Shaky Business

by Foster, Ron

  “See Mike I told you it would happen someday! Somebody has already heard of my invention and stole it maybe?” Donald said questionably.

  “I wouldn’t say that anyone stole it, Troy had already made the best prepper community survival kits ever before the poo hit the fan and he just managed to have himself some inventory on hand when it was needed most. He still makes kits out of what he can find or barter for but those special nylon pouches or tins he used to feature in his EBay store are almost impossible to come by these days. I got a complete one on the boat if you want to see it.’ Crick said wanting to show off his wealth of compact survival supplies ready in an instant to be strapped on.

  “Well mines don’t have no fancy nylon pouches or Altoid tins containing choice US made goods but I got some made out of them expensive sun glass cases and some fancy leather cell phone pouches.” Donald began before Joshua cut him off.

  “Don’t let him sell you no “Bee-Drills” to go in them things.” The man said jokingly

  “Hell he might have a bee or two in that bonnet of his.” Phyllis quipped referring to his palmetto hat.

  “Don’t be taking it upon yourself to make no disparaging words about my hat. Takes a bit of skill and a lot of knowledge to weave one and it’s the best thing going to keep the sun off your head when you beach combing or sitting on a dock under the hot sun trying to make a living!” Donald fussed.

  “Well you can call it a sun bonnet. I heard you say that when you gave Phyllis one, besides she could have said you had bats in your belfry! Joshua said needling the old cuss a might.

  “I do have a belfry on my house by the way. Donald said with a wink in the stranger’s direction.

  “Ok we already know what you are planning on or going to trade them so let’s get on with the dickering for some oysters. Those things ain’t going to last long even fresh caught in this heat.” Joshua said before Donald started spluttering how he knew what he had in mind to trade but that fact was true.

  “Oh we got them shell critters on ice…’ Hobe began before all three of the park dwellers questioned him about where he had got such a rare commodity and how evidently Hobe had come up with a way to generate electricity to run an icemaker on a sailboat.

  “Holy hell! How many pounds of ice can you get out of that machine in a day?” Donald managed to blurt out over the conversation and hush everyone for a moment.

  “About 30lbs or three of them 10lb grocery store bags.” Hobe began before Phyllis told him she would give him 10 dollars for a bag of ice just to have some ice tea to go with supper today as a wonderful extravagance.

  “I don’t know that we got 10lbs ready. We been icing those oysters down all the way from Apalachicola. Randal you are in charge of the ice detail what’s our status? We got enough ice left to just GIVE them some.” Hobe said referring to Randal’s deckhand job of having to run the water desalinator and then fill up the ice machine etc.

  “I didn’t even think about you all having to use up all your freshwater to make ice. So you run a desalinator too? That’s pretty cool but I am familiar with them things. That’s interesting. Tell you what I will give you two blue crabs just for a glass of ice water right now Hobe! Why I haven’t had a cool drink of anything except during winter for I don’t know for how long.” Donald said animatedly.

  “Randall if you don’t mind Go get that pitcher of tea out of the refrigerator.” Crick said with a wry smile they hadn’t already thought they would be running one of them contraptions also on DC current and watched everyone breathlessly await such a fine and marvelous beverage thing in this apocalyptic hot day.

  “It’s free to you all; no barter just our thanks and neighborly intentions. You all drink up and have some seconds when your glasses run out.” Hobe said watching the park residents tentatively tasting the ambrosia that was served to them and relishing its coolness and taste like they had died and gone to Heaven.

  “Now that’s damn near as fine as good whiskey.” Donald said admiringly.

  “You wouldn’t happen to?” Donald began before Crick assured them that yes, they had some alcohol stocks that might meet that requirement which Donald was more than hinting about for trade later but that ice machine wouldn’t support too many rounds if they didn’t get to trading off or cooking up or eating them oysters raw in the mean time.

  “Hell man I can drink whiskey over melted oyster ice, they put clam juice with vodka and tomato juice don’t they? I eat them raw anyway why not drink the water and ice that comes with them? Let’s get on with the trading and for that matter raw is fine with me and can I have a taste of what it is I will be buying first? Hey I got hot sauce and crackers to go with it!” Donald said.

  “What kind of crackers you got?” Hobe asked very interested breathlessly.

  “I got the real deal commercially made crackers buddy. You see I hit every one of those restaurants around here years ago and put them in 5 gallon plastic buckets and sucked the air out with my own patented way of doing it to protect them but if you want a bit of a different albeit sort of pricy type of cracker I was the one that hit the mother lode at picking over an English tea shop and a gourmet store run. They are all factory packed in fancy reusable tins.” Donald said with a devilish grin that he would end up with at least a bushel sack of oysters to trade or gain favors with the rest of the parks residents.

