The Great Unraveling (A Preppers Perspective Book 1) (3 page)

Dennis had explained to his mom after he finally got home from Atlanta that there were now truly just two types of people to think about in the world. The “Shut Ins” and the “Shut Outs”.

The “Shut Outs”. Were a group that he had almost become a part of if he hadn’t of found a lucky ride home. Those were the people who were far from home and had no way to get there and were essentially
shut out
of a safe environment and thrust into a dangerous one. The “Shut Ins” was those that shut everyone else out to protect what little they had as times got harder. You started seeing both kinds of groups the minute the disaster hit. Restaurants and grocery stores shooed their customers out and locked their doors. Without communications or computers for flight schedules the airport must have turned into a mad house with all the stranded travelers milling about looking for answers to where they would stay the night or how to try to get home another way.

“
Dennis had sympathy and compassion for both groups. However, he couldn’t dwell on others misfortunes at this time. He had to concentrate on the here and now and his own families survival first and foremost. From here on out, every single decision he made had a bearing on that. One bad or good decision and his and his mom’s chances for survival were either enhanced or reduced disproportionately. Darn he wished she would just go ahead and bug out with him to the cabin. Maybe he could coax her a bit more he decided as he put chicken legs and thighs on the grill to cook.

Dennis pondered all the upcoming problems he foresaw for social unrest and violence and decided he would take a little quick run to his farmstead, arm Charles and his girlfriend Monica, see to any food needs they might have and then he would haul ass back to the house. He would load as much stuff as he could in his truck this go round from his mom’s house and make the best of using up some gas. Cleaning out the pantry tonight and boxing up the emergency stores would leave little for his mom to do and thus hasten her departure. Moving all that stuff now would allow him room in the truck for the next trip to add a bunch of useful crap he was going to have to leave behind otherwise.

“Now next trip what do I need to bring back to the homestead with me?” he was considering while fixing his and his moms dinners plates so they could sit down to supper.

“Mom we need to box up all the toilet paper, bug spray, blankets towels etc. we need to basically start a new house up with. Those are the type items we will need or the goods we will most likely run out of first. I mean take the paper off the dispensers in the bathroom, take a run through every drawer and cabinet in the house and look for items we might be able to use. Take the dish liquid and soap but leave all those household cleaners here. We don’t have room for them and I got some already at my house. Oh yea, take the bleach and laundry soap. Charcoal starter, you name it and we see how much of this kind of stuff we can get into the vehicles when I get back. I am going to take some of the firewood you got stacked out on the patio and fill up my deer rack basket on my trailer hitch. We need to try to take as much of that seasoned firewood as we can in order to get help get us through winter.” Dennis said between mouthfuls of barbecued chicken.

“I need to look through my clothes and choose what might be best to bring along. I remember you have almost zero closet space at your farm.” Mom said getting into the spirit of a permanent move for the best while putting on a brave smile.

“There you go! I will see how much I can get loaded tonight and I will leave out first thing in the morning. You keep that pepper spray handy tomorrow Mom, even though I am sure you won’t need it while I am gone and then look for me and my truck about dark thirty tomorrow night.” Dennis said elated that the subject of when they were going to be leaving had finally been resolved

“You need to be back before dark Dennis, the government said they were starting curfew soon and I don’t want you in any trouble.” His mom said putting her plate aside and coming to hold Dennis’s hand.

“Will do mom, back way before dark, don’t you worry, we are going to be just fine.” He said giving her a firm but gentle hug and holding her a moment to reassure her.

3

A World At The End Of A Rainbow.

Dennis finished loading his truck and was sweating like a race horse from the exertion but he still managed to be out of the house and on his way by 7.30 the next morning.

The town was very quite but he did see one police car and was wondering if they had gotten the National Guard mobilized yet to keep folks acting civilized.

“Curfew! Good old state governor mandated curfew orders. Damn that’s just about a half step from the President  declaring full blown martial law and he wanted to be as far away from here as possible if that occurred. Probably got the same thing curfew thing going in the small town next to his farm but they were a whole lot less police and a bunch more friendlier people than in the city of Montgomery.” David reminded himself as he headed towards his country home down the highway.

Dennis decided he would take one of the country boy local backwoods alternate routes home and turned off the highway and slowly drove down an intersecting dirt road all the while checking out his distant neighbors land and homes. He had been down this little stretch of dirt road hundreds of times and pretty much knew who kept chickens or a cow or two but he did not know the owners at all, other than waving to them occasionally as he passed by. Charles had said he knew a few people back over this way. He certainly hoped that was true, because they sure were going to need to be networking with these bigger small farms that might produce some kind of surplus they would be willing to trade for.

