Clark Stories

[Lbox88]

Chapter 54

Clark drove over to the 6 mile by 6 mile flat section of land by Loup Creek where the construction was being done. He just said to himself a lot of work can be done with 45 to 50 people using heavy equipment. He was sitting on the highway just watching like any person would where construction was going on. He noticed that everything had stopped and all the people were gathered around the foreman. He decided to see what the work stoppage was about. As he walked up he heard Mr. Cavalierio say this will add a lot of work to this project and the committee will have to approve it. He continued by saying I think it is a good idea but we need to talk to an electrical engineer or someone who has done this before.

Clark asked him what the idea was and the foreman said someone came up with the idea since the trenches are open now why don’t we add some 4 or 6 gauge electrical wires, some telephone line, fiber optic cable and regular TV cable in schedule 40 pipe. The foreman said it is not a bad idea and if we ever get back to normal times the wire would be there and it would be a simple thing to hook each trailer up. Clark said how much time it will add to the job. The foreman pulled out his solar powered calculator and went to his truck. He did some figuring and wrote some numbers down in a spiral notebook. He scratched his head and said if we can get the pipe and wire. 3 days is a pretty good estimate if we add 10 more people to just that job. Clark said I think it is a great idea and we don’t need the committee to make that decision. Continue with the work but leave the trenches open and we can work on it. The foreman pulled Clark over and said the 4 or 6 gauge wire is a brilliant idea – it won’t run any of the trailers with the power we now have but we can put some low wattage florescent street lights up and run them off a few solar panels and batteries. Clark thought about that and said yes it is a great idea and the community can have outdoor night time festivities.

Josh woke up with a raging fever and a cough that sounded like a person with wet whooping cough. I think I have pneumonia he thought to himself. He took 2 more Keflex pills and forced himself out of the truck to look through the supplies for the Amoxicillin. He was so cold and shaking so hard he spilled all the pills on the ground and it took him 10 minutes to pick them up. He took 2 of them also. Amazingly this batch of bacteria was susceptible to the Amoxicillin, but it was too late. Both lungs were almost filled with fluid and the bacteria had totally surrounded and invasively penetrated the heart sac. The amoxicillin did keep him alive and suffering for about 18 more hours. He could not stop coughing nor could he get warm, his shivering at times was most violent. He tried to drink some water to quench the burning in his stomach that his body was screaming for. He also tried to take more pills but shook so much he spilled them all on the truck floor. The gallon jug of water was the next to fall from his trembling hands which soaked the pills and the truck floor. He had messed in his pants, his heart beats were becoming irregular and his chest really hurt like no pain he had ever had before. All this time he lay there suffering more then he had ever suffered in his life. At 4 am he drew in his last shuddering breath and died.


It appears Spangler’s hurried up shot with the shotgun and the single .32 caliber double ought buck pellet did do its job.

Jirco looked at Sgt Carelli, made a quick estimate of him, liked what he saw and heard. He told the Sgt I am just a ride-along passenger you should maybe talk to Sgt Lewandowski and Sgt Wilson they are he ones in charge of this here 2 vehicle convoy.

Lewandowski and Wilson after talking to Carelli for an hour decided he should visit the farm. They and Jirco liked him. Spangler was not paying any attention to the conversations; he was keeping a low profile eyeball on the community and surrounding area.

Carelli called #2 and #3 over to the conversation. Jirco made a pot of coffee on the Coleman stove in the camper and pulled out a couple of lawn chairs.

Another hour went by before Wilson brought up cows and horses. Carelli told them that when they had plenty of gas and were scavenging the countryside that several cows and horses had been spotted about 50 miles west of here on some large farms. No one had made an attempt to capture them because there was still too much food on the store shelves.

Wilson asked Carelli if he would mind showing them where the animals had been spotted were. Carelli said sure if we can take my 6 year old son, I really do not like to leave him with just his mother to watch and protect him. Lewandowski said no problem and wondered what the story was. He would eventually find out.

Since it was only 10am Carelli went and fetched his rifle, some supplies and his boy. There was enough room on the back bench seat for Carelli and his boy to ride. Lewandowski noticed the boy held onto either his dad’s hand or his trouser leg never letting loose. The boy was a little uncomfortable around the men until his dad told him these are good men not like the others so you can relax and have fun. The boy still did not let loose of his dad’s hand until they got in the Hummer.

About noon or a little after they saw the animals in several fields still munching on the round haystacks; there were 50 or so cows, some with calves, 25 or more horses and 5 huge bulls roaming around the large fields.

Jirco was standing around the group and said we gonna have to bring some 4 wheelers back to round those bulls and horses up. Spangler added on and said we gonna have to fence in some fields to keep them bulls away from them cows and we gonna have to fence in some more fields to put them horses in.

Lewandowski told them that the new city will have to be put on hold while the barns, pole barns, fences and fields were fixed up.

When they got back to Carelli’s house they asked him again if he would like to follow them to the farm and check it out for a week or so. He said there are seven of us trustworthy people who would like to tag-along to a more secure area. Wilson just said the more the merrier. Lewandowski said we leave at 7am sharp. Carelli said I am pretty sure there will be 7 more automobiles in this convoy. Wilson said it is only 180 miles so we should be there with plenty of daylight to spare.

Chapter 55

Captain Gadd welcomed the veterans like they were long lost brothers. They were invited to look around and see if they liked what they saw. Jirco and Lewandowski were assigned as escorts and were available for questions. Clark told Gadd he would meet them in the aluminum building for a talk about 10am tomorrow. 34 new trailers on the farm were ready for occupancy and the new comers were told to take their pick of the housing.

Spangler and Wilson were tasked to get the 4-wheelers and animal haulers readied for next weeks return trip to gather up the animals.

Clark had a committee meeting at 6pm and told them of the luck in finding a large number of animals and he wanted them to find the farmers in the group and design the barns, field locations, and fencing. He reiterated the importance of finding a new line of breeding stock to feed the community milk and beef. He continued on and told the committee he would like 1 bull and 10 cows be transported to the farm. He said he was going to keep track of the breeding and rotate his bull out after 3 years to one of the other bulls. So far we have been fortunate here on the farm with our petrol use and I do not at this time need any horses. In the future when the herd expands we will eventually go to horse usage. There are 2 large farms several miles up Loup Creek that can be used later on for expansion and we will discuss who will man those places and see how many fences and barns have to be rebuilt. We can put that on the agenda for one year from now. Any questions? One man asked about future communications at the 2 farms – Clark said I think the repeater on this farm will reach those 2 locations. He made a note to have it checked out.

Captain Gadd and Clark walked into the aluminum meeting building at 10am. Clark had a big grin on his face as he took the podium. The first words out of his mouth were – now don’t everyone speak at once. That got a chuckle and broke the ice. He gave the standard speech about the community and work ethic and walked over and sat down at the head of the table facing the crowd. He was peppered with questions and he thought he handled himself well. Everyone was ready to move in as soon as they went back to their homes and got their belongings. The seven families thought they could get everything into 3 tractor trailers with some careful loading. It was decided they would go home today and be back either tomorrow or the next day. Clark left to go to another meeting on fences, pole barns and barns.

After the fence and barn meeting which lasted 2 hours because of the work that needed to be assigned; he went to another meeting on transporting the animals back to the farm and the new locations. It was decided at the transporting animal meeting that it would take 8 to 10 days to have everything ready before the animals could be brought here. Mr. Cavalierio was again tasked with running water to the fields and barns. This would be easy since the water lines had not been covered over nor had the electrical and other lines been completely finished with. This brought up another problem namely being the cart was before the horse. The 50,000 gallon water tower on a flat area 35 feet up on the side of a mountain which was being assembled adjacent to Loup Creek was not put together and it would be 14 days before that job was finished. The tower would be 75 feet above the highest trailer when finished. The 2 huge bulldozers that were tasked with scraping the bed of Loup Creek removing mud, dead logs and various items that were on the creek bed and banks up to where the myriad of mountain streams formed the creek would be done in about 5 days - This assured clean drinking water until an animal messed or died in the creek prior to the water getting to the pump station. Another 30 people were cleaning the originating mountain stream beds and banks up to there source where they came out of the mountains.

Clark knew Loup Creek and the originating streams would have to be checked periodically. But as of now using the cities water testing equipment the water was safe to drink. Several trees were removed to place the solar panels to power the pump station. The original plan which was still in the works was to use one of the large diesel generators to fill the tank. They were not sure if the solar pump had enough oomph to push the water through a 4 inch pipe 85 feet up to the top of the tank. They had a fall back plan to use 2 pumps if one did not do it, one low down and the other 40 feet higher.

Another meeting the next morning – It was decided to wait 21 days before going to get the animals. They figured if they had been there all this time another 3 weeks would not harm anything. Plus this would give them enough time to completely do all the jobs.

Mr. Cavalierio wanted a few hard rainstorms to wash all the mud away from the cleaned mountain stream and the Loup Creek banks before he filled the tank. He got his wish. Two 8 X 8 aluminum buildings to house the pumps were cemented into a concrete footer. It was decided to leave the diesel generator in the lower building for a back-up with 250 gallons of treated diesel fuel.

Finally the next day after a hard downpour the night before the creek was checked and it was running clear the generator was started and water began filling the tank. After an hour the bottom drain was opened up to insure the tank was drained of any dirt or contaminants, pumping began again. Mr. Cavalierio was pleased there was only one leak but that was not due to any workers fault. One of the 4 inch schedule 40 pipes had a hairline crack on the bottom side and would have been impossible to find unless water under pressure was running in it. The pipe was cut out and a new section glued in. He waited 24 hours and again checked for leaks, no leaks so the trenches were covered over. Each lot was marked with a pipe showing where the pipe connectors were. Now all they needed was some good people and a 1000 trailers.

Jirco and Spangler told Clark one of those might as well things to do. Clark asked them what that would be. Spangler said we may as well bring the hay and all the animal feed even if it is buggy back with us. May as well look for some saddles and horse related items also. Clark said horses are not my area of intelligence, I do know a teeny bit about cows though. Jirco asked Clark if he was going along, Clark said I never thought about it. Do you think I should go? Jirco came out with a flat out no, and said we will handle it. Clark had to choke back a laugh but he did manage a full tooth grin. He said OK that’s settled.

It took 4 days to round up the animals and one night to get them loaded up. The trip back took about 7 hours because of the speed they drove. 4 of the bulls were off-loaded upwind in a bull tight area and out of sight of the herd of cows. As per the agreement 10 cows and one bull were taken to the farm. The rotating work force for the animals had already been assigned.

180 miles west and 235 miles southwest the convicts were up to their old routine again. Only this time they were killing the townspeople and taking the small children again.



Clark thought this meeting stuff was getting old. This meeting was to finish planning the hauling of trailers to the farm and begin hauling trailers to the new city. They had found 770 new trailers and they had 18 trailer haulers. Clark asked 2 questions - how many footers had been completed? One man said 415. How are we holding up on concrete and cinder blocks? We have enough cinder block but we are going to have to go 35 miles south to the other cement plant to get enough cement to finish the job. Ok so that means that every 2 days barring any breakdowns we can park 18 trailers on a completed footer and block foundation. Everyone nodded in the affirmative. So roughly every 30 days or so we can park 270 trailers; OK lets get 540 trailers parked this year and finish up next year.

Clark thought to himself I sure hope we can get enough good people to fill those trailers. The next meeting he went to he would get everyone to agree on not lowering their people standards just to fill the city up.


End Part 1

[Lbox88]

The Early Learning Years - Part 2
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Chapter 1

Please read early learning years #14 first or this story will make no sense to you.....

Jimmy the prepping hermit let the 10X50 binoculars drop back down onto his chest. He lay back and stared at the clear blue sky above him. He said to himself these people down in Loup Creek Valley sure got big plans. Wonder if they know about them Whitlock’s 30 mile away on the other side of those 3 mountain ranges. I may get word to this Loup Creek outfit a little later to be on the look out for em. As many times as Jimmy had watched the Clark outfit he never did see the watcher back in the tree line across the road. The watcher never saw Jimmy either.

Jimmy eased back into the woods and headed for his rocky cave that he had weathered the storm in for the past 2 years if you counted when he moved in that would make it about 8 years. Jimmy had camouflaged solar panels, HF radios and had stayed on top of world events. After he had came out of his shelter he stayed on the mountain ridges never going into the valleys, roadways or cities. He had been preparing for doomsday for many years. The off road motor bike trail he had used to transport some of his supplies close to the mountaintop cave was just about overgrown. He wondered if his pick-up was still parked in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Lots of things have happened in the past few years.

His 40 or so guerilla gardens were doing fine this summer. He had over 800 jars of food canned and had decided he would not can much this summer he would just eat fresh and keep the potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots either in the ground all winter or in the root cellar.

Remembering his last trip to the big city 6 months before the SHTF for a dental checkup; the dentist got all over him about not flossing, told Jimmy that he would not have had that teeny cavity between those 2 teeth if he had flossed 2 or 3 times a day. Jimmy had not missed a day since that cleaning and filling.

