Our End Of The Lake: Surviving After The 2012 Solar Storm (Prepper Trilogy) (2 page)

‘
Oh shit. Lord protect us!’ I thought, as I see disabled cars and the drivers psycho-babbling about. Frigging EMP! Now wait, it’s not nuclear caused, well as near as I can tell at the moment. Skies clear, no tell tale mushroom cloud, etc. Think man think. Ok, radiation is not a worry for the moment; maybe this is a natural event. Haven’t I been repeating the warning that NASA already put out about solar storm cycles and CME events for years? Well, Merry Christmas, your ass is stuck in the middle of the hell you predicted
.

Spread the Word

“
Daaaamn!
” I was drawling out to myself in my southern fried accent,
what to do, what to do, as I reentered the restaurant
, ok go calm David. Hey! There’s a steak knife on that table, I need that and slipped it in my suit pants pocket. It was one of those rounded point, politically correct jobs, that although I was bitching about it not having a usable point, but no… “
oat meal beats no meal’
AND! I was glad it wasn’t a worry to slide in my pocket. I had a knife. I had an edge for multiple survival tasks I needed to perform soon. As I opened the door to the bar, I thought about all the years of Risk Communications I had studied, but studies didn’t prepare me for what I had to do next and that steak knife in my pocket was a joke if I thought it was the best advice I could give on how to get through the crap hitting the fan I’d just witnessed.

Jack was grinning like a Cheshire cat when I returned and said, “Ok, lemme see that key ring!”

I said, “Jack, poke Blake and come talk to me over here, I got some SITRAP to share (situation report).”

Blake was giving Bill hell about never having served in the military and objecting to Bills BS liberal, negative attitude on FEMA`s response to Katrina, when a poke to the ribs got his attention.

“WHAT!” Blake said, as he had slightly alcohol induced steely daggers coming out his eyes in our direction.

“David requires our attention to some problem and is looking awful serious.” Jack said.

“Better be good.” Blake hissed and followed us towards the decks railing.

Before arriving at the railing, I turned and hesitantly said, “Come over here,” while lowering my voice.

“DAMMIT, Dupree!” Blake directed at me, “I don’t take interference well, so what the hell is your problem needing such urgent attention?”

I stared into the big old mans eyes and said, “’Houston, we got a problem’ is about all I can say that fits this.”

Puzzled, he looked at me and I waved them both closer to the railing instructing both to, “Have a look.”

Peachtree St., the artery to the city and the heart of the financial district, as far as the eye could see in both directions, was Kaput! Cars, trucks, service vans etc. littered the scenery as far as the eye could see. All the vehicles and occupants were in various states of disarray depending on the driving skills of the operators. People were just stopped in the streets, people were on curbs, newly attached to light poles, head on wrecks, rear ended etc. it was a Machiavellian hell. This wasn’t a power outage-party anymore; it was every Emergency Management offices’ worse nightmare!

Simultaneously both my bosses said, “Oh HELL!’ and I responded,” You got that right.”

“We got to get moving,” said Jack.

“Yeah, but where?” I asked Blake.

Lord help him he is a card, said “First back to our drinks and then talk privately about the bar tab.” Heads turned up to eye each other, solemn nods and back to the bar we went. Jack ordered a new round to refresh the drinks we swallowed in kind immediately and then we moved off from the rest of the 40 or so revelers, who had not a clue yet as to what had just happened to end the world as we had known it.

I got to give it to Blake, after serving more than 45years for his country, he wanted to stay on duty and make it back the 13 miles by foot to the closest FEMA headquarters to try to help with this situation. Jack and I glanced at one another, considered and nothing more needed to be said. There were no plans for this type of event that we could help with, and we had family and friends to help survive. We turned to Blake to try to dissuade him, but he hushed our objections with a wave of his hand.

He said, “Look, I don’t have anyone but me basically and you are the only troops I can look out for, so...let me give you 10 minutes of advice and then get your asses out of here.”

“But…,” I interjected.

And before I could carry on, he hammered one of those giant meat hooks some people call hands on me and said, “Hush, I got my duty. You, David, are low man on the totem pole, so you listen to me first. Go get Bob to give you two pitchers of water and three shots of Jack. Tell him the Jack Daniels is for me, he understands and will get the message.”

“While David goes on a mission, I will discuss something with you, Jack, privately,” he said refocusing his attention to the street out front.

Well, while I dutifully ordered up at the bar and returned to our table, I was haunted by the way Bob had looked, when I gave Blake’s ‘special order’. He was still his old self hurrahing the bar, but he was a changed man somehow. He’d gotten that ‘thousand yard stare’ those of us that seen battle get: a new determination and resolve that, well to the untested, is just plain scary. It is like dead eyes looking at you and you just know someone is about to kick your ass and they have no doubt they can do it. I turn around and glance back at Jack and Blake, and they are locked into one of those 8 inch conversations you know means business. Meantime, Bob is discussing something intensely with the bouncer named ‘Dump Truck’ and staring in my direction. Bob hands me my order and says to talk to ‘Dump’ before I leave, and then he is back in his happy bartender mode waiting on the rest of the bar, as I make my way back to the table.

