Blue Plague The Fall

by Watson, Thomas A.

  “Well,” Bruce started, “as of now we have thirty-six thousand rounds of 5.56 with four thousand of that belted and enough to reload all of them once. In pistol, four thousand rounds of nine millimeter and five thousand rounds of .45, the rest of the odd rounds less than a thousand each. We can only reload about half of the pistol rounds. We are short on primers. We have over quarter of a million rounds of twenty-two caliber. In rifle, we have six hundred rounds of .338 Lapua; in 7.62 or 308, we have forty-five hundred rounds; and fifty cal, less than three hundred rounds. We have very little in the way to reload any of them except the 308, which we could reload half once. We have over two thousand rounds for the AK-47s and nothing to reload them with. The armory stands now over two hundred and four weapons with nineteen class threes and not counting the boxes buried out back. We have night vision goggles for every member of the family including Tonya with two spares. We have three FLIR scopes and one camera.”

  All of this was the culmination of seven years of preparing, a ton of hard work, a lot of sweat and tears put into the land and supplies. Some could say that it was impossible to get this prepared, but it only takes hard work and slowly buying what you needed. Not trying to stock up as the storm was coming, but over time, just getting a little each week. After the big bills were paid off, then you could spend a little more each week. The average family only had three days’ worth of food and no water stored in their house. Prepping took work and time; anyone could do it. But the criteria had to be followed: work and time. The boxes buried in the back were full of illegal weapons and accessories to weapons that the ATF said people could not have. Only the adults knew about the boxes, and they each had promised to never speak of it to anyone.

  “There is a gun show in Bossier today. I was not going, but I want to stock up on more ammo. Debbie and Nancy, go to Sam’s and buy what we need. The co-op won’t open until one o’clock since its Sunday, so then go there and load up. Remember, if the shit does not hit the fan, we just have extra supplies. Don’t tell anyone why you are buying, and everyone needs to be armed. We will have a lot of stuff in our vehicles and on the trailers. Debbie, wake Steve up, and I want him to go and get a set of tires for every vehicle we have except the tractors. They are brand new, and we still have the old pair. If that four-wheeler and electric buggy are still parked at the store in Ringgold, I want to buy them. Get Steve to pick them up and remind him to drive a hard bargain. Then tell him to come back here and unload them, go to Tonya’s house, and get what she needs,” Bruce told them, sitting at the head of the table.

  “Well, what do you think?” he asked.

  “How much are we talking about spending today?” Nancy asked.

  “Not counting on the ATV and buggy, I’m guessing about eight to ten thousand dollars, but this is only a guess,” Bruce told Nancy.

  “That is doable with ease,” she replied. “Let’s spend out of our own account, and the LLC can reimburse us,” she added.

  “I will give Steve a check to buy the ATVs and the extra bank card for everything else,” Debbie said to Bruce.

  “You give everyone else something to do. What about me?” asked Mike.

  “I want you go over to the Campbell farm and see if they still want to sell the five hundred-gallon diesel trailer and buy it. Then run into Bossier and fill it up and bring it back here,” Bruce said then turned to look at everyone. “I want to go to level two here.”

  The family had made threat levels many years ago. Level one was what they lived in all the time: the front gate had to be shut. Level two was everyone had a pistol and rifle on them when they left the house, and someone was in mission control around the clock watching the monitors, plus level one. Level three was everyone stayed armed all the time, BDUs worn at all times with tactical vest when outside, and the fort was manned around the clock, plus levels one and two. Level four was half the house was awake at all times, full combat dress at all times, plus all the other levels. They had only practiced the levels like it was a game; now Bruce was asking the family to do it for real.

  “If you think it is necessary, then we will do it, Bruce. You don’t have to ask us, so please stop that. I just want to ask you one question,” Nancy said.

  “You can ask me anything, Nancy. What do you want to know?” Bruce said.

  “What does your gut feeling tell you about this?” she asked with hope on her face.

