Business at the casino was almost non-existent. Joe took the offered layoff, with guarantee of rehire when business picked back up. He lost no time heading home. He’d barely parked the Yukon XL in the garage when his cellular telephone rang. It only rang twice and then stopped before Joe could answer it.After flipping one of the hidden switches under the lift up console between the front seats, Joe got out of the Yukon and locked it and set the alarm. He was confident no one, if they even found the Yukon XL and tried to steal it, would be able to get it started. The switch he’d flipped disabled the engine.Going inside, Joe immediately went to the shelter. A control panel assembly with 19 inch rack mount subassemblies in it was sitting on the desk that also held his communication equipment. He flipped several switches on one of the panels. They tripped relays that isolated each section of the PV electrical system from each other. He wasn’t sure it would prevent the system from being fried by EMP, but it was all he knew to do to protect his solar roof array. It was working when he shut it down. Hopefully it would work when he turned it back on.The communications gear was mounted in another assembly. It was a large faraday cage with a removable front panel. Joe made sure it was secure and all the antenna leads grounded. He opened the cabinet next to the desk. It contained additional electronics, and was built as a faraday cage as well. He took out a small hand crank radio and quickly closed and latched the door of the cabinet.He would listen to the news on the small radio, a small jumper wire connecting the built-in antenna to a short long-wire antenna that ran out side the shelter and up the side of the house. Joe listened for a while. There was wild speculation about what would happen. No information was coming in from the areas of combat anymore. Unhooking the antenna lead and grounding it, Joe went over everything in the shelter with a fine toothed comb. Nothing had changed, just as he knew. He just needed something to keep him busy.Every hour on the hour Joe would check the radio. He was napping when something woke him up. He glanced at his watch. It was 8:45 AM. Joe tried the radio again. All he got was static. He checked frequency after frequency. Nothing but static. Disconnecting the antenna out of habit, Joe then checked the CDV-717 remote reading fallout meter. Nothing.Joe went outside and looked around. And there it was when he looked toward Reno. The famous mushroom cloud. He could see the lightning flashes in it. It was still growing. Joe watched it for a few moments, and then came to his senses and headed back for the shelter.He watched the CDV-717. The needle finally moved. Joe noted the time and reading on a form attached to a clipboard lying beside the meter. The winds were strong and from the west, as they often are in Reno. Joe didn’t get that much fallout. He was out of the shelter after two weeks.Joe had been monitoring the Amateur Radio bands since the static had started to fade. He wasn’t finding anything yet.He checked the Yukon XL. It started right up, to his surprise. He’d never taken the EMP protection steps he’d half planned. Either EMP had been less of a danger than some had stated, or the thin metal sheathing he’d applied to the inside of the garage had worked as a giant faraday cage and protected the SUV. Either way, he was glad he still had a good ride.The PV system batteries had been fully charged when he disconnected the component parts. He reconnected the inverter to the batteries while in the shelter and drawn power the entire two weeks without drawing down the batteries too much. He put the PV panels back in the circuit and the meter showed an immediate flow of power. The PV panels had survived the EMP, too.For another week he stayed close to the place, doing the small amount of decontamination needed. Despite the low levels, Joe used one of the Tyvek hooded and booted coveralls, with heavy nitrile gloves, rubber boots, and Millennium CBRN respirator. He wasn’t going to take any chances.He’d lost a few things in the greenhouse, for lack of attention, and possibly from the radiation, though he couldn’t really tell. Joe finally decided he should check around outside his own little area of operations.Joe checked over the Yukon XL again, and went through his vehicle BOB. He really didn’t know what to expect and decided not to go obviously armed. He would have long arms in the Yukon, but would only carry one of the Glock 21’s in an Andrew’s Leather Monarch shoulder holster rig with off-side carrier for three magazines and a Cold Steel Counter Tac II. He’d carry the Glock 30 in a Bianchi ankle holster.He had been in the habit of keeping the Yukon as full of fuel as possible, refilling the tanks whenever he dropped to three-quarters full. He had a total capacity, in three tanks, of over a hundred gallons. He was only down by ten percent but Joe refueled from his thousand gallon underground diesel tank.Joe drove cautiously. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary until he got to the main road. That’s where he saw the first stalled out cars. And car crashes, both single car and multiple car. And bodies. It was a strain on him not to pull over and puke his guts out, but he managed to control the urge.When he hit Interstate 80 it was much the same, except worse. There were vastly more abandoned vehicles, crashes, and bodies. There were several points where Joe had to put the Yukon in four wheel drive and go off the pavement to get around blockages.He was keeping an eye on the CDV-715 meter in the seat beside him and when the radiation level began to climb he stopped in a likely spot and turned the Yukon around. Time to quit looking and start doing something productive.Joe had brought his CBRN gear with him and suited up. He began checking each of the vehicles as he came to them on his way back to the house. He found very little in the cars. Joe decided they were just ordinary people doing ordinary things when the attack came and EMP disabled their vehicles.Most of the vehicles were abandoned and he wondered where the people were. Those vehicles that weren’t abandoned held bodies in extended states of decomposition. Joe was thankful for his protective gear. He checked everything on his way back to the house and collected a few useful items.He had a good pair of bolt cutters with him and had no trouble getting into the semi trailers he came upon. Most were carrying hardware of one type or another. He found one reefer trailer loaded with now thawed and spoiled frozen food. The trailer cooling system had run out of fuel. “What a waste,” Joe muttered an closed the doors of the trailer.Anxiously, Joe came up to the semi tanker with pup that he’d passed on the way in toward Reno. He climbed out of the Yukon and clambered up the ladder of the pup to get to the tank hatches. He opened one compartment hatch and discovered the tank was full. He couldn’t tell what it was until he cracked the seal on the respirator and took a slight whiff. Gasoline. The second compartment of the pup also held gasoline. Three thousand gallons total.When he checked the lead trailer he found diesel fuel. Seven thousand gallons of it total in the several compartments the tank trailer had. Joe assumed it was a delivery for Reno from a California refinery or bulk plant.Joe took a few minutes to try to start the engine of the semi-tractor. No luck. Joe didn’t waste time fretting about the possibility of losing the fuel. He continued his search. He tried each of the semis he found. None would start. He did note one semi with an equipment trailer that was carrying some construction equipment. He stared at it for several long moments, an idea shaping up in the back of his mind. It wouldn’t jell, and he moved on. When he got back to the house somewhat after dark, he put the Yukon and its load of scavenged goods in the garage. He’d unload in the morning. He ate a hasty supper and went to bed in the shelter. Though the radiation was low enough to be outside, Joe thought it wiser to sleep in the shelter to minimize what radiation he did receive.He woke up a little after three in the morning. He’d been dreaming about the tanker load of fuel, and a plan on how to salvage it came to him. He fell back asleep smiling.The next morning after his breakfast and a check of the Amateur Bands, Joe unloaded the Yukon and put the items away. When he came to one set of the guns he’d found, he wondered again about the situation that had put them into his hands.When he found them, it appeared that there had been some type of shoot out. There were a dozen dead bodies with what looked like bullet holes in them. Half of them clutched weapons of one sort or another and there was empty brass lying all around them and the vehicles behind which they’d apparently taken cover.He’d surmised the direction they’d been firing from the way the bodies were situated and went looking for more bodies. He found them. Four dead with bullet wounds. There was a lot of empty brass around, but no weapons. This group apparently had won the battle, and the survivors had left with the weapons of their fallen companions. Joe shook his head. He’d never know what happened for sure. But the thought didn’t keep him from taking the weapons and accoutrements. Joe shook his head and added the weapons to his small armory in the shelter. The rest of the scavenged goods put away, Joe checked the Hatz diesel powered ROKON bike parked out of the way in one corner of the garage. He checked the fluids. Everything was up to snuff, including fuel. The ROKON started right up and Joe drove it outside and let it warm up a bit while he dressed for the occasion.Again he suited up in CBRN gear and strapped on the Glock 21 and Glock 30. He strapped his 72-hour BOB on the back of the bike and then straddled the ROKON. He advanced the accelerator and headed out to recover the fuel tank trailers.He went to the truck that was carrying the construction equipment. He tried the truck engine again, just in case. It still wouldn’t start. No matter. Joe had a plan. He unfolded the ramps on the back of the trailer, not without some difficulty, and climbed aboard the old Caterpillar D6 crawler tractor with bulldozer blade.It took him several minutes to figure out how to start the thing, but he finally hit the right combination and the engine turned over. A little more sure of himself, Joe tried again. The engine caught and began to run, though rather roughly. Joe hoped it would smooth out while he was un-chaining the thing.The D6 was idling smoothly when he climbed aboard several minutes later. Again Joe took some time to familiarize himself with what control did what. Gingerly he began to back the D6 off the trailer. He didn’t have the bulldozer blade high enough and came to a screeching halt when the blade caught on the ramps when he was halfway off. Lifting the blade, he finished backing the D6 until he was clear of the trailer.A few minutes later and the ROKON was chained up on the back of the D6 and Joe was headed toward the tanker. He stopped at another semi-truck pulling two short trailers and a dolly for a third trailer.It was much more of a struggle than he anticipated disconnecting the dolly from the trailer and getting it turned around so he could connect it to the D6. The D6 didn’t have a pintle hitch, so Joe used another tie-down chain to securely attach the dolly tongue to it. It wasn’t a perfect setup, but Joe was able to again head for the tanker truck, the dolly trailing behind the D6.When he got to the tanker truck, Joe halted the D6 and let it idle while he lowered the landing gear of the front trailer. He released the king pin in the fifth-wheel of the truck. Much to his disappointment, he had to release the dolly behind the Cat so he could maneuver well enough to pull the dead truck out from under the trailer and out of the way.Joe knew he had to hurry. It wasn’t a good idea to leave a loaded trailer on its landing gear. But it took Joe quite a bit of time to struggle the dolly under the trailer. He took a long rest and then chained the dolly back to the D6.Smiling, he climbed back onto the Cat and put it in gear. The trailers moved, but the tires made a squealing sound. Joe had forgotten about the trailer brakes needing air to release them. He said a couple of bad words and climbed down from the Cat. Crawling under the lead trailer Joe studied the brake system.