DISPLACED PREPPER

I put the drinks and pitchers of ice water down on the table, and before I even take my seat, Blake has corralled all the shots of whiskey over to his side. “Last call trainee,” he says in my direction. “This is my whiskey. I am kicking you out of the bar.”

“Do what!!?” I start to object before ‘the Look’ silences me.

“You and Jack are going home. It’s best you play camel with that water, because it’s a hot day and you won’t see ice water again for a long, long time, if you catch my drift.”

“Where’s your shit, David?” Jack asks.

“What shit?” I reply, getting aggravated at my seniors and Blake snatching ‘my’ whiskey shot, which I was thinking I really needed about now.

Blake chimes in with, “We already figured out you are a prepper and you rode over here with Jack. You SOL son. Yeah shit out of luck, except that monkey knot looking key ring full of doodads you got. I don’t think you were dumb enough to conceal carry your pistol to the interview or into this bar, so how far away are your preps, and where are you staying?”

This is a smart man I am talking to, he is used to field soldiers having problems with life and helping them come up with a fix. Is there extra hope here? I consider why he asked before responding.

“I am about 18 miles in the opposite direction of travel, my hotel is north and I am heading south.” Oh, oh, here comes that know-it-all finger wagging telling me to pause before speaking further I thought, ‘
Asshole you want me to call you Drill sergeant, too?
’ I am sort of thinking to myself before he begins his communication and my education into his worldly outlook on things.

Blake said, “Look, Jack and I have talked about it and you got 4 options to consider. ‘
Hell that’s news to me, I am all ears
.’ First option is you can see Jack home; he has preps and will take you in. Second option is me, I am heading for the Governor’s offices and you can do what you trained to do in disaster response. Third is go off with Dumpie, he is heading south, but east of your location. And the fourth and final option is for you to go do what you got to do on your own.”

After a moments hesitating on the pros and cons of the choices, I proposed to take Dump Truck along as far as the journey would allow, but I was adamant about heading all 180 plus miles home to Montgomery.

What’s a displaced prepper to do?

PACK MULE INCOPORTATED

I start thinking friggin bad decision to pick the Dump as a traveling companion, he has been bitching from the moment we left the bar. Yeah, he is a 380 pound monster, but he doesn’t have the sense God gave a goat about some things. Now don’t get me wrong there are certain advantages of wandering down the street in the middle of pandemonium with your own one man division beside you. That being said he would not shut up and let me think of what I needed to be doing next. He was naming off every appliance he could think of, wondering if they would still work when the power came back on; what he should do with them if it didn’t. Which ones might hypothetically could have started a fire when they got fried? Then he started running down the list of every, half cousin and relative he had in the county, etc., and what were they doing and saying about this or that appliance no longer working.

I begin to finally like his big old country boy ass a bit better after he quieted down a bit and figured out that all his psycho babbling was his way of dealing with stress. We must have looked like a very odd pair wandering down the street and arguing like Abbott and Costello, but in the looks department we couldn’t have been any different. Dump was 25 and bald with the sleeve tattoo thing going on, and I was tall and thin with the silver gray hair carrying various parts of a three piece suit. I had been inquiring of passers by all the way down the street about who sells water and other goods in this desolate (lack of convenience stores) area of Atlanta. A lot of people took one look at Dump, saw their worst nightmare was standing before them that they hadn’t thought about yet, and realizing the position they were in now, actually changed sides of the road or didn’t answer at all and kept moving as quickly away as they could. We changed course twice to find some kind of store with bottled water, got off the main drag, and then I see a typical tiny India Indian run store and sure enough they are open! Yee ha!

I explained to the Dump I got 50 bucks cash; he said he had 17 bucks and credit cards. “Get off asking me about credit card balances, Dumpie! Nobody will take them now anyway, and I have been hearing this same bitching about 2 miles now. I got them, you got them, we have walked pass about a hundred ATMs, they aren’t going to work, not ever again or not for a long time to come! Yea I know your boss was dumb enough to cause minor riots at the restaurant and bar to charge someone on a later day by writing card numbers down and you blocked the door with your big ass and I had to wait on you, but I have been telling you for at least 3miles now this city wont recover anytime soon or it will take at least 3 months if a localized thing, or maybe never because I am not sure yet what caused the EMP.” I suspected a CME though, a coronal mass ejection sort of like a giant solar flare. If that was the case then, it wasn’t just the US that had a problem, the lights were out throughout the world and we were back to the 1800s as far as technology went.

The store was your typical office building type, about the size of newsstand with some coolers and a couple isles of snacks etc. I hadn’t told Dump truck about my leather money belt I had on with a few hundred cleverly concealed inside what looked like a normal belt. I had two packs of cigs on me and was strongly considering buying a carton when I came to my senses and said now’s the time to quit whether I want to or not. I am still buying one pack out of spite for the road though, my nerves are frazzled enough and I am going to enjoy my vice just for a little while longer.