“We don’t mess with the property of our own kind,” the man I was originally talking with replied. “We figured someone would return eventually.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s good to know there are still some honorable people left.”
The man just nodded.
“How are you going to get up the mountain?” the man asked.
“I guess we will walk,” I replied.
“Does your truck still run?” he asked.
“It still runs but I am out of gas,” I replied. “Any idea where I might find some gas?”
“I have some extra gas,” he replied. “Do you have anything to trade?”
“All I’ve got is three apples and a box of pipe wrenches,” I replied. “Would you be interested in any wrenches?”
“I’ll tell you what,” he grinned. “I’ll trade you the gas for one apple and two of those wrenches.”
“OK, that works for me,” I said and walked over and offered him my hand.
“If you can return my gas in one week’s time, I’ll give you your wrenches back,” he said as he shook my hand.
“That’s mighty generous of you,” I replied.
I walked over to our truck and reached in the back and took one of our last three apples, turned and tossed it to man.
I had Logan hand me two of the pipe wrenches from behind the seat and I took them over and handed them to the bearded man.
“I’m Jimmy’s old man by the way, I knew you didn’t recognize me after all these years and of course, the beard,” he smiled.
“Mr. Snyder, you don’t know how happy I am to see you again,” I replied.
“I bet you are,” he laughed as he handed me a one-gallon gas can from the back of his truck. “If I were you, I’d be careful you didn’t get any of that shit that’s all over your truck on you.”
“I don’t plan on it,” I replied.
He reached down into the truck bed and pulled out a bucket and handed it to me.
“You should stop at the creek a few miles up the mountain and throw some water on your truck and clean it up a little,” he added. “We don’t need the infection spreading to the mountain.”
“I will, thank you,” I said. “Will it be safe around the creek?”
“We haven’t seen any of the walkers make it up past this point,” he replied. “It seems the steep road up over this mountain is too much for them to handle.”
“That’s good to know,” I said.
I walked over to the truck and took one of the blankets out of the back and used it to remove the gas cap so I could empty the gas can into the truck’s tank.
“Would you care for some company tonight?” Jimmy asked. “I was thinking I could introduce you to my family and we could catch up on old times.”
“That sounds great,” I replied.
“Make sure your truck starts before we leave,” Jimmy said.
I used the blanket to wipe off the windows and the doors of the truck, then tossed the blanket in the weeds.
I slid into the truck and turned the key.
The battery, weak from me trying to start the truck earlier, turned the engine slowly a few times before the gas reached the carburetor, but it finally started.
The men waved, their engines roared to life and the three pickup trucks pulled out and sped down the road.
Chapter 9
I put the truck into gear and we headed for the creek to wash off the truck.
I was bombarded with questions the entire way to the creek and as we washed off the truck.
I let Katie and Logan take turns filling the bucket and throwing the water on the truck as I used the blankets to wash the blood and decayed flesh off the truck.
Thankfully I was able to wash off the truck before the blood and flesh had a chance to dry to the paint.
I made Katie and Logan stand back from the truck and I was very careful not to get any of that crap on me or my clothes, luckily the truck wasn’t as bad as I had expected.
As we drove up the steep mountain road, I explained that Jimmy Snyder had been a casual friend of mine when I had lived here in the mountains as a kid.
People in the mountains lived miles apart, not across the street like they did at our home in Rapid City. Jimmy had lived five miles away from my dad’s house, but he was still considered to be my next-door neighbor.
We had started to become good friends as we got older, but we hadn’t seen each other since we both left to go to college, got jobs and started families and new lives.
I told them I had met Jimmy’s dad a few times, but that I didn’t know any of the other men in the trucks. I said that people grow up and move on, the others were probably people that had moved here sometime over the last twenty years.
“I can’t believe I’m going to be a hillbilly,” Katie laughed.
“Don’t use that word in front of these people,” I replied. “They would take that as an insult. They call themselves mountain people.”
“They remind me more of cavemen,” Katie grinned.
We arrived at my dad’s place twenty minutes later, everything seemed to be as I had left it the last time we had been here.