He had found this place with his ONLY friend when he was a teenager. His friend and he were into grapevining big time as teenagers and they travelled all the high ridges many, many miles in all directions looking for that ultimate grapevine swing/ride. They always carried hatchets, rope, flashlights and various objects to make their treks enjoyable. Sadly his friend broke his neck and died while doing flips on his bicycle. Anyway they found this natural cave that led 7 or 800 yards back into almost the top of the mountain and since they were both of like mind, they were going to set up a permanent camp here after they made a good bit of money and live the life of Jerimiah Johnson, but of course with modern conveniences. They talked about this every day of their young life. Jimmy became kind of a loner after his friend died. He did his thing in the Army and learned a lot about survival. After the Army he went to work for a construction company making fairly good wages until he hit that 100,000 dollar scratch off ticket. He only got 62,000 after taxes but with his savings and construction wages it was enough to finish out his prep list. His Dad was getting remarried and moving to FL with his new woman who had a substantial income. So that left him with just himself and no relatives that he was close to. That left one thing, getting the humongous amount of supplies; bed, solar panels, generator, cement, pipe to run the spring water into and out of the cave, the list went on and on. He had the solution but did not want anyone else to know where his place was.

He bit the bullet and hired a cargo helicopter for one or maybe 2 trips. He had to go back to the mountain and chainsaw 35 or so trees down to allow the chopper to drop the load. He just told the pilot that he and a bunch of hunters were going to build a log hunting cabin out where there were no thieves. He knew there was no way on earth he could have carried the 20,000 pounds of equipment and supplies up there in that trek less wilderness. The closest he could get on his dirt bike was about 2 miles so that left the casual hiker out and there were very few deer on his side of Loup Creek and the hunters and game wardens knew this.

He was chuckling at the thought of him painting the cut off stumps brown so they would not be visible from the air.

There were 4 mountains between him and Loup Creek and 25 or more in the other 3 directions before a person would stumble on civilization. He never worried about anyone seeing his fire under the little outdoor logged over pole barn looking thing where he did most of his cooking and canning on a tripod over a metal grate the canner sat on.


Chapter 2

3 mountain ranges over from the farm the Whitlock boys crawled out of bed with tremendous hangovers. Tiny said to his brother that sure was some awful stuff we drank last night. The brother said yep. Another brother said I wonder if those survivors in the next town over got any fresh vegetables. The youngest at 22 years of age said you ain’t wantin no vegetables you wantin that farmers wife, I seen how you looked at her last time we was there. Tiny said we sure won’t find out sittin here talking about it. Five 250cc off road motor bikes roared out of the driveway at 930am.

Jimmy the Hermit decided to mosey over towards the Whitlock boy’s area and check on them. He thought a 45 or so mile one way hike would get the kinks out of his legs. Now let me see if I walk around the bottom of those 1st 2 mountain ranges I can walk right up the backside of the last one and have myself a good watch place.

Devaney asked Clark at the kitchen table that evening if he remembered the calculations on how many people were estimated left alive in the USA and the world. He said vaguely. She said well why are you building a town for 1000 families. He said I don’t know it just seemed the right thing to do at the time. She said well if I was you I would stop at 500 trailers and leave the other 500 lot empty for 20 or so years until a lot more babies are born. He thought about it for a while and said I do believe you are right. We will stop at 415 because that is how many footers and foundations have been laid. He looked at her and said have I ever told you how smart you are. He continued talking and stuck his foot in his mouth – That is one of the main reasons I married you. She chased him out of the house with a meat cleaver, he laughed all the way out the door.

He came back in about 20 minutes later and saw she was not mad anymore. They talked some more on the surviving population and came up with a big majority of the surviving people were living near deep mines and that included WV, PA and KY for the east coast and several western mining states. He just said I do not believe we are going to fill that new trailer town up with survivors, maybe new borns later on like you said. She said well we can hope and pray because more people will result in a fairly rapid advance of or re-advance of civilization.

Jimmy crossed the road just at the end of Clark’s property. He knew of the Clark property he had wandered all through this area for years before the SHTF. He said to himself I can walk on that cleared 10 yard wide, 10 mile stretch of woods running along side of that property. He wasn’t sure if there were surveillance cameras still working but he would assume there were. That cleared stretch of woods will save me from climbing up and down at least 15 or more miles of mountains and it is headed in the direction I want to go. The thought of walking on the hard road never entered his mind – he had become used to doing things the hard way and had no intention of exposing himself to people yet – this walking on the cleared section of land was the first time he had been in or on a cleared area since things collapsed.

Jimmy’s supplies were adequate for several more years.

8 years ago when Jimmy dropped off the face of the earth and became almost totally grey there were several things that had to be taken care of. A post office box at 40 dollars a year, a credit card, someone or someplace to receive his special order items and check the mail (the grocery store owner or his son where he shopped), someone to pay his credit card bills (his dad): These things were accomplished, the money to pay for this he had saved prudently for and at the time he moved to the mountain he had 14000 cash, 15000 dollars in 90% junk silver and 2500 dollars of ¼ and ½ oz gold, he had purchased gold at 250 dollars an ounce and junk silver coins at 4.00 an ounce.

The grocery store owner would take Jimmie’s gold or silver at the current spot rate and Jimmy bought money orders at the grocery store to send to his dad for his credit card bills. Every 6 months Jimmy would come down from the mountain to resupply on books, any pertinent items he had ran short of or forgot to buy that he saw he would need and reorder if needed any outdated anti-biotic medicines from alldaychemist.com a mail order place that did not require a prescription. Jimmy had talked to the manager at Wal-Mart about leaving his pick-up parked in the parking lot. The manager pointed out the furthest corner of the lot where no one parked and said they would not be responsible for his automobile but if he kept the inspection sticker and license plate current on the truck the roving security patrols would not have it towed away. Jimmy had one of those solar powered trickle battery chargers on his dash board to keep the battery charged and the truck was moved every 6 months and he faithfully kept the inspection sticker, license plate and insurance current. He knew people would steal the gas so he had another 20 gallon tank installed with the filler cap under a trick removal steel plate in the bed of the truck. He treated the hidden 20 gallon gas tank with Stabil and kept 3 or 4 gallons of treated gas in the tank that would most likely be siphoned. He put a log chain through the hood with a huge padlock that normal bolt cutters would not cut to keep anyone from stealing the battery and called it good. In the 8 years it had been parked in the lot no one had bothered it except for the missing 3 or 4 gallons of gas, he had to replace the battery once and put new tires on it because the original tires dry rotted and leaked air. It was also waxed with a good one year wax every 6 months to keep the paint from fading. He had to use the pickup several times when the load he carried back was too large for him to carry on his off road motor bike. That was always a pain in the back because he had to make several trips down the mountain to carry it up. At those times he wished he had a helicopter and knew how to fly it. One time he spent 3 days on the library computer researching ultra light heli-copters but decided it would be cheaper for him to just manhandle the items up the hill with human power.

Jimmy was amazed at the amount of freeze dried meats, vegetables, eggs, and dairy products 10,000 dollars would buy and the 25 year shelf life was the information that sold him on the #10 cans. He shopped on the internet for 6 months looking for sales, group buys and discount bargains before he was satisfied he had enough food for 20 years which would be supplemented by deer, rabbits squirrels, birds and produce from his heirloom seed guerilla gardens.

It took him 11 months of weekends and holidays to make the place livable before he could move his supplies and equipment to the cave. He had to hire the use of a small helicopter 5 times, fortunately the cargo chopper pilot had a small helicopter he hauled people around in that did not cost Jimmy too much to have him and his heavy rental and purchased equipment hauled back and forth. It is a good thing he was still working full time because he was spending money like it grew on trees. He needed to rent a jack hammer and buy a small 220 volt welder that hurt his budget a little bit. Using his 5000 watt gasoline generator that just did power the jack hammer or welder he made do. He needed the jack hammer to drill the holes in the wall and roof to run the water pipe from the spring and waste pipe to the mountain side drop off and drill the diesel exhaust hole and holes for radio and electrical wire from the solar panels and antennas.

The location he was going to set his 6600 watt Lister diesel generator needed to be made level. The generator weighed 1300 pounds and he eyeballed the path he was going to tow it on using a come-along. The path was also going to be used to haul the 20 40 gallon drums of treated diesel.

Finally he got the cave entry way mostly squared out using the jack hammer and was ready to install the door. He would use cement to smooth out his rough jack hammer work to totally square the doorway. The doorway was 5 by 7 and he would use rolls of lead tape over tin on the inside and 2 sheets of tan color aluminum on the outside to blend in with the sandstone. The wooden door was made from 2X6’s and was hung on 4 heavy duty 6 hole hinges that were lag bolted into drilled holes in the cement covered sandstone mountainside. The weight and bulkiness constriction kept him from putting a solid steel door lined with lead up. There were cracks in the walls and floor that cool deep underground air flowed into the cavern causing a slight overpressure when the door was shut and this helped keep the virus and radioactive particles from travelling back to where he was. Since the door was not completely air tight the over pressure of air leaked out around the door seam and that also kept the virus and radioactive particles out.

He knew the location where he was would only get fallout and he also knew that if he stayed 600 yards back from the entryway the radiation would not travel that distance. He was just lucky the way he designed his fallout protection that the virus would also not travel to his living area. He set traps for the mice/voles and caught about 60 before his traps remained empty. He left the traps set anyway because he did not like disease carrying and bug/flea infested mice around him. He set off about 12 bug bombs, sealed the doorway and left the mountain for the work week. He would work 3 more months before he had the cargo chopper carry his 20000 or more pounds of supplies to the mountain and break off contact with society except for his every 6 month trip to the city on his parked and hidden camouflaged plastic and canvas covered off road bike that set up off the ground on its frame on cinderblocks to keep the tires from rotting away on the damp forest floor.

He thought real hard about it and again bit the bullet and sprung for satellite TV; he thought it may come in handy in addition to the Ham radio to keep up on current events and occupy some dead time during the cold months. The TV was cheap at 360 bucks a year for basic service; he thought about a computer connection but did not go for it because of the 700 bucks additional yearly price tag. One thing he did know he would not have time to be on a computer or watch much TV because of the work load and he was spot on in that assumption. The only free time he had was when he woke up and while he was cooking breakfast he watched TV or listened to the radio. He was too tired in the evening to do much of anything but wash up, eat and go to bed.

He knew eventually he would have to scavenge in the city to replenish but that was in the future. Since he had had no contact with other people he had not been sick not even the sniffles. He grinned at that and thought that was one strong point in favor of keeping away from other humans. He also was smart enough to realize he had no immunity to any of the current common cold virus and would suffer greatly when he did make contact. He decided he would make contact if he did in the early summer when the cold virus were at there lowest.

[Lbox88]

Chapter 3

At the meeting where Clark brought up the USA population and the stopping of moving no more then the 415 trailers that the lots were ready for. One of the committee members brought up using the huge amount of cinder block left to build some large buildings like the aluminum building they used on the farm. We can use metal roof and put some solar panels on it, lighting the place up and install a few wood/coal burners for winter time heating. One of the others said those famous words; we may as well run water and sewage also. They all agreed that some cinder block supply buildings would be useful in the future. So it was decided the crews building the footers would be reassigned to building the cinder block buildings. One of the committee members threw out a word that caused everyone to sit up; the word was school. Clark said I guess the cinder block buildings will be built to be dual purpose. The meeting broke up with everyone thinking of the future.

The convicts came into a small town of what used to be 25000 or so and decided to scavenge a little and look for survivors. This would be a big mistake stopping in this town.

Unknown to Jimmy one of the people in the farm surveillance room did see Jimmy as he walked along the property boundary. Since he made no attempt to enter the property no action was taken other then Clark and Captain Gadd being notified.

Clark asked Carelli if any people left in his old town would be qualified to move to the farm. Carelli said maybe 2 families but the rest I would put in the Loup Creek trailer park or leave them where they are. Interesting Clark thought. He would ask Carelli and the other ex military men about what they thought of the people they had left behind. But right now there was too much going on for him to worry about it. He made a note to bring it up again when all the trailers were parked on there new foundations and the concrete buildings were finished being constructed.

The convicts had stopped in the middle of the town on the thoroughfare aptly named Main Street. A bearded man walked out from a side street with a rifle slung over his shoulder and started a conversation with the main tough guy. The bearded man was Gunny Sgt Jonas Strickland who had been home on convalescent leave from an appendectomy when the SHTF. He had holed up in a rather large deep mine with 90 or so townspeople and survived the nuclear and virus attack. The survivors had banded together and were farming a rather large tract of land out of sight of the city reached by several connecting dirt and black top roads. They had had run ins with bad people before and had set up a community type watch, today was Jonas’ time on watch.

The tough guy leader of the convicts asked Jonas if he knew where any women or families with young children were. Jonas thought this was extremely stupid of the man. Of course Jonas glibly lied and said he was not from this town but from a town the convicts had passed through an hour or so back the way they had come. He continued on and said in the past 6 hours he had been here he had not seen a soul or heard anyone. The tough guy asked Jonas if he wanted to join the group which was headed south to a warmer climate. Jonas told him not really because he did not get along with people and was mostly a loner. Jonas did say he would have supper with them though and catch up on all the gossip the tough guy’s crew had to offer. The tough guy asked Jonas if he liked little boys and of course Jonas told him yes. Well the tough guy said we can offer you the use of one after supper. Jonas never blinked and said that would be nice. He told the tough guy he would go find a place to take a bath and meet them at supper time. As Jonas walked away his back stiffened up waiting for that shot he knew was coming. He hoped the level 5 vest he had on would keep him from dying on that street. The tough guy let Jonas get almost to the side street before he shot him 4 times in the back with his 38 revolver. The vest did keep Jonas from dying but he was going to be sore for a week or more from the bruises. He made the corner and ran to an alley and hid in a building. The tough guy just said he gonna die a slow horrible death in a little while. The convicts spread out searching the town for supplies.

