Prepper's Apocalypse | Book 1 | Prepper's Apocalypse

by Newman, AJ

  Tom was asleep on the front porch lying on a folded-up painter’s tarp, with Sam’s head on his thigh and an arm across his stomach. They were both sound asleep. Jackie didn’t like what she saw but guessed Tom had stayed to keep her company, and she’d fallen asleep on guard duty. Jackie thought, Thank god, Granny B didn’t see this.

  Jackie had started walking around the area when Granny B came around the corner. She whispered, “Granny B, you still have a couple of hours to sleep. What are you doing up?”

  “Someone has to pull guard duty. Those two didn’t do a very good job at it, did they?”

  “I wish I could take a picture of them. I could have some fun with big brother. He doesn’t like her.”

  “Hon, your phone camera will still work. Remember, we were a thousand miles from the EMP blasts. We also have small solar chargers to keep them and our tablets charged. Take a few blackmail pictures before I wake them up, but I ain’t so sure he hates her all that much. I do believe he won’t trust another woman for a long time.”

  Jackie took several pictures and then lifted Sam’s head and moved it off Tom before waking him. She shook his shoulder until he stirred and whispered to him. “Did you sleep well last night?”

  “Huh, hey, where’s Sam? She was here when I fell asleep.”

  Jackie tried hard not to giggle. “Shush, she’s asleep beside you. She fell asleep on guard duty. Granny B pulled most of her guard duty. Oh, I have pictures with her head on your leg and your hand on her boob.”

  Tom’s face flushed. “I wouldn’t do that. Stop making up stuff.”

  “Big brother, I have pictures on my phone of you copping a feel while the poor lady was asleep.”

  Granny B couldn’t let it go on. “You didn’t have your hand on her boobs. Your hand was on her shoulder. Your sister is full of piss and vinegar this morning.”

  Suddenly, Sam moved and tried to open her eyes. “What’s all the noise about? Go away and let me sleep.”

  Sam rolled over and ended up in the fetal position as she snored herself back to sleep. Tom stretched and then stood up. He whispered, “Sam’s not really as bad a person as I thought. She’s had some bad luck with men and is trying to get herself in a better place.”

  Tom walked around the corner to relieve himself and then took some of the wire from the plane and walked into the brush behind the house. He was still hungry and planned to do something about it.

  *

  Chapter 9

  The Hills subdivision north of Dixon, California.

  The sun was barely below the horizon when Tom finished setting the third snare and hid behind a brush pile. The snare was a simple one right out of the Army Survival Manual FM21-76. Grandpa had the old manual for many years, but the information was still useful. The device was a drag noose type that he’d set in the middle of a rabbit’s path into a thicket. He made the frame out of two eighteen-inch forked sticks, and the top rail was another fourteen-inch stick. He shoved the forked sticks into the ground on either side of the trail and laid the top rail onto the forks. He drove another stake into the ground, tied the guitar wire to it, and then hung the snare's loop from the top rail. He then cut several dozen more sticks and stuck them in the ground on either side of the entrance to funnel the animal into the noose.

  The other two snares were simple twitch up snares made by bending a young sapling over with the trap tied to the top. He made a trigger from two notched sticks and placed the loop in front of another rabbit trail into a large briar patch. Now he could lay back and wait for his breakfast.

  Sam woke when she heard Jackie waking Tom. She had heard them talking about her before Jackie had moved her head and liked what Tom had said about her. She’d enjoyed their conversation that night and felt much safer with Tom around. She wondered if she’d misjudged him. He’d showed a much softer side that night and was easy to talk with. She waited until they stopped talking about her, yawned, and woke up stretching to get the kinks out.

  Jackie gathered up their sleeping gear while Granny B went to the restroom to clean up. Sam asked, “Jackie, what can Lucy and I do to help this morning?”

  “Search the area for some pokeweed, berries, and nuts. We need to save our packaged food as long as possible. Be back in half an hour, even if you don’t find anything edible. Take your pistol.”

