by Ron Foster
“That shouldn’t be much of a problem, I got a backyard full of wild grapes that I think have just been to young to produce. They are all over the wood line” Charles advised.
“I will check them out when we go over there. Did Floyd say what town looked like as he passed through?’ Dennis asked as they headed to his storage shed to get some plant bulbs.
“He said he saw the guard troops and cops hanging out in Lowe’s parking lot and the Tractor supply store center but otherwise it was quite.
“I would like to spend what cash me and mom have left, but I have no desire to get anywhere near a store. Folks are going to be raising hell they can’t use charge cards and be in various levels of desperation. Hell I doubt the stores got much of anything left in them anyway. Still, A fiat currency has no value in post-disaster realms all too soon if there are no goods to be had. I think we ought to just either stay here or go spend it on whatever and wherever we can.” Dennis said as he handed Charles a shovel and grabbed a pickax for himself.
“Everyone’s world is now suddenly dark and dangerous, electricity is out for the foreseeable future and life is getting more primitive everyday. I say we either go now while there might be something to buy or forget about ever going to town for a long while.” Charles said as they walked back to the orchard.
“I agree with you Charles. Me, I just soon not find out first hand what its like to be around a crazed mob and say we just stay here. Tell you what though, if Floyd is up for it. I say we give him a few hundred bucks and send him to town to pick over what is left for his and our benefit. A couple hundred bucks worth of food is not really worth the trip, but if he can find any fertilizer or vegetable plants then we need to try. Hell insecticide and another hundred useful things might still be able to be purchased. I think I will follow him in my truck and see just what. if anything I can buy.” Dennis said contemplating which stores would just be closed most likely permanently and what might be still open.
“I will go with him Dennis, then you can stay here with your mom and work on other projects.” Charles offered.
“Damn that’s tempting, thanks. But I am wondering if my preppers eye and brain would be better used doing one more store run. I look at things different or multi use things than most people.” Dennis said waffling between wanting to stay at home, or the excitement of going on one last big prepper buying spree if he could.
“Don’t you think we need to keep some cash put back? I mean you never know what we might be able to buy later in the future and we haven’t even tried to buy any chickens yet.” Charles said logically.
“Tell you what, I will keep a little mad money back at the house for a rainy day and you go try to buy some chickens now from the neighbors. Send Floyd and Monica to the stores together to see if they can get anything. Monica has been listening to me talk preps for years and she has borrowed a lot of knowledge from my prepper fiction library in the past so she has a general idea what kind of things I would be looking for.” Dennis said as he leaned down to plant garlic and onions as fast as he could before they had to go back to the house and get some money together and share ideas on the shopping trips list.
“Sounds like a plan. It is hard to imagine all the people who suddenly have no money, no car or fuel for it, no phones, no electricity, no food or water and now are standing in orderly lines for long periods of time hoping to make a purchase.” Dennis said ominously.
“Your right buddy, hells look at the idiots at Walmart on a black Friday sale. It takes little or nothing to set off a stampede in some areas. If the crowds are too big or look the least bit unruly tell Monica and Floyd not to even bother getting close to the parking lot.” Dennis warned.
“You know neither one of them has a pistol permit.” Charles said raising one eyebrow.
“Ah hell back to me then. Tell you what, me and Floyd will go and Monica can stay with my Mom. You won’t be gone too long and you can help them with something when you get back... Dennis declared no longer that enthused about even attempting to go on a shopping trip.
“How much food do you think they have in the grocery store warehouses around here?” Charles asked as they went to put up the garden tools in the shed after they finished the plantings.
“The nation’s food system has many tiers Charles, and the “food stored in cities” level is but a minor component. The system encompasses many different levels of intermediate food storage components such as farms, cooperative grain-storage towers, processing plants, warehouses, shipping in transit, and distribution centers, each holding or supplying a significant percentage of our food supply and operating over a timeframe of weeks and months. It is a system in which flow makes up more of the capacity than storage.
Now the peanut processing plant here always has a lot more around than is used locally or maybe even regionally. Most of those farmers will still get a crop in this year of some sort so I imagine some enterprise will still go on as long as we can hold out for several months. But I bet the government is going to control it. Problem is there is no plan and depending on the level of societal breakdown, there is not a promise of any enterprise being able to operate safely or at all.” Dennis said trying to guess what a month or two months from now would be like.
