He arrived home just after dark with a full cargo trailer. Stepping out of the truck, he found himself surrounded by the women and was soon blindfolded. They led him into the new building and pulled off the blindfold.
He looked at the building made from shipping containers and was stunned. It was huge inside. There was a large bar with bar stools on one side, a pool table on the other, and sofas throughout. There was even a Franklin stove on one wall.
When they showed him the kitchen, he was stunned. The facilities were completely professional and top of the line. "How the hell did you pull this off?!"
Julie asked, "Do you like it, Uncle Jim?"
"I love it!"
Susan said, "There's still a lot of work to do, but I think we can have it wrapped up in the next couple of days."
Jim laughed. "So much for survivalist mode."
"We're thriving," said Susan, "not just surviving!"
It took another two days to finish windows, interior insulation, sheetrock walls, and 12volt lighting system, but the final product was perfect.
Jim really was amazed. Julie and Helen put in a juke box and a flat screen TV to test as well. It was incredible. Jim hugged all of them and thanked them. "But what do we call it?"
Helen said, "The Village Pub, of course!"
Julie clapped loudly. "It's perfect!"
"The Village Pub, it is, then," said Jim. "Bartender! I need a beer!"
Jim took great pleasure the next day in helping to fully stock the bar and grill.
NOVEMBER 15th
Julie and Helen came to Jim and Susan and told them, “We’re almost out of money, but we did get everything on Dad’s list.”
Jim thought, Thank God! He grinned and said, “Are you sure you didn’t miss anything? No gold toilet seats or shower rods?”
The girls both laughed. Helen, said, “No, Uncle Jim, we only bought essentials. And we kept a reasonable sushi and mad fund, just in case. We’re just done with really big things for now.”
“I don’t even want to know how much you two went through.”
Susan said, “Oh, I helped, too.”
“The statement stands. Well, let’s get some work done before Rob shows up with more cash and ruins everything.”
Susan said, “Don’t worry, Jim, we still have about nine hundred fifty thousand from the box. Girls, take what you need.”
To his surprise, both the girls groaned. Maybe shopping isn’t as much fun as it used to be. That’s not a bad lesson for them in itself, thought Jim.
NOVEMBER 16th
Jim watched gleefully as the truck backed up on the cement pad he’d placed at the edge of the pond and dumped out hundreds of channel catfish. A previous truck had dumped a load of trout. He knew it was silly, but he felt very proud of this little pond.
Helen and Julie had taken an interest in the project and had helped him install pumps powered by batteries charged daily with solar panels or generator. The pumps ran to run an artificial waterfall that would help to aerate the water. There was also a commercial aerator machine that was fairly loud, but was built for a pond that size and should do the trick if run even for a few hours a day.
The fish would have to be fed so he had installed a simple mechanical automatic fish feeder on one side of the pond and purchased a few years’ supply of fish food. If the pumps got fried, he had many more pumps and batteries stored along with another aerator. Hopefully they could use plants to help filter the fish wastes.
The girls also helped Jim had collect plants from Lake Mary to place around the edges, and had purchased other water plants that were appropriate for the climate. He stocked the pond with minnows and yellow perch initially to get things started, and dumped in lake water to introduce normal bacteria to the water. What a pleasure this has been, he thought.
The driver finished dumping the fish and said, “Enjoy the fishing! Good luck with the RV park! ”
Jim tipped the guy well and thanked him.
Inside the greenhouse closest to the pond he had a 100 gallon fish tank with tilapia and another with yellow perch. These would be kept heated, so he set up deep cycle batteries to an inverter to power the heaters. Charging the batteries would have to be done by generator for now, but they would manage. Once the fish were breeding too much, he’d dump the extras into the pond where the other fish would make short work of them. In spring, he would release all but a small breeding population into the pond.
It was a great project. He just hoped it worked in the longer term.
Julie and Helen were busy lining up more hydroponic supplies. In the end, they took a trip down to Phoenix and pretty well cleaned out some of the nurseries of everything hydroponic. Jim asked them to pick up ammo in several calibers as available, so they hit a few sporting goods and gun stores and a gun show as well. By the second or third trip, they were very popular with the salesmen in both the nurseries and gun stores.
Julie had surprised everyone by having steam driven electrical generator systems delivered. They would have to build a boiler room and the fire would have to be fed constantly when in use, but it would be a feasible backup system given all the trees they had cut down on the property.
The larger surprise was the five wood heated hot tubs that Helen tracked down. There was a wood stove actually built into each tub. Controlling the temperature would require some work to get the hang of it, but it was promising.
The girls set up the first hot tub near their RV and built a 6 foot wood privacy fence around it, with a gate. Just outside the fence they placed an additional 10,000 gallon water tank on a five foot tower made from rail road ties. Julie made three runs in the water truck while Helen finished the wood fence.
That evening, they took great pleasure in demonstrating the hot tub to Jim and Susan and taking turns using the tub, two at a time. It took a while to get the temperature right, but once they did, the tub felt wonderful.
"Here we are preparing for the end of the world as we know it, and you two are out scoring hot tubs," said Susan.
