by Ron Foster
“Hell them boys come down here and drop a bomb shell on me about foreign troops just up the road and now them so and so`s don’t have the time of day to finish a conversation about me leaving out! What the friggin hell is so important it can’t wait on another drink or a few more words?” David thought to himself angrily wondering if his trust was misplaced in Michael and for that matter should he might should be considering Ray as some kind of foreign mercenary collaborator he needed to be watching closer than he wished to.
A momentary long drawn out silence occurred as the group eyed each other suspiciously before Ray spoke up.
“I can go on by myself to tend to what needs doing and you can stay here and talk to David awhile Michael. No disrespect Julie, soldier David. I will come back over here in a bit and we can evaluate things better later when I am done.” Ray said, anxious to get his hoarded and somewhat hidden food stuffs out of the hot Alabama sun and he was no way no how particularly wanting to divulge anything to the stranger David without further conversation and clarifications with his cousin Michael about the man and woman’s true character.
Michael and Ray looked grimly at each other for a moment and then some unspoken agreement between the two was made before Michael said that he thought that it would be alright for Ray to go take care of business and to excuse him from helping because what David needed to tell him seemed to be very important to them all and settled back down to talk to Julie and David at the picnic table.
After Ray left, a very curious David waited impatiently for Michael to say the first word and break the strained silence.
“I will tell you what that was all about later David; meantime explain to me about where you are going and how long you will be gone if you can. You are picking a hell of a time to be traveling anywhere, I don’t get it.” Michael said confused and frustrated at his supposed alliance.
“ Damn, it’s not like I want to be leaving more than a few steps from here anywhere Michael, but my presence is requested by an old friend to help out with some kind of disaster and I got to go. You know how it is I just got to. Just what exactly the emergency is or what I am able to do is not clear to me so be patient and bear with me the best that you can.” David said before recounting how an established trust must be maintained with his prepper buddy Crick who had managed to get a call into him on the telephone to ask for his assistance had come in but it had been cut short before any further communications had been possible.
AUTHOR NOTE: (Complete background conversation is included in book one of the series a Prepper is Cast Adrift (The Preppers Lament).
“Wow, David, you sure must be some kind of a great friend to basically say that you are going to drop everything and task yourself to go charging off halfcocked on a rescue mission not even knowing if you can do any good or not once you get there. Have you even considered for a moment that you might not be even able to get there to where they are stranded at, now that you have heard for yourself that we got foreign troops on the road and securing assets from Ray? And while you’re at it old man, you ever think that if you do some how get there intact and in one piece that you might not be able to get back home ever again? Where’s your mind at man? You got some crazy ass idea that you are going to try to drag all of them preps you got stashed to save the day for them in your own obscure fantasy world or are you thinking about something sensible like maybe leaving them for me to try and protect on the dubious off chance this little adventure you’re going on isn’t just a suicide mission.” Michael said pretty pissed off at the whole notion of it and David considering any of the above.
“What I take or leave is my business and my decision to make!” David warned in response to this outburst with a very dangerous narrowing of his eyes that most folks could not have missed.
” Hell it hadn’t been but a few days since they had both shared a deer together and that riff raff bunch of neighbors that had headed out for a relocation camp or wherever still played heavy on their minds. Wasn’t it David who had been preaching mutual assistance and defense amongst the remaining neighbors on this dead end road and now this fool was just going to pull up stakes and expect his shit to remain untouched and unmolested if the dumb ass somehow made it back? Shit, let him go; he would watch his crap and keep it safe for him for a little while, a damn little while at that! He was curious as hell just what exactly that prepper survivalist had in his old storage sheds anyway. If David didn’t come back well then it served him right and David’s preps would soon be his.” Michael decided thinking that as far as he was concerned David had already somehow reneged and broken their pact on mutual trapping and hunting and jeopardized him and his family’s survival with his absence and lack of efforts on their part to carry on here.
