Curtain Fall: Second Edition, Disaster, Preparedness, Survival, Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 1) (28 page)

John was about to say,
“I want you to know . . . that I’d lay my life down for you,”
but Adam turned to him and said, “I was thinking we’ll need lots of rope. Something strong but cheap, like hemp?”

John nodded and let the moment pass. Like Adam, he was also ready to move on. “How many feet do you think we’ll need?” asked John.

“The pool’s about forty by twenty-five feet, so I think we’ll need at least three-hundred feet . . . or more.”

“That’s a lot of rope,” replied John. “Hopefully we can get it all at one place.” Then he glanced sideways at Adam and asked, “We’re not making a rope bridge, so do you think three-eighths will work?”

Adam nodded and said, “Yeah . . . that should work. And we’ll need poles, at least eight twelve footers, and some heavy stakes . . . maybe twenty. But I don’t know how many tarps we’ll need.”

John was impressed with Adam’s planning. He always appreciated the Scouting program, especially when it exposed young men to problem solving, like with their plan to cover the pool. When Adam talked about the project, John realized his son sounded older, much more mature than his age. He said, “Sounds like you covered everything . . . and then some. I’m impressed.”

“I was thinking we might also need a couple of longer poles, say around twenty foot long. But I thought we could use plastic pipe for those . . . you know, the PVC,” said Adam, without reacting to John’s praise.

“For the cover?” asked John, curious about Adam’s idea.

“Well, yeah. I mean, all we need is to stick them up. If we’re not going to walk on it, PVC pipe might be strong enough.”

“I like it. What made you think of PVC?” asked John.

“Those marshmallow guns we made last year,” answered Adam. “They were really strong.”

John really liked that idea, and again complemented Adam on his good thinking. Soon, their conversation turned to other projects they wanted to accomplish before the disaster occurred. They were deep into a discussion about trip-wires and tangle-foot when John pulled the Suburban into the Tractor Supply Company, or “TSC” parking lot.

John wanted to shop the TSC first because it tended to carry fencing materials, and stores that carried fencing materials carried the rope,
posts, stakes, and wire he was looking for. John grabbed a cart, and began to gather supplies as Adam looked at his list.

John was pleased to find a six-hundred foot long coil of hemp rope, and he added two coils to the cart. Adam simply nodded and checked off the rope on his list. Their unspoken communication was that they could do a lot with six-hundred feet of rope, but they could do even more with twelve-hundred feet.

John also selected a four-thousand foot coil of high tensile wire, an eighty rod spool of barbed wire, a commercial-grade web strap puller, twenty wire-tension springs, six two-foot auger stakes, and an eight pound bucket of fencing staples. With John’s packing skills pushed to the limit, he somehow managed to fit all the supplies into a single shopping cart.

“What are we gonna do with all the fencing stuff, dad?” asked Adam in a cautious whisper. He glanced around the store to see if anyone was watching them, as if they were loading the supplies illegally.

“Let’s talk about it later, OK?”

Adam nodded and turned his attention back to the pool cover shopping list. John appreciated Adam’s sensitivity on the subject, but it wasn’t something he wanted to explain in the store. Besides, John knew a little surprise would occupy Adam’s interest, and maybe even peak his enthusiasm to help work on the fence later.

The only wire fence they had was along the back property, but John was interested in stringing up a three-strand, barbed-wire fence along both sides of his property. Even if the fence would do little in terms of actual security, it might deter the casually interested person from walking into their yard. At least it would be better security than the split-rail fence that currently served as their side perimeter barrier.

For John, climbing over a wire fence was a much stronger sign of intent. A wire fence could also be rigged with noise makers, which was another form of early warning that John was interested in emplacing. Though John didn’t explain any of that to Adam, he bought the fencing supplies with that project in mind.

John mentally calculated how many fence pickets, or engineer stakes, as the Army called them, he would need to run the distance from the back fence to the side of the house. He already had thirty-two of the green, steel engineer stakes at home, but he figured he’d need at least that many more to cover the other side of his property.

