood so he readied his equipment to leave as soon as it got dark. He left the bicycle and put his motorbike up in the back of the truck and a large pillow to sit on. He would take one more shower and change his band aid again before leaving. He looked at all the fuel he had amassed and said well that’s the way it goes sometimes. He looked at his maps and decided to travel in an easterly direction this time and would not stop until he had made 2 highway changes and traveled at least a 150 miles. He lay down to take a nap.

Wilson asked Lewandowski about dark how they were going to do this search. Lewandowski said I am going to flip a coin on this one. Heads we go all the way to the prison before we start searching and tails we search all the way to the prison. It was heads. It was full dark at 730pm. They put on their night vision and pedaled along the blacktop road towards the prison.

830pm Josh woke up turned the lights on and took a shower and again changed his band aid.

Lewandowski and Wilson pedaled by the turn-off to where Josh was staying at 805pm.

Josh got into the truck at 855pm and drove out to the connecting highway and departed the area.

930pm Wilson and Lewandowski started their methodical search of the prison.

Josh had escaped again.

Sgt Carelli and his 6 cohorts caught sight of the prisoner convoy just at dark the 2nd day.

Chapter 49

Lewandowski and Wilson arrived back at the empty house Josh had been staying in about 2am. They had determined no one was living in the prison because of the death stench; the other 4 houses they found had been deserted so long one look at the dust on the floors showed no one had been there for many a month. Now this house had been lived in and recently- the bathtub was still wet and the towel hanging on the towel rack was damp. The bicycle was found outside leaning against the back of the house and there was no sign of the motorbike. They decided the fellow had flown the coop while they were searching the prison. As they rode the bikes back to the house they had been staying in they decided it could have gone either way on the coin toss. No use crying over spilled milk was the thought they both had.

The next day they rode back to where Winny and Herbert lived. A runner was sent to fetch Spangler and Jirco. Everyone was told of the search and the empty house they had found. Spangler had told everyone the fellow would not be back because he had shot him and the way he had ran through the woods escaping them was indicator enough the man would not show his face in this territory again.

Sgt Carelli and the 6 pulled off onto a dirt side road and stopped. He and his men knew they could not take out 600 or so armed prisoners. But, they could do some terrible harassment. They had not the slightest inclination to play Ninja and sneak into an armed camp with who knew how many guards watching the place. They also knew who the leaders of this dangerous outfit were. That was going to be the object of their night time harassing and killing mission. The 2 tow-a-long trailers were disconnected from the trucks, tanks topped off, extra supplies placed in the beds of the pick-ups and then the 2 trailers were hidden in the brush to be picked up at a later date if they had to make a run for it in the trucks. The 2 worst shooters were placed about 40 yards from the pick-ups as guards and the other 5 went on a night time sniping and killing mission. The FRS radios were monitored for an hour to make sure no one was using the channel they were going to use. Freshly charged batteries and ear phones were put in each radio. Weapons, ammo and night vision were checked. They were off for a quick scout mission and then the fireworks would begin.

Carelli could not believe what he saw from a rocky ridge. The convoy was stretched out about 800 yards on a flat stretch of road with no cover on either side. There was a tractor trailer parked in the rear with what Carelli assumed were supplies. He knew the prisoners were not dumb enough to leave all the children unguarded in a tractor trailer at the end of the column. A generator was running in the bed of a truck about in the center of the convoy and lights were strung out lighting up 2 food processing vehicles where lawn chairs had been placed out for the people to eat. He got real sick in the next few minutes. About 70 or so children were led off the busses and marched by the food vehicles where they were handed a beverage or can of something and a small box of something then they were marched single file back to the 2 busses they had been taken from. He wondered why they did not run but after looking the terrain over there was no place for them to run to.