“Now don’t you be getting all pissed off about anything before hearing me out Michael? I know its risky business going on this road trip and it is probably pretty dang bone headed of me to even be thinking about going to Deer Lick creek but you got to look at the bigger picture here. For one thing I can’t just up and ignore a call of honor from a friend to come to his aid and help him when he is in need and at the most trying time in his life. For another thing, I want you to consider that area as my highly considered backup or secret bug out location and what with what Ray just told us about the proximity of them goons from some kind of a foreign security personnel force that are enforcing martial law or continuity of government mandates hanging around, I need to go check it out. Besides, if you would open your eyes and engage that brain of yours, you might consider that your ass might just want to possibly be moving in that direction yourself sometime in the future if it got too crazy around here. Think about it, there is no way in holy hell that I can leave that many fellow preppers in a lurch and dire straits if it’s just something I can man up and do. I couldn’t live with myself the rest of my life if I tried to weasel out. A lot of them folks are personal friends of mine and I would like to think that if the roles were reversed that they would come answer the bugle call for action and assistance themselves to come help my own sorry ass out if I truly needed it.” David reasoned, trying to describe how he felt that he was duty bound and honor tied to go help out anyway possible, if nothing else more than him making a concerted effort and an appearance at the boat landing to try something or anything to get them out of the mess they were in.” David said watching the furrows in Michael’s brow lessen while his own set of stress wrinkles deepened.
“David now you know that I am all about lending a hand and helping folks out when we can, you know that of me. I still say that you need to really think this thing you are proposing over some more. You ain`t going to be doing anybody any good if you end up robbed, killed or incarcerated in a FEMA camp for some bull shit you can’t control or have thought of yet. It ain`t like you’re going to be the last chance first responder or soldier to go rescue an orphanage or free a P.O.W, camp or something. Think of all the obstacles, hell think of your age or any infirmities you have these days to slow you down. You said all them folks stranded up there are preppers, don’t they stand a good chance to get by on their own somehow?” Michael said inquiringly with a raised eyebrow and a caution to himself what he had just said might make David cuss a might at him loudly and strongly.
David sighed, then grasped Michaels shoulder for a moment in comradely playfulness and explained that just because somebody labeled themselves as a “prepper” didn’t mean that they could survive anything or everything life threw their way. It just meant they were better prepared than most folks to face a disaster and try to persevere regardless. Preppers, he reminded Michael, came in all shapes, sizes and attitudes in regards to the level of preps they had stored personally or in regards to the survival knowledge they had attained from their efforts or others to spread the word of prepperdom and it was almost a sacred thing to consider that it was totally unfair to consider them as some kind of backwoods survivalists that could live off the land indefinitely by themselves without community let alone last f
or weeks without equipment and supplies in the wilds on average. Most preppers realized the futility in even considering such a notion of long term self-reliant living and prepared themselves and their families to just maintain a somewhat normal existence for a small period of time in a shortfall of goods and services after a catastrophe. Military and Bush craft schools taught the basics of survival for days before you are rescued when lost in the woods or shot down behind enemy lines, not the attainment of a Mother Earth News type self-reliant lifestyle that would take you a decade or more of failures to prepare for and attain if you had any chances of becoming self-sufficient in an off grid lifestyle means of truly feeding yourself past eating grubs. Besides a lot of the folks attending Prepper Stock only planned on being there at the camp grounds with city goods access for only a few days, a week at most if they had somehow managed to use up or save some of their precious vacation time in anticipation of, or got a few days off from work to attend the event and were now far away from whatever they had stored back at home they had by hook or crook they had somehow managed to put back to help them and their loved ones survive such a calamity.
“Well ok, I got to say that I am sorry and I wasn’t being very realistic or truly caring about your friend’s needs, I guess. I doubt most of the country boys around here could even last that long out in the woods living under the conditions you have described. You never said how long you had planned on being gone, David. I guess it’s sort of hard for to say how long that mission will take but you must have considered some kind of estimate time wise.” Michael said still perplexed about what David thought he could possibly do other than somehow assist in getting that group of people off that island. That was enough he guessed, but he still wasn’t in the least bit convinced that David was somehow uniquely capable of achieving that task to be called upon and risk leaving the area. Maybe he knew somebody in Emergency Management that he was going to call on to help him out somehow. David had said he once had lots of contacts in that service and knowing him had a supply sergeant or two in mind to throw a bit extra gear or assistance his way if he asked for a favor.
