Alone: Book 1: Facing Armageddon (18 page)

     It was mid afternoon now. He was going to water the crops today, but it was cool and overcast. They’d wait another day.

     This mission was more important
.

     Dave went to the back fence that separated his yard from the Hansen house. It took him two trips to take everything he needed. He lugged a large duffle bag, a back pack, and Sarah’s rifle.
And a small folding step ladder that Sarah used for reaching the top shelves in the kitchen.

     He shooed the rabbits away and removed the secret panel that served as his gateway to the yard behind him. Then he put both bags and the rifle through the fence and followed them, reattaching the fence panel so the rabbits didn’t follow.

     The back door of the Hansen house had a multi-paned window, and he broke out the small pane of glass closest to the doorknob.

     With a hand covered with a heavy leather work glove, he carefully picked out all the jagged edges of glass still stuck in the window’s frame. Then he reached his arm in, unlocked the deadbolt and the doorknob, and walked into the house.

     He knew the house was completely empty, and that hiding things would be a challenge. There would be no couch he could hide the rifle behind. No box springs to shove bottles of water into. No dresser drawers to hide extra ammo.

     Nothing.

     But what the house did have was a central heating and air conditioning unit.

     And a central heating and air conditioning unit used a series of ducts to move air throughout the house.

     Dave guessed that any looters who might break into the Hansen home would immediately see that it was vacant and then leave again.

     And even if they stayed awhile, he guessed that they wouldn’t reach behind the central air unit to see if there was a rifle hidden there.

     And they likely wouldn’t unscrew the vent covers from the ceiling and reach inside the ductwork to see if anything was hidden there either.

     Dave chuckled. Even if they had a mind to, they wouldn’t have been able to reach the vent covers.

     But Dave could, with the aid of the step ladder.

     The Hansen house was two stories, like his own. From the rear upstairs bedroom of the house, he had a fairly good view of the back of his own house. Good enough, anyway, to get a bead on anyone coming out of the house and into his back yard.

     This would be his go-to place if he ever had to evacuate.

     He went into the upstairs hallway first and found the central air closet. As he suspected, it was dusty and dirty and obviously hadn’t been opened in quite some time.

     He’d already taped over the muzzle and closed the ejection port of the weapon to keep out dust and insects. He hid the rifle behind the unit, then stood back to make sure that no parts of it were visible.

     Then he turned the thumbscrews
that held the front cover of the unit into place. Inside the unit he hid two loaded magazines and three boxes of .556 ammunition.

     He replaced the cover, closed
the closet door, and went back downstairs.

     In the dining room, he removed the vent cover a
nd placed two soda bottles containing the water he’d gotten from the kitchen sink before the tap ran dry. He’d already poured one third of the water into another vessel, so that each bottle was only two thirds full.

     That was so the bottles wouldn’t burst in the winter time when the water froze into ice and expanded.

     He replaced the vent cover and placed two more bottles of water in a kitchen vent twelve feet away.

     Into two vents in the living room he placed more water, as well as several
Tupperware containers of trail mix. The trail mix would last practically forever, and would sustain him for at least a week, as long as he had water to wash it down with.

     Lastly, inside the vent in the den, he placed four boxes of 9 mm bullets, and an extra magazine.

     Then he carried the step ladder back up the stairs, pulled down the drop down ladder to the attic, and hid the step ladder beneath the attic insulation.

     His
bug out site was ready.

     If he was ever forced to leave his home, it would be just a temporary measure. He’d come here and sit in his perch in the upstairs bedroom, hoping to get a clear shot at the people who occupied his home. If he couldn’t, he’d sit here for a few days until things cooled off, and then storm his home to take it back again.

     But he hoped he never had to do that.

-40
-

     Hi, Sarah.

     I hope you and the girls are well.

     Today I did one of the most disgusting things I’ve had to do since the blackout.

     I’ve been trying to find places to hide as much of the bottled water as I can. I’ve moved most of it up to the attic
and hidden it under the blown-in insulation. I’ve been careful to place the bottles over the joists so they don’t crash through the ceiling, and I could only put so much up there.

     Then I hid some in each of the ventilation ducts and air returns. You never realize how many of them are in your house until you have to remove the plates, one at a time. There were
twenty seven of them, total. I put four bottles into each of them and got rid of over a hundred more bottles.

     In the garage I lined up four rows against the east wall, probably eighty bottles total, and then leaned a sheet of plywood against the wall in front of them. Then, on each end of the plywood I stacked a whole bunch of tool boxes and other junk.

     Speaking of junk, remember all those cardboard boxes full of books and knick-knacks and blankets and stuff in the garage? Well, they’re now full of bottles of water. The stuff that was in the boxes is strewn about all over the garage. The garage is now a colossal mess, but at least the water is well hidden.

     I took that huge mattress off of our bed. You know, the one that’s like three feet tall, that you had to
climb up into every night?

     Yeah, that one. I took it off and hollowed it out. When you walk into our bedroom it looks like a normal bed. But when you lift up the mattress you can see that it’s actually just a shell now, and covers up forty eight bottles of water.

