Rockfall

by William Allen

  With the slightly overloaded truck almost whining under the weight, I retrieved my keys from my brother and drove back over to the gas station and topped off the tank. Then I turned the truck for home and gave Mike a quick brief on my exchange with Bud Collier.

  “You think he might be a problem?”

  I knew what he meant. For preppers, no one size fits all. We all have our own means, methods, and pet theories about the purpose of prepping. Some are strictly bullets, beans, and bandages, in that order, while others have a more directed approach. They have a specific danger that makes them stay up late at night, and preparing is as good a coping mechanism as anything else. Hey, if you are convinced the Russians are going to pop an EMP bomb off over Kansas, then you’re more likely to set up a whole warehouse-sized faraday cage than someone who is obsessed with biological weapon scenarios. Those guys are known to have some of the most effective, and expensive, air filtration systems around in their bugout locations, but you’ve got to worry about the incubation period and a whole host of other issues if that’s your obsession.

  Then there’s another subset of the culture that will occasionally draw attention to themselves. As reference, I consider myself a homesteader, and I belong to a couple of online discussion groups that spend quite a bit of time chatting about the back issues of Mother Earth News, while at the same time, I lurk on several sites designated as specifically designed for preppers or survivalists.

  A careless comment on a forum noted here, a poorly timed joke in a chatroom picked up by others are just some instances. I know of several names floating around for those with this mindset, but in my mind, I think of them as nothing more than raiders. They are the people who self-identify as preppers, but other than stockpiling guns and ammo, they never seem to progress beyond that point. They never participate in any food preservation discussions or ask questions about alternate energy solutions.

  That, in itself, is not so alarming. I like firearms. My brother Mike really likes them. No, what is disturbing are their assertions that in the event of a catastrophe of sufficient scope, they plan to simply take what they want or need. That is alarming, especially since they joke about showing up at someone’s house to help themselves to the supplies laid in by other preppers. Some joke about the idea, but I know that joking hides a kernel of truth. These kinds of raiders are amongst the greatest threats to other preppers, in my opinion, because they studied up on their potential prey way more than your average home invasion crew or a random group of looters.

  “I can’t say for sure,” I admitted. “He’s not someone I had pegged, but then, he might just pay more attention than most. If he’s a prepper, then he should be setting back some of that wheat and oats for himself.”

  “Time will tell,” Mike concluded, and that was that. Bud Collier would be added to our list of folks to keep an eye on in the coming months. He might be a prepper, or he might be a threat. Maybe both.

  As I drove home, I thought about the reactions of the people we’d seen so far. From Mr. Ludlow’s despondent reaction, entirely understandable, to Bud’s sudden, out-of-character curiosity. We didn’t need to see the people in the grocery store to know some were reacting to the news with predictable concern, but I was thinking of how things might play out down the road as the situation worsened.

  For my own part, I liked to think of myself as being fairly level-headed. I knew some people in our community clung to their prejudices. We’d come far, but the old divisions remained. Black, White, or Latino still meant a lot in this part of the world. The whole country, really. Throw in religion and sexual orientation, and our country had a melting pot with a lot of chunks still floating on the surface, waiting to be assimilated.

  My biggest concern remained the likelihood that our differences would become more pronounced as the stressors increased. Add in the rancorous political differences and the situation grew more divisive. Even before this current debacle, our national obsession with the ‘red state’ versus ‘blue state’ mess, as exploited by the two parties, allowed their ideologies of conservative against liberal to devolve into mudslinging contests.

  I had my own opinions about the state of the nation. Again, I’m not wearing a tinfoil hat, but in my opinion, much of the enmity boiled down to artificial distinctions designed to distract the public from certain hard realities. Mike once said that even before Emperor Nero opened his instrument case, the city of Rome was already on fire. Before that meteorite hit, the United States was already languishing through an anemic economic recovery, propped up by wild deficit government spending and a rapid shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

  Sure, unemployment numbers stayed down, but when someone dared to look deeper, the fact was that the jobless fell off the unemployment rolls when their benefits ran out. Couple that with the growth of low-paying, perma-temp jobs with no benefits and little wonder the homeless numbers remained out of control. More and more hard-working people found themselves dropping lower and lower down the poverty scale as catastrophic health problems or a sudden plant closures found whole families now living out of their cars.

  Now, I wondered what would come next. Some conservative pundits labeled this president as a hippie-loving, weed-smoking, communist sympathizer. He was actually a compromise candidate for the Democratic Party, but that didn’t stop the name-calling or mudslinging. Beyond the surface sops to his constituency, I could see little difference from his predecessor over these first months of his administration. His picks for Commerce and the Treasury, for instance, reflected the wishes of his big money backers, and meant the federal government, to my mind, remained a whole-owned subsidiary of whichever multinational-corporation contributed the most money to his election campaign.

  Mike was a hardcore Republican, a zealous convert to the cause, and he scoffed at what he called my cynical position that labels didn’t matter. Money was the only consideration in Washington, and that money made sure the chosen surrogates toed the party line for the betterment of the bottom line.

  “What’s got you thinking so hard, brother?”