David soon answered that question by stressing the fact that all first responders and relief services were surely overwhelmed and anyway he had no way of contacting anyone anywhere unless he showed up at their offices front or back doorsteps if the guards would let him.
“Well, don’t think of me as trying to be a smartass or anything David, but just what in the fields of god’s green earth is it that you think you can accomplish that 70 or so of your fellow brethren prepper minded people haven’t already thought of or come up with for themselves?” Michael asked, waiting patiently for whatever it was that David convinced himself that he alone had dreamed up in some way to save the day.
“That’s a good question, Mike; it took me awhile and then some to come up with that answer for myself. I couldn’t for the life of me come up with an answer why Crick called upon me for anything else but moral support, then I decided to try and think like him and act like him in that sort of a situation. The biggest worry I can think of that he has other than getting everyone off that island ASAP is evidently how to try to feed all those people once he does manage to extricate them. Everyone including him is already going to be pretty weak and weary by now from lack of food and the elements. That’s the particular problem I think that he wants me to personally come down for and help him out with. You know that Michael, I constantly explore and wrestle mentally with all kinds of disaster scenarios and try to find corporate supporters to demonstrate their products as a possible solution to make life easier should I need to survive such situations. Well, back in the day sometime or another I came up this notion of creating for myself something I call a “Lake Living Bag”. What I mean by that concept is designing a bug out bag specifically designed for surviving by any type of a waterway. Makes perfect sense to me and maybe you might also agree if you think about it in the context that I am trying to explain it as. I don’t know why a large majority of preppers don’t already try to specialize or focus their own personal preps and bug out bags based on their needs in a specific geographic area or anticipated future bug out location should the need arise. I have had visions of a separate food procurement bag for years designed to assist in gaining some kind of sustenance for long-term possible living arrangement in a woodland environment. Anyway, I have had the opportunity to play with all kinds of various gill nets, crawdad and fish traps etc. and I hadn’t made any recommendations or done a giveaway of extra or endorsed tackle I had acquired to the prepper community and me and Crick compared notes on that and I asked him about fishing conditions and recommendations specific to the area that he lives around. He knows I have that kind of equipment ready at hand at the moment and as far as I know that’s what it is he wants of me. He has no other way to access that kind of fish catching stuff and as far as I know that’s the only way you can feed that mass of people utilizing natural resources readily available. You need someone that can understand commercial fishing and trapping and I happen to be the only candidate for that job at the moment, I reckon.” David said pleased with himself that he had puzzled out Crick’s riddle and inspiration.
“Well, I will be damned; I could have never come up with that solution. Now that makes sense! Hell yea, I will support you in that endeavor and rest assured I will try and protect your stuff while you are gone but there is no way I can be everywhere at once no matter how close we live to each other, which brings me back to another point.” Michael said as David motioned for him and Julie to come on back in the house and fix them another drink before he had another problem to deal with.
On the way to the house Michael mentioned his and Ray’s fears that the possibility of confiscation of “hoarded food” existed under the emergency powers acts that might be enforced by unscrupulous authorities and what did David think about that scary subject and the suppression of the Second amendment to the Constitution regarding firearms.
“I knew I was getting me another drink for some reason.” David grumbled and made a motion to Julie who was playing bartender in his small ships galley of a kitchen to add another finger measure worth of brown liquor to the already potent drinks they were consuming.
“That thorny question has been echoing in the back of my mind ever since you brought Ray by with that bucket full of bad news. When is he coming back over here anyway? I think he rather needs to be in on this conversation.” David asked Michael, still wondering about the man’s odd disappearance and thinking enough time had passed for him to reappear and explain himself.