Carelli called over 4 of the ex military members and had them lay down facing him where he had already lain down. He closed his eyes for a moment and said there is no way we can go in and rescue those children. Hopefully the convicts will be more worried about saving their own butts then they will the children. The vehicles behind the busses and the ones in front of the busses must be destroyed and all the tires shot off the busses. We must leave a way for most or a lot of the convicts to escape without the children. I want 2 or more 40mm grenades put in the cab or hood of each vehicle behind and in front of the busses and then I want you 4 to open up on the bus tires this side only. We need to get one of the truck guards out here. He will have to stay to the rear of the busses and fire on anyone running towards them. We will need to put a lot of ammo downrange on this one – do not try to save any. The 2 pickups are loaded down with ammo and I do believe we brought more then enough right here with us to do this job. I am going to try and shoot all 6 of the leaders while you are doing the other job.

An hour later one of the truck guards showed up carrying a back pack full of M-16 fully loaded magazines. He was briefed and sent back behind the busses on the other side about 150 yards out and back on the mostly flat area with a small bunch of brushy concealment.

[Lbox88]

Chapter 50

Lewandowski told Jirco that either he or Wilson would be back in 2 days in a bus to bring who ever wanted to come and check out the farm and maybe relocate there after some mobile homes were set up.

After the committee rubber stamped the idea of building a town on the 6 mile flat area running by Loup Creek, Clark said OK let’s do it. Several more planning committees were set up and plans were being drawn up. Clark figured in about a week the sewage, natural gas lines and water systems would be started on.

Josh’s butt started hurting about 3 hours later and he could not stand the pain so he pulled over and lay face down across the bench seat to give himself some relief. He fell asleep and did not wake up till the sun was midway up in the sky. This scared him so bad he leaped out of the truck and really did a lot of damage to his wound by breaking it open where it started to bleed again.

Sgt Carelli asked if everyone was in position he got back a one word response instead of a click – 2 through 6 – He told everyone to stand by he was going to use his suppressed 308 sniper rifle to take out 3 of the leaders. The other 3 were behind the corner of the food vehicle and he did not have as good of a shot as he did the 3 he could see. Hopefully after he shot those 3 and the fireworks began the other 3 would rush over to check on their 3 fallen comrades and that was exactly the way it went down. He grinned as the 2nd trio were bent over the fallen ones when the carrumph of the 40mm grenades detonating in the tractor trailers and on the hoods. 2 of them had that deer in the headlight look as he shot them. After he had killed the 6 leaders he started to kill anyone near the busses. He heard the chatter of the M-16 on the far side of the busses and hopefully that would force any of the convicts to escape forward. The plan was working flawlessly until some idiot of a prisoner opened up with a 50 on one of the Hummers spraying everywhere. Fortunately there were several vehicles between the Hummer and the busses. Carelli asked #2 if he could put a 40mm on that Hummer and shortly the Hummer’s 50 caliber went silent. He shot at every vehicle that left the convoy until they were out of range.

He spoke again into the radio #3 – 4 –and 5 check the bodies. #2 and 6 change the 3 tires on this side of the last bus using the good tires from the 1st bus. #7 drive one pickup and park it behind the tractor trailer and after you get that done go into each bus and calm the kids down. He spoke one more time into the radio telling #3 and 4 to assist #7 after all the bodies were checked. #5 after the body check climb up onto the last trailer and keep an over watch.

Carelli gave the fleeing convicts 3 or 4 hours tops to get their nerve back and return with a vengeance. He figured 1 hour with him helping to change the 3 tires and another 45 minutes to throw enough food and water bottles out of those food trailers to keep the kids fed for 2 days. They were lucky the 1st bus had 2 breaker bars for the oversize 4 prong tire lug wrench and the tires were changed in 40 minutes. The children were put to work while the tires were being changed they each made 4 trips to the food vehicles and carried enough food and drinks for themselves for at least 2 days. #5 and #6 went back and got the trailers and the other pickup. Using 2 tow-straps and one of the Hummers remaining unscathed the last tractor trailer was pulled over completely blocking the road and the other school bus was turned over further complicating road travel. #2 set nine 40mm IED traps to make sure the convicts would lose more time and people before and/or if they took up the chase. They stopped on a sharp curve 7 miles from where they rescued the kids and set up an IED (improvised explosive device) using black thread pulled tight across the roadway to activate the grenades against any fast following vehicle.