  Sam patted her pocket. “I don’t leave home without it.”

  Lucy balked but went with her mom into the brush and on into the woods, which turned out to be an overgrown farm from the 1940s. They worked their way through the brush, and suddenly the dense thicket gave way to a meadow with waist-high grass and several pieces of broken-down farm equipment. A rickety barn and an abandoned house with all the windows broken out painted a picturesque scene of hopelessness across the field. Sam felt a pang of sorrow, knowing that a family had lost everything and had to leave their dear farm.

  “Mom, that tree has apples!”

  Sam and Lucy ran over to the tree and found it to be full of juicy red apples. They were also scattered under the tree, and she could see where animals had gnawed on them. They both plucked one from the branches and smiled as they tasted the fruit's tart but sweet flesh.

  “Lucy, we need a bag or basket to haul a bunch of these back to the others. Let’s search the barn and house.”

  Sam led her daughter through the open barn door and poked around until she saw a stack of gunnysacks in a corner. “Those will do nicely.”

  She watched for spiders because she was terrified of them, but didn’t notice the two rats beside the pile. She gingerly grasped the corner of one bag and yanked it from the pile scaring the rats. One ran between her feet, and she screamed, scaring Lucy, who yelled out because her mother hollered. The rats quickly scurried across the dirt floor and disappeared. Just when Sam and Lucy had calmed down, the barn’s back door flew open, and a man came running out of the dark.

  “Are you okay? Where did they go?”

  Sam and Lucy charged Tom and clung to him with tears in their eyes. Sam’s face was ashen, and she still trembled in his arms as she tried to compose herself. Tom tried to keep the rabbit blood off her clothes but wasn’t successful. Then Lucy giggled, which started Sam snickering.

  Tom stood there with a pistol in one hand and three dressed out rabbits dangling from one of their paws in his other hand. He looked around while waiting for an answer. “What happened, and why are you laughing now?”

  “Rats!”

  “Yep, old barns have rats. Did a varmint scare you, brave women?”

  “It’s not funny. I hate rats almost as much as spiders. One ran between my feet. I thought it was going to bite me.”

  Tom laughed. “Thank God, that’s all it was. I was afraid more of those men had found us and were kidnapping you.”

  “Were you going to beat them to death with the rabbits?”

  Lucy and Sam were still clinging to Tom when Tom said, “I always like being hugged by two beautiful women, but my arm is tired of holding these rabbits.”

  Both of them released him. “Thanks for coming to our rescue, even if it was only a nasty old rat. I’m sure you’re not afraid of anything like us girls are?”

  “Everyone is afraid of something. I just don’t want to share my fears with everyone. Hey, that’s an apple on the floor. Where did you get it?”

  Lucy still had hers and offered a bite to Tom. “Here, take a bite. They’re great.”

  Tom took a small bite and nodded in approval with his mouth full from a second bite. Lucy said, “Grab a handful of those sacks, and we’ll go get some apples for everyone.”

  Tom picked up several bags and flipped them to knock off years of dirt and dust. “Go ahead and start filling the bags. I saw something in the back of the barn that I think we could use” Lucy and Sam went out to the apple tree while Tom stayed in the barn.

  Sam and Lucy had each filled a bag when they saw Tom come out of the barn pushing an old wheelbarrow. He stopped beside the tree. “I had to grease the
axle to free up the wheel and stop an awful squeaking sound, but it works. I cut the rotten tire off, but it’ll roll just fine on the steel rim. Fill it up.”

  Granny B was worried about Sam and Lucy since they had been gone for an hour. She was relieved when she heard them talking through the brush. She smiled when she heard Tom’s voice. “Where did you find the wheelbarrow, and what’s in the sacks?”

  “We found an old farm, and Tom saved us from some rats,” Lucy blurted out to all and then added, “He’s a hero.”

  Tom blushed and held the rabbits up for all to see.

