Premonitions (Book 1): The Farm

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by Anderson, Diana E.




  Premonitions

  Book 1: The Farm

  Diana E. Anderson

  Premonitions

  Book 1: The Farm

  Copyright March 1, 2018

  by

  Diana E. Anderson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, locations, and events herein are products of the author’s imagination. Where real locations and people are named, the circumstances around them are fictitious. If any characters resemble persons living or dead, the resemblance is purely coincidental.

  Acknowledgments

  There are several people whose assistance was instrumental in helping me write this book. First, I need to thank my husband, Michael, for putting up with me spending hours every night writing and rewriting this manuscript, and for his editing contributions. I would also like to thank my proofreader, Jennette Larson, for reading the initial version and giving me her feedback and suggestions. You rock, my friend! Finally, I would like to thank the many authors of apocalyptic fiction who inspired me to add my own contribution to the genre.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my husband Mike.

  Thank you for believing in me and for giving me the space and time I needed to write.

  Above all, thank you for being my best friend, the love of my life, and my true soulmate.

  I hope this book makes you proud!

  Prologue

  I am normally a very practical person. I’ve spent the last thirty-some-odd years as a registered nurse, and my friends tell me I am rock steady. My nursing career started in the Army, and included several tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. I’ve also worked in civilian hospitals, mostly on medical-surgical floors, but I did some time as a surgical nurse, too. I was married to a fellow Army nurse, and he used to tease me and say that nothing would shake me, even when our twin boys were young. Boys can be trouble, and twin boys are way more than double trouble! But no matter how deviously they tried to scare Mama (like the time they hid a live king snake in my underwear drawer), Mama stayed cool, calm and collected. Okay, I wanted to screech like a little girl when I saw the snake – but I didn’t. I admit I can have a temper at times (especially when I watch the news on television), but it is usually pretty hard to make me all weepy and emotional.

  I was raised as the only child of a very loving couple. My father, Scott Langston, was a history professor, and my mother, Annagret, was a nurse. I wanted to be just like both of them when I grew up. Instead of listening to fairy tales, I would listen to my dad telling me stories from history. By the time I was ten, I think I knew more about the Spartans, the Revolutionary War, and the siege of Leningrad than most adults. Just because I liked learning things did not mean we didn’t have fun, though. My mom had a thing for horses, and we spent many lazy weekends at my grandparents’ farm in Riverdale, riding horses, playing horseshoes, and target shooting in the back pasture. It was quite an idyllic childhood.

  That childhood ended one cold January night. My parents went to an affair at my dad’s school, and I was staying on the farm with Grandma and Grandpa. It was a really cold and icy night, and most of the evening was spent in front of the fireplace drinking hot cocoa. The state troopers came knocking on the door about two o’clock on Sunday morning to let my grandparents know that my parents were killed instantly when an oncoming vehicle skidded on the ice and hit them head on. I barely remember the weeks that followed. My grandparents, Henry and Amelia Langston, became my anchors. As I flailed and struggled with all of the changes in my life, they calmly took me in and settled me down. The farm became my home and my place of refuge.

  I stayed at the farm until I finished high school. I left to go to college to get my nursing degree. While in college, I joined the ROTC, and after graduation was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Army. Nursing in the Army was an incredible adventure, especially for a farm girl like me. My first assignment was at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. I worked on the orthopedic unit and spent my free time visiting those places in Europe my dad taught me about so long ago. I spent two years in Landstuhl and then came stateside for a few years. At that time I met my husband, Captain John Patrick Armstrong, RN. We had a number of wonderful years together that included the birth of twin sons. We traded assignments based on the boys. When he was overseas, I was stateside with the boys. When I went overseas, he stayed back. When we were really lucky, we were both stationed in the same place at the same time! It really worked well until the day the Chaplain and two officers in dress blues showed up at my front door. For the second time in my life my world collapsed. John was the head nurse of a forward combat hospital in Afghanistan. He was almost ready to retire from the military – actually only twelve days before he was supposed to be coming stateside to begin processing out of the Army – when he was mortally wounded after insurgents bombed his hospital. There was relief in knowing he died right away and did not suffer, but his death left a huge hole in my heart and my life. Meeting his casket at Dover Air Base was certainly not the homecoming I was expecting.

  After John’s funeral, my grandparents again became my anchor. When John died, I was a Major and the director of the medical-surgical unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. I was surrounded by memories of John. After six months on an emotional roller coaster, I decided I had to get away from everything military if I was ever going to get my life back together. The constant reminders that he was never coming home were tearing me apart, so I decided to retire from the Army and move to my grandparents’ farm with the boys. They invited (or more like begged) us to come live with them. It was one of the best decisions I could have made. My grandparents were very loving and supportive of the three of us as we struggled with the changes in our lives. The farm was again my refuge, and my grandparents were amazing in the way they surrounded the boys and me with love.