25 miles further on Carelli helped pull 2 abandoned cars into the middle of the road on the far side of a hair pin curve. #2 and #3 set up an over watch 75 yards away and were instructed to stay there for 6 hours and if no one showed up to booby trap the 2 vehicles to further impede any following convicts. They were told that all of them would meet where the busses had run over the hill. By this time everyone knew whose children were dead and grief rode heavily on the affected fathers. Since #2 and #3 were on top of a hill they kept in touch with Carelli for 20 some miles until the intervening mountains blocked the radio signal.

Sgt Carelli had found one of his 2 boys, a 6 year old who had that 1000 yard stare. He did not do anything but cry internally because he had not protected the boy from this great calamity. He swore vengeance against those fools who had done this to his kid. A further check of the bus showed a stack of toilet paper – well at least the convicts had done something decent. The bus still stank from clothes that had been messed in because the busses had not stopped often enough to relieve the children. He was going to stop at a creek about 40 miles from here and help the little ones clean their clothes and bodies. He really did not want to help in that endeavor because he knew the children had all been abused severely.

Josh finally got the bleeding stopped and a new band aid applied. What he did not know was some dirty thread strands of his Levis had been deposited deep in the wound along with a few specks of lead.

Chapter 51

The convicts that had been ambushed by Carelli and crew did stop about 10 miles away. They did a headcount and found that 53 of their brethren were no longer with them. A few of the convicts were capable of taking the reins of leadership and a vote by all of them settled that. They discussed going back to check on picking up some of the lost supplies and that resulted in a major scream fest. Finally after they slept for a few hours with guards out; dawn crept up slowly lighting the landscape and another meeting was held. 50 were sent back and the others would watch from a safe distance.

The 50 convicts noticed quickly the only thing missing was one bus. They signaled for the others to approach and some salvaging could commence. 5 of them opened the doors to the last tractor trailer and eight 40mm grenades exploded killing all of the clustered up convicts. 4 more grenades also exploded amongst the supplies setting off a 5 gallon can of fuel which resulted in the total loss of the supplies in that tractor trailer. The convicts got smart then and searched under the vehicles and raised the vehicle hoods up from behind using some rope. They found one more booby trap and #2 figured they would find that one unless they opened the door on that vehicle first. The remaining grenades were cleverly hidden and some were on a delay. #2 had used some delay fuses from one of the armories and 4 more convicts were killed when 4 of them got in the Hummer they had used to pull the trailer and bus over. The Hummer had been driven into a guard rail and the doors were left open. That vehicle was searched by 3 or 4 of the convicts but the 6 grenades under the driver’s seat were one of the booby traps that had been set on a 30 minute pressure delay fuse. The 4 had almost pulled the bus out of the roadway before the grenades detonated. This caused a massive amount of confusion amongst the convicts and most of them headed back towards the vehicles they had escaped in. They decided it was not worth losing any more people to booby traps. They all decided they could obtain more supplies in another town. They did not know that some very angry people would take up the chase for them in the near future. This would not bode well for the convicts.

When Josh changed his band aid later on that afternoon he saw a little pus on it. He did not think too much of it at that time mainly because he did not have a mirror handy. Tomorrow morning he would take the door mirror off of an abandoned tractor trailer to look at his butt.

Sgt Carelli and the other 6 combat veterans had tears in their eyes as the children sat down in the 6 or so inch deep creek to clean themselves. The men had several bars of soap in their kits and they used them to wash the soiled clothes of the kids. It was a warm, somewhat breezy, sunny day and after a lunch and 2 hours of the clothes drying on top of the bus the children put their clothes back on and the trip commenced. There was a new rule if any of the kids had to use the toilet the bus was stopped and the child was accommodated.

Sgt Wilson drove the bus to pick up Jirco, Spangler and however many others wanted to check the farm out.

Chapter 52

The next morning Josh woke up changed his band aid and saw some more pus but decided he would wait till tonight before checking it with a mirror. He forgot to get the mirror in his rush to further remove himself from the area he had been shot. The not checking of the wound with a mirror was a big mistake on Josh’s part. The MRSA bacteria woke up slowly in the moist wound channel. They snatched onto the leaking blood cells and travelled back into the small blood vessels that were leaking. This was prime growing medium for the bacteria. They exploded into life reproducing rapidly and flowing with the blood back to its originating points which was the heart and lungs.