Jonas pulled his radio out and said the code word for everyone to arm themselves and sneak into the city. He gave them the street he was on and told them he was well and the city was full of bad guys with small prisoners in busses.

43 men and 11 women all armed with semi and full automatic weapons began the trek to the city.

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Chapter 4

Tiny and his 4 brothers’ rode to the small town where they knew several men and women survivors had taken up residence and were farming.

Jimmy had made it to the 2nd set of mountains before he set up camp to sleep for the night. He always travelled light except for his sleeping arrangement. He had a water proof wide sleep pad, light weight sleep bag and a light tarp he used to make a lean-to. His weapon for the day was a Browning scoped semi-auto 06 with a 24 inch barrel and eight 20 round magazines he had had made in a machine shop many years ago. He never shorted himself on food either, in his rucksack he had freezer baggies full of freeze dried eggs, ham, beef, potatoes, peas, powdered milk, a baggie of rice, sugar, tea bags, hulled pumpkin seeds, 4 oz bottle of coconut cooking oil and pre sweetened cocoa. This would last him a week. He had 2 stainless steel canteen cups he used to cook everything in. He had put one inverted over his canteen to save room in his rucksack. Of course there were other things, toothbrush, dental powder, floss, aspirin, mosquito/tick repellant, small first aid kit and 10 multiple vitamins; A roll of snare wire to catch some of the returning animals and birds. He did not like to carry a long machete so on his web belt he carried his canteen, a small sharp hatchet and his hunting knife, he had learned a long time ago a hatchet could make short quick work for gathering fire wood or in past better times breaking tail bones on deer. So far Jimmy had never shot his rifle or pistol at another human.

Clark was talking to Mr. Cavalierio who was supervising and helping install the water and sewage lines to the 5 planned cinder block buildings that would need water and sewage. Clark asked him about the water tank and the solar pumps. Mr. Cavalierio said we were extremely lucky to find 4 Grundfoss centrifugal solar pumps that would push the water up 90 feet at 70 gallons a minute. The solar supply place had all the extras to interface with our generator and off/on switching tank float. Since the pumps are commercial grade equipment and we have 4 we should be OK for 40 or 50 years. We also took 4 helical rotor pumps that can pump water up to 300 feet but the 11 gallons per minute pumped are not quite what we were looking for. You do know we had to use a little dynamite to blast the creek bed down to a depth of 8 feet to put the concrete box that holds the pipe pump screened end and we had to build a metal V with holes in it in front of the box to keep any, heaven forbid, trees or logs that may wash down from the banks that may hit it or our pipe going up to the tank. Clark said he did not know that and would drive to that spot in a day or 2 to look at the completed job. Mr. Cavalierio did use some technical terms that were not in Clark’s vocabulary but Clark got the information he was looking for. The tank and pumping system was capable of supporting the 1000 units he had envisioned. Clark left to find Captain Gadd he wanted to discuss that man who walked along the property boundary.

Jimmy made it to the top of the mountain over looking Tiny and the brother’s place about 10am just a few minutes after they had left. He looked the place over and walked back down about 10 feet back out of sight of anyone at the place. He set his little camp up and started a small fire to have a noon meal he had already checked the wind and it was blowing towards him and back down the way he had just climbed up so there was no danger of anyone seeing or smelling the smoke. He had seen a barrel in the front yard of the boys house still smoking from what he assumed had been a late night fire or some trash being burned from this morning. Jimmy wondered what kind of trouble those boys were getting into so early this morning. He decided to take a nap but took his sleep pad back up to the top of the mountain so he could hear those bikes the boys always rode around on when they returned.

Captain Gadd and Clark could think of no earthly reason that unknown man had walked along the perimeter of the farm. Gadd said maybe it will always be one of those mysteries. Clark said you know we are going to have to actively seek out new people for the new city. Gadd said I know it and I guess since that lazy foursome, Jirco, Spangler, Wilson and Lewandowski are getting on everyone’s nerves we can send them out on a people search instead of an animal hunt. Clark grinned and said I like the way you think Gadd. Do you want to ride along with them, maybe me and you can take a Hummer and tag along. Gadd said that’s not a bad idea. Let’s clear up all the administrative things we got pending and take a 3 or 4 week ride around the countryside and let someone else worry about the place for a while.

[Lbox88]

Chapter 5

Jimmy heard the motor bikes returning; he glanced at the sun and saw he had napped for about 2 hours. What he saw through his 10X50’s was not what he expected. Tiny and one of the brothers, he never knew their names. He knew Tiny’s name because he had heard one of the brothers hollering for him on another time he had watched them a few months ago. Any way 2 of the boys had 2 naked struggling women in front of them on their bikes. He knew the boys were bad but he never thought they would get into kidnapping and rape. They must have taken these women from that small survival group 8 or 10 miles down the road. He did not hesitate he gathered his gear and ran down the back side of the mountain.

He sneaked around the bottom of the mountain to about 120 or so yards from their house. It did not look good for those 2 women. Tiny had punched the woman he had on his bike in the face with his fist knocking her out and she collapsed on the ground. The other woman was thrown onto the ground and jimmy thought she may have been seriously injured. That was all it took for Jimmy to go into action. The years he had practiced with this and many other rifles on running and standing still deer stood him in good stead. All 5 of the boys were in the open and the closest cover was at least 15 yards away. He centered the cross hairs of the scope on Tiny’s chest and squeezed the trigger, tracking left to the other 2 boys 2 more shots took them out. One of the boys had pulled his pistol out and was firing towards Jimmy’s location. He was Jimmy’s next target. The other young boy had more smarts then all his brother’s combined he ran for the woods behind their house. Jimmy tracked him and jerked the trigger but the boy went down. Jimmy swore he pulled the shot down and right, he was correct in that assumption; the bullet hit the boy in the leg clipping the femoral artery which was almost as good as a heart lung shot on a human. The shock of the round impacting on the bone in the boy’s leg rendered him unconscious and he bled out in a minute or so. The Winchester Supreme 168 grain Ballistic Silvertip bullet had done its superb outstanding killing job.

Jimmy did not move for 5 minutes, he shook a little bit but he knew he had done nothing wrong even considering the fact he had just killed 5 people. A lot of people would seriously worry for the rest of their life about taking another human’s life but Jimmy’s mind was not wired that way. Of course he would never forget it but it would not drive him to drink or into becoming despondent.

The woman who had been punched in the face was coming around and moaning. Jimmy went into the boy’s house and found 2 big T-shirts. He cut the moaning woman loose and gave her a damp wash cloth to clean the blood from her face and chest he then gave her the T-shirt which she quickly pulled on. They both went to the other woman and Jimmy cut her hands loose. The woman asked jimmy if he could find another damp cloth. Jimmy quickly went into the house and found a small towel which he dunked into the pot of water on the stove. The other woman was sitting up when Jimmy returned and he handed her the wet towel and the T-shirt.

The 2 women told him what had happened; they were in the field when the 5 motor bikes surrounded them. The big one called Tiny had captured them and ripped their clothes off and tied them up. They were then brought back to where they were at now. One of the women a young girl really about 19 or so told Jimmy he had sure saved them from a heap of trouble. Jimmy kind of thought that that was a big understatement.

He asked the girls if they could ride a motor bike and both of them said yes. He told them to ride 2 of the bikes home and send a couple of people back to ride the other bikes back and to help him bury the 5 dead ones. One of the women said they ain’t worth burying and I bet whoever we send back for the bikes will not help you bury them after we tell them what happened. Jimmy thought about that for a minute and said you are right; we will drag them off into the woods and leave them.

The women had been gone about 2 minutes when Jimmy started to scavenge what he thought he may use or need. He had already decided to keep one of the motor bikes to haul his bounty home. He figured his time of sneaking around in the woods like Jeremiah Johnson was coming to an end. It was time to rejoin society or what was left of it.

2 motor bikes with 4 men rode into the death scene. Introductions were made and the bodies hauled off into the woods and dumped. Jimmy told the 4 men he had stacked everything he wanted into a pile by the burn barrel and they were welcome to everything but that pile and one of the motor bikes. The 4 men agreed with him and said they would come back with a few tow carts to get everything later on this evening or tomorrow. They rode off and left him to figure out how to load everything on his body and the bike. An hour later after filling the gas tank from he assumed some treated gas in a 5 gallon can he rode the bike down the half gravel half black-top road to where he could hit a connecting road towards his area.

Chapter 6

As Jimmy was riding homewards he thought to himself I have time now and I am getting a little older maybe I can build that ultra light helicopter. The materials should be free in the city to build it. He bookmarked that in his memory as he slowly rode towards his cave turnoff. He and his friend had been sort of lucky when they headed into the back country to do their wild swings on the grape vines. The state road when it put up the guard rails had left an 8 foot gap before starting the next section of guard rail. That open section was a gentle downward slope to one of the shallow feeder creeks to Loup Creek. They rode their off road bikes down and across the 2 foot wide creek and followed an old sometime rarely used deer trail as far as they could ride which left them about 2 miles from where the cave was. They climbed up 2 or 3 mountains before they found the huge grapevine about 60 yards from the cave. Jimmy was chopping the bottom of the vine loose while his friend was wandering around picking blackberries and raspberries. His friend was following the patch when he spotted the hole in the mountain. And that was how Jimmy became a resident of the place. Later on Jimmy saw that he was leaving a trail down the gently sloping dirt section that led out to the cave. He brought a small rake and some grass seed with him, raked the place sprinkled a little potting soil with starter material and planted the tire tracked area heavily with the seed. The grass took hold growing quickly effectively hiding his frequent trips down the side of the hill.

When Jimmy came around the hair pinned curve close to his off road entry way he almost had a head on collision with a Hummer with a white flag flying from the front bumper. Both vehicles got stopped quickly. The first thought that sprang into Lewandowski and Wilson’s mind was here is the dude we been trying to run down. Jirco and Spangler also had the same thought but since the Clark crew had met the man before a closer inspection of the man’s face told them that this was a different person.

Jimmy’s first thought was the military have arrived on the scene and captured me. He started thinking I knew I should always carry that pistol with me but now I am so screwed because I will never get this rifle off my shoulder to defend myself and I have so much stuff hung on me I can hardly move..

Wilson said to Lewandowski I got the 50 cal you talk to him.

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Chapter 7

Jimmy got the kickstand down to hold the heavily laden bike up. Lewandowski said hello there, I am Sgt Lewandowski from the Clark Farm. Jimmy just said I am Jimmy and I live in a cave several miles from here. Jimmy thought this Sgt sounded like the long dead Elvis Presley. Now that the basics were out of the way the real discussion began. Since the Clark crew had all the time in the world the chairs were pulled out of the tow-along campers and Spangler made some Hobo coffee (water boiled 2 minutes or so with some grounds thrown in it and allowed to settle, then poured through a strainer into a cup).

Clark said I have seen you someplace around here, are you from here? Jimmy looked at Clark for a few seconds and said the name of the market he shopped at. Clark said that’s where I have seen you. 3 hours later Jimmy was asked to join the group. The first place they wanted to go to was the town the small group was at that Jimmy had just left. They had learned there were 30 some people there and Clark thought they would probably make a good group for the new trailer city. Spangler and Jirco had Jimmy follow them back to the farm and his supplies were placed in a new 2 bedroom trailer. And since he had nothing to do he rode back with them to where he had just been.

Jirco and Spangler really liked the quiet man that was riding with them. They liked the way they had to almost jerk information out of him about his lifestyle. When they got to the place the survivors were Jirco and Spangler had a new lifelong friend.

There were now 44 men and 11 women hidden in buildings beside the parked prisoner vehicles. Gunny Sgt Jonas Strickland and 2 ex army grunts had taken over command of the strike force. It was too dangerous to send people at this time across the street to completely surround the vehicles but they would have one thing going for them and that was surprise. They had seen the children in the busses and how they were let out to relieve themselves beside the busses. Everyone that saw this had something a normal person would call a red insane rage flash through the mind of the observer.

Gunny Sgt Strickland was super mad about being shot and seeing little children being used as sex slaves. He hoped that when the time came to open fire that most of the bad people would be killed. He did not think that would happen but he knew that bus with those kids on it would not leave from where it was now parked.

All 55 people had FRS radios and an ear plug. They had to wait on the command to open fire from the Gunny. He had told them he would personally kill anyone who opened fire before the ambush could be sprung. The people believed what he said and kept their fingers far away from the triggers. The attackers knew that the children should be set free at all costs.

Jonas saw that about 80% of the people who held the children captive were back and milling around their vehicles. As soon as the command to fire was given 5 people on each end of the convoy were to cross the road and open fire at the people on the opposite side of the vehicles. The ambush depended on these 10 people killing people on the opposite side of the vehicles the ambush would be firing from. The command to open fire was given. The amount of firepower 55 people can put out from semi and automatic weapons would be described by a kid as awesome. The convicts had no where to run to but toward the 5 people in the front of the convoy. Those 5 people had to retreat down a side street because they could not shoot 200 people down. About 75 convicts escaped but their source of ammunition resupply, vehicles and supplies were lost to them. There were another 100 convicts still out scavenging in the city when the fireworks went off. They too were cut off from their resupply. They had no option but to flee the city on foot.

Gunny Strickland had already designated 2 people to take the bus and drive it out to the farming area. This was quickly done and the extra person was fortunately there to calm the children down and stop them from jumping out the bus windows.

