Clark Stories

[Lbox88]

Part 28.

In the morning they had to help each other to the creek to use the bathroom and refill the twelve 16 ounce bottles they had drunk during the night. The only thing they wanted was tea with a little sweet and low in it for breakfast. Deely told Jimmy I know I died 15 or 20 times last night there was no way I could feel any worse. That was a wrong statement because things would get worse. He said I know what you mean they had taken their clothes off down to Jimmy’s shorts and she was in panties and Bra. The sweat was still rolling off of them when they got to the creek.

That afternoon the diarrhea struck them - modesty was not evident when your stomach was cramping and crippling you up so bad you had to set or plop down in the creek water. The first attack lasted about 1 hour. Jimmy crawled back to the shelter to get water bottles and a small bleach bottle. They filled the bottles while still crouched in the creek and put the fluids back in them that was squirting out faster then they could replace it. They really felt bad but he knew they had to get some food back in their body. They had another package of chicken noodle soup. The 2nd attack came about an hour after they had the chicken noodle soup. They made it to the creek without any accidents. Jimmy did not know how he made it because he thought his guts had exploded out of him when he got in the creek. Neither one of them paid any attention to the other. They did not care about being naked and using the bathroom beside each other because they thought they were going to die. The stomach cramping was painful beyond belief. He had gotten smart when they left the last time and left each of them a water bottle and a bleach bottle by the creek. This attack lasted about 30 minutes. That evening they had oats with a package of sugar and a coffee creamer. Neither of them could touch their stomach it was so sore after the violent attacks they had. The sweating stopped that evening. Jimmy grabbed her hand and said let’s go. She asked where are we going. He built the fire up and said we are going to take an arctic bath in that creek to get the filth off of us and we will each use one whole bottle to wash ourselves with but I am going to add a few more drops of dish soap to the bottles and hope it suds up for us. She said I don’t really feel like taking a bath in that cold water. He said I don’t either but I have a feeling we have beaten whatever has infected us and we need to get clean and stay clean.

They shivered for about 5 minutes until they dried off in the warm shelter. Neither looked at each others naked body. She kind of knew this was what was called surviving in bad circumstances. He just came out and told her what he thought. He said we cannot come into contact with other people for a long time until whatever is causing this sickness goes away. I do not want to go through what we just went through again in this lifetime. She totally agreed with that. We can’t stay here the snow at this elevation will probably get to 3 or 4 feet deep at times. And we don’t have enough supplies to get through the winter. He said let’s think on it for a day or so. She told him she had heard they could drink pine needle tea and he said you can drink it all you want it is nasty and I would only drink it when we run out of real tea or coffee and that would only be for the vitamin C it contains.

The next day he said we need a place with a wood stove or fireplace down by the river and we need some fishing equipment and a row boat to set out some fishing lines. We will need a lot of flour and oil and a good quantity of salt to use in case I come back up in the woods to trap some animals. Green vegetables this time of year are practically non existent. So we will have to improvise on some other edibles. We need to go back to the bodies and take some cotton T-Shirts from the packs. She asked him what for? He said we will gather up some oak nuts smash them and put them in the creek for 3 or 4 days to get that bitter tannin out of them and we can use it for flour until we hopefully find some.

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Part 29.

Clark literally and physically ran into Ilona. She was filling two 2 and a ½ gallon plastic water jugs with water from where it came out of the mountain. The lab test had shown the water was good quality drinking water and germ free. Clark saw her first and stopped. He said hello and she whipped around pointing the shotgun at him. She asked what are you doing here. He said don’t worry I won’t be here long there are 11 gang bangers chasing me. She said a few profane words before asking him how they were armed. He said I know one of them has a rifle because he shot me in the back. She said you don’t look like a wounded person to me. He said I was standing a little sideways to the shooter and the bullet hit my shotgun in the breech breaking it and sort of knocking me down. She said I have this camp set up for long term living and now you tell me there are gangbangers roaming the mountains. He told her the story about how he had ran and did not hear them chasing him but he wanted to be safe so he kept on running.

They both had heard the news about germs in the cities and not to make contact with anyone else if you were healthy. He told her I haven’t been off the mountain in 2 months – she said neither have I so I guess we don’t have what is infecting the people in the cities. She finally got around to asking him what race the gang people were and she sort of laughed and said they won’t chase anyone into the woods because they are afraid of the woods and particularly snakes. She told him about some of her last year students knew the gang members in other cities and she picked that little bit of information up from her students. They walked to the top of her cave overhang and took up a watch. After talking for hours he said I just have enough daylight left to get home. She said you are welcome to spend the night but you will have to sleep outside the tent because I only have one bed. He thanked her for the offer and arranged to meet her 3 days from now at his entry gate. He told her you have a nice set up but I believe mine is a tad bit better – I will show you 3 days from now. Clark spent 15 minutes looking up and down the road before he raced across to the other side.

Ilona went squirrel hunting the next morning planning on shooting 2 of the bushy tails up in the patch of oak trees she had seen a month ago. She settled down on a log about 20 yards from where she had seen a few squirrels moving through the trees. She knew they would get curious in 15 or so minutes and just kept the pellet rifle across her lap so she could make a quick shot when one stuck his head up from the other side of the tree. She was amazed 10 minutes later when 6 of the squirrels came to her side of the tree with their backs to her. Something has scared them she thought so instead of shooting one she waited to see what had frightened the little animals. A girl was picking up acorns from the forest floor and putting them in a white bag. She just thought I must not scare her so she gently whispered out hello – hello – hello. The girl got a scared look on her face and tried to figure out where the female voice was coming from. Ilona said please do not run away I am not your enemy.

Part 30.

Deely came closer to Ilona and when she was about 10 feet away Ilona asked her if she had been near any infected people and Ilona listened to Deely’s story. Ilona said to the girl I don’t know if you are a carrier so we should maintain our distance for a while. I have some supplies I can give you but it will take 3 more days because I have to contact another survivor. We may be able to help each other Ilona said. Meet me here in 3 days about noon time. Deely ran back to tell Jimmy what she had found out.

Ilona walked down below her cave to look for squirrels in a different oak and hickory stand of trees.

That night she had fried squirrel legs, a small rehydrated pouch of spinach and skillet biscuits covered in skillet squirrel gravy. After she ate she had to clean 2 skillets and a small pot. She ate directly from the utensils to ease on her cleanup but it was still a bit of work wiping out the cast iron utensils in the creek and then storing them away for the next cooking session. She knew a lot of her cooking would sometimes be over an open fire so she had no choice but to bring her cast iron cooking utensils. Her pride and joy was a cast iron ceramic interior coated tea pot that could be used for constantly boiling water. A quick swipe of a plastic scrub pad would eliminate any buildup of minerals from the underground water in the ceramic tea pot. She laughed at her other utensils because all she had were stainless steel plates, bowls and cups. Even her canteen and cup carried on her web belt was stainless steel.

2 days later Ilona met Clark at the gate to his place. That is when Clark asked her what load she had in her 20 gauge shot gun she pointed at him. She said I always carry my 20 gauge with slugs in case a bear wants to eat me I am pretty sure the slug will either stop the bear or knock it down. I then can shoot it 6 times with my 357 loaded with gold dot 170 grain bullets. I am pretty sure a 357 bullet with a 170 grain slug at close range will kill a black bear. I hope I never have to find out. The other reason I keep slugs in my shot gun is wild dogs and people which I have not seen. I also have 5 triple ought buck shells on the butt stock in case I have to or can hopefully climb or run up a tree from a pack of dogs. I can then load the triple ought buck and shoot the pack from the tree. I really am more afraid of a small sneaky rabid animal then I am of the bigger healthy ones.

As they walked up the road to where Clark had parked his truck she told him about the discovery of another couple.

They talked for 2 hours straight while looking around and she loved his cave set up. When she saw the washer she thought I am moving here and then she had an evil thought (even if I have to kill him) she eliminated that thought from her mind as soon as it popped up. He gave her 2 fully charged FRS radios that would reach from mountain top to mountain top but were worthless down in the forest. He told her not to touch anything they had and to keep at least 10 feet away and preferably up wind just in case they were carriers of some type of germ or virus. If Ilona got on top of her overhang she could reach Deely and Jimmy with the radio but Clark could not be reached unless he went to the top of the mountain which he did not do.

2 more days later they all met on the road and Clark was shown the camp of the girl and boy. He just said you cannot stay here much longer it is going to get really cold and snowy. Ilona had briefly spoken to Clark about her moving into his cave and leaving the 2 teens her camp. He thought about it for a while and said we will have to put some big blankets on the couch. She just smiled at him. Clark thought this was a win-win for him all the way around. Female companionship and some help later on. It did not hurt things either that Ilona was a strikingly beautiful young woman. He told her let’s tell them what we decided. He told her to leave them her shotgun and 22 rifle because he did not think finding weapons or extra supplies would be a problem in the coming months. He had had no contact with Horatio from about the time he was shot at.

Deely and Jimmy were ecstatic they had a safe and warm place to live even though they were not yet a couple. Long cold nights in a tent will cure that problem for raging teen hormones

Before the teens could move in Clark helped Ilona remove her personal belongings and move them to what would soon be their cave. Clark told them before it gets much colder we are going to have to get you two some winter clothes. He brought back 1 winter jacket, a heavy hooded sweat shirt and a couple pair of gloves for them. Clark said as soon as they thought it was safe to go to the town or city they would get re outfitted.

The only contact on the radio was sporadic contact from foreign people talking in languages Clark did not understand and hard core survivalists living in the deep woods across the USA. Everyone knew as much about what was going on in the country and the world as Clark did which was nothing.

Part 31.

One morning over breakfast Ilona asked Clark what was in the tractor trailer. Clark said Horatio told me long term food supplies and he hinted there may be some firearms and ammunition. She said do you want to look and he said after we make sure Horatio is not coming here to retrieve it.

The snow had melted off the road in late December and Clark said let’s go look at Horatio’s house if there were any germs the cold weather should have killed most of them and hopefully all of them. She asked him if he wanted to check his house to see if his 2 girls were alive. He said if they are alive they will still be alive after we check Horatio’s house. He just said that to Ilona because the connection in his heart to them was no longer there and he kind of knew the living part that made up their soul was not on this earth any longer. He said we are going to wear one of those N95 or 100 masks if we go in Horatio’s house. They had told the teens they were leaving the evening before. The radio contact time was 6PM because Deely and Jimmies’ radio batteries were put on the solar charger at 9AM every 8AM and morning. They did not know but Horatio was in the city the day the virus and germ cocktail was released. He actually was the one that caused the death of the whole town. But Clark would never know that.

Arriving at Horatio’s house at 930AM Clark walked down to the river bank behind the house, turned a big white rock over and got the key to the back door. He had knocked on the front door for 2 minutes and the back door for 2 minutes before he retrieved the key. Ilona stayed in the truck with Clark’s loaded shotgun and rifle beside her.

Clark got the door open and that unmistakable smell of death wafted out. He saw there was a light on in the stairwell that led down to the basement bomb shelter. Hoping the bomb shelter was not sealed up he looked down the steps and saw his friend lying on the threshold of the shelter door. His head was pointed towards Clark so Clark guessed he was coming out. He saw that the house was just as cold as it was outside but he wanted to come back another time after the house aired out. He opened the front door lowered the glass in the screen door and opened several windows that had screens in them. He did remember to get some winter clothes from 2 of the closets for the teens. He did the same to the back door and talked quietly down the steps to his dead friend for a minute before leaving. He told Ilona we will come back in a month or two on at least a 20 degree F day. He just said we can now open the trailer Horatio left parked beside the road. Clark would not get back in the truck till he had walked around for an hour and used 4 water bottles of a weak bleach to wash his shoes and hands off. He left the mask he had on laying on the roadway when he got in the truck.

The next morning he dropped the clothes off to the teens after leaving them out in the truck bed all night. He did not know it but the germs and virus were long gone and there were no living or dead contagious carriers of the diseases on the planet.

Clark had wondered hundreds of times since Ilona had asked him about checking on them to see if his 2 girls were still alive but in his heart he knew they weren’t. That afternoon he drove Ilona to his old house and had her look. He did not have the courage to do it. She came out and told Clark that she and the two teens would bury the bodies as soon as the ground thawed.

That evening he took a walk in the woods alone and cried a long time. He told Ilona the next day that he did not want them to bury his ex wife and the male body. She asked him what do you want us to do with the bodies. He said burn them across the road from the house beside the rail road tracks and leave the ashes and remaining bones exposed to the elements. He did not say anything else.

Part 32.

In February on a cold 18 degree F day all 4 of them returned to Horatio’s house to remove the bodies. All of them wore a mask and were crowded in the cab of the truck. Clark just thought if they got it we die if they don’t we will have a long and friendly life. There would be no body burial they were to be hauled to the river bank and pushed in. The ground was frozen solid and there were no running back hoes available close by to dig a grave. Clark had four 5 gallon buckets of a strong bleach solution in the bed of the truck. This was going to be used to clean the vomit and bodily fluids off the floor. This was easy because they were all dead on the concrete floor. The house did not have that closed up smell of death after they were through. All of them went through Horatio and his families possessions.

This was a treasure trove for a survivalist. Clark was concerned about the water pipes and the pressurized water tank Horatio had shown him on a house tour had frozen. Horatio had neglected to tell him the tank never was full enough to freeze and burst and the water always drained back out of the house pipes when the pump was off. The house was in surprisingly good condition and the large array of solar panels on the back of the house was sending power to the charge controller. He checked the batteries and they did not need servicing. All the lights on the electrical panel were green so Clark knew all he had to do was turn the upstairs main power switches on and power would be available upstairs. They decided to go home and work again on the house tomorrow. Clark knew what Deely and Jimmy were thinking and he was going to tell them they could have the house or his cave he had not decided yet. He would think on it some more after they checked the other houses out. Because Clark remembered Horatio telling him he was in a mutual assistance group that meant there were other peoples houses that were set up for a SHTF disaster. Clark was glad they had saved the mops and buckets out by the burn barrel because they may need to be used again in another house or 2.

The next day Clark threw the 14 dead chicken carcasses out of the Horatio’s chicken coop and used a broom to clean the area. They fanned out and began searching the houses especially the ones on the river bank next to Horatio’s house because it would be real easy to pump river water up to filter and then use it. Horatio had a large slow sand filter that was used to filter the river water before it was pumped into his pressurized house tank. They found 7 more houses on the riverbank that were similar to Horatio’s.

Some furnished and supplied better some not as well. They decided to remove the bodies from each of those houses and clean one every 3 days then take a break. Deely and Jimmy found the house they wanted it was the 3rd one to be cleaned. It was a 3 bedroom ranch with a full basement bomb shelter. The back yard was 200 feet wide and 8 foot high chain linked down to and across on the river bank side. This place was also set up for chickens and had one metal building that was full of chicken feed. It had a 50 foot tower on the river bank for the Ham radio, a 40 X 40 foot fenced in garden and the back east west metal roof was covered in solar panels. There was a small dock with a 16 or 18 foot boat under a marine type car port in the river. Jimmy said to Deely we can have all the fish we want now. Clark and Ilona smiled at the hug Deely gave Jimmy. Clark noticed a few other things like the raspberries and black berries planted halfway down one side of the fence and the small dwarf fruit trees across the back of the fence by the river. Good choice he told the teens.

[Lbox88]

Part 33.

It was now the end of Feb and the last preppers house had been cleaned up. The 4 were sitting in Horatio’s house by the crackling warm wood stove fire making future plans. Jimmy said we need a farm close by we can grow a large amount of things for pigs. And if we can find a cow or two we would be set for fresh milk and cheese if we can cut enough hay to get them through these long cold winters. Clark answered him with that is a great idea but we will need to start making some bio-diesel to run some heavy machinery to do the hard work and travel back and forth to the farm we pick.

Ilona said we should think about all these future things we need to do and have another get together to firm up some plans. Clark said OK but I have a surprise for all of you. I have soaked one of the cured hams in the creek in a cage minnow box for the past 36 hours and I am going to put it in the oven so we can have some salty ham tonight after I bake it for 3 or 4 hours. Everyone laughed and they all piled in the truck to head to Clark’s cave.

The almost 2 day creek soaked baked ham was about 50 times better then Clark thought it would be. A pot of Great Northern beans, mashed potatoes with a chunk of frozen Amish butter in the potatoes and bread machine dough formed into rolls baked in the propane oven topped off the meal. Clark and Ilona sliced the huge chunk of ham remaining and individually vac packed the ham slices to be frozen and used for sandwiches later. They left a good bit of meat on the bone that was sawn into 3 pieces for use in future pots of beans. All in all it was a grand meal.

The teens had brought Ilona’s tent and mattress to Clark’s cave and set up housekeeping with them. It was so much easier to put a little wood in a wood stove then to keep an outdoor fire going to keep warm and the indoor shower was something to be cherished. None of them liked the trip to the outhouse but for now it was a necessity. Before the internet went down Clark had researched leach fields and septic tanks and downloaded plans to install a large septic tank over the hill from the cave. It was a lot of work back then with the available heavy machinery and locations were open he could purchase the required supplies but now it would be a monumental task. It was still on his to-do list.

He and Ilona could not really make up their mind about Horatio’s place or the cave to permanently live in. They were leaning more towards Horatio’s because of the indoor toilet. But the cave was a better hidden and secure place to live if bad people came around. They would wait a while to make that decision. They had to laugh at Deely when she said the very first thing she said she was going to do when she moved down to the town was fill 2 or 3 empty houses up with toilet paper. She never wanted to see, use or clean a butt rag again.

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Part 34.



Middle march the 4 of them prepped Clark’s garden and drove down and prepped Jimmy and Deely’s small garden. They would plant after April 15th in town and April 30 at Clark’s place because Clark’s place was several hundred feet higher then the town. The potatoes were planted when they prepped the garden because a late frost would not hurt them.

Ilona’s forestry and edible flora knowledge had come into play as soon as the young cat tails popped up from the swampy area by the hill roadside. Clark and Deely had never eaten them and were surprised how good they were when properly prepared.

Ilona got on her soapbox while they were eating and ticked off the several items how cat tails could be used. 1. They are from the Typha genus and the rhizomes (root) can be peeled and cooked like potatoes but they have 10 times the starch. 2. Flour can be made from the root by boiling, drying and grinding it to fine white flour. 3. The young shoots are called Cossack asparagus because of their similar taste when cooked – they can be boiled, stir fried and added to soups – they taste like cucumbers when eaten raw. 4. The early flower spikes called kitten tails can be boiled and eaten like corn on the cob which tastes like corn. 5. The pollen can be collected and used as a thickener or added to other flours as a protein and vitamin supplement. They all stared at her and she blushed. She said sorry I reverted back to teaching mode there for a minute. Clark hugged her and told the others that my new wife is really smart. Oh yes Ilona said I forgot the most important thing. These plants grow in water that more than likely have Giardia amongst other water borne disease and a thorough rinsing and soaking in water that has several drops of bleach in it and draining dry are in order. If you bake, boil or steam the part you want to eat there should be no problems.

More people were chattering on the short wave at night and Clark decided to meet some of the closest ones who had put out they had fresh beef, milk and ham for trade. Deely copied down the list that was broadcast twice a day that was for trade and items they would trade for. Clark wanted about 15 to 30 gallons of fresh milk that he could freeze and thaw out to use when he had a craving for it. The cured hams he had hanging in the cool cave were adequate for ham sandwiches and bean flavoring and the 60 quart jars and eight 24 can cases of bacon he had would do him pork wise for a while. He also had enough beef and hamburger for a long while. He looked at what the trader wanted and saw some things he could come up with. Most were exotic fruits. Horatio had 2 female and 2 male Kiwi plants growing on a side fence. The fruits were small but that was expected for the cold weather variety. He was curious about the large amount of blueberries the man wanted till Ilona told him they were great for heart and overall health use. She looked at the list and said he wants the oil type sunflower seed to make his own cooking oil. Clark said we will be ok on oil for 15 or 20 years because I have 40 gallons of coconut oil. He saw her getting ready to ask a question but gave her what he thought was the answer before she could ask it. He said it is that Tropical Traditions Virgin processed oil from the Philippines and was quite expensive. I think it was 37 bucks for a half gallon back when I bought it and is supposed to have a 20 plus year or more shelf life. She just said you did good.

Part 35.

Jimmy piped in after looking at the trade list by saying he wants too much for a trade. It would be a lot of work initially to round up a few cows and a bull but I think it can be done if we plan it right and have the pasture and barn set up. The pigs are out there running loose and I know I can capture some when and if we ever decide we need some fresh pork.

Clark was absolutely amazed at Ilona’s encyclopedic knowledge of wild edibles. She took the 3 for a little stroll and started showing them the myriad of edible plants just in a small section around the cave. James knew a few of the edibles she was talking about but paid close attention as she was talking in that teaching mode good instructors have pointing out 20 or so weeds that could be eaten. Deely said Ilona would you please tell me when you are going to teach us something so I can have a notebook. Jimmy said to Deely you only learned ¼ of what she has shown us because a lot of the plants look different during the 4 seasons and are only edible at certain times of the year. Ilona said that’s right Jimmy and there are look alike plants that are harmful or even downright poisonous if you ingested them. She told them a joke but it was a true story about a family that had been eating a look alike plant for years. The plant they were eating was nasty tasting and had no nutritional value but the look alike plant they thought was harmful was the tasty and nutritional one. Everyone chuckled because Ilona could not tell a joke. Jimmy asked her about mushrooms. She said since mushrooms have no nutritional value other then as a flavor enhancer I let other people that are experts in that field handle them. He said you mean you do not know about mushrooms. She said I did not say that - I have an extensive knowledge about edible mushrooms but since I don’t really care for them and in some cases I would need a laboratory to make sure some of the poisonous look alikes were not in my gathering bag; so I don’t fool with them except for the Morels which are one of the most easily identified spring mushrooms that I like with scrambled eggs and bacon.

Things got busy for a few weeks with the 2 couples each doing things for themselves. They had constant communications with the portable ham radios and base stations so they were always in touch.

Ilona found the combat rations on a back shelf from the 11 countries he had ordered from and asked him about them. He said surprisingly some of them are really good. I had to ask the people I ordered from to translate their country labels to English for me on the top of one box and most of them did. I have tried 19 different ones so far and most of them have been great – try the mutton from India if you want a really good different meal. Some of those meals would be on a gourmet plate here in the US. The sautee’ of rabbit with whitefish, rice and vegetables from France is mouth watering. The pasta and beans with the turkey on the side and the ravioli in sauce with tuna and peas on the side from Italy are great. If you want some spicy stuff try the rice ones from Spain and if you like curry go back and find one from India. I have 55 meals or 5 each of 5 different meals I picked from those 11 countries. I have not yet tasted all of them. The shelf life is about 12 years so we have plenty of time to sample a foreign countries meal. Ilona said you mean you have 3025 meals from foreign countries. He said not any more I ate some. Oh and if you check the calorie count you will see most of them are just a little bit over 3000. Wow she said how much did they cost – He said originally I ordered 3000 dollars worth and I sampled some and thought they were a great item so I ordered another 28000 dollars worth. Since Ilona knew about the coin collection and the dollar going down hill she thought that was a great thing for him to do to get rid of the greenbacks.

Jimmy met a man traveling the highway on a small gas sipping motor bike with two 5 gallon cans of gas strapped to it one afternoon and they talked for quite a while. He told Jimmy that he had talked to a Navy man off one of those nuclear submarines during his travels and learned the worst was over as far as germs went. The world population was only 15% of what it used to be and only people that lived far away from other people during that 1 month period were not infected. He said there are 4 adults and 3 children in my current group. I am meeting up with a supposedly larger then 50 people group about 250 miles south of you in central North Carolina to make some future plans. He wrote down some radio frequencies for Jimmy to contact a Low Ridge named group for him at 7 or 9PM. He was just to say John Q would be there in a day or so. The bottom frequency is for my place if you want to keep in contact and find out our future plans. As he left he told Jimmy to be real careful because all the bad people in the world had not been eliminated and don’t lose those frequencies - you may need help some day. Jimmy also noted the man did not tell him where he lived.

Part 36.

Jimmy reported the meeting to the other 3. They decided that Jimmy should contact John Q in a month to find out all he could. They sure would like to have a few extra people around here. Ilona told Clark they would make the cave their permanent residence and keep Horatio’s house as #2. She said I will help you install the septic tank. I just need some instructions to follow. He said OK we will need a flat bed truck and a big back hoe and will probably have to make 3 or so trips to a place that has septic tanks. We will need a lot of sewer pipe from the cave to the septic tank. She jokingly said can I pick the commode out. He said yes and I do like pink. She hit him. He grabbed his arm and fell down acting like he had been seriously wounded. She said let’s go. He said where? – She said to a septic tank place. He thought she really, really wanted an indoor toilet.

Clark drove her to the top of the mountain and found the keys to the mine company flat bed truck. He had to jump start the battery and he used some of the diesel from the mine company tank and filled the truck. He did not think the fuel had gone bad in the past several months. It hadn’t. Ilona parked Clark’s truck back at the cave and loaded up some break in tools. Next he stopped at Horatio’s vehicle and equipment lot and drove the small back hoe up onto the flat bed truck and tied it down. He looked at her and jokingly said we are now ready to go commode shopping. She did not respond.

They had already looked in the yellow pages while in Horatio’s house and found several companies that sold septic equipment. They drove to the nearest one. They both laughed when they walked in the door. There was a series of pictures on the wall showing how to install the 6 people household tank. They looked at the 20 huge pictures and saw each step and the slope measurements and the leach field that the tank water was to drain out in. She said we can do this now that I see what is involved in it. He said yes but it will probably take us a month of part time work to do it. He used the back hoe on the flat bed to lift the heavy plastic 12 household tank up onto the flatbed. He told her a 12 people tank will take longer than we will be around to fill so that is what we will use. He cut the lock on the chain link gate and entered the outdoor storage area. They loaded about 1/2 of the 4 inch pipe they would need and headed for home. He told her the slope of the pipe to the septic tank will be critical. She asked why. He said too steep and only the water will run through the pipe leaving the solid waste behind. She said a big Ahhh. He said I know the slope is a standard one of ¼ inch per foot. Oh yes one more thing the toilet in the cave will be on a 1 or 2 foot high pedestal unless you know how to blast a trench out through 40 feet of sandstone till we get to dirt we can use the back hoe on.

Clark finished all the measurements and with Ilona’s help gathered up all the materials. He called Jimmy and Deely to come help because the job was just too big for him and Ilona to do. Deely said this is great you are putting in an indoor toilet; I bet that makes Ilona happy.

Clark invited everyone to have Chili and Deely said this tastes just like Wendy’s chili. Clark laughed and said it is Wendy’s Chili. I downloaded the recipe from that top secret recipe place amongst 4 or 5000 other recipes. Jimmy said you have not quite got the cracker baking recipe right. Clark said I know a couple of more experimental batches and I think I will have it right.

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Part 37.

Jimmy and Deely used a tow a long and picked up a larger back hoe to do the leach field. The pile of gravel from a state road area was absconded with to put in the leach field trench and work began that afternoon. The 4 inch pipe was run out of the cave against the wall till they hit dirt and was buried another 130 feet to where it dropped off the mountain side straight into the septic tank. The pipe against the cave wall that was exposed outside the cave was covered with 36 inches of dirt to keep it from freezing in the winter. Working 4 hours a day it took them 16 days to get the outside work done. The last job was mixing cement to raise a spot in the corner to install the commode. Clark made a special trip to a plumbing shop to get brass bolts to tie the commode parts and commode down so they would not rust out during his lifetime. The bolts that came with most commodes were cheap iron and designed to rust out so they would have to be replaced. 5 repair kits for the commode were placed up behind the commode for future repairs. Finally 19 days later there was a commode in the cave. The water line that filled the outdoor 55 gallon barrel was right over the commode so all he had to do was T off of it and he had water to the commode. It really was a throne because to get the slope right the commode set up off the cave floor 3 feet and had 2 steps up to it. No one complained.