Right now under the present conditions, he recognized that something was wrong and that they were facing several specific threats. Using the pistol analogy, in this condition you would chamber a bullet, though still keep the safety on. The mindset he had adopted is, "If that person does 'X', I will need to stop them," and we must be fully prepared to do just that. But what about in the future, safety off cocked and locked? It would be a matter of WHEN person does 'X', and he would need to stop them before they become a threat.” That’s the thought he didn’t want to deal with at the moment. Moving to less threatening environs was pretty much the only rational choice that is if he could manage it. But with the whole world gone to hell, he knew there was no where safe to bug out to for his little group. Arms, ammunition, candles, lighters, antibiotics, gasoline, batteries and food was the concerns. People will fight for these things like animals. In these situations, it all changes. Men become monsters. It will soon be a much more seriously disgusting and horrific world to survive in.
“Dennis they are going to do a radio announcement in 5 minutes.” His mom called out the backdoor to him breaking his thought processes.
“Be there in a minute!” he called back.
“Come on Charles, let’s go find out just how deep this doo doo we are in is.” Dennis said and hurried towards the house. He already knew how deep they were, the rule is at first, the weak perish. Then the rest fight.
Game Changer
“Ok the very first things we will need to do is close and lock the driveway gates. I admit that it is merely a symbolic gesture because I only have that chain link fence run across the front of the property more for ascetics than true security, but it does send the right message. It represents when I don’t want visitors, open these gate at your own risk” Dennis said talking about attempting to do what little he could to increase his homes security
Dennis’s little band of Post-apocalyptic survivors gathered around the little portable radio with deep apprehension waiting for the next promised emergency broadcast report in 15 minutes.
Monica and his mom had listened to the previous broadcast and had breathlessly told Charles and him about a suspected bioterrorist release of smallpox virus in Chicago. The military and the CDC were trying to contain it and the whole nation was on high alert.
“Lord help us, that’s probably the start of Iran and Korea doing a little” tit for tat” because we EMP`ed their countries. I know friggin Iran has been messing with weaponized Smallpox and probably has no qualms about retaliating with some kind of nasty chemical or biological weapon. Of course you got them crazy bastards in Al Qaeda that will start up their own jihad with, or without approval of the Iranians. Everything is going to come unglued now, here is the big problem. Al Qaeda d
oesn’t have any mail home address or certain country so we can’t just obliterate the son of bitches. Israel already told Iran they would retaliate with nuclear missiles if they got attacked with any kind of WMD (Weapon of Mass destruction” so I imagine right now everybody’s got their fingers on some triggers I just soon not think about. Let’s hope sanity prevails and we don’t end up in a worldwide nuclear winter or something trying to turn Tehran into a glass parking lot.” Dennis said worriedly.
“I know what smallpox is but what is weaponized smallpox?” Monica asked.
“It is some extremely deadly shit !It is like the Russian scientists took an already very deadly virus and added horns and teeth to it for shits and giggles and made it even more contagious and designed it to kill you in a much shorter time .” Charles declared looking poignantly at Monica.
“That shit is going to go through and kill a minimum of 60% of the people around the release site even if it was normal smallpox. If Chicago got hit, you can be sure they did other releases in major cities. The next announcements I can pretty much tell you already but the main one is, IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE SMALLPOX DON’T GO TO THE HOSPITAL! “Dennis roared for effect.
“Damn ignorant people are going to flock to the hospitals anyway.” Charles said shaking his head.
“They better listen and learn about Quarantine. I seen a lot of quarantine signs growing up, you alls generation was spared that.” Dennis’s Mom said nodding her head
“Isolation, quarantine and eventually a vaccine is the only thing that is going to save us now. Meantime, except for us going out to buy them chickens off the neighbors , we all are officially self-quarantined and when I talk to the folks with the chickens I am keeping my distance. Dennis said adamantly.
Smallpox is an unbelievably deadly disease. It is the most contagious disease known to mankind – spreading literally like smoke. In the last known outbreak in Europe, a man early in the throws of smallpox, against doctor’s advice, opened his hospital window. In the cold German night, his exhalations went out the window, up the wall of the hospital into an open window on another wing and killed several nurses. That’s contagious. Get the picture?
Phones were an iffy situation at best these days. Sometimes you could get a line out but most times not.
Dennis dreaded every time the phone rang and when he picked up the receiver and spoke it sounded like he answered it gruffly with a tired attitude of “hurry up and tell me what you want.” It wasn’t that Dennis in anyway begrudged giving advice on what to do in this situation, it was the having to repeat he “just didn’t know or couldn’t help so many times.
Acquaintances, business partners, friends, fellow preppers, you name it, had all somehow seemed to just now remember his phone number for “all things regarding the end of the world” and were seeking him out like he had some kind of magical prepper lore to teach them at this late state in a catastrophe to help them survive.
The conversation always started with the same question, how do you treat smallpox at home? The only thing Dennis could say most of the time was that it was a just “Live or die” situation and keep the patient comfortable and God be with them.