  “As much as I kid that old sparky codger I will give him that credit for being the first to think of targeting some amazing things when we all started doing the looting thing. He is scrounger extraordinaire when it comes to looking for stuff in all the right places others hadn’t thought about when this crap began.” Joshua said.

  “Yea you damn wimp, I didn’t see you helping me steal none of it or acquire it. Noooo! You were too busy looking down on me and warning me about being bad around here! But you ate my food and asked for my help later on didn’t you? All you all were concerned with doing was being too busy standing around thinking the government was going to save your modern law abiding radio listening dependant butts and didn’t want to dirty your hands or take the risks I did to survive.” Donald said evidently bringing up a big bone of contention between them.

  “Now we done beat those bad decisions or morality judgments during them hard times to dust, leave it alone Donald.” Phyllis said angrily but Donald wasn’t having any of it just yet.

  “The only thing you always said Phyllis was what if we don’t hear where the relief points were at if the government did send supplies and what if this wasn’t as big of a disaster as I told you it was. By the way one more time I was the one that helped fight off them rogue cops out their doing the same to us as I was to empty shops when they tried to takeover this place!” Donald spluttered before regaining his composure and apologizing to the guests.

  “Ok so you were a hurrah gun toting soldier hero back then, get over it!” Mike said threateningly towards the older man that was met with a blank “who gives a damn” stare.

  “Hey now I want to hear more about these rogue cops you were talking about! Elaborate a bit!” Randal said.

  “I still have the jitters about the vigilantes that chased me out of the Trade Rendezvous for no reason and got me stuck on this boat doing all the tasks the others don’t want to do. There was a lot of ex-cops in that bunch that wanted to play judge and jury now that their supervisory shackles had been taken off and deliver their own brand of so called justice or self righteousness they wanted to impose.” Randall said still vexed about the circumstances of his hasty departure.

  “That’s kind of a sore point seeing that I also used to represent the law enforcement community. I might be however what used to be considered an Oath Keeper Randall in that when the shit totally hit the fan and we couldn’t get gas or food for us and our families, the title of law enforcement officer didn’t mean much. However, since ya’ll are newcomers here, it’s best to warn you about certain areas of the city you need to stay away from and who’s controlling them. They ain’t peac
e officers they are oath breakers. As far as I know, we are the only officially elected peace officers around here except for the county sheriff who we rarely see or hear about and who is still performing his judicial duties in a somewhat fair fashion. A large majority of the cops didn’t just quit and go home to protect their own families when the poo hit, a lot of them banded together for what some might call expedient self protection or just to steal stuff cause they needed to operate you might as well say, and they caused a lot of trouble and mistrust to anything official to this day.” Phyllis said before Joshua interjected that the cops under the color of law had been confiscating supplies from civilians in an effort or a promise to keep their jobs or the public safe.

  “That being said and any talk of using official police vehicles or knocking on a door saying that you were the law only lasted a month or two before anything with a badge became a target for those still struggling to survive the disaster. Although it was explained that there were many different versions of what happened throughout the city or the rest of the beaches, the general consensus was that some crazy ass swat commander of a team etc. use their training and equipment to better themselves and ignore the laws protecting those that they were supposed to serve. It was about this point in time that Donald began to explain how he and the rest of everyone living here ended up basically taking over this State Park. Now there were probably many other foresters and park rangers doing something similar to what most of the people in that profession came to do after the cities started burning and the rampant social breakdown began occurring but they only knew how these park rangers had joined the campers to survive.

  What was unique about this place was that the people that were originally charged to defend and protect and enforce the game laws to this area had themselves an enlightening moment about how it should be best morally done to serve the public and one Mr. Donald standing there in front of them had helped organize it.

  Donald explained that he had been down there having himself a birthday camping trip and wanted to go fishing on one of the big cattle boats as he called them, some people call them head boats because the riders and fisherman pay by the head to go deep sea fishing at one of the places that catered to tourists and locals alike. These boats usually carry anywhere from twenty to upwards of fifty people on a trip and supply the bait, fishing licenses and rods and reels and such to make it happen for a fee. So on the morning of his birthday when he got up to put the coffee on the campfire and get ready to go on such a fishing expedition, Phyllis in her capacity as park ranger, had come by to tell him like she did all the rest of the campers that this park would soon be officially closed due to lack of electricity and other infrastructure.

  Donald at first didn’t really give a damn because she did say sometime in the future not hopefully meaning today and he figured he’d go on his fishing trip anyway but it soon became apparent one of his worst nightmares had just occurred.

  A solar storm had hit and him being out camping and not listening to the radio had missed any news or whatever about its impact or any of the emergency broadcast statements that were being made about it.