  They were an hour late getting on the road, and Granny B knew there would be more people on Highway 80, so the decision to take the Lincoln Highway had been the right choice. They also had to go around Davis and Woodland before reaching Highway 5. There weren’t many people in the first two hours, but around ten o’clock, the foot traffic picked up, and they saw a steady stream of small groups heading south. They passed a couple of families with small children and gave them some apples for the kids. Everyone had similar stories. They were either heading home or traveling to a relative’s place in the country to be more secure. Riots, looting, and random gunfire scared many people from their homes and set them walking to safety. Some had been on vacation and were stranded at airports and along the roadside when their cars quit running.

  Where the traveler’s stories differed was their encounters with looters, thugs, and escaped criminals. Several people had encounters with one of these evil people. Most had just been robbed of food, weapons, and money. One group had a young girl kidnapped while they’d slept on the side of the road.

  Sam had stayed close to Tom all morning. “I feel so sorry for those people. I don’t know what I’d do if someone took Lucy.” She paused and smiled at her daughter, who was partaking in Granny B’s wisdom. Lucy smiled back with a puzzled look on her face.

  Tom watched another family heading toward them at the top of the next hill. He kept an eye on them and noticed they didn’t even have a backpack or any bags. “Watch out! There’s something strange about that family walking toward us. Hey, there were five of them on top of the hill. There are only three now. Get ready for someone to rush us from the side of the road. Keep your guns handy. I’m heading into the bushes.”

  Ten minutes later, the man, woman, and boy were about twenty-five feet away when the man raised both hands in the air. He said, “We don’t mean you no harm, but could you spare some food for my boy. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday morning.”

  Granny B faced the man with her gun in hand behind her. “Sorry, we’re looking for food also. Is there any up the road where you came from?”

  “What’s in that wagon and suitcases. Please share it with us.”

  Granny B sternly said, “I said we don’t have anything for you. Now get gone before I lose my temper.”

  The man raised his voice and pulled a knife from his belt. “Don’t make me use this! My friends are behind you and have guns aimed at you. Give us your supplies and guns, and we won’t hurt you.”

  The man couldn’t see what Granny B saw. She laughed in the man’s face. “Idiot, never bring a knife to a gunfight.”

  The man was about to explode when Granny B grabbed his wrist with her left hand and clocked him on the ear with the butt of her pistol. The man fell like a sack full of hammers. His head bounced off the asphalt, and blood flowed from his wound. Granny B turned to the two strangers approaching her group. “I see you caught the bastards before they could shoot us.”

  Tom shook his head. “This is a combination of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight with the over the hill gang. This one had a .22 Auto chambered in .22 Short, and the other had a teargas gun. This asshat is a man dressed up as a woman, and the one we thought was a kid is just a short asshat. What do we do with them? I hate killing, but these guys will probably try to rob the next group that encounters them.”

  “I don’t want to kill them either,” she said and then barked orders to the men. “Take your clothes off. Everything! Women, unless you want to laugh at their private parts, you’d better close your eyes or head up the road a bit.”

  “We can’t take our clothes off. That’s inhumane.”

  Granny lowered her pistol and fired a round at the asphalt between one of the man’s legs. Bits of rock and a splintered bullet hit him and one of the others in the leg. They screamed in pain but were quickly undressed with their hands covering their crotches. Granny snickered. “Now, get out of here. I’m counting to ten, and if we still see you, we’ll blow your heads off. GO!”

  The men took off running, and all were soon yelling when they stepped on rocks. They were quickly out of sight. Jackie was the only lady who’d stayed to watch them leave. “I think we need to eradicate people like that anytime we encounter them. We might feel good about not killing them, but now they’ll think they have to rob someone else to get clothes and arms.”

  Before Granny B could speak, Tom said, “I know you’re probably right, but perhaps they learned their lesson and stopped their evil ways. Anyway, it made me feel better. Besides, watching them run buck naked across that gravel on the road was darned funny.”