The first thing we did was find the key to the bomb shelter and to be sure all the canned and dried food was still there.
The second thing we did was use the hand pump on the old well, get some water and scrub the many weeks long buildup of dirt and grime off our faces.
Then we ate.
After we ate and relaxed from this morning’s exhausting ordeal, we walked through the house to pick out where we would be sleeping.
Emma and I claimed the master bedroom, Katie claimed my old room and Logan called dibs on the guestroom.
The bomb shelter was ready for us to move into if needed, but for now we looked forward to sleeping in a bed again.
All of this felt strange, but in a good way. It was good to be somewhere that was safe, but also held memories of a happier time.
It was nice to have hope again.
Jimmy and his family stopped over later in the day. He and his wife brought over a cake and a large pot of spaghetti.
We sat, ate and talked.
It turned out that there were ten families living on the mountain now. Mostly new people that had moved in after we had left to pursue our careers and to start families.
Jimmy said he was just starting to get to know the newer people, they all seemed like good decent people. He smiled when he said that the new people were a little hardcore as far as preppers went, but we both considered that a good thing in today’s world.
We told each other what we had been through and what we knew about what had happened.
All of our stories ended with the government being responsible in one way or another, as I knew it would.
Everyone on the mountain had their bomb shelters, affectionately referred to as their “Doomsday Shelters,” stocked with a year’s supply of food and weapons. The people living here now were proud of their places and that they had been so well prepared to survive.
Doomsday as they referred to what had happened, was different than they had expected it to be, but they all prided themselves in being able to survive the end of the world.
In fact, many of them seemed to actually be enjoying the current state of affairs, but I’m sure that excitement will eventually wear off.
Jimmy informed me that everything on the mountain was peaceful. People helped each-other and no one had to worry about being robbed, everyone had each other’s back.
In fact, the men met once a week to discuss how things were going on the mountain and to make sure everyone had what they needed.
They shared what they had with each other.
The men also made a weekly trip down off the mountain to see if anything was starting to change and to keep an eye on the walkers. Today was one such trip, lucky for us, and they just happened to find us on their way down off the mountain.
They also took turns keeping an eye on the
road coming up into the mountain. The walkers hadn’t thus far showed any interest or ability to come up into the mountain, but it only made sense to keep an eye on them. After making all the preparations to survive the end of the world, they had no intention of letting their guard down now.
Jimmy also told me that they have had some spotty communication with people across the way on top of the next mountain, nothing that they could understand, but enough to know that there was a good probability that there were some other people that had also survived.
But the men had decided that it was too risky to go out exploring to see if they could find anyone else alive, as long as the walkers continued to roam the lowland.
Their priority for now was to defend the mountain and to make life as comfortable as possible until the walkers no longer posed a threat.
Like myself, they all figured that the walkers would have to die sometime, but again like myself, it was only a guess based upon the idea that nothing lasted forever.
But since just about everything that had happened over the last few months could be considered impossible, we all decided it would also be impossible to predict when or if things would ever return to normal again in our lifetimes. The group just decided to live one day at a time until the world started to make sense again.
As time went on, we began to make plans to plant the fields in the spring. Even though the shelters were stocked with food and supplies, those supplies would only last for a year. The dead looked like they would be around for much longer than that, so our little community planned to be self-sufficient to survive on our own for however long it would take. Until that time would come when the world would begin to recover, we intended to live our lives the best we could.
Jimmy and his wife had two sons, twins that were Logan’s age.
Logan and Jimmy’s sons quickly made plans to spend their days hunting to supply our families with fresh meat.
But in our new life, not all of my old problems and worries died with our old way of life.
That first night when Jimmy and his family came over, I quickly saw a problem that I should have known would survive the end of the world.
Katie and one of Jimmy’s sons couldn’t take their eyes off each other, and of course, I didn’t take my eyes off them.
Katie and I have had many long talks each evening since we arrived at my dad’s place, our new home.
