Our End Of The Lake: Surviving After The 2012 Solar Storm (Prepper Trilogy) (19 page)

Roland was laughing about Philburn getting the worst end of a deal and in particular about the bike.

“I know that damned bike. Martha, when she was a young girl, used to ride it in the town’s parades and Philburn always commented on how god awful ugly it was.” whooping with the hilarity of it all. “I would sure have paid good money to see you and him heading down the road on it! Ha! David and you say he got stuck with that thing in trade, too?! That is even better.” he replied handing me another beer.

“Well, I could sit around and do this all day Roland, but I need to get moving soon.” I told him as I looked out at the road.

“Well, I will give you a six pack to take with you, it won’t get hot by the time you finish it. I seen you drink.” he said kidding me good-naturedly and putting it in a plastic garbage bag.

“That sounds like fun.” I said as I envisioned rolling along and catching a buzz on the way home.

“Let me see that pea shooter you got in your waistband.” he said wanting to inspect my pistol which I then handed him.

“Sig 230, nice weapon, but a bit small of a caliber for my tastes. I got an extra .45 if you want to trade?” he said handing it back.

“No, I will keep it. I like it and I am having a hard enough time concealing it, let alone a 45.” I replied finishing my beer.

“Well, at least I can give you a better shirt, unless you going to do that Larry the cable guy thing and cut the sleeves off.” he said looking at me impishly.

“I won’t customize it.” I laughingly assured him and waited for him to come back with a shirt and started getting the tractor cranked up.

“I will ride up on the tractor with you and unlock the gate then walk back.” he said handing me a short sleeve blue denim shirt, which I swapped for my sweat soaked threadbare T-shirt.

Roland opened up the gate and waved me off as I saluted him with a beer and a smile as I headed on back down the road.

I checked my watch and it said 3.30. It is about 10 miles to the interstate and let us see about 30 minutes by car to the first Montgomery exit which be would be about 2 to 2 ½ hours on this thing, so maybe I get to my first stop around 6.30, if I was lucky.

I started reviewing my options and wondering if it was better to try coming in at night or daylight and which was the best route to take to my destinations.

I certainly don’t want to risk the bypass exit. There are hotels on both sides of it and I bet they are going to be filled with stranded people and possibly a police presence. Montgomery has a bunch of cops and I would not put it past them to organize a receiving station or something.

Humm, if I was a cop in Montgomery and I broke down on the bypass, what would I do?
I pondered while dodging disabled vehicles and feeling a bit lightheaded. Most of them would know what EMP was and many would just head for home to protect their families or a few might try for the supermarkets expecting trouble, but wanting supplies.

They got a bunch of bicycle cops in the city and some kind of response might have been organized by now, but what could they really do? I do not want my tractor commandeered by some cop that thinks he needs it more than me, so I guess I had better go in the back way to be safe.

Then, which direction should I go; I was thinking and mentally mapping out bad neighborhoods or possible traffic choke points etc. as I headed further down the road.

I see up ahead a few small groups of people heading towards Montgomery who are looking back at me evidently hearing me approach. I guess I am going to play shuttle service to town now, if they want to come in from the east instead of the center.

I slowed the tractor and asked a group of 5 people if they wanted to go to Eastdale Mall and they all enthusiastically agreed and climbed onto my trailer. I picked up 3 more a little further down the road and everyone looked bone weary and dirty. I wonder how many of these people knew each other or were together before they broke down in mass and left on the road. These particular folks must have been around 50 miles out to be still wandering in to town.

I made my turn and proceeded a few more miles before one of them hollered for me to stop, and with wave they continued on, grateful for the few miles I had saved them. I looked ahead on the road and there was no way I was going to make it much further pulling this trailer.

Traffic and wrecks were littering the road and as far as I could see were disabled cars and trucks that wouldn’t be moved for a long time to come. I zipped around some parking lots and got everybody as close as I could before dropping the trailer and making a convoluted path around traffic by riding medians and ditches and even had to turn around once or twice.

I finally shortcut through a neighborhood and even went through somebody’s backyard to get back on the road that would lead me to my first stop.

I was going to see Sherry and although we did not date anymore, we were very close friends. During the four years we dated, as well as afterwards, we had amassed preparations for almost every contingency and had a pact with each other to get through times like these.

I sure hope she was safe and had been close to home when the EMP hit. She always had her 72-hour kit in her car, so unless she had gone out of town for some unforeseen reason, she should be fine. One of her sisters lived close by to her, so I bet she was with her at the house. I am glad we were able to prep some for her also over the years, as Sandra didn’t believe in putting back much more than you would in getting ready for hurricane season.

Damn, that food store must have caught hell
. I thought as I looked at overturned buggies littering the parking lot and a busted front glass door.
I guess the shit has already started in some places here
. As I was traveling, I saw many what I supposed were neighbors out talking to each other in the streets.

I knew all about how disasters will bring people together for the common good short term, but I had little academic knowledge about how they were going to act long term with the necessities of life getting in shorter supply daily.

I could only imagine how those neighbors would be acting in the coming weeks. Most people live paycheck to paycheck and rarely even have two weeks worth of food in the house and maybe a few days worth of water if they had any at all. Water, geez, I wonder if the water would be still on. Natural Gas, I know would probably stay on for a while; I had no idea if the water company had any contingencies except for generators that may or may not be hardened.

There are no governmental rules to force them to do anything and if the company had not made an investment, we were in deep doodoo. There are no mandatory procedures or required emergency actions that require them to do anything, although they have known the threats for years.