  *

  Chapter 10

  South of Redding, California - 99 miles and a week later

  Tom returned to camp before the sun had risen above the trees on the horizon. The dew still glistened on the grass, and Tom thought he saw a puff of his breath every now and then. The nights were definitely getting colder. They’d camped in the middle of the suburbs, hidden in a stand of trees about five miles from downtown Redding. Even with homes and people all around, there was plenty of small game. Rabbits were plentiful, and four found their way into his snares. Everyone was a bit tired of rabbits, but they’d only seen a few cows and one pig they could have shot. No one wanted to kill the cows, and Bill missed the pig with his one shot from his pistol. Tom had seen some chickens but couldn’t catch the swift animals in the brush. Rabbit stew, roast rabbit, and fried rabbit were their primary source of protein.

  Tom stopped to clean the rabbits before entering their camp to keep the flies and other animals away from camp. He was cleaning the last rabbit when three chickens wandered into the area. They weren’t afraid of him and walked in close to Tom. He had his knife in hand and threw it at the closest chicken, skewering it through its neck. The bird dropped to the ground but still flopped around as he chased the other birds to no avail. He returned and dressed out the chicken and headed back to the others at the camp. Tom entered the camp to jeers until he pulled the chicken from behind him and waved it at his friends,

  Granny B took the chicken, ran a rod through the center, and placed it over the cook fire. “I was getting tired of rabbit. We need to make some chicken traps and maybe figure out how to trap some doves and pigeons. I still don’t want to kill a cow and waste most of the meat someone else could use.”

  The chicken was roasted and placed on top of a pokeweed and dandelion salad topped off with pine nuts. It didn’t exactly fill them up, split between the nine of them, but it sure tasted good to the rabbit-weary travelers. The salad helped give them the nutrients they needed and helped make their BMs more regular. This might be TMI but essential to their health.

  Tom was deep in thought when he looked up. “We need some pellet guns and some bows and arrows. That’s how we’ll get more small game besides rabbits.”

  Jackie looked at Granny B and then back at Tom. “That means we need to go into town and find a sporting goods store that’s probably been looted.”

  “I agree on the looted part, but maybe most of the people looting were focused on survival gear, firearms, and any food. I think we should find some pellet or BB guns and maybe some bows and arrows. Think about it, most people don’t know how to use a bow.”

  Sam looked worried. “Tom, look towards the skyline. Fires are burning everywhere, and we heard gunfire all night long. It won’t be safe.”

  Tom had found a Redding phone book a
t a gas station and looked up the sporting goods stores. “We don’t want to walk the entire length from south to north in Redding. I’d travel around the city on the east side and camp about a mile or so outside the city. The map in the phone book shows only one large subdivision and some scattered houses out that way. That puts us in place to scavenge three nearby sporting goods shops. This Gleason Tactical looks very promising.”

  Granny and Jacky glanced at the map and noted where Tom had marked the nearest sporting goods stores. “Sounds like a plan,” Granny B said.

  The walk to their new camp was uneventful but was noticed by several people along the way. A man ran out of his house and waved for them to stop. Granny B and Tom walked toward the man with their hands on the butts of their pistols.

  The man raised his hands to show he wasn’t armed. “You can move your hands away from your guns. I’m not armed. Do any of you know what happened?”

  Tom guessed the man was ex-military or a cop. “Keep your hands where we can see them. We have only guessed like everyone else.”

  The man frowned. “It could have only been a dual attack of nuclear weapons and airburst EMPs.”

  Granny B asked, “What makes you think that? The EMPs are probably correct.”

  “There were two airbursts the night the shit hit the fan, along with three separate explosions many miles northeast, east, and southeast of here. They were far away, and we only saw the flash and mushroom clouds for a few seconds. I was up with my daughters stargazing with our telescope. I lowered it quickly and caught a better view of the southeast mushroom cloud.”

  Tom digested what the man had said. “Thank God the winds blow west to east out here.”