Clark Stories

[Lbox88]

Part 9

The garden was plowed. Some more reading and fertilizer was mentioned. Ah chit, now I need cow chit. He thought that was so funny he laughed out loud. May as well buy it; it will be a heckuva lot less work than shoveling it up in truck and shoveling it off. He went to Lowes and low and behold the fellow worker that he had absconded with the electrical wire from the prison job was working in the load up of outdoor supplies (mainly cow manure). He had a talk with him and found out a lot of things about fertilizer. His friend told him to buy 10 bags of cow manure and 2 bags of 10-10-10 pellet fertilizer and park his truck where it was behind the large pile of fertilizer. When he left his truck was down on the overload springs and wobbled on the road as he was going home – He had 30 bags of cow manure and 10 bags of 10-10-10 pellets and was told to come back at 2 PM tomorrow for another load. On the 3rd day of buying 32 dollars worth of fertilizer – his friend had loaded him up with enough fertilizer to keep his 50 X 50 foot garden fertilized for 20 or more years. One other thing he learned from his friend was to have a no weed garden - some rolls of 4 or 6 mill black plastic or that black rubberized garden covering with the holes in it to let water run through it would be well worth buying. His friend told him there was a large tree and plant nursery that had went out of business on a mountain top 12 or so miles from where they now stood and it would be in his best interest to go see if any thing was left lying around. Clark went there and found that everything had already been stolen except for the high dollar black ground covering. There was enough to cover a 500 foot by 500 foot garden. He started rolling it up and found it was awfully heavy and he could not lift it on the truck by himself. He had to go home and bring some strapping, his come-a-long and a few 2 by 6’s. He finally got 3 rolls on the truck, dropped it off at his place and got 3 more rolls. After he rolled them out on his garden he found they were 25 X 60 feet. So after researching the life span of this microscopic holed rubbery stuff he found it was good for at least 7 or 8 years if it was rolled up at the end of the gardening season and stored out of the weather. He had to build onto the end of his wood shed 40 more feet to put the cow manure and the ground covering under. The 30 bags of 10-10-10 were put in his shed up on a pallet to keep it dry.

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Part 10

He got to thinking about his 2 boys and if he would ever get to see them again. Two bunk beds were bought for the shelter and a bunch of little guy stuff. His finances were at 16400 now and he needed some work to keep from completely depleting his survival cash. Since he had moved in full time and put the sign on the locked gate – I am home – Blow Horn. He had seen no one on his property. He could leave now and not worry about anyone stealing everything he owned. There had been a big fight over his snow machine and motor bike during the divorce. He simply lied to her and told her he had paid less then 400 dollars for the used motor bike and 250 dollars for the snow machine. He wrote a 325 dollar check and paid her for her half interest and took the 2 items before she could get an appraisal or have someone tell her how much they were really worth, he also told her to wait 4 days before she cashed the check because it was no good right now and he would deposit the money as soon as he finished this small job he had. She had no interest in his guns, tools or the pick-up truck. He had been using the motor bike more and more often because of the 75 MPG he got driving it. The trip to the day work center in the big city was 37 miles. He got there early and found on-street parking close. He signed up at 1 minute till 8 am and was quickly called out for a 4 day rough in carpenter and dry wall work. Of course he did not make 20 dollars an hour any more and his work would reflect the lowered wages. He cleared 360 dollars for those four 10 hour days work at 9 bucks an hour and it was all clear money since it was a cash job. He picked up some luxury items, he laughed at that thought as he bought some ground chuck, a stick of pepperoni, a box of fresh crackers and a loaf of sliced bread. He had the ingredients to make mayonnaise, in addition to the free packs from fast food places: tomatoes on the vine and leaf lettuce growing. Those 4 items cost him about 13 bucks. He just shook his head at the store receipt. He was glad he had stocked up with long term items when he was making plenty of money.

Part 11

On a hunch he stopped at Lowes and asked his friend about DC fridges and freezers for really cheap prices. His friend told him I can probably steal them for you but that would put my job in jeopardy. He told Clark to go see one of his drinking buddies, a refrigerator repairman and make sure you tell him I sent you. The place was really hard to find about 5 miles up one of those WV hollows on a sometime 1 lane paved blacktop and sometime gravel section of winding mountainous road. He almost missed the small sign that said minnows for sale. Clark had been told that the repairman had a small bait business when times were slow.

Clark tooted his small motor bike horn and a jolly fat man with thinning blonde hair came out the back of a run down house that was about 4 inches from a creek running on one side of the building. They talked for a bit and the man whose name was Billy Mason told Clark he had just what he wanted and had fixed both of the DC items several months ago. Alas, he said no one wanted them and he had been stuck with the parts he had had to buy.

Clark saw that Billy was a talker and was looking for a good horse trade. So Clark asked him about the fishing and hunting and listened to a whole bunch of lies. He finally got around to asking again about the 2 items and would like to look at them. Billy launched off into another fishing story and Clark just leaned back in the old white 6 dollar plastic outdoor chair. He had nothing else to do so he may as well bargain as best he could. Finally after 2 hours Billy led him down some old rickety wooden steps that were almost rotted through to the side basement door. Billy walked over to a dusty almost full size green refrigerator. He pulled the chain that turned on a 15 watt incandescent light bulb and looked around for a few minutes till he found his AC-DC converter. He was humming the song – The Saints Go Marching In - as he plugged the fridge into the converter. The indoor fridge light came on and he heard the compressor kick on and had to listen very carefully to hear it run. Billy hung a thermometer on the rack and shut the door. He then rambled on about hellgrammites and how hard they were getting to find. The good bank fisherman used them for bass and would not use anything else.

Billy asked Clark to walk back outside for a few minutes while the fridge cooled down. Billy had not stopped talking and walked Clark over to a large Catalpa Tree; Clark had always called them Indian Cigar Trees. Billy had a bright grin on his face as he pulled 5 or 6 green worms off the tree and dropped them in a baggie he conveniently pulled out of a bulging shirt pocket full of things of which Clark had no idea. He explained to Clark that he got a dollar each for these Catalpa worms because there was nothing a catfish liked better. He continued on about the irresistible smell to catfish that they emitted. He just said I freeze each one in a baggie for when the weather cools down a little bit and the catfish fishermen come out to do their night time fishing.

There had not been a mention of price yet as they walked back into the basement 45 minutes later. The thermometer said 36 degrees. He unplugged the fridge and plugged in a DC chest type freezer and raised the lid and Clark saw the light was on, but he did not hear the compressor. Billy said it takes about 5 seconds for this compressor to come on and it did. It also could not be heard over 3 or 4 feet away from the freezer. Another trip outside and Billy opened up a big homemade shed that had four 30 gallon plastic trash cans with the lids off. It was corn mash and Billy tested the contents with a glass alcohol tube tester and said tomorrow I can make another batch. Clark saw the still and saw that the creek water ran through a pipe into a bucket the coils were sitting in to cool them down to condense the moonshine alcohol. He pulled a pint bottle off the shelf and handed it to Clark to taste it. Clark had drunk moonshine before and knew exactly what was going to happen and it did. It burned going in and all the way down and his eyes watered a bit. He knew that Billy wanted to sell him a bottle or 2 and if he had to buy a gallon he would if the price was right on the fridge and freezer. Billy took a drink and coughed and rubbed his eyes and said what Clark expected him to say. That sure is some smooth stuff I make. Of course Clark agreed with him.

The bargaining began - Billy said I got 750 dollars worth of parts and probably 500 dollars worth of labor fixing them 2 machines up. Clark knew that was a flat out lie and hemmed and hawed around saying that was so far out of his finances that maybe he would just buy a bottle or two of shine and think about that big price. He did say I could probably borrow 750 bucks but he didn’t think he could get it for 2 days. Billy said well if you could get 850 bucks I think I could let those 2 items go. Clark knew those 2 items were probably worth 4500 dollars and he knew Billy knew what they were worth. 850 bucks was a steal. Clark stuttered a bit and asked for another drink of that smooth drinkin corn liquor and Billy beamed. He said I could probably throw in a gallon of that there smooth stuff for 850. Clark didn’t say anything for a few minutes. He told Billy well that would be a great deal, but he would have to go to the bank in the morning and try to borrow the money. He also knew Billy knew he was lying, but that’s the way things work in horse trading.

Part 12.

3 days later the fridge and freezer were hooked up and running in Clark’s basement shelter. He killed a deer that night, cut it up, stored it in freezer bags and froze it. He saw that he could get 5 more deer in there, but he wanted some cow meat and that was going to be expensive or maybe he could buy a half one from one of the farmers in the next county. He put that on his list of things to do. He also wrote down to get some pork to mix with the deer meat for sausage and to make some hamburger mixed meat for spaghetti sauce and chili.

He got another job that lasted 15 days and his finances were back to almost normal again. He had been talking with some of the workers waiting for jobs at the job center and found out 2 places that sold pork and beef for about a dollar a pound for a half uncut carcass. The pigs will have been scalded and scrubbed so they just needed some butchering.

Clark thought he could handle the beef but was not sure about the pork. He stopped at the library and read about pork butchering and saw it would be a lot of work but he thought he could do it. He made 3 pages of notes and used the Xerox machine to make a copy of the cuts and locations for both the pork and beef. He went home and did 3 things before he ventured off to buy the meat. He built a large log butcher table, he had to fire the generator up to power the power saws and electric planer to smooth the top of the table. He would let the sun do its thing on the bolted/glued together maple table top and if he needed to smooth it he could use the plane again. The table was heavy and he built it close to the creek so he could wash away the blood. The next thing was an overhead beam to hang any future meat including what he was planning on buying/killing to hang and age it during cool weather.

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Part 13.

He had put off digging his root cellar for a long time and that was the 3rd thing he did. The potatoes and other root crops would soon be ready and he did not want to lose any of them. He had a set of plans for a long lasting one and had gathered the material for a long time. So he checked the weather and started digging the hole in the side of the mountain. He was not going to mess around and would make this a big hole 16 X 16 X 7 feet 2 inches high. The new copper treated 8 foot rail road ties he had surreptitiously midnight requisitioned for the last 2 years were stacked right beside where he was digging. He was lucky he did not run into any sandstone or boulders while digging this huge root cellar.

The center, middle, doorway and corner ties would have to be cemented in to hold the structure together and hold the door up, the floor was pitched 5 degrees to let any water that may get in drain out through 2 two inch 8 inch long galvanized pipes with a threaded plastic cap on the inside to keep mice out that could be removed if necessary. While he was installing the pipe drains he went ahead and put a aluminum screen and covered that with a heavy mesh screen on the outside to keep any bugs or rodents from making a nest in the pipes. Clark did not think it would ever leak; he had planned this for over a year and found some mistakes he would have made if he had not planned long and hard. He had looked for the materials and bought a lot really cheap from the junkyard, the railroad ties were free and picked up beside the tracks after dark. The most expensive item was the 4 foot wide roll aluminum that would cover the inside roof and inside walls. All the materials to build the root cellar cost about 350 dollars and the money was spent over a 2 year period. He was going to buy those 6 inch L straps until he found the 300 feet of 2 inch by 3/8 inch metal strapping at the junk yard that would tie all the upright and overhead ties together. He did have to buy the 4 inch lag bolts at 18 cents each. He had bought over 300 of them.

The auger on the back hoe was used to drill the 10 inch holes for the 8 foot ties and the backhoe shovel was used to lift each one into place. The job of standing each one up took 3 days. He did not do the front because that would interfere with him using the back hoe shovel to put the top roof-ties on. The small drill press was used to drill the holes in the metal strapping and that was a pain in the butt job. He had to use his electric drill to run the 3 inch lag bolts in – His battery drill started smoking after 3 screws were put in.

Finally 18 days later the hardest job he had ever done in his life by himself was finished except for the big heavy insulated door he had not yet made. The aluminum was up covering the inside walls and ceiling the shelving was in and the 3 inches of gravel and sand covered 60% of the floor, the other 40% was covered with oak planks and a partition put up for different vegetables that needed a somewhat drier environment. There was 5 feet of dirt covering the roof, 6 inches of that was top soil and it was flush with the rest of the mountain he had dug out He had enough left over dirt to pile it up 3 feet deep on both sides of the door he was going to make. He used some more grass seed to cover that dirt to hold it together from the rains and winter snow

He used one of the two 10 pound bags of grass seed that he had found burst on the floor at Lowes and bought both of them for a dollar each. He checked the 2 lights he had installed to keep the place from maybe freezing in the winter and wondered whether he should use a 40 or 60 watt bulb to put a little heat in the place. Lots of information he had to look up.

A trip to the next county over where the beef and hogs were for sale was made 2 days after he finished the root cellar door. He drove home with a side of beef and a whole 300 pound pig that had been cut in half. The total was 750 dollars. He pulled up beside his meat block and using a come-a-long pulled the half beef out of the cardboard box up onto the over head rack he had made and then slowly dropped it onto the butcher block. The beef was in a large walk in cooler when he picked it up and he was assured it had been hanging for 4 days and was reasonably aged for the price he was paying. No mention was made as to whether the beef had been grain fed. He was not too worried about it.

The weather was in the lower 70’s and he knew he had to get it in the freezer fast. He cut the beef into 10 sections that were light enough for him to manage and put each part in a trash bag, and put it in his freezer. The hog was done the same way. 3 hours later he started to butcher a section at a time and then wrap each cut up part in saran wrap and then each part was put in a quart or gallon freezer bag. He had a whole box of computer address sticky back labels. As he put a part in a freezer bag he wrote on the label what part it was and put the label on the saran wrap inside the freezer bag so it would not fall off. Making sausage and hamburger would come later as he had the time to do it.

6 hours later he cleaned his mess up and decided it would take him several days to do all that butchering. He would take a frozen part out and let it thaw in the fridge enough to where he could cut it up. 9 days later his freezer door had to have a cinderblock put on it to keep it shut but he was done with butchering.

He kind of thought he had overdone it on potatoes as he had about 200 pounds stored in plastic milk crates with dividers in them. He canned and dehydrated about a hundred and fifty pounds of tomatoes. A double 25 foot row of carrots almost overwhelmed him. Flat Italian Roma and Kentucky Wonder string less green beans were running out of his ears. The 2 kinds of squash were also put in the root cellar also in milk crates. He always wondered whether the milk man missed the 100 crates he had taken from behind Kroger’s. He needed another freezer to put blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries in. He had already dehydrated all of the berries and stored them in mason jars. He also dehydrated most of the peppers except for the ones he canned with tomatoes. There were other garden items he refused to think about like onions which went into the root cellar but he left a lot in the ground thinking they would grow bigger for next year He said to himself I sure ain’t a farmer. From the surrounding mountains he picked 6 bushels of 2 different kinds of apples and 4 bushels of pears and stored them in the root cellar which was now holding a temperature of 48 degrees F until he opened the door and it went up into the upper 50’s really fast. He did not think the peaches would last long so he only picked a bushel. If he had time he would experiment making peach jellies or jams. There was just not time enough to dehydrate or can all the fruit. He thought it was a good thing he did not have anything but chickens because if he had other live stock they would probably die because he did not have the time to take care of any thing extra. He wondered who had planted all those fruit and nut trees on the mountains. The trees were mature and had to be 25 or more years old. The birds beat him to all the cherries on two 60 or so foot tall trees.

He gathered 6 five gallon buckets of walnuts and spread them out on the large gravel section beside the cinder block house to dry out so he could remove the outer husk He decided 2 buckets of hickory nuts this year was enough he thought if he had a road side vegetable stand at one of the farmers markets he could make a good bit of money on the apples, pears and nuts. The half bucket of chestnuts he bagged up and stored in the fridge to keep the worms from hatching out in a lot of them. He was not much of a chestnut person – But he did like them baked in the oven a few times in the winter. He knew there were all kinds of things he could do with them but that was for another time.

Part 14.

His real cheap 10 buck Family Dollar cell phone rang the afternoon 4 days after the garden work, fruit and nut gathering escapade, it was the job center and they told him there was a 30 day job waiting for him at a location, he thanked them and went to bed at 6 pm. He slept till 6 am and felt ready for a different kind of job. He had checked his mail that evening and saw he had a registered letter. The post office was still open so he retrieved the letter. It was from the WV Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The letter stated that if he did not catch up on his child support payments his driving privileges would be suspended until said payments were caught up. That just upset him to no end. He remembered leaving his drivers license on the judge’s desk and had never bothered to get a replacement. Just some more BS to worry about; he threw the letter in the post office trash and went about his business.

He had just finished the 12th day on that job and was driving by his old house on the way home to see if he could get a glimpse of his 2 boys. He had just passed the place and saw they were in the school playground on the swings. May as well say Hi to them he thought. He had just got out of his pick-up when his Nuke Alert started chirping. Holy chit he said. He grabbed both boys by the arm and threw them in the truck cab and told them not to say one word. I will explain in a little bit. The big 25 year old diesel truck started picking up speed headed for his place which was 35 minutes away. The chirping was sporadic now but it was still a steady sound. He told them to roll the window up. He dodged around 30 or so automobiles that had stopped in the roadway, some of the men had raised the hood on the vehicles and were looking at their engine. He was going to have them use their T-shirts as a fallout protector while running into the shelter because he had no idea if the nuclear burst was near and alpha, beta or gamma particles were in the air.. He had them throw their T-Shirts away as soon as they got into the entry door. He used the pulley to slowly drop the door and stopped it halfway down and read the Nuke Alert warning chirp sound instructions. He had time according to what he had read. He told the boys to go sit on the bunk beds.

The rooster went in one empty burlap hundred pound feed bag and the 4 hens went in the other. He ran to the overhang coops and threw them in their respective coops, turned the water on and hit the release on the automatic feeder which slashed the bottom of the commercial grade 55 gallon trash bag the previously frozen sterilized chicken feed was in and turned the light on under the water trough. He closed and latched the tightly sealed heavy log door which would insure no predators got in and hopefully wind blown radiation was kept out and as he was running back the chirping on his nuke alert key ring detector picked up to an almost machine gun chatter. He threw his clothes out behind him and lowered the dirt covered metal door down. Shut the inside 2 inch thick steel door (bought from a prison auction as left over material) and took a quick shower. He told the boys to take a shower and put their pants in a plastic bag.

They did not have any clothes to wear - He gave each one of them a pull over cotton sweater and decided they could keep their shoes, socks and under shorts. He did not turn his radio on but did turn on the outside radiation meter. It was horrible. The radiation had maxed out his detector. He turned the detector off and started talking to the boys. He asked if they knew about atomic bombs and radiation. Both of them nodded their heads in the affirmative. This will be easy then he thought. The boys’ names were Cameron who was 11 and David, 9. The radiation meter was again turned on and he showed each of them on the meter where people would die. David was 9 and he asked the question. Will Mommy die? Clark just said I don’t know which was a bald-faced lie. If she had not found shelter 20 or 30 minutes ago she was definitely going to die. He told them we will wait until this meter is here and he showed them the 0 mark, then we will take you back home. It will be safe then. They said OK.

There is no part 15 - i made a numbering error

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Part 16.

Their little guy toys he had bought were brought out and the small amount of movies and games he had were available for them on the DVD player. He got to know his kids again and he was as happy as a tweeting bird.

The first night in the shelter he lay awake and thought back to all the bad or hard times his ex had given him when he visited the boys – She even had him arrested twice while he was talking to the boys in front of his former house. The family court judge would not budge on his once a month 4 hour supervised visit. He was at his wits end and had no where else to turn – He threw himself into his work and maintaining his little survival place hoping that someday things would be right again.