The bus driven by Sgt Carelli drove down the street of their home town. Each kid was escorted to their parent or parents. There was one psychiatric nurse, 2 dentists and one last school year medical Dr in this large group of people. It would take a lot of praying and community get together to hopefully repair some of these young minds and bodies. Sgt Carelli would be one of the community leaders. He wanted to go after the escaping convicts but he decided he would stay with his surviving son and spend every day with him till hopefully he got better. And when the boy got better firearms training would be put on the agenda.

Jirco and Spangler did not even have to see where they were going to live before they told Sgt Wilson they were staying until they got thrown out. The rest of the people from Jirco’s small mountain town group also decided to stay when they saw this place had electricity and running water. But before they were allowed to stay each person was interviewed and surprisingly the only people the interviewers did not want to accept were Jirco and Spangler. Clark after talking to Wilson and Lewandowski vetoed that decision immediately.

Clark liked the grizzly old fellows and assigned them to Wilson and Lewandowski. The 2 sergeants were pleased with the talented help they were getting.

Over the next 2 weeks trailers were towed to the farm and set up. Jirco and Spangler almost decided to stay in one trailer but they knew they would be at each others throats if they had to stay in close proximity in a home 24/7 so they opted to take a smaller 2 bedroom unit and hopefully they would find an older woman to mate with later on.

The construction at Loup Creek was coming on nicely 1000 300 foot by 300 foot trailer lots were hooked into sewage, natural gas and water. The foot ball field sized lots were determined to be adequate for pole barns for (again that word hopefully) horses. A 1 and a half mile by 6 mile wide section was set aside for the community farm and 2 miles by 6 miles was set aside over the 8 foot deep leach and sewage field for the grains. Another decision was made by the entire community – only edible fruit trees would be allowed to be planted on the trailer lots not to exceed 4 trees. Apples, peach, cherry, nut and pear trees were planted 30 feet apart and 30 feet from Loup Creek for 4 miles. They left a 2 mile section open for exotic fruiting trees later on. On the other side of the acreage across from the fruit trees – blackberries and raspberries were planted for 2 miles. They knew they would have to make pathways through the briary brambles when the plants were established. Clark really liked the planning for this perfect small town they were working on. Now all they needed were some good people. Clark figured they would find them during their search for livestock.

Great minds must think alike Carelli thought as he saw the 2 Hummers coming into town – one with a 250 gallon diesel tow-along and one with a 6 foot tow-along for supplies. The only 2 differences on these 2 Hummers was the 1st one had a 10 foot tall 3 or 4 foot wide white flag stuck up in the air attached to the front bumper and behind the fuel hauler and tow-along there were 2 of those really small 2 man metal tow campers to sleep in. Well that beats setting a tent up in the rain or snow Carelli thought.

Chapter 53

Clark was sitting in a meeting and listening to the solutions on where to go to get 8 or 10 more miles of 4 inch schedule 40 pipe. The argument was over whether to override the only person who knew how to make the sewage system work or taking a chance on an amateur decision on how it should be done. Clark himself was inclined to go along with the amateur decision until he heard the former mine superintendent who used to be a foreman for the construction on much of the cities sewage. The problem was everyone but the expert wanted to run the bath water and sink water into the sewage system to the septic tanks. He just said who is gonna dig all that overflow excrement from the clogged pipes in the leach field in 2 or 3 years. That stopped everyone. He said if you do it my way and we have all 1000 trailers filled up with people the 2 rhino coated concrete 10000 gallon septic tanks will fill up in 100 years; and if the tanks are still good and not cracked or leaking they can be pumped or shoveled out. If we do it your way you all can start digging in 2 or 3 years. Clark asked the obvious question where are you going to put all the bath and sink water. The man said that is why we need 8 or 10 more miles of schedule 40 four inch pipes. He pointed with a pointer at a location on the map about a half mile from Loup Creek and said right here is where the water is going. I want to dig out two 200 yard by 200 yard and 15 feet deep holes slanted towards Loup Creek and fill them first with gravel and then sand and then more gravel and he pointed again down at the end towards Loup creek. I will put a 36 inch drain pipe at the end to let the filtered water run into the creek. Somebody else asked the next obvious question – What happens when the holes fill up with water and rain storms.