Clark removed the screen from the upper door on the outdoor outhouse to let the flies in to do their thing to the waste in the hole. He would put the screen back on when winter came. He figured the fly maggots would have done their thing by then to the waste at the bottom of the outhouse hole and any urine would evaporate over the summer. The outhouse would be ready for emergency use if the indoor commode broke.

Both gardens were coming along great and Jimmy had found several cows with new born calves in 3 different fields that had a large amount of outdoor stacks of round hay. He also saw several domestic pigs that had somehow survived and would be easy to trap.

About 40 days after Jimmy had met the man John Q on the motor bike he contacted him at 7PM to get any news. Clark, Ilona and Deely listened to the conversation. They heard John Q tell them there were 117 people in that enclave and they seemed like a pretty stable group. There were 2 preachers that thought each one should be the one to lead the flock – he chuckled when he said that – But that won’t happen because the majority of the people won’t let the place turn into a total religious system. He said most of the people have too much common sense to let that happen. Overall the place is thriving and has cows, goats, chickens, pigs and large areas for gardens and grain growing. I will probably move there in a few years just to let our 3 young ones look for a mate.

Part 38.

Deely out of the blue just said I am pregnant and Ilona said I think I am too. That resulted in another call to John Q the next evening to find out about mid-wives or a medical doctor. John Q told them they have a doctor and 2 dental technicians that can do basic fillings and pull teeth. He said I will call them and let you know when you can visit to see the doctor. They have guards out watching for unsavory people so it would be best to let them know when you are coming.

Clark sent Jimmy out on a long trip to find enough Pri-G or Pri-D or some type of fuel preservative to save the 3000 gallons of diesel and 1500 gallons of gasoline that had been overlooked by everyone at the strip mine. Clark planned on saving his supply of the Pri product. To save fuel everyone had a summertime electric scooter that would get about 25 miles per charge and go 18 miles an hour. They were nice for running around in the small town but making trips from Clark’s place to the small town was just barely adequate so they all had a gasoline 120 mile per gallon scooter to make longer trips to the city for a small scavenge trip.

July the 4 of them went to a specialty shop in the big city that sold everything to make bio diesel. Clark and Ilona had researched this in the library. It was one of the things Clark and Horatio had not thought of. The shop had every thing from small operations to thousand gallon weekly equipment. They had decided on a 100 gallon a week system and when the extra tanks they were going to fill were full they would shut it down till needed again. Ilona knew how to get methane from chicken and cow manure and was faintly knowledgeable about making potassium hydroxide from wood ash and lime but did not want to do it because it was dangerous. But she would if they could not find a tank of potassium hydroxide that had not had the vacuum seal broke on it because it was highly hygroscopic (it absorbs water).

The special book on the process and how to use the available equipment written in plain English was on a rack just inside the door which would simplify matters many months from now Clark whistled at the price on the book $99.99. Ilona sat down and glanced through the book and quickly found what she was looking for. A typical acre of rapeseed would give you 200 gallons of usable oil and so much glycerin and animal food by product. She just said we need 120 or 130 acres to grow this stuff if we want the amount of bio-diesel we were talking about. She did not say it out loud but everyone knew that was too much acreage for the 4 of them to feasibly work.

They found a 150 gallon a week system they would set up and plant rapeseed, soy or any oil bearing plant to process for the oil. This involved another completely different operation and would take at least a year or more to set up and wait on the plants to mature if they could find enough seed. Clark just told the rest of them that everything was a gamble but they were in no danger of reverting back to primitive cave man style living for at least 30 or 40 years. The 7 houses they had removed the bodies from had enough long term food stored in them for them to live off of for 75 years. Plus the extra batteries and solar panels to replace any they were currently using to maintain electric usage. Everyone commented on the 75 years worth of supplies. Ilona summed it up with don’t worry we won’t be here when the food runs out. They did decide to move at least half of the long term food supplies, weapons and ammunition from the 7 houses to a new aluminum tractor trailer and move it to the secured roadway near Clark’s cave in case they got run out of town by a group of bad people.

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Part 39.

They talked about dental health and Deely said she had not been taking care of her teeth and probably had several cavities. The big group was immediately contacted the next evening and 3 of them were made an appointment to visit the doctor and one of the dental technicians. The appointment was made for the following week. Since no one knew how long it would take Clark decided to stay home and take care of the chickens and watch over the properties.

Deely had 3 small cavities that the dental technician had no problem fixing. She was properly chastised for not brushing and flossing. She got the message. Jimmy and Ilona’s teeth were in good shape because they had been brushing and flossing. The dental technician cleaned all 3 of their teeth and sent the 2 pregnant ladies to see the doctor. The doctor did his routine physical and recommended they pick up a name brand multi vitamin/mineral and pre natal vitamins at one of the big box stores and keep them cool. There was not much he could do since he was not really a baby doctor. He did tell the 2 ladies to come back every 3 months and make sure they were here a few weeks before the babies were due so he could take care of any birthing problems.

Clark was sent to see the dental technician next and he was glad they made him go. The dental technician fixed a small gum line cavity and cleaned his teeth. The dental technician told him if he had not come when he did a few more months of the tooth rotting away would have cost him the tooth. She said neither she nor the other dental tech was trained enough in below gum line cavities to fix them. He got some more training on brushing and flossing his teeth and was told if he followed those instructions his teeth would be OK till he died. He got over his shame about his not taking care of his teeth properly before he got home and made a solemn promise to do the 3 times or more a day brushing and flossing. He knew there was no dentist or emergency room available immediately if there was a problem and he kicked himself in the butt mentally for failing to follow his own rules. He also knew teeth problems could kill a person or incapacitate them to where the person could not function. Shame on him was his thought.

Jimmy in his spare time secretly fixed a barn up and stocked it with hay and cow feed from other farms and feed stores nearby. He had a milking stall and was going to bring one of the cows that was nursing a young calf to this farm. He was determined to get fresh milk for the 2 pregnant ladies but he really wanted a cold glass of real cow milk for himself instead of the powdered stuff. He knew he would have to allot some morning and evening time to milking and feeding the cow but he thought he could do it and later on he knew he would get some help from Clark and the 2 ladies. The idea that Clark had of freezing 30 or 40 gallons of milk was a good one and that would insure they would always have fresh milk on hand until they got another cow that was nursing a young calf when the one he had dried up. He thought one cow would be enough to take care of plus they would get to practice their butchering skills on the calf when it got a little older.

[Lbox88]

Part 40.

John Q gave them a call to arms early one morning. 3 men had kidnapped two 11 year old girls from the Low Ridge community and were on route 60 heading towards Clark and his group of 4. John Q asked Clark if he could block the road and ambush these evil people. Clark thought about it for a minute and said yes we can do that. There was an abandoned 70 or 80 foot trailer parked right beside the highway that he could use the bulldozer to push it across the road. He and Jimmy loaded the bulldozer and in 15 minutes had the road blocked. John Q said they would probably be in Clark’s location in an hour or so. Deely was left at Clark’s cave because she was the worst shooter. The 3 of them set up on both sides of the road and were using FRS radios to talk. John Q was dead on the money about the arrival time; 3 motor bikes with side cars came speeding down the highway towards the trailer that was blocking the road. They stopped just about where Clark thought they would 150 yards back from the roadblock. This gave the 3 shooters about a 45 yard shot. Clark had assigned each person a bike with the rider to shoot at. The 3 shots were almost simultaneous - 2 helmeted riders had a 223 caliber bullet hole somewhere around the vicinity of the temple; the third rider had a 30-06 hole in the forehead. The 2 small girls were tied up in 2 different side cars. They had been scared into uncontrolled bowel movement status. Ilona took charge of the 2 half scared to death girls and walked them over to a small stream to help them clean themselves.

Clark radioed Deely and told her to contact John Q that the 2 girls were safe. An hour later the Low Ridge group came into view. But Clark had already pushed the mobile home back off the road and parked the 3 motor bikes out of the way. The bodies had been searched and dumped over the rail road bank where the small animal and bug life would feed for a long while. Ilona had sent Jimmy to a close by small store that sold clothes amongst other things and he brought back several sizes of jeans, shirts and under garments for the 2 girls.

The meeting between Clark and the chasers from Low Ridge was short. Thanks were given and they departed with the 2 girls back to Low Ridge.


Part 41.

As Clark, Jimmy and Ilona rode back to the cave. Clark commented that this was an interesting day. The other 2 just looked at him and burst out laughing.

10 days later Jimmy and Deely drove to Clark’s cave and gave him 2 gallons of fresh cold milk. Jimmy had to tell the story about how he went about catching the cow and calf and the cleaning process he went through before milking the cow. Deely told Ilona it is amazing how much milk comes out of a cow two times a day and she invited Ilona and Clark over to help with the milking. Jimmy was smiling because this is what he wanted a little help in taking care of that big animal.

Clark listened to Ilona and Deely talk about food groups for a healthy baby and food for the baby after it was weaned. Deely told Ilona that the 5th house up from them had a huge asparagus bed and they should cut enough next spring to dehydrate or blanch and freeze for the next baby. He raised his head up when he heard that. Ilona said we can also use it for the current coming babies. They talked about pureeing carrots, peas and a whole bunch of food for the babies that Clark had not even thought of. He did not know that they had raided the library and picked up a whole slew of books on foods for babies and pregnant women. They wondered how long the vitamins on the shelves would be good for; Clark thought they were just having a regular gab fest. But later on he found out they were dead serious. He was instructed to gather up baby clothes, cloth and packaged diapers. Stainless steel appliances for pureeing foods and the list went on. If they had thoroughly searched the 6th house that had had a child bearing couple they would have found most of the stuff they were looking for and talking about. They would find it in a short while.

The 3 month and 6 month baby checkups were just about as normal as a checkup could be. They finally got to talk to a lady who had been an LPN and she helped the doctor during child births. Deely and Ilona were pleased to find out there was a birthing pool for the pregnant ladies and after talking to the LPN they were really happy because they had read about it. The lady LPN talked about some things that were not generally talked about. She told the 2 women it made the after birth cleanup so easy and the babies came out of the water like they had just been scrubbed clean. It also made birthing so much easier on the ladies. She told them what would have to be stitched if they were torn and after care like wearing large Kotex or what elderly incontinent people wore (huge diaper) for a while. The doctor was capable of doing caesarean section births but did not like to do it and had waited 36 hours before he had no choice but to do it on one lady. He saved the lady and the huge twin babies. Deely and Ilona went home happy.

Part 42.

During the past winter Clark and Jimmy had pulled bodies from about ¾ of the houses in the town and disposed of them in huge wood pile fires. They had not cleaned the houses – Hopefully someone in the future could take care of that job. They had noticed that a lot of the hot water tanks had frozen and burst. They had plans just to remove the tanks so the house would not be ruined. That was a fairly easy job with both of them using a dolly to dump the burst tank outside. There were 400 houses in the town and fortunately a lot of them were empty and a lot of the hot water tanks had not burst. They did not bother with the cracked commodes because the 2 gallons of water was not enough to totally ruin a house just the bathroom floor. They did have plans to go back in the coming year and remove the burst commodes and just flush and drain any that had not burst. Clark fortunately knew where the sewer pump station was and he and Jimmy opened the over flow pipe and the contents ran out into a 600 yard long 3 feet deep ditch that would eventually dry up. It sure stunk that lower part of town up for a few summer weeks.

They went to a business that pumped out septic tanks and took 2 of the pump trucks. They serviced the trucks and put Pri products in them, made sure the tanks were clean, disconnected the batteries and stored them in the fire department metal storage garage. They never knew when they may have to use one of the pumping septic tankers. Jimmy told Clark that he knew how to run one of the fire department water pumper tanks for small fires. He had hung with one of his friends at the fire station a few summers back and learned a little about fire fighting and he could probably drive the big fire truck and get water pumping out of it if they were parked near a creek. Clark told him to service the 2500 gallon pumper tank and they would pump 1800 gallons of water in it in case they needed to put out a fire. Clark said the 1800 gallons will leave enough room in the tank to keep it from bursting when the water freezes in the winter and I know the 0 degree F weather will freeze it in a few days or so. They talked about having the fire tanker truck ready in the winter. Jimmy said the only thing I can think of is to put a solar charger on the battery and install a coal/wood burner in the fire station and put a few lumps of coal in the stove every couple days when the temperatures are in the upper 20’s F to keep the interior of the station in the 40’s. Clark put that on a to-do list when they got through taking bodies and hot water tanks out of houses. He also wrote down house, cave and put everywhere fire extinguishers, carbon monoxide and smoke detectors.

They took a break and drove down beside the Kanawha River and looked at the first locks that allowed barges up river to the now probably forever closed alloy plant. They saw the trash and debris was backed up about a mile and a half. Clark told Jimmy this is a big problem because it will eventually back up the 14 miles to where you live and foul the fishing up. Jimmy said that locks has a water powered generator in it and if someone knew how to run the over head crane all that trash can be lifted out onto those 500 yard wide concrete parking lots on each side of the river and burned. Jimmy said there are 2 more locks before the river dumps into the Ohio and I bet they are just as bad. Clark said no I don’t think they will be as bad because the first locks catches all the trees and trash from the New River and the Gauley River. If this is cleaned up it will take many years before it is built up like this again. Jimmy looked at him. Clark said there are no more construction projects on the creeks that dump into the river and no more mine operations and no more people dumping trash in the river. In a few years any creek banks and trees that are ready to collapse or float into the river from the creeks will do so and the banks of the creeks should stabilize themselves and the problem will be solved.

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Part 43.

That night they contacted Low Ridge and told them about the problem. They said we have 2 people that could probably help you but you should call John Q first because we believe he has worked on some locks in his time. John Q responded and said he would fix that problem for them in a week or so but he would need some help on the last locks because it ran off grid power. He knew where there was a big enough generator to run the crane. After I fix the 1st 2 locks we will have a meeting and fix the last locks. We will probably have to do this for a couple of years and the locks that is nearest to you will have to be taken care of for at least 3 years in a row and then every other 4 or 5 years after that. When the crane fails we will have to think about blowing the middle out of the locks dam to let the water out. Don’t worry if we do that the level of the river will stabilize and one good advantage of that is more fish will be able to travel up and down the river. The bad part is when all 3 locks are blown the river will resemble a rather large creek. But that is probably 100 or more years from now unless the survivors in the country can educate some crane repairmen and large dam generator repairmen. And that is just a teeny small part of the problem for surviving humans all across the USA in the coming years.

Clark had never thought extreme long range into the future. He thought about 50 years from now if he would be alive and healthy without high tech medicine. That prompted him to make another list for his kids and their kids to live with electricity and lights. He wondered where he could get a supply of those nickel iron batteries that were good for a hundred years. Horatio had 2 of them; stored solar panels – controllers, charge controllers, pure running DC equipment, Lister engines he knew were mostly good for 50 years or so without a rebuild. Processing bio-diesel without the chemicals - The list went on and on. He would gather this stuff up and store it in a dry environment and if anything needed rubber/neoprene gaskets he would try to vac pack those and store them in the root cellar. John Q had activated Clark’s long term survival brain cells.

He prioritized his list the next day. Nickel iron batteries, they would be no good without a trailer truck load of inverters and charge controllers. The current lead acid batteries would be worthless in 20 years. Solar panels, a trailer truck load with nickel iron batteries and a trailer truck load of LED lights, wind power. Several Lister generators, the task was formidable. He would talk to Ilona and the Low Ridge group about storing critical resources. Educating the kids – He quit when that one came out and decided to work on what he had came up with earlier. He knew Ilona was much smarter in book learning then he was. His 2 year AA degree from the community college did not hold a candle to Ilona’s Masters Degree in the science field. He would definitely turn over the education portion of his plan to her.

Ilona told him when he started getting excited about stockpiling stuff. That is a nice idea but you have the rest of your life ahead of you to slowly do it. One more thing it will not be safe for you to go gallivanting all over the country cherry picking choice goods. Other people may be doing it and not want you to interfere in their salvage operations. With the wind knocked out of his go, go immediately to get stuff he slowed down and made some plans and talked them over with the Low Ridge group and John Q. He found out the Low Ridge group had been doing exactly what Clark had thought of in an area 100 miles around them. They had the people to send out and it was a planned concerted effort. He also found out they had ran into other small groups and sometimes there was trouble but most times not.

John Q called Clark and told him he needed him and Jimmy to burn the pile of wood and trash he had pulled out of the river with the crane of the 1st locks. He said the weather is hot and the stuff he had pulled out of the river should dry out in 2 days so take a little old motor oil from some abandoned cars and set it on fire; once it gets started the damp stuff on the bottom will burn. He told them he would be back to pull the next half mile of trees and trash out in 4 days. Jimmy and Clark repeated the process 6 days later. They looked at the river and saw one more clean-up by John Q and the flotsam and every other conceivable item that floated would be pulled out. Unfortunately there were a lot of bodies but they would burn down to mostly bone. When everything that would burn had burned. John Q told Clark to take his end loader and a dump truck and clean the parking lots up for the next years clean up. Clark and Jimmy cleaned that nasty mess up in 2 days dumping it at the local trash dump. He told them later that he had dropped the crane claw down to the bottom of the river and pulled up all the water logged stuff. He smiled when he said he liked to be professional in his work. Neither Clark nor Jimmy said anything when he told them that.

Part 44.

3 days later John Q called again and said the 2nd locks parking lot was ready to be burned. Clark and jimmy saw that this would only require one burning and maybe they would not have to clean the parking lots. They would check after the pile had burned down. They checked the parking lots and decided there was not enough trash to make a trip to remove it. John Q called and told them to meet him at the 3rd locks in 2 days at 9AM. Plan on a 2 day campout and bring your pick up and 2 days worth of food and 2 coolers with ice in it and maybe some iced tea and lemonade. Oh yes bring me at least 200 gallons of diesel to run this 90000 watt generator I got from the power company. I hope it’s big enough to run that crane if its not we will have to go to a military base somewhere close and get a bigger generator.

They looked at the river and they were about 4 miles from the locks and the river from bank to bank was filled with floating trees and trash and parts of wooden houses. John Q was leaning against a huge truck that had Power Company written on it. There was a tow along behind the truck with a huge spool of wire on it. John Q said I need both of you to pull that wire into that building there about 30 yards away. I cannot do it by myself. He walked down to the building and Clark saw the door had already been broken open. John Q had a duffel bag with him. They sat down and watched him wire into the huge breaker box. He said well let’s go back and wire this into the truck. 15 minutes later he had the wiring done. He started up the generator climbed the tower to the crane and gave the 2 of them thumbs up. The crane started moving slowly across the back side of the dam and the claw slowly unwound till it grabbed a pile of trees and trash. There would be dumping on the back side of the dam he swung the crane around and dropped the load on the back side of the dam and the river water slowly floated it away down river to the Ohio. He had told them to get in their truck and drive at least 800 yards away to keep from listening to the screaming of the generator.

4 hours later they watched him climb down from the crane and shut the generator down. He said let’s eat, I am starved. John Q said there was an earthen dam up the hollow by Rain Tree Creek that gave out and washed all of what you see into the river. I hope I can get it all in 2 days but I may not and I don’t want to leave till the job is done. After they ate they refilled the generator. John Q took another break 4 hours later and had a snack. He told them he was making progress and he would work till dark today. He told Clark and Jimmy to find a good place to keep a look out because people could hear that generator for 5 miles. Clark and jimmy looked at each other like they were stupid. John Q wanted someone to watch his back while he was working. The thought of security never entered their minds they had gotten so complacent.

Clark and Jimmy had set up the 3 blow up mattresses and sleeping bags in a 2 story building and the only way in was from the front unless a person could climb up a 15 foot concrete wall from the back side. Clark was not completely dumb he had rounded up 3 ropes about 20 feet long and tied them up so they could exit a back window and slide down the backside if they were attacked by a large force. Clark walked around inside the building a couple of times during the night and looked out the windows using his generation 3 night scope. He only saw rabbits, owls and a coyote.

John Q started at daylight after he had a 5 egg scrambled breakfast with bacon and hash browns cooked on the Coleman stove. He asked Clark and Jimmy to use the river to wash out his utensils and heat them up on the stove to get rid of any river parasite nasties. Jimmy did that task. He had to laugh because he had to use a stick to push the trash away from the dock to get the utensils into the water and use a soap pad to clean them up he did use a small amount of clean water to rinse the utensils before he heated them up on the stove to sterilize them.

[Lbox88]

Part 45.

Clark had found the entry to the roof and was sitting in a swivel chair keeping an eye out. John Q quit at 1030AM shut the generator down and checked the oil. He reached into a side panel on the truck and added what looked like to Clark a quart of oil. He refilled the generator and made himself 2 or 3 sandwiches from his box he had in the truck. It was such a nice breezy warm day Jimmy and John Q sat in the grass and ate lunch. Clark would fix himself something when Jimmy came up. Jimmy called Clark on his FRS radio and said I will be there in 5 minutes Clark responded with an OK. John Q stopped at about 330PM turned the generator off checked the oil and refilled the tank. He told Clark and Jimmy I can’t finish this job till about noon tomorrow. I did not bring more food and I hope you have extra. Clark said we have 5 days worth of food and bottled water and drinks. John Q said my extra food is 20 miles from here at the electric compound where I took this truck. I sure wish you would fix me something for a snack and something for supper. Clark and Jimmy did just that.

John Q said the oil really needs to be changed on that generator; I am hoping I can get another 15 hours running out of it. I will service it when I take it back. Jimmy asked if he needed help doing that and John Q said of course. It is a greasy job but there is a creek by the power compound. Clark said we have a bottle of dish soap. John Q said that will do just fine for a clean up afterwards. He told Jimmy to come with him this time because he wanted to show him how to use the crane. He said all 3 cranes were identical and once you learned one you could run the other 2. After we get the generator serviced tomorrow I will show both of you how to power up the other 2 cranes using the river powered generators. He showed them how he had hooked the wire up to the truck generator. He said I want you 2 to roll up the wire when we are finished here and store it in the power room so the next time will be much easier. The exit flow of water on all 3 locks is currently set perfectly. We do not want to change any of those settings. Hopefully there will not be a perfect storm that dumps water from above the first locks to the Ohio River that would usually cause the lock operators to adjust the water flow. Hopefully that will never happen. One more thing these cranes and the claw hook can be changed out to put a bucket on it in case the silt rises up 15 feet and starts to interfere with the entry water tubes. That should not happen for at least 30 to 50 more years.

The next day Clark was dozing in the truck when Jimmy called him from the roof top. Jimmy just said there is a man watching us from about 800 yards away across the road. Clark said don’t do anything we should be out of here in another hour or so. 15 minutes later Jimmy said the man has a little person beside him and is waving at me. Clark sighed and said wave back. Jimmy said they are walking towards us and the man looks like he is stumbling. Clark said OK I will drive over to them and have a talk. Clark had his pistol in his hand as he stopped beside the sickly looking man who really looked like death warmed up and a 4 or 5 year old little girl. The man said would you please put your tail gate down so I can sit. Clark hurriedly did so and stuck his pistol back in his holster but left it unstrapped as he watched the sickly man kind of stagger to the back of the pickup. The man feebly said in a raspy voice my name is Jeb Caulkins and this is my niece Leeny which is short for leeandra Tricia Caulkins. He said I hope you are nice people because I don’t have but a few days left to live. I really do not want to live through today. I have terminal cancer and the pain is so great I can hardly stand it. Leeny will be all alone in a day or 2 and I just can’t allow that to happen. I broke into a pharmacy and have 25 morphine capsules that I have wanted to take for a week to stop the pain. Leeny knows I am going to heaven today or tomorrow. Would you please give her a good home? Clark got misty eyed when he heard that story. He told Jeb yes he would make absolutely sure she has a wonderful home because he and his wife would love to take care of a pretty little girl. Jeb said would you drive me back over to that building and leave Leeny back here on the tailgate with me I want to say my good bye.

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Part 46.

Jeb got off the back of the truck kissed Leeny on the forehead and hugged her. He told her to be good to her new mommy and daddy and kind of slow staggered into the building. Clark had given him a bottle of water because he knew what the man was immediately going to do. He had noticed the generator quit running about 5 minutes ago. He picked the little girl and a small back pack up and asked her if she knew when her birthday was she shook her head no. Clark sat Leeny in the truck cab and walked into the building. He asked the glassy eyed man what her birth date was, her parent’s names, her grandparents names, where she used to live and where she was born. He wrote it all down and left the man to die in peace. He asked her if she was hungry she said yeth. He cut the last loaf of bread and made her a pimento spread cheese sandwich and a strawberry jam sandwich and gave her a cold bottle of water to wash it down with He had to unscrew the water bottle cap. She ate it all and quickly. She looked healthy not too dirty and had on decent clothes and ankle high tennis shoes. She would be 5 on Christmas day. He told her I will try real hard to be a good daddy to you. She hugged him on his leg. He told her we have to make a couple of stops before we get home and you can meet your new mommy. She leaned over in the truck seat and went to sleep. He did not know she had worked hard at helping her uncle in the small things she knew how to do for days and was wore out.

Clark had to tell Jimmy and John Q the whole story. Jimmy had already pulled the heavy wire to the building and rolled it up under the electrical box. John Q said drive me over to the building I want to make sure he did it right and won’t lay there and suffer. John Q came out of the building and said he did it right. He asked Clark if he had found out how they survived the epidemic or whatever it was that killed everyone. Clark mentally kicked himself for not asking such an obvious question. When Clark shook his head no John Q said let’s get this show on the road so we can get home. Jimmy looked at the little girl sleeping on the bench seat and said I will ride in the back.

It took them about an hour to service the generator truck. John Q said I want to keep these specially threaded filters there may come a day when we have to wash them out with gasoline and reuse them. He set the drained filters upside down on a shelf in the power company mechanics supply room. The next stop at the 2nd locks Jimmy went in with John Q and learned how to power the crane up and the last stop at the 1st locks Clark went in and learned how to do it. John Q said hopefully I will be around for the next clean up and we can go into the workings of the locks a little more.

The little girl slept all the way to the cave. Jimmy said we will visit tomorrow and you can introduce Leeny to her uncle and aunt. Clark grinned at that. Clark had no idea how Ilona was going to react but he did know it would be in a good way.

Clark left Leeny sleep and he hollered for Ilona. She said I will be there in a minute. She said I am so glad you are back. He said I have a present for you – her eyes gleamed and he said uhh it is in the truck. She held onto his hand as they walked out to the truck. He opened the passenger door and she OMG you have a little girl. He said no we have a little girl. She went kind of blank and said you have to tell me about this adoption. She stopped and looked at him seriously and asked him if he had stolen the little girl. He laughed and said no I will tell you all of it in a little while after you clean your daughter up. She said we have to go shopping for clothes and a bed and she started blabbering. He said we can do that tomorrow I am sure she will be OK once you wash her clothes, give her a shower and feed her. She said we are going to need a bathtub. He said Jimmy can help me plumb one in beside the shower in the coming days.

Part 47.