With Adam pushing the cart, John led him outside and onto the storage patio behind the store. He walked straight to the pile of engineer stakes, and with Adam’s help he separated thirty from the pallet. With the one cart completely full, John sent Adam to fetch another one for the stakes. While he was away, John took the opportunity to quickly stroll around the patio to look for other useful building materials.

He spotted the eight-foot, pressure treated pine posts, but they were heavier and more work than he was willing to accept. Even as fence posts, and with the help of a posthole digger, the wooden posts would take a lot of time and energy to set up. As far as the pool cover went, the pressure treated posts would work above, but not in the water, which was a plan John was currently formulating in his head.

While John rested his foot on the posts, he decided to go with Adam’s idea about using PVC pipe. But he knew Adam would be surprised with how he planned to use them for a pool cover undercarriage. Instead of building a bridge-like spine over the top of the pool, John decided to construct an in-pool spine out of the lighter and more flexible PVC pipe. He would devise a frame that would rest on the bottom of the pool, secure it upright with rope and stakes, and then cover the spine with tarps.

“What’cha thinking about, dad?” asked Adam, as he wheeled the empty cart up next to John and started loading the stakes.

John lifted his sunglasses and said, “We’re going to need some PVC pipe. I’ve decided to go with your idea and make the pool cover spine completely out of PVC.”

“Really? That’ll be cool. Do you think it will be strong enough?”

“I do,” replied John.

“Then Lowe’s next?” asked Adam.

John nodded and smiled, “Yep. You know me too well. We should be able to find what we need there, but let’s not talk about our plans until we’re in the car, or at home. OK?”

“Sure, dad.”

After paying the bill, John and Adam loaded the Suburban and headed for Lowe’s. It was a short drive, and in a few minutes they were pulling into yet another hardware store parking lot, only this one was much larger and busier than the first.

They made their way to the plumbing section and immediately found what they were looking for, twenty-foot sections of five-inch PVC pipe. John sent Adam off to get a lumber cart while he poked through and selected a variety of matching elbows, four-way couplers, T-couplers, end-caps, and joiners, or straight couplers. He also included a gallon of PVC primer and cement.

John had no hard and fast plan for how to construct the spine, but that’s what he liked most about PVC, that he could do what he wanted with it until he cut it, or glued it. While he eyed the collection of connectors on the floor, Adam joined John with the lumber cart. John figured he had enough parts to assemble a variety of different pool cover spines, but he didn’t want to come back to the store, so he added one more each of the couplers to his collection.

Together, John and Adam quickly loaded eight, twenty-foot sections of five-inch PVC pipe onto the lumber cart. It made for a big looking load, but it was easier to handle than wood of the same length and diameter. He had Adam move the now loaded lumber cart to the contractor’s check out, and they resumed their search for the remaining supplies.

John looked up at the signs hanging between the aisles and saw what he was looking for. He said, “There . . . aisle sixteen. Tarps are down there. Go see what you can find while I go get another cart.”

Without a word, Adam nodded and walked off down the aisle. John found an empty cart and caught up with Adam at the beginning of the aisle. He held a packaged tarp in his hands and said, “Dad, you
have got to see this. It’s forty by sixty. It’s the biggest tarp on the shelf, but it’s expensive.”

John whistled when he saw that the large tarp was indeed very expensive. At a hundred and seventy dollars a pop, he would end up spending close to seven-hundred dollars on tarps alone. With a heavy sigh he said, “I knew they wouldn’t be cheap, but we need ‘em. Let’s get four . . . two for the pool, one for the firewood, and an extra one.”

“There’s only three,” said Adam, as he lifted them out of a box on the floor.

“Fine, then we’ll make due with three,” replied John.

After Adam loaded the tarps in the cart, John led the way over to the generator display. He was surprised to see the store offered a generator model that ran on either gasoline or propane. But when he studied the spec sheet, John saw the generator only provided three-thousand watts of power. That was enough to run the well pump and pressure tank for water, but that was it. Still, the option to use gasoline or propane appealed to him.

