by P. A. Glaspy
Ryan stared at him. “I don’t regret shooting the one I did. I won’t regret finishing off the rest of them either. Don’t worry about me, Sheriff. Worry about them. We ready to head back?”
Gary nodded slowly, watching Ryan. “Yes, the tiller worked so we can pretty much bet the others will too. Let’s get you fellas home and me back to town. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me today.”
They loaded back into Gary’s truck, Ryan in the bed surveilling all around. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, too. Maybe not today, but soon. I’ll find you, all of you. And when I do, you’re dead.
Chapter 7
Jasper knocked on the back door of the old store. “Barbara? You in there? I’ve got work for you.”
Barbara threw on her robe and house shoes, shuffled down the stairs to the back door, peered through the peephole she had installed a few weeks ago, unlocked and opened the door, presenting him with a scowl and a squint at the early morning sunlight. “Jasper! Do you know what time it is? I wasn’t planning to be up for at least another hour. I was up late last night trying to catch up on the meat I had that needed processing. What in heaven’s name is so damn important you couldn’t wait until I put out the sign saying I was working, and that you’d take the chance of waking up the kids?”
Jasper grinned at her. “This.” He stepped aside to reveal two big deer, a doe and a buck, in the bed of his old pickup truck. “I was only after him, but she stepped up not too long after I got him, right in my path coming out of the woods, so I figured I was supposed to get her, too. Since I was so fortunate, and I only have to donate one to the town’s stores, I’ll up your payment from a quarter to a third of the doe meat on this deal. I was worried it might get too warm today, so I wanted to get them to you early, so you can get ’em downstairs where it’s cooler.”
At the offer of a higher payment, Barbara grinned, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and opened the door wider. “Well, c’mon then. Let’s get them critters downstairs. I’ll unlock the basement door and meet you over there—right after I get some coffee brewing. Looks like it’s gonna be a busy day for me.”
Jasper nodded, rubbing his hands together. “Mm mm, two deer and coffee, too? This is my lucky day.”
Barbara cocked her head at him. “Did I say I was making coffee for you, mister? I don’t recall saying that. Wait, let me think a minute …”
Jasper pouted. “Oh, now don’t tease me like that, Barb. I’ve been out of coffee for weeks. You know it’s evil to make coffee and not offer it to your company, who can smell it, and almost taste it, and—”
Barbara laughed at him. “Fine, fine, quit yer whinin’. I guess you can have a cup. But only one, since I’m getting low, and I ran out of cream yesterday. Maybe someone will have some milk to trade today for a bit of tasty venison.”
“Only if you get somebody from outside of town. Townsfolk don’t have cows. Maybe some chickens. Maybe. If they haven’t eaten them yet.”
Barbara lost her smile and nodded solemnly. “Yes, unfortunately the pangs of hunger outweigh the smarter choice of letting the animals breed to make more for food. Fortunately, though, the folks out in the country know those kinds of things and won’t eat their future food resources. Say, how are you coming on getting me fixed up to keep a freezer running? How’s that windmill set up coming along, or whatever it is? If I can keep the meat longer, I don’t have to rush to get it traded off. At full capacity, with everything frozen solid, I only have to run the freezer maybe a couple of hours a day. That big generator works great, but I’m getting dangerously low on gas. I doubt it will make it the rest of the week.”
Jasper went to his truck. “Glad you asked. I’m not completely ready with the wind turbine generator, still got a few kinks to work out, but I found this over at the hardware store. Had to trade a little .380 pistol and a box of ammo to get it.” He held up a round part with hoses, bolts, and other pieces in the bag.
“What is it?” Barbara asked as she inspected the item.
“It’s a conversion kit for the generator. We install this and the generator will be able to use propane, or even natural gas, in place of regular gasoline. There are plenty of empty houses with gas grills in the backyard around here. Lots of folks don’t think to scavenge that kind of gas. Plus, I think there are a bunch of hundred-pound tanks at the co-op. We can fill a few from their storage tanks and bring them here. That should last you long enough for me to work something out on the turbine.”
“That’s great! I may throw in a second cup of coffee for that. See ya on the other side.” She winked at him, then went to the kitchen to start the camp stove she was cooking on, and get the coffee pot going. After that was done, she headed for the basement. The outside entrance was locked from the inside with two heavy duty hasps held closed by extremely large locks. She had found evidence early on of someone trying to break in that way and added a second, as well as a brand new one to replace the one her dad had installed years ago to “keep honest people honest, and keep the thievin’ assholes out.” She smiled at the memory of her father from her youth and thanked his spirit once again for teaching her a skill she could use and, even more important, was viable and valued in this strange new world.
She was removing the second lock as Jasper backed up to the door. He got out and grabbed a rope from the bed. He tied one end around the buck’s back legs and threw the other to Barbara. “If we can, I’d like to save the skin. Amanda is gearing up to tan hides for leather for shoes, tool handles, that sort of thing. Her granddad, Luke, has forgotten more about tanning than all of us put together know. We’re damn lucky he’s still around to help her, although she knows quite a bit already. He’s been teaching it to her for years. She did it as a hobby before, but being a computer programmer isn’t going to put food on the table these days. Hell, being an electrician isn’t much better. I’m having to dig deep in my memory for how to make things run without being able to plug them into the nearest outlet. That’s why the turbine is taking so long. I have to scrounge for parts that aren’t fried to make it work.”