Dennis didn’t even stop at his neighbor’s house as he drove by it and instead went directly to his home to reassure himself that all remained in order. The house was exactly as he had left it and he went directly to his gun safe and opened it. One 12 gauge shotgun, one SKS rifle and a CZ 52 pistol is what he had as loners for Charles at the moment. These firearms he carried out to the truck along with a few bandoliers of ammo. Next he went and filled his ice machine with water and then plugged it into his SUNRNR solar generator. He looked at the dripping thawed mess in his freezer and decided it was still good enough to eat and began loading it into an empty ice chest.

“Hey anybody home!” a woman’s voice called out coming down his driveway and startling him.

He went to his wide open front door and saw Charles and Monica walking down his driveway with two of their three big dogs on leashes.

“Hello my friends!” Dennis called back to them and waited on them to finish approaching his house.

“Come on in! Charles you want a hot beer?” Dennis said heading towards the refrigerator and removing one.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Charles said reaching for the one Dennis was offering.

“Monica? Want a hot beer? Sorry I don’t have any wine.” Dennis said holding up another can in her direction.

“That’s ok Dennis, well yea why not I will take one too. Thanks!” She said reaching for the proffered beverage.

“We saw you drive in. I was wondering when you were going to show up. Actually, I was starting to worry about you a little bit.” Monica said sitting down next to Charles on the couch.

“I darn near got stuck in Atlanta but that’s another story. I have been at my mom’s house looking after her. How have you all been making out?” Dennis gushed happy to see them while sitting down in a chair and making a face from his first sip of a hot beer.

“We have been ok. Well man you sure were right, the shit has definitely finally hit the fan.” Charles said meaningfully fixing Dennis` glance at him.

“Yea it damn sure has. This is one time I wish hadn’t of been right about that NASA solar storm warning affecting us this year or terrorism or anything else. I got you some guns and ammo in the truck by the way and I was just loading up some fresh meat to share with you. It’s thawed out now but it will be ok if you will cook it soon.” Dennis said hopping up to finish filling and closing the ice chest.

“I will throw whatever you got on the big smoker and cook it up for us. I assume you are here to stay or you going back today?” “Charles said questionably, most likely wondering what Dennis was doing arriving here without his mom.

“No I am dropping off a load of supplies and then I am heading back to Montgomery in a few hours to retrieve my mom. We will be coming back to stay for the duration together with the other car. I will be back sometime tomorrow or the next day hopefully.” Dennis said watching Monica lighting up what was most likely one of her last few cigarettes she had left. Dennis hadn’t been too long quit smoking himself and felt for her being forced to quit cold turkey sometime in the near future.

“You want us to be doing anything besides cook up that meat in the cooler Dennis?” Monica asked still looking at the nuclear survival manual.

“No, we will have plenty time enough in the future to figure out what we are going to be doing when I get back down this way. Cooking up all that meat or smoking it for storage is the most important thing for now. Have yourselves a big gigantic feast and eat up whatever you want. I don’t care if you choose rib eyes or filet mignon. I got my portable icemaker running by the way and I will give you some ice to refrigerate what’s left over before I leave. We should be able to get at least 3 meals for the four of us I figure out of the amount of meat represented in the cooler. I didn’t realize I had so much in my freezer. However, I am just guessing, feed them dogs the cheaper cuts if you have too. “Dennis said deciding this hot beer wasn’t so bad after you got past the first sip.

“Charles you got plenty of water stored up?” Dennis asked looking out the window towards his neighbor’s house across the street that sat about an acre back from the road on a slight hill.

“Yea you might say I was a good prepper and did my part just like we talked about. Day one I took my lawn tractor and trailer down to the creek and used that marine battery you gave me to run a sump pump and sucked up 50 gallons of creek water. I even added a tiny amount of Clorox to it. How long do you think we will still have county water to depend on?” Charles asked.

“That I don’t know, if we are lucky I would say maybe longer than anyone else. They got that big water tower over by the volunteer fire department and they could gravity feed all the folks around us but I don’t know what their emergency plan is. I will stop by the fire house on the way out and see if anyone’s around to ask if they going to open the lines when the backup power generators run out of fuel in a week or two. That reminds me, I need to stop off and talk to the “gopher “ brothers on the way out and see if they want to do a little job for us. “ Dennis said and then walked over to his open gun safe in the adjoining room and surveyed his weaponry.

Dennis had nicknamed them the “gopher brothers” because when he had first met them, their mom had told him the story about how she had gone off and left the 17 year old and the 14 year old  at home while she did a business trip for a week. When she got back they had dug several giant holes out in an old walnut orchard on the property for a root cellar and a tornado shelter. She had them fill them back in because they were a hazard to mowing the lawn and the next time she went somewhere they started a 8x8x10 hole they ended up having to fill back in because no one could afford the lumber to finish it. They had both told Dennis if he ever needed a hole dug to call on them and that’s exactly what he planned on doing now.