Helen shrugged. "Think of it as additional water storage."
Julie took a drink from her wine glass. "Yeah, what she said."
The next day they repeated the set up with the other four hot tubs, including giving each its own water tank, but they only filled up Jim and Susan's. The rest of the tubs would be kept empty until there were people there to use them. The tubs were set up at the various spots around the property to make them quickly accessible from the RV's.
Susan made signs with the hot tub rules and placed them on the privacy walls. "That might solve some problems before they can develop," she told the girls. "Now for more important things. Do you think you can come up with a couple of saunas for us?"
That night, Julie ordered two sauna kits to be delivered to their warehouse.
NOVEMBER 22nd
The four of them worked for three days to clear and level a football sized area for use as a helicopter pad and fuel storage, as well as a small private runway next to it. Helen was the one who was insistent about the runway, saying that it wasn’t much more work and made sense to be able to accommodate planes as well as helicopters. They worked together to cut the trees down and then cut them into logs, which they dragged over to either the firewood stacks or the usable lumber stack. It was exhausting work, but they were relieved to get it done. Eventually they would fill a couple of large shipping containers with firewood to keep it dry and keep snakes out of it, but that would have to wait.
Jim called Mike Frazzetta, the contractor he’d used earlier. “Are you up for another cash job?”
The next morning there was a crew pouring a large cement pad for two helicopters connected to a pad for the steel hangar they would put in a couple of days, once the cement was usable.
Mike looked at the runway area. Mike's thick Boston accent seemed out of place in Arizona. “You want this paved?”
Jim thought for a moment. “That depends on how long it takes, how much it costs, and how mu
ch attention it’s going to get me.”
“Can you give me an idea of why you need all of this?”
Without missing a beat, Jim said, “There’s a major pandemic coming within the next few months that looks like it will be worse than anything we’ve ever seen. We’re anticipating a good possibility of an EMP that will take out unshielded electronics as well.”
Mike thought for a moment and laughed. “Greenhouses, runway, trucks… It’s cool, man. I don’t care what you’re doing. I’d be happy to do a runway for you, just remember I didn’t do any of this work, 'cause I’m not telling Uncle Sam shit.”
Jim frowned and said, “Look, Mike, just pack away a lot of food, water, and supplies. Read up on bird flu and EMP shielding. Do it soon. Even if you don’t believe me, store a shitload of stuff you know you’re going to use eventually anyway. And forget you ever saw this place because it’s going to be a large armed camp once things start happening.”
“Okay, I will. Not that I believe it’s going to happen, but it can’t hurt and I’m going to make enough off of you to make it easy to do.”
They came to an agreement on price and, though it made Jim wince, he was very happy with the airstrip in place a few days later.
NOVEMBER 28th
Helen bought a 1968 Piper Arrow four seat plane and stashed it in the hangar. Julie told her, “Now I see why you wanted that runway! Just so you know you're going to have to teach me to fly.”
Julie just shrugged, “Absolutely! But now we have to figure out where to store aviation fuel.”
”Why not get the same kind of underground tanks that Uncle Jim has been using? We’ll put them about 50 meters from the hangar and use 12 volt fuel pumps. We can set up one with Jet A fuel for the helicopter, and the other with aviation fuel for the plane.”
“Where the hell are we going to get Jet A?”
“We just talk someone into selling it to us. No problem.”
“Why not buy an aircraft that uses it?”
Helen paused for a moment, “Why not buy a truck that transports it?”
“Preferably full?”
“Interesting. Why not?”
DECEMBER 2nd
Jim was looking over the supply list. “You realize we have three year's worth of food for 30 people? We have enough firearms and ammo to fight a small war. This is just so far over the top that it’s difficult to imagine.”
Susan laughed and said, “I keep waiting for Julie and Helen to show up with a fighter plane or something. The two of them are the best scavengers I’ve ever seen.”
There was a truck horn honking down the driveway. Susan looked up to see two tanker trucks pulling in, with Helen driving one and Julie driving the other. Susan said, “Jim, you have to see this.”
Jim looked and said, “I don’t flipping believe it!” They walked outside and the girls met them. Helen said, “We got the fuel! 2,800 gallons of aviation fuel and 2,800 gallons of Jet A fuel, can you believe it?!” The two of them were ecstatic.
Jim was stunned. “How the hell did you pull that one off?”
Julie answered, “We found a fuel transport company that was in trouble and selling off a few trucks. We offered to buy two and pay a premium as long as they would fill the tanks for us. In the end it was easy.”
Susan said, “Good work. Now we don’t need to put in underground tanks. But what’s the jet fuel for?”
Helen answered, “Most of your heavy lift helicopters use it, but if Rob comes up with a gasoline chopper instead, it’s basically a lighter diesel fuel that we can mix in with the rest of the diesel supply.”
Jim asked, “Do you think you could come up with another of these vehicles for more diesel storage?
Helen and Julie looked at each other, and Julie said, I’d rather not push my luck with going back there, but general fuel trucks are easy.”