  Phyllis was looking kind of haggard even in that permapress forest green uniform of hers and Donald had commented on how weary she looked and informed her of his background as a retiree of all things Emergency Management. This statement seemed to hit a comradely chord with her and they soon began discussing what exactly did Donald in his lengthy experience think that it was the government had planned for the nation as well as what he thought she should do as the highest ranking officer representing her department in this area.

  Donald did what he always did: first he offered her a drink which he didn’t think she would take but did it anyway and then poured himself one and told her to have a seat because as far as he knew the only advice that you would ever hear from anybody that had his kind of experience of such a catastrophe and not broadcasting it to the general public would probably be coming from him now.

  He explained that there were many different levels of responses and he didn’t even need to ask if she had been in touch with any of her superiors unless they had them some kind of newfangled radios he didn’t know about that would be unaffected by any of the solar geomagnetic storms that were still occurring now as they spoke. The first thing he wanted to know was what her position was and what she planned to do being basically cut off from any and all assistance or direction from her superiors. Phyllis told him confidently that in her eighteen years of serving the Conservation and Forestry department that her first duty was to see to the safety of the parks guests.

  “SO I BET YOU TO TAKE THAT TO MEAN you’re going to just shut the park down and kick everybody out and head home yourself or try to stick around and enforce some rules on the campers that had already paid for the now unusable campsites?” Donald had asked catching his tone of voice and disgust before announcing more calmly what her general orders might be.

  The way he said it kind of pissed her off as does any question asked of law enforcement but she managed to keep her official persona on by advising him that during any disaster or emergency the official SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) was to shut the parks down for public safety concerns.

  Donald said that he agreed with her in most instances and that was the appropriate course of action all right but in this instance if she truly wanted to serve the public, there should be contingency plans for sheltering in place when roads or circumstances made things unsafe and other avenues of evacuation were unavailable. He said for example, what if all those railroad tracks leading into the city had a massive hazardous chemical spill? Surely the park service would understand it was necessary for some campers to overstay their official reservations with or without money or welcome in the reserve and stay onsite. At this point in time, there was a mass exodus of vehicles of every description occurring in every vacation hotspot on the coast of Florida and depending on how much one had for gas in their vehicles that limited the wisdom of a one size fits all approach. Consider also what the now displaced travelers or campers were going home to and if this calamity said distance or fuel to get there was a major point or criteria to consider made it more expedient to allow them time to think things through.

  Donald stated that himself personally had done so already and after thinking it out only briefly after her informing him of the electrical grid breakdown, he wished to stay an indeterminate time right where he was at and avoid the traffic jams, wrecks on the highway and the unavailability of gas until he could come up with a better plan.

  Donald was a prepper but he was one down on his luck and financially broke prepper and he knew those thirty days of supplies he had at home weren’t going to last long in the chaos he expected and didn’t even have to begin to predict his chances of lasting very long for the thirty days it might take him trying to make it to those supplies walking. His plan of action was he would sit right here, drink him another beer and say ‘Thank you Lord, I’m already bugged out and make the best of it!’

  Phyllis didn’t understand the term “bug out” and he explained to her all that meant by that funny term was in his case the inevitable trips to the country looking for food and water to survive once his supplies at home ran out or lawlessness, fire or general instability finally pushed him towards finding an area with more natural resources to assist him. Thus he would have to leave the sanctity and former safety of his home and “Bug Out” elsewhere to try to survive with less competition for resources hopefully.

  “I tell you what Phyllis, since we are under what I call battlefield conditions and we’re both having to allocate resources and supplies under our own authorities why don’t you make me your deputy dog or something and I’ll watch this place when you leave to go check on your house or whatever. Now I hope you will find the sense in that and allow me the responsibility to try to fill your shoes here even though I’m not an official emergency manager anymore. Think about it for a minute, you are basically in the same boat as I
am as of today and as I been repeating myself telling you consider long term or just for tomorrow you won’t be receiving a paycheck anymore for being a park ranger. Finite, final, no direct deposits and no banks no more! Now right now you got the gun on your hip that says the say so about whether I go or stay here, but actually I’m quite useful to have around.” Donald began before she cut him off somewhat dismissively.

  “I am sure you know Donald that I don’t have that kind of authority to deputize you but you can stick around if you want to. You can quit trying to wheedle that permission out of me and I thank you for the offer and your prior disaster service. Do you have any kind of advice on emptying this park out or telling folks any kind of preparedness messages that won’t make them run screaming for the exits like a small fire in a theater or movie house?” Phyllis asked thinking this cool old soul actually did carry a lot of wisdom in matters of keeping your cool and responding appropriately when the chips were down.