“There,” he said aloud after a while. If he could find the correct size wrench, he could back off the brakes manually. He had a Leatherman Surge with him, but it just wasn’t stout enough to do the job.Joe searched the truck again, as well as the D6. He couldn’t find anything that would work. After shutting off the D6 and taking down the ROKON, Joe headed back to the house to get some tools.It took him almost two hours and he was sweating bullets, hoping no one would come upon the rig and take it before he could get back to it. He breathed a sigh of relief when everything was just the same as he’d left it when he got back to the site.Getting the right wrench, Joe backed off the brakes of both the lead trailer and the pup. That done, he chained the ROKON back up, this time on the pup in a handy place. The Cat running again, Joe put it in gear. The trailers rolled along behind, sedately. Leaving a somewhat weaving path behind, not completely due to maneuvering around blockages, Joe took the trailers home. It was dark when he got there and he shut down the Cat.Joe had his untouched lunch for supper and fell into bed. Handling that dolly by hand had probably not been a good idea. How he felt the next morning confirmed the thought. He dug out a bottle of one of the pain killers for which Dr. Jacobson had given him prescriptions. He took two tablets to ease the pain and wondered idly what might have happened to her.Far from an expert dozer man, Joe took four days to dig a trench with the Cat long enough to bury the trailers two-thirds of the way up the sides. After he pulled the trailers into the trench, he used the D6 to mound the dug out dirt up and over them, leaving uncovered the access hatches. Since he’d propped up the tongue of the dolly when he’d unhooked it from the Cat, he didn’t have much trouble re-connecting to it.Joe rested up for a couple of days, taking it easy to allow his body to recover from the effort extended getting the fuel. He monitored the radios occasionally, still not hearing much. After the two days Joe began the scavenging operation again. He finally found a working semi truck and could more easily move the trailer, when he found one that had something in it he wanted. If it was just a few items he would bring the Yukon and trailer, and just transfer items.It took almost a month to get everything he wanted from the strip of Interstate 80 he was comfortable of scavenging. The semi truck had not run well, even though Joe had been able to start it. He went to start it for one last semi load, but it wouldn’t start. He did everything he knew, but wasn’t able to get it going again. He used the Yukon XL and trailer to move the contents of that last load.He’d seen no one in that time. But there had been some signs of people doing the same thing he was, except on a much smaller scale. He noticed that some of the vehicles he’d gone over were being disturbed. When he looked closely, he discovered that jewelry, wallets, and even clothing were being taken from the dead.He stayed at home for another month, sorting and storing the items he’d scavenged. He always went armed when outside and kept a sharp lookout, as well. He finally began to hear some Amateur Radio traffic, mostly on the HF bands. There were definitely other survivors. But he still hadn’t heard anyone locally.One of the trucks he’d scavenge had been carrying a load of Radio Shack products. He used several of the remote mount cameras to set up a video surveillance system, with sound, around the house and property using a computer with motion sensing software. He got the occasional false alarm, but they were infrequent enough that he checked each one and didn’t downgrade the movement limit for sounding an alarm.It was the alarm triggered on one of the cameras monitoring the road onto the property that gave Joe his first indication of local survivors. The small group of people he was seeing was obviously not military. The fact that there were children with them gave Joe no indication of whether or not they would be friendly. Each person was carrying a suitcase or a backpack.When the group was close to one of the cameras, Joe pressed the intercom button and said. “I have you under surveillance. Who are you and what do you want?”“Joe? Is that you, Joe?”“Who are you and what do you want?” Joe repeated.“It’s me, Joe! Artie! Bella is with me. You’ve got to help us, man! We’re starving and one of the Reno gangs is after us.”Joe thought long and hard before he triggered the intercom again and said, “Come on up to the house. We’ll talk. But I’m not making any promises.” He left the shelter and went up to the front door of the log house. He had grabbed the Remington 11-87P on his way up.He opened the door and held the shotgun casually, as the group approached. “Hold it,” he said when they got to the porch steps. “Any one of you armed?”There was some stirring within the group, and then one of the men in back said, “I have a shotgun.”One of the women said, “I have a pistol.”“You’re going to have to leave them out here if you want to come in.”There was some whispered conversation among those in the group, but it didn’t last long. The weapons were produced and the owners set them down on the porch by the steps. “Okay,” Joe said. “Come in.”He stepped back, still holding the shotgun, and the eleven members of the group came inside. It was trying to snow and had turned cold the previous night. Seeing the heater vent, several of the group, with less clothing than some of the others, moved over to it and began to warm themselves.Joe spotted Artie immediately, but he had a hard time recognizing Bella. She looked much the worse for wear, he thought. It was only when she spoke that he recognized her. “Joe, do you have any food? The children are hungry. We’re all starving. Please?”As much as he wanted to tell them to just move on, Joe couldn’t do it. “In the kitchen,” he said. “You can tell me your story while we fix something to eat.”Keeping a wary eye on them, Joe set the shotgun close to hand, and began getting things out to make macaroni and cheese with tuna and sweet peas. A couple of the women stepped forward and pretty much took over the preparations. Joe answered their quiet questions while he listened to Artie and Bella tell of their experiences since the war.Except Artie asked a question first, that Joe ignored. “How much food do you have?”“Tell me what happened,” Joe replied.“Well, since I didn’t have enough money to take the lay-off, like you did, I was at the casino when the bombs came.”Joe didn’t correct him that it had probably been missile warheads that had hit the US, not bombs.“Some of us, when we figured it out what happened, went down to the deepest basement under the casino.” Artie looked over at Bella. “Bella was working too, and she was one of us that took over the basement for shelter. Some of the security people had guns and we were able to keep enough other people out, that we had room for those of us that got there first.”Joe felt a tightening of his gut, but said nothing.“When those trying to get inside finally left… to look for other shelter, I guess… some of us went up and raided the different kitchens for food and water.”“It was terrible,” Bella said. “There wasn’t enough food for everyone, and there weren’t any toilets.”“No blankets or cots, either,” one of the others interjected.Joe nodded.“The only thing we had enough of was water. One of the main pipes went through that basement and we could get water from it until the day we left. Actually, that is why we left.”“How long after the… ‘bomb’?”“Nine days,” Bella said. “Nine terrible days.”“It was just as bad outside,” Artie continued. “Some of the buildings close to our casino were down, and it was hard to move through the debris. But we left the area with the worst damage and began to look for food. Some people went off on their own and never came back. I don’t know if they found stuff or not.“From what happened to us, they probably got killed. All the security people were with us and the children. We got shot at, but security ran them off.”Bella took up the tale. “But we weren’t finding enough good food to stay very long in one place. And we kept getting shot at. They finally killed one of the security officers, and it got worse after that. We had to move every couple of days, even if we found some good food somewhere.“Some of us wanted to break off from the others, but it just seemed too dangerous.”There was a lull, and Joe asked, “How’d you wind up with five children? There were hardly ever children in the casino.”“Two couples from Des Moines, Iowa were on vacation. Two of the kids are from one of the families and the other three from the other. They just happened to be there when we headed for the basement.”Artie and Bella looked at one another, and then Artie continued. “The two husbands got killed in the fighting in the basement. Both of the mothers disappeared looking for food when we got out. We took a vote and it was decided to keep the children with us.”The way he had worded it, Joe was immediately certain that Artie hadn’t voted to keep the children and take care of them. He looked at Bella. Joe couldn’t tell, but he had the suspicion that she might not have, either. The children were staying close to the other four adults.“Go on,” Joe prompted.“Well, we decided to keep moving, trying to stay away from the gang that was after us,” Bella said.Then Artie excitedly said, “Then I thought of you! You’d said that time that Bella should get some food put by. I figured you said that because you did it. We’ve been trying to find you ever since. Finally found where you’ve been going in and out.”Artie’s eyes narrowed. “What have you been doing, going in and out so much?”“Looking around,” Joe said evenly. “Trying, like you, to find food.”“You must have gas and a car that works,” Bella said, rather hopefully.“We want to go south, before the winter gets here for real. I’ve read about nuclear winter,” Artie said then. He was still watching Joe closely. “If we can use your car, you can come with us.”“I’m fine here. I can give you some food for your journey.”“We need your car,” one of the others said. He looked at the children. They had gathered together watching the two women prepare the food. “For the children,” he added, looking back at Joe.The oldest child, a girl, looked to be fourteen or fifteen. She had been watching Joe out of the corners of her eyes. “Can we stay here with you?” she suddenly asked Joe.“Honey,” Bella said, “we want to go south. You remember.”Joe didn’t like the tone. He was beginning to get suspicious.“You can go,” said one of the younger children. Perhaps eight. “We want to stay. He has real food.”“No,” Artie said firmly. “We’re all going.” He turned back to Joe. “Look, Joe… I never thought I’d have to suggest this… But we can pay you for the food and the car. We have plenty of cash. And jewelry, if you want. Lots of it.”Joe suddenly decided he knew where the scavenged jewelry and wallets were. “I’ve got a week’s worth of food to spare. You can have that. You don’t have to pay me.”“What about the car?” Bella asked.“It stays here,” Joe said.Artie studied Joe for several long moments, and then looked at the children again. “Tell you what, Joe. We’ll give the children to you. Look at Cynthia. She’s ripe for the picking. And Twilla will be before too long.”The two girls mentioned hugged one another and looked fearfully at Artie.“I don’t think so, Artie,” Joe said coldly. “Oh, the children are staying here. But none of the rest of you are.” He reached over to pick up the shotgun again.At Joe’s motion, Artie said, “Bob! Take him!”Joe’s eyes cut to the man that was suddenly reaching around behind his back. Moving quickly, Joe grabbed the shotgun, changing position as he did so. It was all over in seconds. Bob lost the quick draw contest. Joe fired the shotgun a fraction of a second before Bob cleared his coat with the pistol he was drawing.“Out!” Joe said, including the two women just finishing up with the food.” The shotgun covered all the adults. “You guys move on back out of the way,” Joe told the children.The other man made a move to try to grab one of the children, but Joe put the shotgun on him and the man backed off. Artie and the others began backing toward the front door of the house, watching Joe like hawks.“What about the food?” Bella asked, her voice cracking.“You gave up the right to any food when you used the kids for bargaining chips,” replied Joe.“Artie did that. Not me! Please! We’re so hungry!”The third man started to bend down and retrieve the weapons on the porch when the group moved outside.“Oh, no,” Joe said. “They stay behind.”“You can’t do that!” screamed one of the women.“I can and I am. I suggest you all take off running before I change my mind and just put you down like the rabid dogs you’ve become.”The other man growled and said, “I’ll get you!”Joe didn’t hesitate. He pulled the trigger of the shotgun. The buckshot charge hit the man in the center of his chest, killing him instantly. The others took Joe at his word and ran away. He’d worry about them later if they came back.He had enough to worry about now. Five children, aged nine to fifteen. Cynthia was fifteen, Twilla fourteen, Gary twelve, Tommy ten, and Sissy nine. Cynthia and Tommy were brother and sister. Twilla, Gary, and Sissy were the other family.They were totally ignoring the dead man in the kitchen and were eating the mac, cheese, and tuna ravenously. They stopped eating when Joe entered the room, but only for a moment. “Are they gone?” asked Cynthia.When Joe nodded all five children went back to eating. Joe could only shake his head and go get a tarp from the garage. He used it to drag both bodies out to the edge of the forest. He would bury them the next day.Joe went back inside. Much to his surprise, all five children were helping with the cleanup. Not only of the meal, but the mess on the floor where the dead man had lain.When they saw Joe the five of them huddled together. “Thanks, mister,” Cynthia said. “But did you do that just to get me and Twilla? If you did, we’ll kill you in your sleep.”Her words were soft and matter-of-fact, but Joe saw the glint in her eyes. “No. I have no intention of harming any of you.”“What’s going to happen to us now?” asked Sissy. “I’m scared. I don’t want to go out in the cold again.” She started to cry.“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want,” Joe said, squatting down to speak to here eye-to-eye. “I don’t know much about taking care of kids, but if you help me, I’ll do my best.”“I have to go to the bathroom,” Tommy said.“Me, too,” Twilla said.Joe showed the children where the bathrooms were. The three girls disappeared into one, and the boys took turns in another. Joe was finishing the cleanup in the kitchen when the children returned.