The spaghetti sauce with the deer meat he made did not go over to well but for some reason they loved the chili. The number 10 can with powdered cheese was opened and macaroni and cheese became a regular meal. They also did not care too much for the powdered milk until he put a drop of vanilla in it and once a week added a little bit of canned carnation milk to it. He had to make biscuits, pancakes and slice up the slab bacon he had had the butcher cut and wrap into 1 pound chunks, every morning. The powdered scrambled eggs had to have bacon bits sprinkled on them before they would eat all of them. He got the evil eye look when he made them brush and floss after every meal. They had to be told there were no more dentists close by and people die because of rotted teeth and gums. That got their attention. There were 2 bottles of 500 count generic one a day vitamins in the freezer and he made sure they all took one. The milkshakes he made with honey and powdered milk was so so until he added some chocolate syrup. They saw the 6 gallon bucket was full of honey and that went on their biscuits and pancakes every day. He knew if they had command of cuss words he would be cussed when he made them eat canned spinach. They would not under any circumstances eat the Kipper snacks or sardines. The Spam had to be fried crisp before they would eat it. It was a learning experience for all of them and he enjoyed every second of it. The boys thinking about him did a 180 degree turn and they were a family again. They did all the manly things a Dad and his kids were supposed to do like wrestling on the floor and tickling each other till tears came out of their eyes. They even played Army and Cowboys and Indians acting like they were riding a horse and pantomiming shooting each other. One afternoon he showed them how to make 3 minute chocolate cake in a coffee mug with pecans and chocolate chips. That was a mistake. He always knew when they were making it – They had to grind 4 tblspns flour and he could hear them turning the crank on the grinder. Cameron had written down the recipe while Clark was making it the 1st time. Clark got up and looked at the recipe – 4tblspn pln flur – 4 tblspn sugar – 2 tblspn coco – rehydrt 1 tspn egg pwdr – 3 tblspn milk – 3 tblspn oil – 3 tblspn choc chips – 2 tblspn pcans – 1 drop vnilla – mix up really good – microwave for 3 minutes. He told them it was OK to make 1 cake a day as long as they brushed their teeth right after eating it – They had that little boy grin like you had just given them a new bicycle.

[Lbox88]

Part 17.

29 days later he began to wonder if the radiation was ever going to get down to a safe level.

The 35th day the place felt stuffy and he noticed there was no air moving around. Do not panic he told himself. He checked the exit exhaust DC fan and saw it was running fine. The air intake DC fan near the front door was not turning. The first failure he thought. He pulled a spare fan down which was taped over top of it, got a screwdriver from his tool box and changed the fan out. Making a note on the fridge door and sticking it there with the magnetic strips. The note said check DC fans every 4 hours while awake. There were 4 fans in the shelter. He had an air intake and exhaust in the main section with the exhaust over the propane stove and the same in the generator room – The generator exhaust was ducted into a 4 inch galvanized pipe that went out 8 feet underground on a slightly upward sloped incline that was about 10 feet long and then up 8 feet with a flapper on the top to keep (hopefully radiation) and water out right below the flapper on the 4 inch galvanized exhaust pipe were 8 drilled and separated ¼ inch holes for exhaust in case the flapper failed to open. That was the only way he could figure out how to do it without spending many extra thousands of dollars that he didn’t have. It worked because everyday he tested for radiation around the exhaust system of the generator and the needle never moved. The gen room was separated from the main area by a steel airtight door. The 6200 watt Lister diesel generator only kicked on when the 660 watt DC microwave or Lemair motor home sized washer were running or to recharge the thirty two 200 amp hour 6 volt golf cart batteries, this meant that his 4800 watt solar array was doing an outstanding job of keeping the batteries charged. The DC fridge and DC freezer drew less then 300 watts a day. The overhead lights were all 1, 3, 5 or 9 LED which hardly registered on the meter when they were on. The DC fans also hardly register on his meter. All the appliances were connected to the battery bank panel with 10 gauge wire and a 500 watt inverter easily handled the small AC washer. The DC microwave was seldom used and only for 3 or 4 minutes at a time to insure the battery bank did not discharge more than the recommended 20%.

It was on day 71 they could leave the shelter. There had been many rain storms that washed away the ground and house radiation. He could find no hot spots with his detector and they walked up to the over hang to check on the chickens. He noticed there were about 90 or so eggs busted on the down slope. Just shells were left. The chickens were fine. He decided to leave them there for another week. He did rake and rinse the droppings out and used the water bucket to clean the area fairly well and left the log door open. David said let’s go get Mommy. Clark told them it may not be safe yet but he would go check on her and if she was home he would bring her. He made them lock the basement shelter door and stay inside for the next 3 or 4 hours until he returned.

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Part 18.

He looked under the seat of his pick-up and pulled his 357 six inch barrel revolver out and noted it was loaded – Checking behind the front seat he pulled his semi-auto 06 out of the case and slid a 10 round magazine into the well. Pulling 2 other magazines out of the glove box he leaned the rifle beside him on the seat, muzzle pointing up and strapped the pistol on to his web belt attached holster. Relocking the log gate chain, he headed out.

He saw no other moving autos or people as he headed to his former house where he had lived with the cheating woman for 10 or so years – It made him sad to think about it so he flung it out of his mind and thought about other things.

The house had that putrid smell of death when he opened the door. He had to back out and put one of his cotton masks on. It did not help much but it was enough to enable him to breathe without puking. They were both in the bathroom. She was lying beside the commode and his upper body was in the bathtub with his legs on the floor. Dried vomit was everywhere. He opened all the screened windows in the house and wrapped them in sheets. He had no idea where to put them and he surely did not want the boys to see this blackened shriveled thing that used to be their mom wrapped in a sheet.

He did not have much choice he put them in the back of his pick up and took them to his place. He parked the truck away from the house and told the boys the bad news.

Part 19.

Knowing what he was going to do was wrong he decided to do it anyway – It would make him feel better while he was alive – He may pay the consequences for it after he was dead – But he would worry about that when he was dead. He told the boys he had to get some wood and make coffins for his mom and her friend. Taking his portable screw gun, both charged batteries, an inverter that clamped on the truck battery, some 2 and 3 inch screws and a 6 inch Skil circular saw, he headed to Lowes.

He cut the locks on the bottom of the roll up doors leading into the lumber section and backed his truck up to a stack of ½ inch treated plywood.

He patted himself on the back after looking at 2 reasonably shaped coffins he had cut and screwed together – He put the boy’s mom in one and screwed the lid down on both coffins.

Next he stopped at the city sewage plant. Looking at all the raw sewage floating in the overflowing 6 foot deep concrete vat, he flung the naked body of Carl (he thought his name was Carl) into the raw sewage. He said a few words over the final resting place of Carl but they cannot be repeated because a lightning bolt may strike him dead.

He grinned all the way home justifying his actions to himself. He kept saying over and over again – that will teach you to take a man’s wife and his boys away from him.

He would dig a grave for his ex wife and the empty coffin down the mountain side and bury them on his property. He had the boys help him make 2 big crosses and used his propane torch to burn their names on the wood. He made her cross out of Oak and the one for Carl from pine. He would eventually get a stone marker from a monument place and etch her name into the marble; he had no intentions of doing anything for the empty coffin grave. The holes had been dug and the body and empty coffin had been lowered in them with the back hoe before he let the boys come see. He had no idea what they would do.

They just cried. He used the back hoe and covered the 6 foot deep holes. He then used a spade to smooth the area out and sprinkled some grass seed over the newly turned dirt. He asked them if they knew any prayers and if they did it would be OK to say them out loud because their Mom could hear them in Heaven. It was really sad as he heard them saying their little night time prayers to have God bless everyone. It choked him up badly.

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Part 20.

The next day he told the boys that life for them on earth would go on until God called them. It was about the most religious he had gotten in a really long time. He had brought back a few of their clothes and things he picked up as he looked the house over. They wanted to go home to either stay there or get some more of their things and look for some of their friends. He told them the house really smelled bad and they would have to take several buckets of water to clean the bathroom up. He also said it will be a long time before the bad smell leaves the house if it ever does. They started crying again.

There had been no radio announcements he could pick up on his shortwave receiver while hunkered down in the shelter. He did not have a transmitter. It was on his list to buy one some day but was low down on his buy list.

He had a hard time teaching them to shoot his 22 because their Mom and her new man were some kind of weird people who hated guns and had passed that feeling on to the boys. He stopped the training and decided to go get a BB gun or pellet rifle so the gunfire would not traumatize them. The thought hit him this is going to take a while.

He had noticed as he drove back from his former house with the 2 bodies in the truck bed that the Wal-Mart and most of the stores close to the main road had not had their windows or doors torn off so just maybe he could salvage some good things to insure all their long term survival.

The boys were told he was going into town for some things and asked what they needed. Of course they wanted to go. He said not yet – I have to move a lot of dead bodies and they may have some strange germs on them (hopefully a lie). Do either of you remember what kind of immunization shots you have had? They just looked at him until Cameron said the shot records are in our medical folder in the house. Clark said good thinking Cam – I will stop and look at them. You boys stay close to the house and if any one comes around run into the basement and lock the door. I will be back in a couple of hours. They started playing cowboys and Indians. The thought hit him get some young adult or children archery sets. He debated on whether he should haul out one of his main battle rifles. He decided not yet because he had not seen any roving gangs or for that matter anybody and he was comfortable with the variable scoped semi-auto 06 and could shoot it extremely well, he did take 6 more 10 round magazines and wore his pouched ammunition vest.

Part 21.

Arrggh, he ran back out of Wal-Mart – The smell was just too bad. He had a strong stomach but that smell was just like being put into a large sewer line and the lid shut on you. He sat in his truck for a minute or 2 thinking. The fire department – an ambulance – the hospital – the dive shop right over there - all have portable oxygen tanks. He used his crow bar to pry the dive shop doors apart. He didn’t know too much about how the units worked but he had watched enough TV shows to know just plain oxygen was fine above the ocean depths and then they started talking about gaseous mixtures. The things worked kind of like Oxygen-Acetylene torch tanks he quickly saw. He found a tank that said compressed air that had shoulder straps on it and next he looked for a face mask or mouth piece with some hoses that he could hook into this tank. He piddled around with a mouth piece and saw he had to bite sort of into it. Looking in the glass cages he saw something like a miniature clothes pin and laughed, he grabbed it to insure he didn’t breathe through his nose. The tank and mouth piece were all hooked together and by Jove it worked.

Entering Wal-Mart again with his flash lights he headed for the sporting section. The thought hit him of what he looked like in this dark place with a dive mouth piece on and a tank slung on his back – The thought of the Mummy show hit him and he almost laughed until he remembered he had a mouthpiece in his mouth. There were 6 bodies he saw just sprawled on the floor near the grocery department. He hurriedly made his way with a large buggy to the sporting goods area. Grabbing 4 BB guns off the shelf, he had to break the gun case open to get the 3 high dollar pellet guns and looking around he found the pellets, BB’s and pellet gun darts. Glancing at his list he saw archery equipment. There were several models for young people. He left the toys alone and grabbed 4 sets with all the equipment to shoot out of the package. He had a nice bow and grabbed about 60 aluminum shafts and arrowheads to attach to them. Again checking his list he saw 410 and 20 gauge. More gun case glass was broken and 2 single shot 410 and two 20 gauge shot guns with another buggy full of shot shells. Might as well he told himself; 2 semi auto 410 and 2 semi auto 20 gauge shotguns were loaded up. Can’t stop now he thought, 2 bolt action 22 and 2 semi auto 22 rifles were thrown in the buggy. He pushed the buggies out and loaded the truck. Another trip to the dive shop and the tank he was using was swapped out for a new one. He stopped at the buggy storage area and got a flat bed dolly on his 2nd trip back in. Back to the gun department; 4 mini 14 and 3 AR 15 with about 90 boxes of .223 ammo went on the dolly. He put 12 different hi dollar scopes on the dolly and 14 sets of mounts and rings hoping he had grabbed the right ones. Take all the rifles/pistols and ammo his brain for some unknown reason told him. Another flat dolly had to be rustled up while the full one was left at the doorway entrance. Halfway back he ran out of air. He ran out and back to the dive shop and got 4 more tanks that would fit.

Stop, Stop this now he told himself I am not organized, the way I am doing things is too haphazard. Finish with the weapons, go home and prioritize your future activities. He thought of how he would hang sheetrock in a new house, he would not put one sheet in one room and go to another room and hang a sheet on the ceiling. This would do for this trip. He stopped at the canned goods and grabbed about 15 cans of carnation milk and departed the place. He loaded the truck up and stopped. Why not open the back loading dock doors and all the front doors to kind of air the place out. All of the smell would not leave until the bodies had mummified or been removed and the area cleaned. He made a mental note to do that when it was breathable inside. He opened the loading dock doors and left the front doors propped open. There was a draft created because he could feel it blowing outward on his shirt. 2 days, I will come back and check.

________________________________________
Part 22.

The 2 boys could relate to the BB guns and he started the training that afternoon. Since the BB shooting was close range he did not have to take them off the front porch to do the preliminary target practice. Several paper targets were put up after a few hours of classroom work. The youngest boy was the best shooter. He was a natural. The flight path of the BB could be seen by him and he automatically adjusted his sights to an almost magical push of the BB to the center of the Black spot on the target. The 11 year old Cameron was not far behind him.

That night he made lists upon top of lists and finally threw them on the floor and went to bed. Of course he started over again in the morning and came to one conclusion – He had everything already to survive. It was how comfortable he wanted to be while he was doing this surviving that would be the key to this strategic reallocation of goods (he liked that terminology, he had read PAW fiction). It would do no good to bring several tons of goods here because he did not have any buildings to store the goods in – So storage was #1 on the list - He did not want to take the time to build anything so that left him with empty tractor trailers. 2 would do for the immediate future he was thinking; two 53 footers or two 48 footers. He continued on with his lists and told the boys to get ready for a trip. They jumped up and down for 2 minutes before he told them to sit down.

They drove to the truck stop on the turnpike and there were at least 40 parked there some with the motor cabs attached and others just parked on the jack stands without the cabs. He wondered what was in them. Stick to the plan he told himself. He had ridden in a few rigs and knew enough to drive them in a straight line, backing them up with a rig attached would be a learning experience. He made a bet with himself that the parked ones on jack stands with no tractor were empty and that’s the 1st checking action he took – He was right – He checked the tires on 2 of the large empty ones and decided to take them. Making another bet with himself he bet that the trucks parked next to the restaurant had no diesel fuel in them. Another winning bet. The keys were in them in the on position and the batteries were dead. He had come prepared with starting ether, 2 five gallon cans of diesel fuel, his small 1000 watt generator, a 12/24 volt battery charger and a bunch of tools. He decided to check the other parked trucks before expending a huge amount of work to start one. Good thing he did, he found one that was full of fuel and just needed a jump start – after it was running he fiddled and fiddled around until he figured out how to disconnect the loaded trailer that was attached. The boys were blowing the diesel horn until a thought hit him that there may be bad people around and he made them stop and then had to explain it to them.

[Lbox88]

Part 23.

He already knew that the house was too small for the 3 of them but he did not want to leave this area that he knew intimately. The place could be defended fairly easy from a few high spots that overlooked the house, he had fresh drinking water, a large garden, electricity, chickens, eggs and there was abundant wild game, berries, fruit and nut trees. And the main reason was it was his and he had the deed.

He got the 2 empty trailers parked on a level place just a little further away from his house then he would have liked. But he had plans to move them again after he chopped some of the forest down on property adjacent to his that he did not own, leveled it off and graveled it for a permanent parking area to park more trailers that he knew he was going to need for extreme long term survival.

2 days later the scavenging for long term survival began in earnest. Both boys could handle the 22 rifles and the pump 20 gauge shotguns and he had the shotguns loaded with 000 buckshot. He stopped at Wal-Mart and decided one more day and a person could enter the place with maybe just a touch of Vicks Salve under his nose and not be overwhelmed. He made the boys sit in the truck while he tied ropes around the dead bodies’ legs and pulled them out the back loading ramp doors. When he was done there were 43 bodies in a pile beside the dumpster. He would come back at dark one night and pour some kerosene and old motor oil on them so no one would see the black smoke that would come off the burning bodies. There was nothing but concrete for 75 yards in any direction so he was not worried about starting a forest or house fire. There was not much he could do about the rotten produce or the rotten meat in the display coolers. He did not think that smell was anywhere close to what 43 human rotting bodies smelled like. All he could hope for was the open doors and the breeze would remove as much smell as could be possible. He would find that he was partially right. It would probably take a 15 person clean-up crew to dispose of all the rotten meat, burst milk cartons and produce in this super store.

After picking up a 24 foot tow along from U-Haul - Clothes and footwear were next on his list. They went to a clothing department store and hung different size clothes on the push along hanging racks including winter jackets for him and the boys. The racks were pushed onto the tow along which made for a quick shopping job on that segment of scavenging. Next they stopped at a shoe store and loaded up on boots and tennis shoes of differing sizes also for him and the boys. He checked his list again and this was the part he dreaded. They went into a baby clothing and supply store. The boys just looked at him squinty eyed. He said I am thinking ahead long range boys. He looked for functional clothes but he did load up baby boy pants and girl dresses, pretty pretty’s is what his mom called them. He had thought long and hard about using space for the plastic covered disposable diapers and took a pallet load of differing size plastic diapers. He took 2 pallets of cotton cloth diapers. Most of the baby bottles, long life dry formula and other baby items were on lists to be picked up at Wal-Mart, he would probably have to return here for other items, but he was following his list plan and would not be side tracked.

Next stop was the electronics store, he was in a fun mood so he told the boys they could have any thing they wanted that they could carry out. He thought that would slow them down - it did not - they went and got a flat dolly and started loading game machines and DVD games. He went and got what he came for which was 6 lap tops and some soft ware to keep track of the inventory. The boys were computer literate so they were going to do a lot of key punching. He was sure he would get an evil eye after he told them about their new job. That evening after unloading the U-Haul and putting everything in the trailer – Cam looked at him and said, Daddyo, which got him a stern look from Clark. Cam continued and said I think this job would go a whole bunch faster if you just drove the tractor trailer to wherever we are going and then we could load it and inventory it when we had lots of time. Clark started to tell him a little work never hurt anyone, but thought it was a great idea and would indeed speed the process up. Clark knew they had been lucky so far and was beginning to get that worried feeling. They would do Wal-Mart tomorrow with an empty trailer or 2 and then start the next big job. He was praying for just 2 weeks more and he would be set for at least 20 years.

The next morning he pulled out 3 of his battle rifles, 1 Saiga Model 100 30-06 with ten 20 round magazines and 2 AR 15’s with twenty 20 round magazines. He was not sure if the boys were ready to defend themselves – He had not spent enough time training them to do things automatically when in danger. He would hope for the best if anything happened. He was hoping he would get the time to do the heavy requisitioning before bad people showed up and he knew in his heart they eventually would.

The Wal-Mart trip went off flawlessly – He filled 3 trailers and the most important one was completely full of toilet paper. It was a good thing the battery powered fork lifts could be charged and this made emptying the ware room easy as everything was on pallets.

That night he turned the outside florescent 100 watt bulbs on and set up some targets 25 and 100 yards away the one hundred yards away targets were lit up by hanging 100 watt drop florescent lights powered by the 1000 watt generator. After 30 minutes the boys could keep the rounds in a 10 inch circle at 100 yards and 3 inches at 25 yards. Clark thought this was excellent shooting for 1st time young shooters and he knew they would improve with practice. He asked them if they liked to shoot the rifles they had and that gleaming smile young people have lit their faces up and they asked can we shoot some more tonight. Clark relented and let them shoot 40 more rounds each.

He had taught the boys how to use the forklifts in Wal-Mart and turned them loose on filling the trailer with toilet paper because he figured they couldn’t hurt the toilet paper. Cam asked his dad to come back and take one of the fork lifts home with them so they could use it while picking up heavy stuff from other places or moving heavy stuff around at home. He wrote that on top of his working list of things to do.

They practiced shooting again that evening and the next morning. He patted himself on the back for his training efforts; the boys were now shooting strings of 5 shots and grouping them in a 5 inch circle at 100 yards.

Years ago he had bought 2 Saiga Model 100 in 30-06 because of the price, 375 bucks each at the time and it was a real battle rifle. After researching ballistics for a while he saw that there was no difference in the 308 and 30-06 – 168 grain bullet at 1000 meters.

Since he had grown up with a bolt action and semi-auto 06 it stood to reason for him to keep the same caliber. He already had the reloading equipment and dies and had been reloading the 06 cases for many years. This also was a part of WV where everybody had a 06.

The AR 15’s were bought for the boys 1st rifles to use when they grew up. He had accumulated over 10000 rounds of 223 and probably 20000 rounds of 06 bullets over the years. He had standardized the reloading powder for both guns and bought 8 pound bundles every 4 or 5 months until he had enough IMR4895 powder to reload all of both rifle cartridges at least 3 times each. This gave him at least 60000 bullets and he decided that would be enough.

Remington had a sell on 168 grain 06 and 55 grain 223 bullets which came in bundles of 5000 each and he had bought 12 bundles of each. The on sale primers came in packets of 1000 which were cheaper then buying the 5000 pack and he had to buy 120 packs, so he was set for ammunition. He liked the number 60 and that is how many boxes of 550 packs of 22 bullets he had. There were over 100 boxes of assorted 12 guage from slugs up through # 8 shot. The only 20 gauge and 410 gauge shells he had was what he had picked up from Wal-Mart, but he had plans to fix that problem soon.