  Bruce thought about blowing the question off and making a joke, but he couldn’t. This was family, and you never lied to family. He stood up at the end of the table and looked at Nancy. “I feel it is going to get real bad real fast. We don’t have much time, but we do have some. I was really hoping that we would do all this prepping and nothing more than a storm or two would come our way. I feel something bad is coming. What it is I don’t know,” Bruce said, sitting back down.

  “That’s why we listen to you, Bruce. You will tell us the truth no matter what. Even if nothing happens this time, we are still going to listen to you because you put the family first,” Mike said to him. “Now what else before we wake the kids?” Mike added.

  “Mike, I want Jake to go with you. When you get back, send him to mission control to get it up and running. Then I want you to pull out the beast, and if someone calls, you go to them in the beast. I don’t think we will need it, but better safe than sorry. Debbie will take my truck with a trailer, and David will ride with her. Nancy will take her SUV with trailer, and Matt will go with her. Now you two will follow each other, and everyone have your CBs on channel thirty. I will take both girls with me in Debbie’s SUV and a trailer. I will tell everyone at the gun show I am getting ready to open an online business along with doing police demos,” Bruce told them.

  Debbie gave him a questioning look, “Why are you taking the girls?” she asked.

  “Because they can bat their eyes at any boy there and get him to carry stuff to the truck,” Bruce replied.

  “You are going to exploit our daughters to get other people to help you lift heavy objects?” Debbie asked, not believing her ears.

  “Yes,” he replied in a nonchalant tone.

  “Okay,” Debbie said. “Can we say a prayer before we go and wake up the kids? I do not want to admit it, but I’m nervous.”

  “Nervous, I’m scared,” Mike said. “If I could put a lump of coal up my butt right now, I could make a diamond.” He got up and walked to the end of the table with Bruce and the wives.

  They bowed their heads, and Nancy said the prayer. She asked the Lord to watch over them and help guide them along the way and give them courage for the kids. They said amen, and they went to wake all the kids and move them down to the kitchen.

  Bruce sat and told them what was going on in the world and what preparations needed to be made today. Then he told everyone what was expected of them today. The only one who looked scared was Tonya. The kids had grown up with this for over seven years. This was just a live drill to them. Preparing the kids over the years had paid off. If it did go badly, they would miss stuff, but they had been practicing this forever. Each adult stood up to give his or her report in front of everyone after Bruce finished. After all the adults were finished, Bruce asked if anyone had anything to add.

  “Dad, there are some things I want to add to mission control that we don’t have here. Can Mike run me over to Radio Shack and Best Buy?” Jake asked.

  “Yes, it’s not far from where he will go to fill up with diesel if the Campbells will sell us the trailer,” Bruce replied.

  “I will need Matt to get some stuff at Sam’s, too,” Jake added hopefully.

  “Okay, but it has to be what we need,” Bruce said.

  “Oh, it is,” Jake said seriously.

  Bruce looked at Nancy. “Buy what they need.”

  Since neither of them jumped up and yelled, he knew it was legit. He was not going to ask what was needed. It dealt with computers, he knew, because they did not explain what they wanted. These two were the computer nerds of the family. Of th
e two, Jake was better but not by much.

  “Anybody else?” Bruce asked.

  He looked at Tonya, and she had tears in her eyes. “Tonya, do you want to ask a question? We have time,” Bruce said to her.

  “You are being serious, aren’t you, Mr. Collins?” she asked.

  “It’s Bruce, little one,” Bruce corrected her.

  She looked at him. “How about Dad?”

  “That’s okay, I will be honored, and yes, the family is being very serious. I know you have not practiced a lot with us, but you have been around here a lot. All of this is called prepping, not for the end of the world but just in case something bad happens. We hoped and prayed we would never have to use what we have learned and prepared for, but we must protect the family,” Bruce told her as tears rolled down her face.

  “What about my mom if something happens?” she asked, crying. Steve immediately pulled her over to him and hugged her. Bruce made a mental note that she did not mention daddy.