“Well, if you need parts, you know where you have to go to find them. Monroe has a little bit of everything at his place.” She was threading the rope into one hook on a come-along she had overhead, attached to a slide rail that ran the length of the basement. Her dad had installed it for this very purpose. She put a tarp on the ground to keep from scuffing the hide when the carcass came off the truck bed.
Jasper was trying to keep the buck from sliding off before the rope got taut. “Yeah, you’re right, I need to get out there and see if he has what we need for your power to keep running. You being able to use your electric saws and grinders is the difference between meat for a few folks every day or meat for a lot of folks instead. Good thing you kept those old pieces of your dad’s equipment, since the newer ones got fried in the pulse.”
“Had I known there was going to be an electrical apocalypse, I would have unplugged everything that night. Live and learn.”
Jasper chuckled at her sarcasm. “Yeah, I lost quite a bit of equipment myself. Had to go back old school. I found some books at the library, in the vintage section, that had a lot of info I can use. Vintage is the world we live in now.”
“Tell me about it. My dad’s old meat saw and grinder are a godsend. Good thing I stuck them in a corner instead of the trash when I got the new equipment a few years ago. Well, let’s get these guys hung up. I’ll start on them after I get some caffeine in me. Yep, it’s gonna be a busy day.”
****
The butcher shop had been Barbara Manchin’s childhood home. She grew up in an apartment above it with her parents and younger brother, Zach. Both of her parents had passed on, and her little brother was living out west on a cattle ranch. She thought about him almost daily, hoping he was alive and surviving in these crazy times. If nothing else, he was in a place without a lot of people, and with a lot of food.
While many such businesses had shut down with the advent of big c
hain supermarkets and big box stores, Manchin’s Meats had survived. There was a loyal customer base of folks in town who liked knowing how their meat was processed, without fillers and additives. Barbara also processed game for the hunters in the area, as her father had done before her. It wasn’t that the hunters couldn’t do it. Any hunter worth their salt could process their own kills. It was because she did it so fast and packaged everything neatly, ready to go in the freezer. She also had a secret recipe for venison summer sausage passed down to her by her dad, which was known across middle Tennessee as the absolute best anyone had ever eaten.
This side business for wild game processing had always been done in a separate area of the basement, to keep the meat from coming into contact with the products being sold to the public. Since selling wild game meat was illegal, they had never ventured down that path, although it would have been easy to do. Most of the hunters would throw in part of one the tenderloins as a “tip,” or tell her to keep the stew meat, or a pack of steaks that didn’t quite make the requested weight per pack of the customer. Consequently, Barbara had a large chest freezer full of venison, wild boar, a small turkey, along with slabs of bacon, ribs, odds and ends of beef chunks, and assorted other meat offerings when everything went down.
Business had not slowed down when the power went off. In fact, she was busier than she’d ever been. Folks had been coming to her with cows, goats, pigs, you name it, in any apparatus they could use to get it there. One guy carried a butchered goat across his shoulders while he rode a bike five miles to get to her. At first, she had no equipment she could use to process the meat. She could do it by hand, but it took a lot longer, especially when it came to the grinding. She was almost to the point that she was going to have to start turning folks away when Jasper showed up one day with a wild boar.
“Jasper, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can get this processed before the meat starts to go bad. I’ve got two deer, a pig, and a goat waiting already. Four critters a day is my absolute max capacity with no power.”
Jasper looked dejected, then thoughtful, then brightened up. “How about if I could get you some power? Could you get me in then?”
Barbara crossed her arms with a huff. “Jasper Jenkins, just because you’re an electrician does not mean you can magically create electricity any time you want to. Or are you saying you’re an electrician magician?” She snickered at her own joke. Jasper Jenkins had served in Kuwait and Iraq during Desert Storm. He was retired from the Army, where he had trained as an electrician, an occupation he continued in after joining the private sector. As a master electrician, there wasn’t much he didn’t know when it came to dealing with electricity or electronics, to some degree.
Jasper cocked his head at her and smiled. “No, but I have a generator you can use, smart ass. I guess it’s more important for you to be able to run your equipment than me to have lights. I was on city water so it wouldn’t help with that anyway. I didn’t have a lot of food at the house, just a bunch of microwave meals, which I went through pretty quick with the help of the genny. Being a bachelor has its downsides. You don’t buy food for long term. You don’t have things that make big meals if there’s just one person. If you’re dumb like me, you don’t even have a bunch of bottled water stored up. I used to laugh at people who did that stuff, you know the ‘preppers.’ I guess they’re laughing at us now.”
“I doubt they’re laughing, but I’m pretty sure they’re telling all the naysayers ‘Told ya so.’ I probably would be if it was me.”