He would teach the boys how to shoot the 22 pistols soon and move them up to a 9mm when he thought they could handle the larger pistol.

He had used his 357 for deer hunting and found it to be an excellent pistol for 50 yard shots. The 180 grain soft lead bullet he reloaded for it was devastating on deer and of the 6 deer he had shot they had all been one shot kills.

For long range shooting he had a 26 inch bolt action sub minute of angle new out of the box Matte Black Weatherby Vanguard 30-06 with bi-pod that he found for 450 dollars at GunBroker.com. He hated to spend the money that he did on the scope but he mounted a Leupold Vari-X 111- 3X10 50mm illuminated reticle in matte black that matched the rifle and he was extremely happy with the way the gun shot across the 6 and 700 yard valleys between mountains on deer hunts.

Part 24.

The boys jumped up and down as he told them to again get in the truck. He checked the road as he went to one of the largest trailer sales lot in the state. He made a note to pull 4 automobiles off the roadway on his way back home. There were about 300 trailers on one lot and 200 across the road on another lot. They walked through the lots looking only at 14 by 80 foot trailers. He wrote the numbers down of trailers they liked by looking through the windows. They spent a lot of time looking at 9 trailers that first day. The boys had already made up their mind to get one trailer. He stopped them and said tomorrow we are going to look at some more they grinned at him because that meant they would get to leave the house again.

Look here Clark told the boys. They rode back to the office and got the keys for this trailer – Clark had heard about these 16 feet wide trailers and knew there had to be all kinds of permits required to move this big thing on the highways. And they were only moved from 1 am to 5 am. The brochure he was reading said it was 16 by 82 feet. This model had a huge living room and 3 bedrooms. There were several features he really liked about this one. There was already a built in thimble in the wall to run a 6 inch stove pipe out for a wood or coal stove and it was located right beside of a side door to make carrying coal or wood in easy. The roof had four 280 watt solar panels mounted on a directional rack to face them in the right direction. All of the lights were either LED or the screw in florescent bulbs and could be run with just the solar panels and 2 solar size batteries. He told the boys that this is the one they were going to live in and then told them in the next 2 or 3 days you will pick one of these super large trailers out and we will tow it home for future use. That appeased them and they started playing cowboys and Indians. He wanted to get these trailers towed to his place before bad people moved into the area and closed the roads down or just started killing anyone they saw. He knew it was going to happen, he had read too many stories about the collapse of the USA and what would happen. The area he lived in was several miles off a secondary road and his graveled road would be easy to close off by tree felling or using the backhoe to dig a 4 foot deep trench across it. There were a few trails that he could reopen to get to a major road. But first he wanted to gather everything that was necessary. He had plans and the equipment for alarming the entry roadway and closed down backwoods trails so they would not have to maintain a 24 hour watch. He did not think there was anyone alive that knew where his place was.

On the way home he cleared the roadway of any vehicle he thought may be in the way of him bringing those 3 trailers home. They went the next day with all kinds of things to get the trailer sales lot big diesel trailer truck running that was already set up for trailer towing; he also packed them a big lunch because they would be gone a long time. He should not have much trouble getting one of the older diesels to run, it had not been but 5 or so months since the US was attacked. The fuel should still be OK. He took along 5 gallons of his treated diesel fuel anyway. He would drive his motor bike back to get his truck after towing the trailer to a large area just inside the log gate. The boys sometimes helped him and sometimes got in his way as he was airing the trailer tires up and servicing the trailer lots diesel towing truck. Finally after 3 hours he had the trailer hooked on to the towing truck. He drove 5 MPH all the way home and that took him 7 hours. He had hooked his truck onto the end of the trailer to save him from motor biking back to pick it up. That night they all had a bowl of their favorite cereal covered in cold canned Carnation milk. The 2 boys opened up 5 or 6 new video games and started playing on their new game boxes or whatever they were.

Part 25.

It took 2 days to retrieve the next 2 trailers, but they were inside the log gate now just waiting to be parked on their permanent spot. On that trip home he could have sworn he saw someone running across the street in the town before he reached his town. That sent shivers down his spine and he told the boys to be super alert from now on out. One more thing boys he said. You will carry either the rifle or your shotgun with you at all times and that includes when you go to the bathroom – If I find you further then 2 feet away from your gun – I will take some action against you that you will not like. They both had big eyes and shook their heads in the up and down position. He thought about those instructions and said to himself there is no way they can comply – I have to get them to start wearing a pistol which would be better then a rock. Training on the 22 pistols began that evening.

Clark needed a bunch of gravel to cover his parking areas. He started hauling it in a dump truck from where the state road had it piled in various locations. He was worried about security when he was hauling the gravel back to his area so he dumped the boys off with 1 shot gun and one rifle and 2 short range FRS radios to watch his back trail 4 miles before he made the turn into his road. The boys had bicycles to follow an hour later because the road was mostly down hill and flat blacktop to his turnoff. They could make the trip on bikes in 10 or more minutes where he would pick them up in his truck.

He had almost made it to where he was going to dump the load when Camron called on the radio and told him there was a Blazer following the dumptruck and it looked like there were small people in the vehicle with maybe a lady driver. Did he want them to shoot the vehicle? Clark didn’t hesitate – NO – He ran to his truck and drove back to the blacktop road. There was a Blazer parked about a hundred yards from where he turned in to his road – He saw a big hand painted piece of white cardboard with the words – PLEASE HELP US – The sign was being held by a woman with 3 children standing beside her.

[Lbox88]

Part 26.

Just yesterday Clark had told the boys they needed to find other people to move here or they would move to another place – They could not make it with just the 3 of them. The boys needed playmates and he needed some companionship. He thought one of the boys may have sent out a prayer last night and this was the answer. He would soon find out.

Clark motioned for them to come to him. He was again being prudent in case someone was hidden in the vehicle. He got on the radio and told the boys to maintain a watch behind them and cycle to the entry way road.

There were 3 girls with the woman – 2 were he estimated about 9 or 10 and one was maybe 4. The woman would not have won any beauty prizes but when she smiled at him he saw something that made him like her, it radiated trust. So he took a chance and told them to have a seat on the tail gate of his pickup.

The woman said she ran out of gas and could not go any further. She told him her name was Missy Forbes and told him the 3 kids’ names – He let the names fly by, if she stayed he would memorize their names and if she just wanted some gas to move on, he would have saved some brain memory cells.

Camron and David rode up at that time and put their bikes in the back of the pick-up. All five of the kids started talking about whatever it is that kids talk about and walked away, or I should say jogged or moved in that fast unlimited energy way that kids have, from the truck.

He was sure she had a long story, but he wanted to get her automobile off the road and behind the log gate out of sight. He told her it was dangerous to leave her auto where it was because some bad people may see it and wonder where the people that drove it were, which may cause them to search the area which he definitely did not want. He told her he would tow it to his gas tank and they could talk while putting some gas in her tank.

While talking he found out she was from a small town 45 miles away and had survived in a 1950’s bomb shelter her dad had made – she was baby sitting these 3 brats (she called them) for her sister when her key chain nuke alert her dad had bought for her went off. A year ago right before her dad passed on he had shown her how to use the bomb shelter if anything ever happened. Her sister never returned to pick the kids up and she said I guess I am their mother now. He asked her if she had any weapons – She told him her brother had stolen all her dads’ guns when he died and sold them for drugs. She never saw him again either.

Before he could ask she told him she had no plans and had no idea what to do or where to go. They had to leave the shelter when they ran out of food and were out scavenging when a gang of people started chasing them. She escaped in the blazer on a 4 wheeling road the low riding cars could not traverse. She kind of shuddered when she said they shot at me and the kids with pistols while they were chasing us. She showed him 8 or 10 bullet holes in the back of the auto.

He took a deep breath and told her she was welcome to stay with him and the boys. But they would have to rough it for a few months until he got a trailer set up. They could stay in one of the trailers for now and come fix food in the cinder block building and take showers in his shelter. She started crying and said she had no idea how to repay him for his kindness. Clark just told her don’t worry you will have more work to do now then you can imagine. They broke off the talking and went in to fix some food. The conversation would continue tomorrow.

Part 27.

Clark used some of his storage potatoes to make hash browns with scrambled real eggs and fried bacon. The bread machine was used to make 2 loaves of bread the night before. He turned the generator on and used the toaster to make toast and everyone enjoyed the food while washing it down with Tang and Powdered milk. Missy was a hot tea drinker and that made Clark happy because it meant he was the sole drinker of the 900 cases of 24 pack can Folgers and Maxwell House coffee he had stored away in one of the trailers.

He had to redo his planned work agenda for a little bit to get the newcomers lined out. He found out she was an expert shot with rifle and pistol. He showed her the trailer with the weapons in it and told her to train the 2 oldest girls to learn how to shoot the 22’s and 410 shotguns. Thinking about that he told her to train them with the BB guns and pellet rifles first. She knew this was a new and dangerous world because she and the kids had witnessed and survived it first hand. One more thing he told her before he left – Start making a list of things you will need for the next 20 years or more for all 3 of you. She looked at him as if he had gone mad. He just told her when bad people move into town we will not be able to get anything else until we do a lot of killing. Don’t worry about food, toilet paper, paper towels – Here is a rough list of what we have or have picked up. Unless there is a specialty item of food you want stick to what you and the girls will need like feminine hygiene items, jackets, clothes, boots, tennis shoes and you can go from there.

3 more truck loads of gravel would be enough to do the areas he wanted to gravel. So he and the boys took off to accomplish that task. He brought the small end loader back with him on the 3rd load. Looked at his work list and shook his head. All he said to himself was – Ain’t no way.

They were making lists to bring with them on their next shopping/scavenging trip when David the 9 year old asked about school. Clark told them he and Missy were going to be their teacher for a while.

The next priority item is more power and then after we finish with Missy and the girls trip we clear the forest to permanently move the 17 or more tractor trailers to and then it will take us several months to put in footers for the trailers, run water lines from the creek and sewage lines to the leach field, which I will probably have to make a lot bigger.

Camron how are you and David doing on punching our inventory into the inventory program. David answered for him – 3 more days to finish those last 2 trailers. We have set 2 chairs in the trailer and hung a drop light so we can see what is in them. Sometimes I punch in and sometimes Cam punches items in. Have you stored what you have on disc and locked them in the safes? Camron said yes sir. The boys were training the 2 girls to give them a hand on the next trailers.

Both boys had specific jobs to do and Camron was designated the official supply captain and had to list everything on to a note book computer. David then made a CD copy of the items on the computer. He placed the CD in one of the 3 fire safes they had brought home from Lowes to store important papers, pictures, Memorabilia, gold and silver coins in. Clark just told them that someday gold and silver coins may be used again and they should have a good supply. They never said anything when he broke into the coin shops. Clark had the treated lumber from Lowes to build ramps up into the back of the trailers after they were parked in there permanent positions.

They took one day off and then all 7 of them started to gather solar panels and batteries, 3 days later they had enough solar panels and batteries to power the 3 future planned on trailers with many, many spares for future break downs. The solar batteries were the dry ones and they cleaned out 5 NAPA stores for battery acid. Clark put on his to-do list to build battery boxes beside each trailer. He also made a note to pick up mine buggy batteries and store them. He had a plan for keeping all the lead acid batteries trickle charged to keep them from freezing. But it did not look like he was going to have time to do that this year. He would pour all the acid into glass jars and store it in a non freezing area. He laughed at his plans, there was no way on earth he would get all this done before snow flew.

OK Missy it is time for us to gather the items you have on your lists. Since I taught you how to drive the tractor trailer in a straight line and disconnect the trailer we are going to take a chance and have you drive a tractor home, dump the trailer and return. One boy (David) and one girl (Sherrie) ride with you, one boy (Camron) stays with me and one girl (Francine) hides in the woods on our entry road and watches for intruders. She is not to take any action except tell us when we get in radio range if it is safe to come home. We will keep the young one (Kimberly) in the cab of our tractor. She asked him about anti-biotic and general medical kits. He told her the contents of 2 Wal-Mart, 3 Kroger, and 2 Rite Aid Pharmacies are stored plus 3 current PDR (Physician Desk References). We took everything in the hospital surgical room, the supply room for the surgical room and the hospital pharmacy. The medicine in the refrigerators from the pharmacies is stored in a large high efficiency fridge that is quite a draw on our current solar system. But we will rectify that in a few days as soon as we can install some more panels and batteries.

On one early scavenging trip he had told the boys they should start looking for a water filter like they used in the house. He had told them the creek water was probably safe to drink since it only travelled a short distance from where it came out of the mountain. He then told them about the time he drank some river water and 6 hours later he thought his inside guts were going to squirt out of his rear end or his mouth and he was deathly sick for 5 days. They always drank the filtered water after that story. They did find 4 water filters and 12 cases of filters which were now sitting in one of the trailers ready for use.

Part 28.

When Clark and Missy finished with Missy’s reallocation of goods, there were 7 more trailers parked on the inside of the log gate. This was OK as far as Clark was concerned. He had set up space in the to be leveled and graveled forest for 40 trailers and he now had 18.

She asked him one morning if he could make some larger root cellars. He told her yes with your and the kids help I can do it in about half the time instead of the 18 days it took me the 1st time. She said you’re going to lose all the liquid canned food goods when it freezes – He smacked himself mentally – A small oversight he told himself. OK he told her we can put off the other work until we make some more large root cellars.

They went to the last place he had gathered gravel and picked up a larger back hoe that belonged to the state. The forklift was used by Camron to load rail road ties onto a running diesel tilt flat bed from a strip mining job. Missy dumped the supplies off next to where Clark was digging the side of the mountain about 15 feet from where the original root cellar was, with the large backhoe he had the mountain dug out in a day and a half. He had told Missy he was going to make three 23 X 23 by 7’2” new cellars and that should give us enough room to store all of the canned goods with a small walkway between the pallets which will be on sand, gravel and oak planks to keep the moisture down plus we will have an empty one to store things we have forgotten about. With the work split up and the use of a small gasoline cement mixer the work was done in 12 days. He thought he cut the work time down to a third.

Her next comment was we need to get some metal lidded trash cans and store the medicine particularly the anti-biotic in one of the cellars. The 50 degree temperature should extend the shelf life by several years as it will the canned goods. Clark was beginning to think this common sensed woman had a good head on her shoulders and he was becoming attracted to her for more than that reason.

They had been extremely lucky so far and the roadway inside the log gate looked like a parking lot for fuel trucks – There were 3 10000 gallon propane trucks, 4 10000 gallon diesel trucks and 3 10000 gallon gasoline trucks and 1 5000 gallon kerosene truck. Clark could imagine the fireball those tankers would make if they caught on fire. They had gone to 16 NAPA, 21 Advance Auto and 5 marina stores gathering up Pri-D and Pri-G type products. All the tankers were now treated and Clark thought he had about 51 gallons of Pri-D and 47 gallons of Pri-G left.

In the haste to do everything else a radio transmitter had not yet been taken from the super radio store that sold HF radios. The HF radio transmitter and all the equipment to run it were finally picked up at the Super Radio Store. They were fired on by semi-automatic weapons as they were driving away from the store. Clark told all of them when they got back that that was the last trip to town.

The job of putting the antenna up on the concrete pad took all of them about 5 days to get everything installed and figured out how to work the thing.

One of the stores Clark and the boys had cleaned out early was the St Alban’s Gun and Archery. This place was a hunter, reloading and archers dream place. It was about 80 X 80 feet and had everything that Clark wanted. It took them 2 days to take everything but the shelving. Now was the time he was going to make use of some of that equipment – suppressors, night vision and 275 pound test cross bows were on the top of that list.

[Lbox88]

Part 29.

That night David yelled for Clark to come listen to the shortwave. There was chatter on about 15 frequencies. What they were hearing sounded ominous. Missy asked him if he had restocked the shelter and he told her about half. She said I think we better get to stocking it. Camron was told to check out the supplies in the shelter. He, Missy and the other 3 took off towards the trailers, David was following with the forklift. She looked at him and asked him if it was not already too late and he said I hope not. She said what about virus filters. He said ain’t got anything like that but I have an idea that may or may not work. She said well do whatever it is that your idea tells you may work. He had to go into his shed and find the 50 pound sack of fish tank charcoal. He lifted the lid on the 1st water meter and slid another Hepa filter around the intake of the 6 inch pipe going to the shelter, put a stretch tie-down around it and tapped the new clean fiber glass matting down 4 or 5 inches under the filter and filled in the cavity with about 6 inches of charcoal. Next he slid one Hepa filter around the upper part of the pipe on the charcoal extending it out till it was against the water meter casing metal and put another 6 inches of charcoal on top of that and covered that with another Hepa filter and 6 more inches of fiber glass. He did the other intake the same way. He was sure there would be no draw into the generator room from the generator exhaust since he had never measured any radiation in the room plus the intake generated a small over pressure in the room. Inside he doubled the intake Hepa filters up on both the intakes and told everyone to take one last look around the area before he sealed the door. She said do we have a place to sleep and he grinned at her and rolled 2 queen size blow up quilted air mattresses out and hit the CO2 cartridges. He said during the day we can stand them up against the wall. She just said good thinking. They duct taped around the door 2 or 3 times and then covered the duct tape with silver backed tape to make sure it was air tight and turned their attention back to the short wave.

Part 30.

During a break in the talking on the short wave Clark said out loud – this information has to be coming from a CDC type of laboratory in California or a science laboratory on a military base somewhere out west. 91% fatality rate sounds awfully scientific to be coming from some guy in a shelter in Montana. Missy said the outbreak happened 48 hours ago – So unless it got in to the jet stream it will take a little bit longer for the easterly flowing winds to reach us. I would think we at least beat it by 24 or more hours. Clark did not say anything – He was wondering whether his made up charcoal filter system was going to work. He knew a foot or so of charcoal in water filters like they use at treatment plants would eliminate a lot of things. But those were wet – His mind went off on a tangent trying to think of how he could make a round 1 or 2 inch thick charcoal filter and keep it damp while it was in front of the intake Hepa filter.

David punched Clark on the arm and asked him about the chickens - He told everyone that he had reset the system back up like it was before the radiation and had diverted the eggs to fall outside again. He told them I don’t want any of us to eat anything from outside, especially eggs, until we find out more about this air born virus.

The man who said he was broadcasting from Montana told everyone he was getting really sick and did not know if he could broadcast anymore. The short wave was silent for about 30 minutes until a person who said he was broadcasting from a place on a mountain side in Northeast Texas. This person identified himself as Slim and told everyone monitoring the band that he could hear the transmissions from CA and would relay them. Clark told David to see if he could reach him – Just tell them you are in the Ohio Valley. David called out Slim several times using the name River Boy. About 3 minutes later Slim came back and said I hear you River Boy.

Slim relayed what the scientists in CA were broadcasting. This is an engineered virus that is extremely virulent and contagious. The life span of it in direct sunlight is about 5 to 6 days and usually a person who is infected becomes sick in the first 4 hours of becoming infected. The body of a person who has died will remain infectious for about 10 days as far as we know. Animal contagion or crossover to other animal species has not yet been confirmed. You must be in a hermetically sealed environment unless you have virus filters.

Part 31.

Clark said contact Slim again and ask him if he can contact those people in CA. We need to know about our homemade virus filters. Clark got on the radio himself and told Slim how he had set up his system. Slim came back and said I will ask them as soon as they quit broadcasting. They heard Slim relaying the question. Slim came back and asked for River Boy - Clark told him he was listening. Slim told Clark they said maybe. Clark thanked Slim and told the rest in the shelter. I think the scientists in CA are being nice. But we won’t know for at least a couple of days - All I can say is let’s go to bed and tomorrow we start school classes. Everyone went to bed. It took Clark a long time to get to sleep.

The next morning when they turned the short wave back on – They heard Slim calling for River Boy – Clark told Slim to go ahead he was listening. Slim said I got a little more information from those fellows out in CA – Here is what they told me to tell you – If you have a UV light you can place it in front of your activated charcoal. Use some Hepa filter and wrap up the charcoal contents from inside your water filters to at least a 6 inch thickness – Slide that into your intake pipe but place the UV light in front of the Hepa wrapped water filter charcoal.

Clark told all of them we have what the scientist said. No harm in building those filters and installing them in the intake pipes. I believe there are eight 24 inch UV lights in that crate under the bunk beds. Missy asked him why he had 8 UV lights. He gave her a grin and said I read somewhere in a PAW fiction story that they kill germs and I was going to use them on the water in here but I forgot about them till just now.

