Sol Survivors | Book 2 | Nashville Nightmare
Page 25
“But sometimes it does,” Debra said finally straightening up.
“That makes it real,” Dr. Morgan replied, “and all the more noteworthy.”
After Dr. Morgan and Ricky walked off, Joel and Debra began trudging up the driveway. “What did you mean by that?” Joel asked her. She toyed with him in response for as far as they could be overheard.
Mick and Sammy found themselves standing alone. Sammy clearly wanted to rest his leg. After a few minutes, Mick noticed him squinting down the street.
“What the heck is this coming now?” Sammy asked.
Mick spotted what he was looking at. A slow moving manual-powered vehicle approached, which proved to be a large tricycle with a cooler up front, like a summertime ice cream vendor in the touristy parts of pre-Helios DC. The driver was skinny and a little haggardly, sporting a three-day beard.
“Is this where the trading post is?” he asked stopping before them.
“Yes, but you’re early,” Mick answered. “That’s the lot across the street. You’re welcome to set up and wait.”
“Thanks. Say, would you boys be interested in something delectable for your supper?”
At that moment Mick noticed the smell of cooked meat coming from the cooler, although it wasn’t all that appetizing for some reason.
“Possibly. What do you have?”
He opened the cooler and removed two charred small animal carcasses on a spit.
“Fresh barbecued rabbit, cooked perfectly.”
“No!” Mick and Sammy both responded. Sammy almost fell trying to quickly back away.
* * *
“I’m extremely disappointed your cathemeral guest wandered off the night before I arrived,” Dr. Morgan’s voice said. “I sure hope he returns.” By his casual tone Joel could tell he was still in his last seen position, lying in the grass with his arms behind his head.
Joel didn’t answer because he thought he felt a bite. Just a small tap on the line, followed by two more.
He pulled back on the rod to set the hook.
“Fish on,” Joel said. “Feels like another crappie.” He reeled it in and lifted it from the water. “Too small.”
“I can use that as bait Mr. McConnell,” Ricky said. But Joel had already unhooked it and tossed it in the air. The splash it made reentering the river was barely perceptible.
“When are you going to start calling me Joel, Ricky?”
“Probably as soon as I am comfortable with it.”
“Intelligent answer.” Joel turned to Dr. Morgan. “Smart kid, eh, doc? Aren’t you glad you didn’t lock him up?”
“Definitely,” the doctor replied. “And Colonel Matheson was right. I needed a vacation. I feel bad about sleeping on your couch last night, though, while you banned another guest to the chicken coop.”
“He prefers it there, believe me.” Joel bent down to get a worm from the can. “You are welcome to the couch as often as you like.”
“I appreciate that offer, Joel, but I prefer to not be so invasive. It was obvious to someone of my profession the conversation was restrained in your home while I was present, and you apparently have important matters to discuss with your housemates. I’d prefer to stay with Ricky tonight, wherever he settles, assuming he is going to spend another night indoors.”
“That’s part of the deal,” Ricky said reeling in his line. “I’m sorry I slept for fourteen hours, doctor. I really needed it. And my parents were glad to have me home.”
“That is most understandable, Ricky. So what are your plans for tonight? I wouldn’t mind visiting the Dunn house, especially after meeting Mr. Dunn yesterday evening. He is an interesting character.”
Ricky pulled his line from the water to inspect his bait. “That all depends on the fishing, doctor. But I expect we’ll wrap this up soon and go home for lunch. The big cats only bite at night, like I’ve been telling everyone. So I think I’ll come back at sundown. They are usually active early. If I can get two big ones before midnight, I’ll bring one to the Dunns and one to my parents. And then probably hit the sack. You will naturally be indoors already. My parents offered you the couch, and their house is likely where I will end up.”
“So you are not going to resume the full nocturnal schedule and hang out with your friends?” the doctor asked.
“Not tonight,” Ricky answered. “That’s all I can tell you. Need to do my fishing thing, and not get behind on sleep again.”
“And the notion of walking the two miles here by yourself after dark doesn’t bother you, either?”
“Of course not.” Ricky began rebaiting his hook.
But the mere mention of being outside at night again struck a momentary panic in Joel, made worse by the awareness of the distance to his house from the fishing hole. Suddenly getting back home for lunch sounded greatly appealing.
“You say of course not,” the doctor commented, “but 99% of the population cannot do what you think is easy.”
“That’s because 99% of the population is now trapped in a tunnel vision reality,” Ricky said. “They’ve been sold a bill of goods by their own psyche.”
Ricky’s statement seemed to bring the doctor to full attention. He sat up and said, “How is that?”
“I’ve been thinking about your vision tests,” Ricky answered. “Those posters with the black and white squares. I think I’ve figured out why the brains of diurnals and nocturnals are only willing to see one image or the other.”
“Why, Ricky?”
“The tests resemble crossword puzzle frames when you first see them. How you view a crossword puzzle frame depends on whether you like doing them or not. If you enjoy them, all the white spaces represent hours of fun waiting to be completed. If you don’t, you tend to see the black spaces as more dominant, representing partial completion of an annoying project.”
Dr. Morgan scratched his beard.
