Blue Plague The Fall

by Watson, Thomas A.

  Bruce always heard people complain that it was too hard to prepare for any disaster. He would laugh; he knew you did not do it all at once. You do it little by little over time. This farm was the result of almost a decade of work. Last February, Mike and Nancy surprised everyone when they announced that they had bought three hundred acres in North Dakota as a backup site for the family. To say that it left everyone speechless would be an understatement.

  The family had talked about having a backup site; Bruce was thinking maybe Missouri, but Mike and Nancy said they wanted a place that was really out in the middle of nowhere. Well, they bought it. The closest neighbor was fifteen miles away and the closest town was over an hour. You had to drive twenty minutes just to get some gas. It was a farm that had a river on the western side and two hundred acres for farming and a hundred acres of timber. They had bought it in foreclosure, and when Bruce and Debbie tried to give them money for it, they told them no. They were contributing it to the LLC. Nancy told them since Bruce and Debbie had paid for the majority of this farm and accepted them as family, this was their present in return.

  The family had been up to the property now several times to start work on it, but it was far from being ready as a backup site. There were no provisions in place yet. It had three large barns, and they had put two storage areas underground, once again using shipping containers. In May, they hired contractors to build onto the house that was there, pulling from the LLC funds. This was the first time the family did not do its own work, but doing it themselves was not feasible due to the distance of the backup farm from their home. They rented out the two-hundred-acre field to a farmer seventeen miles down the road. The work on the house included solar panels since no electricity was run to the house. The previous owner had several generators, but they did not want to rely on just them and the largest propane tank anyone had seen at a house. On the property were two, thousand-gallon fuel tanks for diesel and three grain silos. The kids had mixed feeling about the new farm. They set up satellite for the Internet and TV, and that was okay, but there was no cell coverage. Every time they went there to do some work, Bruce and Mike kept an eye on the girls, waiting on a seizure related to no texting. They filled the propane tank and put a thousand gallons of diesel in one of the tanks, treating it so it would last.

  This was running through Bruce’s mind as he sat at the table waiting on Mike to get his second cup of coffee down. They had not been up to North Dakota since the first week of July. They were planning on going back in September for a week. The farmer they had rented the fields to was watching the place. Bruce would never admit it, but he was not in the mood to do this all over again. This was wearing him down. Damn, getting old sucks, Bruce thought again. Yes, Bruce could whine with the best of them but only to himself. Be damned if he would admit it to anyone, even Debbie. Someone had to be gung ho all the time, if for no other reason than to rub it in when someone complained; that’s why everyone thought he was a machine. The human Energizer Bunny. Just then the girls came in the back door with towels wrapped around them.

  “Hey, Daddy,” Danny said as she walked up and gave him a hug and kissed his shaved head. Danny was five feet, six inches tall, and 140 pounds, with brown hair and green eyes, and a toned body that was solid muscle. She was not masculine in her appearance but built like a gymnast. Everyone could tell she was a beautiful young lady, much to Bruce’s annoyance.

  “Hey, pumpkin, did you have a good workout and swim?” Bruce asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Danny said. “Mom, have you seen my black jeans?” she asked.

  “They are hanging in the laundry room. Hurry and get ready. Who is driving today?” Debbie asked. The five kids that were still in high school took turns driving the Suburban, each driving one day a week.

  “I get to drive today,” Danny replied, smiling, walking over to Mike and kissing him on top of his head and giving him a hug.

  “Hey, Daddy Mike,” she said to Mike.

  “Hey, little one, you have a good day at school,” he replied.

  Mary came up behind Mike, kissing him on top of the head, “Morning, Daddy. Did you sleep late?” Mary was the same height but with a slightly lighter frame than Danny, with black hair and brown eyes. She worked out like Danny but not with the same intensity.

  “Yes, I did, baby,” he said to her, yawning. “Don’t ever get old, baby, it sucks,” Mike stated to her.