Clark cut 24 water filters apart out of the new case the boys had put in the shelter leaving them 24 more for the water filter. He wrapped Hepa filter around the charcoal in 2 bundles that were easily 6 inches in diameter. Next he took the back side off the UV lights to insure the light would shine in a 360 degree circle and slid it into the main air intake and put a large dollop of bathtub caulk on the UV light wire that was against the Hepa charcoal filter making an air tight seal. He did the generator room next and said now we wait. But, he said school starts today kids.

They heard from Slim late that night before they went to bed. He made a general broadcast to everyone listening that he was really sick and signed off

Part 32.

The Chinese were a diabolical people. They had planned this attack on the US and what they considered their enemies for many years. There were 3 diesel freighters flying a Taiwanese Flag heading north at 14 knots from southern Mexico 300 miles off the western seaboard of North America well out in international waters, they were using a low tech method to do more destruction to the already heavily nuclear damaged US. 148 sky blue bottom, dark top ocean colored small balloons had been released about every 100 miles, (the balloons were filled to a neutral buoyancy on the boat prior to launch), starting somewhere around the lower end of Mexico and heading northward to Seward AK. Each newly invented polymer leak proof lightweight material balloon had in a plastic gondola a 100 pound plastic high pressure tank full of this new virus and a 50 pound plastic tank of helium that could stabilize the balloon's altitude on pre-programmed computer command of the altitude sensor. A 4 foot by 4 foot solar panel was attached to the top of each balloon which kept fully charged 2 large special light weight batteries during the day. These batteries operated a computer, a GPS, and a 3 foot plastic propeller with a 4 X 4 foot holed plastic rudder for guidance. The propeller was driven by a mostly plastic electric engine. These balloons for all practical purposes were invisible to radar and downward looking satellites. 74 of the balloons were sent eastwards, 3 days before the remaining 74, where they were to release the deadly payload on Middle America which would disperse to the east coast of the US. The amount of virus released on the mid-America discharge was enough to saturate the US areas and reach the eastern seaboard. The remaining 74 were set to hover 75 feet above the ocean insuring they would be out of the reach of most storm waves for 3 days before releasing their payload 2 miles off the western coast of the US at a height of 10000 feet to insure maximum dispersal of the virus. The initial 74 had run into a strong westward headwind and were 2 days late reaching their GPS calculated computer controlled payload release point. This gave Clark just enough time to install the pipe intake UV light on both air intakes which did more to kill the virus then the Hepa covered charcoal filters which trapped some virus and slowed the rest of the virus progress towards the virus death dealing UV light. The rest of the world including the countries surrounding China was also attacked with these virus type dispersal systems. These other country virus dispersal balloons were precisely calculated to go off in the western parts of those countries on the western side of China insuring the virus would fall to the ground before it reached the borders of China. To do this evil deed the Chinese had studied the worlds’ weather and wind patterns for years before putting this plan into operation. They made absolutely sure all the Muslim countries received a double dose of virus which would totally end the idiot Islamic population expansion problem in the future. All the virus dispersal balloons were supposedly timed to go off at the exact same time. The ones set for Russia just above China’s border took them a year and a half to smuggle the parts for the balloons into hidden strategic locations for the release date. Amazingly all the devices made in China worked except for the USA failures that would eventually cause China a big problem.

Part 33.

A week had gone by and they were still alive. Clark did not say anything; he just kept his fingers crossed. About 12 hours after Clark had done his thing with the UV light and the charcoal filters, on both the intake air pipes - trillions of approximate 100 nanometer sized virus particles started falling out of the air in his general area. These particles were riding an easterly wind and in 36 or more hours would blow out into the Atlantic Ocean. The particles wreaked tremendous fatal damage on the US surviving population. Of course there were going to be survivors and a large portion of those survivors would be unsavory people.

The virus particles trickled down through the fiber glass where some got hung up in the Hepa filters and charcoal and would soon destabilize into particles of molecular nothingness. Some of the virus entered Clark’s 6 inch intake pipes and slowly floated with the indrawn air towards the intake fan. They were of course virus and already dead until entering a human body. The dead virus unknowingly in their state were pulled through the UV light and like a mosquito in a mosquito electric zapper were zapped as they floated through the UV lights deadly rays. Clark was lucky in that the UV lights were new and had a 1000 hour life. The virus was totally destroyed in the intake pipe right before it reached the last jury rigged Hepa charcoal filter and on the outside surface the virus dissipated to that molecular nothingness in approximately 300 hours. Clark would never know this; he thought his filters with a little help from the UV light had done the job.

Life went on in the shelter, classes were taught to the young people. Clark had decided to wait in the shelter for at least 60 days unless he heard to the contrary

Part 34.

The 3 diesel freighters had not gone unnoticed. There were 2 US nuclear submarines keeping track of them. But since the freighters had not ventured any closer then 300 miles of the west coast, they took no action. The nuclear submarines just maintained a distant watch. The Captains of the US Subs were thinking high handed and were on their own. The thoughts just went through their minds wondering what Taiwanese freighters steaming north in international waters were up to. Again US political correctness even in time of global war hampered the effectiveness of the US Military to do its job.

3 weeks later some Navy military whiz kids in hermetically sealed US shelters finally pieced it all together and instructions were relayed to the submarines to sink the phony Taiwanese Chinese freighters. Typical US political correctness – Shut the barn door after the horses have left a month ago

[Lbox88]

Part 35.

The 3rd week in the shelter another DC fan went kerplunk. It was the exhaust fan in the generator room. Clark was thinking I have 2 more spares hopefully that will get us through another 5 or so weeks. Clark thought 4 more people sure cramped up his shelter as he was comparing it to him and the 2 boys 2 and a ½ month stay. The air was just a tad stuffy but OK. He noticed more of them were sitting closer to the exhaust DC fan outlet as there was just a hint of a breeze as the incoming air was pulled out. In general they were overall comfortable and had plenty of varied food.

He and Missy were using laptops and books taken from his boy’s school classrooms. Missy had a degree in Business and had taken several classes towards a teaching certificate. Fortunately one of the classes was making class instructional outlines. This made it really simple for Clark during his teaching time. He just followed Missy’s outlines. Missy and Clark alternated on day time teaching so they would not get burned out and it was working extremely well.

Around the 4th week night time chatter on the shortwave picked up considerably. Information was being put out by government survivors who had communications with Cheyenne Mountain and several other government locations. They learned about the virus and were told it was safe to come out now with the caveat not to turn dead bodies over for at least another month to insure total dissipation of the virus. Clark just decided to spend another 4 weeks in the shelter. The virus had not crossed over to animals which was a big relief. Another item of interest was those 9% survivors. There were estimated 200 million people left alive from the initial nuclear attack before the virus was released and simple math revealed there should be an estimated 18 million survivors. This was off by about 15 million. It seemed that anyone who had used the illegal drug Crystal Meth had a survival rate of 90% instead of 9%. Surviving CDC scientists had no explanation. Clark laughed at the scientists’ declaration. He told Missy you do not have to be a scientist to make a statement and here is my statement, something in the Methamphetamine gave a hard core drug user a whole bunch of immunity from the virus. Clark's logic was hard to argue with. He also told the others that it was going to be a really dangerous world outside with that many former and current drug addicts roaming around.

I have an idea on making sure our entry road is hidden in plain sight and as soon as we leave the shelter that will be the first thing we do.

If we do have to visit a city – I believe we should do so at night using night vision. Hopefully the brain dead drug addicts don’t think to put a night guard out with infra-red or other night vision.

Part 36.

During the 6th week a little romance developed between Clark and Missy. They were sitting at the table, he drinking coffee and she drinking hot tea when she reached her hand over across the table and placed it over his. The shyness left them about their feelings towards each other. He told her I think I will get one of the trailers fixed up for us very soon. She gave him a coy smile and said I hope so.

They left the shelter on the 56th day. As he had said the first thing they did was put up 3 strands of barbed wire 4 feet back on the entry road about 60 feet long, which easily covered both sides of the road and centrally hung on the fence a state road sign that said DEAD END. The upright pipe on one end was stuck down into a buried 4 inch steel pipe and the fence on one end could simply be lifted out for egress or entry. Clark put a push broom, and several gallons of water in the woods about a hundred yards back from the fence to keep the roadway cleared of any exiting tire tracks.

Clark found out later, on a government radio broadcast that 2 of the Chinese attack virus balloons malfunctioned, and drifted up 31000 feet into the 3 mile thick 390 mile wide 210 mph Jet Stream, which quickly carried them across the Atlantic, across the Med, and headed right for Mainland China. The jet stream turned suddenly 90 degrees North and the balloons continued southeast toward Beijing. With the helium tanks exhausted, the balloons descended to 10,000 feet, and received the computer dispersal command despite the fact it was on the other side of the planet from where it was supposed to be. Seems the Chinese Engineer that designed the device had been overridden by Chinese Security, who didn’t want intact virus containers to fall into enemy hands, and installed a fail-safe that would disperse the entire virus, then detonate a small computer controlled white phosphorus grenade in the helium canister after the virus was dispersed to totally burn and destroy the evidence.

The dispersal pattern covered Beijing, spread across the 180 mile width of the Yellow Sea, and covered North Korea, killing the Communist Party Leadership in both countries who had ordered the strike right as they were coming out of their bunkers. This major mistake on China’s balloon launch also wiped out about 90% of China’s 1.3 billion population. If a census could be taken the world would have less than 400 million people left alive and the US would have about 33 million due to the large number of crystal meth addicts.

Part 37.

The ground had not yet frozen when he started clearing off the parking lots for the mobile homes and the tractor trailers. After the trees were cut down he, Missy and the boys used the backhoe to pull the stumps out. He saw he was going to need a small dozer to make quick leveling work of the mountainside. A sneak trip to the state road construction equipment area where he absconded with a dozer and an asphalt compactor to compact the ground area before he put the gravel down; he used a string with a bubble level on it and one of the kids protractors to put the 2 degree slope on the area to eliminate standing water (he did not know how to use a transit). The tractor trailer and fuel parking lot was 500 feet long and 120 feet wide. He was not going to move anything until the mobile home area was leveled off and compacted. 22 days later the gravel was on the compacted tractor parking lot and the mobile home lot was leveled off and compacted. He would begin on the mobile home footers after the tractor trailers were in their respective area.

A foot of snow fell before he could begin on the mobile home footers. Missy and the 2 girls were given the task of inventorying their 7 trailers while footer construction came to a standstill. Each tractor had a large number painted on the door and the side for easy location of specific items as the computer records indicated which trailer contained what.

Clark started to make just one rolling ramp to use to gain entry to the tractors but saw that was not a very good idea; so all of them constructed a 10 foot tall 24 X 24 foot slant roof pole barn to do construction of the tractor ramps and other items during inclement weather. He saw that he had enough mortar and cement to do the footers and cinder block construction, but not enough cinderblocks for the mobile homes to sit on. A planning session was set to figure out the easiest way to make a secretive trip to Lowes to gather the block. One more thing he found out it was easy to slide on the tractor entry ramps if they were wet so some of those gritty stickem strips that were put in bath tubs to keep people from slipping were put on the pick up list.

In the meantime other jobs were finished and plans made for long term. One job he thought was important was running 14 gauge wire to each tractor and installing a 100 watt screw in florescent bulb to light up the trailer for use by the Clark family. After he showed the boys and girls how to wire up a pull chain porcelain light fixture that job did not take long the electricity draw would be minimal since only one light would be turned on at a time. Missy asked him about the pile of top soil that was removed from the parking area. Clark told her we will have to expand the garden either this spring or next fall to keep 4 more people supplied with fresh vegetables. Clark knew he had taken over a lot of property that was not his but he figured possession was 9/10ths of the law and he would let his great great great grandkids fight any property rights battle. He did make sure the 3 mobile homes were on his property.

They did build a dirt berm between the fuel vehicles and the tractor trailers and there was a 70 foot space separating them. 2 of the 18 trailers were empty because they had moved the wet pack canned and bottled goods that would freeze into the root cellars. He had plans to refill them someday with something.

The footers for all 3 mobile homes were dug and cement poured during some nice weather. He had enough cinder block to do 2 of the trailers and in early March the cinder block was laid and 2 trailers moved onto their permanent parking place. The plans for a Lowes raid for cinderblock were put on hold while the 2 mobile homes were readied for occupancy. The romance between Missy and Clark had begun a little early one day when they were alone in one of the empty mobile homes and it had stealthily continued ever since. They both laughed about how 2 adults were sneaking around romancing like they were teen agers.

The garden was enlarged and readied in early April; some tomato and pepper plants had already been started under lights in the cinder block building.

Part 38.

There were now 31 chickens and 3 roosters. Francine (9) and Kimberly (4) were assigned the task of feeding them. Camron and David moved the chicken tractors daily. At least Clark thought this part of the operation was working smoothly. Egg production had ramped up considerably and eggs were being pickled, hard boiled, eaten daily and dehydrated on a constant basis. When they had all the food supplies back to 100% the overflow of eggs would be fed back to the chickens as scrambled eggs and the shells would be crushed and fed back to the chickens for the calcium content. He had checked his chicken feed supply and thought he was good for at least 3 more years. Surely he thought he would be able to refill his 55 gallon chicken feed drums before he ran out and he knew even bug infested grain could be used.

He and Missy were talking about sheep, goats and cows when Camron came running in the mobile home screaming wild dogs are after Francine and Kimberly. Clark grabbed his shot gun and looked out the door down to the chicken tractor and saw that the 2 girls were for the moment safe inside the tow along tractor. He told all of them not to shoot the dogs and scare them away. He grabbed his scoped suppressed 10/22 and ran to the back of the tilt flatbed where he lay down and calmly started shooting each one in the head from about 35 yards away. He killed all 11 and the dogs never knew they were being slaughtered. Later on that evening after he had hauled the carcasses to a clearing in the forest where he would burn them that night under a large pile of brush he would place on them he returned; he told the family to expect more of this for a long time and make sure to never go anywhere without their pistol and rifle, or shotgun and their radio. He asked 9 year old Francine why she never shot any of the dogs with her 22 pistol and she said I like dogs. More training to come soon Clark thought.

After the wild dog attack on the chicken coop, Clark finally had time to put the alarm system out. He added 6 solar powered short range broadcasting game monitoring TV cameras around the area, all set on wide viewing. A lot of work was done setting up the monitoring room in the trailer and it was full of electronic equipment. He and Missy had to re read the instructions several times to get it all to work right. Wandering feeding deer set off the infra red beam alarms so many times that they were about to pull their hair out. They decided to raise the beams to a 4 and 1/2 foot level that would eliminate 99% of the small deer. A big buck with a large rack or running deer would still set the alarm off, but big bucks were few and far between.

The plans were solidified for the trip to Lowes. New weapons were brought out and target practice began.

No part 39 another number error of mine

Part 40.

During the planning trip to Lowes Clark had decided to load some armor piercing bullets up in some white painted magazines. Missy asked him why – He told her if anyone follows us I or you can shoot at the big front of the following automobile and destroy the engine. She said well lets shoot a magazine or 2 and see where the bullets fly – I want to make sure I can hit the broad side of a barn with a different bullet. He said good idea. There were 2 crates of 500 M993 7.62 AP Cartridges. He noted to her that the AP bullets were all black tipped and there would be no difficulty in differentiating between the M118 Lake City hollow pointed bullets for shooting people even though the AP bullets would kill someone just as dead as the hollow pointed bullet if they were hit in a vital spot. The point of impact for the armor piercing bullets at 200 yards were the same as the hollow point bullets so no adjustments had to be made. The AP bullets were not as accurate as the other bullet but were within two inches of a 5 string shot of hollow points and they decided that the two inches was insignificant when shooting at something as big as an automobile 200 yards away.

He went and built a 10 foot ladder and a small camouflaged tarp covered platform for 9 year old Francine who he was going to leave behind on his night raid to Lowes. It was far enough back in the woods that the ladder or platform could not be seen. He did this because he did not trust her enough to shoot someone. He figured it would be a while and take a lot more training for her to defend herself or the rest of them. She was going to be the lookout and watch the entry roadway. The ladder and platform were to get her out of the reach of any wild animals. The platform was large enough to place a blow up sleep mattress on and he and Missy decided to leave the 4 year old with her for company. They also planned on leaving them enough toys, food, candy and soda pop to keep them occupied for the 2 or 3 hours they would be gone. Clark just thought this was a new real world and young people would have to grow up fast to help.

Tonight they would practice fire with the night vision and tomorrow they would make the night time scavenge trip to Lowes.

Part 41.

A trip on the back roads to the mines where they had taken the tilt flatbed was again made – Clark wanted another flatbed truck and a diesel heavy lift fork lift. He knew the electric fork lift he had would not lift the pallets of cinderblock onto the trucks. He also did not want to fiddle around trying to get a fork lift at Lowes started in the dark to do the work. While he was there he opened up a container that said explosives. He needed some dynamite to make sure he could blast the boulders loose to drain the mine water from his soon to be fish pond. He did not know much about explosives but he figured he could get a stick or more of dynamite to blow up. After he got the dynamite and the forklift loaded onto the 2nd tilt flatbed he made a look see around the equipment area. He saw a gasoline powered portable jack hammer and a gasoline concrete drill – He loaded both of them – The jack hammer may be needed on the bottom of the pond to maybe smooth it out a bit and the drill could be used to drill a hole in the cemented together boulder seams needed to insert the dynamite.

Missy asked him why he had 5 airtight coal/wood burning stoves on his list – He said, well – 3 for the mobile homes – one extra and one for the green house we are going to build in the next 2 or 300 years whenever we get the time. She laughed and asked if he had the material to build the green house – He just said nope – not yet – She rolled her eyes and made a comment, we need 30 more people to do all this work. He said, yep. Then he got serious and told her – It is just work to keep us busy and it will help tremendously later on in life as we get older. She told him you are thinking long range and he looked at her and asked, is there any other way to think? She laughed and told him we will get it all done someday.

The next night just at dark, Francine and Kimberly were led to the lookout tree. Clark watched them as they climbed the ladder and settled down. He did not repeat any instructions; they had already been given to Francine and Kimberly at least 25 times. The 9 year old who had been trained with the shotgun was armed with a 20 gauge shot gun with slugs and triple ought buckshot in case a black bear tried to climb the tree.

________________________________________
Part 42.

The flat bed rolled off into the darkness with no headlights, the brake light fuse had been removed, the 2nd truck was hooked onto the 1st with a car trailer hitch and the forklift was attached to the 2nd flatbed on a 15 foot tow-a-long. Missy and Clark were wearing the generation 3 night vision. Clark stopped the flatbed 2 miles from Lowes on a side road. He pulled the bicycle off the back and rode slowly towards the pitch dark Lowes compound which sat a few hundred yards from the rest of the Mall area. He rode slowly through the mall area and looked Lowes over carefully. There was no sound or lights from any of the buildings. 3 more clicks on the radio and he waited on Missy to pull behind Lowes and park. Camron was given the bicycle and he rode out onto the far side of the mall parking lot, sat down behind a trash dumpster and took up the watch. The tow-a-long rear ramp was lowered and the diesel forklift was ready to be driven off beside the cinder blocks. Missy, Sherrie and David were sent in to the store to pick up the items on Clark’s list. Clark maintained watch on the back road behind the store and waited on Missy, Sherrie and David to bring the listed items out before he started the diesel motor on the fork lift.

55 minutes later they exited the store with 3 loaded flatbeds. Clark helped them load the items on one of the trucks. He told them they had time to make another trip and get the secondary items on the list. The 2nd trip took a little over an hour and Clark figured it would because some of the specialty items would be hard to find. The forklift was started and the pallets of cinder block were quickly loaded. The forklift was quickly backed up onto the tow-a-long. Clark sat in the seat of the forklift facing backwards as Missy drove them home.

Clark knew something bad was going to happen because he just had that feeling. He was just a little wrong; nothing happened this trip other than...

Part 43.

Juan (Hayzoose) Gonzales (Hayzoose is his phonetically pronounced nickname) was stoned out of his mind on some home made crank he had helped make at his compadres house; he was also smoking some home grown pot as he walked towards the mall. The time was about 920pm when Missy saw the lone person about a hundred yards ahead of her walking towards her on the sidewalk as they were driving out of the Lowes area. She forgot all about operational security and spoke into her portable radio telling Clark. Clark told her to drive past him and stop.