While Ilona was taking care of Leeny, Clark opened the small kid sized back pack and found a clean change of clothes, hair brush, comb, small teddy bear, a doll, 3 electronic cigarette lighters, 3 small boxes of hard candy, toothpaste, toothbrush, 1 can Vienna sausage, a half bottle of water, some kid jewelry, pen knife, finger nail clips, small battery radio and a small notebook folder with pictures. He looked at the 10 pictures of the family and both sets of grandparents and found they had the parents and grandparents name on the back and date taken. He was glad of this because he would be able to show a picture of her real mom and dad and grandparents to her when she got older. There was even a small picture of Jeb and his wife with names and date taken on the back. He would go to town and get glass covered picture frames and set them on a top shelf to keep them for her.

The next day the 5 of them went on a shopping spree just for Leeny. Ilona had decided to use the same tent for Leeny she had since it was in excellent condition. She wanted to put a real mattress and box springs with real sheets and blankets even though Leeny would sleep in a small sized sleeping bag on top of the covers. Clark just thought it was a girl thing and kept his mouth shut. When they got all the stuff in the cave and the Chester drawers with a mirror on the back in the tent - The 3 females folded and placed everything in the drawers. Ilona had picked out some dresses for Leeny and Clark just said no and told her it will be a long time before dresses will be back in style. Ilona pouted for a few minutes but found some other girly thing to look at in the super store.

Leeny found the bear skin rug near the wood stove and plopped down on it and claimed it as hers. Clark had worked on that hide for about 2 weeks before he got it finished. He had found the simplest tanning method on the internet and soaked the hide in alum and more salt in a huge plastic barrel for 5 days after he had scraped the flesh off. That scraping he did on a sheet of plywood convinced him he never wanted to be a taxidermist. His fingers cramped up for at least a week when he finished. He had to hang the thing stretch it again and partially dry it and then remove it from the plywood and stretch it again. The last step was to rub Neats foot oil into the fleshed out side and rub that side over and over a smoothed out saw horse for hours and hours and then rub more Neats foot oil into the fleshy side before he had a usable soft bear skin rug. He would not do it again because it was extremely labor intensive.

Ilona was an outstanding teacher. 4 days later she figured out Leeny’s education level she started on an intensive play time instruction program for the little girl. They had to go to several Kindergarten schools, the library; the available DVD’s in the educational institutions and of course Wal-Mart’s kid section. She had already in her mind laid out a teaching course for Leeny to follow in the coming years.

Clark and Jimmy put up a small kid swing with 4 swings on it – they were thinking ahead. A plastic slide tube and a low monkey bar were planned for the next day. Of course there had to be a sand box full of toys with a night time tarp cover according to Ilona.

Clark did not realize how much he missed having a little person in his life again and if anyone could see his aura they would see a beam of happiness. Still there was work to be done and Leeny helped out. When ever she was with Clark or Ilona she always held their hand.

Deely came to visit often when she could get away because she loved the little girl like the other 3 did - Clark told her when she left about mid afternoon to tell Jimmy he wanted 8 two to 3 lb catfish in the next day or so. She said that won’t be a problem all he has to do is bait one of the trot lines. He has found a spot in the river that is teeming with sunfish and blue gills. Clark said I will ask for a mess of them the next time. Clark jokingly told her to have him clean the fish. She said no I will not tell him that and laughed all the way to her motor scooter.

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Part 48.

After a fish dinner the next day Ilona told Clark it is time for a baby checkup. Are you or Jimmy going with us this time I want to take Leeny so she can meet some of the kids her own age. Clark said Jimmy will go this time because I am fixing one of those pull a long travel trailers up. Jimmy wants to stay there till the babies are born. I lost the card draw and I will have to stay here with Leeny till you two get done with baby making. She said and why cannot Leeny go and stay in the travel trailer. Clark was caught and said I told Jimmy that Leeny would stay with me. She said you tell Jimmy that Leeny is going with us and to pack the trailer with the right foods for the little one. Deely and me will breast feed the new babies for the next 2 years so we won’t have to worry about poisoning the babies with outdated baby foods from the big box stores and that is if you can find any baby foods.

Clark did not mind staying at home to take care of the chickens and the cow for one night. The next trip they took to have the babies would be anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks. He wondered if Jimmy had cheated on the card draw. Nah - he thought he would not do that, but he still wondered anyway. The only thing he did not like was milking that big fat cow twice a day. He wondered if he could take his Honda 2000 to power a small milking machine. He would check on that possibility in the coming months and he definitely made a note of it.

When Jimmy came back the 4 of them had a meeting. Clark said it is time to start gathering 3000 gallon tankers for bio-diesel we are planning on making. I have it figured we can make 3000 gallons in 10 weeks without killing ourselves. Unless we go to that 1000 gallon a week monster machine they have in the shop. I plan on having 1 or 2 full 3000 gallon tankers here and 1 in the city near your house. I cannot find out information whether Pri-D will work on strictly bio-diesel. We need to know for sure before we make a lot of product that will go bad in a year or so. They batted that around for a few minutes until they started on where they were going to store the rig or rigs to haul the tankers around. 15 minutes later they had the start of a plan. 4 empty tankers would be parked on the road to the cave because the tankers were hidden from anyone who may travel the strip mine road. One would be parked by the fire department. Jimmy would park a diesel truck near his house on the roadway and Clark would drive one diesel and park it in front of the 4 tankers on his entry road in a wide spot.

Another pole barn would be built to house the 1000 gallon weekly equipment around side of the mountain across the creek coming out of the mountain. Jimmy and Clark cleared the forest for a hundred yards in all directions around that metal roofed pole barn and sprayed 1 year kill everything Roundup. They were a little concerned about forest fires caused by lightening strikes. The rest of Clark’s property had already been cleared in a hundred yard direction from all his outside equipment and metal roofed buildings.

There was a new aluminum double wide car port that had the 2 sides and back on it 3 houses down and across the street from Jimmy’s place. The 150 gallon operation was set up there for future operations. A diesel generator was placed in that car port for power. It just made sense to go all diesel since the fuel they were going to make would be diesel.

Part 49.

At the next meeting after they had thought about what they were going to do they changed the plan to have just two 150 gallon a week operations and try to keep 2500 gallons of bio-diesel to work the equipment they actually needed. At 200 gallons an acre they still needed about 12 to 15 acres and that was a lot of property to work. They had found a parked string of railroad tanker cars and 20 tankers had potassium hydroxide in them which was enough to make at least several million gallons of bio-diesel. Ilona said with the potassium hydroxide problem solved all I need for you 2 big strong men is to find me a methane digester – the plans to make a small one for the chicken and cow manure are in that book over there. Clark and Jimmy rolled their eyes because this would probably be a hard complicated job.

She said there is no sense in planting oil crops if we don’t have the equipment set up to process it. Oh by the way we need 2 of the digesters and everyone laughed. Seriously guys she said our kids will probably be using methane to run their vehicles and generators. I don’t plan on in my life time ever seeing McDonald’s opening or street lights in a town. That thought slowly sunk in to all their minds. She was wrong on the streetlights but right on McDonald’s. In the coming years some of those very few surviving hard core smart survivalists who lived near the large hydro power generating dams would light up the towns near them.

A few more months had gone by when Ilona said to Clark it is time for us to go see the Dr. for our coming babies. They left the next morning and Clark had a big grin on his face when he went to milk the cow. He had found a single cow milk machine and his Honda generator would run it. He was glad of that because it freed up a lot of manual labor time. He fed most of the milk to the chickens and only put a quart or so in the fridge. All 4 of them knew it would soon be time to take this cow back to the pastures because the milk from the cow was slowly coming to an end. Jimmy had already spotted another cow with a real young 2 or maybe 3 month old calf and would swap the cows out in a month or so.

They had put together 2 methane digesters and had filled up 2 tanks with the gas for making bio-diesel. John Q and another man from Low Ridge came down to show them how to get the potassium hydroxide out of the tanker cars. They had to round up some special equipment that would screw into the tankers dumping system but once it was set up they could dump any amount of the caustic powder they would need into another portable tank. They would need the bio-diesel they were going to make for the next years crop of rapeseed. This fuel would be needed to fuel the plow and heavy equipment to harvest the plants. That resulted in more research on what was needed to actually do the job.

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Part 50.

The babies were born 3 days apart. Clark now had a son and Jimmy had a daughter. The ladies stayed at Low Ridge for 8 days after the birth and were ready for some light work when they got back. Leeny was glad to see Clark and hugged his leg as soon as she saw him. She was jabbering up a storm about her new friends and Clark could only understand every 5th word. Ilona had to interpret for him. Clark was put in the dog house when he said to the other 3 he could not tell the babies apart unless they were naked.

Things fell into a routine for the next few months. Jimmy had captured 2 pigs and one was about to have little piggies. He told Clark he had read up on how to gut the other one and clean its hide. He was going to make a roaster and cook the 250 pound thing. They talked him out of that because there was no way on this earth the 4 of them could eat 140 or 150 pounds of fresh cooked pig. They all would help him butcher it and freeze it, cure hams and make bacon for the coming months. They told him spare ribs would be nice and some fresh shredded pork for BBQ and Cole slaw sandwiches would hit the spot. Of course everyone had to inspect the pig pen he had built that he was going to keep the pregnant sow in. He said he was going to feed it from the tons of feed remaining in a few farm stores and of course give it a couple of gallons of milk every day.

Clark told Ilona that Jimmy is taking us way beyond our work ability with this pig. Ilona said we all know that – 8 of the little piggies will be picked up by the Low Ridge group as payment for the Dr. delivering the babies and our use of the birthing pool. They want the little ones because it will be new breeding stock. Oh I forgot to mention me and Deely talked to several young couples that want to move here and help us. We know for sure that 2 of the nicest couples will come next spring to get started on their garden and help us with more live stock including a few more piggies. She laughed and said won’t it be wonderful to have other people to talk to all the time instead of once a day every 3 or 4 months. He agreed with her on that.

Low Ridge cane under attack several times but most of the attackers were killed when the people at Low Ridge got fed up with the sniping and counter attacked the camps the crazy people were staying at. The attacks frightened some of the young people that wanted to move out further away from the highly visible and known place on the main highway.

4 couples 3 with small children moved to the town and Jimmy and Deely had next door neighbors. This tickled Ilona pink because Leeny now had the same age playmates.

Jimmy changed the signs of the name of the small town to Clarkston which really tickled Clark. The small town would prosper in the coming years because of the vast amount of bio-diesel that could be produced. Other survivalists came out of the deep woods and started up small cottage industries between Low Ridge and Clarkston. Over the years Clark eventually got everything on his lists to keep electricity flowing for at least 200 years and stored the items in 2 concrete buildings with metal roofs.

A central registry was established to match up the growing children for future mates. Those parents who did not have the knowledge to properly home school their children sought out knowledgeable adults that would and could do it for them. Eventually a pair of traveling instructors would make the circuit to insure a good education level for the far flung children. Higher education was in the 10 year away planning stage.

John Q showed Jimmy and Clark everything he knew about the 3 locks. A concrete man visited them one day and inspected the locks. His conclusion was the locks would hold up for at least a hundred or more years. The fishing in the 3 sections of river between the locks would be outstanding as long as the population density remained low – which it would for at least 50 more years. Clark noticed that they only had to clean the river in front of the first locks every 8 or 9 years now that mining and construction on the creeks dumping into the river had stopped. The 2nd and 3rd locks had not needed cleaning up for at least 20 years.

The New River which was one of the rivers that formed the Kanawha River that started in the Carolinas took about 1 year to dissipate and clean the chemicals from it. The Gauley River which was the 2nd river that formed the Kanawha River cleaned itself in less then 1 year. The fish Jimmy now caught in the Kanawha were just like the healthy and chemical free fish from 200 years ago.

Ilona had her own school teaching her 5 boys and 2 girls with Deely’s 7 girls and 2 boys. Later on in life Clark and Ilona moved into Horatio’s house after putting a new metal roof on the place. 2 of Clark’s boys married 2 of Deely’s daughters and took over the mountain side cave. Leeny ended up being just like her mom and was a dedicated forestry teacher with her own 5 kids.

Clark had thought the big fork lift batteries would go bad around the 10th year but the 1st 6 were still maintaining 95% of the charge. The 6 empty spares had not yet been filled with acid and it has been 26 years running time on the original 6. He thought those battery maintainers with the desulphating system may have had something to do with it.

Life in this section of the post apocalyptic USA crept slowly but merrily along.

End Story #21

[Lbox88]

Taking a step back here, it appears I forgot to include Story #15

Clark Story #15 - The Killings

I wrote this a few days after watching a special on the DC Snipers. This is not too much of a survival story just some fictional entertainment.


Clark Story #15 – The Killings

Clark had been thinking about how stupid the DC Snipers had been. He knew he could have done it better. But his targets would be selective. He wanted to kill the President, the vice president, 6 members of the legislative branch and 4 Supreme Court justices. He had no idea when his mind had snapped but it had. He just thought it was the right thing to do. One of the most important items he was concerned with was getting caught.

The members of Congress, the Vice President and the Supreme Court Justices would be easy. It was the President that was taking up all of his attention. It would be nice if he had 3 or 4 people he could trust to give him a little help. Time was of the essence so he put out some extremely low profile feelers to some of his most trusted friends. He had no other friends but ex-military members in a sprawling farm community.

9 of them were potentials so he let it be known amongst 4 of the most trustworthy that he thought certain people should be denied breathing any more of his and their air. He got 3 nibbles. The 4th one got killed in a farm accident so that eliminated one of his loose lips problems. The 3 that were left were rabid red necks that followed politics religiously and let it be known to any and all that some changes should be made in national policy. Of course the people who listened to this rhetoric were like minded so it never left the general area.

The plan was simple and would work if no mistakes were made – they would take out the 4 Supreme Court Justices and 3 members of congress then lay low for 4 months and 5 days – the wait time was just a random pick and had no bearing on anything, but hopefully this would lull the system guards into believing it was just a small team of idiots which had done this and had no further desire to do any more damage. The remaining 3 key members of Congress and the Vice president would be next.

The country was outraged when 7 liberal members of the elite liberal left were shot down in cold blood and no trace of the perpetrators were ever found. 4 months and 5 days later the remaining 3 key members of congress and the Vice President were gunned down from long range.

Clark decided to wait 28 days before taking out the President who had not yet made his weak mind up on nominating the dead Supreme Court Justices; also he had to choose wisely to get his nominees through the Senate. The other main reason was he wanted their choice to replace the President before the dead legislators were replaced and the key slots filled. This was going to be easy because congress was in recess and nothing would be accomplished until they were back in session. So the automatic succession would go on as laid out in the Constitution. Those 2 days before Congress went into session would change the course of history as to who the next US President would be.

The 4 of them had acquired surreptitiously multiple silenced rifles and three 50 BMG 10 shot scoped rifles. Clark and his 3 partners in crime practiced faithfully with the big gun and reloaded many shells until each of them could hit a man sized target at 1300 yards. He was not worried about any human surviving if they were hit anywhere in the upper body. The 646 grain bullet would destroy any human. He wanted 2 shots at the president so he practiced on moving targets at the exact range and speed the target would be moving. At the last moment he changed his mind about shooting the President, he wanted to blow him up and have the blood and guts splattered all over American television live.

The White House press and presidential movement programs came under intense scrutiny. They found he would be in Cleveland Ohio in 3 months. He grinned because he knew where the President would be standing when the 6 grenades and 48 ounces of C-4 would be detonated remotely. He knew there would be bomb sniffing dogs and robotic sniffers. He decided the only way to beat this was to put the explosives in a 5 gallon metal bucket and Meg weld the lid on. He drilled a small hole in the bottom of the can for the electrical antenna wire and soldered that hole shut both inside and outside. The explosives were finally brought to the bucket, placed in and the detonating electrical wire connected. Filling the bucket ¾ full of Styrofoam popcorn and then compressing that down with 2 inches of 1 inch bolts and nuts the contents were locked in place and would not slide around. The lid was then welded on. He took the bucket over to a 55 gallon water filled drum and pushed it under the water and placed a cinder block or 2 on top of the bucket and left it for 24 hours. He turned the 5 gallon bucket over and submerged it again for another 24 hours. There were no air leaks. He had used rubber gloves when he placed the explosives in the bucket and connected the wiring. He destroyed the gloves and washed his hands several times and put on another pair of rubber gloves before he put the lid on and welded it. He was pretty sure there were no residual traces of explosives on the outside of the can. But since Clark was a stickler for details; he lightly sandblasted the bucket and scrubbed it down with bleach water and dish soap. After it had air dried he repainted it black with one of the dollar general cans of spray paint. The bucket was then placed in a 10 gallon plastic bucket. He went back over the details, the C-4 had been scrubbed down while wearing rubber gloves, the grenades had went through the same wash cycle and everything was blow dried with a small air compressor and then placed in plastic bags from another dollar general store 70 miles away. Nothing was again touched without rubber gloves. The remaining wiring, plastic bags, spray paint, air compressor, soap, rubber gloves, hair nets, Meg welder tip, remaining weld material and tape that were used were destroyed by burning and then taking the remnants and dropping them in a deep river 55 miles away. The only evidence left was the bucket containing the explosives and the receiving antenna which was taped to the top of the bucket in a Mylar bag for the radio detonating signal. He had tested all 4 of those new Eneloop batteries and he knew they would work for at least a year so 2 and one half months would be just a warm up for them. The detonator had a blinking LED light that would take at least 8 months to run the batteries down so he was good to go.

He checked his list that night and saw he had forgotten something. He went out to the workshop and put a wider nozzle on the Meg welder and put in a half roll of different composition welding material and ran some of that through the new nozzle.. Locking the garage he had a nice night sleep. Waking up the next morning he felt as if something was wrong with the welder. He put the welder in the back of his pickup with a sledge hammer and drove 35 miles away to the river. On a gravelly bank he beat the welder into many broken parts and dumped it off a bridge into deep water. He had bought that welder with cash from a newspaper advertisement in the big city so there would be no trail leading back to him if it was ever found. Returning home he pulled out his 220 amp stick welder and shoved it into the previous welder spot.

Part 2 - The Killings

Now the dangerous work began – A picture was taken of one of the Cleveland water trucks door marking and a city license plate was taken.

A simple stencil was used to paint the logos on several magnetic automobile door signs, 2 more stolen Ohio license plates were painted the city green and after loading a backhoe, some 10 foot rebar and 10 foot sections of water pipe on the flat bed they left for Cleveland at 4am on a rainy Tuesday morning.

The 3 stopped in a mall parking lot and the license plates were changed and the magnetic door signs put on. They were wearing the hard hats, clear big black rimmed Clark Kent plain glasses and shirts with the Cleveland water logo. Clark put out the red cones and Larry put the backhoe to work, he carefully cut and pulled the inch thick grass covering backwards 10 feet and it was a nice rolled up job. Clark wanted the bomb bucket in the ground before any onlookers could gather. Larry dug him a nice 48 inch deep hole and 2 solid 12 inch cinderblocks were placed in the bottom of the hole and then the bomb containing bucket on top of the blocks. 6 inches of fine sand was piled on the bucket before anyone could see. The coliseum parking lot remained empty until a bored private security guard drove by and waved. The guard turned around and asked how long the job was going to take. Clark told him we should be out of here by 4 PM; the guard flipped him a casual salute and drove off. Larry kept on back hoeing while he grinned at Clark. The 10 foot trench was dug in short order 3 slightly deeper trenches of 8 deep x 14 inches wide were dug and the rebar was slid through the top half of a cinderblock that was dropped in the holes. A bag of concrete Reddi mix was dumped around each cinder block cementing the rebar to each block. A bucket of water was poured on the Reddi mix and Larry started covering the hole back. Clark uncovered a bad rusted 10 foot section of pipe on the flat bed and covered the new pipe up. All 3 of them rolled the grass back over the hole after the dirt was packed down then Clark took the grass roller and smoothed their work out. He took 8 or 9 handfuls of grass seed and carefully sprinkled it over their work. The only thing he was worried about was the antenna. The 3rd member of the team knew all about survey markers. He had driven to the city a few days ago with his transit and found the city survey marker. It was easy for him to figure out the reading for the stake he had placed in the grass. Using a set of marking punches they had marked a copper 4 inch by 4 inch thick round with the location numbers. The antenna wire was soldered on to the bottom side of the survey round that had been screwed and soldered onto a 40 inch 2 inch thick water pipe which was cemented into a cinder block. Clark was depending on a nosy secret service agent removing the half inch dirt on top of the marker and checking out the numbers. This dirt removal would insure the signal would be received down through the copper round survey marker.

Clark stocked an old abandoned mine with long term groceries. He figured if he had to disappear for a long while this would be prudent instead of hiding out in cheap hotels because there would be a huge reward. He did not tell his other 3 cohorts what he had done in case one or more of them were captured. He knew any deal any of them made with a prosecutor would still result in them being sentenced to a life term in prison instead of lethal injection. Clark had no intention of spending the rest of his life behind bars or sentenced to death.

2 weeks before the President arrived in Cleveland a team of secret service agents arrived and went over the place with a fine tooth comb. One of the agents found the marker and instead of checking with the city engineers about the marker he just asked them the closest marker numbers and when he had those he saw the numbers were extremely close together and noted in his notes – marker checked with city engineer.

Clark had let his hair and beard grow long. He kept away from anyone who knew him and on the Kill President Day he used a white temporary washable removal dye to color his brown hair white.

The effective range of the transmitter was just a little over 1900 yards. He parked his truck in a small unattended free parking lot 4 miles from where he would detonate the bomb. He rode a 10 speed non-descript bike to where he had laser ranged 1600 yards from the bomb which gave him a 300 yard cushion for his transmitter; the detonator had been checked seven times under the current conditions it was now placed and had worked each time. He was listening to the all news portable radio mounted on the handle bars as he slowly rode from McDonalds where he killed 10 minutes eating. His timing was perfect the President had just started his speech when Clark hit the 1600 yard mark. He pushed the detonator and 1 or so seconds later there was a tremendous explosion over his left shoulder. He stopped just like everyone else and rubber necked towards where dirt, dust and debris were falling from the air. He asked several people what happened and no one knew so he rode the bike to his truck. He abandoned the bike close to a low rent district. He just rode it up next to a not so busy street corner put the kick-stand down and walked around the block to his truck and rode home.

Arriving home he took the sheet out of the truck covering the seat in case some white hair had fallen out of his head. He lay the sheet down behind his house and using a 10 dollar electric hair trimmer he cut his head hair down to the one inch he always kept it and then cut his beard off making sure all the hair fell on the sheet. Next the long billed cap, Bermuda shorts which he never ever wore, the T-Shirt and the tennis shoes went onto the sheet. He walked out on the grass and hosed his head and body down then used a shampoo to mostly remove any lingering white hair coloring and hair. The sheet was rolled up and soaked in kerosene and then covered in gasoline. A nice hot wood fire was going good in the burn barrel. The sheet was thrown into the barrel and after 15 minutes the contents were stirred again and another fire started; that evening he would dump the burn barrel in a fast moving creek about a mile away. He had stopped several times on the way home to throw the Eneloop batteries into a field and bust the detonator into many pieces with the trusty sledge hammer. The detonator pieces were thrown out the window into road side ditches miles apart. He went in popped the top on a cold beer and rewound his old VCR 6 hour tape that he had set to come on 15 minutes before the scheduled speech. He giggled when he saw the body parts flying through the air before the cameraman either got hit by the debris or fell down, because that was it for the live broadcast gory pictures. The bullet proof glass cage they had surrounded the president with concentrated the explosion inside that glass cage and it would take a long while to pick up all the body pieces and separate them out for burial.

He had told his 3 partners in crime to put out a story that he was trying to talk them into rejoining the Army with him to kill some of those Arabs. That was the main reason for them not being seen together for the past 2 or more months. He also knew this would be one of the biggest manhunts ever put on by the federal government. Now to put his 2nd plan into operation; he rode over to Larry’s house because Larry was single, had a 2 story wooden framed house with an attached wooden garage that he stored 55 gallon drums of gasoline in.

Part 3 – The Killings

Just at dark Clark rode his motor-bike to Larry’s house using the back roads which not many people travelled. Larry as usual was setting on his porch drinking liquor and smoking pot. He said to Clark - dang boy you did it and I believe we are all going to get away with it. Clark grinned at him and told him yes we are. He told Larry to call his 2 friends but not tell them he was here, just that they needed to come over for a couple of hours. Larry said what do you have planned and Clark said a small celebration party. He told Larry I scored some killer weed and I have a bottle of your liquor and a bottle each of our 2 friend’s liquor. Larry let out one of those yeehaw yells and high fived Clark.

They talked about getting rid of the boots and clothes they had worn when they planted the bomb. Larry assured him everything had been burned and the burn barrel contents dumped in the river. They had stopped at 2 different car washes and cleaned the back hoe, the truck tires and underneath the trucks; the 4th member of the team had then led them to a fairly deep gravel bedded creek where the trucks and back hoe were driven up and down for 45 minutes. They had also cleaned the floor mats in the creek while they walked around in the boots to make sure they did not put any of the dirt from their boots back in the trucks from the bomb burial site. The back hoe and trucks have since been used at 5 different muddy job locations so that should take care of any trace evidence remaining. Clark grinned because he had done the same thing but used a different creek bed to drive his truck in. They talked about the guns and gun bolts used in the killings they had torched into several pieces. The pieces were put in a stripped down automobile and taken to a car crushing facility. He told Clark that he and one of the other perpetrators had personally watched the car crushed and loaded onto a train to be sent to a smelter plant. The guns they had not used were in 6 or 8 inch schedule 40 pipes with capped off ends buried 8 feet deep close to the big oak at the end of Larry’s property. The unused ammunition for those guns used in the killings had been fired into the river and the brass dumped and mixed in at three different firing ranges in the - to be reloaded barrels. Clark high fived him and said now all we have to do is keep our mouth shut and we should get away with this. Larry said yep. As he said that the other 2 pulled into Larry’s driveway. Clark watched them grin after they saw him as they exited their vehicles.

About 3 hours later Clark took the almost empty drugged liquor bottles and placed them in his saddle bags and brought out 3 almost empty bottles of liquor and placed them next to his passed out friends. Next he took 2 clean baggies and put some of the drug laced pot in each bag and hid the pot in the 2 pickups after he put the baggies in his friend’s hands and put many fingerprints on the baggies. He rolled one joint using a drop of water from the sink and put it over the visor in Larry’s truck. He did not think that joint would survive if his plan went as planned. He washed his drink glass and put it in the cabinet.. His liquor bottle which was full of tea was already in his saddle bag. He figured these men were so full of dope and liquor they would burn completely up and not awaken, but he was going to make absolutely sure they never woke. Smoke inhalation should kill them before they burned up.

Checking his hands to make sure he had his gloves on he went into the garage and opened the lid on one of the 55 gallon drums of gasoline and placed a partially full plastic 2 gallon gas container on top of the drum. He made sure the drum was flush with the inside wall and set out to do his deadly deed. Inside he used a few drops of gasoline and diesel fuel to start the fire on the rug by the end table which had a kerosene lantern half full on the table. He knocked that lantern over on the end table and let it drip onto the fire that was licking at the interior wall next to the gasoline. By this time the room was full of acrid smoke, Clark did one more thing before walking outside; he set the window curtains on fire which put out more smoke and heat. He assumed the curtains since they were cotton would be one of the first things to catch on fire during a flashover. Larry’s house was at the end of the road 6 miles from the cross road and then 5 more miles from his closest neighbor. Clark assumed rightly so that anyone seeing the red flicker in the sky would instantly think Larry and his friends were having a bon-fire party.