  Mike’s words jolted me from my thoughts as I wound my way along the long driveway, but I stayed silent as I pulled around to the big barn. Backing the truck up while using the outsized side mirrors since the bed was obstructed with so many bags and packages, I managed to line up with the loading dock without mishap. Only then did I break my silence, speaking up as we walked around to regard the large job waiting for us.

  “Just wondering which way the president is going to jump,” I replied evenly. “People are always worried about Big Brother taking over, and jack-booted thugs herding the population off the FEMA camps. But really, what is the man going to do next? What can he do? Who will be pulling his strings now?”

  “Wow, those are some big questions,” Mike agreed. “What do you think he’s planning? And what could we do even if you guessed right?”

  I shook my head as I unfastened one of the multiple elastic tiedowns.

  “The answer is food,” I replied cryptically. After a pause, I fell into lecture mode as I continued. “The next question is, where is he going to get it? Some of our most productive farmland will soon, or already has, taken a saltwater bath. Our transportation infrastructure just suffered a body blow. And the man has to know that Mother Nature is shortly going to be doing her best to wipe out what farms and crops are still intact.”

  Mike paled in the heat as a shiver ran down his body.

  “Well, when you put it like that, I guess we’re pretty well screwed.”

  “The only way the president can keep things in this country limping along is if he figures out a way to feed the population,” I hammered out. “FEMA might have those stockpiles, but what can the government do long-term? I think we’ll see a massive pivot on the national focus to immediately increase food production, but…” I paused, letting Mike fill in the rest of the sentence.

  “We’re already into early summer and planting time is long past. And if the
weather does what you think, we’re going to be seeing frost on the ground before too long.”

  I grunted as I picked up the first bag, realizing the one thing I’d forgotten to pick up at the feed store was one of those big dollies like Billy used. The little dolly I had for use around the garden was grossly undersized for more than two of the bags, and I worried the wheels would fall off, so we did the unloading the hard and sweaty way.

  Once we had the first stack shifted, I stopped to stretch my back and continue our discussion like no time had elapsed.

  “People are going to go hungry no matter what Uncle Same does,” I stated flatly. “We need to make sure we don’t end up starving with them.”

  “You mean conceal our true production? How you planning on doing that? Anyone who pulls up to this barn can see the greenhouse through the gap between the buildings.”

  With a sigh, I went back to work, lifting a fifty-pound bag of rabbit pellets to my shoulder and starting a new stack over to the side.

  “And what’s with the rabbit pellets anyway? We don’t even have rabbits,” Mike whined as he picked up an identical bag.

  “No, but Wade does,” I explained. “I figured we could swap him some later. Being good neighbors and all. And I plan to get some for ourselves, eventually. You can help out with that by setting your live traps, you know.”

  “Wrong time of year for wild rabbits,” Mike observed, “but I get your point. You’re planning to diversify our meat production as much as possible.”

  “You got it. We’ll get tired of beef and chicken at some point. I haven’t had goat since I left Houston, but it isn’t bad.”

  “Seems wrong to worry about getting different tastes satisfied when we know people will be starving, and you never said how you intended to hide that greenhouse, either,” Mike complained.

  I stopped again, wiping my face with a handkerchief made from an old t-shirt. For a man just past forty, I was normally in pretty good shape from all my physical labor on the farm. But with the temperature hovering at ninety degrees Fahrenheit, the hundred-percent humidity, and the hour not even ten a.m. yet, I felt like I was sweating buckets while working muscles that didn’t usually get this kind of strain. Lift with your legs, I reminded myself before answering Mike’s question.

  “Hiding that greenhouse from casual observation will be easy once we move the shipping container over in between the big barn and the calf barn,” I explained. “Of course, when the FEMA-designated inspector comes to check our property for appropriation or confiscation, that will make things a little more dicey.”

  “That’s why we have eighty acres and a backhoe,” Mike quipped, using the punchline to an old farmer’s joke.

  “Yeah, maybe at some point,” I agreed halfheartedly. I’d never taken a human life, and I didn’t have Mike’s cavalier attitude about it. “We’ll need to come up with alternatives, but one idea I was thinking about was taking the second greenhouse setup and building back in the woods.”

  “Might work, unless they bring in drones or we screw up and wear down a path they can follow into the trees.”

  Of the eighty acres, there remained about ten acres of heavy timber still untouched, backing up to the paper company land. Not old growth, but some of the oaks back there were approaching a foot in diameter. I thought about the inevitable foot traffic and decided a pergola or gazebo would look nice in the back yard. When I made this suggestion, Mike just started laughing at me.

  “Anything else, your highness?”

  “Yes, master builder, while you’re at it, please knock together some pens for a few sheep as well,” I replied in a fake regal tone. Then dropping back into my regular voice, I added, “Might as well aim for diversity. For some things, like the goats and chickens, we could trade with the neighbors, like Wade, to keep the bloodlines fresh.”

  “You already adding Wade into our plans, then?”

  “We have to, Mike. Like we talked about before, we are going to need their numbers, and their goodwill, too. The Husband family has been in Albany County for over a hundred years. You know some of the locals still see me as an outsider.”