He looked exasperated and just said because the pipe is below the bottom layer of sand and will have 2 feet of gravel on the pipe to insure a constant flow from the holes and no the pipes will not get clogged up with gravel or sand because there will be a smaller similar water chute there in front of the 36 inch drainage pipe. There will be a hole for each 500 trailers and I have already calculated it out. I have built in a 500% fudge factor so no matter how much it rains or how many bath tubs are emptied even if they are all emptied at the same time during a rainstorm the water will not overflow the holes. That is the best I can do towards cleaning our water up and sending it back into the creek. We do not have the infrastructure or electricity to use if we did build something like the cities use and we don’t have the chemicals or activated charcoal to super clean or strain the water. The design incorporates the drainage ditches beside the proposed gravel or black top roads and I have factored that drainage water in also. Once a week as you can see on my plan we will run 300 or so gallons of water here at the beginning of the sewage system to wash any solids that are not carried to the septic tanks. And yes there are cleanouts every 75 yards. The amount of water we take from the upper part of Loup Creek should just about be the same amount we put back into the creek minus the water going into the septic tanks from the toilets. This overflow of water coming from the septic tanks to the leach field will eventually percolate through the earth where it will be cleaned and then dumped back into the ground water and eventually make its way to the creek.

The man stood up and said bacteria will eventually grow in the sand and eat all the grease and filter out the soap before it gets a chance to get to the creek. We may have to dig out the sand and gravel in 40 or 50 years and put new sand in. But I can assure you one thing it will work. One more thing I have to clarify because no one has asked about it – Where the 36 inch pipe drains into the hole. There will be a 24 foot long, 8 foot wide and 8 foot tall 1 inch holed section of 5/8 inch road way sheets of cast iron over the gravel and sand. This will be the chute that the water runs into. This will be covered with 24 to 30 inches of large gravel. And if you will look at the plans you will see there is a 36 inch section of 8 foot tall pipe welded to the top of the cast iron as an air intake. I will take a minute to explain this. If the water on top of the gravel freezes over to a depth of 4 to 6 inches this air way pipe will allow the bottom section under the frozen section to drain out. Clark immediately saw what he was talking about. There would be no vacuum created under the ice to stop the flow of water. This guy is a pretty smart man thought Clark.

Clark said OK lets do it the way, he looked at the nametag on the man, Mr. Cavalierio has it designed. Clark thought when the man said 2 or 3 years to dig all that excrement up everyone got the point. Clark did not think he would be around to dig it up a hundred years from now.

The next meeting also involved water. The people were talking about water runoff from the trailer roofs. Clark just looked at Mr. Cavalierio and nodded to him. He said this one is not rocket science. There are several solutions to this – run it to your garden through an underground pipe, dig a 2 foot hole and fill it with gravel, get a barrel with a hose or pipe running off the barrel and let it water your garden, get one of those soaker hoses that expand to 10 or so feet and let it water the yard. Clark decided he had had enough meetings for the day. He went home to see what Devaney was doing.

Josh woke up with a raging fever. He checked his band aid and it was completely covered in pus. He started to get a little worried. He stopped and broke a mirror off an abandoned vehicle and looked. He panicked the entire right cheek of his butt had red streaks running up and down his backside, halfway to his knee joint and up to his kidneys. He just said I shudda looked yesterday. Going through his supplies he found the old mans anti-biotics. One was Amoxicillin and the other was Keflex. He knew Keflex was for bacterial infection so he gulped down 2 of the 500mg tablets. He felt so bad he had to lie down; he made sure he had the pills with him and a gallon or so of water. He was not hungry. The MRSA bacteria he had raging through his body were immune to Keflex. Little sacs of fluid full of bacteria were forming on the sides and bottom of his lungs. Some of the bacteria had managed to attach themselves to the walls of his heart. Bactereremia had set in. Things were not looking good for Josh.

Sgt Carelli walked up to the stopped Hummers and started a conversation with Jirco.