“Can we go to bed now?” Cynthia asked.Joe was surprised. It was still early afternoon. “So early?” he asked.“We get really tired,” Twilla replied.Joe felt a tightening in his gut. “Were you all sick, earlier? After you left the shelter?”Cynthia nodded. “Yeah. But only for a couple of days. Everyone was.”Trying not to be obvious about it, Joe studied each of the children in turn, looking particularly at their heads. All five had obvious loss of hair. Only time would tell, but Joe was afraid they had picked up heavy doses of radiation since they had left their shelter.“Sure, you can go to bed now, if you want. Grab your bags and I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.” They followed Joe down into the basement and then into the shelter. It took a little while to arrange bedding for all of them.“We aren’t staying in the bedrooms?” asked Cynthia. “The house has bedrooms, doesn’t it?”“It does. But I think it’s still safer to be in the shelter.”“You think they’ll come back?” Twilla asked.“No,” replied Joe. “I was thinking of the radiation from the fallout.”“But it stopped weeks ago,” said Cynthia. “They told us everything was okay, now.”“I just don’t like taking chances,” Joe replied. He didn’t want to alarm them, but Joe was worried about the radiation levels to which they had been exposed. Not only had they been out of shelter much longer than had he, the levels to which they had been exposed had to have been much higher, as close to the detonation as they had been.Yes. Only time would tell if they survived the exposure. Joe would do what he could, but it wasn’t in his hands.Two weeks later Sissy became too weak to stand. And so it went, by body weight, each of the children succumbed to the radiation they had experienced. After Sissy and Tommy had died, and Gary had fallen ill, Cynthia and Twilla came to Joe.“It’s the radiation sickness, isn’t it?” Cynthia said. “Gary is going to die and them Twilla and me. Aren’t we?”Joe couldn’t keep the tears from streaking his face. He couldn’t meet their eyes. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “It’s… possible… but… there is still hope.”The two just turned around and went to the shelter. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get either girl to eat anything, or even drink water. They both died shortly after Gary, just a few days later. Joe buried the children, in a pretty spot in the forest, well away from where he had buried the two men he had shot.He didn’t eat much himself for several days and just moped around the place listlessly, wondering whether or not he should try to go on. The decision was almost made for him. Joe was just standing and staring at the Yukon XL on a clear morning a few days after he had buried Cynthia. Just staring at the Yukon and wondering about all the things he’d done to it. Maybe it had all been a waste of money and time.Joe felt the bite of the bullet in his right leg and heard the sound of a shot. He didn’t think. He reacted, the way he’d trained. He went to the ground and rolled behind the Yukon. Scanning the road and forest in that direction. He didn’t see anything. Joe took a quick look at the little hole in his Cabela’s whipcord pants. Red was oozing from the hole and it stung. He reached behind his leg. Another hole and more warm wetness.Checking all around again, Joe got up into a crouch drawing a Glock 21 from under his jacket. He breathed deeply a couple of times and then burst into a sprint toward the back of the house. Three shots rang out, but Joe didn’t feel any more impacts.He slipped in the snow and fell, but was up in an instant. Joe hustled through the back door and into the house. He went down the steps into the basement and over to one of the windows high in the basement wall. Three men were running toward the house, crouched down, staying near the forest on both sides of the road.Joe popped the window out, one of the special features he’d built into the house, took careful aim, and fired at the men. They dove into the forest and Joe hurried into the shelter, returning a few moments later with a scoped PTR-91, musette bag of loaded magazines, and a pair of Steiner Commander V binoculars. He did a quick search with the binoculars of the forest at the point the men had disappeared.When he had a fix on one of the men, lying down beside a tree trunk, he eased up the PTR, sighted, and pulled the trigger. The man flopped slightly and Joe was pretty sure he hit him. He scanned the area again. It was some time before he spotted more movement. He sighted the PTR again and fired. He fired rapidly again, and then a third time when the target started moving after the first shot. Joe heard two shots and the impacts of projectiles on the exposed concrete of the basement near the window from which he was shooting. He quickly changed windows and began searching again with the binoculars.When he saw the second man he’d shot at struggle to his feet and head away from the house, Joe drew a careful bead and put a bullet in the back of the man’s head. Joe checked the first man he’d shot. The man hadn’t moved.Another shot hit the basement wall and Joe caught the muzzle flash out of the corner of his eyes. He concentrated his binocular search in that area. He saw movement twice, but couldn’t get sighted in before the man disappeared again. He gave up the binoculars and began to use the riflescope to do the searching. He saw movement again and pumped three quick rounds into the tree behind which the man had jumped. Joe saw the body fall out away from the tree. He maintained a vigil for the rest of the day, checking both sides of the house and the rear occasionally, while keeping most of his attention on the front. He took time to wrap a pair of Best Glide trauma bandages on his wounds. One for the entry point and one on the exit wound.When it started to get dark Joe went into the shelter and then outside through the escape tunnel that was part of the shelter installation. After doing a thorough search around the back of the property and the sides and not finding any tracks, Joe headed for the area where he’d seen the men.He went past where he thought they were and looked for tracks, hoping he would find only three sets. Joe breathed a sigh of relief when that was exactly what he found. He followed the path they had taken while together and found the empty cartridge case of the shot that had hit him. Joe shook his head. He’d been lucky they’d attempted the kill at such a distance and the shooter hadn’t been any better than he’d proven to be.Joe found the man he’d killed first. A clean shot through the top of the left shoulder into the chest. The second man had a through and through wound in his shoulder. The shot that had killed him was a through and through as well. Through the skull.The third man was still alive, but barely. All three of the 7.62mm rounds had penetrated the tree and then, tumbling, entered the stomach and groin of the man. He was a bloody mess. The only thing he could seem to move were his eyes. He was looking right at Joe when Joe drew the Glock and put a .45 ACP round through his forehead.Joe was exhausted, and his leg was paining him, when he finally put the last of the items he’d recovered from the men into storage. The bodies would have to wait a few days. He put the Yukon back into the garage, locked it, and set the alarm, doing the same to the garage. And again the same with the house. When things were locked down, Joe went into the shelter, ate a small meal, immediately threw it up, and went to bed, still dressed.The throbbing in his leg woke him the next morning. He downed a couple of painkillers and then stripped the bandages and his clothes off. He took a shower in the shelter bathroom, and then, first-aid kit at hand, did what he knew he should have done the evening before.After cleaning the wounds with Providone/Iodine prep pads, he bandaged them again. It wasn’t an easy task doctoring the exit wound. He had included a mirror in the first-aid kit for such a situation, but it was still difficult. And it was painful, even with the painkiller taking effect. Joe took an antibiotic, and lay back down, already exhausted.It was some time before he got up again to eat and check the surveillance cameras. It was snowing heavily. Joe kept checking, between naps, but really didn’t expect anyone to show up in the middle of a snow storm. But he checked anyway.He counted himself lucky when he’d gone through a full cycle of the antibiotic with no sign of infection in the wound. The entry and exit holes were still puckered, but the wound seemed to be healing from the inside out, which was what Joe wanted. He’d live with scars.For a month Joe did little except tend the greenhouse garden, clear the PV panels of snow, and recuperate. He also continued to monitor commercial radio broadcast, public service, shortwave, and Amateur Radio frequencies. He wasn’t getting anything on AM or FM broadcast radio or on the public service bands. Once in a while he’d run across a shortwave station, but they faded in and out and he wasn’t able to glean anything useable from them. He was hearing some Amateurs talking from time to time, but nothing local.The harsh winter lasted until mid-March. There had been no more visits from anyone. The attack had decided Joe that giving up wasn’t for him. He decided to go exploring.
Frisco Lessons – Chapter 3
Joe took a week to get ready. He moved everything of value that he could to the shelter, and the rest went in the basement. He repacked his various BOB’s for the journey, as well as doing a minor rearrange in the Yukon.Like the Yukon, the trailer had three underbody fuel tanks totaling a little over a hundred gallons. Also like the Yukon, there were four 20-liter jerry cans of diesel on a swing away rack on the rear bumper. With the transfer tank and tool box combination in the trailer, that gave Joe well over three-hundred gallons of diesel fuel. There were four twenty-liter cans of gasoline in the trailer, as well as four cans of water.Joe had incorporated top of the line security shutters on all the doors and windows of the log house. He closed and locked them that Monday and was ready to go. He didn’t go far, however. Just to the densest portion of the forest flanking his road. It was about a half way between the county road and the house.After he had unloaded the ROKON from the trailer, Joe took his Husky 570 chainsaw with 24” bar into the forest. He cut down six trees, taking them from various points in the forest. With the ROKON, he skidded each one of them to the road and placed them in a modified form of an abatis.It wouldn’t stop any determined attempt to remove, but it might give someone pause. It might also fool those not studied in defensive measures into believing the fall was natural, since they had to take apart the abatis before they could see the cut ends of the trees and with no signs of travel might also believe it was uninhabited past it. It was part of the reason Joe had picked a rainy day to leave. The rain would wash away the recent evidence of travel.With the ROKON and chainsaw stowed once again, Joe climbed into the driver’s seat of the Yukon XL and was off to see the wizard.He headed west when he got to I-80, though his line of travel was to be east. He couldn’t figure another way to get around Reno. He wasn’t going to go through it, due to the lingering radiation. It took him three days of using back roads after he got to Truckee, to get to US 50. It was in decent shape and he made good time up to Fernley, where he picked up I-80 again.Joe stopped whenever he saw friendly looking people. He gathered quite a bit of information when he stopped in Truckee, about the status of things west of them. It wasn’t good. I-80 had been a major evacuation route from the west coast. There were millions of people trying to get away from the attack, and fears of further attacks and invasion of the west coast.“Invasion?” Joe asked. It was the first he’d heard of it. None of the Amateur Radio Operators he’d heard had mentioned it.The man he was talking to laughed and shook his head. “Who’d want it now? It was just wild rumors.” His smile faded. “Got a lot of people killed though, believing it to be true. Some of them got as far as here. Weren’t no more gas to be found. The evacuation kind of petered out here.”That would explain why he hadn’t seen more people at his place, Joe decided.“Lot of killing went on,” the man continued, apparently quite pleased to have someone to whom he could tell his tale, that hadn’t already heard it several times.“Over gas and food, mostly. But they were desperate. Some of those that could, killed at the drop of a hat. Seen it myself a couple of times.” He shook his head. “Over nothin’.”Joe asked, “How have you guys making out?”The friendly look faded from the man’s face. “Don’t talk much of that. Particularly to strangers.”Joe quickly nodded. “I understand. Word gets to the wrong ears, and then… you never know. I guess I should be moving along.”“Perhaps so, stranger. If word got back to us you been telling tales, it won’t go good for you.”“Don’t worry. I’m in the same boat. Wouldn’t want it known I’m traveling about. Might give people the wrong idea.”The man’s grin was back. “Yes, sir. It might at that. Mum’s the word.”