  “Shoot, Bryan, we grew up less than twenty miles from here. You and I played football against some of these guys in high school.”

  “Yeah, against them is the point,” I said with emphasis. “Look, we need to talk to Wade this evening. Let’s go ahead and bring over some seeds for them as a ‘Welcome to the Apocalypse’ gift. I’m thinking a selection of the heirloom cold-resistant crops.”

  “Mmmm. Love me some turnips, but you can keep the kale.”

  “Might be we can get the current garden crop to harvest, but we can go ahead and plant our own winter sets now, just in case. And get the greenhouse going, if we want any fresh veggies for the foreseeable future.”

  Mike turned sharply at the last sentence, giving me a hard look.

  “You really think it’s going to get cold that quick?”

  I shrugged, feeling the sweat dripping into my eyes. Damn, I should have worn my hat.

  “You’re the scientist, bro, not me. I’m just a washed-up ambulance chaser turned will scribbler. But look around,” I gestured. “This place is Plan B, so we need to work on advancing Plan C, D, and E. We don’t know what is going to happen, but we’ve both looked at the likely scenarios. All that water vapor and debris in the air might temporarily cause the temperature to rise, but you know better than me what happens next.”

  “Increased precipitation in some places, drought conditions in other locations,” Mike recited. “Hurricanes spawning out of season, accompanied by an uptick in tornados. And longer, colder winters.”

  I didn’t need to add anything, and we went back to work. The mindless labor seemed to calm my mind after the previous outburst, and sooner than I expected, we had the truck unloaded.

  “You ready to make that run to Tractor Supply?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah, but we’d better take your truck,” I suggested.

  “Why is that?”

  “You got that camper shell on back, and it looks like we got rain coming.”

  The dark clouds had flowed in while we were under the overhang, shielding us from the view until the last minute. We got plenty of rain in this part of Texas, but these clouds somehow gave off an almost malevolent impression as the first squall line scudded by like a black wisp.

  I felt the first drop impact my neck and roll down my back. The moisture quickly blended into the sweat, but I imagined I could feel the tiny fleck of liquid rolling down my spine. The first rain of the new world, I thought, and shivered despite the heat. Soon the sprinkles became a deluge, and I forced myself to step out into the downpour. For a split second, I imagined instead of simple water, I was being bathed in the blood of the victims of the meteorite, and the shivers returned in earnest.

  CHAPTER NINE

  By the time we checked in with Marta, peeked in on the kids, grabbed a drink of water and hit the road once again, the rain had slacked off into a steady, much more navigable downpour. The closest Tractor Supply sat just off the highway east of the Jasper city limits, and we made the drive in a half hour. Traffic was heavy, even for a Saturday morning, but drivers acted like grownups and didn’t tailgate or honk their horns for no reason. Bless their hearts, I thought. It was the quintessential Southern expression, that one. Bless their hearts. I’d heard it used in many ways growing up, and the meaning varied greatly depending on context.

  The parking lot wasn’t overflowing with other vehicles, but I could see that might start soon.

  “We get in and out quick, like a duck mating,” Mike warned, and I couldn’t help but agree. Nothing on the list was important enough to risk one’s life. Well, except maybe the animal antibiotics, but that could save a life later, so I was willing to run the risk.

  We dashed inside and I grabbed one of the few remaining carts while Mike snatched up the freebie sales paper from a bundle by the door. I gave Mike a fake glare and he just shrugged. Mike did that
every time, always looking for a deal in the For Sale ads. I noticed he left the paper folded up in the crook of his arm as we hustled to tick off the items remaining on our list.

  Despite some overlap on the animal feed side, Tractor Supply stocked a much wider variety of products than Wilson’s store. I noticed the other shoppers were focused on the food items, like beef jerky and the potted meat for camping, while Mike and I had very different priorities. This made sense, as some people were able to pick up food here while avoiding the crowds, and likely empty shelves, down the road at the WalMart store.

  The closest I came to the packed food aisles was when I ventured into the next row over to pick up some of the barbeque sauce and pickling spices Marta had added to the list, and I violated my own rule and took everything they had on the shelf. I just didn’t want to go back for more. Those schools of sharks roaming the nearby aisles made my skin scrawl. The suppressed anger and fear seemed to radiate off them in waves.

  We started to skip the hunting and fishing section altogether, but Mike saw they had some of the 550 count boxes of .22 Long Rifle, and I stopped briefly as he added his finds to the cart. Sure, between the three siblings, we had enough ammunition to fight a war or two, but more was always better and getting these boxes now certainly wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

  I also hesitated at the dog food aisle. My old black Labrador was getting on up in years, around twelve or thirteen years old, and I had enough to last him for another two years. On the other hand, the day might come when dog food was all some people had to eat. Not worth storing more, I decided, then hit the cattle care section.

  I picked up two cases of milk replacer for the calves and stored them under the cart, then I got one of the sales associates to assist me as I loaded up on the antibiotics listed out by Marta. She’d done her research and discovered that many of the same antibiotics used on people had their equivalents for use in cattle and horses, but available without a prescription and minus the ten-thousand-percent markup. Smart woman, that sister-in-law of mine.