Jasper nodded in agreement. “Oh, I definitely would be. I’m just glad I had that salt water fish tank a few years ago. Got rid of the tank, but kept the five-gallon jugs I used to get the salt water in. I take those to the artesian well and fill them up. Twenty gallons lasts me a couple of weeks if I keep flushing to a minimum. This is one of those times when it’s good to be a guy. The world is your urinal.” Jasper laughed at his joke as Barbara shook her head.
“If all of you guys continue to pee wherever you want outside it will start to smell like it as well. I hope the mayor or the town council or somebody is thinking about things like this. Has anybody heard from any of them? It’s been two weeks.”
“Not that I know of, but then I’ve been kind of keeping to myself. Without knowing how long this is going to last, you don’t want people knowing what you have, no matter how little there is, you know? What if the power never comes back on? We don’t know how big this thing is. No one from the government has been here, which makes me think it’s the whole country. What are people going to do when the food runs out? How will they survive?”
Barbara replied, “Like the pioneers. Like the pilgrims. Like the forefathers. You grow your food or hunt your food. You make things or trade what you have to someone who does. You help your neighbor if they are willing to help themselves. You protect what’s yours. People have been around a whole lot longer than electricity. They did it. We can do it. You work or you die. That’s how it was then, and that’s how it will be now.”
Jasper looked sad. “Well, I ain’t a stranger to hard work, and I can hunt and fish so I won’t starve. I might even be able to trade some meat for some vegetables. But I sure ain’t looking forward to life without air conditioning. We might not die without it, but we may wish we had.”
Barbara laughed at his comment. “Ain’t that the damn truth.”
****
Jasper had brought his generator to her, which made it possible for Barbara to run her freezer a couple of hours a day. With the modification to propane, she was not worried about her ability to keep things cold as long as she kept the freezer relatively full and limited opening it only during the times she had the generator running.
Her meat market had turned into more of a trading post. She had many different items that folks had traded her for meat. Everything from fresh fruits and vegetables to eggs and honey to clothing and shoes to guns and ammo could be found in her store now. All items were available to trade and many times she took the worse end of the deal to help people get what they needed or wanted. As long as she had food to eat and her roof didn’t leak, she felt like she was doing okay, and better than a lot of others in town.
Since she was spending most of her time processing meat, she took on some helpers in the store. Jesse and Staci Hayes lived on the next street over when everything went down. They had no running water and very little food. Barbara invited them to move in with her. She had an old wellhead in the basement, from the early days before city water. The floor was concrete with a drain in the middle. A butcher has to have a way to hose everything off. Even after the city hooked them up, her father had kept the pump serviced and used it regularly for cleanup. He liked the feeling of pumping the handle and having water come out. He said it made him feel like a pioneer. Barbara was thankful for his pioneer spirit now.
Barbara had babysat Jesse when she was a teenager. He felt more like a little brother than a neighbor to her. They had three girls between the ages of four and ten, so they were extremely open to Barbara’s offer of a job that paid in food and a house with running water—sort of. Jesse provided security and helped Staci with the store. Their oldest daughter, Alyssa, minded her sisters, Hailey and Jaclyn, in the apartment upstairs while their parents worked downstairs. She also took on an apprentice, as much to pass on her knowledge as to gain another set of hands. She chose a pair of hands attached to a strong young man named Eddie Brewer.
Eddie Brewer had been the biggest offensive lineman at the high school that anyone could remember. His parents were older than most of his friends’ parents because Eddie was what is known as change of life baby—his mother got pregnant with him just as she was going into menopause. As they had no other children, the Brewers welcomed Eddie as a gift and doted on him. Now in their mid-sixties, with the health problems that come with aging, they were dependent on Eddie to provide whatever sustenance he could get since everything went down. Mr. Brewer had been a friend of Barbara’s dad, so she had b
een trying to keep them in food quietly. If everyone knew how much she had frozen, she’d likely not be able to keep it. Eddie was very happy when she asked him to come work with her. Now he could provide for his parents and not feel like it was charity. For Barbara, it was more security. Not many people had the guts to challenge Eddie.
****
There had been run-ins early on with some of the folks in town. They seemed to be of the opinion that Barbara should just open the freezer and hand out all the food until it was gone. Doug Roberts had been one of the first to show up at her door, with a couple of friends, demanding she open up. He hammered the door with his fist, yelling toward her apartment.
“Manchin! Open up! We need the food you’ve got in there! We’re in a state of emergency!”
Barbara opened the window from upstairs. “Excuse me? What the hell are you talking about? And stop beating on my door!”
He stepped back and looked up at her. “We need the food from your freezer. The grocery store is empty. Folks are out of food. We need your meat.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You seem to be confused. As you said, that is my meat, not yours, and not the town’s. You are all more than welcome to buy some if you’d like to do business with me but it is not yours to take, nor demand that I give you.”
Now it was his turn to stare, which quickly turned to anger. “What do you mean, buy? Money’s no good, credit cards don’t work. How are we supposed to buy it? We didn’t buy the stuff at the grocery store. We just took it. First come, first serve.”
“Yes, because when the power goes off stealing is suddenly legal, right? I heard what happened to Mr. Malone. He was beaten half to death trying to protect his store from looters. That won’t happen here.”