Clark moved back 200 yards keeping his motor bike pointed towards the house in case someone came. The gasoline in the open 55 gallon drum in the garage lit off in a not so spectacular manner – Clark just heard a low caruumph knowing the sealed 55 gallon drums would be next and would definitely be spectacular. The living room where the 3 bodies were was fully enveloped and flames were shooting out the windows with no sign of any one surviving. Clark left the area on this bright full moon night. He did not turn his lights on until he was past the entry turn off by 2 miles and fortunately he made it home without passing anyone. He washed his clothes twice before hanging them out to dry. The whiskey bottles were rinsed out, busted and thrown into a burning fire in the burn barrel; he would empty the burn barrel in the morning and dump the glass at a small closed landfill people sometimes illegally used. Unbeknownst to Clark he had lucked out on his somewhat poorly planned triple murder. One of the exploding 55 gallon drums of gasoline spewed its entire 50 some gallons on the 3 bodies burning the bodies down to almost chalky burnt bone dust.

One of Larry’s friend’s girlfriends drove out to check on her man late the next morning. There was nothing left of the house only burnt and charred timbers here and there. 3 weeks later the State Fire Marshall thought he had figured out a scenario. This was somewhat based on the laced dope that was found in the 2 surviving vehicles. He really could not get a point of origin on the start of the fire due to the exploding drums of gasoline which consumed most of the house. The location of the burnt bones in the chairs which were recognizable by the springs that were not consumed resulted in the Fire Marshall thinking the men had drank and smoked dope till they were stupefied and then passed out was the leading theory he had. He concluded his report by adding he believed the fire was started by a cigarette falling from one of the just passed out victims landing on some combustible material.

Clark would know none of this until he went to town 2 weeks after the incident. The Sheriff did not bother to talk to Clark because the 3 dead men had told the story so convincingly that Clark had contrived. So far Clark was looking good. On his way back from town he was really upset that he had burned the VCR tape until he pulled into his driveway. There were 7 black unmarked automobiles and one State Police car sitting in his driveway. The state patrolman told Clark to have a seat in the back of his automobile. Clark never said a word he just sat down but he noticed the policeman did not shut the car door. In a few minutes a tall man with a grey suit handed Clark a paper that just said on the top Federal Search Warrant. Clark read the search warrant and looked at the tall man who had identified himself as a US attorney working out of so and so judicial district. Clark asked why me I ain’t done nothing. The prosecutor just said we are covering all bases on the death of the President. The main reason we are searching your house is because of your past affiliation with Larry and he named the 2 others names. Clark said I ain’t talked to them boys in several months ever since I wanted them to join the Army with me again. They did not want to go kill Arabs. The prosecutor pulled a notebook out of his jacket pocket and asked him which recruiting Sgt had he talked to. Clark rattled off a Sgt’s name at the recruiting office in the city. Clark actually had talked to the recruiter trying to see how much rank he could get back if he re-enlisted. He remembered telling the Sgt that as soon as he cleared up a few more personal items he would be back to enlist.

One of the searchers asked Clark where his Meg welder was and Clark just said I wish I could afford one but the stick welder I got will do until I hit the lottery. The prosecutor asked Clark if he was going to be here for a while in case we want to talk to you again. Clark told him no, as soon as I sell the house or get a long term renter I will be in the employee of the federal government. I am willing to spend the next 16 years of my life to get an early pension. The prosecutor just stared at him for a few seconds and walked away. 3 hours later Clark watched the searchers carry out a few bags of stuff and drive off. He went inside and saw the place wasn’t to badly messed up. His heart skipped a few beats when he saw all his VCR tapes were missing and he smiled when he thought about burning the tape that recorded the destruction of the President. He checked his computer and it was still on so he assumed they had made a copy of his hard drive. There was a note on the kitchen table telling him his personal property may be picked up after he saw Judge Lambert at the US Courthouse in 12 weeks. Clark knew he was not going to join the Army and he also was not going to rent or sell his house but he was going to disappear for a year until this intense search heat died down. He drove into town and looked for the Sherriff; he handed the man a check made out to cash for 400 dollars. He asked the sheriff if he would send random patrols out to his place to keep check for vandalism. If any windows or doors were broken in the 400 dollars should cover the plywood and labor to board his place up. The Sheriff handed him the check back and told him to write on the back of it what it was for and to sign under it. The Sheriff asked him where he was headed out to. Clark said I am going to see an Army Recruiter. What are you going to do with your truck and motor-bike? Clark said I am taking the tires and motor off the motor bike and hanging it up in my garage and I am going to keep my truck until I can get back to drive it to where I am going. The Sheriff patted him on the back and just said good man.

During the next week Clark spent several hundred dollars making his place semi-burglar proof. Motion sensor lights using 100 watt fluorescent screw in bulbs were placed in 8 locations around his house and garage. He had four 120 watt solar panels and some gel pack batteries so they should be good for a few years. The neatest thing he installed was an electric eye beam that turned on a small siren with a recording saying the Sheriff had been notified. The system would reset in 3 minutes and was supposedly fail-safe. The obligatory alarm signs were posted in the obvious locations and phony wires were connected to the windows indicating windows were alarmed. He did not take his motor bike apart but he did drain the oil and fuel. On his way out of town he stopped at the county property tax building and paid for 3 years claiming he was going into the Army and would not be back for 4 years. He had a third cousin that he knew slightly 50 or so miles away. He called her to see if she would hold his mail for him while he was in the military since she was the only living kin he knew about. He had met her several years ago and she seemed like a nice person so he took the chance and called her. She said she would be proud to hold a serviceman’s mail. She was instructed to trash the advertisements and just hold official documents. He had already settled up with the utility companies and instructed them to take any current money due from his deposit as he would eventually return to take up residence. This only left a couple of things that he would have to take care of in person; his auto license plate and his driver license. He guessed he would have to visit his cousin in 10 months to pick up his registration card and make the trip to the department of motor vehicles. He thought a person in the US could not really go totally grey if he owned a licensed, insured automobile or wanted to keep a current drivers license.

He checked his finances he had about 12000 dollars. He knew the combination to Larry’s safe and had taken 8800 dollars and left 800 so it would not seem like a robbery. His other 2 friends always carried 12 or 1300 dollars in their wallet and he took most of it leaving a couple of hundred in each wallet. If he had known of the total fire destruction including the cheap bolted down safe which melted in the intense fire he would have taken it all. He left 700 dollars in his free checking/savings account just in case the Sheriff actually cashed the check he had given him.

He had just left the post office when he smacked himself on the side of the head. He returned to his garage turned the alarm off and retrieved his motor bike.. He did not put the oil or petrol in it because he would have to lay it on its side in the back of the pick-up. After rearranging everything in the loaded truck he got the motor bike situated. He had just saved himself a slew of insurance and licensing money. He would ride his motor bike for the next few years and only put a current license plate on it and lie to the DMV licensing clerk about the status of his insurance, he had done it before when he walked the 500 yards to the office and had forgotten his insurance card; he just made some numbers up and signed the form. The truck insurance he would just let lapse until he needed to renew it again.

Arriving at the abandoned mine site he saw it was exactly as he had left it. The 2 signs saying - poison and explosive gas – do not enter were still bright and could be seen 25 yards away. He knew for a fact this mine had been abandoned 17 years ago and the company that owned it had disbanded leaving the state with the problem of sealing the mine up and cleaning up the mess the previous owners had left. There were hundreds if not thousands of mines just like this and he knew the state did not have money to begin cleaning up the first one unless some kid crawled in it and got trapped or died. The furor in the newspapers and television would force the state to permanently seal that mine up and everything would die down till that problem was again forgotten about.

The entry way to this mine was quite large and could easily accommodate his truck and motor-bike. He was not going to keep his bike in the cave because he would be driving it and to remove and replace the cross members closing the mine would be too much trouble to take them down to exit and re enter. He installed the 3 15 watt solar panels for lighting above the entryway before entering.

That night after settling down and cooking some stew on his Coleman stove he laid back on the bed he had brought along to make sleeping really nice and thought about his past actions. The new President of the US was the senile Senator Robert Byrd from WV who had been sworn in 2 hours after the President was declared dead by one of the 5 remaining Supreme Court Justices. The 4 of them had figured out the succession and after they killed everyone on the list he was the next successor. They liked him because he was the only US Senator that called the US Constitution his Bible and he had a copy of it in his breast pocket. It was one of those things he told interviewers he never left home without and it was laying on top of the bible that he was sworn in with. The 4 did not know if he could put the country back on track according to what the forefathers had laid out in the original document. They were willing to bet he would give it a try if he did not die from old age or become so senile the legislators would have to replace him. So far in the 4 months he had been in office he seemed to have been rejuvenated and told the country what he wanted to do if he could get some of the screaming liberals on his side and forget about the trillion dollar health bill which he said he would never sign into law under any circumstances. The Cap and Trade was another issue that was put on the back burner and forgotten about. Those 2 issues were the big ones the 4 had talked about the most. He fired all the czars the day after he was signed into office.

Clark went to sleep that night and never woke up. He should have paid more attention to those old mine signs that said poison gas.

The end

[Lbox88]

Another WAY jump back.

Just a short prep story #1A

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Clark lived in a 4 room house on the riverbank in a small 1200 peopled town. The property was 300 foot by 300 foot and he had a large back yard. The house was 40 foot above the river and he had devised a small lift to pull his 18 foot tri hulled 85 HP boat up to his car/boat port. The boat had a small after market canopy installed in case he got caught out while fishing in bad weather on the Kanawha River in West Virginia. The property was bounded by an 8 foot green slatted chain link fence all the way to the river.

There was a 16 X 24 metal shed behind the house a dual aluminum car port by the double entry drive electronic gates. 16 empty rabbit hutches had been built several years ago onto the back of one side of his house. He had had a dog but it died of old age several months ago. The city ordnances did not allow chickens in the city limits, but that didn’t bother him. He built a coop capable of handling 16 layers. He liked fresh eggs and fried chicken.

He had worked himself into a dead end job driving heavy equipment for one of the wealthy business men in town and had resigned himself to dying of old age while driving an end loader or whatever.

That fall while deer hunting he met up with 2 really talkative younger fellows who had just came back from the war zone. Everyone had shot a deer and decided to stop at a watering hole for a few beers before heading home. He listened intently to these fellows about the coming storm and the preparations they were making. They turned him on to some web sites. He wrote them down and decided to use his computer for more then just down loading country music.

3 weeks later Clark leaned back in his computer swivel chair and said something out loud – Holy Chit…He had an 80 page spiral notebook full of notes and things to do. He was frugal with his money and drank beer at home and rarely went to any of the local beer joints unless he was woman hunting.

That weekend he brought the back hoe home with him – He told the boss he wanted to tinker with the hydraulics because one side of the shovel was kind of sticky. The shop was only 900 yards from his house so he just drove it down the back street and into his yard. He couldn’t afford one of those high dollar concrete bomb shelters – But he sure could make a 20 X 20 X 12 or 14 foot deep hole to hide in. That weekend he dug it and stood there kind of slack jawed at the pile of dirt he had piled up. He thought about that for a little while and said I can use a lot of it to cover the top of the hole and when it gets dark I can use the end loader to dump it in the fast flowing deep river. He knew that was against all kinds of laws, but heck it wasn’t anything but clean dirt and wouldn’t hurt any thing or anybody if no one knew about it.

He put a tarp over the hole and made more plans. The railroad was doing a massive amount of track repair about a half mile from where he was doing some digging for another company.

That week he drove a fork lift over to the humongous pile of copper pressure treated railroad ties. He told the work foreman he needed some old or new ties to put a fairly large shed on he was building out at his hunting camp. Well, his house was his hunting camp, the way Clark figgered it. The foreman told him to keep it quiet and come back after 6 pm and take all he needed from either stack. The railroad had dumped several hundred more ties then was needed on this job and would not miss any. Clark asked him what he drank; he got a response and grinned. He told the foreman he would see him next Friday on payday.

That evening he drove the fork lift back to the pile of rail road ties and walked back to the shop to get a dump truck. He loaded 300 or so ties into the dump truck. Drove the fork lift to the shop and walked back and got the loaded dump truck. Dumped the ties in his yard, took the truck back and had a beer and a burger for supper.

Now that he had some of his building materials which by the way were all free. He thought about what to put under the ties to keep the dampness down a little bit. He knew where gravel and sand was but did not know enough about it. He decided to ask an engineer at the local college that he had had a few beers with.

Several days later after finding out what he did not know, he dumped a load of sand in the hole and spread it out to about 4 inches thick. Ok I need some more knowledge he was thinking – Drinking water, waste removal and the most important of all cheap filtered air. He stopped for a day or two and did some research. OK a sloped pipe with a ¼ inch slope will take the waste and water out to the bank where it would be washed eventually into the river. Now how to get that pipe the right slope and a 4 inch hole through 20 feet of hard soil. Guess I am gonna have to talk with the engineer again, he thought. A quick lesson with a transit and he could use it. Next he had to go to the big city and rent a horizontal gasoline drilling rig with enough sections to drill 20 feet. It was a good thing he talked with the people who he was renting the equipment from – They told him in order to get a 4 inch pipe through the hole he would need a 4 and ½ inch bit. They then showed him how to slide the pipe in and make sure the sections were glued together. The bit and drill extensions could be pulled out the other side when the hole was finished. 2 more 4 inch holes were drilled 6 feet up, one 4 feet from the drain and the other 8 feet away from the waste drain – This was for his air intake and exhaust. Eventually he would buy a 100 X 100 foot sheet of contractor 8 mill plastic to cover the inside and seam it together to totally eliminate 99% of the dampness. Probably have to lay some plywood over it to keep from tearing it.

He now had a way to dispose of waste and a means to get air into the place. Next job to tackle was water – he had read city water could not be depended on if the power was off. He did some measuring beside his house and decided he could fit a rather large water tank in that spot. He also noticed he could disconnect the roof down spout and run that into a barrel or even into the tank he was fixing to put there. So far he had only spent money to rent the drill and buy the pipe glue – The pipe was extra left over from other jobs. He needed some of that galvanized roofing to put over the rail road ties for his roof.

The engineer and he were tipping a few beers one evening and Clark was asked what he was doing. Clark remembering all those warnings to not tell anyone anything; he told a small lie and said he was building a bomb shelter out in the woods near his hunting camp. The engineer told him that was a really smart thing to do and he told him he belonged to a MAG (Mutual Assistance Group). He also told Clark to keep that quiet and he would not mention his bomb shelter to anyone either. They continued to talk and Clark fessed up he wasn’t sure how much of a load those railroad ties would take if he put 8 foot of dirt on top of them. The engineer laughed and said that’s an easy one. Just make sure you put all of your upright ties in 8 to 12 inches of cement so they won’t shift sideways and you will have the structural equivalent of a concrete shelter, well almost. Clark was relieved to hear that because he was stumped. They talked a little more and the engineer told him to make sure all the ties on top are tied into the upright ones with a 2 inch wide metal L, 6 inches long on each side with at least 4 four inch lag bolts on each side of the L.

He had a good drinking buddy who worked in the metal fabrication shop at a local business. He looked him up one evening and told him another small lie. He said he was working on a job and needed 200 of the metal L’s and gave him the specs. The guy said no way I can make that many and get away with it. Let me talk to the boss and see if I can’t get them on the cheap. 3 days later he called Clark and said 100 dollars – Clark breathed a sigh of relief because he had looked the price up and they were about 5 bucks a piece. He told his friend make them as soon as you can and I’ll get the money.

He definitely was not going to ask the metal shop man about the 1600 4 inch lagbolts. Which he probably only needed about 500. He was going to have to bite the bullet and buy a fiber glass water tank or something that would hold up in the cold weather. He thought about putting a heater coil in it running off of a solar panel and battery. He would think about that and research it.

The 160 watt solar panel price almost gave him a stroke. He needed it and 2 golf cart batteries to have light and a small DC fridge in his shelter. He started building the box for the batteries and charge controllers that week end. There was no way he could get any of his mining buddies to abscond 2 mine buggy batteries – So he bit the bullet again and ordered them from the internet. The batteries were a good price, but the shipping cost made him sick. When he ordered the solar panel he ordered six 39 led dc screw in lights to light the shelter. He was still waffling about the small AC-DC fridge until he thought about cold beer. That settled that, he bought it.

Piping for the water was next – he brought the small backhoe trencher home that weekend and dug the water pipe trenches. He bought home one inch plastic water pipe because that was all they had left over from another job, but that was OK because he was going to reduce it to ½ inch when he hooked everything up. He needed help now to dig the footer, mix the cement and man handle the ties into the hole. He could not trust anybody in town. He talked to the engineer and he was out with a bad back. So, who do I call next? He called one of the young fellows that had started all this and explained his problem. He said they could help him on the week end and they had just finished their shelter. He told them he was going to pay them and the young guy said that would be fine.

He had to make a simple jig to keep his chain saw straight when they cut the 60 ties. He berated himself hard for not taking into account the 8 foot lengths of the ties and he could have made the hole 24 X 24 or 16 X16, nope he thought 16 X16 was too small, and saved a lot of work. It took 2 weekends to get the ties cemented in and the heavy duty galvanized roof screwed down with 2 inch stainless steel screws and the edges and screws caulked with some type of 50 year neoprene caulk. Clark found several pieces of the rubber that goes on roofs and they seamed it together and used the glue to hold it together forever he thought. OK now to put the dirt back on top of the roof and see what’s left. He checked his list to see if everything was done before the dirt replacement. He had put 3 extra 1 inch pipes in, in case he needed some more wiring. They were capped off and buried 6 inches deep. The electric from the solar panel was in – the water line was in – the waste drain was in and capped off – the in and out air pipes were in. He had run city electric in and that is what was being used to light the 4 foot fluorescents installed beside the 6 39 LED DC lights.

The dirt was back hoed onto the roof and leveled off. The door gave him fits when he installed it. It was a 48 inch wide 72 inch tall solid metal one from an abandoned mining building and weighed at least 300 pounds. He took the metal frame from the building the door was hung on and had to do some fancy metal sawing to get everything air tight. He spent 80 bucks on lead impregnated tape and covered the outside and inside of the door, he had no idea if it would stop gamma radiation, but it sure made him feel good. He was going to do the same to the inside of the outer door. He also placed 18 solid 12 inch cinder locks inside to put against the inner door for more radiation protection. There was another door that covered the downward steps to the shelter and Clark did not know and had no idea how to camouflage it. The outer door was also 48 inches wide 72 inches tall and was a two inch thick solid piece of oak that had a sheet of aluminum on each side and it was heavy. He hoped he wasn’t injured or sick when he had to come in because it was a beast to get that outer door lifted up. It was a good thing they didn’t use creosote anymore to dip those rail road ties in any more or the stink would not have allowed him to stay in the shelter without a gas mask.

He checked his HEPA filter he had installed on the incoming air pipe and the small 4 inch DC fan pulled outer air in fine. There was another small HEPA filter in the exhaust pipe to prevent any radiation from coming through the 20 foot of pipe back into the shelter. For now he placed a cap on the exhaust pipe and a cap on the intake to keep rats bugs or bees from building nests. He had a 20 foot screw together pipe to push through the pipe to remove the covers if he was inside. He decided to change that in the next few weeks with a plastic fly screen and a ¼ inch metal rabbit cage type screen inside behind the fly screen.

The toilet was flushed and clean water ran out and dropped about 7 feet down onto the hillside. The sink drained into the same pipe. City water was now forcing pressure through the 500 gallon tank he had installed beside his house. He would have very little pressure if the city water failed. He thought he had done a good job for the 1800 dollars he had spent in the past 4 months. He would have to devise a way to turn the small solar panel on from the shelter, or make sure he did it before entering the shelter, that heated the water in the tank if things happened in the winter.

Things went smoothly for the next few months – Clark bought a steel building and had it placed on a concrete pad beside his aluminum building. It was 16X24 also and cost more then he wanted to pay. He had been out of debt until he started on this project. The long term supplies set him back several hundred dollars. But 2 more months and that credit card would be ready for use again.

Clarks weapons were inventoried and inspected – A 300 bolt action Winchester magnum with a 26 inch barrel in stainless steel – a .22 8 inch barreled revolver, a Ruger 10-22 rifle , a colt 223 rifle, a browning 30-06 semi automatic, a semi auto browning 22 with a 5 and a ½ inch bull barrel, a 1911 45 colt auto pistol, a 357 S&W 4 inch barrel revolver, a 12 and 20 ga pump shotgun. When he was talked into going coon hunting several years ago, he saw the light (pun intended) to having a generation 2 or 3 night vision monocular or head band type. He saved his money for a little bit and bought a generation 2 head band. It was a shame because he never went coon hunting again or had any use for it so he packed it away minus the batteries and forgot about it.

He had a steel gun safe installed in the steel building and stored his weapons there. The reloading equipment was mounted on 2X12 tables in the other building and was not moved.

Clark celebrated his 35th birthday with a hussy he had picked up in a beer joint 20 miles from his house. It was an enjoyable night.

Deer season was upon him and he took wed thur and fri off for an extended hunt. It was a short hunt he shot a 10 point 250 pounder at daybreak on the first day of the hunt. Gutting the deer and letting it hang for a few hours in the 35 degree weather. He settled down to have a beer and think about his situation. Not much more he could do except plow some ground up beside his 2 sheds and get it ready for a big garden. He had a plow and thought a 40X40 foot garden would supply him with enough food each summer. He had his parents canning supplies and 2 or 3 gross of jars. He had read that lids went bad after a few years. He would stop and pick up some or order them off the internet after he checked the prices.

He stopped at the watering hole he and the 2 young fellows had stopped at last year and upon entering he saw them sitting at a table. They waved him over. They told him they had shot 2 young spike bucks and had left them hanging 10 feet up in a tree and would get them in a day or 2 because the temperature was right to age them in the chilly weather. The conversation continued on and they let him in on some goings on in the world since they still had many friends on active duty in the military and they kept in contact with them through the internet. They looked at each other and nodded their heads ok. They asked him if he had any long range communications. He said no.

It went back and forth for a while and he got their frequencies. He learned more then he wanted to learn. This would cost him some more money. A short wave set and an antenna. Buy several tons of chicken feed and if he liked rabbit several tons of rabbit pellets. Make absolutely sure he had enough ammunition to last him a lifetime. He sat there in a small alcoholic daze. The news that was not being reported on the main stream media or the survival websites was bad. These boys had never steered him wrong before so he took what they said and would take action on the information.

The next morning he went to the college and found the engineer. He reported what he had learned and the man told him everything he had heard was 80% accurate. The engineer was cool, he gave Clark some radio frequencies and told him not to call those frequencies for at least 14 days after anything happened and the last piece of information he gave out was, keep your short wave set unplugged and disconnected from the antenna. Chit was all Clark said. He drove to the city and went to the Radio Store and bought what had been recommended. The dang card had just been paid off and now he was in debt again.

He went to Walmart and bought 20 boxes of 550 round 22 caliber. After looking at the prices on ammo he decided he could reload what he had 40 times cheaper then what he would pay for ammunition here. He stopped at a gun store and bought 16 pounds of rifle powder, 8 pounds of pistol powder and 2 pounds of black powder for his 50 caliber Hawken. He had several thousand rounds of just bullets and at least 10,000 primers. He was set for ammunition.

He was afraid to go to work but made sure he was always close to his vehicle where he could get home in less then 2 minutes. Nothing happened for 3 weeks. He had installed his shortwave ham set and tested it. He also ordered on the internet 4 GMRS radios and 1 ham portable transceiver. Why not he said – he installed a CB with a 12 foot whip antenna in his auto. Another month went by he paid his credit card off. He had a fairly good wood stove that he could cook off of in his house and he thought about wood for winter. He took his pick up and chain saw 3 miles away up a holler and proceeded to cut 4 inch thick hardwood trees down so he wouldn’t have to split them - He made 12 trips in 4 days to that stand of trees and he had 12 or more cord of wood drying under a 400 dollar car port he had installed for just that reason.

2 more months went by and he and the engineer were drinking a beer at the local watering hole. The man asked Clark if he had any gas masks or N-100 masks in case of some type of air born incident. Clark said no. Well I would think about getting something the man said. The conversation revolved around 2 women who had just entered the bar. One of them was really ugly and she hit hard on the engineer. Clark laughed and got up to go home. The pretty lady said hey stranger to Clark. He looked at her and did not recognize her. She said we went to school together over in the next town. For the life of him he could not recognize her or he had lost his memory. She refused to tell him her name and that intrigued Clark. She knew all the people he had went to school with and he still could not pull her name out of the hat. She gave him a telephone number and said call her sometime. He asked her who should I ask for – she responded with, the unknown girl. She left and Clark followed out and walked around the corner and went home.

The telephone number with unknown girl was laid by the telephone. Clark ordered the masks and he even went so far as to spend a couple of hundred dollars on Tyvek suits. That concluded Clarks buying anything except replacement supplies.

He went into the shelter the next weekend and inventoried the stuff he had for a 45 day stay. A partial list, 20 cans Coleman fuel – stove right under exhaust port, 90 cans Dinty Moore beef stew, 30 cans spam, Coleman oven that fits on stove to bake bread, country mill grinder, 10 five gallon buckets hard white wheat, 5 five gallon buckets pintos, 10 five gallon buckets rice, 10 one gallon cans milk powder, 5 one gallon cans whole egg powder, 6 one gallon cans hamburger rocks, 2 five gallon buckets kidney beans, 1 five gallon bucket candy, 4 gallons corn oil, medical supplies including KI03 and anti biotics, tooth brushes, paste, soap 5 gallon bucket to take sponge bath in – he thought long and hard about adding a simple shower with a hanging bladder over it to put warm water in – that went on his next month project. If he had to stay in the shelter over 30 days water would become a problem. He put on his list 36 one gallon jugs to store in corner, there were 2 bunk beds with blow up or self inflating mattresses on the beds. Sheets, blankets and towels. He had followed several lists and had incorporated them to his liking. There were many more items not mentioned on the list. He had even bought a small lap top and loaded it with how to stuff. The radiation detector was not cheap and it was stored minus batteries in a plastic small tote.

He called the unknown lady the next afternoon………

just a prep story CH 2

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Dog gone it – no answer – he would try again tomorrow which was a Saturday. He went over his finances and saw one more payment and he would be out of debt again – He thought that 800 dollars he was making a week as a heavy equipment operator wasn’t very much, but it was a living. He made a quick decision and decided to go Honky Tonkin. After a quick shower he put on his pull up wide toed cowboy boots thinking that they would be appropriate for the Red Neck bar he was going to. He drank too much. He woke up in a strange house lying beside a chunky woman he had never seen before. Ah well he thought it wasn’t the first time and he hoped it wasn’t the last. The woman was nice, she cooked him breakfast and took him back to the bar where his auto was parked. He told her he would call and went home.

He didn’t feel like doing much today and he definitely didn’t want to drink any alcoholic beverages for at least a week or so. He was watching the local news when that big buzzing sound came through the TV speakers. It was a severe weather warning. He noticed that a fast moving storm would pass through his section of the county in 15 or so minutes. He looked around outside and folded up his outdoor plastic porch chair. Chit, the power went off in the middle of the storm. He pulled out a lantern and lit it. The battery powered radio was turned on and he looked for a country western station. His phone rang; it was his neighbor up the block. Clark was informed the electric sub-station on the side of the hill that powered the town had been completely destroyed by a lightning strike. The projected repair time was 6 days. No, Clark thought all his frozen food in the chest freezer would spoil and it was really inconvenient to be without electricity for more then a few hours. More money he thought. A generator would have to be bought and a supply of fuel stored. Argghh, just when he was to make that last payment on the credit card, this happens.

He dressed and strolled out to his pick-up, he knew there wasn’t much use going to the local Lowes because the whole town would have rushed there and bought up everything. Thinking about it for a minute or two he decided to drive to a Lowes 80 miles from here where he would have a better selection to choose from.