“Thank you.” Joe slipped the Yukon back into gear and left the small town. He found a good place to stop and eat his evening meal. It didn’t take long to heat up water on his single burner multi-fuel camp stove he set up on the open tailgate of the trailer and reconstitute a Mountain House camping entree.After the quick meal, he traveled another mile or two, until he found a place he could turn off the road and park the Yukon and trailer where they couldn’t be seen from it. Joe took a turn around the area, and then set up camp when nothing looked out of the ordinary.It was still early spring and the nights were cold in the mountains. Joe set up his Mountain Hardwear Trango 3.1 tent and laid out the Thermarest sleep pad and the Slumberjack Quallofill sleeping bag.He had a Thetford chemical toilet and a privacy enclosure in the trailer, but just used the forest as a bathroom, burying his waste with a Cold Steel Special Forces shovel. With the alarm set on the Yukon XL, Joe crawled into the tent and went to bed, one of the Glock 21’s at hand.Joe continued his trip on the old road between Truckee and King’s Beach on Lake Tahoe. It was rough going in places. Twice he had to take the long handled, round point shovel from its bracket on the full length cargo rack atop the Yukon XL and do a little dirt work to make the road passable.At another spot Joe used the 12’ x 16” aluminum ramps, also carried on the roof rack, to bridge a two foot deep, three foot wide gap in the pavement that had been washed away. He could have gone through a lot of trouble going down off the road and around, but handling the ramps, even at 115 pounds each, was much easier and faster.Joe drove around Fernley a bit after he got there, but didn’t see anyone. He did see signs of survivors, but it seemed no one was willing to show themselves. Getting back on I-80, Joe continued the trip. He checked a few vehicles and trucks. They’d already been scavenged. He was a little leery of scavenging in some one else’s territory, anyway.Despite the risk of scavenging, when Joe began to find untouched vehicles, he couldn’t resist the urge. The area apparently was too far out of range for those in Fernley, and it was still quite a distance to Lovelock. He took very little, except for arms and ammunition. He did make a note of everything that might be useable to a group of survivors.He could use the information for trading purposes or even as good faith offering. He ran across another fuel tanker with fuel still in it and topped off the tanks in the trailer. He was transferring fuel from the trailer to the Yukon every evening to keep its tanks near full in case he had to leave the trailer.Joe took his time, keeping a sharp eye out for problems. Natural or man-made. Despite the capabilities of the Yukon XL the way he had it equipped, he continued to be extra cautious when he had to abandon the pavement for whatever reason. Occasionally he had to switch for the East bound lanes to the West bound, or back, to go around a major blockage.One such blockage appeared to have at its center another tanker truck. There were at least a dozen vehicles involved. From the size of the burned area, Joe decided the fuel tanker trailer had ruptured and dumped fuel on the road. Joe turned around and went back to the closest restricted crossover. He went back to the East bound lanes and tipping his hat at the “Authorized Vehicles Only” sign at the crossover.He wondered what had happened to the people in the abandoned vehicles. A short time later he saw three coyotes milling around an overturned vehicle. They took off when Joe came up. He stopped and checked the vehicle. The driver’s window was cracked, with a piece or two missing here and there. But there wasn’t enough opening for the coyotes to get in. A decomposing body lay inside the vehicle, on the roof that was now a floor. Joe gagged and backed away.When Joe was well out into the area of the I-80 with the Humboldt Sink spread out on each side of the road, he stopped in the middle of a long empty stretch and set up camp. No one was going to come up on him unannounced where he was.Joe set up his Katadyn Base Camp water filter by hanging it from the roof rack. It hung down the side of the Yukon. After placing the empty 20-liter water container under it, he filled the holding bag with water from the Sink using a two gallon pail. It began to drip into the receiving can almost immediately.He set up his camp stove on the tailgate of the trailer and heated a large pot of water from another of his water cans. When it was hot, he added water from the second water can to the Sunshower bag, and poured in the hot. It was warm enough to take a luxurious shower after he hung the bag up on the other side of the Yukon.After thoroughly brushing off his clothing he dressed and began fixing his supper. He filled the Katadyn drip filter several times, filling both the empty can and the partial he’d used water from to take his shower. When the cans were full he put them back in the trailer, cleaned the filter and put it away. He slept soundly, feeling secure in the location.He was getting close to Lovelock and had stopped checking abandoned vehicles when he reached the point where the locals had scavenged them. He slowed down and approached what looked like another large pileup of vehicles. Joe slowed more and came to a stop. Things didn’t look right. There were cars all the way across both sets of lanes, the median, the shoulders, and out into the side ditches.Joe had several pieces of communication equipment. First he tried several channels on the Motorola FRS/GMRS radio. No response. On a hunch he tried channel 19 on the Cobra 148GTL mobile CB radio. Bingo. “That you out there in the grey looking rig?” came the reply to his hail.“It is. What’s going on? I’m headed to Winnemucca and would like to get by.”“No problem. We just need to extract a toll to let you pass.”“A toll? How much?” Joe keyed the mike and asked.“Ten percent of your stuff. We decide which ten percent.”Joe didn’t reply. He carefully turned around and went back the way he’d come. “Hey you! Come on back! We can work this out!” Joe continued to ignore the voice on the radio. When he was well out of sight of the road block, Joe stopped. After getting out of the Yukon, he climbed up onto the roof rack with the Steiner Commander V binoculars and the PTR, and watched the road in the direction of the road block. It wasn’t long before a pair of 4-wheelers showed up speeding toward him.Joe had brought up the Cobra HH38WXST CB hand held radio. He immediately keyed it and said, “Call them off or I’ll kill them.” He then went prone on the roof rack, extended the bipod legs of the rifle and sighted in on one of the 4-wheelers. It was close to a 600-meter shot. He fired three slow shots, aiming at the center of the chest of the driver each time. On the third shot both people on the 4-wheeler fell off and the machine ran off into the ditch.Joe immediately brought the other team into view in the scope. It was slowing, and he hesitated. The 4-wheeler turned around and went back to where the other two men lay.Joe heard one of the men on the second machine on the CB. He shot ‘em both! Both of them! Shot went right through Billy’s belly and into Harry!”“What about the machine?” came the reply. The leader seemed more concerned about the equipment than the men. Joe immediately sighted on the second machine and fired three quick rounds.The two men jumped for the cover of the ditch along the road. Switching aim he fired at what little he could see of the machine in the ditch. Joe picked up the CB and keyed it. “You try to follow me and you’ll get worse.”Joe climbed down off the roof rack and got into the Yukon. He drove another mile away from the site and stopped again. He listened to the chatter on the radio. They’d made no effort to change channels and Joe shook his head.From what he heard, both of the men were dead, their 4-wheeler had a hole in the fuel tank and a flat. The second machine had two flats but seemed to be in running order.Joe continued to monitor the channel while he studied a topo map of the area. He got out of the Yukon and crossed the highway ditch. Joe studied the mountains for a few minutes through the binoculars. He occasionally scanned the road in the direction of the Lovelock. He saw no one, and from the waning conversation, those manning the roadblock were either unwilling or unable to come after him.Joe went back to the Yukon, opened the cross-bed tool box, and extracted a fence tool. He cut the fence and folded back the wire. Joe went off-road with the rig, to get around Lovelock. He took it easy, having only tested out the off-road capability of the Yukon XL after he’d had the modifications to it done.He made a point not to get into anyplace he couldn’t turn around in. And he did have to turn around a few times. Following the topo map took some practice. Joe did quite a bit of pick and shovel work, to make passable stretches the Yukon and trailer wouldn’t quite go with out it.The bridging ramps came in handy several times, as well. Joe was amazed at the number of small gullies the mountain valleys had in them. Not all were small ones where the shovel would lower the edges and fill the bottom. Some were two or three feet deep and several feet wide. The ramps were twelve feet long, giving him a safe span of ten feet, if the edges of the ground were sound.He cut the 399 road north of Lovelock and debated for a while whether to take it and other local roads the long way around Rye Patch Lake, or cut back to Interstate 80 cross country. Joe took the road. The time was probably shorter, if he took the roads, though the distance was quite a bit more.Much to his surprise, he ran across a group of people moving a herd of cattle the second day he was on the back roads. He was on them before he realized it and three men on horseback were suddenly right there. None had made a move to pull a gun, but all appeared armed.“What’cha doing up here?” asked the apparent leader of the group. “How’d you get through Lovelock? They’re ambushing everybody and taking their stuff.”“Came around cross-country from I-80 to this road. Yeah. I had a run in at the roadblock at Lovelock. That’s why I’m coming this way.”“Must be pretty lucky. Or pretty good,” one of the other men said.“Go on back to the herd,” the leader said, motioning to a pair of calves venturing from the protection of the rest of the herd. He turned back to Joe and added, “Really got to look out for the coyotes. They’re everywhere.” He paused a moment and then asked, “Would you mind stopping at the camp? We’ve hardly talked to any other survivors and would like to hear your tale. No way to prove it, but we’re a friendly bunch if no one tries to misuse us.”“I’d be glad to. About the only people I’ve had contact with are like those in Lovelock. Everyone else is keeping a very low profile.”“The camp should be up ahead a ways on the road. They travel faster than we do. Just ease on through the herd. Mind you don’t spook ‘em. We wouldn’t take kindly to that. I’ll radio ahead.”Unable not to feel a bit tense about the situation, Joe headed for the camp. When he was out of sight of the drovers, and not yet in sight of the camp, he stopped for a moment and checked his weapons. While he favored the PTR and the 7.62mm x 51mm cartridge it fired, the rifle was awkward in the Yukon.He took out a Steyr AUG and several magazines and put them on the passenger seat. The AUG was a bull pup configuration and fired 5.56mm x 45mm ammunition. He could handle it one handed if need be, and it packed much more punch than his Glock 21 in .45 ACP. Everything was as ready as he could make it and he started up again.Joe felt considerably more confident when he got to the camp set up alongside the road at a good spot to overnight the cattle. There were women and children in the camp. The women and older children all had firearms in evidence, but they gathered around curiously, not threateningly.“Hi,” Joe said, getting out of the Yukon XL slowly. “I’m Joe. I ran into the buckaroos and they asked me to stop.”“Howdy. I’m Melissa,” said what looked to be the oldest of the women. “Steven radioed and said you’d be here. Welcome.” She held out her hand and Joe shook it.“Joe,” Joe said. He was looking around at the camp. There was a pickup with a large horse trailer, two with a tank trailer each, two with travel trailers, and two with their beds full of equipment. There were three large tents up, and a couple of privacy enclosures. A steel fire ring had a small fire burning within it. There was a tripod over it, with a suspended pot. A coffee pot sat near the fire.“You guys have quite an operation here.”“Thank you. We’ve been on the road for a while. We’re all anxious to hear what’s been going on out there,” Melissa said, making a vague gesture away from the camp. “But it should wait until the herd gets here so the others can hear, too.” She grinned. “That way you won’t have to tell the tale more that a couple of times.”Joe smiled back. “Thanks.”“Make yourself to home. We’ve got a chemical toilet set up over there,” Melissa said, pointing to one of the privacy shelters.Nodding, Joe headed for it. When he came back he took the time to inspect every inch of the Yukon and trailer. Joe was glad he’d had the heavy duty skid plates installed to protect vulnerable items on the underside of the Yukon. Those and the rock sliders along the edges of the truck had kept the damage to a minimum when he’d been off road.Several of the children and a couple of the women were curious about his rig and Joe, rather pridefully, showed them some of its aspects. He was still answering questions about it when the herd came into view.Joe stayed out of the way while the hustle and bustle of getting the cattle settled and the final elements of the camp set up. Then, with two of the buckaroos circling the herd on horseback, the leader of the group came up to Joe and introduced himself.