The 29 LED flash light was turned on and pointed at the man standing on the sidewalk. Clark glanced at the man’s eyes and saw they were super glassy looking and he had that drugger slack jawed look. He smelled that distinct odor of Marijuana that was drifting off the joint held in the mans left hand. Chit Clark said to himself – this guy is one of those doper survivors. About 3 seconds had gone by since Missy had stopped. Juan’s right hand eased towards the pistol stuck in the front of his pants. Clark made a decision and shot the man several times in the chest. The suppressed rifle could not be heard over 75 or so feet. He dragged the body over to the tow-a-long and slid him between the forklift and the tow-a-long cage. He got on the radio and said to Missy - Get us home now and follow our plan. Missy drove at a sedate 25 mph until she was within the 2 or so mile radio range of Francine’s hand held. Francine replied to Missy’s 5 clicks with 3 clicks. Clark walked over to the tree stand and retrieved Francine and saw that Kimberly had to be woken up. Clark carried the 4 year old back to the truck and they continued home. The man he had killed was taken to where the wild dogs had been burned and placed in the same spot. He poured a small amount of kerosene and motor oil on the body after he placed him on some logs and brush then set the pile on fire. He rode the electric forklift back home took a shower and piled into bed beside Missy. He had looked at the body and retrieved a 38 revolver pistol, a wallet, 12 extra cartridges, a large bag of pot, a flashlight and some coins. He had gotten curious and pulled the dead mans shirt off before burning him There were seven pencil sized holes over the heart lung region in the front and back of the man and no expansion or bigger exit holes in the back of the body. He thought about killing the man with armor piercing bullets and said to himself, they worked but next time use the other bullet.

Juan’s 3 friends were waiting on him to bring some food from the small grocery store in the mall. They had driven to this town in a 6 passenger diesel pickup. The truck was loaded down with marijuana, crystal meth the ingredients and material to make more dope. They had set up their operation in a large house that had a hand pump well and were doing what they did best, make more dope for trade and their own use.

Part 44.

The next morning he and Missy kicked around going back to Lowes tonight but decided to wait several days. Good thing they did. Anyway they had tons of stuff to do – Clark told Missy he wanted her to help him for an hour this morning before they started on the other work. She asked him what it was he wanted to do with her hour – He laughed and said I am going to drive the back hoe to where we burned the dogs and that body up. I want to dig a hole and have you use the bull dozer to push the bones and what other scraps are left into it. He said there is no sense in letting the wild animals come around thinking they have found a garbage dump and also I don’t want the bones dragged everywhere. She said let’s get to it. It took 45 minutes to do the job.

Missy went off to another job and Clark took the cement drill to the outside bottom of the pond and drilled out several holes in the cement holding the boulders together. He really had no idea how to detonate the dynamite so he put that task on the front burner. The next job was unloading the items picked up at Lowes. He put the paint sprayers together and hauled the 5 gallon buckets of exterior dark green paint over to the trailers. He found that if he stood on the cab of the flatbed he could just about step onto the roof of the parked trailers. That would eliminate a bunch of work hauling a ladder around to each trailer. He thought about how he could do this job quickly and came to the conclusion he needed Missy to drive the flatbed. He started painting the trailer tops and the upper portion of the outsides that after noon. The next day he painted the gravel and created a mess. They just went to the pond for the day and had a picnic while the painted gravel dried in the sun. He could not think of a use for the empty plastic paint buckets, but he was sure they would come in handy for something some day. He turned them all upside down and placed the lids paint side down on the gravel and would let hem drain for several days before he stored them in an out of the way place.

On the 5th day he went over the items he had picked up with the crate of dynamite. 400 yard spool of blasting wire, a 50 foot spool of that fuse wire that burned when you lit the end of it, and 48 blasting caps, fortunately he knew what those were because some of the people he went to high school with were always setting them off. He experimented the next day with a couple of blasting caps – he rolled out 10 feet of blasting wire attached it to the cap and stuck both ends of his end of the wire onto a 12 volt battery – It was a nice boom. OK he thought, Now that I know how to blow up dynamite I will do it tomorrow. He backed off about 90 yards from the drilled holes with 3 sticks of dynamite in each, the thought going through his mind if he had put too much dynamite or not enough in the holes. There were 12 sticks of dynamite in the four 36 inch deep holes he had drilled. The explosion was spectacular and he was covered in small pieces of sandstone. The explosion was probably heard 10 miles away. After he brushed the sandstone off him he walked down to the end of the pond and saw a 24 foot high 2 foot wide stream of water shooting down hill. He said to himself, overkill, and laughed all the way back to his mobile home. Missy said I think one of the backroom windows cracked or was hit by a rock. She said you scared the chit out of us when that went off, even though we knew it was going off. He laughed and said I’ll put in 2 pieces of plexi-glass one on the outside and one on the inside to create a kind of insulated barrier and fix that window tonight.

All 7 of them walked down to the pond 15 minutes later and the water was gone. Clark said we will let it dry out for a few days and in a minute I am going to use the back hoe and dig a trench to divert that water coming out of the mines off to the side of the pond. I believe I have enough schedule 40 four inch pipes to reach the middle of the pond to refill it from our creek water. She asked him why the middle, he said I am not sure but I believe it will constantly aerate the pond. They walked out into the 2 feet thick silt covered bottom of the pond and saw that whoever had blasted it out had done an expert job sloping it towards the hole that Clark had just blew open.

He got the mine water diverted with a little difficulty and saw that if it was going to be a permanent job he would have to make a 10 foot long 2 foot high 1 foot thick cement barrier. More work he said to himself.

In the city several people heard the explosion but had no idea which direction it came from as they were all inside at the time. The night that Juan did not come back they went looking for him. Instead of walking down the sidewalk Juan had used they drove to the Mall entrance and went inside. If one of them had walked the sidewalk they would have found the puddle of blood which would have put them on guard. But the Clark luck was holding. There were several more drug people who had moved into town and of course they had all run into each other and became a pack. They scoured the town for Juan for several days after he had disappeared. After a week Juan Hayzoose Gonzales slipped out of everyone’s mind as the pack lost themselves in a drug orgy.

[Lbox88]

Part 45.

Clark told Missy 10 days later that he did not have enough cement to do both jobs – One was to permanently divert the mine water from the soon to be fish pond and the 2nd job was to plug the pond hole up. He told her I don’t feel comfortable going to Lowes; I would like to go to the cement plant on the outskirts of town down by the river. She said that would be best because she did not think there was anything at the cement plant a drug addict would want. He told her I think we can get the big pipe for the drain and some metal or plastic pipe to make the green house frame right next door at the water plant.

They left the next night just after it got dark using the same routine as the Lowes trip. Francine asked when she would get to go on a trip; it was boring sitting in a tree stand. Clark told her soon, after a little more firearms and other training. Francine said goodie goodie.

They drove 18 miles out of their way using back roads to completely by-pass the city. He got 7 pallets of ready mix concrete and 1 pallet of mortar on the front flat bed if he had any left over he would store it in one of the empty trailers. He put 4 rolls of concrete wire and 60 or more 8 foot rods of rebar. The next stop at the water plant they found the 12 inch threaded 4 foot long ½ inch thick metal sewer line pipe. Clark thought that this piece of pipe was perfect. They looked for a 12 inch screw on shut-off valve and found one in the pipe room. Clark knew he did not have any equipment big enough to screw that valve on so he had to use the manual equipment at the water plant. He used some stuff in a spray bottle that said pipe thread sealant and screwed the valve on as tightly as he dared. He checked the valve and it smoothly opened and closed. Missy said this one inch plastic pipe will do for the green house because it will bend easy. He said I want to put thin plexi-glass over it if we can find it. If we use that 6 or so mill clear plastic we will just have to replace it every 2 or 3 years. She said the only place I know where plexiglass is at Lowe’s. He said I know but we have all summer to figure out a way to get a pallet or 2 of it. They wrapped and secured a chain onto the heavy pipe used the forklift and placed it on the truck. They then made a quick check of the plant for anything they may need. There were 2 clicks on the radio and He and Missy ran to the roll up metal entry door. The main highway ran right by the water plant. They watched 2 automobiles with bright lights on drive slowly by the place. Camron was hidden about 25 yards from the highway and had observed the cars coming and signaled Clark and Missy. They watched the cars go out of sight and noticed there were no brake lights lighting up. Clark told Sherrie the next time she heard the 2 clicks to make sure she turned her headband LED light off a little quicker. Clark wrote down some items in his recover at later date book and they headed to the back roads and home.

I guess we weren’t as sneaky as we believed we were Clark thought as 2 cars came racing down a parallel side road pulling in behind the 25mph travelling hooked together loaded down flatbed trucks.. He noticed the red winking gun shots flashing at him from the passenger side window and he guessed the window behind the driver or the driver’s window, the harsh sound of weapons firing and the ricochets of bullets off the steel framework of the fork lift cage. He stitched a row of .308 caliber armor piercing bullets across the window from left to right then back again from right to left. He then put the remaining bullets from the white magazine into the engine. Dropping that magazine he inserted another full white one into the well as the car directly behind him ran off the road into a ditch. He never hesitated he fired on the 2nd automobile in the same pattern he did the first one. He told Missy to stop as the 2nd automobile came to a stop in the middle of the road. He shot the headlights out of the car on the road and took his time shooting the headlights out of the car in the ditch.

Turning his night vision on he just sat on the seat of the fork lift and watched. There was no movement around or inside either auto. Still he just watched for another 5 minutes.

He got down from the forklift seat and walked to the front of the truck and told Missy we have to do something about this mess I have just made. Camron and Sherries eyes were as big as coffee cup saucers. He told Missy to go up and turn around so she could drive back beside the car in the ditch but wait about a hundred yards back until I give you the 5 clicks. Clark slung his rifle and unholstered his .357. 3 minutes later he gave the 5 clicks. Missy pulled up beside him and she just said what’s the plan. Clark said well we have 2 car loads of dead used to be druggers or crazy people. I want to pull the one out of the ditch with the tow chain and haul it down about a hundred yards facing back this way and then I want to push the other car up to about 20 feet from it so they are both facing each other. She said OK. While Missy was doing that Clark grabbed the push broom and a gallon jug of water and broomed the tracks exiting from where the car in the ditch was and the broken glass from the auto windows into the ditch. Next he got Missy turned around pointed in the right direction again.

Missy asked what’s next. He said I am going to make it look like they attacked and killed each other. Cam said how ya gonna do that Dad. He said watch and continued by saying this would not work if there were forensic people to do an investigation. He poured about 3 gallons of diesel fuel inside the vehicles and over the dead occupants. He next used about a gallon and poured it on the engine of each auto and maybe a half gallon in each trunk. He shut the hoods and trunk and then poured a little gasoline and I mean very little inside each auto. He left a window on each side of the autos down a little and threw in a diesel soaked burning rag. The gasoline inside each vehicle did its expected whoomph. He told Missy to drive about 50 yards towards home and stop, he wanted to see if the diesel fuel would ignite and cause a massive interior fire and get the automobiles hot enough for the gas tanks to catch on fire and hopefully explode or burn fiercely enough to melt a lot of the metal on the autos. The fires were huge and hot, he told Missy to drive on home.

They stopped and Clark got Francine and Kimberly. On the way through the woods Francine asked Clark if anything exciting happened. Clark thought about his response and knew that Camron and Sherrie would tell her what happened. He told her some crazy people shot at us. OOH she said what did you do? He told her he shot back at them. He could imagine the conversation the young ones would have later that night and the next day.

Missy and Clark decided not to talk about the incident for a while. They got on with their work.

Part 46.

There was just enough of a slope to enable Clark to drive the bull dozer down into the empty pond. He pushed the majority of the sand stone silt to the hole at the far end where the exit hole was. The only way to get the silt out of the 2 foot wide slit was to use the pressure sprays. He next dug a trench using the small backhoe about 20 or so inches deep from the creek to the soon to be fish pond. He glued the 4 inch pipe together covered the pipe and fixed the creek end so he could easily lift that section out of the creek water in case he ever needed to eliminate the water flow to the pond. Next he placed the pipe end in the pond up 4 feet from the bottom between two 6 or 700 pound boulders to insure the flow would not be restricted in the next 40 or 50 years. Now that the kids had water to run the gasoline powered pressure cleaners the work began. He had to give the kids instructions and warn them that the pressure coming from the machines could put an eye out. Even with the adjusted safety glasses on the silt got into the kids eyes. Clark had never seen so much silt blasted everywhere as the kids took turns using the pressure cleaners. The kids got tired after a couple of hours and Clark and Missy took over. The bottom of their fish tank was finally spotless after 2 and a half more days of pressure cleaning. He pulled the pipe out of the creek end stopping the flow of water to the soon to be giant fish tank and let nature dry the bottom out.

He built the form for the 10 foot long cement barrier to insure mine water did not flow back in the pond. Everyone helped mix the concrete in the gasoline cement mixer and wire tie the rebar together to make sure the cement wall would not collapse for at least 50 years. After that cement was poured the late spring rains started and it rained off and on for 8 days so not much outdoor work was accomplished during that time.

Missy told him during a rainy thunderstorm day that he needed to put another drain pipe up about 18 or so feet above the 12 inch pipe. He looked at her and said that thought never crossed my mind. She said if you just let the water flow over the repaired concrete slit it will just run down on your 12 inch drain pipe and valve. He said I see that in the coming years that would cause a big problem with rust. Let me think on it for a while and we will discuss it again he told her.

The next day he told her I have thought about the drain pipe and you are so right. I have decided to run a 4 inch pipe 2 feet below the top of the cement wall and run it out and elbow it to the side and down through another pipe onto a flat rock so the water won’t dig a hole. The water will run down through that small rock filled culvert into the creek 300 yards further down and that problem will be solved. She said I have been thinking about the pond also and I think you should place 8 or more 3 or 4 foot around boulders on the bottom of the pond to establish some sanctuaries for small fish. We can measure the pond and draw the exact location of everything we put on the bottom and hang it behind a piece of that plexiglass we are going to get someday. He laughed and said OK we will do that before I build the concrete forms around the pond drain hole. She said this job is bigger then you thought it was going to be. All he said was yep.


The garden had been planted for about a week and 10 chickens were slaughtered and frozen. Clark said I want to keep our winter flock to 16 chickens and we will keep them in the overhang coops in really bad below freezing weather. He said I am not much of a chicken farmer but I think someday we will need a couple of new roosters and hens to diversify our flock. She said I think we may have to go to the library one night for some information books. That went on one of the to-do lists.

Finally the boulders had been placed on the pond floor; the 12 inch and upper 4 inch drain pipe placed in position, cement forms built rebar tied together and concrete poured. Before he poured the concrete Clark glued a sleeve onto the 4 inch drain pipe 3 inches back into where the cement would cover it to insure a water tight seal and to lock it permanently into the cement. He had to slip back to the water plant for a sleeve for the 12 inch pipe and he cussed mightily on this one as he had to weld a bead on the pond side around the 12 inch pipe to also insure a water tight seal when the cement was poured around it and to also lock it within the cement. He also glued 2 one inch pieces of 1 inch pipe to the sleeve on the 4 inch pipe and welded 2 one inch pieces of metal water pipe to the sleeve on the 12 inch pipe. He did not think either pipe would have ever broken contact with the cement but now he knew it never would. Clark waited 10 days before he took the concrete forms down. He then painted the new cement with the paint/rubbery substance that is painted or sprayed on the bottom of swimming pools. He waited another 3 days after that before he started the creek water flowing into the pond. He told her I am going to let the water get to 3 feet deep and then drain it out just to make sure any contaminants on the floor bed are washed out and I with your help will pressure clean the walls before we put any water back in.

Missy was laughing at him while they were standing by the pond which only had about 24 inches of water on the bottom after 5 weeks. He said looks like its going to take a while to fill our pond.

While the pond had been filling Missy and Clark had not been idle. 3 surreptitious trips had been made to the library and locations of where the drug people were staying marked on a map; they noted there were more than 80 armed drug people living in the town now and travel in town was dangerous. They also had used his pickup to get 80 4 X 8 sheets of ¼ inch plexi-glass from Lowe’s for the greenhouse.

Sometime in late June, Clark and Camron went out into the country. They were looking for cows, goats and chickens mainly roosters. 60 miles away they spotted a bunch of chickens on an abandoned farm. It took both of them 2 hours to catch 4 chickens and 3 roosters. They spotted a small herd of cows grazing but they also saw smoke coming from a chimney on a farm off in the distance. He thought the next time he came out this way he would leave a message on the farm entry gate saying if they wanted to talk or trade he would stop back by in 2 weeks and to please leave a message in the bottle for him. When he got back he told Missy to have Camron and Sherrie slaughter the 3 roosters they had. He turned the 3 new roosters loose on the 45 hens he had. Well he thought that should take care of our in breeding for 10 years or more. She told him I don’t think that is a good idea to get rid of the roosters we now have – We should isolate them with a small amount of hens and then next year have them fertilize the eggs of the new roosters hens and that way if we keep good records our breeding stock should be good for many years for new hens. He saw the logic to her thinking and said OK.

Clark and Missy did not know it but the city drug inhabitants had found the 2 burned out automobiles and they had came to the conclusion Clark had wanted them to. The talk in the city was how the dudes in the autos had gotten into a gun fight and killed themselves. They also wondered which batch of drugs that they made had caused them to go insane. The constant drug use had done some damage to their brains and they were not rocket scientists or if they were before the drug use they sure were not one now.


Work began on the green house. Clark liked this kind of work because it was simple and easy. He had the kids do most of the building after he cemented the corners, middle, center roof support beams and door way with Lowe’s treated 4 X 4’s up on concrete piers above the ground to keep them from rotting away anytime soon. He would think about putting another sheet of plexi glass on the inside to form a 1 inch air barrier in the future since he now had enough plexi glass and hardware to do that.

They had the room so they built 2 on the south east facing mountainside. The plexi glass houses were 16 X 16 feet and 10 feet high in the center tapering down to 6 feet on the sides. This gave him a reasonably slanted roof of what carpenters call a 4/12 pitch which meant for every 12 inches the roof sloped 4 inches. The 4 X 4 framed building with 1 inch pipe every 12 inches cemented at least 10 inches in the ground and one inch pipe every 12 inches as roof trusses. The plexiglass had been screwed into the piping and 4 X 4’s every 6 inches. That job of drilling, screwing into the 4 X 4’s and bolting the plexi glass onto the pipes with washers on both sides by the kids slowed the operation way down. This made the green houses extremely sturdy and long lasting buildings. The seams and screws were 1st covered by 50 year roof cement and then by a 2 inch wide aluminum strip which also had to be screwed down and the screws covered by the 50 year roof cement. The 4 X 8 doors were made from treated 2 X 4’s with an X bracing and covered with 1 sheet of plexiglass. He went ahead and built the exhaust and intake windows front and back but did not think they were going to grow much in the place during the heat of the summer. He found 2 more 6 inch DC fans and hung them on the center 4 X 4 to move the hot air back down amongst the plants during winter growing. When it was done Clark told Missy I really did not want to do all that detailed work but the carpenter in me made me do it right. And now we have greenhouses that will last at least a hundred years or more, about the only thing someone in the future will have to replace are some plexiglass sheets after they glaze over and cut down on the sunlight. Missy told him that he only had 5 wood/coal stoves. He told her we are going to that Ace Hardware 35 miles from here on the outskirts of that small town and hopefully pick up several more stoves. She asked him when he was going to break off all the work going on right now to do that. He just said soon.


On the 7th week he drained the pond hopefully for the last time. They walked over the sandstone bottom and rechecked the location of the 6 boulders they had placed on the bed of the pond. She said I had another thought and we should place some flat rocks on the bottom for crayfish for fish food and if they get to be a nuisance we can harvest them and have shrimp tails or plain ole craw-dad tails for a big time snack. He said another great idea by my missus – she punched him on the arm. They gathered up 12 or so 2 foot by 3 foot 2 inch thick flat sandstone rocks and placed them around the pond. She asked him where he was going to put the dirt and maybe the tree. She also said we can pull the tree out after a year if we tie a nylon or one of those ropes that don’t rot for many years onto the tree. He said I have a better idea, when we pick up the stoves from the hardware store why don’t we get a roll of heavy chain and tie that around it and hook the chain up on the side of the bank. We will need some weight on it to keep it from floating to the top. That way we will know for sure we can pull the tree out unless it completely rots away. 3 days later he and Missy had covered 75% of the bottom of the pond with 4 inches of topsoil and placed the flat sandstones on top of the topsoil. There was no dirt placed in a 10 feet circle of the fill pipe in the center of the pond where the water from the creek pipe would fill the hole. Clark would set out some minnow traps in the creek next spring and put a thousand or so minnows in the hopefully creek water filled fish tank. He would have to go to the river or a farm pond to catch some bass. They had read up on the types of plants to throw into the pond and he knew where several ponds were to gather those aquatic plants. But that was a next summer job.