Two hours later he pulled into the huge parking lot. Looking over the 16 or more generators displayed, he read the literature and made a decision. Dang a whole weeks wages the thing cost. Go ahead big boy and bite the bullet he told himself. It was a good thing he had read those forums about generators and how to hook them up a while back. He had to buy several other items to hook the thing up to his whole house electric system. He needed a 6 foot 6 guage dryer cord to plug into his existing dryer outlet and run the wire through the wall outside to a 220 outlet – a 220 outlet and a electrical box to put it in – 6 foot of 10 guage wire to make a plug with 2 male ends to plug into the 220 outlet and the generator 220 outlet. 5 five gallon plastic gasoline containers, metal if available – some Stabil or Pri-G – He had read the literature on the generator he was buying and there was no oil filter to change, just change the oil. He definitely did not want to pay the price Lowes had on 30 weight oil, he would stop at NAPA and pick up the oil there. When he walked out the door he was 950 bucks lighter. And he still wasn’t done – He opened the top of the box the generator was in and drove to a gas station – Dang 4.09 for gasoline. 32 gallons later after filling the 5 gallon containers and the generator up he drove off, another 100 and some bucks lighter. He stopped at NAPA and bought 3 quarts of 30 weight oil for another 6 bucks, but he grinned, Lowes wanted 3.39 a quart. Well there goes another complete week’s wages and some part of the following week money.

He got home, gathered some tools up and put the handles and wheels on the generator. The thing was too heavy for him to lift up the porch steps. He went and got a couple of 2 X 4’s and wheeled it up on the porch where it would fortunately be out of the weather. He parked it so the exhaust was pointed towards the yard and began the rest of the work. 1st thing he did was use his portable electric drill, which fortunately for him he had left one battery in the charger, to drill the hole through the porch wall inside beside the dryer outlet. He just looked at all that extra cord and thought I should have bought the 3 foot cord. Oh well better to have too much then not enough.Next he pulled the cord through the wall and sat there and hooked it through the back of the electric box then he screwed the wires onto the 220 outlet, the box was then screwed to the wall and a cover plate put on it. That was one little job done. Next he skinned the wires on the 6 foot of 10 guage wire and hooked them to the 2 male plugs and he was ready. He went in the house and turned the main breaker off and unplugged the freezer and fridge and made sure all the other breakers were off, he would turn them on one at a time for whatever he needed. He punched himself on the head and asked himself why he had unplugged the fridge and freezer when he could just as well turned the breakers off. Too much alcohol must have destroyed some brain cells was all he could think of.

The generator started on the 1st pull. He turned some lights on and then the fridge and freezer. That wasn’t so bad he thought except it cost so much. I should have bought a small generator a long time ago just for something like this. Well its done now.

The phone rang it was the unknown girl…..


just a prep story CH 3

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Clark let out a choked snorting kind of laugh when he looked at the caller ID – It said - unknown girl… He tried to quit chuckling as he answered the phone. The conversation was a good one and he finally learned who she was, most importantly, her name. It was Barbara Sue and she was one year behind him in high school. He was standing by his bookcase and pulled out his senior yearbook. He had to put her on hold for a second while he screamed out a No chit. The girl in the high school yearbook had braces on her teeth, superman glasses, pig tails and weighed 75 pounds. She told him she was going to visit her parents and would be gone for a month. When she got back maybe they could get together for dinner and talk about old times. Clark wholeheartedly agreed with her. A month would be long enough to get out of debt again.

He ran the generator 2 hours every 4 hours just enough to keep the fridge cold and the freezer goods frozen. The junction power relay box for the Cable Company was on the downhill side of the sub station and he had no TV or internet. This was just peachy he thought, Maybe he would look at that Direct TV and Satellite internet system again.

9 days later the power was restored to the town. He decided it would be prudent to park the generator in the steel building where it would be out of sight to a sneak thief who could use a boat and come straight into his property from the river. He put on his to buy list 3 motion sensor lights and the one on the house would have an interior alarm on it. The 2 he was going to put close to the riverbank where it would cover the entire back of the property. The thought of putting an 8 foot fence up with a gate to put his boat in the river had crossed his mind many times. The cost of 300 foot of 8 foot fence and the poles was doable, but he just kept putting it off. He finally put it on his things to do/buy list.

3 weeks later he was out of debt and while he was buying the motion sensor lights he saw a reasonably priced dual cam security system that showed the 2 different areas the cameras covered on the monitor on a split screen. He talked to the resident expert about the system and learned that it could be hooked into a laptop in a separate location for dual location watching. He thought this was a neat system for the price and was going to buy it 2 or 3 weeks from now.

For a month he kept a low profile and only drank 4 beers at home. He was afraid to go to a beer joint thinking he would run into that chunky lady. He thought if he didn’t do any good with Barbara Sue he would resume the beer joint woman hunting rounds again.

He called Barbara Sue several times, but he guessed she hadn’t got back yet. While doing some more reading on solar he kind of figured he needed another set of 6 volt batteries to run the Ham station and maybe another set to keep the laptop fired up so he could monitor those 2 security cams he was going to install. The engineer found out the information he needed and how to split the signal and how to power the cameras once the city power was off. He was right, another solar panel and 4 sets of 6 volt golf cart batteries would be sufficient to run what he had. Dang he would have to wait a month or more before he bought another solar panel, but right now he bought the security cameras and the extra 3 sets of batteries. All of that was 1 week’s wages. Now next month he would spend another week’s wages just on a stinking solar panel. He would have to have the engineer get one of the electronics people to draw him a diagram on how to hook all the batteries together.

Barbara Sue returned about 10 days later. She called to let him know she was back. They made a date for Friday evening. Clark had a choking fit when she came out the door of her house. She looked like a Miss Universe winner and when she got closer to him she smelled better then anything that had ever hit his scent receptors. He didn’t do anything for 10 seconds but stare at her. She gave him a bright full tooth smile and asked, “Are we going anywhere?” Clark was smitten. The little cherub with the heart arrows had shot 10,000 arrows into him. He finally came to his senses and reached for her hand. They walked to his automobile holding hands like 2 teenagers.


just a short prep story CH 4

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The date was a dream for Clark; they went to a nice restaurant in the city. He learned why she looked like she did in the yearbook picture. She was only 13 then and she had been advanced many times through grades because of her smartness. That made her about 5 years younger than Clark. He learned that her parents had retired and moved into a Condo in Fl and she was living in their house in the next town over. She had a consultant job for an Engineering firm and her specialty was resolving computer main frame problems. Clark was kind of speechless during this time and thought – I wonder if she sees anything in me other than my rugged good looks (he rolled his eyes to himself at that thought).

They did hit it off though and she asked him when they could do it again. He, trying to be cool, said, ‘in about 15 minutes.’ She laughed that low sultry kind of laugh she had, and they then went for a drive through a small wilderness park close to the restaurant. He gave out a lot more information then he received and cared not a whit as long as they were together and talking.

The dating went on for a few months before things got hot and heavy. She asked him to spend the night and boy was he ever ready. All he could think of for the next few days was WOW, after all these years, I have found a real keeper. Then the thought entered his mind. I wonder if she thinks the same way. Not holding anything back the next date he asked her. She said she was ready for a long term commitment if he was. OK, that took a load off his mind. Things settled into a routine after that.

On one of his jobs demolishing a building and hauling the debris away, he noticed the 800 yards or so of outriggered 8 foot tall green slatted chain link. He asked the construction crew boss if he could have 100 yards or so of it with the poles. The boss told him to do it on his off time and give him 30 bucks for the diesel he was going to use running the forklift to raise the poles out of the ground. Clark agreed to that and thought that was cheap for 100 yards of 8 foot chain link and the poles. He forgot to mention he was going to take the drive through and one walk way gate.

That afternoon when he got home he went out on the street and hired 2 high school teens to help him the next evening. He had them cut the fence every 50 feet with his bolt cutters (it was quicker then having them clip the bottom and top and unscrew it) and roll it up and tie the roll together with some bailing wire so he could use the forklift to put the rolls on the back of his pickup. He then handed one of them a 12 pound sledge hammer and told them to walk behind the forklift and as soon as he got a pole lifted out of the ground for one of them to beat the cement on the bottom of the pole till it fell off. The teens traded jobs every pole, one removed the chain from the pulled up pole and beat it off while the other hooked the chain onto the next pole. He took 45 poles, the poles were that old timey 2 inch 1/4inch thick walled iron water pipe that was common when steel was cheap from 50 or so years ago. He had to make 4 trips in his pickup to get the stuff home. He paid the boys a hundred bucks and told them he had another job helping him put it up in a week or so.

He borrowed the backhoe with the auger that weekend and after measuring out where he wanted the poles he dug a 3 foot deep hole, the poles were 11 feet long. And he needed about 40 holes. He almost forgot about the walkway gate holes. Before he left work the following Friday he used the end loader and filled his pickup with broken bricks to augment the cement mix he was going to put in his fence post holes. He didn’t know if he could get that much work out of the 2 teens in one shift and decided to do the job on 2 Saturdays. He figured it out right. 20 holes a day filled with mixed cement, broken bricks and leveled took a whole day. He waited for the 3rd week for the cement to set up and they strung/stretched the fence and bolted the gates onto the poles. He now had what he thought was a reasonably secured back fence. He didn’t know how handy that fence would be later on. He guess he had fudged a little or the teenagers couldn't count. He had 6 more rolls of the chain link stacked up in a pyramid pile at the back edge of his property.

His love life was idyllic and he had even managed to save a bunch of money due to a couple of week end over time jobs. He finally got the 2nd solar panel installed and the security cams. He patted himself on the back for a job well done. Remembering what the 2 fellows had told him about chicken feed and rabbit pellets He put a cheap aluminum 16 X 24 aluminum building right beside the other 2 and put gravel down and stored the cracked corn and rabbit pellets on pallets. He thought about mice and after looking the building over that was sitting on a 6 inch concrete footer. There was no way mice could get in unless one ran in the open doorway or they were already in the food. He sat out a bunch of traps, sticky paper and rat/mice poison. He then sprayed the building to kill any 6 or 8 legged critters that were not supposed to be there and locked the door.

Deer season was just around the corner and surprise, surprise, Barbara Sue said, “Let’s go shooting.” Clark’s jaw unhinged a little at that comment and wondered what else he did not know about his (he hoped) soon to be bride. She owned 2 magna ported magnums, the 1st was a 28 inch barrel .264 Winchester Magnum that her dad had bought to do some long range shooting, and the other was a .300 Winchester Magnum. Both bolt action rifles had the same scope a 4 X12 Redfield wide field parallax correctable with a range finder. Clark guessed when her dad had bought those guns Redfield was a number one optic. The rifles both had limb saver recoil pads. Clark had shot a no recoil pad installed .264 a long while ago and he still cringed when he thought of the bruise that thing had put on his shoulder. She had an Ithaca feather light 20 guage pump and a new 8 shot 357 S&W revolver. He asked where the .22’s were – She said she never got into plinking, just long range stuff and skeet. WHOA, he thought.

He hung his head in shame when she started off at the 600 yard mark. He put his rifle back in the case and put it in the truck. There were other days he could practice alone. He was going to sit this one out and be an observer and a target changer. Dang she kept 10 shots at 600 yards on a playing card (it was an ace of spades) with that .264. She said today is a good day to shoot, no wind. The .300 she did a little better with, the group was a little tighter on the card. She said I feel pretty good today - set up 4 more targets, 2 at 800 and 2 at 1000 yards. Ah Ha he thought her group opened up with the .264 at 800 only 6 of the bullets were on the card 3 were about half inch away left and he guessed the last was a flyer, it was 6 inches away and right. She let the .264 cool down and shot the 300. 6 out of 10 were on the card 1 was 5 inches high and 1 was just about a ¼” low, 2 of them were in the same hole 1 inch low.. Dang Clark was thinking to himself she’s jumping around all over that target and he mentally rolled his eyes. Clark asked her if she was sure she wanted to shoot at something that far away. She grinned at him. She didn’t get one in the card at 1000 yards with the .264. They were all clumped together in a 12 inch circle 5 inches to the left. The .300 she hit the card twice and the other 8 clumped in a 9 or 10 inch circle 9 or so inches right. Clark didn’t say anything he waited on her to comment on how great her shooting was. She let out a few choice cuss words and said I knew I should have bought those 2 high dollar bull barrels and receivers when I had the chance. My shooting today really sucks she said. Clark smartly kept his mouth shut and only wished that he could shoot that good with a production rifle. Or heck any rifle.

A few days went by before Clark said anything about her shooting. She had a weird habit of smoking one cigarette a day with her morning cup of coffee. And he jokingly said maybe it’s that cigarette you are smoking in the morning. She thought about it a few minutes and said nope the carcinogenic effects of the nicotine have been absorbed and trembling effects of tobacco tar have left my body long before I went shooting. He again smartly kept his mouth shut.

Things were really looking up he thought…

just a short prep story CH5

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They had been rotating staying a weekend at her house and one at his for about 2 months. They were extremely lucky they were at his house.. The phone rang at 214 am on a Sunday morning, it was Dec the 7th. Clark looked at the big lit up display on the caller ID and finally figured out it was the engineer’s cell number. The conversation from the engineer was kind of muffled. Clark said it is difficult for me to understand what you are saying. After listening closely and turning the phone reception up he could make out what the man was saying. Do not go outside unless you have an N100 mask on. There has been some type of airborne virus or several types released worldwide. Stay in your shelter until you hear the all clear. Chit, Chit, Chit. He ran into the kitchen and grabbed the partial box of N100 masks he had, put one on and took one to Barbara Sue. As he was sliding it over her head he lifted his mask and said, “don’t ask any questions right now, just please do what I say.” Get your clothes on and if you have any feminine products, toothbrush and whatnot, gather them up in that small carry bag and follow me and do not take your mask off for any reason. He pulled the cord that connected the solar panel that turned on the heater in his outdoor water tank. She helped him lift the door up to his shelter that she had only heard about in sort of an off handed way. They entered and he dropped the door down and pulled the interior sliding bolt to lock it. He finally got the pad lock off his metal door and they entered. He turned the LED lights on and folded out 2 lawn chairs and they sat down. Turned on the 4 foot UV tube light in front of his HEPA filter to hopefully destroy any air born virus particles and then turned on his DC blower motor to draw outside air in and turned on an additional blower that he had added to the exhaust to help blow the interior air out of the shelter. He left his mask on and told her what he knew. He told her he would turn on the short wave and local AM and FM station radio in a few minutes. The engineer had given him some hints if he had to enter his shelter and he was contaminated. A lot more research by Clark had garnered much more information.

He told her he had had it calculated out how long it would take to replace the contaminated air in the shelter. 3 hours. He also said he had some diluted bleach solution to spray everything in the shelter, including them and the outside of their masks right before they took them off. The waiting began. Clark thought the minimum 3 hours was somewhat iffy and had decided to go 9 hours before removing the 12 to 24 hour one time use mask. And he told her the same thing.

It would be hard to sleep with the mask on so they decided to play some cards, board games and listen to the local news for the next 7 or more hours. The only weapons they had were his 45 and 36 rounds and her 357 with 28 rounds of .38 158 grain hollow points. It would be enough. About 7 AM some scattered reports of people dying in the streets started to trickle in. Clark had one of those moronic grins on his face and thought those 2 young fellows were right. Chit. He had forgotten to warn them. To late now, alll he could do was hope for the best. He thought about it some more. They hadn’t warned him either. So he forgot about it.

1130 AM they resprayed everything including their face masks and Clark pushed the face masks out through the 20 foot exhaust pipe and installed a new HEPA 4 inch filter.

The temperature was a chilly 54 permanent degrees 6 feet under the ground here unless he turned the Coleman stove on to cook something. Not to worry he had thought of that and had boo coo winter clothes.

News was not good, there were millions of people dropping dead everywhere around the world.

They waited and waited. Clark had to hang a sheet in front of the commode – it was awkward and not kosher wiping your butt with someone looking at you. The shelter was cozy and since they had no problems or idiosyncrasies that irritated each other, they got along hunky dory. The shower he had installed with the small DC boat pump to pump the water out to the sink worked great with a little heated water in one of those 5 gallon sun shower bags. More talk started coming in from the short wave, it was not yet time to contact the engineer, so they just listened to the reports of the massive die off that was circling the globe. The local AM and FM station had quit broadcasting 3 days ago, 6 more days to go before contacting the engineer or the 2 young fellows to see if they were OK.

Day 10 the shelter shook like there was a small earthquake close by. There was no damage as far as Clark could tell. He ran a 2 inch strip of duct tape around the door in case of a misalignment.

Funny the short wave did not receive anything but static any more.

just a prep story CH 6

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She was asleep and he was running scenarios through his mind. Why didn’t I make a double air tight entry way with a drain so I could leave my contaminated stuff out there. Could have put a small cement pad there and a drain out to the riverbank – Well it is just to late to think of what I coulda – shoulda done and I am going to have to live with it – I think I screwed up big time by plugging in the short wave receiver, Dang the engineer told me 14 days before contacting him - Just plain stupid of me to do that – I really think that was a nuclear weapon that detonated in the big city or even the plant several miles up the river. Now what am I going to do – I am afraid to open the door to use the radiation detector because there may be active virus in the outer stair well – Well follow that rule – wait 14 more days before doing anything – Maybe I can hook up that tube short wave receiver to the incoming antenna and use it. I will wait 14 days before I do anything, especially take that tube radio out of the plastic water proof tote it is in. Good thing I had not plugged in the transmitter – just the receiver. I can still transmit and hopefully the tube radio will receive on those frequencies I have written down in my book.

They talked about the scenarios he had thought of and her being a smart lady sort of agreed with him - She told him if you have some wire I can hook up the probe on that radiation detector you have and we can slide it out the exhaust pipe until it is hanging there and we can get a reading from it. But I agree 100% with you – We will wait 14 more days before we do anything – We can hook up one of your cheap radios to the short wave antenna and see if anything is receivable – If there is nothing but static – We will have to wait until the ionization of the air waves stabilizes out before any type of radio wave will propagate through it. He looked at her and said, “Now I know why I got hooked up with you, you are brilliant.” She blushed and said, “it is awful living in a vacuum. We need more information on this air borne virus and the radiation if there is any before opening that door.”

They talked about the virus thing and he blurted out what he thought he knew about virus longevity and how cold weather should have affected its viability. She shot that down really quick and told him that an engineered virus or a bunch of them strung together with cold weather variants may have an indefinite life span. That destroyed his basic common sense understanding of what he thought he knew. He again thought knowledge is wonderful and sometimes common sense has no value to it. So what does one do when stuck in a hole in the ground for who knows how long with a beautiful woman - I’ll leave that to your imagination.

just a short prep story CH7 and the finale

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What Clark did not know and never would was he had really built his outer door to an air tight standard. When he closed it for the entry into the shelter the door hermetically sealed against the 1 inch thick soft rubber molding he had placed in the frame. He thought he was water proofing it, which it also did. Another thing he did not know was the virus had not yet reached the area he was living in, one more hour before that happened. And the big thing he would never know was the lead tape he placed on both doors stopped enough of the gamma radiation that the 2 inch thick steel door and the cinder blocks cut the radiation level down to about background levels. The outside gamma levels were enough to kill a human in less then 1 minute if one were exposed to that level. That does not mean they would die in 1 minute. It meant they would die maybe tomorrow or even linger a horrible death 3 to 5 days later. But make no mistake they would die if exposed. One other thing the massive amount of gamma radiation did. It cut the lifespan of the exposed virus down from its engineered lifespan of 60 days to less then 30 by damaging its internal structure rendering it incapable of reproducing.

The Middle Eastern Muslims and the Chinese had made this virus and thought they had a vaccine for it. It was extremely contagious and was airborne and contact infectious. What they did not know was it mutated about a week after they had all their people vaccinated. A million infected carriers with small air releasable canisters were sent to all points of the globe and the weaponized virus was released at midnight eastern standard time Dec 6th. CDC got its 1st case at midnight on Dec 7th. The engineers’ sister worked the midnight shift at CDC and he was notified at about 1 AM. The only other person besides his MAG group he notified was Clark.

The world was a shambles. The United States had unleashed its' entire nuclear weapons arsenal on the Middle East, China and Russia. It was a dying last gasp from a mighty nation. The carriers of the virus were extremely effective in their mission. 98% of the worlds” unprotected population died in the 1st 10 days. Any person who ventured outside of an air tight shelter in the next 20 days also perished. All the vaccinated carriers died on the 11th day of their vaccination. The vaccine just was not capable of stopping the mutated virus.

The living leaders of Russia and China fired back at the US, but most of their nuclear armament people were dead or dying – Still the US was hit with 300 multiple nuclear war heads and this caused tremendous damage.

60 days later Clark and Barbara Sue had to leave the shelter, regardless of their edibles, they ran out of water. They wore their masks off and on for 2 weeks and they did not die. So they decided to live a normal life if there was such a thing in this time. They gathered some chickens from under a house several miles away and Clark captured some rabbits in Have-A-Hart traps and they were set for protein. The fence came in handy by protecting the running loose chickens and the pet rabbits that inhabited the yard from the large packs of wild dogs.. They could always trap a rabbit in a trap in the yard. They never heard from the engineer or the 2 young fellows. It was 7 years before they saw another human, other then their 3 kids.

And that folks is my short how to prep story.

A comment on story

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Let me answer a few questions brought up during the story – Clark built this place for a 45 day stay - end of chapter 1 – He actually spent 84 days in the shelter – He had 36 gallons of extra water plus various drinks in the shelter. Remember he had spent 10 days in the shelter before bombs went off – Then he waited 14 days before he tested the radiation on Barbara Sue’s probe. Then he waited 60 more days before leaving the shelter. 84 days – Also he had a low volume flush toilet – more water usage – the shower and what water they used to cook with. Gee whiz – they used a lotta water. This was his plan for surviving in a nuclear attack – he had never thought of holing up for an airborne virus attack. You have to remember this guy was just paying attention to the small amount of what he thought was reliable information he was receiving. The other thing I gotta mention is the water pressure maintained for at least 6 to 10 days. So ya gotta factor that in. And yes Siskyumom – I will tell everyone what I told you. I had written several more chapters and decided to stop while I was ahead. The guy they met was a good guy – they visited and he told them he was traveling around meeting people who had broadcast their locations and wanted to be met up with. They had a pleasant visit and that is or was the end of what I wrote. I missed a few things I should have mentioned on prep things – maybe in another story I will bring them out. Thanks again…..

[Lbox88]

Clark Story #22 - Clark the Logger

The Logger Story #22
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This story was written just for pure entertainment with just a few neat survival tidbits thrown in. Again I did not research the things I threw in the story – I just wrote it off the cuff. So I guess you can ding me for that.


It was 815PM on a Friday night. Clark was drinking a pitcher of beer back in the dark corner of the out in the sticks country bar. He kind of chuckled a little bit because he did not think the music in this place had been upgraded from the 1950’s or thereabouts - He recognized the song and the singer because no one on this earth could sing - It wasn’t God who made Honky Tonk Angels – with that nasal hillbilly country twang but Kitty Wells. He walked over to the juke box just to see if there were 78 rpm or 45 rpm records on the thing. It was a new box but someone had recorded the old songs onto CD’s and he perused the list. He was right the music was mostly from the 50’s through the 70’s. Guess these country folk did not like new music.

The place was filling up with them way out in the country tough red-necks. The ladies came through the 3.00 dollar cover charge door in groups of 2 or 3. The women had on cowgirl boots, tight jeans and most wore a tight pull over T-Shirt of differing colors and writing on the front or back.

A local supposedly good country band was warming up behind the stage. That was the only reason he had come out to this rough red-neck bar on a hot summer night. The place smelled like pine because the floor had new pine sawdust on the floor covering the wooden planks. The tables all had peanuts in the shell in large plastic tubs. The place was ready for another night of revelry..

Clark was 29 years old, single and supposedly a confirmed bachelor.. He had his flings over the years but he knew he was not going to find the woman of his dreams in this beer joint. He just wanted to dance a few songs, enjoy the music and drink some good draft beer then head on back to his tow along travel trailer where he stayed on these work trips.

He owned a small logging company and had some contracts to timber some good hardwood from 4 farms out here in the central mountains of WV. He had let his crew have the weekend off because it was going to be a long hot work week. He also wanted to unwind after working 6 days straight.

Slow dancing to a juke box song by Al Martino – Painted Tainted Rose which was appropriate for the place – The 2nd song he had to pull some old memories out on how to waltz to a song by Patti Page – Tennessee Waltz - And the 3rd dance song was a real bar room hug em up close song by Brenda Lee – Too Many Rivers. After he had danced with 3 really young 21 to 24 year old fine looking ladies he had his fill of dancing and just settled back to listen to the band. He had carefully watched to make sure the ladies were not claimed before he asked them to dance so he would not get in a bar room fight. Even though he had been in his share it just wasn’t smart to wake up with knots on your head, black eyes, bruises all over your body and busted up knuckles.

There were 8 fights during the evening and one big one that had 3 women in a scratching, eye gouging and hair pulling contest and 7 guys in a knock down, stomp your face try to kill each other fight. The big bouncers got everything quickly under control and people began to party again.

He left at 1230AM just as the band started its last set. He wasn’t 100% sure but he thought the 3rd gal he danced with wanted to get to know him a little better. But he stuck to his guns tonight to just drink some beer, dance; listen to the band and leave.

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Part 2

He was lucky to get this prime lumber. Some enterprising farmers back in the late 40’s or early 1950’s had re-planted these stands of hardwoods after the area was mostly timbered out. His bid was accepted to do the job and his percentage after selling the cut trees to the saw mill would make it a profitable job and he would finally have a lot of spare cash.

Monday afternoon Ferguson came running into the travel trailer out of breath. He said boss you ain’t gonna believe what I found. It is better you come with me just so you know I ain’t playing a joke on you. Clark’s interest was piqued. As they rode back through the stand of trees they had been cutting on Ferguson drove them up to a cliff side and parked the truck. He said wait right here boss and I will drop the rope ladder down I brung with us. He watched Ferguson scramble up the cliff side like a Billy goat. A few minutes later the rope ladder dropped down about 25 feet. Clark tied the bottom of the ladder to the truck bumper and climbed up the ladder. He saw Ferguson off in the distance and followed the machete path to where he stood by the biggest Cherry tree Clark had ever seen. Ferguson said that ain’t all boss you gotta see the other 8 trees. All Clark could think that he and his 2 man crew had hit the jackpot. The guy that drove the logging truck was not a part of the crew. What Ferguson had found was five 9 or 10 foot diameter Black walnut trees about 90 feet tall and 4 extremely valuable Black cherry trees with a measured 9 foot diameter and 85 or 95 feet tall.

Even with depressed prices he could still get 44 dollars a board foot if he air dried them a short while before taking them to the saw mill to get cut and finished off in the kiln. Ferguson said we will have to give Billy the driver several days off when we move these trees to your farm. Clark had mentally calculated one million dollars and probably more for these 9 trees and that was a minimum for virgin timber like this. Ferguson was no dummy and he knew this was a lot of money standing there. He said boss I will need 3 sticks of dynamite to blast that sandstone on the back side of this cliffed mound area to get the dozer and back hoe up here. Clark said yes and then let’s get the trees out of here before we finish the rest of the job.