NASA's "Solar Shield" satellite-based detection system at the Goddard Space Flight Center monitors coronal mass ejections. The U.S. grid currently relies for its defense on warnings from NASA that would alert U.S. utilities to take actions to protect their systems, but they would only have a few hours advance notice.

The stockpile of spare transformers would fall far short of replacement needs. Urban centers across the continent would be without power for many months or even years, until new transformers could be manufactured and delivered from Asia. The transformers are not made in the United States so no telling if or when we might possibly get a shipment.

I just do not know at this point, until I start sifting through some news, how bad off we are
. I considered as I abruptly swerved to avoid some people that did not have sense enough to not stand in the road.
Damn people, though, are going to be their own worst enemies and I bet we already have catastrophic casualties
.

The hospitals probably filled the morgues over night, as back up generators started running out of fuel, unless someone had the initiative and the equipment to siphon diesel out of some trucks.

I had better watch my ass out here as most people by now have figured out they could pretty much do what they want without worry about the law. I had better be sure to let Sherry know it’s me beating on the door or I might be looking at a 12 gauge or 9mm carbine, as a welcome home.

That neighborhood she is in is a strange one; you got professionals up and down the block and a few streets over various kinds of riff raff. On Fourth of July or New Year’s, it sounds like a war zone with fools shooting off all sorts of weapons, I can only hope they are short on ammo about now.

I think when I get over to Sherry’s house; I will hide the tractor in the garage and borrow her bike to go check on my Mother.

My Mom, she has to be freaking by now. She will be worried about me in Atlanta, as well as my brother in Texas. Not so much Bob, she knows he has been prepping for years the same as me and he is the one with his bigger salary that stockpiled some of her house. She wouldn’t allow the level of stuff we wanted in the house, didn’t see the need, but she did get on the bandwagon enough to bring in about a month and a half worth of supplies and various survival tools.

I got a bunch of stuff stashed in my closet and the majority of my guns there. I have sufficient ammo too, but not all. I got to thinking once again of my treasure trove of preps over at my storage building.

I got a good assortment of essentials over at Sherry’s, I started thinking. Thank the Lord, she allowed me to stage some supplies over there that my dear old Mom would not allow me to, not seeing the expense or need, as well as her tenacious need for everything to be picture perfect in a room.

I do not have any pressing need to get to my storage building and I considered just leave it as it sits. The laws of natural selection will be taking over soon and in a month or two I will have less or greatly weakened folks to deal with.

On the other hand, though, if the State does organize some sort of response, it is going to be hard to get to with any kind of curfew in place. Damn, David I said fussing at myself, if anyone should know what they are going to do, you should, but all your degrees and licenses don’t mean shit when you know they going to fly by the seat of their pants, even if they do manage to make an effort and organize something. Martial law will be a given, because of the stupid Patriot Act, but who will enforce it? No, it is going to be dog eat dog for awhile until humanity emerges again and civilization reforms itself just like it always historically does. What that will be only time will tell I guess.

No sense dwelling on it I guess until you get your facts
I mused. The main thing is water, is it on or off. I was halfway tempted to pull the tractor over and try somebody’s faucet on the side of their house the question was nagging at me so much.

I had less than 15 gallons at my Mom’s. Sherry was ok, her neighbor Helga next door had a pool and between filtration devices and all the knowledge, she accumulated off me for years there was no problem there, except for our garden in her backyard and these series of droughts we had over the years were going to be taking a toll on my efforts to permaculture.

Sherry’s backyard garden with 20 raised beds was a valuable commodity now and I had heirloom seeds in sealed cans to keep it going for some time to come. That was a funny thing about us, we always bought stuff in twos knowing that someday my job would take me away from her and we would separate as equals on the preps.

I supplied the larger portion of our food and safety insurance by using my school refund checks from studying emergency management and she allowed me to do this by paying for her house and helping me when I got low on daily living expenses. Looking back on all the arguments, we had on this odd couple arrangement we were both more than satisfied by the final outcome with a safety net or savings account we could have never produced alone.

The majority of the food had 25-30 yr shelf life and we were in our fifties so what would a can of Mountain House be worth in 20yrs if we needed it? Double, triple, quadruple the prices we paid? I already have seen the price of the stuff go up 35% since we started collecting it.

NASA said 2012 to 2014 for the Solar Storm to hit; various others prophesy for thousands of years said 2012 watch out. I saw economic collapse as a possibility or pandemic as not a possibility but a probability of happening and we decided to be as prepared as we could through part hobby, part necessity.

That reminds me, Sherry’s old somewhat anti prepper friend Betsy will be finding her way to Sherry. There was no way in the world to hide our ever-mounting pile of goods and survival equipment from her, but it eventually just became a David and Sherry thing that was no longer talked about like a friend that had eccentric hobbies.

Well, I knew this day would come
, I sighed to myself. Sherry and I were going to stop our constant monthly expenditures after the shear bulk of supplies reached a year apiece, but our Prepper hearts knew we must share and therefore just kept adding on in order to be not caught short when sharing with those that had not taken our path towards preparedness.

Now this day was upon us and we had what we had to ameliorate some misery with no re-supply in sight. I remember how many times I thought, probably wrongfully on the credit card scale, do I need anything else, will my shipment get in on time, etc.

Well, if I do not have what I need now, chances are I cannot find it again. I resolutely assured myself that I had taken prior proper actions.