3 teams of 6 led by the 2 army grunts and Gunny Sgt Strickland began a city search for stragglers and they found quite a few.

Strickland kept 2 of the people alive to interrogate. He grinned at that thought because there would be no Military Commanders, police or court system to hold him in check like in the past when he worked at Gitmo as an interrogator. Water boarding will make a grizzly bear try to talk English. He chuckled evilly at that thought.

[Lbox88]

Chapter 8

The Gunny was surprised at the dumb people out scavenging in the city very few of them carried a rifle with them, most were armed with pistols and shot them like gang bangers in the movies. Well that was good as far as he was concerned because he was going to put another huge dent in that prisoner population.

He had wrung every scrap of useful information from those 2 prisoners that was in their dirty evil mind. He was surprised at the booby traps that were set when the prisoners were first attacked. Someone has some military training and access to some good explosives. He would remember that when he went back to those cities the prisoners had taken children from.

Jimmy got out of the Hummer at the small town the survivors were holed up in and approached one of the men. He explained why he was there and asked them if they would talk to a man named Clark and his assistant Captain Gadd.

When the group heard safe drinking running water from a spigot, warm showers, electricity for lighting and natural gas for heating; Clark did not have to say any more. They were tired of living a hard dirt scrabble life and wanted some 20th century technology for a small amount of leisure time. They all knew where Loup Creek was and that huge flat area beside of it.

Clark told them they would all have to be interviewed to keep people out like Jimmy had just killed. They agreed to that wholeheartedly. He told them the next morning a few busses would come to take them to look at the new city and if they wanted to stay there a few tractor trailers would be made available to haul their personal possessions to their new living quarters.

Clark made the decision to go back and help set up this small group in the city and in a few days to make another trip to the city Sgt Carelli and his friends had left and then expand the search.

2 days later after taking all the weapons from the vehicles the convicts had left behind. Gunny's entire group was armed with automatic weapons and several M4’s with grenade launchers and half dozen crates of 40mm grenades.

The Gunny had found out what those convicts had done to the children and he was going after them even if he had to do it alone. The group was not going to allow him to go off alone. Since the 6 man teams had worked so well in the city there would be 42 people take up the chase or 7 six man teams. There were several other ex military members in the group and all of them had seen combat but they were all in their mid to late 60’s and the combat was during the Viet Nam era. They would not be expected to run through the woods like Tarzan did in the jungle. They would set up ambushes along the lanes or highways the convicts were on. A lone scout had been sent out on a quiet running 750cc motorcycle to find out how far those convicts had travelled. Strickland knew it was about 45 or so miles to the next town that may have some vehicles that could be gotten running.

The Gunny now had some serious firepower under his command and was going to use it to decimate these insane people. He knew there would be no arrests of either him his crew or the convicts. Civilization had broken down and now Might would make right. The convicts were going to be treated just like they had treated those kids and their parents they had slaughtered.

The scout had came back into radio range and reported the convicts were bunched up about 19 miles away and still on the highway. The Gunny knew there was a parallel road and was going to flank them and ambush them at about the 25 mile mark. He would take some prisoners to see if any groups had broke off and entered the forest.

This time Gunny had the high ground and there was no place for the convicts to hide. There were 18 of the Gunny’s crew on each side of the roadway about 35 feet high and 75 feet from the road. The other 6 were 250 yards ahead and 250 yards behind the ambush point to take out any stragglers or fast runners. The ambushers had all been instructed to AIM and spray starting at about mid thigh and when they changed magazines to start doing the same thing over and over until he called a halt. The forward and rearward 3 were told the same thing but to make sure most of the people they shot were in the legs. Gunny had the SAW with him that had been mounted on top of a pickup the prisoners had left behind and 3000 rounds of ammunition for it.

________________________________________
Chapter 9

#2 approached Sgt Carelli and said I think me and #3 should go back and disable those booby traps we set up before an innocent civilian gets hurt. Good thinking Carelli said. Get #3 and grab a couple nice 600 or750cc bikes and a cycle trailer with 3 or 4 five gallon cans of fuel and ride on out there.

The new people were settled in and work assigned a few days later. Clark, Gadd, Lewandowski, Wilson, #4 and #5 left on the trek to find more people. Their 1st stop was Carelli’s old town.

Clark asked why Spangler, Jirco and Jimmy did not want to go on this trip. Lewandowski laughed and said the 3 of them were really excited about some silly idea of building an ultra light helicopter. Gadd just said bad idea; the down drafts in these mountains are too dangerous for an underpowered helicopter. Clark said ah, but what if the pilot just stayed 10 or 15 feet above the mountain trees while he was going up and down them and stayed out of the high valleys between the mountains. Gadd said that would work but it would sure eat up the gas and limit the range.

Jimmy and his 2 new partners were at the airport looking at commercial helicopters. After looking at all the controls, led lights and buttons in the cockpit, Jimmy almost gave up. Spangler hollered for Jirco and Jimmy to come look at what he had found. They walked back into the dim corner of the hangar and Jimmy’s eyes lit up and said that’s it, that’s what I looked at on the internet. There were 5 small single seat helicopters with the name Mosquito XE stenciled on the fuselage. Each of the ultra light planes had a full instruction book, maintenance manual and a DVD disc in the instruction book.

Jimmy said let’s go back to the farm and read these instructions and watch the DVD. They looked in the engines at the batteries and Jirco said that battery is the same size as the ones we seen in the battery shop over there. They went back to the battery shop and saw there were about 90 batteries of all different sizes. What was really nice was the batteries had no acid in them and the battery acid in a plastic box was beside each battery. They were all grinning like maniacs as they rode back to the farm. Jirco who was the better mechanic of the 3 said I reckon after we read these instructions and watch that DVD we will have to drain those gas tanks and put some fresh treated gasoline in before we fire one of em up. Spangler was thinking if those 2 idiots get those things up in the air and back down again without killing themselves, I may give it a whirl.

It took the 3 of them 3 weeks to learn how to make the helicopters go up and down and forwards. This was done on their off time between their duties at the farm and the trailer city.

Spangler was the last one to learn to fly the ultra light helicopter and after he learned he thought it was so neat he screamed halleluiah – of course by himself when he was out of earshot of the others after he got it up off the ground and hovered it.

Jimmy wanted to show his 2 friends where his cave was and 5 weeks later after Jimmy had went to the cave and cut 30 more trees and some brush out of the way to land the helicopters; he led them there. Jirco said you should restock the place just in case. Spangler said just in case of what, there ain’t too much more that can happen. Jirco said do you remember that old rule or tale that things happen in 3’s. Spangler said I ain’t superstitious. Jimmy said that is not a bad idea, I may get back into my hermit mode and want to come live here again.

This is what they found at the airport:

http://www.innovator.mosquito.net.nz/mbbs2/index.asp

[Lbox88]

Chapter 10

It took the 3 of them carrying an extra 120 pounds a load to restock the cave about 25 trips. The reason it took so many trips was the extra 1200 gallons of treated diesel fuel and that included refilling his empty 40 gallon barrels and new games and things he would not have normally brought here just for himself. Jimmy’s Lister engine only used about two tenths of a gallon per hour to recharge his batteries when the sun did not shine. In other words Jimmy had a diesel engine that really just sipped the fuel. And Jimmy only ran the engine 2 hours a day when it was needed to top off the batteries and that happened maybe every 2 or so months. His Lister engine was rated for about 100,000 hours before it may need an overhaul and he only had 1100 hours on it.

Clark and his little convoy talked the people from Carelli’s old town to join them at the new trailer community. As they were leaving he talked to Carelli and said I see what you mean about those people they are sheeple. Carelli laughed long and hard at what Clark called them. They had a few more words and Clark said I do believe they will see the light after mingling with the rest of the trailer community. They will definitely have to fall into line or I believe the community will run them off. Clark snidely said or they may just kill them for being so stupidly liberal.

#2 had just removed the remaining booby trap from under the vehicle on the highway where the bus had been turned over. #3 said we got company. It was the Gunny in a Hummer towing a 250 gallon diesel tank. His woman that he finally talked into living with him and moved into his cabin was sitting in the passenger seat. #3 waved at them and walked towards the Hummer. Gunny told his woman to keep an eye on him and look for other people. #2 crawled out from under the tractor trailer and also waved at the Gunny who had on his military fatigues with his dulled down military stripes showing.

Gunny saw #2 had a cluster of 40mm grenades in his hand with wires hanging from them. #2 saw what he was looking at and said I am just removing some booby traps I set to kill some prisoners. Gunny said you are just the people I am looking for. #3’s fingers tightened up on the M4 he had slung upside down on his shoulder. Gunny said quickly no, no, no not for a fight about those prisoners. We killed all but for about 5 of them who took to the woods and we could not find them. They talked for 2 hours and #2 and 3 helped him tie a tow strap to the vehicles blocking the roadway and remove them.

Gunny said he would follow them to the farm and the trailer city. He would look it over and report back to the 90 some people living where he was and make a decision on whether they wanted to move to the new city.

Clark and Gadd in the 3 vehicle convoy were heading in the opposite direction from Gunny’s clan so there was not much chance of running into them. They did meet several small groups of people who were happy where they were but promised to visit the city in the near future. 420 miles and over 2 weeks later they headed home.

Spangler and Jirco had walked around the mountain just a ways from Jimmy’s cave and found the 3 separate orchards and some small garden areas. They asked jimmy about it that evening before they left for the farm. He told them he had a sweet tooth and decided on pears, peaches, apples and cherries to satisfy his cravings. He took them about 75 yards further out from where they had found the apples, peaches and pears. He showed them the bush cherries and the 4 dwarf cherry trees he had. He laughed and said he actually had to fight the blackbirds to get a few cherries until he bought some bird netting for the trees and that slowed them way down. He told them he dried a lot of the fruits using 2 electric dehydrators in the cave and the large non-electric outdoor one by the solar panels. They asked him about the electricity and he said his 10 battery setup handled the small draw from the electric dehydrators, LED lighting and the DC fridge when he plugged the fridge in for some powdered white or chocolate milk and to keep some leftovers cool for the next day or to have some ice cubes for iced tea or soda.. They asked him about heating the place and he said he had 2 areas he kept fairly warm when he wanted to heat them up. He boiled some water on one of his Coleman stoves and he had to show them the plastic covered blankets he pulled to close an area up. 5 or 10 minutes at night boiling a pot of water or cooking something would keep a closed up area warm for 9 or 10 hours. In the 8 years he lived there he thought he had only lugged 4 or so 5 gallon plastic cans of treated gasoline up the hill to refill the metal ones that he used in the Coleman stoves.

Jirco and Spangler looked at each other with that look. They knew this was a perfect survivalists dream home and if things came push to shove they would ask him to consider letting them live here with him. They had estimated because of the way the place was laid out there probably was room for 10 more people with some additional supplies and equipment.

Chapter 11

A lot of people took stock in Jirco’s opinion and when he gave it out people listened. He was asked what he thought about Gunny since he and several other people had spent a lot of time with him while Clark and Gadd were off trying to round up some people to fill the trailer city. All he said was Gunny is a definite keeper. Devaney heard that and would tell Clark that when he got home. Of course this was all dependent on Gunny moving here to the farm. Jirco and Spangler had reserved him a trailer beside of theirs.

The 5 convicts that had evaded the search from Gunny’s men were some of the smarter convicts. 3 of them had hunting and fishing experience, one had been an Eagle Scout and the 5th one was a street wise person. Amazingly 4 of them had a rifle and a pistol, the 5th one the street wise person had a Remington pump shotgun but no pistol. They all had a ruck sack with scavenged goods from the former town. The Eagle Scout had a web belt with a canteen, hatchet and hunting knife. This would be the most valuable equipment the 5 had other then the food they carried to survive the next 90 or so miles southward they travelled in the woods. The canteen cup was used to boil drinking water for them which they carried in empty water bottles keeping the men from having dysentery and other water borne disease. The hatchet was handy in making lean to’s to keep them mostly dry when summer storms came through the area. All in all they were not in too bad shape when they entered the next empty town to resupply.

Gunny did not know he would be living on the farm instead of with the rest of his group that were assigned trailers in the city. But he would take it in stride.

A few months had gone by and Clark had been right 11 of the people from Carelli’s old town had been tried and evicted from the city for rabble rousing, wanting the people to quit carrying firearms in public. They were given some supplies and driven back to their old city and told not to come back. Clark felt bad for the 3 children age 4 to 6 that went with their parents.


Some very smart people from the nuclear submarines had landed at the Houston space center which was one of the few places that had not been destroyed. They had gotten some huge back up generators running and were accessing the satellites and the Hubble Telescope. The telescope had fortunately been moved into a higher plane of orbit prior to the disastrous chain of events on earth taking place and would be stable for another 4 to 6 years before another lift would be required. This new lift was not going to happen unless some Divine intervention took place.

Security had never stopped at the farm or the new trailer city. It was Gunny’s day to man the surveillance cameras and monitor the HF radios. Jirco was right, trouble came in 3’s.

One of the navy officers working on the satellites was extremely curious about the Hubble telescope and making it work. On his free time he read the operating manuals in the space center and figured out how to turn it on. The telescope had been programmed by someone now long dead to keep its main lens pointed at an approaching object from deep outer space. As soon as he started receiving the signal from the telescope and got it on one of the 48 inch monitoring screens he saw it was a large rock. The size of it was beyond his capability to figure out. He called several of his co-workers over to take a look. He wished he had never done that. The news after several hours of spatial/celestial mathematics and trajectory calculations indicated the object was on a line to impact the earth. Where it would impact would take another week to get close to figuring the impact point. Everything else they were working on stopped and all the available brain power and computer power went into solving this. If they had known how to access the data already in the computers that had been calculated they could have saved a lot of brain power sweat. But they did not know this.