Clark gave Billy, the log truck driver the next 10 days off with half pay. He then drove to a hardware store 20 miles away that serviced the mines in this area. Using his WV logging credentials he purchased 8 sticks of dynamite with fused detonators and returned to the site. Since he was 6 miles from anyplace occupied he was not worried about anyone noticing the blasts. Ferguson and Clark knew quite a bit about blasting so they placed the dynamite in some cracks in the area they wanted to knock down. 3 hours 10 minutes and 7 blasts later they were able to drive the dozer and back hoe up on the 3/4 mile oval mound area. Ferguson and Josh gave the tree measurements to Clark. He said we can save 47 limbs and if your measurements are right we can get 75 more or less 8 foot 4 inch long sections from the trees. Ferguson said Boss don’t forget all those 7 and 8 inch thick 4 to 6 foot long pieces for gun stocks. Clark said I did not add those in we will just have to throw them on the truck after we trim them up. Ferguson said one more thing boss I am gonna have to cut one section of 5 of those trees 12 foot 4 inches to make it come out right on the big end. Geesh Clark thought these trees are going to bring more money then I thought. There is a super premium on 12 foot long 1 X 12 cherry and walnut probably 75 or more dollars a board foot. I don’t think the world has seen 4 or more flat bed trucks loaded with 1X12X12 walnut or cherry in 60 or more years.

It took Josh and Ferguson 2 and one half days to de-limb the trees. They decided to use the ropes to drop the big limbs and tops out of the trees all the way to the ground to make sure they did not crack or break any of the wood by cutting the whole tree down. 7 days later they had the wood stacked under Clark’s open air wood shed. They had 29 logs they would have to de-bark with power tools because they were too big to run through Clarks de-barker. The 3 would do that as soon as they finished the contracts.

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Part 3

Clark went and bought 48 more sticks of dynamite. Ferguson asked him what in the world was he going to do with that much dynamite. Clark said we are going to blast those huge stumps out of the ground and level that cliff road back off so no one else will go up there. Maybe somebody a hundred years from now will find the cherry and walnut trees we are going to plant back in those filled in holes. Ferguson said good idea boss.

They had already taken the 19 other 4 and 5 foot diameter cherry and walnut trees from the mound. He would sell them slowly to 3 different saw mills for a super profit. Ferguson and Josh used the bull dozer to remove all the stumps from the mound. Clark used the back hoe to make sure the spring was cleared out and all 3 of them lined it with rock to keep the side dirt from filling it. It ran out one side and down through the center of the mound from the end high point. Clark said to the 2 men this spring is what enabled those trees to get that big. There were small cherry and walnut trees growing already and the 3 men using their experience separated them the appropriate distance and moved the ones they had pulled up to another area on the mound. Clark cheated and put 2 large 8 year fertilizer spikes at the base of each replanted and remaining trees to give them a boost. They used the bull dozer to pull the dump truck up on top of the mound 22 times to put top soil from the forest into the huge holes that were blasted and back hoed out of the ground from the stump removal. He told Josh and Ferguson I will tell the farmer that owns this land that we seeded him some valuable trees for his great grand children to make some money on. No Josh I am not going to tell him we took a million dollars worth of trees from him. Ferguson laughed at that comment and told Josh that Clark had already paid the farmer for the trees. When they left the mound it was leveled off, cleared of all brush and the trees that were left and the ones they had replanted looked like something you would see at a commercial tree farm.

The contract stipulated that Clark could have all the hard woods for the stated price. So he had not really cheated or stolen from the farmer. He decided to help the farmer out in another way. There were small walnut, butternut, chestnut and cherry trees dotted here and there throughout the hardwood tract. He took 8 of each and replanted them at what would be the new planting field’s edge - Stringing yellow plastic tape around the replanted trees with signs - Do Not Remove hanging on each tree. In a few years there would be some walnuts, chestnuts and cherries for the farmer to pick and enjoy. When he talked to the farmer at the beginning of the contract he was told that a stump removal team would clear and level the fields off for planting as soon as Clark left. Clark was talked out of replanting a few paw paw and persimmon trees by Ferguson.

2 months later Clark and his crew had timbered the 4 sections of contracted land. The 3 were sitting on the front porch of Clark’s ranch house which covered 79 acres of leveled off mountain top having a drink. Ferguson asked Clark how he was going to sell the wood for the maximum profit and how he was going to split up the profits. He told Ferguson and Josh he had been thinking on how to do just that for about 3 weeks. The problem we have is taxes he told them. On the small stuff that we are going to sell immediately I will take out enough money from your share to pay the taxes and pay you under the table. You should each clear about 90000 dollars or more. They both grinned like hyenas. It will be another 18 to 30 months before I start selling the big stuff off. And again I will keep enough from your part to pay the taxes. You both should clear under the table about 150 thousand each on that sale. Ferguson said I hate to ask this boss but how much are you gonna make. Clark said after I pay the taxes I should clear 375 thousand. Josh said dang boss you almost splitting the whole shebang right down the middle. Clark said yes both of you did most of the work. All I did was furnish 400000 dollars worth of equipment. They got the message when he told them if he did not have the logging equipment the trees would still have been on top of that mound.

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Part 4

The months rolled by and Clark and his crew did the odd job to keep their hand in. He had talked to both of the men about not flashing any money around or buying fancy cars and what not. He just said you will probably go to jail for tax evasion and I will probably be put under the jail for the same thing. Clark really did not want to pay the federal government the huge amount of taxes when he sold the bulk of the now slowly drying wood under his sheds. So he had put out some stealthy feelers on who could buy such a huge amount of slowly air drying prime high dollar virgin timber.

He had not exactly been up front with his 2 employees. He really did not have to give them what he did since they were on the pay roll at 18 dollars an hour with benefits. There was over a million dollars worth of lumber and probably way more then that to be sold. If he sold it under the table he would not receive the more than 90 dollars a board foot it was today currently selling for.

He daydreamed for a bit on how much 300 to 400 six foot long 4 foot wide 2 inch thick solid heartwood cherry or walnut dining room tables would sell for and that just took care of 2 of the five 12 foot long tree parts. He called a good friend of his that was a finish carpenter that made custom furniture and cabinets. The man laughed and said if he could get a solid piece of wood to make even one table the price would be well over 12000 dollars. Clark almost fainted. Just 2 of those 12 foot sections were worth 4 million 800 thousand bucks. Well one thing he thought of real quickly a person could not put that many tables up for sale all at once or the price would plummet. This would have to be handled very surreptitiously. His mind rapidly went through how to do this. He would be extremely happy with 2 million 400 thousand bucks for those 2 sections. Why shucks he thought just a plain round number 2 million would be OK also for those 2 tree sections.

3 days later he called his cabinet maker friend back and asked him when he was free to talk about a deal he was thinking of. The man said come on over I am finished for the day and just opened a cold one. Clark looked at the time it was 930AM must be nice to be independent he thought. Clark told the man he had the black cherry and the black walnut he had mentioned a few days ago. Hank’s eyes got big and said you found some big trees somewhere. Clark smiled and asked Hank what he would be willing to pay for a cherry or walnut kiln dried slab. Oh yes I have the limbs from the same tree for the legs and chairs if you are into that sort of thing. Clark thought Hank would choke on his beer because he had deliberately waited to tell him that when he was ready to swallow the drink.

Hank said can I see the slab. Clark said that will be kind of hard to do right now because the 9 foot diameter 12 foot 6 inch long sections are air drying for a little while longer before I have them cut and kiln dried. Hank actually fell out of his chair and dropped his beer bottle and broke it when he heard that. He did not say anything but got the broom and cleaned his mess up and then mopped the floor before he got himself another beer and sat back down. Hank had a little larceny in his heart too Clark knew. Hank said you have over a million dollars and more in those 2 sections. Clark said no I have 4 million 800 thousand in those 2 sections if I handle the sale right. But I only want half and the lowest I will take is a flat 2 million. Hank asked if he had the board feet calculated. Clark said the saw mill man showed me on his cutting computer the 5 most profitable ways he could cut the lumber up for me. Tables, chairs and 1X12 one inch or wider planks was one of the calculated cuts. Hank said I don’t think you will get over 1.4 million for the unfinished product. Clark said nope I can get more at the current price of 90 dollars a board foot. Hank said let me call you tomorrow and the offer I make will be good only after we inspect the kiln dried slabs for the table tops.

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Part 5

Hank called back the next afternoon and told him the most he and his partners could come up with was today’s spot rate on gold and they had 1.6 million for a secret tax free purchase after the wood was inspected. Clark started to just tell him a flat no but instead told him let me think about it for a day or so. Hank said OK and hung up.

Clark leaned back on his porch and drank a huge glass of iced tea. He thought this was a good deal - no cash in the bank, no taxes to pay and no one would ever know he had a cool million bucks in gold in his vault in the basement and according to the economy gold had no place to go but up in price. Plus he had all the other timber to sell. He would have to make up a story about why the 2 huge sections of trees were missing. He would think of something to tell Ferguson and Josh until he came up with their 150 grand or a 1/3rd of it till all the wood was gone and he would pay them off and retire. He had over 300000 in the bank and he decided he would pay them each 50000 to keep them satisfied until everything was settled.

This would be a win win for everyone involved. Hank and his friends had bought gold when it was bouncing around 200 an ounce and now it was 1800 an ounce.

He called the saw mill and had his friend send 2 large flatbed trucks and the 2 big log lifters for the 2 sections of tree. The next morning the saw mill crew arrived and loaded the huge pieces carefully onto the big flat beds. Clark knew the saw mill would not cut the sections until tomorrow after 1PM because the crew was going to put a new fine kerf 60 inch blade on the spindle to eliminate a lot of waste cutting. Clark knew the computerized equipped saw mill would make short work of the big logs.

That evening after the slabs were wheeled into the kiln Clark called hank and told him it would be 18 to 23 days before the cut parts would be ready for linseed oil or whatever he and his crew had decided to do with the wood if he and his partners accepted them.

Clark had a rough idea on what the saw mill charges would be after the cutting charge. It normally ran 2 dollars a board foot kiln charge but since he had a special kiln set at 170 degrees it was 3 dollars a board foot. He knew the outer layer would be misted to keep it from drying out faster then the interior to keep the wood from splitting.

Clark paid his 2 workers 50000 dollars each and said he would not make as much as he thought he would on the 2 sections of tree at the saw mill. But he told them there was more then enough wood under the shed to pay them off when it was cut, dried and sold. Ferguson and Josh were fat dumb and happy with 50 grand of tax free money because they trusted their boss.

22 days later using the electronic moisture testers the wood came out of the kiln. Hank and 4 other men were with him and they drooled over the heartwood and the swirly grain Hank said they would bring the gold over to his house whenever he wanted it. Clark asked them how they were going to preserve the wood. Hank said on 15 or 20 of the pieces they had a stain to put on and then they would dump all the wood in a flat tank of hot linseed oil to soak it 5mm into the wood. They would then cotton buff it to a shine and do it 20 or 30 more times to build up that deep natural lustrous protective gloss that high end buyers looked for. The 3X3’s and the 20 inch planks that were saved for the legs and chairs had the same grain as the table tops. Hank just said we will make a profit on this purchase but it may not be as much profit as you made. Clark knew he was lying because of the gleam in his eye when he talked about the magnificent royal wood grain that he had never seen before.

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Part 6

Clark saved the 3 remaining 12 foot sections and took the 8 foot 6 inch sections to the mill. This was cut into planks from 8 to 16 inches which had not been available for more then 60 some years. He had several cash buyers that were not reported to the IRS and several that were. He just thought you cannot win them all. The wood that was advertised was sold out immediately but that was reportable income. His 2 workers were paid off and laid off till further notice which as far as Clark was concerned permanent. He figured he had paid them roughly 300000 dollars in the past year and if they could not manage their money that was their fault because he had shown them how to make small investments and hide their cash. He was going to live the rest of his life on easy street. His plan was to take 30 to 45 day budget boat tours and upgrade his status with cash when he got on the boat to 1st class and no one would ever know he was high rolling it on budget ocean liner trips. It had always been one of his childhood dreams to float around the ocean on a big ocean liner and have his every need catered too. The other part of his dream was to visit all those foreign cities and ogle the good looking women throughout the world and especially intermingle with the beautiful and rich women on the big ship.

If he started taking these extended ocean liner cruises he would have to have a trustworthy person house sit for him. He also would have to take ¾ of his gold and cash and bury it 8 or so feet deep in case the house sitter decided to torch through the vault door going into the semi basement shelter. The man that built the house never finished making the place a true bomb shelter but he did have nice money and firearms safes in the basement and a steel vault door leading down into it. He had 6 months before his first cruise so he had plenty of time to make arrangements.

He had decided to cut the rest of the trees up the way Hank wanted and would settle for 40% tax free money whenever Hank and his partners sold the wood over the coming years. That was one worry off his mind about someone coming onto his property and stealing the logs. Clark had a lawyer set the money transfer system up and if Hank reneged - Clark would own all of Hank’s assets and Hank owned a minimum half million dollar home and properties.

Clark asked his cleaning woman if she knew someone that would house sit for him. The woman said not too many trustworthy people around here. He asked her about doing it and she said can’t do it my husband would divorce me and if I brought my 2 boys out here they would steal the paint off the walls. I do have a 1st cousin that is having a hard time getting a good paying job. She may be interested and I know she is a good girl. Clark said well all you can do is ask her to come in for an interview. She said I will do that tomorrow morning.

Clark buried his money 8 feet down in Tupperware plastic inside aluminum coolers. He took GPS coordinates and painted on the opposite sides of the fence posts he had buried the money from - one small red and one green stripe on each iron post. The GPS coordinates he put in an envelope and gave to his lawyer in a sealed envelope but he left the 1st 2 numbers off the coordinates and kept them in his safe. He only had one electric utility bill and it was automatically paid from his checking account. The insurance and other minor bills were paid through a bill pay account. That left the stinking property tax that changed yearly. He went to the tax office and asked about an automatic payment. Surprisingly they set it up for him - The last stop was the bank clerk to set up a transfer of funds automatically from his 600000 dollar savings account to his checking to insure it always had a balance of 2500 dollars.

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Part 7

He hired his house cleaning ladies 1st cousin on the spot. She was a tall, skinny, freckled faced, blue eyed, glossy black haired 18 year old high school graduate. He told her the salary was 125 dollars a week plus room and board. He had a small safe that was bolted down to a steel table in the pantry that he gave her the combination. Inside the safe was a note book and 3000 dollars which was her 6 month salary. She was to make note of her withdrawals. He said I was going to make 6 checks out for each month but I am going to trust you. But I did make 12 checks out beyond the 6 months cash in case I want to stay somewhere for 6 or more months longer. He gave her a 400 dollar a month bank debit card for monthly food purchases.

He told her he would be in and out of the house for a few more months before he left and she could have the bedroom at the end of the hall. He jokingly said if you make a mess would you please clean it up. She turned red and started to say something but bit her lip. He apologized to her and made sure she knew it was a joke. One more thing while I am thinking about it. We have satellite TV and please do not order any movies because the payment I have set up does not account for movie purchases. There is a computer in the bedroom and you can down load first run movies from Pirate Bay.org for free. She said I am well aware of that virus infested place. He laughed and said I have a pretty good anti-virus system so you may be OK. He asked her if she knew how to use firearms and she said yes I am an expert shot with rifle and pistol. He said tomorrow I will put a pistol in the safe for you and you can either leave it there or carry it around with you.. She said I will carry it and would also like for you to put a loaded rifle and shotgun somewhere nearby.

Clark looked at her skinny body and made a decision. He went to town and bought a pump 20 gauge shotgun and AR15 for Inez. He had a 1 X 4 scope put on the AR and left the guns on the kitchen table with a case each of slugs, 000 buckshot and 62 grain hollow points. He tapped on her bedroom door and told her she may want to practice fire and zero the guns in on the table and left.

January 11 after flying to San Francisco he boarded a cruise ship for his 1st around the world cruise. It was to be for 191 days and he was supposed to return to Baltimore sometime in late July. Clark’s luck was not so good on his 1st cruise. The 1st week he had diarrhea the 2nd week he caught a cold and thought he would cough his lungs out the 3rd week he recovered and began to enjoy himself. The food was so good he had to force himself out of the dining rooms. The 4th week he really enjoyed eyeballing the bikini clad beautiful rich ladies as they strutted around the boat decks in the tropical weather.


Part 8

He was not doing too bad making acquaintances both lady and men. He liked to shoot the breeze with a fellow who had just been on a moose and bear hunt in Alaska. They had been meeting for breakfast for several days at 6AM. This particular morning as they strolled near the rear of the ship towards one of the breakfast bars they had taken a liking too. They both heard gun fire. His friend said I have never heard them shooting skeet this early. A few seconds later they heard screams and automatic weapons fire. They did not know whether to run back to their cabin or hide. They had the decision made for them when 3 fellows came running around a corner about 75 yards from them shooting at the early morning strollers and exercisers. Geesh Clark said they are killing everyone. About that time the men noticed Clark and Stanley and started shooting at them. Clark said to Stanley remember what Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did in the cowboy movie when they were about to be overrun by their pursuers. They grabbed each others hand and leaped over the railing to the ocean 75 or 80 feet below. Clark heard or thought he heard bullets whizzing by but was not for sure because he was screaming as loud as he could. Fortunately for the 2 they landed feet first and must have went down into the ocean 20 feet or more. Clark thought he would drown before his head broke the surface with Stanley surfacing 3 feet from him. Neither of them could explain why they had grabbed their ball cap with their free hand but both of them had their cap.

They looked up at the huge ship as it sailed past them at about 12 or 15 MPH. 2 minutes later the ship was a small dot in the distance and they looked at each other. They then heard more screaming and looked 5 or 600 or so yards across from them several people in the water were batting at the huge fins circling them. Clark started to swim away from them but Stanley said don’t move your feet just try and float. He told Clark to help him pull his outer shirt off. Clark had no idea why Stanley wanted to take his shirt off but since they were going to get eat up by sharks in a short while he thought he would help Stanley with his last request. As soon as Stanley’s shirt was off he saw Stanley pull the cord and a round rather large circle life preserver expanded around his chest. Stanley said I cannot swim very good and am really afraid of the water. This life preserver is rated for 400 pounds so it should hold us up now all we have to do is float away from those wounded screaming people without attracting any sharks – that is why I asked you not to thrash the water with your feet. He told Clark to grab his shirt with one hand and hold it up in the air and use his other hand to hang onto the life preserver. Clark saw immediately what Stanley was doing because he had the other end of the shirt wrapped around his arm and held up high. The ocean breeze was blowing briskly away from the sharks and Stanley said hopefully we will sail a ways from the carnage in the water and the sharks will stay in this area.

30 minutes later after maintaining his legs as still as he could Clark asked Stanley if he knew where they were. Stanley said somewhere on the lower end of India supposedly entering the Bay of Bengal between Thailand and Malaysia. Clark said that covers a few thousand miles and Stanley said yep. Cheer up Clark there are thousands of uninhabited and inhabited islands out here. Now all we have to do is get lucky. 55 minutes later they were standing in ocean water 16 inches deep. Stanley said I do believe we have run into one of those undersea mountains but we cannot stay here we will quickly die of thirst.

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Part 9

Stanley asked Clark to climb up and try to stand on his hips or shoulders he said with a little extra height you may see something. Clark did and he did see something that looked like it may be palm trees. Stanley said OK did you get a bearing on that spot. All Clark did was point in that direction. Stanley took from his small fanny pouch and opened a flat plastic case and pulled out a small waterproof plastic Silva compass. He said one more time Clark just to make sure we have a good solid direction. Clark climbed up again and got the bearing and said let’s head that way. Stanley pulled out a bit of para cord from the pouch and used a big fat Swiss army knife from a belt pouch to cut it and tied the compass around his neck.

About 4 hours later the island came into view to the 2 swimmers down at sea level. Clark sure was glad Stanley had the inflatable life preserver because he did not think he could have tread water or swam as long as they had been in the water. When he got tired he ran one hand and arm down through the top of the life preserver, rested his head on the back flap that held Stanley’s head up and just floated along with Stanley.

Finally 11 hours after they had jumped off the ship they crawled up on the beach of a small island that had numerous coconut trees on it. Stanley said we need some fluid pretty quick or we won’t be able to function. He asked Clark to either climb one of the trees or knock some coconuts down for them to get something to drink. He told Clark he thought it would be dark in 45 minutes or so. Clark looked at his watch and saw it was full of salt water but Stanley’s was still keeping time accurately. He would ask him about his watch later.

Clark really did not want to climb a 50 or more foot tall coconut tree so he looked around the beach for a long pole or something. He found something about 25 feet long that was about 3 inches around he had no idea what it had come off of but he sure could and would use it to knock some coconuts out of the trees. His guestimating the trees height was off by about 20 feet. He found a tree that was slanted just enough for him to pull himself up about 40 or so feet and that was far enough for him to use the pole. He knocked 11 nuts out of the tree. He gathered them up by 4’s and walked back to where Stanley was building some type of shelter and a fire pit. Stanley saw him coming and said great because I am really thirsty.

Stanley used a short piece of hard driftwood and beat his Swiss knife’s big blade through the end of the nut. He cut 4 of them before he used the awl on the knife to punch some holes in the eyes. He drained his 2 before Clark had finished one. Stanley said we will have to eat some nut meat to go with that fluid or we will get the runs. He sliced down through the 4 nuts and got the outer peel off. Clark used the hard piece of driftwood to crack the shells and they sat there and ate a little bit. Stanley said we may as well roast some of the meat because we won’t know what is on this island till daylight tomorrow even though I have a small key chain light. Clark had pulled his clothes off when Stanley mentioned the salt would chafe between his legs and under his arms if he did not dry his clothes. In about a minute his clothes and socks were flapping in the breeze coming off the ocean beside Stanley’s.

Stanley had cut enough palm fronds and laid it on some mounded sand for their bed this night. They lay there naked in the tropical weather and talked for a while around the sputtering fire before falling into dream land.

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[Lbox88]

Part 10

The next morning after some more coconut milk and some roasted coconut meat they set off in just their tennis shoes to look for water. Stanley seemed to think they would feel much better if they could rinse their hair and body off to rid themselves of the salt so as not to get chafed. If they found enough fresh water he also wanted to clean their clothes of the crusted salt. They were lucky about 500 yards from shore or about one quarter way across the island they found a pool of water. Clark tested it with his finger and said tastes like fresh water to me. Stanley said that solves one big problem we had. We need to go beach combing now to find some clear plastic bottles. Clark asked why clear. Stanley said I will feel a 100% better if we can let that water lie out in the sun for 6 or so hours and let the suns rays kill any bacteria if there is any in the water before we drink it. Stanley said I for one would sure hate to get some type of bacteria or tapeworm while we are stranded 40 million miles from any medical facility. Clark said you mean to tell me if we put that water in a clear bottle and let the sun shine on it for 6 or more hours the little bugs in the water will die. Stanley said that’s the theory behind it.

They found 9 clear 2 liter coke bottles with the lids still on them and probably 45 - 12 to 16 oz bottles. Stanley rinsed out all the bottles they were going to use in the ocean and again with pond water. Next he put 3 or so sections of tree bark together and filled them with clean water and soaked their salt laden clothes in the clear water 3 times till they were salt free. Clark grinned as Stanley filled all 9 of the 2 liter bottles walked about 25 yards away from the pool and started rinsing himself off from the head down. After Stanley was done and said he felt like a new man – Clark did the same.


Stanley opened that amazing little case again and took out a various assortment of fishing jigs and a small selection of hooks. Clark watched in amazement as Stanley cut his life preserver open and took out monofilament fishing line. Stanley chuckled when he got the fishing line out. Clark asked him what was funny. Stanley said I made sure no one saw me when I slid this line down through the air valve into the life preserver because even I thought I was stupid for doing it. Clark said I would think wearing a hidden deflated life preserver on a perfectly good ship would have been more stupid. They both laughed at that comment. Stanley said I believe we can make use of that stupidly long pole you found for a fishing pole. Clark said don’t you think a smaller pole would be better. Stanley said yep do you happen to have one in your hip pocket. Clark just said Duh.

That evening after they had both eaten about 3 pounds of a fish neither of them recognized but Stanley did know it was not a poisonous puffer fish. They talked for several hours about what tanley thought about the US Government leadership and how Americans rights were being taken away slowly what he thought was becoming a police state with too much power being given to the police and on and on. That is when Clark learned about being prepared for a lot of things. He also found out Stanley’s watch was rated waterproof for 90 feet under water and had teeny solar cells on each side of the watch to assist in keeping the battery charged. The key chain light he had also had a solar cell on one side. Clark had never heard of such a thing. But he told himself he sure would learn lots more things if he ever got off this island alive.

Stanley’s kit also had a tube of Neosporin, 8 alcohol pads, surgery sewing needles, surgical thread, three 4 inch gauze pads, small bottle Visine, film canister with Vaseline cotton balls, 2 Bic lighters, flint and steel, 4 different size sewing needles, 40 count bottle of Cipro and bottle of Amoxicillin, 50 count bottle of aspirin and 50 feet of #8 black thread. The belt scabbard that held the Swiss army knife had a small sharpening stone in it. The stainless Swiss Champ XIT army knife had the fire starting magnifying glass and a bunch of other tools. Stanley told him I would have added more stuff to the fanny kit but it was full and I decided that the stuff I had packed would do. He told Clark that he would like to have had his web belt with his stainless steel canteen and cup, hatchet, 6 inch hunting knife and his pistol. He laughed and said all that except for my pistol is in my bag in my cabin.

Part 11

Over the next several months Clark learned what it meant to be a survivalist or prepper. He soaked up the knowledge Stanley put out. If they wanted salty tasting food they cooked it in ocean water. Clark sure did miss bread but Stanley sun dried some coconut meat and smashed it to a fine powder and they used that to coat their fish in to fry it on a large piece of aluminum found on the beach.. Clark bent part of it into a frying pan shape and after cutting it with the Swiss knife they had enough left over to make a 2 or 3 quart cook pot which they used to boil ocean water down to get the salt crystals left in the pot amongst other cooking uses.

The coconut oil was a little harder to get from the nuts but they finally got enough out to fry the fish, other shelled ocean creatures and coconut meat in whenever they wanted fried food.

Clark was amazed that Stanley recognized a huge tree that grew in a sort of depression about 75 feet from the little spring. It was a Neem tree and the ends of the twigs on the evergreen tree could be chewed to make a toothbrush. Stanley had a small roll of dental floss that he shared with Clark. Stanley told Clark we are really lucky the tree has the once a year seed pods on it. We can take the small internal seeds from the pods and press the oil out of them and store it in one of the bottles. The oil is a mosquito repellent and they are starting to bother me when we leave the beach area. In addition to using the twigs for toothbrushes we can chew the leaves to further clean our mouth. I don’t think we are supposed to swallow the juice from chewing the leaves because of the many chemicals the leaf has. But it sure will freshen your mouth up from the astringent properties the leaves have. Stanley said that is about all I know about the Neem tree and I would not know that if I had not went on a lecture tour to a botanical garden in Thailand 2 years ago while on another cruise and sampled the leaves and twigs as a toothbrush. I learned about the uses of the coconut while watching that TV series “Survivor”.

10 days after they had been on the island a huge rainstorm hit the place and lasted for 3 days. They were both miserable during that time and Stanley stated they should build a good shelter near the Neem tree down in that depression in case a typhoon hit the area. They scoured the beach area and found old anchor rope and hundreds of yards of monofilament heavy duty fishing line. Stanley said the heavy duty line was probably from long fish lines put out by fishing trawlers. They used the line tied to the Neem tree and 3 coconut trees in sort of a triangular shape to form the roof frame of the shelter and weaved palm fronds into the line. Clark thought they would have to put new palm fronds up every 6 weeks or so. Stanley said that should protect us if we have a typhoon or another rainstorm like we had before. Since the shelter is in a depression the winds should not blow it away. They were lucky the land sloped away from the Neem tree to let the water flow away because they would soon make use of that shelter several times in the coming months.