  Debbie got up and went over to Tonya and hugged her with Steve, “Don’t worry. If something bad happens, we will bring both your mom and daddy down here.”

  “Piss on my dad. I only want my mom to be safe,” she said. Bruce made another mental note, and he noted that Debbie did not say anything else about Warren.

  “Okay, I want everyone to hold hands and bow our heads. Nancy, will you lead us in prayer?” Bruce asked her.

  After the prayer, everyone stood up and moved with a quickened pace to go get ready and pick up supplies. The family was making the final preparations. No one would be panicking in Louisiana yet. The problems were up north. There were others who, like the family, saw the signs. Unrest in a region of America, large riots in Europe, and almost the whole continent of Africa in turmoil. The rest would see the signs in the next few days, but it would be too late then.

  Chapter 16

  It was 8 p.m., and the whole family was home. All of the vehicles were out front and loaded down with supplies. There was not much room left in any vehicle, and the trailers were loaded to the max. They had gotten everything they had gone after plus a lot more. In total, the family had spent over $46,000. Bruce was the last one to pull in, with the girls, thinking that if this did not go badly, they were going to have to work some serious overtime to replace the money. They had made a few unscheduled stops, but Bruce felt they really needed the stuff. Everybody had already put up anything that would spoil and left the rest in the vehicles and on the trailer. The family gathered in the kitchen at the table.

  Bruce had called Mike and almost made his heart stop thinking something was wrong. After Bruce assured him everything was all right, Bruce asked Mike to call everyone and tell them he was picking up pizza for the family. Bruce knew nobody would feel like cooking tonight. As they spread out the food, everyone took a seat for the debriefing of the day’s activities.

  “Have to say I feel like I have run a marathon carrying an elephant,” Bruce said out loud.

  “I could eat that elephant you carried in that marathon,” David said as he shoved a piece of pizza in his mouth.

  “Bruce, you should have called to let me know a Lowe’s truck was coming here. I get a call on the radio from Jake that there is a big-ass truck at the gate honking the horn. I know I scared the shit out of the driver when I walked up to the gate with my SCAR across my chest. He holds his hands up and said he had a delivery but he could deliver it someplace else. I asked him to see the invoice, and it had our address and your signature so I let him in and we unloaded it by the shop. I told the driver I was trying to kill some pigs and he said if I had to use a machine gun to kill the pigs out here, he was glad he lived in the city,” Mike informed Bruce.

  Bruce closed his eyes, beating himself up for that. “Mike, I am very sorry for that. I totally forgot to let you know I stopped at Lowe’s and had them bring the order out here.”

  “No harm, no foul, brother, so let it go, and let’s not do that again,” Mike said, pushing a piece of pizza down his throat.

  Anyone watching the family eat would think they had been starving. Bruce had stopped and picked up fourteen pizzas. The family very rarely ate fast food when they went out, much less at home. So the appeal of fast food was part of the ravaging hunger. Most of what they ate, they grew or had bought in bulk. Most people did not realize that a modern family could spend several hundred dollars a week eating out. A meal cooked in this house cost about ten dollars and could feed eight with some left over. This one meal cost $210, and Bruce was wondering if he should have bought more. Six pizzas were already gone, and no one was slowing down. Bruce decided to wait until everyone was finished until he would start the meeting. It only took another twenty minutes before the pride of lions backed off the pizzas. Everyone started to pull out paper, clearing spots off on the table, so they could make their reports on the day’s activities.

  Bruce stood up and called the meeting to order. “I know I called us to level two, but I want everyone here so we can put off mission control until we are finished,” he announced.

  “That’s okay, Dad, I have it fixed for now,” Jake said.

  Bruce looked at his son with a blank stare. “You can see the monitors from here?”