  “I will try, Daddy,” she said, laughing, walking over to Bruce and kissing him on top of the head. “Morning, Daddy Bruce,” she told him.

  “Morning, little lamb. Don’t listen to your dad; getting old is okay. Just don’t join the Marines. They teach you how to whine too much,” Bruce told her, laughing at Mike.

  “Piss off, ranger boy. I’m tired and not in the mood,” Mike stated in a harsh tone.

  “Go get ready, girls. I will have food ready before you leave,” Debbie told her.

  “Okay, Mama Debbie,” Mary said, walking up to her, giving her a hug, then walking out with Danny to get ready upstairs.

  As the girls walked out, all four boys came in the back door in tank tops and shorts with sweat dripping off of them. All were very muscular for their age, and all of them had the full eight-pack washboard abs. This is one area that irritated both dads. You could see Mike’s and Bruce’s abs, but only the top four muscles unless they worked out hard and got very strict on their diets. Not the boys––their entire bodies were ripped. In this house, there was no sedentary lifestyle: everyone worked on the farm and worked out in the gym, and couch potatoes were not allowed. If someone got in a couch potato mood, somebody found them something to do.

  “Hey, Dad, ready to start the day?” Steve said, sitting down at the table with Mike and Bruce after getting a cup of coffee and his creatine mix.

  “Hell yeah, after Mike and I go get us a good workout,” he replied to Steve.

  “I don’t know if I like you very much today,” Mike told Bruce.

  “Aww, it’s okay, we can get you something for that vaginal itching after we work out, Mike,” Bruce joked with him. The boys all started laughing.

  “I can remember a few times you needed a tampon, baby,” Debbie told Bruce. Everyone laughed at that as Bruce tried to remember the last time he acted like a pussy.

  “Thank you, Debbie, for setting him in his place,” Mike said.

  Just then Nancy came in the back door carrying a basket of eggs. Seeing everyone laughing, she asked what was so funny.

  “My wife is verbally abusing me because I’m picking on Mike because he slept late and feels old today,” Bruce informed her of the situation.

  “Debbie, let him pick on him. I told Mike several times last night to quite playing Call of Duty and get some sleep, but did he? Oh no, he kept playing,” Nancy told everyone. Nancy was five feet, two inches, 130 pounds, with black shoulder-length hair, which was pulled back.

  “Thank you for taking up for me, Nancy,” Bruce said, sticking his tongue out at Debbie.

  “Well, I have to remind Bruce every once in a while that he is not superhuman,” Debbie told her.

  “Oh, well, that is different, that is part of your job description, so go ahead. I have to do that to Mike as well.” Nancy said.

  “Well, Nancy, I thought you loved me, but I see you are siding with your wife instead of your second husband,” Bruce replied.

  “Jake, Matt, and David, you need to go get ready for school, and pay no attention to the wives belittling me,” Bruce told the boys.

  “Yes, sir,” they replied in unison, taking off upstairs.

  “Remember, it’s range day; we have to go shoot. So straight home, don’t forget,” Bruce yelled upstairs.

  Yells of joy could be heard from the boys. Once a month, at least, everyone went to the back of the property, set up targets at the one-hundred-yard range the family had made, and practiced shooting.

  “Can we blow something up today?” Mary yelled down the stairs.

  Debbie, Nancy, Steve, and
Mike turned to look at Bruce as he yelled back, “Yes, we will blow something up today, little one.”

  The adults heard a yell from Mary filled with excitement, “Yes! That is so cool.”

  Mike looked around at everyone in the kitchen. “She makes a daddy so proud,” he said, wiping a fake tear from his eye.

  “That’s okay, Mike, we know our daughter is tougher than you. It’s okay,” Bruce told him.

  “Sometimes I think I could slap you, Bruce,” Mike said, laughing.

  “Ewe, spank me, big daddy, make me cry hard,” Bruce said to Mike as he stood up, putting his butt in his face.