Life was really boring on the small island and Clark thought if he had been by himself he would have went nuts he then qualified that with I would have probably died 2 days after I was here. Stanley finally remembered that the small new green leaf shoots on the coconut tree were edible but he could not remember the nutrition value. They added that to their diet.
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Part 12

Their rescue was simple - 3 natives in an dual out rigged motorized large 36 foot canoe from a big island 35 miles away pulled up to the island beach right where they had their beach camp. They were going to check on the Neem tree for seed pods but the person who was supposed to keep track of when the tree had pods had died and no one was sure of the date. Stanley was glad to give them the date the tree had pods. So it was 6 months 11 days and 3 typhoons later when they left their island home. Stanley told Clark to make sure when they got to civilization to start on a multi vitamin/mineral tablet because he did not think they had been getting some micro nutrients to keep their body healthy in the long run.

They found out later from a National Indian Police investigator that they were the only survivors of 3000 people on the cruise ship. The terrorists/hijackers had killed and robbed everyone including the ships vaults of gambling monies. A satellite had tracked the ship to where it was sunk in fairly deep water and watched the hijackers escape in several small boats.

Clark told Stanley that he was only going on cruises in the Atlantic from now on. When they split up to go home they each promised to keep in touch.

Clark had his Dr. do a physical and all the blood tests. He came out healthy. He wasn’t so lucky at the dentists’ office. He had 3 small cavities which were repaired and he decided right then to go on the 3 times a day flossing and brushing that Stanley recommended.

Inez told him she had received official notification that everyone on the cruise ship was killed or missing. But she had followed his instructions to not be worried till one and a half years had gone by and to consider him dead at the end of 36 months. She laughed and said I had plenty of time left you were only gone a little over 7 months. He laughed with her. He said I will be here on and off again for a while so the arrangements will be the same.

Clark pulled out all those sites Stanley had written down for him and started on a learning journey. He ordered a watch, Swiss knife and key chain LED light like Stanley had but did not order a life preserver. He decided to special order a midget flat soft fanny pouch to keep everything Stanley had in his plastic case plus there would be enough room to add the fishing line and a few other items. He would never be caught out again without those basic items. He did not think he could take a pistol on board the Atlantic cruises but he would ask anyway. He did come up with a weapon he could carry even on a plane. It was a short bow disguised as a cane with several plastic non fletched arrows the fletching was slide on plastic ones and were kept in a separte section of his carry on luggage. The arrow tips had him flummoxed until he thought of super strong flat sharpened plastic that would go undiscovered in the plastic cane head. The bow string he would keep in his shirt pocket.

He talked to a few construction bosses that had experience with bomb shelters and found one. He asked him to complete the shelter at his house.

27000 dollars later he had a functional bomb shelter - Now to stock it. 18000 dollars spent and he had enough long term food for 4 people for 2 years plus some extras.

He and Inez went out shooting the next afternoon and he took a liking to that AR15 so he bought himself one. He also had noticed the small garden Inez had and he asked her about it. She got a sad look on her face and said the deer and rabbits ate it all. He laughed and said well I’ll make it bigger and put a fence around it. She said would you really? He said yes I would and will call the fence place in a little bit. She said if you are going to fence the garden in would you make a chicken run and a big yard for them so we can have fresh eggs and meat. He thought that was a good idea because he had eaten fresh eggs when he was younger and they were a 100 times better then the store bought ones. He said why not and I guess we will have to build a chicken coop. She hugged him and said thank you.

When he called the chain link fence place he told them what he wanted for his garden fence and the chicken area. The man said we do these quite a lot and have it down to a science the man told Clark. He next called the construction man that had done his bomb shelter he told Clark of a small crew that specialized in high tech chicken, pigeon and bird coops and gave Clark the number. Clark called the chicken fencing man and gave him the number of the fellow who was going to build the chicken coop so they could get their act together.
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Part 13

Clark had fallen into Stanley’s simple exercises and 3 times a day brush/dental floss program – Clark always thought he was in decent shape until he noticed Stanley could outwork him by a factor of 5. Stanley had a simple exercise program – walk or preferably jog every other day a mile or more – keep an 8 or 10 pound barbell close to each hand and hold them straight out from your body or lift them many times a day while sitting around – do at least 25 or more sit-ups 4 times a week to keep your stomach muscles strong and flat and that was all the exercises Stanley did. Stanley had told him those exercises worked for him but may not work for someone else.

3 weeks later after the chicken coop and fences were installed he had watched them for a good while the were installing them and saw they buried the chain link 12 inches in a trench and filled the trench with cement and watched them install a solar powered electric wire in 3 spots on the fence. He asked the construction crew if they could build a 4 stall cow barn with all the modern facilities in them. That crew gave him another number to call.

After talking to the cow barn construction boss he found out a non standard 25 foot tall cinder block building with aluminum doors, 6 or 8 solar tube lights backed up with some DC or AC curly cue pull string fluorescents and a metal roof would be best. It would cost a little more then a stick building but there would be no maintenance or upkeep on the building for at least 50 years. So he had the large 32000 dollar building built and would have 36000 dollars worth of equipment installed inside. He now had a choice to make on the automatic removal of cow manure. The foreman said you can have it both ways but it will cost about 11000 dollars more. The options were to have the automatic cow manure remover either dump it into a drain pit to be washed out to a settling pond or septic system or have it dumped outside the side entrance on a cement pad where it could be gotten to easily and used as fresh raw field or garden fertilizer. Of course Clark had it both ways. He really liked the idea of using it for fertilizer and that is what he would do with the manure most of the time whenever he got some cows.

Stanley called one afternoon and Clark told him everything he had done. Stanley said you are almost done – now you need an alternate power source and a backup. Clark asked him what he recommended. Stanley said 50000 dollars worth of solar panels and batteries and at least a new or rebuilt 6000 watt listeroid generator with at a minimum a 5000 gallon diesel tank with treated fuel. Stanley asked him how big his propane tank was and Clark said 3000 gallons – Stanley said keep it and put a 3000 gallon one beside it for summertime cooking and winter time hot water. Clark said my wood stove has that copper 20 gallon hot water tank on it. Stanley said do it anyways for a double backup because propane does not go bad. They talked another 10 minutes and Clark found out Stanley was going on an African big game safari about the same time he was going on an Atlantic cruise.

3 months later the barn was finished, 44000 dollars worth of solar panels on the southern side of the house roof, 26000 dollars worth on the barn roof, 48000 dollars worth of nickel iron 100 year 325 amp hr batteries spread out between the house and the barn in battery banks in walk-in cinder block buildings beside the back of the house and barn. Listeroid generator in the large battery cinder block building and another 5000 gallon diesel and 3000 gallon propane tank buried besides the building the generator was in and the propane tank buried beside the original tank. 24X24 foot cinderblock Root cellar popped into his mind.
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Part 14

Inez asked him what kind of cows he was going to buy. He said I never really thought about it. She said I have. He asked her what her thoughts were. She said you really do not need a full size cow for milk unless you are going to put a hog pen up and use the extra milk to slop the hogs or make a lot of cheeses. He asked what would you recommend. She said those small breed Dexter cows. I would get 2 females and a bull and breed the 2nd one so the 2nd ones calf would be 3 months old when the 1st Dexter starts to run dry. He said that’s what we will do when I come back from my next cruise. When I get back we will stock up on cow feed and fence in several pastures to keep that bull from ruining the milk program. She said I would have the 1st cow bred by a different bull before you buy them and delay purchasing the bull until it is time to breed the 2nd cow. He said OK you find a place that sells the small breed cows and we will do it when I get back.

He asked Inez if she thought he was paying her enough and she said I have not spent but a little of my salary – I am saving it for my college fund. He said I can give you an interest free loan if you really want to go to school. She said maybe next year I will take you up on a small loan. I will have enough for tuition and books for the 1st 2 years next September when school starts. But if I keep my job here with you 2 years later I will have enough for the final 2 years. But you will probably have to give me a slight raise when I start taking care of the chickens, feeding and milking the cow. He just said that will be fine with me. He mentally calculated his finances he had 3.2 million buried 600000 in the bank and about 2 million in the basement. He chuckled at the labor costs he was getting by keeping her on the farm. He would theoretically spend about 12000 a year on her and he could afford to pay her the tax free salary she was now getting with future raises for 400 or more years. That is if she stayed with him. He could see no reason she would not unless she found a boy friend..

Clark went on a 71 day cruise and met the lady of his dreams – wealthy, intelligent and it appeared she was compatible with his philosophy. After a torrid love affair on the cruise ship he invited her to his humble place. The first words out of her mouth the next morning were that slutty young girl will have to go now that I will be the lady of the house.

Clark loaded all of her suitcases back into his pickup and took her back to the airport. He never said a word to her on the trip to the airport until he got there. He just said that young girl is my most trusted assistant and maybe soon to be adopted daughter. You have made such a stupid hateful mouthy mistake that I cannot and will not live with you.

He drove back home and took a nap with a clear conscious.

Clark called Stanley and told him of his love life problems. Stanley laughed so loud it hurt Clark’s ear. He said just wait - it will happen just like I am waiting. They talked for another half hour about survival things and general stuff and hung up.

Inez was a fount of common sense. He laughed at her when she said oh my gosh that girl you had here sure was purty. Clark agreed with her but did not tell her why he took her back to the airport.

Clark laughed at the chickens for 3 days straight and learned how to milk a cow with and without the milking machine. Inez said you are becoming a real 1st class prepper - he just stared at her and said yes I am. She said if you have the money you should build a pig pen but not put anything in it and closer to the house build a nice meat smoke building. He was a little amazed at this young girl who he thought was just using common sense. He had no idea of her family farm work background. He would learn about that later.

He called the last construction boss and got the number of a crew that built 1st class pig pens and root cellars. About 2 weeks later he had an indestructible iron and cinder block pig pen 300 yards from the main house with 2 mud bogs in them with water pipe from his well buried and ready to maintain the mud bogs and water the future hogs. The root cellar construction started 3 days after the pig pen was finished and that job took 4 weeks because the crew had to let the cement dry between courses of cinder block. A different crew built a 16 X 16 foot cold and hot cinder block smoke house with an honest to goodness 3/8 inch thick steel roof with what looked like a factory welding job of hanging O bolts to hang meat from an S hook on. Clark asked the construction boss why a steel roof – The construction boss looked at him like he was stupid and just said nothing to burn so no fires. Clark didn’t even say duh he walked off mentally smacking himself for asking such a stupid question and kept on staring at the sky.
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Part 15

He was up fixing himself some breakfast and noticed a lot of things in the kitchen he had not seen before. There were 2 dehydrators and 2 large pressure cookers inside the cabinet his fry pan was. Later that day he asked Inez about it and she just said I bought them in case we have to stay on the farm for a long time. He asked her how much they cost and she just said oh they were not much. He fired his computer up after looking at the names on the items he had found and said to himself that girl sure does not know what how much means. Before he gave her her money back he decided to look around and see if she had bought anymore prepper items. He found 30 cases of quart mason jars and 15 cases of pints in the pole barn. He did a little more research on those mason jars and found a side blurb directing him to Tattler life time lids. He then researched lids and found out that lids that came with the jars were not much good after a few years. He went ahead and ordered enough bulk life time lids for what she had already bought and for the next 40 cases he bought.

That night he handed her an envelope and told her it was a bonus for being such a trustworthy person. Of course there was 500 dollars more then what she had spent. She did not say anything but took the envelope and went to her room. Shoot Clark thought I have made her mad. He hadn’t - she had just gone to her room so he would not see her cry some happiness tears.

3 days later one of the cows fell down quivered a whole lot and died. Inez called the vet. They talked for 2 or 3 minutes before Inez told her about the cow. The vet came and took some blood, tissue and saliva samples from the cow and said she would call back quickly with hopefully a diagnosis. Inez talked to her all the way to her truck and gave the vet a little hug before she left. Clark just assumed they had known each other for a while.

At 10AM the next day the vet called back and asked her and Clark to come to town tomorrow to get a shot at the Dr.’s office because the cow had died of anthrax spores which were in the ground all across the USA.

The next morning Clark and Inez arrived at the Dr.’s Office. The Dr. had been informed of the cow dying of anthrax. He had over nighted some vaccine from the US government CDC science laboratory division and had it ready for the 2 lucky or unlucky victims. Unknown to the Dr. or the CDC this batch got mixed in with the regular anthrax vaccine. This was an experimental vaccine and had anthrax, smallpox and monkey pox in it which had been tested on prisoners in South America but had not been approved for USA military or general population use. The Dr. gave them the information about the vaccine that he thought was just anthrax vaccine and told them it took 6 days to give full protection from anthrax. He also gave them a prescription for 10 days of Cipro for a just in case.

The vet called the next day and asked Clark to put the cow in a pit and burn it before covering it back with dirt. Clark used the back hoe and got that done by noon and used 20 gallons of diesel and gasoline and fire wood to do the burn job right. The vet said she would bring vaccine for the other 2 cows he had and to make sure she was notified before he brought any more animals to the farm because she wanted to vaccinate them before he did bring them to the farm.

Inez ordered a replacement cow the next day and told the delivery people to either vaccinate it for anthrax or stop at Clark’s vet to have it done. The place she bought the cow from did the vaccination and made sure the cow was vaccinated for everything cows were supposed to be vaccinated against and made sure it was de-loused and de- ticked with a standard flea and tick spray. The price of course was added into the purchase price. Inez told Clark later that evening that she was sure they had washed the cow with a good smelling soap.

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[Lbox88]

Part 16

Clark heard Inez come in the front door and heard her holler for him. He walked out of the kitchen and heard her say I need a little muscle and handy-man help. He walked out to the pickup and saw a 40 gallon green plastic barrel, some screen, aluminum down spout and cinder blocks. He asked her what are you going to do and what do you want me to do. She said first thing is I do not want you to laugh at me – he said OK. She said I want to install this manual down spout diverter onto the rain down spout by the kitchen door. Then I want to put a faucet on this barrel and put a 6 inch screen on top of the barrel where the diverter will dump into the barrel to catch any bugs or dirt from the roof. And finally I want you to lift it up on these cinder blocks so I can use the faucet at the bottom to fill up my bucket. He said sure I will help you but what on earth do you want rain water for. She said you promised not to laugh. He said I did. She said I want to use the really soft, silky, rain water to wash my hair. She also said if the weather is not to cold in the winter and the water has not frozen I can use the water from the barrel to fill the humidifier tea pot on the wood stove – the rain water does not leave any residue in the enamel pot. He just said good idea.

The job took longer then he thought it would. Gathering the tools to do the job was time consuming even though he had his tools organized. Well he thought he did - it took 15 minutes for him to remember where he put the pop rivet gun and the pop rivets. Finally he had all the tools gathered up and began on the job. She said I wanted a down spout diverter to shut the barrel water off in the winter time to keep the barrel from freezing and cracking. I also wanted the barrel on this side of the house so the sun would not shine on it. He asked why are you worried about the sun shining on it. She said the barrel will last many more years if it does not shine on it. He said I see.

Two weeks later the vet showed up to take some blood from the cows. The 3 of them sat around the table and Clark listened to the vet and Inez talk about the animal problems from long ago at Inez parent’s farm. Clark said ah ha so that is how they know each other. When the vet left Clark raised his eyebrows at the bill but paid the 1300 dollars. Inez said you will have to buy a small dormitory medicine fridge for the barn. I saw you raise your eyebrows at the bill but 900 of that are for medicines in the big box on the front porch. He jokingly said did I buy out the pharmacy. She laughed and said no but you do have a bunch of vet controlled prescription medicine for your animals that will last several years. A lot of it is Ivomec medicines, Tylan for foot rot and various other problems and Naxcel a cephalosporin for lots of cow diseases and a bunch of other neat stuff. She discounted you 4 gallons of tick and flea concentrate that is used 1 part in 60 for the spray misters you had installed in the barn. The vet knows I know how to use all that stuff and that is why she left it. Clark was getting more and more impressed with this young freckly faced soon to be 19 year old girl.

Stanley called and said he would be traveling through in a few days and would stop for a visit.

Clark picked Stanley up at the airport and brought him home. The reason Stanley had stopped to visit Clark was he wanted him to go on a grizzly bear hunt in AK or Russia. Clark said I would think about the AK hunt but I really do not want to visit Russia. Stanley said show me your hunting guns. Clark said I only have a pump shot gun, AR15 an old 30-06, two 22 rifles, and a couple of pistols. Stanley said we are going gun shopping tomorrow.

On the way to one of the largest gun shops in the state - Clark asked what am I going shopping for. Stanley said a sniper rifle or 2 and a medium big game rifle that you will zero in and probably shoot it a couple of more times in your lifetime. Clark asked why am I going to buy this big game gun then. Stanley said to shoot grizzly bear and if I can talk you into it maybe a cape buffalo and a lion. OK Clark said.

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Part 17

Stanley knew exactly what Clark needed and grabbed the 1st salesman he saw which happened to be a nice looking young lady. He asked her a couple of ballistics questions and when she fired back the answers he said yes mam you will do. He pointed out the TRG-42 Sako 338 Lapua rifle hanging on the wall behind the counter with the suppressor on it. He told her he wanted three VX-7L 3.5X14X56mm Leupold scopes, mounts and rings. Next he wanted 2 sub minute of angle Weatherby Vanguard 30-06 rifles with suppressors. He told her to bore sight the 3 scopes and have their in house gun smith set the triggers to 2.4 pounds and check the rifle internals for burrs, scratches or misalignments. He asked her how long that would take. She walked off for about 2 minutes and said they would be ready at 2 PM tomorrow. He said fine now we need some rifle/pistol cleaning equipment, ammunition, powder, bullets, and primers. After that order was written down he said we need a Dillon turret press, the accessories, 3 reloading books and some dies. He said to Clark I know the guide will be there with you but I think one of those cross the chest S&W 500 caliber 10 inch revolvers should be carried as a 3rd backup. Clark just said add it to the list with the holster.

That evening the 2 mounted the press on the heavy duty bench in the bomb shelter and started cranking out different powder combination bullets for the rifles. Inez wrote down each combination and stored the loaded bullets in different boxes with masking tape on top of the box denoting what was loaded in the boxes. Stanley said one more shopping trip for some good boots, pants and light weight and heavy weight parkas and you should be ready in 4 or 5 more weeks. That should give you plenty of time to break those new boots in. We will test those new rifles out tomorrow. Inez smiled she had never owned or shot a decent rifle with a scope on it that cost 3 times more then the rifle.

After purchasing the clothes and boots for Clark they stopped to pick up the rifles. Stanley said I forgot one thing. The lady that waited on them yesterday was working and Stanley told her he needed 3 secure airline destruction proof cases for the rifles they had bought yesterday. She said I have just the thing it is a double scoped rifle case, ½ inch thick, mar proof aluminum and has 2 stainless steel bands around it with hasps for 2 padlocks. She said you may not like the color but it was designed to be extremely visible in an airport if someone snatches it from the airport baggage claim section. It is bright yellow with international reflective bright orange stripes around it. Stanley said that was a great idea. He bought 2 for himself.

At 130PM they were setting targets up from 25 yards out to 1000 yards. Inez said if the wind is blowing I will not shoot past 300 yards. If you want to shoot in no wind conditions we have to be out here at 530AM to about 930AM. Stanley said good thinking Inez we want to really run that 338 through its paces. So we will shoot the 06’s this afternoon out to 300 yards and shoot all 3 of them at daylight. 2 hours later they had the 06’s dialed in and one of them appeared to be a tack driver out to 300 yards. The other maintained a hair less then 1 MOA. Stanley said maybe with a different powder and different weight bullet we can get it to shoot in one hole. He laughed at that. They cleaned the 2 guns and Stanley had one more request for Clark and that was to take him to a lumberyard - He wanted some 2X6’s and bolts to make some sturdy shooting benches.

Stanley laughed at Clark at 9PM that night when they finished building 2 benches. He just told Clark your prep days are getting better. Clark said yeah right. Clark asked him why he bought treated lumber. Stanley said so they will last 4 or 5 years. If you put that Thompsons water seal on it a couple of times a year the benches will probably last 20 years.

The big shooting test the next morning - Clark shot one 338 round at a target 25 yards away just to see where the bullet was going - Left and low. He adjusted the scope and ran an oil patch through the barrel. The next target was 100 yards away. Stanley smiled and said about 3 inches high but dead on. Clark ran the oil patch through the barrel and fired another round. Stanley looking through the 60 power spotting scope said almost went through the same hole. He cleaned the barrel again and shot another round. Stanley said again it is almost in the original hole. Inez wrote down what batch of bullets that group came from. Clark cleaned the barrel and walked with Stanley to the target. He put a white piece of tape over the 3 holes and wrote the conditions down and time of day. The 2nd bullets were the 250 grain bullets and they clover leafed about 1 inch below the 225 grain bullets. Stanley said OK this is the 300 grain hunting bullet we will use on grizzly. Those 3 bullets opened up to 1 inch and an inch and a half below the other 2 sets of shots. Stanley said will you sell me that gun. Clark grinned and said yep for 2.3 million bucks. Stanley laughed and said I do believe you like that gun.

They started at 400 yards and moved on out to 600 yards. The gun got hot and the groups started opening up so they cleaned the gun and decided to wait an hour. The 30-06’s were brought out and Inez had the honor. She had made a tiny mark on the 06 that was a tack driver and was going to keep it for her own use. The 06 she shot was one of those 1 in ten thousand guns that shot exactly where it was aimed (of course with the windage and elevation set) no matter the distance. If the shooter had the range dialed in and there was no wind she could keep the 3 shot string in a 2 to 4 inch circle around the X out to 800 yards. She just said I want to practice a lot more before I start shooting at 1000 yards. Clark had 15 reloads in a box that he had not fired. They were 180 grain Amax or something like that. That was the bullet that the other 06 really liked. Clark knew his limitations and quit at 600 yards before he was shown up. Stanley shot just about the same as Clark did but he tried the 338 at 800 yards and saw a big spread. He just said I am not a 1000 yard shooter. Inez grinned because she thought if she had a lot of practice she could keep a decent group at 1000 yards with her gun and the bullets she had been shooting. She also thought she could shoot the 338 extremely well at 1000 yards with a whole bunch of practice. But that was for another day.

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Part 18

Stanley stayed 2 more days and helped Clark paint Thompson water seal on the 2 shooting benches. Since the benches were sitting on a pad of concrete and the legs were not making contact with dirt Stanley predicted a 25 year life for the benches. Stanley did not know that Clark was going to put a water proof tarp on the benches and that would definitely extend the lifespan. Stanley had walked Clark’s property over and shot a deer at Inez’s request and made a few suggestions on security. He had already told Clark that the location of the farm was great 33 miles from the big city and then 7 miles off the main high way on a secondary gravel road with a solid lockable iron pipe gate. His main concern was there would only be 2 people if anything bad happened. He wanted Clark to install a series of motion detector alarms 4 or 500 yards out from the house and 2 or 3 day time cameras and possibly 2 high dollar night cameras. He even wrote down the name of the company that would do the installation. Clark looked at Stanley and with a grin asked are we getting paranoid. Stanley saw the grin and he answered yes. I have heard there are zombies roaming around out here in these woods. Clark laughed and said OK I will have the security measures installed. I will tell Inez to call the company today.

That evening he and Clark saved the back straps off the deer and cut the rest all into strips to marinate it and smoke it in the new smoke house. Inez beamed a little bit at the huge amount of jerky she would have for a daily snack. Clark and Stanley fried the back straps up with garlic, onions and some bacon and ate both strips. They just grinned at Inez and told her she could have some of the next deer and laughed. She did not mind because she was going to eat all the jerky when it was done. She figured if they gutted it, butchered it and trimmed the whole thing into strips they deserved the fillet mignons. All she did was make a big batch of her special marinade and helped hang the strips in the smoke house.

Stanley said you sure are depending a lot on that young girl. Clark said I am paying her for her service and she gets free room and board. Stanley looked at Clark and asked if there was any hanky panky going on and he saw Clark get really mad. He backed off and said I was only joking. Clark calmed down and said I feel like she is my daughter or young sister and I do really trust her. Clark said she has no access to my money except for what I allow her access too. Stanley did not say anything.

Inez waved at Stanley when he left with Clark. She had made plans herself and headed off to the city. She was going to buy the powder, bullets and primers that her gun shot the best with. She decided to buy an 8 pound keg for the 338 and some bullets and primers for it also. She knew that Clark would be gone in a few weeks to AK on a 3 week hunt and she would have plenty of morning time to practice. The 400 and some dollars she spent on powder and bullets was a good investment she thought. She also knew that if she used Clark’s supplies she would run out in about 11 months on just practice so she decided to use her own money and reload the bullets herself. They had shown her 40 times how to do it and turned her loose to practice. She could do the reloading.

Clark took 4 loose fitting dark colored shirts, 2 light weight long sleeve and 2 heavier long sleeves to the tailor in town – he was going to get something else done Stanley had told him was a real smart thing to do. Have 2 lightweight water resistant nylon pockets with Velcro closures on them sewed either under the shoulder blades or under the arms to carry cash, extra credit cards and travelers checks in case he was - robbed the odds were the robbers would only take his wallet and not leave him stranded somewhere completely broke. He had laughed again and told Clark don’t forget you may be stranded in the ocean again that bought a laugh from Clark.

Clark showed Inez the camera installation bill – she whistled – 28000 dollars but the motion sensors were tied into the system. The chief technician set the sensors to not pick up deer and wild animals – Clark never did figure out how he did that. He told Inez I guess you get what you pay for.

Inez waved at Clark the next morning as he drove to the airport for his trip to AK.

Clark met Stanley at Seattle International and they continued their journey to Anchorage. They were met at the airport by the guide outfit Stanley had hired and were whisked off with their gear to another small plane. They landed somewhere south of Fairbanks in the AK range just before dark. They were assigned a large heavy duty canvas tent with a wood stove and told supper would be ready in the big tent in an hour. They would be assigned their guide at meal time.

Since this was a working hunting camp they had a pot of moose and grizzly stew cooking every day. Clark said the moose stew is not bad but I would have to experiment with that bear meat to get it to fancy my palate. Stanley said I agree with you – wait till you have a bear steak cooked on the outdoor wood grill. You will like that. As soon as someone shoots a moose we will get to eat some of the filet mignon and that is outstanding. Clark went off to one corner of the tent with his assigned guide. Clark and his equipment seemed to meet the guide’s approval. He was told at daylight he would be allowed to shoot his gun to make sure the zero had not been knocked out of alignment during travel.

After shooting his rifle the next morning and cleaning it again he and his guide got on a 4 wheeler and rode along an enlarged game trail for about 5 miles. They parked the 4 -wheeler and climbed up on a knoll where the guide laid a piece of water proof canvas out for them to lay or set on. The guide whispered to him we will watch this valley for the next 4 hours. They saw 3 grizzlies but they were small and did not come into Clark’s 225 yard range he had set for himself and the big 300 grain bullet he was using. They ate the sandwiches and drank the hot soup in the thermos bottles for lunch the camp cook had prepared for them. After lunch the guide whose name was Chintley said I have another place about a mile away but we will have to hike there. Clark just said OK. The same thing happened at that spot. Chintley said we will come back here at daylight tomorrow because the bears are really moving around.