Part 47.

During that summer there was intensive firearms and bad guy contact training given to the 4 kids. Kimberly was still too young for this type of training. Francine was given slightly more training then the other 3 kids. Clark thought she was coming along nicely and was reacting like a person should in the training exercises. Wild dogs showed up 3 more times and 95% of them were killed, Clark always worried if the ones that escaped would become super smart and become what he called a ninja dog. Never did happen.

The garden had been expanded to 100 X 100 feet and it took all 6 of them to manage the produce, can it, dehydrate it and store it in the root cellars. 4 year old Kimberly, soon to be 5 walked along behind the manual pickers and carried a small basket which was quickly filled. She took her basket to the processing table and hurried back to get more. At least she was getting the proper work ethic training Clark thought.

The water in the fish tank was about 4 inches deep now and Clark and Missy wanted to get the chain to put a tree near the edge of the pond before the water got too deep for the dozer to lay it in place it so they would not have to drive out on the carefully tamped down top soil. They left the next afternoon to the Ace Hardware to get the stoves, chain and other items on the hardware list. On the way to the stove store they drove right by a sign that said Car Ports. Missy slowed down and told Clark we should take a look while it is still day light. They drove down a graveled road for about 400 yards and there was a large warehouse type building and in front of it were 6 different types of car ports put up for demonstrators. Missy said well I guess this means another trip out this way later on. They retraced their path and headed again to the Ace Hardware.

Clark noted the place called Dome Cycles about ½ mile before the hardware store and mumbled of course, I just forgot about it. 4 hours later they had 5 wood/coal burning air tight stoves and everything accessory that would be needed for the next 100 years.

He told her to stop at the motor cycle place. The cycles were just too valuable to be left here and he was going to take what they would need for many years. They could come back and get spare parts another time he just wanted to make sure he had them in his possession before some other gang or group of people snatched them. There were about 80 cycles put together and on display on the showroom floor and 40 or so 4 wheelers. They loaded three 125 and four 250cc off road motorbikes when he thought of 4 year old Kimberly and threw an 80cc bike on the flatbed. Missy said I want a 4 wheeler so two 4 wheelers were lifted onto the mostly empty 2nd flatbed. He told Missy we will come back to get more bikes, spare parts and 4 wheelers after we put up some car ports. He grinned most of the way home until he thought about all the work he and his crew were going to have to do.

The next morning he and Missy cut down a 25 foot tall 10 inch diameter beech tree with leaves still on it they then drilled about a hundred 1 inch holes through the tree to speed up the water logging process to insure the tree would not float. Using the backhoe bucket he placed it about 12 feet from the edge of the pond he then had to use the dozer to pull the back hoe back up out of the pond slope. He and Missy then wrapped several hundred pounds of linked together 2 inch logging chain and snapped it on around the tree while the back hoe held it up off the pond floor. He pulled a 1 inch chain to the upper side of the tank and bolted it on to the huge eye bolt he had drilled the hole for a while back so he would have a way to pull the rusting chain from the pond 3 or 4 years from now. He told her that tree and its limbs sticking out should make a good reef structure for the fish we will put in next year. She said I bet you it lasts longer then we think it will. He said I hope so because it was a lot of work putting it there.

Missy said, well Mr. Carpenter where ya gonna put the car ports up that we have to go get. He walked down to the big space between the berm separating the trailers and the fuel vehicles. He said right here is as good as any and it’s already graveled.

They offloaded the motor bikes, 4 wheelers and stoves. He put the extra stoves and parts in one of the empty trailers telling her the motor bikes and 4 wheelers can stay outside for a few days without being hurt. Let’s take the rest of the day off and plan on how we are going to accomplish tomorrows’ task.

Part 48.

The Ace Hardware had more goodies than Clark had expected to find. They sold ammunition, shotguns, pistols, and rifles. After he had put that bounty in the firearms trailer he decided he had enough weapons and ammunition to last him and his kids’ future off spring several lifetimes.

He and Missy made 2 more trips to the motorcycle store and loaded up more vehicles and enough spare parts to fix all of the motor bikes and 4 wheelers for many, many years.

2 weeks later the dark roofed car ports were installed over the bikes and the mobile homes. The pond had about 7 feet of water in it mainly due to a hard 2 day rainstorm. He thought that sometime after Christmas the pond would be full. It had taken about 6 months but the place was somewhat organized. He and the boy Camron made the 60 mile trip to the farmhouse with the cows and left the message on the front gate. He blew the horn for a minute before he departed the area to insure the occupants knew there had been a visitor. He thought those people if they were good people lived to close to the road and were subject to be killed by the soon to come roving bad people. He thought about that for a while, 18 or so million drug addict survivors – 15 or so million prepared survivors maybe 95% of the preppers good people. Wondering about the percentage of survivors that would settle in the warm zones FL, southern CA and the Gulf states; he tried to do the math in his head but could not come up with any meaningful numbers. He would ask Missy to crunch some numbers and see what she came up with. He knew that when the store foods were gone and the local southern wild game killed off some of those survivors would go for the northern wild game, deer being the #1 poachable animal after all the surviving cows were slaughtered. Those people would have to move northwards to obtain a supply of meat. Of course he was just speculating and had no earthly idea of what he was thinking about or if even it was a good hypothesis.

He told Missy in late November it was time to do something about the more then 300 drug addicted people animals that were living in the city. They had watched and listened several times to those people when a toilet was filled up in a house they burned it down and moved to another house not caring whether they burned just one house down or the whole block. She looked at him and asked him if he was talking about wholesale mass murder. He said yep and explained his reasoning. She mostly tended to agree with him.

The next day he told Missy I don’t know anything about military tactics but since there are only 2 of us doing this. Good ole common sense should take up most of our planning. She just shook her head in the affirmative. He said maybe we should go to that military air base I mentioned a while back. They just may have some equipment we can use if we can figure out how to use it. She said lets do that tomorrow night. He laughed and she said what’s so funny – He told her we are going to do a recon and I don’t believe you can get any more military speak then that. She did not see the humor in it and walked off and went to bed.

Part 49.

The next morning Missy asked Clark what they would be driving to the military place. He said one of the tilt beds with the diesel forklift, one 500cc motorbike, the cutting torches and tanks, amongst some other maybe needed items. What’s the motorbike for? Well if the truck breaks down we will have a quick and easy way to get home.

About noon Clark was telling the 4 older kids how he wanted them to man the observation tree stand; when Sherrie said why doncha put one of them motion things that go off when deer run through it out near the road and a deer TV camera overlooking the place and then we could all stay here in the trailer and not have to freeze out in that tree. It hit Clark like a lightning bolt that this was one of the better ideas he had heard from the kids in a long while. He told Missy we will put our trip off for a day or 2 and set the motion alarm and TV monitoring camera system up.

Missy told him later that night in bed that maybe they should wait until after checking with that farm about getting a cow or 2 before we go to the military base, she added we can kill the dope addicts anytime. Clark was never one to start an argument and wondered if Missy was getting cold feet about murdering those no good pieces of trash in the city. And then he remembered she had said we can kill them anytime. He just said OK.

The bottle was hanging on the outside of the gate when he sent Camron over to retrieve it. He knew he was putting his son in grave danger by having him do it but he thought most decent people would not shoot a little kid and if they did they would probably shoot him too. He was right this time. The message just said blow horn. He did and about 2 or 3 minutes a man of about 50 or more riding a 3 wheeled bicycle rode down to the gate. The bartering began.

Earl was not the only person on the farm Clark was to find out during their talk and bartering. There were 7 other families and about 11 or 12 young children. The farm had goats, pigs and cows. Clark grinned when he heard that because he was going to get one pregnant cow and one cow that was now lactating. He could bring the cow that was now lactating back to get her serviced when she ran dry and the pregnant one would soon be ready to give milk plus he would have one or 2 to butcher later on. The reason he knew this was He and Missy had scoured the library for that information. The deal was 2 roosters, 10 layers and 12 dozen eggs to be delivered in a week or so.

Clark met all the men on that farm and they talked for 2 more hours. He had told them about the drug people and what they were doing in his city. 2 of the men grinned and said we had that problem in the next town on down the road. Clark noted the operative words HAD that problem. Clark told the men what he planned to do about them and told them he was going to get some military equipment to help him rid the city of that undesirable element but he had no military training and was not sure of what to get when he went to the military base. Earl looked at the 2 men then back at Clark; he then said we may be able to help you out a little bit on your lack of military training. We will talk more about that when you bring the chickens and eggs back. Clark asked a lot of questions on how to take care of the cows and what kind of set up he was going to need, he took lots of notes. Before he left he told them to build some chicken coops and tractors. One of the men said he raised chickens for a living a long time ago. Another one spoke up and said we will have to go to the feed store, another said yes we have lots to do and they left Clark with Earl. 4 women with about 8 or 9 kids came out to speak with Clark and Camron met some kids his own age. Before Clark left Earl said to bring his family back with him next time and they would have an indoor picnic since it was right down chilly outside. Clark was worried about security of his place and told Earl so. Earl said has anybody ever stopped at your blocked off road and tried to enter. Clark said he did not think so. Earl said these drug people always take the easy route in and if a road says dead end they believe it. So Clark left with a date 8 days from now at 10 am to meet with all the farm residents.

Clark knew that on past his house were four 100 acre or bigger farms with the only entry through his barbed wire dead end gateway. He and Missy had checked the places out and 3 of them had large barns and one had milking stalls in it. He had no idea how long it had been since the owners had had cows. He and Missy would have to take a look at the growing fields and see if the farmer had grown wheat or some other edible for the cows.. They laughed when they found a large half cemented floor half dirt floor with a huge mud hole in the center of it. The 75 by 75 foot area was surrounded by 4 foot upright steel bars 4 inches apart cemented in a footer all the way around the pen with chain link on the outside of the bars. She said pigs and he said yes and the outside chain link must be for keeping in small piglets. The large barn with the milk stalls had a new red metal roof. He talked about bacon and pork chops, she laughed and said no, no, no maybe in a year or 2 but not right now. He was disheartened but agreed with her. He said all we need to do now is scrounge up a hundred or so bales of hay, some cow feed and they would be ready for a few cows.

They pulled out the yellow pages and found 3 feed and seed stores, 2 were to close to the city but one looked promising as it was about a mile on the outskirts of town on a side road they could get to without going out on the main highway.

[Lbox88]

Part 50.

Missy asked him how many empty 40 or 55 gallon drums with lids he had. He said 11 metal ones and 16 plastic ones. She said I think just to be on the safe side we should try and get 25 or 30 more or as far as that goes a trailer truck load full. He said why? She said when the kids get older they are going to have to have a way to store alfalfa, oats, corn and Timothy Hay Seed. And you are going to have to have a place to store those 100 pound sacks of the aforementioned seeds we are going to get until we can plant a small section on each of those empty farms for our cows to graze on and feed and vegetables like squash and pumpkins for the maybe future pigs. One more thing Mr. soon to be farmer Clark you will have to grow some of those seeds for our future herd of cows. He just shook his head and said maybe we should just stick with chickens. She said the way you talk about T-bone steaks, hamburgers, bacon and pork chops, I think you will have to become a small time farmer. Also do not forget the cow feed. Then she laughed for a long time.

He sat down and made a list again on what he did not yet know he would need to harvest, and store some hay, oats, alfalfa and other animal foods. He almost pulled his hair out. They still had 6 days before they had to go back to Earl’s farm so they checked the yellow pages again and found a Coca Cola bottling plant. He said I bet they have 100’s of those plastic barrels full of syrup or empty ones. She said probably, but do they have the screw on type of lid or just a bung type top hole. He said we will never know until we go look.

They rode the pickup a mile into town and parked in a yard behind a house where the vehicle was not visible. They rode their bicycles to the bottling plant. He cut the lock on the chain link gate and hung a new lock back through the chain on the gate. They went to the ware room and he was right there were 100’s of full 40 or so gallon syrup filled plastic barrels there. They continued the search and found the barrel cleaning room and the empty barrels did not have a top on them. They looked at each other and inspected the barrels he quickly saw that there was a plastic insert key to secure the top interior threaded screw on lid once it was tightened down. He also saw the machine that pressed the plastic key lock out. He told her we would never get these lids off without using this machine we would totally ruin the lid. They counted the empty cleaned barrels in the cleaning room and there were over 300. She said this will do, we do not have to lock the lid down like the plant does. He said this is going to take at least 2 trips because we will have to strap the barrels down to the flat bed unless we palletize them and use the electric forklift to place them on the truck bed. She just said palletize. They left and returned home to make plans for the next night.

He took Francine, David and Sherrie on this trip; they were big enough to handle the lightweight 40 gallon plastic barrels and lids. Camron and Kimberly remained at home.

They eased through the bottling plant gates about 815 pm. They had seen no one on the back streets they had travelled. Clark pulled the double truck with the tow-a-long into the back loading bay where the empty barrels were. At 1030 they had enough barrels palletized to load one of the flat beds. He looked at the 3 kids and decided they were done for the night. Another trip would have to be made to secure another load out of barrels. He thought that was OK because he would only need to bring one flatbed and the tow-a-long with the electric fork lift to accomplish the task.

They were on a side road 2 turnoffs before they reached the dead end sign road when their luck ran out. A pickup came speeding up behind them and the same routine happened as before the blinking flashing red gun lights of pistol or rifle fire and sound of bullets being fired at them was prevalent. He emptied his magazine into the windshield and the engine of the pursuing vehicle and watched it roll to a stop. Missy was on the radio telling him Sherrie had been shot and all Hades was breaking loose in Missy’s cab. He told her to stop. He ran to the cab of the truck and saw Sherrie was bleeding from a leg wound in her thigh. He used a 4 X 4 Gauze pad and wiped the blood away and saw a raggedy entrance wound. Looking at the cab door he saw an entry hole right about where her leg would have been. Further inspection showed the bullet had not exited. He asked Sherrie how much it hurt and she said it stings a little bit. He wrapped a gauze pad around her leg and told her he would fix it as soon as they got home.

He told Missy to back up very carefully to keep the 2 towed along parts straight. She asked him why? He said we are going to tow this automobile home with us and dispose of it and the bodies on the farm. Checking the occupants of the truck to make absolutely sure they were dead he fired a .357 round into each of the occupants head. Using the chain he chained tightly the truck bumper up to the tow-a-long and radioed Missy to drive slowly home – Before he hooked the truck to the tow-a-long he pushed the truck onto the grassy area on the side of the road and shot 3 holes through the bottom of the radiator and let it completely drain onto the grass, he saw there was oil leaking from the oil pan so he retrieved a crescent wrench and removed the oil plug and let it also drain onto the grass. He poured some water onto the previous leaked radiator fluid, oil and glass then broomed it all to the side of the road and then poured some more water over the road. He hoped that it would it would dry up and look like an old spill by daylight since it was a low humidity cold night.

Arriving home 25 minutes later he carried the injured 11 year old Sherrie into the mobile home and laid her on the kitchen table.

Part 51.

The first thing Missy and Clark did after they got her on the table was wash their hands and Clark held the surgical gloves open for Missy and she donned them. Clark put a towel under the injured thigh, removed the 4X4 gauze, and squirted saline solution over the area. After the blood was washed away he could see the bent piece of metal about 1/2 of an inch deep imbedded in her thigh. They stopped and told Sherrie she was going to have to take pain medicine because when they pulled the bullet piece out and patched it up it would really hurt. Both Clark and Missy had taken advanced 1st aid courses he had been required to take the course on a job he had and she took the course in college. They both had a good idea on how to proceed on this minor wounding of Sherrie. They talked about not sewing the wound up but Missy nixed that by saying a girl does not want a huge puckered scarred looking hole on her leg. Clark disagreed with sewing it up and told her that we do not have the know how to fix a deeply abscessed infected wound and Sherrie will just have to live with a puckered scar mark on her leg.

Clark had to look on the inventory list to find the narcotic location and a quick check of the PDR showed 50 milligrams of Demerol in syrup form in a half glass of water would be fine for Sherrie’s body weight and it could be given every 3 or 4 hours for a few days. They took no chances on her getting an infection and immediately started her on one of the Cephlasporins - Cephalexin (Keflex) 500 milligrams twice a day for the next 10 days. They would watch the wound for infection and if the keflex did not work they would go to a stronger anti-biotic. Sherries head was nodding as if she was going to sleep – The Demerol was working.

Missy said hand me those sterile things that look like a pair of pointed tongs. He handed her the forceps – She grabbed hold of the big part of the bullet and gently pulled it out. A little blood started flowing from the wound. Clark had already put his 29 LED headband light on. He poured some more saline solution into the wound and looked with a magnifying glass to see if any pieces were left in the hole. He did not see anything so he squirted the solution into the hole forcefully and let it drain out. Missy used the surgical scissors to cut or debride the damaged skin out of the wound and he squirted some more saline into and over the wound. He removed the wet towel under her leg and put a dry one down. Next he held an antibacterial ointment covered 4X4 gauze pad on the wound to dry it up a little. Clark used one of those Silverlon 4X4 treated wound dressing pads then gauze wrapped the pad onto her leg wound and then cleaned everything up.

Missy and Clark decided to go on 4 hour watches and give her the Demerol if she needed it when the current dose wore off. Sherrie slept for 10 hours and Clark had to wake her up to give her the anti-biotic. He carried her to the bathroom and after she was finished asked her to drink a cup of chicken broth and a glass of water. Sherrie went right back to sleep. She woke up about 6 hours later saying her leg really hurt. Clark again carried her to the bathroom and asked her to eat a cup of chicken noodle soup with some crackers. When she finished her meal he gave her the Demerol. She again went to sleep. Clark told Missy she is an excellent patient. She hit him on the arm.

Before Missy went to bed Clark told her we can put off the barrel recovery plan for a bit, but we have to have the cow feed and hay or leave the cows at Earls for another week or so. She said no, tomorrow night we will go get the feed and hay. Camron can set here with Sherrie until we get back. All the kids watched what we did so they know what to do. We have to take Sherrie to the bathroom before we leave and she should be good for 8 or 10 hours. Clark said OK. Missy said Sherrie is healing up really fast and there is no sign of infection so she should be on her feet in 3 or 4 more days and she will be able to go with us to Earl’s farm. Her leg will probably be just a little sore but she will be alright. Clark said if we have to we can put the trip off for 2 or 3 days until she is at 100%. Missy said that’s a good idea.

The next night Missy, Clark, Francine and David headed to the feed store. Clark was tired of these drug animals and everyone was armed to the teeth. The kids had M-16’s and Missy and Clark had the hard hitting 308 rifles. He wanted to do some night time sniping but Missy talked him out of it. Her main argument is those people do not know we exist and we should keep it that way for as long as possible. She said we have been lucky so far and have left no evidence that we are in the area. He reluctantly agreed with her and said soon I am going to do something about these dangerous crazy people.

The feed store sat back a ways from a secondary road off the main highway and they had no trouble parking the flatbeds behind the place beside a loading dock.

The place must have just gotten a shipment in before the virus attack. The wareroom for hay was full and hundred pound sacks of seeds, cow feed, chicken feed, corn and everything that was on his list was available. The electric forklift was put to work and before 11pm both flatbeds were loaded. They had no trouble getting back home and did not see anyone in that section of town. They were of course on the secondary roads and did not expect to see anyone.

That night Clark burned the bodies that were in the truck and hauled the truck back out towards the entryway, when he had a little free time he was going to tow it 15 miles from the city and park it way back on an old logging road.

Part 52.

About midmorning the next day the family went to work and filled 150 of the 40 gallon barrels with the 100 pound sacks they had brought back. He had to make 2 trips to the soon to be cow barn. A permanent magic marker was used to mark each barrel on the lid and the side with its ingredients. The 1st trip he off loaded the hay in the barn and used the forklift to slide 3/4 of it up into the low hayloft.

Before the barrels were transported to the barn Camron and David had to log each barrel and its contents on to the inventory sheet; Clark told Missy that he was going to ride one of the 500CC motorcycles to Earl’s farm and tell Earl they would be 3 days late on their visit. Missy said you are insane it is 20 some degree F out there. He said well I guess I can drive the 60 miles in the truck. Missy also said and that reminds me I want us to go shopping for me a new king cab diesel pickup. He wrote that down on his to-do list.

Clark made the 60 mile trip at daybreak the next morning and told Earl he would be 4 days late bringing the chickens and to hold off on the picnic. He rushed back home and towed the bad guys pickup 2 miles up an old logging road and pushed it 20 or so yards into the brush.