“Do you want them boys to come help you build some sort of fall out shelter; is that what you got in mind? You think we might really be needing one? “Monica asked scared there could be a nuclear war to worry about next.

“God I hope not! But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. I am not too worried about that at the moment but it is a concern to think about. No I just run out of funds to get me a tornado shelter or bunker built and I figure this summer I will need a root cellar anyway. I am going to build the damn root cellar like a fall out shelter though. By the way Charles, being former military and all, you probably don’t need to read it but there is a book over their on the shelf of Nuclear war survival skills. You might want a review on improvised shelters until we get my shelter constructed.” Dennis said but then handed the book to Monica first who looked like she couldn’t wait to get her hands on it.

“I doubt that it will escalate into a global nuclear war. There would be no winners and only all losers so I am not worried about being obliterated. There will be some dirty bombs going off in the U.S. though I bet if we did do a full blown military retaliatory strike against Iran. Those suckers got their terrorist cells infiltrated in the states all over the place for just such an occasion. There is good chance of bioterrorism also. But hopefully we might have them scared enough of our nuclear power not to do that, well I doubt they try bioterrorism openly anyway.

Israel has already told Iran if the used any of those missiles they said they have loaded with biological and chemical warfare agents that they could expect probably to get nuked in return. The bible says something about the total destruction of Syria in one day so that may well come to pass.

“I am of course still quite curious if somebody in the U.S. wasn’t messing around with H.A.R.R.P and somehow short circuited our own grid. That would be the false flag attack of the century! Every time they experiment with that thing for weather manipulation or whatever else they do with it, there in Alaska. There are far too many strong readings of electromagnetic energy emanations in odd places. I can only guesstimate at what might actually be going on until we get an official causation confirmation or the government and the media false flag us into whatever we are supposed to believe about it.

Remember my friends that they admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident with the Vietnamese was staged” Dennis said thinking about an entirely new twist and turn that might explain the national emergency they were in.

“Damn Dennis! I wish you didn’t know so much sometimes, some of those conspiracy theories or terrorist capability assessments you come up with scare the hell out of me.” Monica said rapidly glancing through the survival book she had been given.

“You asked the question and I gave you some answers.” Dennis told her smiling and ignoring the poke at his prepper knowledge that might throw a wet blanket on something in the conversation.

‘Hey Charles I got a little crappy radio that can receive the shortwave band. Maybe we can pick up what’s happening in the world and get a little heads up. Dennis said going to get it and then after putting batteries in it trying to tune to a station.

“Here you fool with this for me and see if you find a station, I got sidetracked for a minute.” Dennis said handing the radio to Charles and going back to his gun safe.

Dennis knew the Gopher brothers only possessed a single shot .223 Remington rifle and a single shot 12 gauge shotgun so he thought he had the ideal barter material for them to consent to dig out and work on his new root cellar. He had an old Russian 5 shot bolt action Mosin Nagant 91/30 rifle that was chambered in 7.62 x54. It was only a hundred dollar gun before the poo hit the fan, not telling what it was worth nowadays. It and 100 rounds of ammo for it to shoot were worth a good down payment on a little hard excavation work to Dennis.

He had 223 NATO rounds that were militarily loaded too hot with smokeless gunpowder for that .223 Remington of theirs, so that caliber wouldn’t help them any. He had stored tons of 12 gauge shells for himself, so he added several boxes of buckshot and slugs to his barter pile to sweeten the deal. Speaking of sweetener he went and got two 10 LB bags of commercial deer attractant out of his stores and gave one to Charles and added one to the pile the Gopher boys would be receiving. Jack and Clyde could now have a good chance of keeping themselves and their mother feed by hunting deer on their back pasture and in the wood line.

“Charles you might as well go set you up a saltlick on your back property somewhere with that trademarked Deer Cocaine stuff and get ready to feed you and those big dogs with some game. By the way I wanted to talk to you about borrowing one of your hounds as kind of security around here for me and my mom. We can talk about that when I return. I will get you set up with some traps and snares when I get back also and we can work out how we are going to run our trap lines for food procurement.” Dennis told him ticking off a mental list of things he and Charles had talked about doing before if a big disaster hit.

“Sounds like a master plan to me, Hey Dennis you got any mash started yet?” Charles asked knowing Dennis had an alcohol still and a few hundred pounds of sugar stored, as well as assorted turbo yeasts packages packed in mason jars in his refrigerator for the purpose of making some white lightening should he decide the world was ending.