Part 19

That evening Clark got to eat a bear steak cooked over wood coals and told Stanley this stuff is really good cooked this way. Stanley said yep it is the only way I like it. We will have the camp butcher cut as many steaks as he can get out of the meat and the rest made into fatty bear/moose big link spicy sausage. You have to cook the sausage over an outdoor fire on real low heat after you prick some holes in it to let the bear fat come out or boil it for at least 15 minutes with the skin pricked and fry it for a few minutes on low heat to crisp up the casing. It is pretty good on hard bread sandwiches with mustard. You must keep in mind that a lot of bear meat like pork has trichinosis in it and must be thoroughly cooked – that’s the reason for slow cooking a long time or boiling it to get the internal temperature of the steaks, roasts and sausage to at least 165 F.

The next morning Chintley whispered to Clark the bear you want is coming up that draw and it looks to be a really large one. Clark put the Leupold scope on the bear and said to himself wow I’ve never shot anything that big and vicious looking - He dialed the scope up to about 10 power and could see the fight claw scars on the bears snout and head. He forced the old first time hunt tremors from his body and waited for the bear to get closer. He looked over at the guide and saw Chintley had taken the safety off his rifle just in case Clark wounded the animal and it attacked them. Clark shot the grizzly from 125 yards away. The big slow moving 300 grain bullet hit the bear right where the heart and lungs were supposed to be. Clark had gotten the scope back on the bear and was amazed as he watched the front side of the huge bear cave in to what looked to him a foot sideways. The bear fell down like a freight train had hit it and never quivered. Chintley said now the work begins. He got on his radio and told the camp where he was. About 30 minutes later 3 fellows from the camp showed up to help skin the bear and salvage the meat. Chintley asked Clark if he wanted the head or claws. Clark said no I just want a squared off pelt to put in front of my fireplace.. Chintley said great that saves us a lot of work. Clark noticed they took the back straps out and put them in a large plastic bag. The bear was quartered and a game cart was used to haul the meat over to another 4 wheeler that had a tow along attached. Clark just thought to himself this is about as professional as anyone could get.

At camp Clark watched 4 people butcher the quarters and use a vac pack to put the cut up meat in. They dropped the meat in a 4 foot deep hole and covered that with a wooden top. Chintley said the meat will freeze in the perma frost hole and they can ship it back to Anchorage a little at a time to their freezers there to pack it in styro foam coolers and air freight it to you. Clark just said neat. Chintley told Clark you really have a trophy bear because my measurement showed the hide to be 9 feet and a few inches square.

Stanley came in after dark and said 5 of them had to use 2 pulleys and a come along to pull his gutted moose 15 feet up in a tree to keep the animals off it. They would process it in the morning. He told them he did not want the heart, liver or kidneys. 2 Indian guides placed them in a plastic bag and thanked him as they took the meat away.

Chintley said to Clark the next morning 7 or 8 miles away in another direction from the bear hunt near a swampy area you sure are lucky because I believe you will get a shot at a trophy moose in about 3 or 4 minutes. Of course this did not help calm Clark down after the huge bear he had shot yesterday. Clark shot the monster racked moose using the 225 grain bullet. The range on his and the guides rangefinder was 325 yards. The moose took 1 step before crumpling up on the ground. Clark’s moose was easy to process because they could drive the 4 wheeler right up to it. He told Chintley he would like just the 61 inch rack. Chintley said OK that will be easy we will cut and save the hair that covers the split we will make on the rack so we will be able to ship it. Clark and Stanley’s hunting trip was over because Stanley had shot his rather large grizzly the same day Clark killed his moose. They still had 11 days to kill before heading home. Chintley told both of them one of the streams nearby had steel head running in it and they were a good fish to freeze and eat later. For 2000 dollars cash under the table Chintley would take them to the small camp on the stream and use the aluminum boat with the jet ski powered motor on it to travel and fish the stream for the next 10 days. Stanley handed Chintley the 2000 bucks he looked at Clark and said you owe me and grinned. Chintley said I just happen to have 4 fishing poles and a dip net. Clark and Stanley both laughed because they had just been robbed but they did not care they were going fishing.

Chintley loaned Clark and Stanley a camp 300 Winchester magnum rifle because their rifles had already been shipped back. It was a little complicated because they had to send their plane ticket back with the small plane pilot to get copied and faxed to their home authorizing someone there to pick up the guns and meat from the airport. Chintley told them it was some obscure Alaskan law that required the outfitter to do that if the hunters stayed at the camp after they had used their hunt tag.

Clark and Stanley’s arms got a work out catching and releasing hundreds of 10 pound and larger steelhead fish. Chintley filleted 80 of the 10 pounders and gave them to the cook when he resupplied the fishing camp. Those fish were vac packed, frozen and sent back to Anchorage for shipment to Clark’s and Stanley’s home airport.

8 days later Clark said I am fished out. Stanley said OK we will catch the next plane out and go home

Part 20

They parted company at Seattle International and would make plans for an Africa hunt in a few months. Clark had a straight through jet plane to Baltimore MD and then a 2 prop engine ride to an airport close to his home town. The plane he was on landed in Kansas City MO. Rumors were running rampant about hi-jackers and quarantine. The captain made an announcement and stated everyone will be stuck here for 30 days in the air port quarantine section. Clark remembering what he and Stanley had talked about on the island had no intention of being forced to stay in a crowded room with 175 people by the government.

When Clark got on the plane he had walked through the weaponized aerosol spray and this was the 6th day and the 3rd time the spray had been used in passenger terminals and populated rush hour areas across the USA and the world. Illness and deaths were happening all over the country. He just happened to be on a plane when all air travel was being grounded and quarantines were being activated. The planes were grounded and directed to quarantine locations. The US government had no idea what was about to happen in the US or the world.

He knew the bathrooms would be checked but he thought there was just enough room under the cabin table in the stewardess lunch prep room for him to squeeze himself in and close the curtain. He waited till the stewardesses were busy at the end and front of the plane opening the exit doors and did just what he planned. He waited 45 minutes before he crawled out and saw the walkway tubes that connected the plane to the terminal were not there. The plane was empty now all he had to do was figure out how to get down the 20 some feet to the tarmac without breaking his legs. Well improvise he told himself. He tied three blankets together and then onto the bottom of the seat by the door and slid down to where he dropped the last 2 feet. He ran into a hangar and had 300 dollars in his hand. A black man was dumping suitcases onto a turntable.. He walked up not to close to him and said these are yours if you can get me off this airport and there are 3 more for you when we get off. He said go over to that bathroom. My one hour lunch break comes up in 5 minutes. Clark waited and 5 minutes later the man showed up with an airport logoed pull over jump suit and an airport ball cap. He was also wearing an N95 or N100 face mask.

The man said you ain’t gonna get out the entry gates they chekkin everybody. He told Clark to put on one of the flesh colored N-95 masks lying on the corner of the table before he came much closer. He said stick the other two in the jump suit pocket for spares. I know a sneaky way out but you will have to crawl about 20 yards under the fence and stay in the drainage ditch till you hit the high way. Do not go left that will take you into the real bad part of town. After you walk right on the highway for a few hundred yards take a left on this road it will take you into the city but it is a 9 or 10 mile hike. As Clark got out of the bed of the pick-up he dropped the 600 dollars through the passenger window, said thank you and remember you have not seen me. The man gave him a snappy salute and drove the airport truck back to the hangar. The black man was not a dummy – he picked the 100 dollar bills up with a pair of pliers and dropped the bills into some of the airport bathroom germ killer solution for 30 minutes before letting them dry out in a hidden part of the hangar.

Clark was walking on the highway still in the airport jump suit when a young guy stopped and asked him if he needed a ride. Clark said yes my truck broke down back there. If you can get me anywhere in the city I will be OK.

Clark thanked the man and got out on a bustling corner in downtown Kansas City. He stepped into an alley and took the dirty coveralls off and threw them in the alley dumpster. He thought a minute before he really made up his mind on what to do. Public transportation will probably be watched. He still had no idea what kind of germs or whatever it was they pulled a plane out of the air for. He looked at the big phone book hanging on of all wonders a public telephone. Looking at the phone book map he got oriented – next he looked for a motor cycle shop – he wrote that address down and then an army surplus store and then a gun store. He was pretty sure MO had a reciprocal gun carry agreement with WV. All of those places were many miles from where he was. He went into a restaurant and ordered a takeout meal and broke one of his hundred dollar bills. He had 14 thousand three hundred cash and change left – He thought back again and said to himself Stanley had come through again because the extra cash money he had was in those hidden sewed in pockets under his arm pits. He was afraid to use a credit card and was not sure about the Travelers’ checks so he was going to use just the cash.

Part 21

He caught a cab and went to the motor cycle shop - he knew exactly what he wanted. The first salesman asked him what he needed. Clark walked over to a dull green colored 250CC motor bike. He said I am going to pay cash for this bike and I want you to make some modifications on it for me. The salesman said yes sir if it can be done we will do it. Clark said show me the street tires that will fit this bike. Clark picked out 2 high dollar tires and asked the salesman if he was getting a discount because he was leaving the knobby tires with the dealer. The man said yes we will do that. Now I want you to put synthetic oil in the crank. I need a holder on each side that will carry a 5 gallon plastic gas can (4 gallon will be OK) and a carrier over the rear wheel. I am not going to put more then 70 pounds back there so it should not bother the handling of the bike. And I want a 3/4 size wind screen and a front carry rack. The salesman said that is easy what you want done. It will take a couple of hours. Clark told the salesman he would pay extra to have a mechanic go over the bike to make sure all the bolts were torqued down because he was soon going to use the bike for long distance rides on the highway. Clark said make me a sales ticket up and here is a 1000 dollars. Clark finally slowed down and looked at what he had bought –on-road/off road – kick/electric start - 75 mpg – water cooled – automatic transmission – adjustable suspension - 375 pound capacity - AM-FM-CD–CB Radio - top speed 80mph. He thought that is fast enough on the back roads I will be driving. I don’t want to push it over 65 mph on the super high ways. He went back to the salesman and told him to make sure there was a good quality anti-freeze in the radiator. He was told anti-freeze was installed at the factory and there was a 30 day temporary tag being put on as he spoke. The salesman also told him the out the door price with all the additions he wanted was 2400 dollars and that included taxes. Clark said that is fine.

He called a cab and said he would be back in a couple of hours. The gun store had no problem selling him a 6 shot 4 inch barrel 357 revolver after he showed his driver license and his WV concealed carry permit. 3 minutes later Clark assumed the man called the whoever gun dealers call to check on him - He bought 50 rounds of 180 grain jacketed hollow point bullets and 20 rounds of bird shot. He asked for a holster that would attach to a web belt with the 2 hooks and he got what he asked for. Looking around he found the Swiss army knives and replaced the one that was still in his suit case on the plane.

Next stop was the Army Navy surplus store. A web belt 2 canteens, case cover and cups – small 2 man stand up water resistant light weight tent with water proof floor – sleeping bag and foam pad for the bag - purification water pills, a 60 buck Katydin water filter, four 108 hour candles and gas siphon hose, something he saw he thought was so neat a compass with a thermometer alongside the compass – an extremely small folding shovel for toilet and fire holes - He asked the man where the closest grocery store was. The man said there is a super large one 2 doors down. Clark said I will be back to pick this up in a little while. He bought over the counter medicines, 30 count bottle of 1 a day vitamins, 60 lightweight packages of mix boiling water with meals, bag of 16 small apples (need some bowel roughage but I have no idea how or where I am going to carry them and it is cold enough outside they will stay good at least 3 weeks if I don’t let them freeze), dish soap, 4 dish rags, 4 pack toilet paper, 2 Bic lighters, two 30 count packs of small tootsie rolls, single instant coffee packs, small jar tang, tea bags, 1 lb bag of powdered sugar and small box creamer packages for the tea and coffee, one lb jar honey, one each 25 count chicken and beef bouillon cubes, box saltines, box vanilla wafers and a small tub of margarine for some grease to add to his mix water with meals, bottle of peroxide, tube of Neosporin, 4 pack 4 inch gauze pads, small box band-aids and a roll of gauze – after looking at the small pile of groceries he saw he was going to need a back pack. He would get that when he got back to the surplus store. He bought a pack of 30 gallon trash bags just to waterproof everything in his back pack and to cover his sleep bag and pad. He did not yet know it but he would use the trash bags to wash his outer garments and underwear.

When he got back to the surplus store he bought a medium size back pack, a 24 inch handle hatchet and a military GI mess kit. He knew he had forgotten something but he could live for at least a month with what he had if he was near water. He had gone to the library and downloaded map quest directions and then got directions to by pass all the cities. He had 20 sheets of paper when he was done. Next stop was a gas station to get a current local map. The only map he was interested in was the one on how to get out of the city on secondary roads. He did not turn his radio on till he was well away from the city and then did not have to pay such close attention to vehicle traffic.

He was somewhere on the other side of Independence about 20 miles from Buckner on route 24 when he rode off the highway into the woods for the night.

He was fortunate there was a small quick moving creek where he stopped. His canteens were currently full but he would be able to refill them in the morning from the creek. He had called Inez from the city and told her not to worry about him for a few months and make sure she picked up the guns and meat at the airport - She said she already had done that and stored everything away. He could not get hold of Stanley.

That night he listened to the news and found out he was a carrier of an unknown bacteria or virus. He was told not to come into contact with people for 23 days and if he wanted to make contact he would have to go to a quarantine site. He lay there and cussed and cussed and cussed. He definitely was not going to turn himself in to be locked up forever by some government idiots. He had enough food for 30 days so he would stay right here out of sight of civilization and ride this what ever it was out. Stanley had told him after the island survival that several different anti biotic should be stored in their pack and showed him the site from where to order the anti biotic without a prescription. Clark decided not to take any right now till he found out more information.

[Lbox88]

Part 22

3 days later he still had not found out much information. He built his fire ring a little higher on the tent door side knowing the rocks would get hot and radiate some heat into his tent He just thought I can do 20 more days camped out here standing on my head if it doesn’t get too cold. He decided to dig a 2 or 3 foot deep hole to use for his toilet. He lucked out and found two 4 or 5 inch thick Y branches that he cut to 5 or so feet long and dug a 2 or so foot hole for each of the logs leveling them off as he dug on each side of the toilet hole. Next he found a 4 inch log he had to cut off 7 or so feet to fit the 2 Y branches and that would be his toilet stool so he wouldn’t have to squat every time he had to use the toilet. He wished he had 2 more Y branches but he didn’t find any and he was not going to chop a bunch of trees down to make a perfect toilet. More information was put out on the 8th day about weaponized anthrax, smallpox and monkey pox. The announcer said there was not enough smallpox vaccine in the world to vaccinate all the people in the US. Clark and Inez were going to be two of the lucky ones. All military people going to the Middle East and Korea were still vaccinated against smallpox and anthrax. The only people vaccinated against monkey pox were virologists who worked with the virus and that number was extremely small. Not counting the prisoners in South America who were tested with the vaccine virtually no one was vaccinated against all 3 of the diseases. The CDC only had enough of the triple vaccine to do 298 people. And you can bet your life street corner Joe Blow was not going to get vaccinated.

It took 642 people in the US to do an extreme amount of contamination at the airports and cities. After they had sprayed empty their large shaving can over top of the departing and boarding crowds they moved to the cities and did the same thing on the crowded streets during rush hour. They did this every other day 3 times. The once extinct virulent Smallpox Virus was again loose and raging through the general population of the continental US and the world.

Clark got deathly sick on the 12th day – fever – chills - vomiting – head and body ache – nausea. He had been listening to the news broadcasts for 4 days straight and someone somewhere had decided to throw out all the information people needed to help themselves. He knew on the 15th day he should start on the Amoxicillin to keep from getting pneumonia. It had gotten colder and the 20 degree sleep bag was just enough to keep him warm. He had hung the remaining apples in the bag up near the top of the tent to keep them from freezing and they were still fairly hard and juicy when he ate one. He did not know that the vaccination was the main thing keeping him alive. The Monkey Pox vaccine he had been given was barely enough to fight off that Pox and that was what was giving him difficulty getting well. The amoxicillin, zithromax, toothpaste, toothbrush and dental floss were all that was in the fanny pack and the anti biotic may have helped with the lung problems. He made sure that he did not carry the fish hooks or anything metal in his fanny pack before he boarded the plane. The metal stuff all went into his shipped luggage. There were 75 or 80 pustules on both of his legs and after looking at them he thought he was going to die but they did not travel any higher. In other words he was slightly infected but the vaccine was fighting off the disease.

He forced himself to eat a mix hot water with meal pack every day if he was able. The mix water with meals was 3 varieties, chicken noodle, beef noodle, ham and peas. The hatchet was not quite what he would have chosen to chop firewood to keep warm in the winter but it was weighty enough to chop 4 inch dead and partially dead trees down that he burned into pieces instead of trying to have a wood pile. He tried to keep a small fire burning by the tent flap door 16 to 24 hours a day to get some heat in the tent but some days he was just too sick to do that and he lay and shivered inside his sleep bag. The only time during that period he reluctantly got out of the bag was to use his toilet which fortunately was only 4 feet from the side of the tent and refill his canteen cups from the creek about 10 feet away on the other side of the tent and boil water for tea sweetened with a small dab from the 16 oz jar of honey or powdered sugar or a bouillon cube. If he could not start a fire to boil water or use the Katydin filter because he was too sick he would throw one of the water purification tablets into the 16 oz canteen cups he filled with creek water. He could not remember whether it was the 13th or 14th day that the noise from traffic on the highway came to a virtual stop. The four 108 hour candles were a virtual lifesaver when he was sick – they put out just enough heat in the half coffee can found by the creek he would stick a candle in to keep his hands and face warm during the long cold nights and days when he was unable to have a fire plus the candle gave a little light during the nights. Even though he had his plastic solar key chain light the air port screeners did not take. At times during his illness he thought the candle warmed the tent up but when he got well he knew that was a pipe dream.

He limited himself on the beef or chicken bullion cubes he had besides the tea and coffee because there were only 25 cubes in a bottle. The one pound box of crackers was holding up and he figured he had enough to last him till he could resupply. He had found if he put 3/4 cup of water in his canteen cup and tilted the cup over a little and real close to the 108 hour candle flame the water would get hot enough to make tea or dissolve a bouillon cube. This really helped when he was unable to do anything but make a toilet trip. The 5 pack of cheap throw a way razor blades would last him more then a month because one blade would last him 3 shaves and he only shaved every other day using the large bottle of Palmolive dish soap as lather. He also used the Palmolive dish soap to take a sponge soap bath using one of the dish rags to wash with and one to rinse off with in the tent when he had a good fire going near the door to heat the inside of the tent up and 2 full warm canteens of water did him fine whenever he took that type sponge bath.

He had thought the airport jump suit was such a great item that he bought two at the surplus store – a lightweight cotton work one and a insulated hooded waterproof one for riding the bike at the surplus store. This meant that his jeans and wool shirt would not get dirty and the only things he had to wash in the warmed up creek water in a trash bag were his socks, shorts, T-shirt and the jump suit when it got filthy. The wool glove inserts he put away because he figured he would really need them if and when he ever continued his motor bike ride. He tried not to wear out the leather outer gloves working around the campsite. It was a good thing the stainless spoon, butter knife and fork were in the GI mess kit because he had overlooked those 3 important items. He had been extremely fortunate where he left the highway because 35 yards off the roadway there was a huge oak tree that he set his tent under and the large limbs kept most of the sleet, spitting snow and rain off the tent and his small campfire.

Day 22 the pustules dried up and the scabs dropped off his legs without leaving any scars. The severe coughing and burning in his lungs had stopped. He continued to take the amoxicillin. When he was really sick during the 12th through 17th days he treated himself with the over the counter medicines – one day he took alka seltzer cough and cold – the next day he took thera flu and his last medicine other then the amoxicillin was bronkaid tablets.

Whoever had weaponized the smallpox virus had stripped out the 2 weak portions of the virus and only left the flat and hemorrhagic type which was usually 90 to100% fatal on non vaccinated people. The CDC had put out enough information about the disease to totally panic the entire USA and the world but it was to late too worry about people being upset when they were infected and had a more than 90% chance of dying.

Part 23

13 days after the virus had been released in the US the CDC saw the pattern and released the information to the military. It was really too late to do anything except comfort the infected people. Those that were sick had already infected their caretakers.

The military separated out the troops that had been vaccinated less then 3 years ago maybe 95% survivability chance if they did not get the monkey pox – 6 years ago 50% chance – 9 years ago 25% chance – anything more then 9 years your chances of surviving the virus were less then 15%.

This did not take into account the non-vaccinated people that the massive dose of anthrax released killed without anti biotic treatment in the first 7 days. The request for discharged soldiers that had been to the Middle East and Korea less then 3 years ago were recalled back to active duty to help with body disposal and hospital duties.

Clark was well enough to go home on the 28th day. The USA was a different place as he rode the secondary roads eastward. There were very few people out and all the stores were closed and no vehicle traffic. He just would have enough gas to get home unless he siphoned some gas from the many cars he saw parked in the small and large towns that was the main reason he bought the siphon hose to steal gas if the police were watching the gas stations. 10 gallons plus the 4 in the tank would give him about 980 miles travel. It was a little over 825 to his house. But he could knock a hundred miles off that if he got on the super highways. He would think about that tomorrow as he sped along at 40 to 50 MPH. He was not sure how much gas he had used when he was camped out because he always ran the engine to charge the battery for 10 minutes whenever he finished listening to the radio or just monitoring the CB listening to the truckers for as long as they were in range of his short antenna. He ran out of food on the day before getting home and had to shoot 2 rabbits luckily mostly in the head with the 357 birdshot from 8 feet away along side the roadway to tide him over. He knew he could get home without shooting the rabbits but his stomach was sending big hunger pangs out and rumbling so much he could not keep his mind on handling the motor bike and was afraid his inattention while going 45 mph would cause him to wreck and severely injure his body.

The major population centers in India, Pakistan, Beijing, NY, Los Angeles, Denver, Stalingrad, Buenos Aires and a hundred other cities never had a chance. The warning from the CDC was 7 days too late. Smallpox spread like wild fire against un-vaccinated people.

China was crushed its population was down 97%. The only people in China who had not been infected were the people in the sterile rooms that had control of its nuclear launch weapons and the lone farmstead that did not have contact with other people. These military people in the sterile rooms were supposed to be changed out every 30 days but when they saw what was going on in the rest of the world and their own cities. They maintained 100% lock down security. 3 weeks into their lock down period final authenticated orders came from the high command to launch in 2 weeks against Russia because that was the only place in the world that had the Smallpox virus stored and weaponized.

Russia, the US and China all had similar sterile airtight facilities for the military to control the launch of the nuclear arsenal which had remained on alert status.

China launched on Russia just when Russia thought the epidemic was over. The surviving Russians thought China and the rest of the world were launching on them. They launched all of their missiles towards their designated targets of which the US was one. The US monitors at the locked down Cheyenne Mountain passed the word to the missile fields what was going on. Of course the USA launched everything they had which was not a small amount of missiles. WW111 started and ended with world wide destruction and mega dosages of radiation that killed more than 40% of the red blooded animals roaming the earth not counting the human devastation.

Clark had been home 2 days when the nuclear weapons started going off. He and a 20 pound lighter Inez headed to the bomb shelter when the radiation detector went off in the kitchen.
________________________________________

Part 24

He found out Inez like him had almost died from the sickness. But she had slowly recovered and had not taken any anti biotic even though she knew she could use what the veterinarian had given her for the cows. She had taken alka-seltzer cold and cough medicine for 5 days to help with the severe lung and cough problems. She had not received a heavy dose of the combined virus like Clark and Stanley had she had just picked it up from someone in the airport who was sneezing and contagious while picking up the frozen meat, fish and guns.

The farm did not get much radiation as it was not near any high value military target. The worst fallout was from the west to east winds that blew the radiation over the farm on out into the Atlantic.

The radiation meter never went over 7 Roentgens so Clark did not think it would be long before he left the shelter. When it went to 2 Roentgens he put on one of the Tyvek suits and checked on the automatic feeders and waterers for the cows and chickens. Everything was working fine but the automatic cow manure remover was not working as advertised. He spent an hour in the less than 1 R barn cleaning everything and had to use the high pressure hose to clean the cows hooves and the 5/8 inch mine belt that the automatic pusher slid over to dump the manure into the grate where it was washed out to one of the 2 small settling ponds. The chickens were fine in their metal roofed cinder block building – he spray washed the chicken’s concrete floor before he busted the eggs onto the floor to give the chickens some different food including the egg shell calcium.

Inez talked a lot during their forced shelter time. Clark was glad she was with him. He was beginning to take a real liking to this young intelligent girl. They talked about the information they heard previously broadcast from the CDC. She said I do not believe I was ever vaccinated against smallpox and Clark said I know I wasn’t because if I remember correctly the last case of smallpox was eradicated in 1977 or 1979 before I was born. Since neither of them were scientists they wildly speculated on why they were immune. Inez said I think the anthrax vaccination had something to do with it. Clark disagreed with that – eventually they talked about other things. Neither of them would ever find out they had been accidentally vaccinated against the 3 diseases when they got the anthrax treatment.

Stanley had gone over a lot of things that would make a shelter stay not so dull. One was the small 30 foot shooting area for the pellet pistols and rifles. Clark could hold his own with the pistols but when it came to rifle shooting Inez had him beat hands down. He swore she cheated on one competition shoot when he could only find one hole in her target on the X. He accused her of shooting the other 4 pellets somewhere else. She laughed at him and just said you are jealous. Of course she was right.

Board games including chess and checkers got old quickly but the shooting never did and they practiced and competed constantly.

The day finally came when the outside radiation had subsided back to background levels. They left the shelter and vacuumed every part of the house the end of the vac hose could reach and set the vacuum cleaner out in the barn after dumping and washing out the dust container and throwing all the filters in the vac cleaner in the garbage. He would check the vac cleaner in a week or so to see if there was any radiation in it. The portable radiation detectors showed no significant radiation on the ground in the 30 or so places he checked so the animals were released to walk around the frozen barren ground. Clark figured they were in between snow storms and he was right.

They talked and wondered if Stanley had survived and if he had - Was he doing OK?

Stanley had been sprayed as he walked down the concourse with Clark. He had been quarantined at the Montana Billings Logan International Airport with the 67 passengers on his air plane. He like the rest of the passengers in quarantine were not told of what type of disease they were supposed to have been contaminated with. This was a typical government ploy to keep the masses from panicking. The quarantine monitors did let out a rumor that it was a highly infectious type of influenza. If Stanley had been told about the anthrax he would have immediately started taking the Cipro he had. Then just maybe he would have been one of the less than 10% that survived the smallpox and monkey pox infection. But Stanley died 8 days later from the anthrax he had inhaled at the airport.

Inez said I guess college is out for the next 75 years. Clark laughed and said I do believe you are right. He said hopefully we will find some smart people who can teach us things we will need to know in the coming years.


Clark told Inez we should check the small towns and the city out to see how many survived. She said OK I will take the old 30-06 with armor piercing bullets and you take one of the AR-15’s. He laughed and said planning on starting a war. She said no but I want to finish one if it does start. She continued with no I don’t want to end a war I want to make sure no one follows us home if we do run into bad people I can eliminate their engine with these armor piercing bullets. Clark thought to himself she must have talked to Stanley more than I thought.

She said are we going to pick anything up on this trip? He said no this is just a search to see if any people are around. We have enough supplies for several more years but we will soon have to get some hay and probably some chicken feed. She said you should put on the list some hog feed if we capture or trap one we will want to fatten it up before we slaughter it. He said good thinking.

They would see no one alive on this trip. The uninfected survivalists living in the deep woods would not come out for at least 6 more months to make sure the virus was gone. Most of the survivors were several hundred miles south – west and north of them away from the nuclear bombed cities. Most of the survivors were military people that had been vaccinated within the past 3 years.

End Section 1