“So all the sun flare really did,” Ricky continued, “was illuminate something that was already there: the human tendency towards divisiveness. We see it in politics, social issues, sports team allegiances, and crossword puzzles. Those first few days after Helios people were stressed out, or else in a daze, and we started gravitating towards one side or the other on the issue of whether being out in the sun was still okay or not. Once we affirmed in our minds our position on the matter, we became dogmatic defenders of it, because that’s what we do, and once a person views a matter through a certain lens it becomes extremely difficult to reconsider the viewpoint. So the opposing solar period became repugnant as a way of enforcing our allegiance to a chosen position. And our subconscious then sealed the deal by adding fear of the opposing cycle to our assertion.”
“Wow,” Joel said. “Was Colonel Cowboy ever right about the benefits of studying you in your natural environment. Which I now see simply means going fishing with you.”
“Yes,” Dr. Morgan agreed. “Those are very philosophically astute observations for a mere socioeconomics student. I don’t suppose you have any ideas on how to solve the problem, and cure additional people from the post-Helios division?”
“I have one,” Ricky replied. “You need to get them to stop looking at the world like a crossword puzzle, and more like a Jumble puzzle.”
“Please elaborate.”
“A Jumble puzzle doesn’t have black and white squares. It has rows of empty squares, including some which contain circles within them. The letters which end up in the circles are the keys to solving the puzzle. As you know, circular architecture lends itself to human interaction and cooperation. Circles are the key to life and happiness.”
The doctor shook his head and lay back down mumbling something about how he wished Ricky would stop messing with him. But an intensely thoughtful expression remained on his face.
Ricky formed a giant smirk and cast his line out again.
The End…
Sol Survivors 3 is a work in progress that will only be completed if you let me know you are interested in seeing this series con
tinued (otherwise I am going to write an exotic cookbook). There are two ways you can do that. One is to leave a review of this book on Amazon and mention it. The other is to join my mailing list to be notified when it becomes available, which you can here:
http://tinyurl.com/lrcl7mo
Meanwhile, I have several other survival-style novels already out, written more or less in the same vein but with varying characters, bug-out snafus, bad guy intellects, weapons, and SHTF scenarios. If you are enjoying the Sol Survivors books so far, you should love these as well:
Buck Out: Two Wall Street wizards must bug out of New York when the financial markets crash rendering the U.S. Dollar worthless, ushering in famine and upheaval.
In this collapse-of-society adventure you will encounter:
• Manhattan in all its glory going up in flames
• Financial market melee
• Bugging out by kayak and scooter
• An unorthodox “shotgun preacher”
• A creative way to evict squatters
• An obsessed Secret Service agent
• A long motorcycle chase scene
Buck Out is available in Kindle, paperback, and audio here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010AT768E
Rational Collapse: When mass rioting erupts across America in response to a chain of police shootings, two Homeland Security agents race to collect the evidence that will prove the incidents were coordinated by foreign terrorists.
In this politically-incorrect thriller you will encounter:
• The ultimate bug-out vehicle
• Terrorists striking in an imaginative way (or is it?)
• Police officers persecuted for doing their job
• A sharpshooting teenage girl
• Intense gunfights at a campground and truck stop
• Fun with the typical American’s mental instability
• A Duck fight
Rational Collapse is available in Kindle and paperback here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B072M9S9VC
SurviRal: A Denver couple tries to escape the chaos of the city after a killer manmade virus crashes western society.
In this uncomfortable eye-opener you will encounter:
• Dutch scientists discovering they are not God
• Bugging out via mountain bike and golf cart
• A survivalist Congressman adept at archery
• A bad guy gang undermined by their own fame
• A 50 BMG
• Colorado topography and culture
SurviRal is available in Kindle and paperback here:
.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R4VD7PS
Prepping for the day the SHTF: A complete bug-out and survival plan for life after doomsday.
This is my non-fiction prepping book for all you Joels out there. Learn how to become much better prepared than even Joel was! Available in Kindle and paperback here:
.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CHQPSVG
A Fresh Word from the Author
The majority of the book you just read was written in the year 2020 when news headlines were causing perpetual long lines to form outside ammunition stores. The term the new normal has come to reside in our vocabularies in a real and worrisome way. Fear of the unknown is making a big comeback.
During this time period the irony was not lost on me that I had thus far written three completely different SHTF-style novels. One involved a worldwide pandemic by a laboratory-manipulated virus. Another was about mass civil unrest spreading across America in response to racial police shootings. And the third was about a solar storm destroying the power grid. These were all published well before 2020. Sometimes I can’t help but think two down, one to go. (It is the solar storm story I have now decided to extend into a series. Let’s go with that.)
The first actual book I put together, however, was a short non-fiction prepper guide. In it I included a list of optimal locations in America for purchasing land to establish a survival retreat on. The bug-out locations for the survival retreats of my novels have more or less used that list as a guide so far. That’s how we ended up in a rural community outside of Knoxville for Joel McConnell.
But there are a lot of things I originally plotted to include in my stories which did not end up in the books. Let me tell you why: the characters didn’t allow it! You’d think I was in charge, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong. Once characters are created and dropped into a dire situation to work themselves out of, they do it their way, not mine. The second half of my novels rarely resemble the original plot outline. I become a spectator, and am rendered a mere reporter. I don’t mind. It’s interesting to watch. I tell you, writing a character-driven novel is similar in essence to reading one.
Let’s all just hope my “reporting” ceases to be so hauntingly prophetic. Cheers.
Ken Benton