  Living on the farm as the mother of two kids was different than living there as a child. Although I worked at the local hospital, I threw myself into the activities on the farm, especially the garden. Working in the garden was somehow very therapeutic for me and made me begin to appreciate how much work was really involved in getting food to the table. My grandmother taught me to can, and we put up incredible amounts of food each fall. Grandma also taught me to sew using her old treadle machine. I wanted to buy her a new sewing machine, but she said she did not want one – the treadle machine was good enough for her mother, it was good enough for her, and she hoped it would be good enough for me!

  My grandfather was a hunter, and knowing my love for firearms, he took the boys and me hunting with him whenever I could get time off from work. We learned not only to hunt, but also how to dress the meat and how to make the world’s best jerky. Grandpa also loved firearms, and had a good collection of them. He loved to take Chris and Jon shooting and had a range set up on one of the fields. By the time my boys were sixteen they could hit the bulls eye with almost any one of Grandpa’s guns and could disassemble and clean all of them, too! Of course, I had my own collection of firearms, and Grandpa and I would spend many happy hours arguing over the relative merits of our assorted weaponry.

  He also was very interested in current events. A staunch Conservative, Grandpa was very worried at the state of this country. We watched the news and dissected everything the commentators would say. Grandpa was not a fan of the administration, and we shared concerns about the emphasis being placed on political correctness and moral disintegration. Things that we considered important American values – truth, honesty, fidelity, marriage, faith, reli
gion – all of these seemed to be targets of the administration. It was almost as though they were trying to tear America apart and turn it into the opposite of what the Founders intended it to be. We both really focused on what was being done to the economy. Our debt was unimaginably high, with no efforts to pay it down. The government kept growing larger and larger, spending money like there was no tomorrow. Grandpa and I believed that it was just a matter of time before the out-of-control spending led to an economic disaster. He had great insights into the world situation, and many an evening was spent discussing how events around the globe could affect us here on the farm. Grandpa and I spent a lot of time discussing potential outcomes of the poor management of the economy over the last twenty years. He taught me so much – and helped me to understand not only why the government felt an economic stimulus plan was needed, but also why it could not work. He opened my eyes to a number of things that I had not ever considered. For example, I learned from him about fiat money – that is, money that is just printed paper with nothing to back it. I was surprised to know that our money is no longer completely backed by gold. I learned more about the Federal Reserve, also known as the Fed. I knew it was the central bank for the United States, but I always thought it was a part of the government. Grandpa helped me to understand that although the President appoints the board members, the Fed can make financial decisions for the country without approval of the President or Congress. The Fed oversees all of the banks in the country, and it is the board members and bank presidents that set things like interest rates and manage inflation. Grandpa thought (and I agreed) that the Fed had way too much power over our economy.

  Grandpa’s long-held concerns about the economy led him to becoming a prepper. I understood the basic philosophy of prepping, but it took me a while to understand that being a prepper meant far more than having lots of guns and food storage. Grandpa showed me that we needed to think about things such as water, safety, and surviving without electricity if necessary. Above all, he taught me that it did not matter what you had, if you did not have the skills to use it, you had nothing. Too many people buy nifty things like water filters or magnesium fire starters, but then never use them. I don’t think the middle of an end-of-the-world situation is the time to start learning how to use those prepper tools! We practiced with everything we had, from fire starters to generators to cast iron cookware and my Big Berkey water filter.

  Grandpa and I were both were extremely concerned about the security of the United States and the world. In addition to watching the news on television, we would both scour the internet trying to find additional information to help us have a better grip on what was really going on. We learned quickly that the mainstream media only tells you what the powers that be want you to know, and you need to work hard to find anything closer to the truth. There was so much spin on the news these days – both liberal and conservative – that truth became very elusive. Grandpa had his bets on a total collapse of the economy. I was leaning more towards something knocking out the grid – an electromagnetic pulse or a hostile country hacking into our electrical grid and collapsing it. Grandpa would use the rupture of the housing bubble in 2009 as an example of what was coming, except on a bigger scale. He’d point out countries like Greece that were so in debt they would never be able to pay back their loans. Then he’d point out our huge national debt and the fact we were printing billions of dollars with nothing to back it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he would cite our rising unemployment and cities across the country that were threatening to declare bankruptcy. When Puerto Rico began to make noise about declaring bankruptcy, I realized that Grandpa was probably right and began watching the economy even closer. It didn’t mean I wasn’t still worried about the grid, though, because I knew grid failure was a probable side effect of an economic collapse.

  Unfortunately, our conversations about the what ifs of the economy and everything else came to an end with my grandparents’ passing. It’s been about three years since they both died. They are buried in the family cemetery on a hill out near the far pasture under an old oak tree that was one of their favorite places on the farm. It is hard to believe they are gone. I miss them so much. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of them and miss them both dearly. One really important thing that I did learn from them, though, was that life does go on, and I vowed that I would continue my grandparent’s legacy of preparedness for my sons and my future grandkids.