9 days later they had a rough impact point and a rough date it was going to happen.

Chapter 12

The impact location as close as they could figure it would be 500 to 1500 miles south west of Mexico City. The rather large meteor dimensions were calculated to be 7 miles wide and 4 miles horizontal. Its speed was on the order of 40000 MPH. The date of impact was 131 days from today.

The submarine captain had been researching his computer bank on past impacts and he came up with dinosaur extinction or an ELE (extinction level event for humans). He thought if he resupplied his boat and notified the other submarines to head for the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and submerge 800 feet they may survive the impact, he was not to sure about afterwards.

The Submarine Captain instructed the people who were in the space center to set up the computers to send out a looped repeating message on all HF frequencies that would travel around the world notifying everyone who could receive it of what was going to happen.

Gunny heard it on its first transmission. He did not hesitate he called Clark and Gadd immediately. After they listened to the broadcast it was controlled panic afterwards. Clark said we have a little over 4 months to prepare for this. I want 24 hour working meetings in shifts on ideas. Gadd immediately notified Lewandowski and Wilson who just happened to be checking the water tank out. They reported back to the farm quickly.

After hearing of the impending disaster, Jirco looked at Spangler and said I told you things happened in 3’s. Spangler had no response.

It was Jimmy who came up with the best idea anyone had heard in 3 days. Parachutes was his answer. He recommended all the caves people would have to shelter in have a 20 foot long metal covered steep pitched roof with 6 or 8 hanging sheets of parachute silk or nylon to let air in but stop the volcanic dust that was probably going to be in the air from the exploding calderas and volcanoes that would erupt.

Clark looked at everyone and said it may be as long as 3 or 4 years we have to shelter in the caves before we can come out because the volcanic dust in the air will destroy your lungs. Ideas began to flow in from the think tanks. Another great idea was to weld many sheets of 5/8 inch steel road sheeting together forming an inverted V for people to shelter under if the caves collapsed. Arrangements were made to drill out of the cave sides to escape if the whole cave collapsed. Alternate places were being set up using the 350 parachutes hung in buildings to keep the dust out. The animal cave was completely stocked with hay and grains. This time Clark had enough bulls to insure 80 or 90 years to keep the herd healthy. He would lose some cattle but he would have enough for breeding stock. He would also keep a small amount of horses for breeding stock. The logistics were too great to save all the animals in the next 3 and half months.

Jimmy, Jirco and Spangler needed help in the worst way. They approached Captain Gadd and asked him to learn to fly the cargo helicopter. His eyes almost popped out of his head and he almost walked away until Spangler said Please. He turned around and said well it does not matter if I live or die before we get blown up by a rock.

Jirco serviced the cargo helicopter as best as he knew how and after reading the manuals he could get the engine started. Captain Gadd kept saying I am crazy over and over but he also had been self teaching himself using the school teaching manuals on learning how to fly a helicopter.

5 days later he settled himself in the pilot seat with the instruction book in the other seat and started fiddling around with the controls. He got it out of the hangar and into a real shaky hover 3 feet off the ground. He quit for the day and said he needed to think about what he had done and would resume his self teaching flying tomorrow.

Clark knew what Gadd was doing and thought it was a great idea to have people spread out. What Jimmy and his two cohorts did not know was Clark had picked 3 of the many single women to move into Jimmy’s cave. He and Devaney had been matchmaking for a while.

10 days later the Captain was flying 10 feet off the ground all around the airport. The pile of supplies was ready to be hung on the helicopter. Captain Gadd practiced hovering over the 15 or so thousand pounds of equipment until the 3 radioed him to lift it up higher. He found out the helicopter was much harder to maneuver with a big load but he practiced flying around the airport for 30 minutes. The load was dropped off at the airport and Captain Gadd told them tomorrow we will take the 1st load of supplies to Jimmy’s cave.

[Lbox88]

Chapter 13

Jimmy wondered at the 3 queen sized beds and the 3 sets of bunk beds with the top beds having side boards to keep a person from falling out. There were things he had not talked to Clark about being slung onto the cargo helicopter. The diesel heavy duty fork lift he knew would be needed to carry the 5/8 inch 4 foot by 8 foot sheets of metal to protect the Lister generator and the gas generator from a cave in. The jack hammer to escape through a side wall was included and it would be stored beside the generator.

Clark took Devaney with him to inspect the generators and propellers on the wind turbines. He saw they were sealed units and the gritty dust would not impact on their use. He had already decided to use the other cave his grandfather had used back in the 50’s during the cold war to house all of the new city residents. Power would be needed and he knew there would be no sunlight for the solar panels. Hopefully the wind turbines, propane and diesel generators would supply enough power for the residents in the 2 mile deep cold war storage cave.

Jimmy was asked by Clark if he had enough wind to run a few of the wind turbines for additional power. He thought about it for a minute and said yes but it would be a long run of wire from the side of the mountain between 2 valleys. Some extra people were assigned to Jimmy’s crew to install the turbines.

All of the major items on the think tanks list had been accomplished by day 47. Now the secondary list was started on. This involved putting a few upright beams in the hangar to support the roof – they used 6 and 8 inch steel water pipe welded together and welded them to the roof beams. Next on the list was gathering all the rolls of contractor plastic to wrap the large and small helicopters inside a plastic cocoon. Devaney asked him if the roofs on the trailers would collapse under the expected volcanic ash fallout. He said probably and I don’t know if we have time to put an A-frame roof over all of them to keep the ash off the flat topped trailer roofs. The trailers that have a pitched roof may survive but I do not have any idea if they will make it. She said well we can do a bunch of A-frames in the next 90 or so days.

When Jimmy, Spangler and Jirco were told they were going to have company in the cave and the reason why they did not make any complaint. Jimmy then knew why all the stuff on the cargo chopper had been carried to the cave.

6 of the coal miners recommended they go to the former working mines and bring 6 or 8 roof bolters in and send a bunch of 36 inch bolts up into the cave ceilings with the 12 to 24 inch slab of steel which would stop a lot of roof collapse. They ended up with 11 roof bolters and Gadd carried 2 of them to Jimmy’s cave with a 4 man crew to man the bolters. They finished jimmy’s cave in 5 days and took the machines back to the 2 mile deep cave to help with that job.

150 or so people can get a lot of work done if they are organized. Captain Gadd and Sgt Lewandowski supervised most of the projects and kept the arguing to almost zero. The working folks knew they were doing this to save their own lives.

The battery systems that were charged from solar, diesel, propane and wind were doubled in all 3 caves. Aquaponic and Hydraponic systems were set up in all 3 caves but catfish were going to be the fish for the system – 80 degree permanent temperature water for tilapia did not look feasible plus catfish were available in the ponds locally.

The think tank people decided a 12 foot tall log cabin type structure with a steep pitched roof built over the cave air intakes would hold up better then any prefabricated system during an earth quake because they would flex more then brick or cinderblock. 2 inch holes were drilled directly under the 2 foot roof overhang and the complete interior of the cabin was covered with parachute cloth to minimize the volcanic ash going into the cave air intakes. It took 12 people 6 days to build these log structures. They were not built to last a life time so the green logs were buried 5 feet deep in the mountain side drilled holes and the logs would rot out in 15 or so years. But that should be enough time for the air to clear up. The entry ways to the caves were done the same way but were 20 feet long, 10 feet high and the interior was completely covered with parachute cloth as was the large log door way. The outside air intakes inside the log structures were covered with Hepa filters that could easily be replaced if they got clogged with ash.

Now that everything that had been thought of was accomplished the think tank was given another project; How to clean or remove the expected 4 or 5 feet of volcanic ash from the Loup Creek and farm area after the people left the caves. Equipment would quickly be damaged by the volcanic ash while removing it and that was where Clark left the think tank to go home.

One of the solutions the think tank thought up after Clark left was to use water from the tank to clean up the city and it’s farming area. That caused Mr. Cavalierio to do some more plumbing. He installed 20 fire hydrants that were screwed loose from various spots in the big city. These hydrants were randomly placed in various places in the trailer city and the farm. The fire hose was stored in one of the cinder block buildings and a log structure on the farm.

They went back to the building the diesel generators for the water tank were installed in and air proofed it, installed parachute cloth in it and installed an A-Frame roof over it. Steel guy lines were attached to the water tank everywhere and tied onto large trees that would hopefully flex with the coming earth quake and explosion.

15 days left and the residents of the city and farm decided they would move to the caves 3 days prior to impact and everything power wise in the city and farm would be turned off. The water tank power would be the last item to be disconnected. And the water tank would be emptied.

Jimmy, Jirco and Spangler built a small air tight wooden structure over his mountain cave spring with the drainage hole just big enough to let the spring drain naturally.

No one knew what was going to happen. The consensus was the mountains would protect them from the initial blast which would probably circle the globe at a faster then sound speed or faster.

The roof bolters had completely covered the roof of the caves from the entry way back 30 or so yards. Everyone was going to stay close by the exit to try and escape if the cave collapsed.

It was wait time…..

Chapter 14

Clark and Captain Gadd were talking about whether the tin they had covered all the structures with would be enough to keep the logs from catching on fire from the expected hot ash and forest fire ashes. They had cleared the woods around everything that was covered in tin for 100 yards. And in addition to the roofs all the log structures had a 4 foot section of tin on the bottom. They really did not think the green logs would catch on fire but they still worried about it.

The big rock hit the upper atmosphere at 40 thousand plus MPH and started to glow from the friction with the air. At the angle it was travelling it almost skipped off the atmosphere back into space but earth was not going to have any such luck. Coming from the bottom of the world passing over Antarctica it seemed as if it knew where it was going to hit. If anyone does not believe big rocks are not randomly travelling around in space just take a look at the moon, ever wonder how them big craters got there.

The impact with the Pacific Ocean 750 miles directly west from Mexico City was something a kid would say, AWESOME. The rock was traveling slightly north east when it impacted with the ocean. This resulted in a large section of salt water 3500 feet deep to vaporize from the heat and speed of the impact. Still traveling at 30000 MPH when it hit the upper mantle of the earth under the ocean it penetrated almost 2 miles into the upper earth mantle before coming to a stop. There was a large hole in the ocean larger then the 4 x 7 mile rock. Before the ocean could flow back into the hole, the melted and broken up section of the earth’s upper mantle was ejected outwards, again stopping the incoming salt water and pushing it outwards creating a larger hole in the ocean.

The earth mantle where the impact took place was a boiling cauldron of super heated rock, earth and sand further stopping the inflow of salt water. The ejection upwards and outwards of so much water and super heated earth into the atmosphere was stupendous. The ejected material was travelling about 2000 MPH and about 15 minutes later all of Mexico was struck by a 2000 MPH shock wave with tons of heated rock and debris from the ocean floor. At the distance Mexico was from the impact the super heated debris caught everything it touched on fire. The fire would not rage long because the 3400 foot high tsunami was right behind the ejected debris.

The underground deep ripple effect of the seismic shock wave circled the globe. This ripple effect would be the cause of much trouble for our survivors. Every caldera located in the western US either exploded violently or became active spewing lava and ash out at an amazing pace. The continental plates shifted causing many earth quakes. If a person were in the space station he/she would have a birds eye view of what would look like a world becoming unstable.

The caves Clark and company were in did not go unscathed in this first of many earth tremors. The entry ways everyone was standing or sitting by rumbled and shook slightly from the rippling effect of the seismic shock wave travelling through the ground. Some of the rocky ceiling fell and several of the roof bolts pinged out. Luckily no one was injured on this first of many earth tremors.

Clark and crew were right on the initial blast, the shock wave and super heated wind flew over the mountains but dropped burning debris everywhere setting the forests on fire.

The calderas in the rest of the world also exploded causing massive tsunamis in the rest of the worlds oceans. The west coast of the US was toast and the eastern seaboard 250 miles inland was under hundreds of feet of receding saltwater.

So much saltwater was thrown into the atmosphere that the initial eastward flow of falling ash was beaten to the ground by the massive downpour. This was fortunate for Clark and crew because the initial explosions would have dumped upwards of 7 or 8 feet of hot ash on them. As it was they only got about 2 feet of slightly warm, and damp salty ash fall.

The later caldera explosions in the Atlantic Ocean and the ones near Hawaii would cause the world survivors more problems. The entire world was eventually covered in a thick, dark, murky haze of floating dark glass like volcanic ash which would take a long time to fall from the sky.

[Lbox88]

Chapter 15

The 5 escaped convicts had made it to southern Georgia and had set up housekeeping with 8 or 9 young females and young boys. As usual they were up to their old tricks.

At first when they had made their initial escape from Gunny’s crew they had used bicycles to lengthen their lead from the non-existent pursuers until they thought the pursuers had broken off the chase. They wanted to live on the beach in one of those million dollar beach houses that was in an undamaged nuclear free area but there was no drinking water. The closest drinkable water they could find was 7 miles inland at a small farm. The place actually had a hand crank up bucket in the water well.

The convicts were all at the beach frolicking in the fairly warm ocean water when bad things began to happen. The shock wave had lost much of its punch 4000 miles from the initial impact but the wind was still hot enough to make a person think their skin was burning off. They all rushed to take shelter in one of the beach houses when things really began to look even worse. The ocean water receded as far as a person could see. 2 of the convicts had a pretty good idea on what was coming next and told the rest of the people to head inland quickly. They made it 5 miles before a billion or so tons of 500 MPH salt water mashed them into the ground ending their lives.