“Hi, again. I’m Steven. I think you met my wife, Melissa.”Joe shook hands with him and said. “Yes, I did. She’s been most hospitable. My name is Joe. I was telling your wife how much I liked the way you’re doing things.”Steven smiled. “Thanks. Had a lot of practice. We’ve been gathering up stray beeves since shortly after the attack. Just so you won’t think we’re rustling them, we’re recording ear tags and where we found them. If some one has a claim, we’ll turn them over. Just didn’t want to let the coyotes take more than what the radiation already has.”“I understand.” Joe smiled and added, “Just so you know, I’m not a raider, either. I have a place in Winnemucca I want to check on. I’m from right on the state line west of Reno. Reno took a nuke and there’s not much going on around it. Talked to a guy in Truckee. A few survivors there, doing okay.“I’ve seen signs of other survivors, but everyone seems to be keeping to themselves. Haven’t seen any signs of government. Haven’t heard anything on the radio much either.”“Same with us. Our place is another three days north of here. We hunkered down when the attack came. We seemed to be all right. There was some fallout, but not much. Nobody got real sick. A couple of us on the ranches out here got together and decided to try to recover all the beef we could. Food is going to be a problem in the future if the winters get as bad as the news was talking about before the war.”“I had a shelter. Didn’t get much radiation either, but enough to stay in the shelter for a while. Mostly just been waiting for it to settle down. I’m kind of on an exploration trip. I’m set up pretty good for produce. Have a big green house. But I’d sure like to make a deal on beef for the future.”“Really? How is your fuel supply?” Steven saw the cautious look on Joe’s face and hurriedly added, “Not in detail. Just… You got any to trade? We’d just filled our farm tanks when the war started, so we’re okay for the moment. But we’re sure going through it fast, even being careful.”“I know where a tank truck full is, if you have a way to get it. The truck wouldn’t start.”Steven’s eyes lit up. “That’d be worth a beef a year for five years, if we can recover it.”“Done.” Joe told Steven the mile marker on I-80 that the tanker was closest to.Steven was excited. “We can take our old semi… it still runs… over and take 447 down to the interstate. That should be far enough from Reno not to be a problem, shouldn’t it?”Joe nodded. “I wouldn’t waste any time. The areas on both sides of that stretch have already been scavenged. People are bound to get to it soon.”“Yeah. Hang on a minute.” Steven went over to one of the trucks.Joe saw him talking on a radio. It was a business band radio. Joe heard the Bearcat BCD396T scanner in the Yukon pick up the transmission. He couldn’t hear what was said, but Joe could tell it was Steven. Joe just hoped no one close was monitoring like he was.Steven came back. “They can be there late tomorrow. Thanks. If they recover that fuel, you’ll have your beef. Have to make arrangements to pick it up, but we’ll have one ready for you each season.”“Fair enough,” Joe said and shook Steven’s hand again.Joe stayed the night at the camp, setting up his own tent. They fed him, but Joe contributed to their food stocks to equal what he consumed, despite Steven’s insistence that he didn’t need to.The next morning Joe left when the camp group headed out after breakfast at dawn. He could travel faster than the caravan and quickly out distanced them. He cut east on another state road and cautiously approached the Humboldt River at the northern end of Rye Patch Lake. Fortunately the bridge was intact and he was able to cross the river.As he’d seen in some of the other small towns, there were signs of survivors, but no one hailed him, or tried to stop him when he went through Imlay. He got back on I-80 and headed for Winnemucca. He was very surprised to find that every vehicle he stopped and checked on the highway had already been scavenged. There weren’t many semis in evidence. Not as many as there should have been. Someone had done a very thorough job of scavenging.Joe approached every exit cautiously, stopping well back and studying the area with binoculars before he went past. He was glad he was doing so, when he got close to Winnemucca. Like Lovelock, there was a blockade at the first southwest off ramp.He turned the rig around and retraced his route for a ways and then headed up into a likely looking spot in the mountains where he could hide the Yukon and trailer. The ground was solid and he didn’t leave much in the way of tracks. After unloading the ROKON, Joe covered the truck and trailer with ghillie suit style tarps. With the PTR slung over one shoulder, a musette bag of magazines over the other, and a Kifaru Marauder pack on his back, Joe climbed on the ROKON and headed for the roadblock.Joe slowed when he neared the blockade. He stopped some distance from it and called out. “Hello! Anyone there?”“This is the Nevada National Guard. Keep your hands off your weapons and come forward.”“I’m not looking for trouble,” Joe said, staying where he was.“It’s routine, sir. Please come forward.”“Will I be disarmed?”“No. But we need to know a little about you before you can enter the city.”Joe eased the bike forward and stopped again when a Guardsman in full MOPP gear stepped between two of the cars constituting the roadblock. He was carrying a survey meter and ran the probe around Joe’s body. “Normal,” he said and went back to the other side of the blockade.A Guardsman with a Captain’s bars on his collar stepped out next. He was wearing a facemask. “You been exposed to any unusual clouds of dust or fog within the last thirty days?”Joe shook his head.“Been sick at all?”“No.”“Been around anyone that was?”“Not to my knowledge. I stayed in a buckaroo camp up in the hills a couple of nights ago, but everyone seemed just fine. They hadn’t had contact with anyone except their own people for some time they said. What’s going on?”“Just routine. Had a couple of people come through here early on. Sick. Just the flu, but it took a foothold and we lost some people because of it. Can’t afford to loose many more. We’re just being cautious. “You passing through or hoping to stay?”“Not sure. I have a place on the south side of town. Thought I would stick around for a while. See how things go.”“Not a real good answer,” the Captain said slowly. “We’re hard up on food. How are you going to provide for yourself?”“I have food with me for a little while.”“Couldn’t carry much on that bike. Don’t see anything but a small pack and a big gun.”Joe began tensing up again. “I wasn’t sure what kind of welcome I would get. Some people at Lovelock wanted ten percent of everything I had to just let me pass through. I stashed some of my stuff before I came up.”“I see. So you gave up ten percent of your stuff?”“No. I went around, cross-country.”“Ah. Not one to cave in, huh?”“Not to extortion,” Joe replied firmly.“Well, we won’t ask for ten percent, but while you’re here, you’ll be subject to helping the community a few hours every week. What’s yours is yours to keep. You can trade for goods. Some people are even taking gold and silver. Don’t go causing any trouble and trouble will leave you alone.”“So you’re letting me in?” Joe asked.The Captain nodded. He made a motion to those still behind the vehicles blocking the way and one was pushed out of the way.“Do I need some kind of pass to go back and get my stuff and come back in?” Joe asked.“No. We’ll make a note that you’ll be in and out.”“I take it we’re under martial law, wherever there is a post.”“Haven’t heard anything from headquarters, from state or federal government. We’re the local detachment, doing what we can to keep things going. And peaceful. In cooperation with city government.”Joe nodded and eased the bike forward, still a little tense, despite the Captain’s words. But no one tried to stop him. Breathing a sigh of relief, Joe headed for his place. There were signs that people had been in it, perhaps for some time, from the amount of junk, trash, and waste there was in and around it. But no one was there now.The bolted down steel bunks and the steel picnic table with attached benches were intact. So was the stainless steel counter with built-in sink. They showed a few dents, but were still in good shape. The plastic bucket to catch the drain water was gone, and the simple brass bib faucet was broken off.It took a couple of hours, but Joe had the place cleaned up the best he could without tools, the junk piled out of the way, and the waste and trash ready to be buried. With that done, Joe headed back to get the truck and trailer. He would finish the cleaning process when he got back with the rig.There was no problem when he left. He told the guards at the blockade that he would be back in a while. They wouldn’t let him back in when he returned with the Yukon XL and the trailer. The Sergeant in charge sent for the Captain again.Joe saw the man’s eyes widen slightly when he saw Joe’s rig. He motioned for one of the men, in protective gear, to run the survey meter over the truck and trailer. Again the man shook his head. There was no radiation.“You didn’t say you had this kind of rig,” the Captain said, almost accusingly.“Didn’t want to risk it until I knew things were going okay here. It’s not going to be a problem, is it?”The Captain shook his head. “Not officially, but you’d better watch your back. You’ll be a target once that becomes common knowledge. We’re keeping control, but there is a lawless element working around the area and here in the city.”“Thanks for the warning,” Joe said. The Captain waved to open a gap in the blockade again and Joe drove through. He, or rather the Yukon XL and trailer, got approving glances from the half dozen men behind blockade.Joe went directly to his place and finished the cleanup after taking a broom out of the Yukon. He kept one to clear snow from the rig, but it worked just fine for its original design. He went to the edge of the property and dug a hole in which to bury the junk, trash, and waste he couldn’t burn.After digging up one of the caches, Joe removed a replacement faucet for the sink and installed it using tools from the toolbox in the trailer. There was a plugged drain pipe under the sink and he installed the P-trap he took out of the cache. That done, he took down the Little Giant multipurpose ladder from the Yukon roof rack and extended it. He leaned it against the building and went up to look at the roof.It was in good shape, being a large slab of concrete, as was the flat mounted solar panel. It had a slight covering of dust, but the winds Winnemucca was prone to kept it fairly clear. After putting the ladder back on the Yukon, Joe took the long handled shovel again and dug down near one corner of the building. A few inches down was a rectangular concrete pit. It contained two deep cycle twelve volt batteries and a wiring panel, a pressure tank, and the top of the well, with the necessary plumbing.Joe flipped a couple of switches to reconnect the solar panel to the batteries and the batteries to the 12 volt submersible pump in the well. He went into the shelter and tried the faucet. Quite a bit of air blew out, and then some dirty water. But after the water ran for a minute or so it cleared up. Smiling, Joe went back outside and closed the hatch doors on the pit, but didn’t fill in the shallow hole.He carried in his chemical toilet. Using a pair of Channel Lock pliers from the toolbox, he took out the plug in the leg of the four inch wye sewer fitting set into one wall. He dumped the chemical toilet into the drain. It led to the septic tank that had been installed when the shelter was built. The connection for a toilet was just under the surface of the floor, but Joe had decided not to install anything easily breakable. From the attempts at damage to what he had installed, he was glad he hadn’t.Joe pondered for a while whether or not to open up the hidden compartment, but decided it was doubtful he would be staying, so just moved a few things in from the Yukon and trailer. He settled himself for the evening.When he got up the next morning he went out to check on the Yukon and trailer. He’d set the alarm the night before, as always, but he was a little jumpy because of what the Captain had told him.He’d brought out the Brunton ADC Pro portable weather instrument and checked the information it provided. He’d been tracking the weather with it and it was now showing a sharp drop in barometric pressure. It would probably rain before the day was out.After making himself some breakfast using his camping equipment, Joe locked up the door of the shelter and climbed into the Yukon. He headed for downtown to see what was going on. There wasn’t much, but he saw an old man sitting in front of a restaurant. The main streets had been cleared of stalled cars and Joe was able to park near the man.Joe sat down on the bench beside the man. “Hi. I’m Joe. What’s going on?”“Jorge,” replied the man. He made no move to shake hands. “I never saw you before.”“I have a place on the south side. Just got into town to check it out after the war. How about you? You doing okay?”“Sure. Just had my morning cup and waiting to see what transpires today.”“Such as…”“Never know. Saw a coyote right here downtown a couple of days ago. Never used to see that before the war.”“I suppose not. You say you had your morning cup? They have coffee here?”“Sorry, son. Only for the locals. And a cup a day. Costs a silver dime. Just like the old days. ‘cepting it ain’t a bottomless cup.”“I see,” replied Joe. “I’m not much of a coffee drinker, anyway. Tea is my drink.”