John paused a moment and wondered how much LP he had in his storage tanks at home, and he was even more surprised he hadn’t thought to check earlier. He knew their last fill-up was back in July, so that meant either both tanks were half full, or one was full and the other empty. Either way, it would be nice to have both full before the disaster. He made a note on his phone to check the LP when he returned home.

Adam, seeing that his dad was completely preoccupied, asked, “Dad, can I go look around?”

“Yeah . . . sure. I’ll be here for at least another ten or twenty minutes. Do you have your phone?”

“It’s at home. I forgot it . . . remember?”

“Right. OK, just come back in . . . fifteen minutes.”

Adam acknowledged with a grunt and said, “Roger that.” He was out of sight before John raised his head from the phone.

Seeing Adam gone, John turned his attention back to the generator’s specification sheet. He liked that the generator could run for nine
hours at half load, or about fifteen-hundred watts on its four gallon tank, but he knew they’d need all available wattage for the house. The well wouldn’t be the only thing needing power. There was the fridge and freezer, as well as the lighting, at least until the solar panels would work again.

John turned his attention to a sleek looking, six-thousand watt Troy-Built generator. It had a six gallon tank, and could run at half load, or 3000 watts, for up to eleven hours. For John, that meant he could run the well pump, and a few high-demand appliances at the same time. He knew Jenna would appreciate being able to run the washer while the water was running, and she wouldn’t be able to do that with the previous model.

With his hand resting on the Troy-Built, John considered the problem of fuel availability and storage. The spec sheet said the gas generator would run for about eleven hours on six gallons of gas, but he knew he wouldn’t need to run it straight for that long. He figured he could run it for two or three days on five gallons of gas, but that still meant some fifty gallons of gas for thirty days of operation. That was way more fuel than he could, or even wanted to store on his property.

John decided to buy five more five-gallon plastic gas cans before he left the store. He realized he’d have to carefully ration their fuel when the power went out. At least until they could rely on the solar panels once again.

As for the reliability of their solar collectors, the ash sitting on the panels would be a problem, but not as much as a dark atmosphere. Without the sun, the solar panels were little more than expensive roof ornaments.

John heard someone approach and looked up to see Adam. “Good, you’re here. I have a question for you. How many gas cans do you think we can fit into the fuel pit you dug this morning?”

“The red plastic ones, or the green metal Army ones?” asked Adam.

“The red ones,” said John. “I’m gonna keep the metal ones in the garage.”

“Uhhh . . . I don’t know for sure,” said Adam, “but if I had to guess I’d say about six.”

John nodded, and before he could comment Adam offered, “We can always make it bigger.”

“I don’t want it bigger,” said John. “Grab four plastic gas cans over there and put them in the cart. I’m gonna go get a flat-cart to get this generator,” said John, as he pointed to the six-thousand watt Troy-Built.

“Do you think we can get it in the truck?” asked Adam.

“Yes,” replied John.

“On top?” asked Adam.

“No, that’s where the pipe will go. I’m sure we can get the generator in the truck . . . we’ll just have to move a few things around it all. Stand fast, I’ll be right back,” finished John, and he went to find a flat-cart.

Adam helped John load the generator onto the flat cart, and they made their way to the contractor checkout. A middle-aged woman stood ready and quickly scanned John’s large order of merchandise. He produced his retired military ID card before she completed the sale, and waited for a manager to approve the discount.

John never hesitated to use his ten-percent military discount at Lowes, especially on big purchases like today. Ten-percent wasn’t a lot until you applied it to a two-thousand dollar bill.

The cashier offered to find help, but John declined and pointed to Adam. “I’ve got all the help I need right here,” he said with a smile. The cashier smiled back and John managed the flat-cart and shopping cart, while Adam handled the lumber cart loaded with plastic pipe.

The two men spent the next thirty minutes loading their supplies into, and on top of, the Suburban. John used a collection of ratchet straps to secure the pipe to the luggage rack, and then dangled a red flag from the back. Despite the odd appearance of their load, no one seemed interested in their work. And once again, John expressed his appreciation for Adam’s idea to use PVC. He couldn’t imagine loading a similar load of lumber to the top of his truck, and said as much to Adam.