  Everyone started laughing at that until tears were rolling down each face. This was the way to start a day with friends and family. Everyone enjoyed being with each other, and no feelings were ever hurt. This was the love of family and friends, and there was not much better in the world than that.

  Chapter 10

  Bruce stacked the last bag of flour in the container. Mike was sitting on the floor by the door sweating profusely. The underground container was full with the supplies that were designated to be placed in it by the two generals who were disguised as their wives. The container was forty feet long and eight feet wide, the same as the other three. It was now full, with a walkway along the right wall. It had taken six hours to move all the stuff the wives wanted placed in it. Almost double what the guys had planned on putting in it. While the guys had been stocking the new storage area, the wives had been feeding the animals, watering the garden, and working in the greenhouses.

  Mike looked up at Bruce and said, “I don’t remember us agreeing to move that much in here, do you? I thought this one was only going to be half full so we had extra room for storage in the future.”

  Bruce collapsed beside Mike. “Hell, I thought they were fixing to make us move everything we owned in here. Steve is still lying on the barn floor. That last pallet of feed wiped him out,” Bruce replied.

  “You do realize that if we were union we could go on strike when Nancy and Debbie change the work schedule like that, don’t you?” Mike informed Bruce.

  “And who the hell would tell them we are going on strike? It damn sure is not going to be me. When one of them is mad, it’s bad enough, but both of them? I would rather drag my balls across broken glass,” Bruce replied.

  “I did not think about that,” Mike said. “We could get one of the kids to inform them,” he volunteered.

  “No, then we would have to go and get another kid to replace the one that would disappear,” Bruce said.

  “Yeah, you are probably right,” Mike said, suddenly snapping his head up. “What do you mean, Steve is lying down in the barn?” he asked.

  “Well, we did volunteer him to move all four pallets of feed from the loft of the barn down to the floor.” Bruce said.

  “Hell, he is a young stud; he should be able to do twice that,” Mike said.

  “That’s what I told him when he collapsed gasping for air when he brought down the last bag of feed,” Bruce said. “Steve just looked at me and said he was ‘going to put his dress on’ because he was not a stud anymore.”

  “If we ruin Steve, Debbie and Nancy will shoot both of us,” Mike said.

  “Why do you think I left him on the floor of the barn to recoup and to keep them from seeing him?” Bruce replied.

  Mike stood up and walked up the steps out of the storage area and looked around. The heat in Louisiana was brutal in July, but August was insane, so the rest of the barn would have to wait. The kids would be home from school shortly, and they were going to practice shooting today. Practice was a loose term to apply. It was just good family time together. All the kids could give any soldier a run for their money when it came to using any weapon. They all treated weapons with the respect that a weapon deserved.

  Mike turned and yelled at Bruce, “Come on, old lady, let’s go get Steve before the girls see him lying on the floor.”

  “Leave him there,” Bruce replied. “I’m laying in my own misery right here.”

  “If you remember, old man, we are shooting today, and that means that Debbie and Nancy will shortly be placing their hands on high-powered weapons. I don’t think they would kill us for wearing Steve out like that, but they damn sure would wound us. I, for one, would like to keep my appendages intact,” Mike informed Bruce.

  Bruce jumped up and started walking up the steps, “That is a very good point, brother.”

  They started walking to the barn when Zeus and Hera, the family’s and the farm’s protectors, two Great Pyrenees dogs, started to run out of the barn at them. The family had two Chihuahuas, Buddy and Sassy, and a Bassett Hound, Clyde, but they stayed in the house. Clyde would come outside in the day, but he had to curl up on his bed at night. It was agreed in the family he was scared of the dark.

  The main barn was huge by any standard. On the main floor were twelve stalls, a tack room, two feed rooms, and an office, which was used to store equipment. The main hall between the stables was over twenty feet wide. The bottom floor covered 3,200 square feet, and the loft was just over a thousand square feet. When they bought the farm, it was in bad shape, so after the house, the barn was repaired and looked great now.