“They got that, too. And they’ll let you have a cup. For that silver dime. You got any? You got any booze? Or chocolate. My granddaughter would dearly love to have some chocolate.”Joe didn’t need any silver dimes. He had quite a supply, but the rather forlorn appeal for chocolate for his granddaughter touched him. “Yeah. I’ve got a little chocolate left. And I could use a cup of tea.”Joe went to the Yukon XL and fished through one of his packs. He brought out a couple of Hershey bars and took back to Jorge.“I can only spare one dime…”“That’s okay. They’re on special today. Two for a dime.”“Thanks, Joe. I’d better get this up to home before I decide to eat it myself. Want to get back before they start the town meeting.”“How far is it? I can take you if it’s more than a couple of blocks.”“That would be nice. Can’t pay you for the gas, though. Just can’t spare it.”“Diesel. And that’s okay. Come on.”Jorge climbed into the passenger seat of the Yukon. “Wow! You from the government or something? Or a ham? You got lots of radio.”“I like to stay informed,” Joe said, starting the truck. “Tell me how to get to your house.”Joe followed Jorge’s directions and dropped him off a few minutes later at his house on one of the residential streets. When Jorge was back in the Yukon, Joe headed back downtown. He noticed some activity around the Red Lion Inn and Casino parking lot as Jorge said, “Pull in here. There having the meeting in the Red Lion.He pulled in to the parking lot and parked near the other vehicles that appeared to be in running shape. There were also several horses tethered to a makeshift hitching rack.Joe followed Jorge into the Casino and they found a spot in the rear of the crowd as it gathered. He leaned over and asked Jorge, “Why aren’t they having this in City Hall?”“This has kind of been the un-official City Hall since the Guard got involved. Guess ‘cause it’s kind of neutral territory.”It didn’t make sense to Joe, but he let it slide as he was jostled when more people came in. The crowd was beginning to get unruly when several people began to take seats at a large table setting at the end of the room. Joe noticed that the Captain was one of them.It seemed to be a routine meeting, considering the circumstances. People reporting on resources, availabilities, responsibilities, consumption rates. All sorts of things those responsible for a community needed to know to make decisions and plans. Joe noted that many of the reports were directed at the Captain. The Guard seemed to be a big part in the ongoing government of the city. Very little mention was made of the areas outside the city proper.Things didn’t sound all that bad, but Joe began to feel a little uneasy with the way some of it sounded. He looked around the room. It seemed to him that everyone was quite comfortable with what was being said. And suggested. They were round about words, but the gist was that those who had, were soon to provide for those that didn’t. Or else. Joe decided it wasn’t the place to be.He leaned over and told Jorge, “I’ll see you around.” He left as unobtrusively as he could, but he thought the Captain might have taken notice. Joe wasted no time getting back to the shelter. He loaded up the things he’d removed from the Yukon for the night before. And then it took him only a moment to decide which to recover first. The caches in the barrels or the goods behind the false wall.He took the shovel off the Yukon and dug out the tops of the other barrels that were buried by the one he’d already dug up. After transferring everything from the barrels to the Yukon XL and trailer, Joe took out the portable Oxy/Acetylene torch and took it inside the shelter. He went back and unfastened the bundle of thermal lances on the roof rack. He took one inside and connected the second oxygen hose from the tank set to the lance. He put on the cutting goggles and after firing up the torch, he used it to light the lance.Joe was very careful not to cut all the way through the block wall. He didn’t want to burn anything behind it. But he cut an outline large enough to make it easy to get things out. He continued to cut the wall in a waffle pattern. With the burn completed, Joe loaded up the torch equipment and got the sledgehammer from the Yukon. A few strong blows and the sections of the wall began to fall free. When he had the opening made he began to empty out the space and load the items into the truck and trailer.When the space was clear Joe hesitated, but he didn’t want to lose more than he had to. He got the ladder and some tools from the Yukon and went up on the roof to pull the solar panel. When it was in the trailer, he pulled the batteries, the tank, and the water pump and added them to the trailer. After making a quick check to make sure he wasn’t missing anything, he used the ghillie tarp to cover the contents of the trailer.He was at the blockade when Joe looked in his side mirror and saw a Humvee headed toward the blockade at high speed. Two men were pushing a barrier car out of the way. Joe heard the radio one of the men crackle and the man quickly look at Joe.Joe gunned the Yukon and slipped through the hole before the men could block it again or raise their weapons. He heard a shot or two as he drove away, in a weaving pattern to reduce the chance of one of the rounds hitting him. Checking the side mirror again, Joe saw the Humvee in chase. He floored the accelerator, to get as much distance from the blockade as he could.He suddenly slammed on the brakes, stopping quickly, almost jackknifing the trailer. Joe rolled out of the Yukon, PTR in hand. He’d slipped a 100-round BETA-C drum in it before he left the shelter. He took a fraction of a second to deploy the legs of the bipod, and then began to pour round after round into the approaching Humvee as quickly as he could.Someone was hanging out the passenger side of the Humvee, trying to fire back at Joe, but the Humvee was maneuvering too erratically for the man to get any kind of good shot. Prone, with the PTR on the bipod, Joe didn’t have the same trouble. Long before the Humvee got close, it nosed over into the median at high speed, jumped the other lanes, and disappeared on the far side.Joe got back into the Yukon and took off again. He slowed down only enough to not wreck, weaving in and out of the stalled vehicles on the road. Before dark, he picked a spot he’d seen on the way in to pull over and hide above and behind an outcropping of rock near the roadway. Joe ran back down to replace the wire fence he’d cut to get off the Interstate after he’d parked the Yukon XL and trailer out of sight from the Interstate.He didn’t think they would send anyone else after him, but Joe wasn’t going to take any chances. He topped off the 100-round magazine and put it back in the PTR. He found a good place where he could lie down and keep an eye on the Interstate in the direction of Winnemucca.Joe decided to forgo a hot supper and ate a little jerky and a handful of gorp as he kept watch well into the night. The wind had picked up and it began to rain lightly. Joe went to the truck and retrieved his Stashaway II rain suit. After putting it on, he went back on watch. He dozed fitfully during the rainy night, waking at every change in sound.A little groggy the next morning, Joe took the time to heat water on his camping stove. He dropped two Bigelow Earl Grey teabags into his Stanley 2-quart vacuum bottle and added the water. He let it steep for a couple of minutes and then poured himself a cup of the tea.He continued to watch the Interstate as he drank his tea. After the first cup of tea, Joe fired up the Yukon XL and drove down to where he’d cut the fence. It took only a moment to pull the fence out of the way and get back on I-80. Checking his side mirrors often, Joe headed back toward Reno. Instead of back-tracking the route he’d taken around Lovelock, he decided to stay on I-80 until he got close to the first north eastern exit Lovelock.He ran into some undisturbed vehicles and did a little scavenging along the strip of I-80 he’d missed going the long way around Lovelock. He didn’t get much until he ran up on the scene of another battle.Joe studied the area through his binoculars for a while from a distance when he first saw what appeared to be another blockade. However, it was only on the west bound lanes. As he studied the layout, he came to realize that what he was seeing was an encampment. Vehicles had been pulled or pushed into a circle. The circle seemed to key on the one semi truck in the bunch. It was parked with the rear of the trailer in the circle.When there were no signs of activity, Joe got back into the Yukon and drove up. He stopped before he got to the blockade when he saw the remains of someone with a gun lying beside one of the vehicles outside the circle. There was expended brass around. The coyotes had been at the body and it wasn’t a pretty sight.Joe got out and looked around on foot, the PTR in his hand. He started toward the body, but stopped and went to the rear of the Yukon XL. He set the PTR handy and then suited up in his CBRN gear. The scene looked simple enough, but the Guard Captain at Winnemucca had said a bad flu virus had been carried into the city from outside. Joe wasn’t going to take a chance.When he was suited up, Joe surveyed the scene in detail, on foot. He found three more dead people, with weapons, at vantage points around the outside of the circle of cars and truck. When he went into the circle, he found parts of fifteen more bodies, a few with weapons.The semi trailer doors were closed and Joe was careful when he opened them, holding the PTR at the ready. But there was no danger in the trailer. Only more bodies. These had been protected from the coyotes, but not the bullets that had holed the doors. Joe discovered then why a battle had been fought. The truck was a grocery store delivery truck. It was still half full of food.Joe decided that one group of people had found it and defended it against another group that wanted it. The remaining evidence indicated the raiders won, took what they wanted, and left. Without knowing how full the trailer had been initially, Joe couldn’t tell how much had been used by the original finders and then taken by the raiders. The trailer floor space was three-quarters taken up with pallets, but most of the pallets had been broken open and items taken out. Having gone through the previous winter, some of the wet pack canned goods had swollen, and a few burst, but most of the canned items had made it through with no visible damage.After deciding what he wanted to take, Joe hopped down out of the trailer and went to the Yukon. He dug out a large spray bottle of full strength Clorox. Spraying each weapon and accessory liberally with the Clorox in turn, he then wiped them all down and stowed them in the trailer. After that he took from the semi trailer everything he could fit into the Yukon and his trailer. He took only things he knew he would use, and items that he thought would have the highest trade value, whether he would use them or not.He had good tie downs for the loads, so he piled things high on the trailer and on the roof rack, strapping them down securely. Joe looked at the loaded rig and shook his head. He was going to have to be extremely careful when he went off-road to get around Lovelock.Having decided to try to recover the rest of the goods later, Joe removed the bodies from the semi trailer and put them in one of the cars. He wasn’t going to bury them, but didn’t want to leave them for the coyotes and buzzards. He closed up the trailer again and then decontaminated himself before taking off the protective gear.He made a note of the location of the trailer and then hit the road again. Joe continued to check abandoned vehicles but found very little more he wanted before he got to the place he was going to leave the interstate. He did find two more fuel tankers, but one was empty. He made a note of the full one.After cutting the fence, Joe drove through and headed for the spot he’d picked out on the map for his evening meal. There was another place a ways past the meal stop where he could camp.The long handled shovel and bridging ramps got even more use than they had on the outbound trip. He also used the 5-foot long pinch/pry bar to move some rocks. Once, rather than try to back track and take an alternate route when his way was blocked by a large boulder, he used another thermal lance to cut it into pieces on which he could use the pinch bar to roll out of the way. Joe finally made it back to the Interstate, southwest of Lovelock.He went back through Truckee, but this time he stopped to see if he could do a little trading. Joe let it be known to the few people he saw that he was wanting to trade a few things and where he would be.He set up camp on the edge of town, within view of one of the occupied dwellings of the town. He hoped he’d be safe there, being in open view of anyone passing by, and by those in the home.It didn’t take long for people to start showing up. Joe declined the most wanted trades, those for gasoline, diesel, and medical supplies. Not only did he not have much with him, the items were too necessary for his own use. He did trade off a few things, including several of the less capable of the firearms he’d found, with only a box or less of ammunition for each one of them. He’d hang onto the rest for use or trade later.Mostly Joe was looking for opportunities. From the first days after his conversion into a prepper, he’d known he couldn’t make it on his own forever. He had several years’ supply of many items, but