The 4 nuclear submarines did not do well at all. Their choice of where to ride out this cataclysmic event was a poor one or unlucky one. The submarines were 10 miles apart directly over an uncharted T shaped 80 mile long weak fault line 4700 feet below the stationary submarines. It exploded on one of the 3rd tremors that were caused by other distant exploding calderas. The fault line split open and super heated magma ejected out directly under the submarines. The ocean water was instantly super heated a 1000 or so degrees into super steam in a 100 mile wide area. This instantly cooked alive all the sailors in the subs. The internal heat in the submarines was not high enough to fry or melt the electronics so the subs would stay at the depth where the automatic controls were set at. It would take a long time for enough equipment that was stabilizing the ballast system to break down and let the submarines spiral downward to a depth that was beyond the submarines underwater crush parameters. But this would eventually happen and fortunately for the future environment the automatic SCRAM (shutdown of the nuclear plant) would function flawlessly on all 4 submarines.

There were no major rock falls in any of the caves but a lot of small roof rock fell damaging some non essential items and scaring the animals into a near panic.

Clark wondered if the amount of work put out taking the farm surveillance cameras, repeater tower and batteries down was worth it. He did not think there would be anyone travelling in this burned out ash coated country for years that is if there were any other survivors.

Of the 3 caves the one inhabited by Jimmy, Jirco, Spangler and their new female companions was probably the most tranquil. Harsh spoken words were seldom uttered and a steady calm reigned. Rotating card games occupied a lot of their time and surprisingly the other members found that Spangler was a superb chess player unfortunately for them after he beat them severely. Jirco ended up being the comedian and Jimmy just languished in the company of good people.

9 months and 10 days went by before the first work parties left the caves. The air was not suitable for an unmasked person to breathe but the heavy fallout of ash had slowed to just a trickle. There was not enough available sunlight to grow anything but maybe lichen. The farm crew and the city crew put the installed water hydrants to good use and 45 days later they had the gardens cleared and a large area prepped for the animals. Jimmy and his mates had a much rougher time. They used street push brooms and snow shovels to shovel and scrape the 2 feet of packed down damp volcanic ash off of his gardens and away from the bottoms of his deathly looking fruit trees that had miraculously not burned, maybe it was because they were not near any other trees or had no brush growing around them. The cherry bushes were burned to the ground, but Jimmy thought the roots had survived and in a few years they would hopefully have bush cherries again. They got enough removed that the spring rains would wash the remaining residue away and let the ground on the gardens and around the fruit trees breathe freely. Jirco said it will be many years before the rains wash most of this ash away allowing the mountains to turn green again. He was right about that.

Before the farm and city could begin using the water hydrants for clean-up a large crew had to do the same thing Jimmy and his crew did. The building that housed the generator to pump the water into the tank had to be thoroughly cleaned outside before the door could be opened. Loup Creek was still running mostly clear but occasionally a slurry of ash filled water would drift by the pump location. Mr. Cavalierio noticed this and said it will be alright the pump was designed to handle much worse. The only thing we don’t want to happen is to get volcanic ash into the air intake of the generator. The work crew had a good chuckle when they first saw the water tank – all the cables were hanging from the tank because the trees they had been tied to had burned down. The work crews pushed the volcanic ash back 15 yards from the feeder streams and the creek bed above the pump station. They would wait for some heavy rains to help finish washing the ash away before they turned the water pump on to fill the tank.

They had 3 meetings on how to handle the ash clean up above the water pumping station. It was finally decided after a few hard rains they would fill the tank and go up stream and wash as much ash down into the creek and let it wash away then they would pressure hose the creek bed down to the pump station to help clean the rocky creek bed. It would be a long time before enough ash was washed away above the pump station to let the volcanic ash contaminated water flow into the mostly undamaged trailers in the city and destroy the fragile household plumbing.

Chapter 16

Another meeting Clark said to himself. This one was fairly important the work crews needed the roads plowed to prepare for their massive clean up operation. One plow truck would be sacrificed. Everyone knew the gritty volcanic ash would get into every part of the running vehicle. They decided to change the air filter twice a day and change the oil every evening hopefully prolonging the trucks useful life span.

The road to the airport and the roadway to where Jimmy and his cave members would walk down from the mountain cave were ploughed clear. Chains had been put on the snow plough truck to enable it to clear large areas everywhere for grass to begin growing whenever the sun came back out. The fruit trees that had been planted in the Loup Creek area were the last to be plowed clear before the volcanic ash ruined the snow plow truck engine.

It was 21 months to the day before everyone left the caves. The cleanup up crews had done a fine job but after looking at the mountains the rains, snow, wind and weather had done an almost as good job of clearing the volcanic ash. There were pockets of the gritty stuff but it was not in the way of the people doing anything unless they wanted to roll or play in it. The children were told of the consequences of doing that.

The think tank meetings had painted a bleak picture. No wild life - and they were not even sure if any insects would be alive. Clark kept his mouth shut because he knew there would always be mosquitoes, roaches and flies, how he knew this he did not know but if anyone wanted to bet him he would bet there would be those 3 insects.

The most important items the farm had were cows, horses, chickens and pigeons that is of course other than the humans. But a handy meat supply would be extremely important for the coming future.

There were enough stored foods to feed the 281 adults, 73 teen-agers, 87 pre teens and 92 babies or toddlers for at least 10 years and that would be plenty of time to increase the beef/dairy herd, chickens and the pigeons to resupply everyone with needed meat. 55 women including Devaney were currently pregnant.

Clark and his Biologist friends were smiling because there were now enough humans to keep the human population from becoming extinct and on an expanding track. Clark and his biology friends kept their mouths really shut about the terminology, women of breeding age, so as not to offend anyone. Currently there were 135 adult women of breeding age and in 5 years that number would go to 171 barring any sterile women or accidents. They knew the bare minimum of breeding couples was 50 so they would in the near future soon quadruple that. If no other people were found this small group could theoretically repopulate the world. One of the first classes taught to all people of breeding age was in-breeding. And the consequences of not checking the community family tree; this class would be taught every year until the gene pool was diversified enough that 37th distant removed cousins breeding would no longer result in a total community catastrophe.

4 computers were set up just to maintain records of the community family tree to prevent any in breeding. 2 hard copies updated yearly were placed in 2 separate gun safes. In the distant future these records would be extremely important to track back family lineages.

The 1st year everyone was out of the caves over 300 vacuum cleaners were burnt up cleaning every nook and cranny on the farm and the city. The greenhouses were put back into 100% operation and the precious heirloom seeds were doled out to a large number of people with instructions to save seed for next year from the grown plants.

The helicopters were not put back into operation until mid summer of the 2nd year because of the hard time the clean up crews had of cleaning up the hangar. The only automobile lost to volcanic ash was the 1st truck that did the original plowing. A crew went out late in the 2nd year and re installed the surveillance cameras just on a hunch by Clark. The repeater and the HF antenna on the farm was also put back into operation even though the wire antennas they had put up before the meteor struck worked fine. The repeater gave the local radios a lot more range.

The 3rd spring two 10 year old boys saw what they thought were chipmunks in the now greening up forest. The group took action this spring as no bees had yet been observed. The entire group hand pollinated the fruit trees that needed bee pollination and they just barely got that job done while the fruit trees were blooming. In the future ground bees became numerous enough to take care of that labor intensive problem.

On the 4th year 4 more pigeon roosts had to be built. So far the only bird life was the chickens and pigeons and 2 of the new roosts and chicken coops were placed in the Loup Creek town to separate the birds in case of an accident or disease.

5 years later the fish in the rivers and the ponds that had running water to them showed signs of a healthy fish recovery.

6 years later Clark and Devaney had had 3 boys and 2 girls. The cow herd was almost two hundred head. The herd was split into 3 different grazing areas and fed from 3 different grain fields to also insure safety from disease.

Half of the re-grown cherry bushes near Jimmy’s cave were transplanted to the farm and Loup Creek but it took 7 years to develop any bush cherries. His fruit trees also survived. The only people to visit Jimmy’s cave were Jimmy, Jirco, Spangler, their mates and children. The cave was finally sealed up, the contents inventoried, the information and location placed in the community archives. The cave and surrounding fruit trees would be maintained and visited by future generation hikers and hopefully swinging grapeviners.

On the 8th year there were 540 trailers occupied in the Loup Creek city and horses were mostly the mode of local transportation. Clark’s 1000 trailer city was completed with the 1000th trailer placed on the footer amid a large city celebration.

Chatter was heard on the one hour a day monitored HF radios on the 9th year.

Clark was right the flies, roaches and mosquitoes by the 10th year were thick.

The End

[Lbox88]

Clark Story #16 - The Liberal Arts Clark

1.

Clark shed pearl shaped tears as he listened to the hauntingly familiar sound of orchestra music playing Amazing Grace. He was sitting by the casket taking a long last look at his Mom. Everyone else had left the wake but he lingered on because it was hard to tear himself away from the lonely occupied casket which sat in the corner of the small parlor at the funeral home. He mentally told his Mom she should be ashamed of herself for playing that music because she knew he had a soft heart and even a softer heart for certain music. She had left instructions on what type of music was to be played at her wake and the last 30 minutes was to be Amazing Grace on a continuous loop until the wake was over. Clark told the funeral director what his Mom wanted and it was complied with.

The funeral was at 1pm the next day and again his eyes misted up as the lone bugler played taps in the background. His Mom had been in the military for 4 years and the local VFW had sent their bugler.

Clark was now parentless and was going through the same grieving process millions upon untold millions had gone through before. He did remember the last sentence the preacher had said – Life goes on. He drank himself into oblivion that night and passed out on the couch.

The next morning he woke with a hangover and cussed himself out for drinking. He put on his running shoes and ran a mile or so until the sweat poured out of him and his mind cleared. After showering he began the task of going through her possessions which he now subconsciously knew were his. He went through the safe, read the will and looked at her insurance policies. He sat back down quickly after looking at the life insurance policies. The one she carried from her place of work was 50,000 and she had transferred her military service policy to a civilian one after she left the military. It was worth 250,000. He knew these were tax free monies. He had no idea she had this much insurance and figured she would have the standard policy of 10,000 to get her buried and pay the minimal bills she had. He also had no idea how much the house was worth. It was a 3 bedroom, 2 baths, full concrete basement, brick home with a 3 car garage that sat on a corner lot on one acre in a mid sized town in West Virginia. He put the policies back in the safe and continued to go through the rest of the 3X3X3 foot safe. He found his dad’s 45 pistol and her 357 revolver. He opened the velvet covered jewelry box and found a letter addressed to him on top of the sparkling jewelry.

The letter started out Dear Son – Your dad and I kept a few things from you because we had not decided whether you were ready to join us in the state of preparedness for what we always thought were coming bad times. So we waited, it was sad when your Dad was killed in a plane crash many years ago. We have a small unimproved farm acreage of about 60 or more acres in the country. The deed is in the safety deposit box at City Bank. We had you sign the entry authorization card when we took you to the bank about 8 years ago. The safe deposit key is in this jewelry box. When you go to get the deed and check the property out I need to tell you the things we had done to the property. Here are the GPS numbers for where the well, septic and survey marker pipes are located. Any metal detector will find them because we buried the well and septic metal covers to keep anyone from bothering them. Attached to the deed is the survey map, depth of well and location of how the septic and leech field is laid out.

We, I and your dad were going to retire there and build a bomb shelter under either an earth dome type of building or covered by a cinder block building. The locked room in the basement has long term storage food in it, various military items and 5 rifles your Dad left. I did not give you the rifles because you had your own rifles and pump shotgun. These rifles are more combat oriented and I hope you never tell anyone you own them. The following is a list of preparedness sites I really hope you spend some time at before you make any long term life decisions. Read the survival fiction at this site before you do any building that is if you decide to live there. We really had great plans for you and your sister, God now rests her soul. (He really missed his little sister who died from viral meningitis 12 or so years ago). The letter had a few more details about house items.

Since the burial was yesterday on a Friday and he had just quit organizing things in her house he turned the computer on and started looking at the sites that were listed. He did what he always said about other people he became addicted to the computer screen and finally could not hold his eyes open and at 4am he crashed into bed. At noon he got up ran about half a mile, showered, ate breakfast and started right back where he had left off the night before. At 9pm that night he finally came to his senses. There was just too much information to be absorbed by his weak mind. He had been trying to absorb huge chunks and it was not working, he did not have total recall so he would have to take it in easy absorbable bite sizes like he did in college classes. He opened a browser in word and took notes and reminders of what to go back and look at for the next 2 hours and went to bed. He would let what he had read percolate in his mind while he slept and hopefully he would get a better handle on it as the days went by.

The next morning he asked the funeral director to get him several notarized copies of his Mom’s death certificate. He called the insurance companies and inquired about collecting on the policies and got details on how to do it without running into any red tape. He almost made a mistake and put the house up for sale but came to his senses before he called the real estate agent. After thinking about it for a bit he decided to give up his apartment in town and live here till he got better organized and educated on this preparedness thing.

3 weeks later when the insurance money came in he deposited the checks in 2 different banks. He had learned a few things from those web sites, and he also knew to only make 9000 dollar withdrawals from now on. He wanted to keep under the radar of the IRS as one story told.