  “No, I ran the cameras that are on the perimeter through the computer that I had Matt pick up at Sam’s. I made a program after the computer had a baseline of the ten cameras’ field-of-view on the perimeter. After that, I programmed it to sound an alarm if it sensed a change of 30 percent in the pixel disturbance. That is about what a person walking in a camera field generates at about forty yards. I could not do it for the cameras inside the farm because the dogs, goats, horses, or cows would set it off. I will try to program it to recognize them tomorrow; that way someone does not just have to sit and stare at monitors. That is kind of barbaric if you think about it. I mean, you could sit and stare, but why,” Jake said, giving his verbal dissertation of his revamping of mission control.

  “How long did that take you?” Bruce asked; he had to know.

  “I already had designed the program. There was one on the Internet, but it was designed by a moron. I just took his source code and revamped it. That took some time. At least two days, but I did that a few months ago. But the computer in mission control did not have the RAM or computing power I needed for the program. After Matt and I set up the computer, I dumped the crap that was on it and uploaded my operating system. Then I put the video program on it and trained it to do what I wanted. It all took about two hours, I guess,” Jake said nonchalantly.

  Bruce turned to Debbie and asked, “Did you have an affair with Bill Gates?” Everyone laughed at his comment.

  “If I did, it could not have been that good because I don’t remember it,” Debbie said.

  “Okay, since Mr. Wizard and his partner in crime have turned the house into a cyber fortress, let’s get down to business,” Bruce said, calling the meeting to order.

  “Nancy, will you start?” Bruce asked.

  Nancy reported that she had picked up enough meat for another six months, but it had to be separated and vacuum-sealed. They had enough food for the catfish now to last a year. The birds now had an extra six months’ worth of food. They had picked up extra food for the rest of the animals, so she would have to prepare a more detailed report later because she really could not think now.

  Bruce asked Debbie to go next. Debbie reported that she had picked up enough seed for another year. They had bought all the canning supplies that they could find, along with vacuum bags. They had picked up another vacuum sealer to back up the two they had, but this one was made for industry, and it was big. She thought they had enough canning supplies to put up the whole garden, but she could not say now. They had also bought a dozen five-gallon water containers. She knew that they had a well, but you never know. Like Nancy, she said her brain was not working well, and she could not say what else she had bought.

  Bruce asked Steve for his report. Steve said he picked up four complete sets o
f tires for the trucks and SUVs; that was all they had. He picked up several tires for the trailers also. He got the four-wheeler and the electric buggy for three thousand dollars together because the guy was getting a divorce and needed the money. Both were almost brand new, and he could not find anything wrong with them. They had gone to Tonya’s, grabbed her stuff, and already put it in the bedroom.

  Mike reported that he got the fuel trailer from the Campbell’s for six hundred dollars, it held five hundred gallons, and he went and filled it up, costing fifteen hundred dollars. It was pulled into the back behind the catfish pond. He did not want to put it in the barn or on the west side of the property beside the other tanks.

  Bruce turned to Jake and said, “No one but you kids will understand what the hell you and Matt bought today, so you can surprise us later, okay?”

  Jake said that was fine with him; he was not ready to say what he and Matt had planned to build.

  Bruce reported that he would not be surprised if Homeland Security showed up after the amount of ammo he had bought today. They spent $7500 at the gun show on ammo, and the little trailer out there was crying with all that weight. He also bought three more night-vision devices. All of them were current military issue, and he did not ask the guy where he got them. Two of them were the monocular kind, and the other was a PVS-7. They also picked up one more thermal scope. Those five things alone were ten thousand dollars, but they were not on the civilian market. So they were getting put in the safe, and if the cops came someone had to get them and run out into the woods. He and the girls had stopped at several stores and bought a lot of the weird batteries that the scopes, red dots, and goggles took. Then they stopped and picked up reloading supplies. Then stopping at Lowe’s, and they bought a lot of lumber and two large storage sheds. With everything that was bought today, they did not have enough storage area for it. The family never left anything out exposed to the sun and the elements. That is why the stuff they had lasted.