I still can’t believe the things she feels she has to tell me, but I guess I should consider myself lucky that she feels comfortable enough to tell me such things. However, I am beginning to get the feeling that I am being set up. I firmly believe she is trying make me feel shell shocked, so I will feel relieved when I find out what she is really up to.
I’ve held my ground and am still considered to be the sexist over protective father.
I still see her as that little five-year old girl that I would bounce on my knee and tell her stories. She sees herself as a worldly thirty-year old that should be ruling the world, except when she needs my help.
So, this is the end of my story, we managed to survive and now live a life much different than we did in our old life.
It is a quiet and peaceful life, but it is fulfilling in many ways that we would have never expected.
We only hope it will last, but as the days go by, we grow more confident that it will.
But I also know that each day should be considered a gift to be enjoyed and appreciated.
Everything we have could all be taken away in the blink of an eye, believe me, I know because it happened once, and I knew how easily it could happen again.
So how did the whole mess start?
Everyone that I talked to has their own version of how it started and who was responsible.
Some people felt the government screwed up when they tried to give out flu shots, others thought the flu vaccine project was just a cover for the government to kill off half the countries population intentionally as part of some grand master plan of the “New World Order”.
Still others thought it had something to do with the Chinese or the Russians, and the plan succeeded because of our government’s negligence.
I think you get the idea that everyone around here felt the government was responsible in one way or another.
Most of the people on the mountain leaned towards what had happened as being an intentional act by the government.
I still hold on to my long-held belief that the government wasn’t intentionally trying to kill us all, but they just usually made stupid decisions that resulted in the outcome being the complete opposite of what they had intended. I felt that they weren’t intentionally trying to kill everyone, it just worked out that way.
But, what do I know?
So, after all this time, what do I know about how or who started everything?
I honestly don’t know any more now than I did the day all the power went out.
All I know for sure is that the dead somehow appeared one day and had gone on to destroy everything and everyone that they came into contact with.
I also knew that my family and I were alive because of a combination of having been prepared for a coming financial crisis, and that we had a few lucky breaks, maybe more than a few lucky breaks would be a better description.
Our entire world now consists of a house, a bomb shelter, and ten neighbors scattered throughout the mountains around us.
What still remains outside of our little world? It’s hard to say but based on what we had seen and experienced over the last few months, probably not much.
For now, we are happy to just be alive and not be in a drain pipe or surrounded by the dead.
How long would our new life last?
Your guess is as good as mine.
About the Author
If you have read my book to this point, then you already know quite a bit about me, because most of the information about my family and I in the book is true, except for the dead of course.
Information about our ages, employment and education is all mostly accurate. However, as you might have already discovered, my area of expertise is in the field of Economics, Mathematics, Finance and Statistics, not in English, Punctuation, Grammar and Composition, so I hope you will cut me a little slack this first time around.
I’ve done the best I can under the circumstances, with Katie, my primary source of encouragement to write this book, hanging over my shoulder the entire time I’ve be writing and trying to proof read the book.
It has been distracting and she isn’t much better at punctuation than I am.
Before I started writing the book, Katie insisted that her character should have at least two hot love interests, and of course, a nude scene in the book. She said all the zombie books she has read that were any good, had these two important elements in them.
So, in order to get her out of my hair, I agreed to incorporate her recommendations into the story.
However, she hasn’t stopped complaining ever since I let her read the final version of the book.
She insists that she isn’t a chatterbox and as far as her promised nude scene, standing in a dark tent, covered in shit was not what she had in mind.
Then there were her hot love interests. I did let her talk to two guys in the book, but of course that didn’t meet her expectations either.
As I was before I started the book, I guess I’m still the sexist over protective father, and I can live with that.
In fact, I feel quite satisfied with myself each time Katie throws that accusation my way. It tells me that I must be doing something right.
Logan also read the book and gave me his extensive evaluation and detailed review of the book.
He said, “Cool.”
We all decided that Emma didn’t need to read the book, zombies give her nightmares.
Thanks for reading our story,
[email protected]
pper's Tale
Just Trying To Stay Alive: A Prepper's Tale Page 36