“Maybe he will be back in a half hour so. I agree he needs to get in on this conversation but we will discuss that more later. He is probably jawing with the wife and getting reacquainted with the kids. Now then, David, try and answer my question if you will, more directly. Do you think we need to worry about either one of those situations I mentioned?” Michael said altering the conversation back to the matters at hand and still keeping David in the dark about Ray’s stash of goods that he was putting up unbeknownst to him.
David eyed him for a minute and then went back to the conversation of the subjugation of the constitution and personal liberties and his thoughts on such encroachments.
“Look Michael, neither one of us needs any kind of further education about how foreign soldiers or rogue law enforcement acts in times of disaster or war. We both have plenty of history lessons and real life experience’s to clue us in on the highly probable occurrence of that shit occurring if you start getting treated as a peasant or undesirable when the chips are down and they think nobody’s watching. Are you asking me do I think they will go door to door trying to enforce it? Hell no! There are not enough soldiers or crazy enough Law enforcement types to even attempt that and they know the citizenry will not stand for it and revolt. Some might be opportunistic S.O.B.s given the smallest chance but I have heard a many police officer or sheriff say that for one I wouldn’t enforce such crap because of strong personal liberty
belief and secondly I am not going to go get shot at every time I pull in a driveway. Just not going to happen. Do the new world order types want us to revolt so they can call in more foreign soldiers and draconian measures? Sure, that’s a possibility but they will only do it to take control of certain areas at first close to their base of operations or as a distraction far away they can extend so called authority to. Hotspots as they like to call them, mass surge reactionary forces and then you will see the alphabet agency’s trying to call in civilian mercenary operators to assassinate or imprison whoever they consider resistance leaders so they can quell an uprising without getting their hands directly dirty. The government has already has dumbed down schools, prescribed massive amounts of psychotropic drugs to adolescents, brainwashed kids to snitch on their parents etc. and it will be jealous vindictive neighbor against neighbor and spoiled state owned brats acting like the secret police for the bastards to point accusing fingers at those they feel are holding on to more goods than they deserve. What people can’t take by force in time of need will be done by lies and treachery that won’t enrich their bellies much before some other asshole does it to them. Just remember the majority of the fore fathers that signed the constitution died impoverished and without thanks or charity from their neighbors that benefited from their sacrifices for pledging their lives and fortunes to the cause of freedom in this once great Nation. Patriots will all always remain the minority while the cowardly self-serving minions of greedy evil humanity serves their own devils messiah and forget what it is, or for what actions they will be judged by a higher power for when their day of reckoning comes around. Oh, the Oath keepers as a majority can be depended on, some of the folks in militias will hold true, many common men and women will remain faithful to their vows but I think the majority of so called citizens will not stand up to this oppression but instead try to profit by it, not take a stand.” David ranted thinking disgustedly that schools probably didn’t even teach anymore how we could learn from history about what it meant to have foreign troops on our soil and how the colonists fought back against this tyranny so hard that the British hired professional soldiers from Germany called the Prussians to try and suppress us. Would anyone still know or remember about the French Indian wars anymore when a bounty was placed on American settler’s scalps and the most horrific attacks came from Canada for any number of political or economic reasons? History repeats itself, our job of living in the present and remembering it is to never allow such tragedies and miseries like the holocaust, wounded knee, the Bataan death march, Stalin, Mao, Poppa Doc, and a million other things and atrocities that have happened to allow man’s inhumanity to man to ever repeat itself again. However we are a fickle and unworthy benefactor of these lessons from time and forget all too easily how the progression of events that allowed such terrible things to happen is complicity and lack of preparedness. I don’t mean preparing for a disaster like prepping food and ammunition for the day you see coming, I mean preparing the hearts and minds of others not to turn a blind eye to such events occurring in their lifetimes. When any dictator or mad man or woman anywhere wants you to lose a right or liberty they are patient at first while they deviously deceive and distort facts that first rewrite and influence history to subjugate your mind, then affirm it through the kids in order to create a false reality.