Two phone calls received today were expected, dreaded and welcomed all in the same wave of passing emotions. First was his ex-girlfriend turned lifelong prepper buddy Charlene. She and Dennis had been talking on and off for years on what to do in this kind of situation. Dennis had a permanent open door policy to her in case she needed to bug out and now was the time with the encroaching threat of smallpox in the cities. Sanitation would be almost nonexistent and government attempts to control the disease by travel restrictions and forced quarantines would soon make bugging out on anything but a less traveled back road very difficult and dangerous.
Charlene had her own preps and lots of them from when she had followed the road of prepperdom with Dennis. The food stores and medicines she had stored away were desperately needed to augment his supplies as well as provide for herself, but there in lay the quandary of what she was bringing, how she was going to load it all, when she was coming etc.
The original plan she and Dennis had for Nuclear or Solar EMP was for her to “Bug IN’, help out her sister and mother as things developed and bug out to her relatives in the country with her family or separate from them and and just she would bug out to Dennis’s location. These type of decisions were heart rending and mind numbing, but the option of leaving the mother and sister with country farmer relatives was practical from a survival point of view, but distasteful on a ,moral or blood kin basis.
Dennis and Charlene had been over the finer points and pitfalls to all these problems so much in past prepper conversations that it was decided that inevitably Charlene would end up joining him to face the apocalypse together and at the end, just be secure in their hearts they had done everything possible for her relations before leaving them on their own.
It was never a cruel or cold hearted decision to decide thus. This is what Charlene and Dennis had prepped for and had on more than one occasion been laughed at or been belittled by friends and relatives for spending so much time, money and energy on preparing for these types of disasters.
Dennis thought that it really sucked that it had taken them both over 5 years to each put together enough food for the two of them to have over a years worth each of food stored and now that food was being divided amongst so many hungry mouths that depended on them now because of their own lack of preparations.
Dennis had resolved himself to the fact that it was a live together, die together world now and that his humanity and soft heart could do nothing about. He really didn’t have it in him to deny others if he could give a shred of comfort. Oh he knew it was easily his downfall and prepper logic said it was the ultimate mistake, but it put him right with his feelings about his relationship with the man upstairs.
He felt it was better he spend his time keeping up everyone’s spirits sharing meager rations fairly, than ever carrying the memories of a out right cold hearted denial to a starving or thirsty man or women. His conscience would kill him long before the loss of any morsel of food or unshared canteen. Oh he would fight like a deranged demon to protect what was his and protect his extended family and friends survival from those usurpers and beggars that challenged it, but he had a sixth sense on weighing hearts also.
Dennis could look a man or woman in the eyes when he was clear headed and tell if their hearts carried evil or they would share with him if in the same position. He told everyone he knew for years some Native American wisdom that related to being truly happy with ones self. He stated that “You live by your first instinct and you die by you last.” If you remembered that and followed your first instinct, then you wouldn’t be second guessing or questioning yourself all your life about what was right or wrong.
Dennis was known to say “the doctor smacked you on the ass and your first instinct was to breathe, your last is not to. Don’t worry about whether or not you had a decision with either. Live life, follow your instincts.”
Charlene would divide up her food stores and preps as she saw fit. The remainder would be moved by them both if possible to Dennis’s Prepper shack and nothing more would be said about what they were ultimately left with. No bitching about “Should of, Would of, Could of” What was left was all they had, what was given away was all they had. Simple, nothing left to do but fight death or starvation the best they could and try to remember to look at it as the big adventure in resourcefulness it was and attempt to smile while doing it.
“You can’t keep a good man or woman down! Where there is a will there is a way and if I got a pocket knife and a piece of string I will amaze you!” Dennis had joked to Charlene regarding some trapping prowess he hadn’t demonstrated in 30yrs that they were now forced to rely on him teaching to all.
A odd mixture of old southern gentleman and hell raising redneck, Dennis was well suited to try and lead this little group of possible survivors through the murky depths of modern man
mastering forgotten skills before it was too late.
“You just thought I was getting eccentric.” Dennis had said many times over on showing off his constant add-ons and tweaks to his preps in the form of aircraft cable modern snares and steel Conibear body hold animal kill traps.
“Everyone here is an eater or consumer in some way, so everyone here has to be a hunter, a trapper, a cook, etc. Why it will take me 10 days to even set out and teach you how to run two short trap lines. First off, never touch my damn traps! Charlene, you and you in particular remember that. You got a bad habit of having to touch or point to closely to anything you are talking about. These damn things are dangerous for one, but also remember I don’t want you scenting up my traps! Animals will be getting smarter by the day once I start looking at them as other than nice furry creatures and we all are about to live in the realm of hunter and prey.