Missy and the kids stored the 12 dozen eggs in one of the 46 degree root cellars and picked out 10 good layers and 2 young roosters that had not yet been slaughtered for food. The pond was checked and it was full. The drain pipe Clark noticed was going to need a strainer to keep the minnows from being sucked out through the drain. They noticed that the water was becoming crystal clear and the cloudiness from the mud created from the top soil on the bottom was settling down. She asked him if he wanted to trap some minnows and put them in. He said we will have to feed them some made up fish food until we get the aquatic plants in and microscopic bugs started to grow next summer. She said come on; it will be fun to throw a handful of fish food in every day. He said the fish food is at Lowes. That put a damper on her wanting to do something fun. She said I am going to look in the yellow pages. He just grunted. 5 minutes later she gave out an Ah Ha. He looked at her. She told him there is a store at 2400 Mountaineer Lane that carries a wide selection of fresh water fish and a complete line of fish supplies. He looked at the city map and saw it was about 6 blocks behind the Coca Cola bottling plant and could be driven to on the secondary roads. He told her remember the last time we went to that area Sherrie got shot. She said those guys were no where near where we were they were out driving around near our route home. He said you must really want to feed some minnows.

They left a little after dark that evening. They were lucky this night they loaded the pickup full of fish food. The place really smelled bad because of the dead fish in the aquariums and small dead pets in cages. He made a note of the fish tank air pumps and large 250 gallon empty aquariums. He could not think of a good reason yet why he may need those aquariums but would think about it. He did think of one reason and that was if he ever had to empty the pond he could put the fish in the tanks for a while till he refilled the pond. He wrote that down to put on his knowledge base in the computer.

The next morning they took 4 minnow traps put some squeezed dough ball bread in them and placed them in the deep pools in the creek. They went back about 1pm after lunch and found they had about 300 minnows. Those were dumped in the pond and a small handful of fish food was thrown in where they were released. He said you are fast tracking our fish pond activity. She said I know but fresh fish would be nice. He said we can set a few trotlines out in some ponds but our fish tank is not quite ready for bigger fish. The above water and below water aquatic plants that will draw insects and allow different kinds of bugs, snails, frogs and underwater aquatic life to grow have not been put in. She said set a trot line and we will eat what you catch, I guess we will have to wait till late spring to gather the aquatic plants up for the tank.

On the 5th day Sherrie was walking around with a tree branch Clark had cut for her to use as a cane. Sherrie said it twinges when I put to much pressure on it. They had all looked at the wound and that special Silverlon antibacterial bandage had done its wonders, the wound looked healthy and had formed a big scab. Sherrie said but I will have a nasty looking scar on my leg. Everyone laughed and told her you ought to be glad that’s all you got from being shot. Sherrie did not have a clue on really how lucky she was not to get a serious infection. The sterile saline solution had flushed all the bacteria and foreign particles out of the wound and the anti-biotic salve covered 4X4 Clark had immediately slapped on the wound left a coating of the salve on the exposed wound area and kept any airborne particles from entering the open wound. The anti-biotic salve and one of the 6 remaining UV lights Clark had hung over the open wound just may have created a sterile environment and eliminated any bacteria from settling into the open wound. Sherrie and her 2 novice doctors had been lucky this time.

[Lbox88]

Part 53.

One more day to go before going to Earl’s farm; Clark and Missy took two 200 watt solar panels, two 6 volt golf cart batteries and some wiring to the soon to be cow barn. Using the extendable ladder in the barn Clark mounted the 2 panels using the plastic covered metal roof clamps on the south side of the barn roof. Next he ran the wire from the panels to the charge controller then to the batteries; then he wired up 3 porcelain pull chain bathroom lights, hung them down the center of the barn screwed 3 nine year life span 100 watt fluorescents in them. He put an in line timer on the out put side of the small 400 watt AC inverter and set the timer to come on at 6pm and off at 6 am. Not caring about the 2 or 3 watts he would lose from the inverter during the day as it always drew power, he figured the 20 or so watt draw of one 100 watt florescent would be negligible on the batteries. He turned 2 of the lights off and left the center one to come on for hopefully the next 18 or so years or earlier when the batteries failed. The barn now had lighting in case he or anyone ever had to come to the place at night, it would be lit up.

The cow and chicken feed would be good through this coming summer since it was now 18 degrees F and spoilage would not occur at these temperatures. If there had been any live bugs or bug eggs in the just filled barrels they had now been eliminated until the barrel was reopened and infestation again happened. The whole grains he did not worry about. He always thought if the feed spoiled he would think about getting a pig because he did not think spoiled food would hurt that cast iron stomach they had. He had worried about the rodent chewed through grain and feed bags leaking from the flatbed and leaving a trail on the way back to the farm but Missy never drove fast enough to blow any off the trucks.

Missy said how ya gonna give the cows some water in the barn – he smacked himself mentally again. He found the electrical panel and looked for the well breaker. He grinned when he saw it was a single 15 amp breaker, that meant he could use solar to pump some water out of the well to the barn and maybe future pig pen. Instead of tracking down the wire for the well he decided to put 4 solar panels on the roof right where he was and 4 batteries a charge controller and a 3000 watt inverter next to the breaker box. He would have to make another trip home to get the panels and some more batteries, but he was determined to have this place set up for the cows before they were brought here. He and Missy looked around some more before he retrieved the solar panels. He had noticed the large maybe 2000 gallon tank about 50 feet behind the barn that was raised up about 20 feet on metal I beams. They moseyed over to it and saw it was a water tank. The reason he knew it was a water tank was it was wrote right on the side of it. He told Missy I bet the farmer used this to take care of cleanup and the animal needs in and around the barn.

On the way home to get the solar panels he thought this was going to be a nice set up. He could put the well on a timer and pump water into the tank once or maybe twice a day to take care of the animals water needs. He knew someone would have to come here once a day to check on the feed and water, then the thought hit him yuuuck, mucking the barn out after the cows spent the night inside. Oh well nothing good comes without a little labor. He finished installing the solar panels and had it hooked up to the well breaker before dark that day. He had delusions of grandeur about bringing a generator here or solar paneling the entire roof and using an electric cow milker. But, he needed a lot more help and knowledge then he now had.

They had a late breakfast the next morning and decided to take the 2 king cab trucks, he had stopped at a truck lot a few days ago and towed a new truck for Missy home and now had it running.. The eggs had to be kept inside one of the pickups to keep from freezing them and the chickens would be OK for the 55 minute ride in the closed cages in the back of the truck. Clark drove the truck with the eggs and the high wire cage sided tow-a-long to transport the cows back. Everyone was armed to the teeth except 4 year old Kimberly.

Part 54.

They arrived about noon and soon everyone was getting acquainted in a large barn with a big coal stove right in the middle that was fighting the 15 or so degree outside temperature off.

The kids all hit it off and were in a corner talking about things that only kids talked about.

The adult men were in another corner discussing the main item – Survival.

Missy was whisked off to another corner and the sounds coming from that corner sounded like a gaggle of geese.

The eggs and chickens had disappeared as soon as he parked the truck beside the barn.

Earl introduced Clark to all the men and told him to set down with 2 men in particular for a long talk. The 2 men Fred and Hank had been in the military and knew a whole bunch about what Clark needed to know. Fred told Clark he was going with him to the military base and the military weaponry would be divvied up. Clark thought about that for about 4 seconds and knew Fred was right. There was no way he and Missy could use all the equipment they assumed they were going to obtain and the big part was Clark had no idea of what he was looking for and if he found it how to use it.

Earl came back into the conversation about 2 hours later and told Clark that they would help him do a little farming this coming summer and several people would be sent to his place to show and help him and Missy set things up for the long term. This was contingent on disposing of the idiot drug people living in the city which Clark would also have some help doing.

Clark and Missy listened to the pre teens as soon as they got home. Camron said he would not mind living at Earl’s farm because they did not have to go to school. But he said another interesting thing. He said Dad they don’t know much about history or how to figure out things using basic algebra or math like Missy taught us. David jumped in and said I noticed that also Cam. Sherrie said they do not have any extra electricity for DVD players or X-Box games. Francine said they only have enough electric to run the well water pump and some lights in the houses. Clark knew about the electric but did not say anything. He and Missy had talked about it that night in bed. She told Clark that they had kind of gotten their priorities mixed up by not keeping the kids in a classroom type environment, but she and the nurse had talked about that and there would be maybe some changes in the coming months. They also had not stocked up on petrol or medicines but were rectifying that problem now. She also said they had to kill 50 or 60 drug people in the closest next town over from them and the drug people had destroyed the pharmacies.

Clark, Missy and the kids had talked about how much information they were to give the people at Earl’s farm and decided to just tell them they had gotten a lot of supplies from Wal-Mart before the bad people moved into town. No mention was to be made of the full trailers, their petrol and propane supply or military weapons and night vision.. They could talk about the root cellars that they were storing excess vegetables in and the pond they were going to hopefully stock fish in. Clark decided a lot of trust would have to be developed before giving out some information on his family’s lifetime supply of goodies.

Clark was not sure if romance would develop between David and Francine but he had seen Sherrie and Camron holding hands a few times. He asked Missy about it and she said “Mr. Clark, Sherrie knows about the birds and bees, but as far as I know it’s just a puppy love kind of thing right now, hopefully it will grow into something more later on. Francine and David are to young right now to know what is happening and their bodies have not yet began to develop sexually so let’s just let nature have its way.” He could not argue with her logic so he just grunted his agreement. She also said there are other children their age at Earl’s and anything could happen when they get together over the next few years.

Part 55.

Clark was supposedly to meet just Fred at the entryway the next morning but there were 2 other men in the king cab truck with him. He took them to the cow barn where he had set a room up with a Coleman stove and a catalytic heater for them to have coffee and a snack. They could also spend the night in the room if necessary. It would not be 1st class accommodations but a blow up sleeping mat and a sleeping bag would be adequate. There was a 2 inch gap under the door and the side window at the top had been lowered 2 inches to insure adequate air ventilation while using the catalytic heater.

Clark checked out their weapons, they had AR 15’s and semi-automatic 30-06’s with scopes and 10 round magazines. He wondered how they had eliminated the large number of people in the next town over from their farm but did not ask. He would find out later how they did it.

Fred asked Clark if he was ready to go. They left 15 minutes later with Clark driving the flat bed with the tow-a-long and fork lift and a bunch of other stuff.

The base was deserted they found that out after having to cut the locks on the 6 inch pipe across the main gate road and pushing 2 concrete abutments out of the way so Clark could drive through with the tow-a-long. The other gate was permanently blocked with cemented down concrete abutments. Fred went into the gate guard building and came out with 2 maps. He told Clark to go to the Air Force Police (Security Forces) Armory and wait on him, there were 3 places they would check this trip; the Security Forces Armory, Motor Pool and ammunition bunkers.

Clark waited an hour and a half on Fred. Fred showed up with 5 Up-Armored vehicles He was pulling 1 behind his truck and his 2 friends were driving and towing 1 Up- armored HumVee (HMMWV M1114) vehicles with mounts for weapons mounted on them. He knew they were M1114 up-armored vehicles because Fred told him that was what they were.

They had to use the torch to gain entry to the armory and that took an hour. Fred and Hank grinned like there would be no tomorrow when they saw what was in the place. Fred took his notebook out and started making notes after a few minutes he told Clark to bring the fork-lift to the front door. When they were done loading the flat bed, Fred told him there were 57 M-16/M4’s, 68 9MM semi-auto pistols, eleven 50 caliber 10 round magazine/day night scoped rifles, 5 dozen generation 5 night vision, 6 SAW (squad automatic weapons) and several thousand rounds of ammo for each weapon. Fred said we are missing some heavy weaponry. We should check out the bunkers with this sign on them – he pointed out the explosive sign on the torched off armory door.

There were 9 bunkers and 2 of them had the explosive sign on the door. Fred said I think we have found the 40 millimeter weapons and grenades. He was right. It took another hour and a half to torch the locks off the bunker door. Inside were 6 Mark 19 launchers and about 1200 grenades on which the wooden crates were marked HEDP (high explosives). There were other goodies too numerous to mention including several crates of C-4 marked – For use only by 307th Civil Engineer Squadron. Clark could drive the fork lift inside the bunker and loading the bunker contents onto the flat bed was one of the easier jobs he had that day.

It was 12 degrees when they arrived back at the barn just as the sun set. Clark took one of the lights out of the end porcelain pull chain light fixture, screwed a receptacle plug into it and using an extension cord with a drop light on it lit the room up the men were going to stay in tonight. The room was warm but the catalytic heater needed some more fuel. Clark took it outside and filled it with enough white gas for it to burn till morning.

Part 56.

The next morning after a home made bread and egg sandwich breakfast, Hank fried Clarks’ eggs on the Coleman stove and Clark furnished the skillet, grease, condiments bread and a pot of coffee. The splitting up of the equipment from the military base began. Fred said we will have to make another trip next week and possibly one more to gather some other items.

Clark got 2 Hummers 2 Mark 19 grenade launchers, ten 9MM pistols, 1 SAW machine gun, 7 generation 5 night vision, two 50 caliber rifles with day night vision, 400 40 MM grenades, 8 M16’s with grenade launchers attached and enough ammunition to fight a small war. Continuing to look over the weapons from the base, Clark asked Fred what M4 –M-60 machine gun was. Fred said we have 7 of them; they are 308 caliber machine guns and are the latest model made. Even though they have all been replaced by the M240 SAW. I have seen them shoot 1500 rounds of belted ammunition without a misfire or the barrel getting super hot like the earlier M-1/M2/M-3 M-60 models. On the earlier models they had 2 barrels and when one barrel turned white hot or after several hundred rounds were fired through it, the assistant gunner used an asbestos glove and knocked the pin out locking the barrel on and after a quarter twist the barrel dropped off and the new barrel replaced it and the firing commenced again. I think you should take 2 of them they mount directly to the bracket on the Hummer. It will give you a standoff range of 1100 meters with about 600 rounds per minute fire capability. The only drawback I see about them is you have to take the 100 rounds of belted ammunition out of the small metal ammo cans, hook more belts together and place them in a 1000 round ammo can. This is OK if the big can will be carried in a vehicle. But a person running through the woods, desert or jungle cannot carry a 1000 round ammo can. That’s why the belted ammo is in 100 round carry around ammo can. What me and Hank like about the M-60 is what we call a drop beat pattern to drop 30 or 40 308 rounds down on people from 300 meters on out to 1100 meters and with a little practice it can be done easily. Clark just looked at him with that questioning look on his face that dumb people have. Fred said don’t worry before I leave you will know everything there is to know about all this new military equipment and firepower. Clark had one more question; he said I thought that the M-60 was a Viet Nam era gun. Fred said it was the squad automatic weapon (SAW) back then, but that one used 40 some years ago cannot hold a candle to this recently developed now obsolete M-60 Model 4.

So, He and Missy sat in a classroom for 4 hours that 2nd day. Fred had asked him if he had a blackboard and fortunately Clark did, he even had the erasers and chalk. The next day the temperature got up into the sunny mid 40’s F and they got to shoot all the weapons. They had fun shooting the Mk 19 mounted on the Hummer. Fred had thoughtfully left 100 practice 40 mm rounds and they used half of them learning how to range the launchers out to about the 400 yard range on the M-16’s. The 4 kids did not get to practice with any of the weapons but they had to watch and take notes. They also had a hundred or more questions for Fred. Even though Clark had 50 caliber rifles and was going to practice with them this coming summer. Fred had him and Missy trained and firing the 50 caliber rifles before the 3rd day was over.

As Fred was leaving on the 4th morning he said we will be back in 5 days for the next trip to the base and Hank will then teach you some small unit military tactics and some other neat stuff.

Fred, Hank and one other man arrived on the 5th day about 9am and the weather was really bad. It had started snowing about 9pm the night before and there were 3 or 4 inches on the ground. Clark asked Fred what kind of vehicle he should take and Fred said same one you took last time with the forklift. Clark worried about the tracks they were going to leave when they left the farm, but the way it was snowing they would be covered over in an hour or so.

They made it to the base by noon and quickly torched off the locks to the 2nd explosive marked bunker. Fred said to Clark I am glad we found these, we may never need them but they just may come in handy some day. Hank had no idea why they were here, he said I know they use them around nuclear storage areas; Fred chimed in and said I bet they are for when nuclear loaded planes are parked here overnight. Clark did not say anything because he had no idea what they were talking about. Fred explained it to him. What we have here Clark is 24 shoulder mounted 5 mile range anti aircraft missiles. As you can see written on the plastic case – FIM 92A Stinger Weapons System – 1 Each. There are also 24 Javelin missiles and they are man portable as is the Stinger and they are anti-Tank missiles. I guess since the Air Force does not have tanks or heavy artillery type weapons they requisitioned these missiles and other items for the Security Forces to battle off some heavily armored vehicles like a Bradley or an up-armored Hummer. The other find was 24 M136 AT4 Recoilless rifles which were also for taking out light armor. We may have a more immediate use for the Javelin and the recoilless rifles then we do the Stingers. They loaded all the missiles and recoilless rifles on the flat bed and Fred had Hank and the other man take the 4 Hummers that were parked behind the Security Forces Armory that had been overlooked on the initial trip. These Hummers had what Fred Called a Crows system and would be handy for shooting at things while protected from incoming small arms fire. 2 of them had Ma-Deuce 50 calibers already mounted to them. There was no ammunition for the 50 calibers. Hank said I bet the ammo is in an unmarked bunker, Fred said yep. We will check all of them on the next trip.

The snow was 6 or more inches deep and showed no signs of stopping as they made there way back to Clark’s home. He had to stop in the flatbed and let the 2 hummers and Fred in his diesel 4 wheel drive pass him to break trail. The trip home took 4 hours and was a nerve wracking experience for Clark.

They pulled up to the barn and Clark told the 3 men he needed to use one of the Hummers to get home. He told them he would be back in a few hours either with the Hummer or on his snow machine. The beady eyed man (Jeff or Jeffery, Clark never did lock his name in memory) asked Clark why they did not all go to his house. Clark told a small lie and said there was not enough room for 3 more people in his trailer. He assured them he would either bring food or the fixings for a nice supper. The toilet in the barn worked and the faucet in the toilet put out cold water for drinking or a sponge bath if one took the time to heat the water. Clark had looked at the piping in the bathroom and saw that the farmer had put an ingenious drain back system on the toilet tank and sink insuring there would be no water in the inlet pipes when they were not in use. The toilet was stainless steel and he did not think a little freezing would hurt the bowl or as far as that went the toilet tank either. He had looked under the sink and saw that the J drain was made from cast iron and he knew the water when it froze would expand upwards and there no chance the cast iron pipe would burst from the small amount of water that would freeze in the piping.

Jeff told Hank and Fred right after Clark left that they should kill Clark and take his woman back to Earl's farm with them.

Part 57.

Hank and Fred looked at each other and Fred told Jeff they would talk about it after they ate the supper Clark was going to bring them. Fred knew Jeff was some sort of distant kin to Earl and Earl had taken him in as a general handyman. Jeff did not have a woman and lived alone in one of the small cinder block buildings near Earl’s house. No one really got along with Jeff and everyone had noticed Earl grinding his teeth when he talked to Jeff.

Jeff went to the bathroom and Fred looked at Hank and he shook his head in the affirmative.
When Jeff walked back in the room Fred threw a shirt wrapped rope around his neck from behind, he kept pulling Jeff backwards around the room so Jeff could not get back standing up right or use his hands on Fred. Fred simply and with as few marks as possible on Jeff’s body choked him to death.

Hank laughed a little and said to Fred – I didn’t like him at all and now look at the mess you have made in our nice sleeping room. They lay Jeff down on the rubber sleep mat and covered his face with the shirt that had been wrapped around the rope. They laid him on the rubber sleep mat because Jeff had voided his bowels as he was dying. Fred said we can drag him out in the snow when Clark comes back. Hank said what story are you going to tell Clark? Fred said some sort of heart attack because it looked to me like he grabbed his left arm and chest and his face turned kind of a blue color. Hank said OK. The 2 combat veterans settled down as far away from the not so pleasant smelling Jeff as they could. After a few minutes Hank said come on Fred let’s put him outside the room it will take a long time for this smell to dissipate as it is. They drug Jeff out on the rubber sleep mattress and left him about 10 feet past the room they were in. Fred left the door open and lowered the window and in about 3 minutes the cross-draft blew the bowel movement smell out.