After all the funeral bills were paid he gave the obligatory notice on his low wage job. He never did find a job that paid a decent wage even after graduating college with a liberal arts degree. He also now knew after reading just a few weeks on those sites that he had really been a dumb left wing donkey. He was now 24 years old and still what he called himself dumber then a box of rocks. But he was going to fix that in the next year as best he could. He just barely knew how to change a light bulb and wanted to fix that problem. He had good analytical skills and basic math skills including 2 years of algebra but no science skills. His classes in college were a waste of breathing air as he now knew. He could not even be a kindergarten teacher because he did not take the classes to get certified. He would think about that over the next year and see if he could remedy that after self educating himself on a bunch of lacking knowledge.

That night he decided to see what kind of rifles his dad had stored in the basement. He saw 4 rifle sized OD army green cases leaning in the corner and walked over to them. He opened the 1st one he came to and saw it was similar to the AR15 with a small difference, this one said M-16 on its side and had that selector switch that made it a fully automatic weapon. Now he knew why his Mom said don’t tell anyone you have these rifles. He opened the 2nd box and it had another M-16 in it but it had an envelope in it addressed to him. It started out with Hello Son: If you are reading this something bad has happened to me – Hopefully your Mom is okay and can explain a little more. Anyway there are 5 military issue weapons here – you need not concern yourself how I came into their possession – Let’s just say I did some horse trading and leave it at that. I could only get 10,000 rounds for the M-16’s but that is a nice round number. There are 2 M203 grenade launchers for the M-16’s but I could not get any grenades so they are not worth much unless you stumble on some grenades for them. The 2 day night scoped M14 Designated Marksman Rifles with quick detachable suppressors and polymer stocks are a dream to shoot – Again I could only get 10,000 rounds for them and again that is a nice round number. The 1 Barrett 50 caliber rifle M82A1M was really difficult to obtain and I could only get 4 hundred Raufoss exploding rounds and 500 rounds of armor piercing. There are 20 M16 magazines with 18 rounds in them and 20 M14 magazines with 18 rounds in them. I could only get 3 ten round magazines for the 50 caliber and I did not pre load those magazines.

One more thing while I am rambling along in this letter that I hope you never see. The long term storage food will probably last for 30 or more years as long as the outer and inner container is not damaged. The salt, sugar, honey, beans and rice will last forever as long as the container is intact. Well I will close this out now – Love you, Dad.

Clark got all misty eyed again as he tightly gripped the letter his Dad wrote. After reminiscing for about 30 minutes he put the rifles away and locked the door as he left. He told himself as he walked up the basement stairs; I still have a lot to learn. Later that night after reading a real good story about EMP and vehicles he went into the garage and looked at the old pick-up that belonged to his Dad that his Mom would not sell. It was a standard transmission and had a diesel engine. He had no idea where on the engine the electronic or non electronic ignition system was. He wrote that down - how to tell if an automobile was EMP proof and learn a whole lot more about engines.

He thought about rifles that evening and came to the conclusion he knew very little about shooting. One of his friends he roomed with in college talked about going hunting a lot and talked Clark into buying a 30-06 rifle, a 22 and a shotgun. Clark had a good bit of money saved from the money his parents sent him so he made the purchases. They took the rifles to the range and sighted them in. That night he almost cried because his shoulder hurt so much. Well they went deer hunting and never saw anything but little black deer pellets in the woods; anyways that is what his friend said they were. They also went bird hunting with their shotguns and shot at sparrows and he still could not remember whether he ever hit one. That ended his hunting career, the rifles were cleaned and put away never to be brought back out again. He made himself a big, big note to learn about hunting and shooting.

For the next 90 days he went over and over the self help books he had bought on, plumbing, electrical work/house wiring, brick laying and house construction. He never thought he was that dumb and the books he had gone through were just extreme basic know how. He sure was glad he was not living in a post apocalyptic world or he would have died a long time ago with the other liberal arts graduates.

2.

There were other books he had not started on, some he was leery about starting on like basic electronics, ham radio and auto engine repair but he was raring to go to get into the gun books, he had simple gun repairs, guns of the world, reloading basics, gardening small and large plots, canning and how to shoot rifles and pistols. He knew he would need some professional help on some of those things but he did not want to ask for professional help until he at least knew some questions to ask. Since he had only a few bills like small property taxes on this house and the country acreage, auto insurance, utilities and food he was going to take some more time off before he maybe looked for a new job. The internet would be his friend for at least 3 more months.

He had started paying a lot more attention to the news after becoming enlightened at some of the sites he had visited. The economy was in really bad shape and the idiots running the country wanted to expand government and make the reduced level of working people pay more for the people who had never worked and never would work. It was kind of stupid now that he had a handle on how the system worked. All he had ever been taught in the schools he attended was share, share, share and take care of those downtrodden people. Well if he could help it he was going to hang on to every last dime he made from now on and help only those that helped themselves or at least tried to.

Sometime during the seventh month he went to the bank and made a copy of the deed and the instructions on where the well and septic were. He bought a cheap metal detector and left early the next morning for the 4 hour drive. He had to stop at 2 farmhouses to find out where the road to his property was. When he got to where he thought the property was he turned around and went back to the last farmhouse and talked to the farmer who had initially seemed friendly. The farmer told him he had been trying to buy that property for 5 years and he was waiting on it to go up for sale because of unpaid taxes but the taxes were always paid. Clark told him his Mom and Dad always wanted to retire to that place and put a house up and live there and they had kept the taxes paid. The farmer asked Clark if he wanted to sell it and Clark told him no he was going to live there and needed to find someone to clear it off. The farmer slammed the door in his face. Clark drove 10 miles back to a small feed store he had seen and stopped in there. He did not say anything about the conversation he had with the farmer. The feed store man told Clark to hang on and he would make a few calls. He came back about 5 minutes later and told him a few fellers were out of work and could use the money and they would be here in about 15 minutes if he wanted to wait for them. The feed store man bought him a cup of coffee in a pint mason jar and started up a conversation. In 30 minutes Clark knew who every available woman for 30 miles was and who not to let on his property after he started building anything because they would even steal the gravel if it was in a pile. The feed man told Clark after he got the place cleared off he could have the place fenced in on some really discounted barbed wire and metal posts he had for sale and he even knew a couple of fellows that could do the job real cheap.

3 men with bib overalls and orange John Deere hats came in and told the feed man whose name Clark heard was Emory that they were there about a job clearing some property off. Clark spoke up and said I would be who you are looking for. The spokesman for the work crew asked Clark if he had one of them there cell phones and Clark told him he did. The spokesman told Clark his name was Gerald and to check to see if it worked out here. The feed man, Emory gave him the store number and Clark called, it worked. Gerald told the 2 men he was with to stay here and he would call them in about an hour to see what kind of equipment they would need to start on this here job. Gerald told Clark to lead the way and he would follow him in the big tired 4 wheel drive pickup.

They got to where Clark was the last time and Gerald said I know you a smart man and I need to see the deed to this here place so I can figure out where the boundary lanes are. Clark Pulled out the deed with the map attached and where the survey points were. Gerald said this is great, now all I gotta do is find the first survey marker. Clark said I have a GPS and the coordinates. Gerald said that be fine get in my truck and lets go see. Clark had no idea of what he was in for the brush and weeds were taller then the truck. Gerald said set them coordinates on this here corner survey mark. Gerald put the truck in 4 wheel drive and eased through the brush following the arrow pointing to the survey mark. Clark said we are on or close to the corner of the lot. Gerald said fine. He took an axe from the tool box and cut down a 15 foot tall sapling. Clark said I brought a metal detector to find the metal survey marker if you want to go back and get it. Gerald thought about it for a minute and said nope we get it on the way to the other corner. This be close enough for the first clearing. Gerald took a post hole digger out of the back and dug a 2 foot deep hole he then tied a orange streamer on top of it and put the sapling in the hole and filled the hole back in it. Clark told himself silently I would have never thought of doing that.

They stopped at the car on the way to the other corner; Gerald was just letting the engine idle which was enough to pull the truck through the bushes when he slammed on the brakes. Clark asked him what he saw and Gerald got out of the truck, walked to the front and said it is OK I thought it was a deep hole. To Clark it was a deep hole but the big tired truck went down and back up the other side, but Gerald had to give the big diesel engine a little more throttle to get up on the other side. Clark said we are at the survey marker. Gerald said well see if that metal detector can find the pipe. 3 minutes later Clark heard that whine from the metal detector and Gerald dug around with the spade and found the pipe. He had to drive about 25 yards away to find a tall enough sapling and it was placed beside the survey pipe. Gerald said you lucky this is a squared off piece of property because it make it easy to put fence up and keep it cleared. It also make it easy for us to make a straight line because that GPS thing keeps us going straight and we can cut it by following my truck tracks. Call Emory at the store and ask to speak to Hank. Clark got Hank on the phone and he heard Gerald tell Hank to go on home that they would start in the morning because the job gonna be bigger then we thought.

After Gerald and Clark completed the marking job, Gerald drove through the whole property asking Clark if he wanted to keep that stand of hard woods near the back corner. Clark asked him if he would and Gerald said yes sir for firewood and maybe even build a few things. Clark asked what he would build and Gerald thought a minute and said a root cellar, hog pen, entry gate posts and maybe a pole barn. Clark just said yes good ideas Gerald. Gerald asked him if he had any ideas where he wanted his garden and fortunately Clark had drawn up some plans on how he was going to lay the house out contingent on what the architect had in mind. Gerald said good because that’s where we will pile all the brush and burn it and then we will plow it in for next years garden 60 acres of brush gonna make a big pile and probably 2 or 3 days to burn it all.

Clark asked him if he did fences and Gerald said yep. Would you be interested in putting the barbed wire up around the property? Gerald said yep, but I gonna have to figger out how much labor it gonna take before I can give you a price. This here job gonna be about 900 dollars plus fuel and that includes plowing ash into the garden for ya. Clark thought that was reasonable, boy was he in for a shock that was slave wages, times were hard out here in farm country. Clark asked him about planting blackberries around the fence and Gerald said be cheaper if ya buy enough to put 2 or 3 rootlings about 3 feet apart between the fence posts and wait a year or 2 to see what did not take and replant in the open areas. Clark asked him if he wanted that job and Gerald said yep but we can’t plant till this fall or next spring or the rootlings will all die. Clark kicked himself for not getting into the gardening book. That will be fine Clark said. Gerald asked Clark if he knew much about farming and Clark said not yet. Gerald said well I can give ya a few pointers when you get started. Clark said I would appreciate that. When they got to Clark’s car Clark handed him 500 dollars and said I will give you the rest when you finish up. Gerald said that will be fine and for Clark to come back in 3 days to check out the job because it probably take us about 3 days to do it. Clark headed home.

He studied gardening for 2 nights and left at 10am on the 3rd day. The place looked 100% different when he got there. There was a large fire burning where he decided his garden would be. Gerald drove up and said tough job gonna take us another day to finish it up. I strongly recommend you spend 300 dollars to have the boys remove the brush and poison ivy from that hardwood stand or you will never be able to get in there to cut any down. Clark said fine have them do it. Gerald said I was gonna charge you to come back next spring and spray that area with round up to keep it clear, the chemicals won’t hurt those 4 foot diameter oak trees and that should keep it clear for 2 or 3 years before you have to kill the poison ivy again. If it was me I would use the one year brush killer and do it every year for 3 years and that oughta take care of it. Clark just said OK.

Gerald said I have a price for the fence job but it depends on how you want it done. One price is dirt cheap and the other is a bit pricey. If it was me I would do the pricey and never worry about it for the next 50 years. OK Gerald what is the difference between the 2. Well one we cement the posts in and they will not rust out for 50 or more years and they be at least a hundred times more stronger. The other is we just pound them in the ground and hope no cattle you have push up against em. Clark said let’s do the pricey job. Gerald said I asked Emory down at the feed store and he has enough wire for you to do 4 strands but he ain’t got enough poles. How many poles are you going to need? Gerald said about 400 more and I can pick them up 60 dollars cheaper then Lowe’s will deliver. Clark said OK I will stop there and order them and bring you the ticket back for you to pick them up. Gerald said uhh one more thing Mr Clark. You gonna have to fence in your garden with 8 foot fencing with the rabbit wire around the bottom. Ah Clark thought here is something I read about. You will need the outriggers on the top also to keep the deer from jumping in. Clark said yes and I want the bottom 4 inches of chain link buried in cement. Gerald said now that is a right nice idea and I never thought of it. I don’t wanna order the 400 pipes right yet because some of them old boys may come in here after we leave at night and pick it up. We don’t leave nothing here when we leave so they ain’t nothing for them good ole or bad ole boys to steal. They don’t steal no barbed wire after it on the fence because it too much of a hassle to mess with. Uhh one more thing Mr. Clark – We gonna have to pay somebody to guard the cement that we gonna need out here to put the poles in the ground and you may as well have them deliver the posts while they deliver the cement. As a matter of fact you can have them deliver the poles and 400 foot of chain link for the garden. Clark said how much cement we talking about. Gerald said 700 eighty pound bags of Quikrete or sand mixed cement. We can get the gravel outta the creek across the road and make some nice summertime swim holes for you and also some nice fishing holes. Clark handed him a 1000 dollars and told him he was off to Lowe’s and would stop by on the way home to see when he should return. Gerald said you writing this money down because I ain’t too much of a book keeper. Clark showed him the notebook and had him initial beside the 500 dollars and the 1000 dollars.