     Man, that mattress held a lot of stuffing. I put it in a big pile on the floor in Lindsey’s room. Her room is directly over the safe room. In fact, I have plans to pull a bunch of insulation from the attic and add to the pile. My goal is to make her room knee deep in insulation. That way the safe room will be toasty warm this winter when I crank up the fireplace.

     Anyway, back to the disgusting part.

     When I was at the Castro house next door, I opened up their chest freezer and found the most disgusting assortment of former food you’ve ever seen. It all went bad when the power went out. It was green with mold and stunk almost as bad as the decaying bodies outside.

     Anyway, long story short, I went back over and dragged all of it over here, in a couple of large trash bags. It almost turned my stomach.      But now, it’s in our own chest freezer. Any looter who opens our freezer door will see it and smell it and will quickly close the door again. He’ll never know that underneath it are
fifty five two-liter bottles of drinking water.

     So here’s the deal. I got all of it hidden except for three bottles. Those three bottles will sit on a shelf, untouched, along with half a box of spaghetti, half a jar of grape jelly, and
three packages of ramen noodles.

     If anybody ever breaks into the house, I will try my best to convince them that’s all I have. I’ll tell them that I do the same thing they do. That I go out at night and break into houses and grab whatever food and water I can find.

     Hopefully they’ll buy it and take what’s in the cupboard and leave.

     In the meanwhile, my
real source of food and water will be the little places all over the house where I’ve got it hidden.

     If that’s not good enough, and they want to get ugly, I’ve got other things hidden around the house as well. Knives, several of them, hidden behind doors and inside pillows. Underneath the center cushion on the couch is your handgun. Just in case mine jams or I ever need a second one.

     I hope you don’t mind, honey, but I’ve turned our home into a fortress. But it’s a place where I can be confident now that I can survive in. That we can all survive in.

     Because I fully expect to find you and the girls, and to bring you all back here some day.

     You can take that to the bank.

-41
-

     Dave had finished his writing and put his log book away before he realized he’d forgotten to tell Sarah the good news. It was the only good news he’d had in awhile, and he’d been just itching to tell her, then he forgot all about it.

     But that was okay. He’d write her again in a few days, and she’d hear all about the backyard full of baby rabbits.

    The two females had given birth within two days of each other. A couple of them were stillborn, and Dave buried them in the garden at the Hansen house. The rest of them seemed healthy, though. He counted eighteen, between the two litters.

     He had no idea how soon the new rabbits would be old enough to breed on their own. If they got to the point where they were
breeding so fast he couldn’t feed them, he might have to start culling the litters. For now, though, he didn’t see any reason he couldn’t keep up with them. He loved the taste of rabbit, after all, and he didn’t mind the thought of eating it for supper every night for weeks on end.

     All in all, the prospect of having too much meat beat the hell out of the alternative of not having enough.

     Dave was suddenly startled by the sound of a gunshot. He immediately drew his own weapon and ran up the stairs.

     The shot was close. Closer than any of the shots he’d heard in the past. And this one was in broad daylight.

     There was something else about this shot, too. As close as it was, it was somehow muffled. It came from the west side of his house. Dave was almost certain it came from the house next door.

     The next shot confirmed his suspicions. Again, it was muffled and sounded like it came from within a structure. And again, it was just to the west of Dave’s house.

     Dave walked back down the stairs and ducked into the safe room. He was certain now that no one was shooting at him. But if bullets were flying in the house next door, there was a possibility that a stray bullet might find its way into his house. The only safe place to be was within the safe room with its bulletproof walls.

     As he walked into the safe room, a third shot rang out.

     He and Sarah didn’t know the people next door at all. The family had only moved in a couple of months before the blackout.

     In fact, he’d only seen the man one time.

     About a month before the blackout, he’d come knocking on Dave’s front door. Dave remembered opening the door with some apprehension, thinking it was a salesman. Or even worse, a Jehovah’s witness.

     “Hi,” the
tall, red-headed man said. “Is there a Sarah Anna Speer that lives here?”

     Dave replied, “Uh, yes…”

     The man produced a woman’s magazine.

     “This is for her. The mailman left it in my box by mistake.”

     Dave smiled and took the magazine. They introduced themselves, although for the life of him Dave couldn’t remember the man’s name.

     A fourth shot rang out.

     Dave recalled mentioning the encounter at dinner that night to Sarah.

     “Oh, I met his wife the other day when their furniture was being delivered. She seemed nice enough. They have twin boys and a girl, all three years apart. I can’t imagine trying to handle all that.”

     Five people. Names unknown. They’d apparently been living in the darkened and very quiet house to the west of Dave since the blackout.

     Laying low. Getting increasingly desperate.

     Running out of food.

     Dave heard the fifth gunshot.

     He knew there would be no more.

     He knelt down and said a prayer for the young family he’d never gotten to
know, and hoped they’d have an easier time in heaven.

     He stood up and was surprised to find a tear rolling down his cheek.