only a couple of years of some hard to store or expensive to store items. He needed a way to obtain them. He’d already cut a deal for the beef with the ranchers north of Lovelock. He wanted some kind of similar deal in Truckee, only ongoing.So Joe made many discrete inquiries about possible job opportunities. He didn’t find many opportunities, much to his dismay, so he packed things up after two days of trading and headed for home, disappointed. He got very anxious when he approached his road. Would his place be intact?The trees were still down, right where he’d left them. But that didn’t mean no one had gone past on foot. Joe chocked the trailer out of the way and unhooked. He then used the hydraulic winch in the rear bumper to clear an opening in the abatis. When he could get through, he reconnected to the trailer and went up the road.He stopped before he got to the house, parked the rig, set the alarm, and set off in the woods toward the house. There were no signs anyone was occupying the place, Joe decided, studying the house with binoculars from several locations around the perimeter of the woods. But some one had been there. He could see some damage to security shutters on the front door.Joe finally went up to the house and opened the security shutters on the back door. Everything was secure inside. He hurried back to the Yukon XL and trailer and brought them to the house. He parked the trailer, and then the Yukon, in the garage, before he began opening up the house again. Though everything looked secure from outside, Joe checked the basement and the shelter. Everything was as it should be.After everything in the Yukon XL and the trailer were unloaded and stowed in appropriate spots, Joe lit a fire in the wood/coal furnace and sat back to relax and review in his mind what he’d accomplished during his trip. Frisco Lessons – EpilogMainly he’d found that being on your own had many disadvantages. And he still didn’t have really good long term options to make it. He had food for several years, and other consumables for three or four years. He did have options for some things, such as toilet paper. He had several packages of cloth shop towels that would be used, washed, sanitized, and reused.Joe got up and poured himself a snifter of Hennessy cognac. Sipping it slowly he racked his brain for ideas. The only thing he came up with was to latch onto a group and either become part of it, or make it his own. He finished his cognac and went to bed.Over the next month Joe made six trips to recover all the supplies from the grocery truck he’d found. He stopped in Truckee during three of the trips and did a little more trading. His greenhouse garden had suffered some during his absence, but it was producing well again and he was able to find a good market for the fruits and vegetables he was raising.He kept noticing one man. He seemed to always have a horse drawn wagon load of wood available. Joe talked to him on his last trip back from the grocery truck. “How much firewood do you have?”“All I need. Me and the family got a whole forest full.” The man looked a little amused. “How much you want?”An idea suddenly came to Joe. “I might need a lot. Would have to get it over the pass before winter sets in.“Won’t take the stuff over the pass. You’d have to do that yourself.”Jokingly, Joe asked, “Don’t know anyone with a big truck in working condition, do you?”The man grinned. “As a matter of fact, I do. Don’t have the fuel to run it, though.”“I have a little fuel left,” Joe replied. “What are you asking?”The dickered back and forth for a little while. They finally settled on a price, pending Joe’s acceptance of the condition of the truck. Joe agreed to come back the following week to check it out.He took the fresh and canned food that was part of the deal when he returned to Truckee to meet with Hurley. He left the trailer at home. Hurley led the way to his place and Joe followed slowly along behind him. When they got to the small farm, Joe got his first look at the truck. It was a seventies model GMC long deck dump bed, tandem axle bob truck with a stock rack on it.Joe realized he should have tried to find such a truck before he moved everything from the grocery truck with the Yukon and trailer. But that was in the past. He went over the truck in detail, looking for problems. He couldn’t find any.He’d brought twenty gallons of diesel with him. One of Hurley’s boys put the fuel in one of the saddle tanks the truck had, and Hurley climbed in and started it. It took several tries, as it hadn’t been run in months, but it did finally start. Joe let it run while Hurley and his family unloaded the food from the Yukon.Joe had assumed that Hurley would let one of his older boys drive the truck to Joe’s place, with Joe taking him back, but Hurley was adamant that Joe take care of the transport on his own. The Yukon would fit in the bed of the bob truck, but they didn’t have a way to load it. At least, not with out a great deal of work.The truck had a rear pintle hitch. Joe’s front receiver mount tow bar for the Yukon had a ball hitch connector. “Too bad the electric’s out,” Hurley said, not at all upset with Joe’s problem. For it was Joe’s problem. “In the old days, we’d just weld up a tow bar. Got everything we need, ‘cepting a welder. Always planned to get one of those Lincoln portable welders, but never did.”Joe grinned. “I have one,” he said. “Not a Lincoln portable, but an On-Board welder by Premier Power Welding.”Hurley looked amazed. “You got a welder?”Joe nodded. “If you can weld me up a tow bar that will work, I’ll let you do some welding of your own, if you need to.”“Deal!” Hurley said immediately, holding out his hand for Joe to shake.Joe had to admit, Hurley put together the tow bar far faster and more neatly than Joe’s simple welding course would have let him do it. Hurley took the better part of the rest of the day to do some welding around the place, fashioning some protective bars and panels for their house. Hurley had used some of Joe’s small selection of welding rod to do the tow bar, but used his own rods for his work.After the work was done, Joe talked Hurley out of a supply of welding rod, at the cost of several silver quarters. Joe was whistling when he headed out, driving the GMC, towing the Yukon XL. Hurley’s boys had loaded the bob truck with cut and split wood. That had cost Joe a couple of one-ounce gold eagles, and two silver dimes each for the three boys.Joe knew it was like taking coal to Newcastle, for Joe had plenty of forest that he could cut for firewood. But he wanted to conserve it. And he didn’t want to risk injuring himself cutting it.The next day Joe called Steven on the twenty meter Amateur Band frequency Steven had told Joe he monitored regularly. After they had exchanged pleasantries, Joe asked, “You remember telling me you were having a hard time getting enough wood for your stoves on your place?”“Sure do,” Steven replied. “It’s a constant battle. Not only do we not have much available up here, what is available isn’t that great. And cutting it by hand is a chore. Can’t spare the gas for chainsaws.”“How about I bring up a bob truck load and we do some trading?”“Absolutely!”The next day Joe loaded his camping gear in the passenger side of the truck cab, locked up the place, and headed for Steven’s ranch. He was able to stay on back roads all the way. Steven talked him in to the ranch when Joe got close. In no time the wood was unloaded and two steers loaded up. The five steers he’d already made a deal for would be received in the future. The fuel tanks on the bob truck were refilled as part of the deal.When he left, Joe didn’t head directly back to his place. Again he took back roads and got back on I-80 between north east of Lovelock. He breathed a sigh of relief. The fuel tankers were still where he’d found them, untouched.Again it was hard work to pull the dolly from under the empty pup of the first rig, and get it connected to the pintle hitch on the bob-truck. After that it was fairly easy to drag the truck from under the loaded fuel trailer and get the dolly under it. Joe went slow after he’d picked up the trailer and pup. Partly out of caution, and partly because he didn’t want to go through Truckee during the busy part of the day. He hit Truckee at midnight and got home mid morning. As always, upon returning to his place, with it undisturbed, Joe breathed a sigh of relief.He parked the trailer and pup directly over the buried tanks and then took the time to fire up the Cat D-6 and build a ramp so he could unload the steers. Steven had given him a couple of halters that would fit the steers and Joe staked them out so they could graze, and filled the small galvanized trough with water that Steven had also thrown into the deal so they could drink.It was late summer now and Joe didn’t want to risk getting caught on the Truckee side of Donner Pass if an early snow storm blew in. He took the steers to Truckee the next day. He had no trouble trading them off. Hurley took one for two truckloads of firewood. A local farmer had a surplus of swine, and traded four pigs for the other steer. Joe turned around and traded the pigs to the local that was doing butchering for hire, in return for already processed meat. Joe got a dozen smoked chickens, six sides of cured smoked bacon, and eight cured and smoked hams for the four pigs on the hoof.Joe headed for home, pleased with the trip. He wasn’t too pleased when he got close to Donner. It was snowing heavily. But the bob-truck made it without a problem, even without chains. He hesitated, but left the load of wood on the truck. He would deliver it when spring broke. He covered it with a tarp to keep it dry. Joe was ready for winter.And such a winter it was. No sooner did one storm taper off than another was developing. Joe was snowbound from mid-November to the first of April. He spent the time productively. Joe kept the crops in the greenhouse rotated and growing. He’d stored hundreds of empty canning jars, with several hundred rings and thousands of lids. He also had a couple All American 30-quart pressure canners and all the accessories he needed to produce case after case of canned vegetables. He became expert at regulating the fire in the kitchen wood stove for the canning.Most of the fruit was dehydrated in a pair of Cabela’s 160 liter commercial dehydrators, or several of the Food Pantrie non-electric hanging dehydrators, depending on whether he had good sun for the solar panels or not.He tried hunting several times, but never got a shot. He just wasn’t a hunter. It was something he should have learned before the war.Joe found himself getting on the Amateur Bands most nights, for companionship. He was also learning quite a bit. There were reports of places like Lovelock and Winnemucca that had set up their own system to obtain and control supplies. There were other places like Truckee and Steven’s ranch were people were working together within the community and outside the community, to obtain the things needed for survival.Despite having as much diesel fuel and gasoline as he did, and enough Pri-D and Pri-G to keep it good for a long time, Joe was pleased to hear that a couple of farmers in the area had the equipment to make biodiesel. That was one thing that would really ease the hardships many people were facing. Diesel fuel meant transportation, and that was important long term.With the rest of the world little danger to what was left of the United States, military personnel were coming home by any means they could. Some individually, some as intact military units.And government, real government, by the people for the people, was making a comeback. There was talk of state and federal elections. People were beginning to resist in those areas where warlords had taken control, or banditry was the norm. Talk of rebuilding the infrastructure was rampant, and some people were taking steps to do so.Already three nuclear power plants were back up in different parts of the country, providing electrical power to local users. Joe was doing his own small part in the rebuilding by setting up the trading route between Truckee and Steven’s ranch. Both groups began to grow as word was passed that they were safe havens with sources of supply.At least in the west, with the long distances involved, and the many armed citizens that had survived, banditry didn’t really develop, other than in places like Lovelock and Winnemucca that controlled very small territories. And even they were beginning to come under control of less radical citizenry.Now if Joe could just catch the eye of Steven’s cousin Rachael…
End
Copyright 2007Jerry D Young
Right now people are getting sacred, when they get scared they panic, they don't think. It is like guns, the Democrates are making the ammunition makers and gund makers and sellers rich. Out of fear. Just a thought,
Seed companies have a bumper crop of customers
Out here on a farm just off Interstate 90, Greg and Sue Lutovsky hear every day how the economy is going.
Not so great for everybody else, excellent for them.
America had its Victory Gardens in backyards during World War II — not just for the food, but also to boost morale.
Now Victory Gardens are making a comeback: the 2009 Recession version.
Sue is the one who answers the phone at the couple's Irish Eyes Garden Seeds, which produces more than 400 kinds of seeds (mostly vegetables), as well as 70 different kinds of potatoes and 25 kinds of garlic.
By some of the questions they get from customers, the couple know these are first-time gardeners.
"We had one person ask us which way the seed goes in the ground," says Sue.