  Chapter 1

  Today was turning into one of those days. I absolutely hate being late for anything. Maybe it was just my military background, or maybe it was my grandparent’s belief that being on time was a sign of respect for others. No matter where it came from, being late to me was just as bad as being dishonest. And here I was, sitting in traffic at least a half an hour away from where I was supposed to be right now. Just one more rotten thing to cap off a totally rotten day.

  I was really getting myself worked up over being late to meet my friends for our monthly dinner and over the lousy day I’d had. My rapidly deteriorating mood was interrupted when my cell phone rang. I looked at the screen and saw it was my best friend, Marcie Evans.

  “Hi, Marce, what’s up?”

  “Where are you? We’re all waiting for you, and we’re starved!” Marcie exclaimed.

  “I’m stuck in the demolition traffic near the old high school. Go ahead and order without me” I told her. “Just be sure to order me something with sausage on it. It’s going to take me at least fifteen minutes to get past this mess and another ten or fifteen to get to the restaurant. I’ll warn you now that I’m getting cranky!”

  “You, cranky? Oh, my gosh, I just can’t imagine that” quipped Marcie. “Drive safely, and we’ll see you when you get here.”

  I thought to myself that this delay was just the perfect end to a crappy day. I had been looking forward to this get-together for a couple of weeks. It is hard to get all seven of us together with our varied schedules and assorted family responsibilities, and when we finally did manage to get it arranged, my lousy day at work made me leave late. Getting stuck on the road while trucks are hauling off debris from where they are razing the old high school in town was close to setting off my last frayed nerve.

  My morning started off fine, until my boss told me that the hospital budget was being cut again for the fifth time this year. I currently work as one of the nursing educators for Riverdale General Hospital. My job is quite wonderful most of the time, although I do have issues with the Director of Nursing, who is more focused on finances than she is on quality nursing care and patient safety. She does not seem to be all that interested in promoting whatever it takes to provide the best possible care to our patients and is more interested in dressing in her fancy suits and high heels and having her numbers look good for the administrator and the Board of Directors. I understand that with all of the changes to health care and shrinking reimbursement, hospitals are hard pressed to provide good care to patients and remain financially viable. This means things the hospital administrators see as non-essential are dropped to keep room in the budget for patient care services. I can agree with that to a degree, but I just think there are better places to cut than anything that has to do with providing good, safe care. The budget cut this time means the education department’s part time clerical person was being laid off, and the other educators and I would have to take on all of the filing, record keeping, and other clerical tasks for the department, as well as our usual educator tasks. To make it worse, nursing staff was also being cut, which meant a few of our nurse assistants were being laid off. At least in this round, none of the licensed nurses are being cut, but I’m sure that will be coming soon. With the economy the way it is, the hospital wants to be as lean as possible, but I feel really bad for the people who were being laid off because there just are not that many jobs to be found. Unemployment was already pretty high in Riverdale, and increasing numbers of layoffs would only make it worse.

  As if layoffs were n
ot enough to depress my mood, some free materials I ordered for a class I am supposed to teach next month were supposed to be here today, but didn’t show up. When I called the company, they told me the free materials were no longer available. The person on the phone tried to sell me similar materials, but my budget just didn't have the two hundred dollars they wanted. For that matter, I didn’t have any money at all in my budget, and that’s why I was so excited at the thought of free materials to begin with! Then I got a call from the contractor working on my farm letting me know there were some minor problems, and we needed to meet tomorrow morning. I spent most of the afternoon working with a nurse who simply could not grasp (or more likely did not want to grasp!) the concept of how to use isolation gear. I also had a few “emergent” requests from a couple of department directors to do mass education for all staff to solve problems caused by one or two non-compliant staff members. Since when does it make sense to re-educate everyone when one or two people who knew better chose not to do what they were supposed to do? And, in these troubling financial times, if we don’t have the money to keep all of our staff, how are we going to find extra to pay for staff to have unnecessary education? It makes me wonder if directors even think about that. It would solve so many problems to just hold the two or three staff members accountable for their choices!

  Finally, I was all set to leave for the day when one of the physicians showed up at my door venting about issues with the nurses and telling me all of the things that I needed to “educate” them about. Dr. Nolan is a competent doctor, but he is older and very set in his ways. In his mind, healthcare went down the tubes when nurses stopped wearing caps and white dresses and fetching coffee for the doctors. Although he is great to his patients, he is pretty hard on nurses, and lately he seems to have a litany of issues he needs to “discuss” every day. That wouldn’t be bad, except for some reason he only wants to talk to me about his issues, and he usually shows up about the time I am trying to leave for the day. I’ve tried to divert him to talk to the Director of Nursing, but he refuses to talk to her and says she is too unprofessional for him. Most days, I am happy to chat with Dr. Nolan and listen to his concerns about these “young girls” (yes, he is referring to middle aged nurses!) because even though he can be really crotchety and cranky, he is a teddy bear at heart, and I usually do enjoy talking to him. Today, though, he was more whiny than crotchety, and I was in a hurry.

 

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