  As they neared the barn, the dogs bounced up to them as if saying, “Steve won’t play with us.” Mike and Bruce patted each on the head.

  “Where is Steve?” Mike asked the two dogs.

  The dogs took off inside the barn, and lying on the floor in a pile of hay was Steve, with his arms over his eyes as both dogs ran up to him and started licking him.

  “Will you two please stop? It’s hot enough without being covered in dog slobber,” Steve said as he pushed them away.

  “Why are you still lying down?” Bruce asked, walking over to his son, looking down at Steve, and shaking his head. “You are embarrassing your daddy, son,” Bruce informed him.

  “You are kidding, right? I don’t think there is a bag of feed for chicken, horse, cow, or dog in this state that I did not move out of this barn today,” replied Steve. “I want a raise in my allowance.”

  “A raise––since when did we start getting paid?” Mike asked Bruce.

  Steve sat up suddenly, “Dad, don’t you dare tell Mama and Mama Nancy that I’m asking for more money. They will find something else for me to do,” he pleaded.

  “Just think, this is what you have to look forward to when you get married. Love, companionship, happiness, and getting your ass worked off when she thinks of a new project,” Mike informed him. Debbie and Nancy did a lot of work on the farm that was just as hard. It usually consisted of jobs that Bruce and Mike would rush through.

  “Tonya would never work me like this,” Steve proudly stated.

  Tonya was his girlfriend, who everyone in the family loved. Steve and Tonya had been sweethearts since ninth grade. He was surely following in his father’s footsteps by staying with his high school sweetheart. She lived on her own family farm about ten miles down the road. Tonya was over at least every other day of the week. Steve very rarely went over to her house because Tonya’s father used to be very abusive to her and her mother, but that had changed. Two years ago, Tonya had ridden her ATV to the house with a black eye, saying her father had punched her in the face when she tried to stop him from hitting her mother. Steve, acting like his father, immediately ran for a vehicle to go and stand up for his girlfriend. Bruce and Mike stopped him and informed him that he would stay here. At sixteen, he did not have the experience to handle this. The dynamic duo, as Nancy and Debbie called the husbands, drove over to Tonya’s house after notifying the sheriff’s department of what was going on.

  Three hours later, the duo returned. Mike’s shirt was torn, and Bruce had a busted lip, his eyes and face were red and swollen with no shirt. Everyone came running out of the house except Steve and Tonya. Tonya was asleep on the living room couch with her head in Steve’s lap, and he would not leave her.

  “What the hell happened?” Nancy asked. “Yo
u two look like hell.”

  Bruce looked at her and replied, in a flat hostile tone, walking into the house, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  As he walked into the house, Debbie turned to Mike. “Well?” was all she said to him.

  “All right, when we drove up, Warren, Tonya’s dad, had called both of his brothers over. It seems he knew after Tonya left where she was going. When we pulled up, they told us to leave, and Bruce very kindly informed all of them he just wanted to talk and the cops were on the way over. He just wanted to talk to Pam, Tonya’s mom. Warren told him it was none of our business, that unless we wanted to get hurt we should just leave. That’s when Bruce told him that he was a deputy and wanted to see Pam. Well, Warren looked at him and said that he was not a deputy in this parish so he could kiss his ass. That did not go over well with Bruce, as you could imagine, so he started walking to the house calling out for Pam. That was when Warren came over, taking a swing at Bruce. Bruce blocked it easily and commenced beating the shit out of Warren. Both of Warren’s brothers took off to jump Bruce from behind. Just before they reached Bruce, I yelled, tackling both of them. Now I am fighting the oldest brother, and Bruce is fighting the younger brother and Warren. This is when the six deputies show up in three squad cars. They order everyone to stop fighting, stand up, and put our hands up. Well, I did that, and the oldest brother tackled me from the side. So I got him in an arm bar, breaking his shoulder, and then stood back up with my hands up. These were some young-looking deputies, and I did not want to get shot, because two already had their guns out.