These days, she's handling 100 customer calls a day, and the family business expects to gross $1 million in sales this year. Business is up 20 to 30 percent over last year, both in seeds under its own label and seeds it packages for companies such as Burpee and Park Seed.
The business has a dozen employees packing seeds from shelves full of bins.
In another warehouse, seed potatoes fill big wooden crates, the kind used in apple orchards. Last year, Irish Eyes produced 160,000 pounds of seed potatoes, up from 30,000 the year before.
They've already sold out of six varieties of the tubers.
Why potatoes?
Maybe people are reaching back, back into their collective memory, back when potatoes were a staple food. Irish Eyes gets its name from that connection, the eyes referring to the eyes in a potato.
"It's the perfect food crop. It's got everything you need. It's a food source with very little effort. It can be stored a long time," says Greg. "There are not many things you can harvest in September and still be eating in June. You could live on potatoes and half a cup of cream and be healthy."
Some dietitians would argue against a cream-and-potatoes diet, but there is no denying that many in this country are now in survival mode.
Out-of-state visitors
There is no retail outlet at the 13 acres at Irish Eyes (the couple leases an additional nearby 90 acres), but customers find it anyway in the wind-swept Ellensburg countryside.
Greg says the wind is just fine with him. It helps pollinate the crops, he says, and it keeps the crops dry so fungal disease is almost nonexistent.
Recently, a customer drove from Montana, and another from northern Idaho, to pick up potato seeds.
"We can ship them to you at the appropriate planting time, probably mid-April" Greg says he told them.
But the Montana customer, who bought 500 pounds of potato seeds, "physically wanted them in their hands, I guess afraid we might run out," says Greg.
Says Sue, "I think they're scared."
Greg says about the run on seeds, "It's just about everything that's happening in he world, the stock market, the economy."
The Montana customer, says Greg, is a contractor who does part-time farming and sells produce at local farmers markets.
With not too much contracting work these days, the farming helps a lot. Those 500 pounds of seed potatoes will produce 5,000 pounds of potato crop, says Greg.
Greg says others show that they're newbie gardeners by placing an order for, say, one-eighth of an ounce of tomato seeds.
"That's like 900 tomato seeds. That's a lot of plants," he says.
Still, there is a simple math about planting your own garden.
"If a person has been laid off, and had a finite amount of money, they're looking at spending $2 for a head of lettuce that'll last two days," says Greg. "Or for $2 they can buy a packet of lettuce seeds that has 300 seeds and eat lettuce all summer long."
Belt-tightening time
It's not just Irish Eyes that has been booming.
A retail garden store like Sky Nursery in Shoreline says seed business is up "at least 20 percent."
And Burpee, the Pennsylvania-based world's largest seed company, says business also is up by that much.
Although it came up with the idea too late for this year's print catalog, on its Web site Burpee sells a "Money Garden" that for $10 puts together $20 worth of pea, tomato, pepper, bean, lettuce and carrot seeds.
It says the seeds will produce "over $650 worth of vegetables!"
"People are belt-tightening, particularly on large-ticket items," says George Ball, chairman of Burpee. "It results in an almost Depression mentality."
But it's not just about saving money, says Bruce Butterfield, research director for the National Gardening Association.
"I think one place where a lot of people feel they have some small control over what is going on around them is in their backyard," he says. "It's this whole sense of, 'I'm gonna have better-quality food, and save money.' "
And if you don't have a backyard, or you want to garden in the company of others, P-Patches have proved popular.
In Seattle, the P-Patch program in 2008 had a waiting list of 1,230 for plots at its 68 sites, nearly triple the waiting list in 2006.
Food-system concerns
It's not just saving money that has increased business for Irish Eyes, says Greg Lutovsky.
It's also about GMOs.
That stands for genetically modified organisms — for example, corn that has been genetically modified to resist insects and diseases.
"People are starting to rebel against genetically modified seeds in our food system. There is no reason to have fish hormones spliced into a tomato," says Greg. He says that 95 percent of the seeds Irish Eyes sells are certified organic.
At Sky Nursery, Andrea Kurtz, 31, an acupuncturist who lives in Phinney Ridge, is looking over the seed rack.
This is the second year she's having a garden — Armenian slicing cucumbers, beets, pole beans, snow peas, lettuce, tomatoes. She's even going to raise chickens — three hens for eggs, and later they'll be slaughtered for meat.
"I like being able to grow what I eat, to pick something and eat it 10 minutes later," she says.
She's among the youngest of the garden crowd, who tend to be baby boomers.
Gordon Smith, 61, and Saphire Blue, 64, are husband and wife who've gardened for decades. They're retired city of Seattle employees, she a gardener, he a carpenter. They have two properties, one in Seattle and another on Vashon Island.
They talk about the joy of eating fresh produce.
But Saphire also mentions why they'll be growing more potatoes this year.
"If we have an earthquake, or in any way have to survive," she says, "you can trade potatoes with a neighbor for eggs."
That's not a quote you'd have expected to hear a couple of years ago during the boom times.
But these days, it's not about flipping houses for an easy profit.
Flipping dirt for that bumper bean crop is more like it.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2008829989_seeds09m.html
Here is a chart worth considering, i have seen it on about four sites so far, it is a little hard to read, but you can find a link at: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_DnyLywo1Fts/SZRimqm048I/AAAAAAAAG1U/605g0AXs10w/s1600-h/garden%2Bplanner%2Bimage.jpeg
Here we go again, first Nais and now this. They (the government) wants to control the food, if they control the food they will control you. You will eat.
My Problems with H. R. 875, The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009
By Linda Goin on March 10th, 2009
This past weekend I had the pleasure to meet at least six people who are engaged in sustainable farming in Virginia. These individuals worked on farms for a number of years for very little money. Their pleasure was learning how to grow organic foods, eating the same foods and supplying others with their produce.
This organic farming lifestyle has become a subculture in America - a quiet revolution. It is built upon the hopes of twenty- to thirty-something-year-old individuals, both male and female, who enjoy working the land in the most sustainable ways. They are not illegal immigrants, nor are they drifters. Many are students, and just as many are married and live on the land they farm as responsible stewards.
I was impressed with these individuals, as they believe in providing an alternative food source to local residents and they love their work. So, when I learned about H.R. 875 [PDF], the “Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009,” yesterday I was alarmed and concerned for these small farmers. This bill is designed to regulate the food industry and, in the process, help eliminate or reduce the number of illnesses, deaths and recalls that U.S. citizens have experienced recently as the result of eating processed foods. I wondered how this bill might hurt the farmers I met last week, as these folks want to make a profit, yet they don’t own enough land to feed thousands of people.
My horror was mitigated, however, by the very nature of some opinion pieces written against this legislation. Those articles seemed alarmist and were just as vague as some of the wording in this legislation. So, I decided to ask a few friends to read over the bill with me and I did a bit more digging on the sources. Here is what I discovered:
H. R. 875 was introduced on 4 February 2009 by Representative Rosa DeLauro (D - CT). Although Rep. DeLauro is lauded for her work on the Paycheck Fairness Act, she also is questioned for her connections to large agricultural conglomerates and corporations. A look at PAC money contributed to DeLauro in 2008 shows $182,000 from Agribusiness, the largest amount provided outside Labor.
If you follow the PAC link above, you can click on different links to dig deeper and find companies like farmer-owned cooperative Land O’Lakes and Agri-Mark, another cooperative, as DeLauro’s supporters. While, on a personal level, I cannot support some of the companies that support DeLauro, I also don’t see Monsanto or any other genetic-altering food company on that list of financial backers.
On the other hand, DeLauro’s husband, Stanley Bernard Greenberg, is a Democratic pollster and political strategist who counts Monsanto as one of his clients. Monsanto, therefore, is less than six degrees away from DeLauro, but there remains a question about how much influence Monsanto might have on DeLauro’s decision-making processes.
The first article against this bill that caught my eye was produced by Campaign for Liberty. The president of Campaign for Liberty is John Tate, a man who specializes in political strategy, fund raising and grassroots lobbying. John served as the National Political Director for The Ron Paul Presidential Campaign Committee and is currently President of the newly formed Campaign for Liberty. He is well known in Virginia as a long-time political activist.
Considering Tate’s and DeLauro’s politics, I consider Tate’s campaign against H. R. 875 a political stance against DeLauro or even the Democratic party rather than a stance against the bill itself. The tirade against this bill, for instance, assures readers that H. R. 875 will destroy the ability to grow backyard or home gardens. However, there seems to be an exclusion for this type of ‘farming’ in Sec. 3, Paragraph 13B (page 11, line 21). where it states, “the term ‘food establishment’ does not include a food production facility as defined in paragraph 14 [below], restaurant, other retail food establishment, nonprofit food establishment in which food is prepared for or served directly to the consumer.” As far-reaching as this sounds, this exclusion could include a home garden (nonprofit food establishment in which food is prepared for or served directly to the consumer). Also, the following Paragraph 14 states, “The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.” So, there is a difference noted in this bill between “food establishment” and “food production facility.” These terms are worth noting when reading this bill, but they also are of a concern to the small commercial farmer who also eats his own food…the paperwork for this scenario as defined by this bill could prove a nightmare.
While this bill seems to concentrate on food processing plants and food distribution areas, it does not touch specifically on small farmers or organic farming - small commercial businesses that do food processing at the ’sustainable’ level. Think free-range chicken ranches and farms that package produce for farmers’ markets (even putting items in crates could be considered ‘packaging’). These businesses are not non-profit ventures. They are commercial, and - therefore - may be included in this legislation and would need to meet the same oversight as larger food production facilities.
Tate’s campaign against this bill is understandable, as the bill advocates increased government oversight, a practice that many Americans have come to distrust. Increased government oversight also adds to the bottom dollar, which means an increase in market prices. This increased oversight may add an undue financial burden on the small farmer as well as to the consumer who wishes to purchase alternative food sources.
Moving on to other opinions, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is opposed to this bill, but the Center for Science in the Public Interest is for the bill. The first group is a nonprofit organization that supports local farmers and the latter is a government organization that wants to regulate the food we eat. Common sense might tell me to go the way of the local farmer; but, I also want to know if that local organic farmer tested the soil for chemicals and used sanitary conditions to move produce to markets.
The questions are big ones, and the answers are not readily available. I invite you to read H. R. 875 [PDF] to form your own opinions. You might want to read more opinions, such as Is Congress Aiming to Kill Organic Farms to learn more about how others view this national legislation. And, you might want to talk this bill over with your local farmer(s).
Currently the bill has been introduced and referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (majority Democrat) and the House Agriculture Committee (majority Democrat). No Virginia representatives serve on those committees. Those committees will then report on their findings and it will be voted on in the House and then the Senate before it is signed into law by President Obama. You can follow the progress on the bill at Govtrack.us.
There is some time for public comment, and there is time to contact Representative Perriello (or any other representative) about the bill as well. I am anxious to hear your comments on H. R. 875, as I need help in understanding the bill, too. I think it is important, considering the growth of small organic and sustainable farms in Virginia, that there is dialogue about this legislation before it becomes part of our daily lives. Please feel free to use the comment section below for your thoughts or to point readers to other resources that might help everyone decipher this bill.
http://www.appomattoxnews.com/2009/my-problems-with-h-r-875-the-food-safety-modernization-act-of-2009.html
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