[Lbox88]

3.

After he had stopped back from Lowe’s and told Gerald when the delivery truck would arrive. Gerald told him he did not have to hire anybody to guard the place as he had 4 boys and 2 girls that were going to camp out here during the night to stop any thievery.
Clark said he would pay them something anyway. He next stopped at the feed store and paid Emory for the barbed wire and the available posts he had.

Clark made an appointment to see an architect 2 days hence. He researched fence posts, barbed wire and gardening again. He told the architect what he wanted and showed him how the septic, well and garden was laid out. The architect told him to come back in about 2 weeks. Before Clark left he asked him for a ball park figure. The man did a few scribbles and said since the well and septic is installed and you are well above the ground water table and you definitely do not need blast doors for your basement shelter where you are located, it looks like a straight forward cinder block construction job. The air filtration system will cost you a pretty penny unless you do it the way several others around here have cheaply done it. You are looking at around 90,000 dollars. I am basing this on the depressed area you are building in and the local labor will be way cheaper then if you build in the city. The bullet proof glass is kind of overboard and I myself would install steel shutters that can be closed and locked from the inside. I have a few hints that I have picked up from other peoples shelters that I am going to add in to your plans.

Clark went out and had some Tacos and stopped off at one of the local watering holes he frequented. He watched a few good looking women dance, drank his beer and went home to study some more.

Clark drove back to the farm on a Monday to see how things were going, he knew Lowe’s was supposed to deliver early that morning. He arrived around 1130 and the place looked like a beehive. Gerald told Clark he would talk to him when they broke for lunch in about 30 minutes. Clark noticed there were fence poles in holes as far as he could see in both directions with a pile of gravel stacked right by the hole. Gerald told him after he ate that he and his crew had worked over the weekend drilling the holes and laying the poles in each hole He said I borrowed Emory’s transit so we could keep a straight line and we moved the holes 4 inches into your property just in case thereis a property line dispute in the future. If you have an extra 200dollars I can get 2 out of work men to work for 4 days to start pouring the cement and water into the holes. Clark said that’s more then 1400 gallons of water. Gerald said yep we got a 250 gallon tow along water tank that we fill up with our pump over at the creek where we been getting our gravel. We also found 10 8 foot 6 inch steel pipes for corner and center posts to hold the fence from an old closed down mine.


Clark thought 50 dollars a day was cheap for the type of manual labor that had to be done picking up 80 pound cement bags and mixing water and gravel into the hole. Gerald said they would work 10 hours a day. Clark said go ahead and hire them. Clark handed Gerald another 1000 dollars and asked him if he was keeping track of the fuel. Gerald handed him the book and it was dated from the day they started and how much fuel was used on the job. Clark paid him for the fuel and told him to start on another page. Gerald grinned and said yes sir. Gerald said we will finish this job up purty quick now. We need to go
to the chain link fence place in the city and buy some gate materials. Clark said why not buy the gates at Lowe’s. Gerald said because we can build em 350 dollars cheaper and better here on the job. We also gotta weld some things on the special gate steel poles to keep anybody from just unbolting them and driving off with them. Clark said I see which he did not. If he could not find out how Gerald did this job on the internet he would look and ask questions when it was finished.

The architect said trust me on this you want a metal 100 year roof with the solar racks installed while they are doing the roof for the solar system you will buy some day. I have oriented your house so one side gets the optimum solar exposure. Correct me if I am wrong – there is no power or telephone service to this property. Clark said no there is none. OK to run power to your house right now at the current cost for 6 to 8 miles would be 124,000 dollars. Clark gulped. Don’t panic the architect said - There is a new company that is building original Lister diesel generators that retail for about 3100 dollars and that is for a 12 kilowatt service. The back up 3 kilowatt manual Lister generator will cost 1400 dollars. The 12 kilowatt can be set for automatic start and stop hooked into the battery electrical system. I designed this house for propane, diesel and solar. The locations for the propane and diesel tanks are here and the location for the 1000 gallon gasoline tank is here. To fill a 10000 diesel, 5000 gallon propane and 1000 gasoline tanks will cost you about 40,000 dollars which is a far cry from 124,000. The diesel will last a thrifty person 15 or so years based on nominal usage of the Lister engine. Propane to cook and heat water with is a wild guess on how much cooking and how much hot water you use. The gasoline is for chain saws, small engines like lawn mowers and maybe to start huge outdoor wood fires. Clark looked at the man and he grinned saying it was a joke. Power to run these diesel and gasoline tank pumps must be manually turned on and off at the power center of which there are 2 one in the shelter and one in the kitchen. The shelter on off switch will override the kitchen switch so you must always leave it on until you take up residence in the shelter. When your solar system is installed I expect the diesel usage to last 25 or more years. The only thing bad about an off-grid system is the batteries. 8 years is a good life for them and they must be maintained faithfully. So I have calculated 16 batteries with 2 backup sets which is around 10,000 dollars. Clark perked up on battery longevity because he had just read a report on nickel-iron batteries and their theoretical 100 year lifespan.

4.

The architect called his secretary and asked for 2 sweetened ice teas. He said wait till we get something to drink and I will start again. I had to move the barn because of where you placed the garden but that is OK since nothing has been written in stone yet. Based on all the learned information I have obtained from my farm associates. This cinder block barn will be capable of taking care of 4 cows and no less then 50 chickens if they have to be locked down there for 9 to 12 months. Food storage was the limiting factor on the amount of animals housed therein. The escape or barn check entry hatch is located here. If you notice the cinder block generator room is located on the way to the barn and can be accessed by the hatch located here. Don’t worry about the cement floors in the barn or generator room the solution will be forthcoming. The only thing you will have to tell the construction workers is you want an escape door located here in the shelter so you can dig yourself out. The special door and frame will be given to you long before construction starts with instructions on how to install it. 30 or so days after construction is completed on the house a special 4 man crew will arrive with some heavy equipment and dig the tunnels and drop in the cement 48 inch pipe for you to make your way to the generator room and the barn. These people never take more then 4 days to complete a job and make the top soil look like it has not been disturbed.

Now your exhaust and intake system to do it without spending 50,000 dollars; a lot of thought went into these systems. We know they stop smoke, tear gas, radiation, virus, sewer gas and several other odors. You will have 2 air intakes here and 2 exhaust outlets here. I had an air specialist calculate the amount of air required and you are well under a 3 air intake limit with these 8 inch pipes. The external Hepa filters can be changed from inside the shelter by pushing another one through the internal air tight doorway pipe up behind it until the other one falls out. Here is how you know the filter has fallen out. A measuring push rod has a big line on it that marks it has fallen out. The 6 inch external exhaust pipes have no filters in them – internal overpressure keeps anything from entering the 6 inch pipes. If the fan fails a simple drop down door covers the inside of the pipe until the fan is changed out. So far this system has proven 100% reliable. The virus and germ UV light goes here behind the Hepa filter and can be moved when you change the filter.

But you said the house would only cost about 90,000 dollars – Yes I did and that was just for the house with none of this high tech stuff, the barn, generator room and all the other items added on. Well what kind of figure am I now looking at – Close to 200,000 but that will probably be cheaper by 25 or so thousand. He grinned and said now my bill has not been added to that yet.

Clark went home and thought about this for a while. He called an appraiser the next day to find out how much his house was worth. 2 elderly men showed up at 9am on the dot. He had taken all the guns from the gun room and put them in his Dad’s pickup under some blankets and locked the camper shell. These men did not miss anything they even found a microscopic crack in the cement floor tile in the garage shower. 5 hours later they sat down at the kitchen table and one of them told Clark you have a perfect house. The other one slid a sheet of paper over to Clark and Clark’s eyes got big. Clark said really and the man that had slid the paper said really. The other man said perfect location, perfect amount of property and a perfect house. The figure on the paper said 425,000 dollars. One of the men said I can send you a top notch real estate agent over in a few days. Clark said it will be at least 90 days before my new house is ready. The other man said perfect because this house will be snapped up within 10 days of going on the market if it even makes it to the market. One of the men said over his shoulder said to take no less then 410,000 because this is even better then a new house.

The real estate agent called Clark and asked when he would like to meet. He told her 14 days at 9am because he had a lot of business to take care of and would be out of town.

Gerald and his crew were welding the garden gate onto the poles when he arrived. Gerald looked over and said it will be just a minute afore we done. Clark looked around after the welder put his equipment on the welding truck and saw the place had been picked up and everyone had left but the welder and he was starting his truck to leave. Gerald said let’s test this gate out before we make the trip around the fence line. Both gates floated open and closed back snug against the 2 inch steel water pipe that was cemented into the ground. Clark asked why the water pipe and Gerald said easy to drive over Clark checked the fit and he would be hard pressed to get a playing card between the gates. The outside edges of the gates fit snugly against 1 inch water pipe that was welded to the 4 inch steel gate posts. Gerald said I reckon ain’t no rabbits gonna get through that tight fit. Clark agreed with him. Clark noticed the sliding latches on the gate but did not comment, he figured that one all out by himself – if they had put a drop down horseshoe type of latch the gate would have had an inch or more gap. Clark asked him about welding the stobs on the bottom and top of the gate Gerald said that makes sure nobody can knock the gate up or down to remove em off the hinges and we also welded some nuts and bolts in strategic places to keep somebody from unbolting the gates.. Ah Clark said.

Clark got out at Gerald’s behest and sighted down the fence line and it all looked like one post to him. Clark had to check each corner of the fence and as far as he could tell it was perfect. Gerald said I got enough wire and poles to fence off two 4 or 5 acre plots to rotate them cows you ain’t got yet. He also said we gonna have to come back and put you an entry way gate up. Clark told him the cow pastures and the gate would be the last thing on his list. Let’s settle up because I need to talk to you about a few more plans I got. Clark gave him 500 dollars to give to the kids for the 16 nights they camped out guarding the place. Gerald said you did not have to do that. Ignoring Gerald’s comment Clark said now how much do I owe you and your crew. Clark gladly paid it. Clark unrolled the architect’s plans and asked Gerald if he could put a crew together to build the concrete buildings on the plans. Gerald said don’t rightly know but 2 of them boys we worked here did a lot of concrete work and another feller I know did some brick laying a while back. Now I know for sure the 2 carpenters I know can build the forms for everything you got on here and can frame up the inside of a house as good as any union carpenter can. They is 2 boys that lay brick but I ain’t even gonna ask them because they be wanting 40 dollar an hour because they die hard union men. That 25 dollar a week they getting ain’t too much but nope I ain’t gonna ask em because they probably report us for doin sumthin wrong. My friend he just retired last month he was a construction foreman on building a buncha houses, he may come by just to keep us outta trouble and let us use his license to buy some things. Gerald said call me back at the feed store in 2 days about 2pm and I will have an answer for ya. Oh one thing why these fellows like workin for ya is it all cash pay and it don’t impact on their unemployment benefits and food stamps.

Clark had no idea what to do with everything in the house especially the bullets and guns. He decided to wait and move a lot of it in a rental moving van.

That night he pulled up the nickel-iron battery website and checked their prices – he almost closed the page down when he saw the price but re read it and saw where they gave a 15 to 25% discount on volume purchases. He wrote the number down and went to bed. The next morning he found out he did not have enough knowledge to make a decision so he called the company and queried them. He found out the 325 amp hr battery vs the 220 amp hr lead acid battery was not comparable. The 325 amp hr beat the lead acid battery hands down. He also found out he only needed 10 to just about equate to 16 220 amp hr batteries – quickly using his calculator it became apparent he would save about 30,000 dollars over a 50 year life span which to his now business oriented mind was a huge savings. After some bargaining he got a maximum 25% discount saving even more and free freight shipping to the feed store because it was a business address. He continued talking to the battery representative and learned a few more useful tips and where to buy a barrel of the metal preserving KOH battery electrolyte. He laughed when he hung the phone up because he was getting the cart before the horse. The house location had not even been strung out and he now had solar batteries. He called Emory at the feed store and told him there would be a freight shipment coming in about 2 weeks or so.

He went to the Backyard Chicken website and read for 3 hours on different breeds and their uses. Taking a break he went to Walmart and did some girl watching for about 45 minutes and returned home where he read on cows and their feed.

Clark called Gerald at 2pm and got a positive response. Gerald told him the retired construction supervisor wanted to have a meeting with him tomorrow afternoon and he wanted to look over the plans.

Frank the construction boss told Clark after looking over the plans for an hour or so – I can save you a lot of money if you use lumber. Clark said no, might be needed for future radiation protection and long term maintenance free shelter. Frank said I see. Frank got up and Clark watched him through the window of Frank’s house as he walked up to an apple tree in his back yard and just looked up at the limbs on the tree. Frank stood there for about 10 minutes before returning and putting a pot of water on to boil. He never said anything while watching the water boil. Clark watched him put 3 or 4 heaping tablespoons of Maxwell House coffee in the boiling water. The aroma infused the kitchen with that fragrant coffee smell. Frank watched the little hourglass sand timer trickle the last grain out and took the coffee off the burner. Opening the refrigerator Frank sat a large creamer on the table. Next he pulled off of a cabinet hook what to Clark looked like one of those gold coffee filters that went in a high dollar coffee pot. He carried the pot and the filter over to the sink where he poured 2 cups of coffee through the strainer and placed one in front of Clark. Frank said its better with a good dollop of cream and if you need sugar its there on the table. Clark had never drank such a fine cup of coffee, but halfway through he started getting the shakes and knew it was from a huge hit of caffeine.