Fred and Hank both heard the Hummer at the same time. They met Clark at the side barn door and gave him the bad news. Clark said Oh that is awful. Was either of you close to him? Hank said Jeff did not have any friends except maybe for Earl. Clark just said I see. Fred said before we eat we would like to move the body outside. Do you have any of those blue tarps? Clark said yes I have a bunch of them.

Fred rolled Jeff off the rubber mat onto the tarp and Hank hurriedly using some scrap rope hanging everywhere in the barn tied the tarp around Jeff. He looked at Clark and said sorry about the sleep mat but it will wash off. Clark did not say anything. Fred asked Clark if there was a high place where they could stash the body until the ground thawed enough to bury him. Clark said there is the walk around ramp on the water tank which is about 5 feet off the ground. Hank and Fred picked up Jeff and slogged through the snow where they deposited the now double tarp wrapped body up on the ramp out of the way of any animals.

They left the soiled air mattress outside the barn in the snow next to the door – Fred said he would wash it off in the morning because it did not look like he and Hank were going back to Earl’s anytime soon unless Clark came up with a giant snow-plow. Clark just looked at him. Fred said it was a joke Clark. Clark breathed a sigh of relief.

Hank said this is really good food Clark, tell Missy she is an excellent cook. Clark did not tell them that Camron and Sherrie had cooked today’s meal.

Hank said to Clark, well I guess you and Missy are going to learn small unit tactics a week or so early – so tomorrow about 9am or so “come on down” and he said the come on down like that guy on the TV game show always did. Clark chuckled.

All 7 of them showed up at 9am – Clark had already brought them breakfast. Today was Francine and David’s turn to milk the cow.

Clark told hank and Fred that there was no way they could use 4 to 9 gallons of milk a day. Hank said freeze some, make some butter, make some cheese and then throw the rest to the pig that you don’t have. Even Missy gave out a laugh when Hank said that. Fred said don’t worry just throw it away for now. There will be some people come here and show you how to make cheese, cream and buttermilk in the near future.

The class was boring Clark thought. What Hank was teaching was common sense and some of it He and Missy would never be able to do. Hank told them it does not make sense what I am showing you now but later on if you are with 6 or 8 other people and some more practice on a mission it will all come together. Then Hank got to the good part; using explosives in ambushes or making IED (improvised explosive devices). Clark took lots of notes and asked lots of questions. Missy saw the need for this knowledge, but like Clark, thought some of it was boring. She paid particular attention to the instructions on how to handle prisoners and saw the need to kill attacking prisoners immediately or become a prisoner herself.

On the 3rd day Clark brought a load of canned food including Spam and a few dozen eggs for Hank and Fred to cook for themselves. Fred had told Clark that he and Hank liked hobo coffee and if it was OK they would make their own coffee from now on if Clark had any grounds to spare. He made both of them happy when he brought the 5 gallon porta shower, soap, shampoo and 10 bath towels. The Coleman stove was sufficient to do all their cooking and a large pot to warm water in for the shower took care of all their needs. Clark still brought them a loaf of homemade bread every day. Fred and Hank took a gallon of fresh milk for coffee use and drinking, they left the milk out in the 35 to 40 degree hallway to keep it fresh.

The kids knew they were too young to go out on missions like Hank was talking about alone or by themselves, but took lots of notes; The 4 kids would talk about this when they were together and come up with some of their own tactics. They knew they may be called on to use one of the weapons in one of the Hummers, but that information had not been taught to them yet. Clark finally found out how Hank, Fred and 6 others (2 of the others were women) eliminated about 50 drug crazed people in the town by Earl’s Farm. Fred said we had to kill 5 women and one boy who looked like he was 13 or so years old. We know he was a rabid drug user because he had needle track marks on both arms 8 inches long.

Most of the killing was done with 22 caliber subsonic ammunition from 20 to 25 feet away. The 8 people from Earl’s farm used bolt action 22 rifles and would take out household after household right before dark when they were using the outdoors as a bathroom and right after daylight. They had been extremely lucky that all the people shot died on the spot and did not give out any alarm. Or else the attackers were expert shots which they all were. Fred told Clark and Missy it took them one evening and the better part of the next morning to kill the crazed people. Hank reiterated that there were never more then 3 people staying in a household at any one time and that made it very easy for them to kill the people. He next said it won’t be like that in the big city because the way I understand it is 8 or 9 people crash in a house and leave at different times all night and all day. We will have to see if we can get them in close proximity to each other and do the damage with superior firepower or even the grenades to take groups of them out at a time. Clark also told me that there were no women or children that he had observed with the more then 300 people that have so far taken up residence in the big city.

[Lbox88]

Part 58.

Eleven days later the last trip to the base after the snow had melted away was for combat clothing, equipment, web belts, canteens, ammo pouch carriers, etc. The military clothing store had everything Earl’s group was looking for and the Security Forces Supply building had the military equipment they needed to completely outfit everyone at both farms for a long time.

They used the backhoe and buried Jeff close to where Clark’s ex-wife was. He was not put in a coffin and only a crossed 2 X 4 was put at the head of his grave. Fred told Clark that he would ask Earl if he wanted to get a headstone for Jeff’s grave..

They found the 50 caliber belted ammunition in one hundred count ammo cans in the 4th bunker they broke into. There was nothing of note in the other bunkers they searched unless you would call 60 500 pound bombs and maybe 20,000 rounds of 20 millimeter ammunition for the fighter cannons. They could think of no real reason to use either of them except for a 500 pound IED, improvised explosive device. But that was an awfully large explosion and a very heavy item to move around so they just relocked the bunker.

Planning for the big city cleansing (is what Hank called it) began. 3 trips to Earl’s and 9 days of hide and seek gathering intel on the drug crazed people in the city resulted in a hopefully simple plan.

Clark said it is a shame to ruin such a pretty convention center, the other 9 people in the planning meeting said the same thing. The plan was to leave printed flyers from Clark’s printer in several locations advertising a new drug and an all woman strip tease show several days from now which would give them time to see if they could remotely detonate one of the heavy 500 pound bombs that they did not initially want to use.

Hank, Fred and Clark used the fork lift and took one of the 500 pound bombs out of the bunker. They then used a ½ pound of C-4 and molded it on to the front of the impact detonator fuse on the front of the bomb and used almost a 1000 yards of electrical detonating wire to hopefully set the bomb off. Fred and Hank knew there was a sequence on screwing the detonating fuse out, but they did not know that piece of classified information. The detonating fuse supposedly had to be activated by some special twisting before the fuse was activated prior to hanging or after attaching the bomb on the plane. They had decided to use the C4 as the fuse to detonate the 500 pounds of high explosive contained in the bomb casing in case the bomb fuse did not activate. They had no idea whether what they were going to do would work. It did. Clark told Hank and Fred that was a scary explosion and we were ¾ mile away from the detonation. I had no idea of the power of a 500 pound bomb, I have seen them go off on television, but there is a big difference in being in close proximity then watching it on TV. He said I feel sorry for anybody that is in or within 500 yards of that convention center.

Now all they had to do was secrete a 4 foot long 500 pound bomb somewhere in the convention center and run the detonating electrical wire out to a safe place where none of them would be blown up or hurt when they activated it. Clark thought it was such a silly plan that it may just actually work against a mob of drug crazed killers. They had practically unlimited access to the abandoned convention center because it was 500 yards off the main highway and could be accessed by 3 secondary roads.

Fred said I will be he contact man with the crazies. OK Clark, Fred continued what kind of drug/narcotics do you have stashed away; we are going to have to load up some insulin needles to give out as samples to get the groups attention. Clark said we have over 200 vials of Demerol and I know that works because we used it on Sherrie when she was shot. Hank said these people have been using drugs all their life so I would assume a stiff shot would be required to put them in La La land, Clark told them what the amount was they used on Sherrie and Fred just said a 75 unit shot will get the experimenters attention and they can pass on the good results when they come back to the land of the awake people. How many samples are we going to give out one of the women asked? They talked that over and decided 25 was a good number. They reworded the message they were going to put out several times. Basically it just said 30 minute strip tease show – free samples of a new drug – and after the show a proposition would be put to the group and anyone accepting would have access to the new drug for life. If no one accepted the proposition the show would move on to the next populated town. If you want to know more; be in the convention center at 6pm on such and such date. Please be 10 minutes early and seated as once the show starts the performers do not like interruptions. The 1st 25 people to arrive at the convention center the day before the show at 6 pm will receive a sample. Unlimited supplies of this drug are available after the show. That was basically the gist of the flyer.

Now Hank said we have a small problem, we have to get the bomb in the convention center and wired up. That discussion went on for an hour with no firm plan on placing the bomb. They adjourned and decided to take that sticky problem up the next day. Camron and Sherrie told Clark after hearing the plan to put the bomb outside in a painted crate and run the wires up to a telephone pole then to wherever the guy was that was gonna blow it up. Or maybe use 2 of the bombs one on each side and if the 1st bomb does not do it – set the 2nd one off. Clark looked at the 2 kids and asked them where they had gotten such ideas – they grinned at him and said the cartoons – road runner and wile e coyote. They are always blowing each other up with acme dynamite. Clark laughed till tears came out of his eyes and said that is exactly what we will do.

The next night Fred and Hank ran the detonating wire up a telephone pole right beside the convention center and tediously attached it to the lines running away from the place until they got to a 2 story building a little over a half mile away. The wires were placed beside a newly charged 12 volt battery. Fred said that’s one. Hank said yep. Tomorrow night we will string the wire on the other side of the center. Meanwhile Clark had checked the buildings outside and found a trash dumpster on each side of the center - 4 of the men then quietly drug the dumpsters beside the poles the wire was hanging from. The 3rd night Clark and 2 other men used the electric forklift and gently lowered a bomb into the 2 dumpsters and covered them with paper trash. Hank and Fred came along behind them and wired the blasting caps into the C4. The bombs were set. Now all they needed was for Fred to convince a few of the crazies to spread the word with the flyers Clark had made.

Part 59.

Hank, Clark and Fred spray painted one of the up armored hummers with bright red water based paint. Fred then drove it into town at high noon the day after the attack plans had been finalized and the bombs readied. He had a 5 foot white flag raised over the top of the auto. He parked in front of one of the apartment buildings that he knew several of the dopers were staying in and waited.

It wasn’t long before 7 or 8 long haired wild looking armed men had surrounded the loud sounding idling diesel vehicle. Fred just sat behind the steering wheel and waited some more. Finally one big black man with a giant afro that was looking kind of straggly walked up to the driver side window pointing a sawed off shotgun at Fred.

Fred rolled the window down about an inch and handed the man a 75 unit Demerol loaded insulin needle with 8 flyers. The man took the needle first then after looking at it he put it in his shirt pocket and then snatched the flyers.

After the man read one of the flyers he asked Fred what was in the needle. Fred told him to put the shotgun away and he would talk to him. The man slung the shotgun over his shoulder and stood spread legged with his arms folded across his chest staring at Fred.

Fred rolled his window down about 6 inches and told the man his name was Fred and he was the front man for the show that was going to be put on at the convention center and that he was also the recruiter for a larger outfit 250 miles from this town. He next said the drug is a cross between crystal meth, heroin and crack cocaine and is only mildly addictive. It is made at a solar powered factory 500 miles from here and we have exclusive rights to it. There is no limit on how much you can take so it eliminates all overdoses. 75 units is the perfect downer, anything over 75 units’ acts as an upper. The downer may last up to 8 hours and the upper is good for a little over 4 hours. The body will reject anything over 150 units and will not absorb the drug. All it will do is leave a nice lump of fluid where you injected it until the body can process it out as waste. Fred had no idea if what he was telling the man had any truth in it, but that is what the nurse came up with as a story.

A few nights before Fred went on his day time contact mission, Clark, Hank and 2 women had brought two 240 amp 12 volt batteries and an inverter to the convention center and hung 5 sixty watt fluorescents up over the stage and 5 twenty watt ones down each isle leading to the front seats. They calculated the lights would burn brightly for far longer then would be necessary before the batteries would have to be recharged. This would be enough to turn them on and leave them on the night he gave the 25 Demerol loaded needles out. The lights had well over a hundred hours of run time before the battery needed to be recharged. So they left them on from 1 hour the night before the supposed show in case any of the drug crazed people looked around the center, Clark and crew were not worried if anyone looked around inside the center because they had put absolutely nothing inside the place except the batteries and lights.

There were 10 adults and 4 kids involved in this operation. Clark had an up armored hummer with a Mk 19 grenade launcher attached and a SAW M249 squad automatic 5.56 caliber machine gun on the seat as a back up with five 200 round box linked ammo to replace the Mk 19 if machine gun fire was called for; Camron and Francine were designated gunners.. Missy had their other up armored hummer with the stand off M-60 machine gun mounted with eight 100 boxes of belted .308 ammunition; Sherrie and David were the gunners.

Hank was going to detonate the bombs when Fred gave him the signal on the hand held radio. With Hank was one of the women, she had a 60 power spotting scope and one of the scoped 50 caliber 10 shot rifles; her job was to watch over Fred while he stood out in front of the convention center.

The other 2 hummers were manned by 2 men each and were 2 miles out of town on the opposite side of Clark and Missy. Those Hummers were armed with M60’s and Mark 19 grenade launchers. The odd man was in a high rise 1200 yards from the convention center. His 2 jobs were to keep an eye on people outside that were visible to him on the streets that did not go to the show and maintain radio contact with all of Clark’s raiding party.

It was 5 minutes till 6 pm and 281 people had entered the convention center. Fred had given each person entering a numbered ticket he had conveniently stolen from the centers ticket office. The sign behind him said take a ticket and as soon as everyone is seated I will bring in the show people. Keep your ticket as that will be your number for the big drug drawing at the end of the show and 7 lucky men will get to personally spend some time with the ladies afterwards. At 4 minutes to 6 he leaped in the red hummer and sped straight out of the convention center parking lot. He knew where 800 yards from the blast zone was and as soon as he reached that mark he spoke into his handheld - BLOWEMUP.

The lady with Hank said in a low voice that Fred was almost clear. Hank said I see him. I am going to give him 2 more seconds after he clears the safe marker. 1000 – 1001 Hank said. He touched the 2 black wires to the negative side of the battery which completed the circuit. The blast came immediately after he touched the wires to the negative post. Both 500 pound bombs detonated simultaneously. A second or so later the windows in the room he was in cracked, small pieces of concrete bounced off the cracked windows and the side of the building facing the convention center. The caruumph sound of the double 500 pound explosion was tremendous.

Missy was one mile away parked beside of Clark and had the door open when the explosion went off. She said Holy Chit. The 4 kids were facing towards the explosion and their eyes got big as saucers. The sound hit all of them 2 or so seconds later. They could see the debris being flung skyward, the huge fireballs and the cloud of dust generated by the explosions.

The celebrating party was over 10 or so seconds after the explosion when Fred’s voice came over the handheld radios saying there are 19 or more dope fiends still running loose in the city. The man in the tower said I know the location of 11 of them. He relayed that information to the Hummer drivers. Clark said to Missy let’s go take a look see and use some of this heavy firepower.

Part 60.

Fred, Hank and Clark had a few contingency plans for after the explosion. Originally all 4 Hummers were to go the site of the convention center and kill any survivors. This was changed on the fly. Fred sent one of the manned Hummers to the explosion site. He picked up Hank and the woman and headed with the other 3 Hummers to surround or box in the apartment complex the high rise observer had reported.

Missy and Clark covered the front of the complex with Missy hanging back about 600 yards on the right side of the bldg in the middle of the road leading to the apartment complex. Clark had to drive to within 250 yards on the front left side and the other 2 Hummers parked about 200 yards behind the place on opposite ends they had to get this close to have a clear line of fire because other buildings were in the way. Fred talked to the high rise observer and was told the 11 people he saw outside had gone inside the building they had surrounded and they were still inside.

What Clark and company did not know and never would know was there were 23 people inside the apartment complex. This was a small group that had formed and decided not to go to the convention center; they had other plans which bode no one any good will. And this was the remainder of the drug crazed killers in the city.

Fred was the on scene commander and directed the firepower that would soon be unleashed on the apartment building. Fred told Hank simple is better. He directed Clark to fire a 40 millimeter grenade in each of the 8 lower floor windows on his command. The left rear Hummer was told to fire grenades into windows on the bottom floor on the opposite right side of Clark. He told Missy to open fire on all the upper windows from right to left on the 2nd floor and he would do the same on the other side of the building. He asked if everyone was ready he got back 4 affirmatives. He then gave the command to open fire.

Camron missed 2 windows and had to retarget them with 2 more grenades. Sherrie thought that this was fun because she did not see any people and was just shooting up a storm with the mounted M-60. What she did not know was she killed 7 people on the 2nd floor with her first sidewise raking fire of the building. Fred had a mounted SAW M249 that fired 5.56 cartridges. He opened up on the 2nd floor opposite of Missy and almost cut the wooden framed 2nd floor in two pieces. Clark received some heavy semi automatic fire from the ground floor on the lower floor opposite of which Camron had blown up with grenade fire. The reason Missy did not receive any fire is she was just a little out of range of the AR 15’s. Clark told Fred what was happening and he directed Missy to open fire on the lower floor. Sherrie fired 200 rounds into the lower floor on her side and the firing from the building stopped. Numerous fires had started inside the building. Fred told the other 3 other Hummers to just stand by and keep watch until the fire had engulfed the building. They waited until the roof collapsed before they drove off. Fred had maintained constant radio contact with the observer in the high rise. Everyone could hear the observer as he reported to Fred that there were no moving targets in his field of view.

The men in the Hummer that were at the Convention center reported there were no survivors they could find, the place had completely collapsed and was now nothing but a giant broken concrete pile, bent girders and window glass fragments. Fred told the high rise observer that he would pick him up in 10 minutes and for the rest of the people to rendezvous at Clark’s entry way.

As soon as everyone was at Clark’s entry way – Hank told the other occupants of Earl’s farm to head home. He and Fred were going to stay here for 3 more days and use the night vision to check the city out for any survivors. After the 3rd day they would head home.

After a Spam and egg breakfast, Hank and Fred heated some water up, grabbed 2 scrub brushes and attempted to wash off the red water based paint. Fred was cussing Hank on why he had put the paint on so thick on his side and Hank laughed and said you painted that side. An hour later they had 90% of the paint off. Hank said I believe the rain will take the rest of it off. Fred agreed with that and they put the buckets and brushes away.

Hank saw it was Missy’s turn to milk the cow earlier and he jumped in and told her he always wanted to milk a cow. She handed him the 2 two gallon buckets and said I want to watch this. Missy did not know that Hank had milked cows since he was a teenager. She stood there as he milked the cow in what she thought was world record time. Hank continuing on with his little joke told her why that was the easiest thing I have ever done. I cannot see why anyone would complain about doin that little simple job. He walked off and left her standing there with 2 full buckets of milk. Clark put the lids on the buckets and drove them home. Missy was flabbergasted and could not think of anything to say all the way home. Clark just told her we will have to have the kids learn to do that. She still did not know what to say.

That night Missy and Clark took the high rise observation post while Hank and Fred rode through the entire darkened city on bicycles. They saw nothing but some wild dogs, rabbits, rats and a few skunks. They went home at 11pm and decided to check the city one more night. Fred told Clark if there were any survivors they were long gone by now and probably would not be back. Hank said the only thing you have to worry about now will be travelling groups of crazies and if you use caution and keep a lookout while scavenging you should be alright.

2 weeks after the convention center explosion Hank brought 2 more men to Clark’s residence. Hank introduced him to the first man who was the farmer and would go with Clark and give him instructions on what needed to be done to farm a few sections of land to feed the cows and pigs he would soon have. The other man was the mechanic and he was going to the tractor and grain sales outlets in the city with him to get the heavy farm equipment running that Clark would eventually need to do his small bit of farming.

Clark and Missy just about filled an 80 page notebook with notes on the first day with the farmer. Hank had gone with the mechanic to get the equipment running and towed back to the farms that would have grain or whatever grown on them. Hank told Clark that night before he left that the 2 farms the equipment had been parked on was under the large pole barns and that Clark was lucky the previous farmers had used metal poles in cement and covered the pole barns with metal 100 year roofs. He also said the farmer would be back several weeks from now to show him how to use the heavy equipment.

Clark told Missy that night while drinking Hershey’s co coa in hot milk that they may as well get a 10,000 gallon tanker of diesel fuel and one of gasoline for each farm that had equipment they were going to use on it and park them under the pole barns with the farm equipment. Missy asked if he was going to treat the fuel. He said yes. She said it looks like we are again going to be snowed under with work, but at least this time we will have a little help for a short time. He just said – yep.