Jim scratched his chin and said, “Let’s get a couple for diesel, then. Maybe you can work the same kind of deal?
Helen said, “If there is a use for it, we can certainly come up with a couple from somewhere. It would be nice to get them filled all at once, but worst case we can run a pump from the spare tank to the main tank and fill it one fuel stop at a time.”
“Wait a minute! I’ll call Mike and see if he can’t work some magic for us.”
A few hours later the contractor had two tanker trucks filled with diesel lined up for delivery the next day. Mike was starting to wonder if he wouldn't be able to retire off of these goofball survivalists.
DECEMBER 4th
Julie and Helen had kept the warehouse so that they could keep making purchases online with prepaid credit cards. Jim and Susan soon got into the swing of it as well, as it was mostly a matter of click and forget. It was convenient as much of the shopping was done at night after the day’s work was completed and they could pick up the deliveries from the warehouse at their convenience.
Julie and Helen ordered books on any skills that would come in handy. They also ordered anything within reasonable limits that would help make life at the ranch more bearable in case they were stuck there longer than they anticipated. Helen wasn’t sure how several boxes of western novels fit into that, but Jim seemed to think they were necessary.
The two of them made good use of the NAU campus, getting to know the library and making a number of purchases in the book store. Julie looked up Samantha, a friend who was finishing her B.A. in photojournalism there and talked to her about the possibility of coming into the group when things started to move.
During the days they worked on projects or took trips to buy supplies that they couldn’t order online or that were heavy enough to be worthwhile picking up in a semi.
Helen started bringing in trailers of bricks, mortar, rebar, lumber, roofing, and other building supplies on the assumption that it would give them more flexibility later as needs for walls or more buildings became apparent.
Julie had developed a fascination with aquaculture systems after helping Jim with his pond. She developed a plan for a system using duckweed to feed yellow perch. She wasn’t sure if the idea would work for them, but she started lining up books and equipment, just in case. We might be very glad of it one day, she thought.
All four of them worked to equip one of the steel buildings as a mechanic’s garage to work on vehicles as large as the semi trucks. They tried to anticipate parts needs, but knew it could very well be luck of the draw. In the end they stocked tires and electronic parts most likely to fail, knowing that they would not be able to cover everything.
DECEMBER 8th
It had been snowing for two days and it was getting old. So far there were drifts of up to five feet in places, thought most areas were more like three feet. The propane heaters in the RV’s functioned well, otherwise it would be miserable.
Jim suspected that Susan and the girls were more than happy to take a snow day. He knew he desperately needed some genuine downtime. The fifth wheels were comfortable enough with the propane heaters and he had the small generators for power when needed. Jim was enjoying a good book and Susan was busy writing in the log she was keeping of their projects and supplies.
He had talked to the girls by the two way radios they like to use in camp. Both of them were delighted to put their feet up and take a day off.
Jim was surprised when the satellite phone Jim had sent them rang. He answered it to find Denise on the line.
“Hi, Jim just wanted to see how you were doing with all the snow.”
They chatted for a few minutes, and she told him about how the teens would be taking a camping trip to Mammoth a few days down the road. When he got off the phone, he said to Susan, “It looks like we’ll have the boys here in a few days.”
Susan looked up from her computer, “You know, I keep waiting to find out that it was all a false alarm and we just over reacted. Having the next step right around the corner now isn’t very comforting.”
He kissed the top of her head and said, “However it goes, I’m glad we
’re here together. I’m sorry there hasn’t been more time to enjoy the various projects. Can you believe we have an airstrip? How did that happen?”
“That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“Ever wonder if Rob isn’t doing this to line up his own private vacation spot and we’re just caretakers for it?”
“I’m sure that’s part of his plan.”
“Oh, well. What can you do? How about some breakfast? My treat.”
DECEMBER 8th: AFTERNOON
Helen and Julie were enjoying the day off. They were at the kitchen table working on their laptops and drawing schematics of the aquaculture system they wanted to build. The satellite TV was on in the background with cable news with the sound turned up just loud enough to hear.
Julie looked up at the news coverage of Christmas shoppers, and said, “Most of these people are going to die of the flu or starve to death. Helen, we have to save more.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“We have to get the word out.”
“No one will listen and we’ll get shut down if we attract attention.”
“What?”
Helen paused, then said, “There’s a fight between the part of the government and elites in control that want to be able to easily prepare themselves for what’s next, just like we have, and those who want to do anything and everything to save as many as possible. In the middle are the politicians who are in denial or just plain being lied to about the dangers.
“If we openly run out and start proclaiming that the sky is falling, we’ll be locked up or shut down instantly because we will be endangering the power players who want the time to fully prepare and who want to completely dominate afterward. They won’t play nice.
“The news channels won’t cover it because many of those same folks own the networks. The most we can do will be on a micro level. You can pull in Samantha and some of her friends. We can talk to some of the local leaders on a one to one basis and encourage them to start getting the word out to stockpile some extra food. Pastors, Rotary Club, Masons, whatever.”
The Forgiven The Fallen The Forsaken Page 5