Our End Of The Lake: Surviving After The 2012 Solar Storm (Prepper Trilogy) (36 page)

“Well unless they had two cars, or the owner of that one is who the message was for, it’s hard to guess why it was left here” said Betsy trying to piece the car and note together.

“Well either way the possibility of them coming back here is high. A hike back from there would only take a determined person in reasonable health 4 days to do it in” I said puzzling it through.

“I say we leave this one alone but the others are fair game” Sherry said anxious to replenish or add to the supplies of toilet paper at the girls’ house.

“I agree, let’s start with the last two and work our way back to the first” I said setting off towards them.

Sandra advised me she had seen an open window on the one she and Betsy had approached and thought she could get into the house through it.

“Ok just be very careful” I said and went to case my assigned cabin for an entry point.
This backdoor does not even have a deadbolt should I just kick it? No I can be a little less destructive just forcing it with my little crowbar I had brought along I thought
.

I got the door jimmied open and stepped cautiously inside in case somebody was just hiding and not answering the door out of fright at the appearance of our armed group. A quick check of the house showed it unoccupied and Sherry and I started in on the kitchen cabinets.

Typical lake house, hardly anything in it, a few cans of food, some coffee, a half canister of flour and some cornmeal all welcome stuff but hardly enhanced our supplies at all. Sherry hit the toilet paper bonanza and drug out of a closet one of those huge Sams club Multi roll packs.

Out of curiosity I checked the fridge, it was totally bare. One of these days I bet if I checked the mystery signs houses refrigerator I might get some better clues on how its tenets departed.

Sherry bundled up in glad bags some half used shampoo and some soap. There was some junk fishing tackle on the screened in porch but nothing we needed. Rendezvous with Sandra and Betsy and it was on to the next house.

“You get much?” Sherry asked the pair as we met them at the open front door?

“No pretty slim Pickens. Did find a six pack of beer in the fridge though” she replied.

“What’s Betsy doing? I said watching Betsy wedging a piece of cardboard in the door frame.

Sandra laughed and said “She is leaving her own mystery sign. It says “The Borrowers visited today” and has a date on it”

I smiled and responded by saying that ought to account for all the broken locks I was going to be leaving in this section today. Sherry decided the next house we pilfered needed one too and so a new tradition was born. I guess you could say we were marking our turf in one way.

The next house Sherry and I broke into had a bit more in the pantry than most and my pack got filled with a descent assortment of canned goods.

I wish we could find us a wagon or wheelbarrow or something as we had to cut our trip short to haul our grabbed goods back to what we had started to refer to as our compound.

“I wonder how Jack is making out today. Donnie’s side of the Lake has some expensive recently built big houses on it. By not selling a rifle or shotgun to Donnie we pretty much assured ourselves the job of playing armed escort on that side of the lake and increasing our stash of goods.

Jack had taken the riding lawnmower and its trailer today and I was hoping that it was pretty likely he and Donnie would be divvying up somebody’s wine cabinet or bar full of hooch.

Just as I was imagining what a wonderful sight a trailer full of liquor would look like I heard a loud shot come from over on Donnie’s side of the lake. We listened intently for a bit and hearing nothing more, we resumed our trip home a bit more hurriedly all wondering what that shot meant.

We called on the radio back to camp and advised the compound we were on our way in and would be there in about 10 minutes and went back to lugging our assortment of goods along.

We divided everything up and I broke out a bottle of vodka and mixed everyone a drink with some lemon aide to celebrate our first formalized “Borrowing” expedition and waited for Jack to return.

“Are we doing the communal kitchen thing tonight or is each house on its own.” Sherry asked the group looking around.

“The wood is mostly all wet for campfire and Dutch oven cooking but I have plenty of dry put up for the rocket stoves. Those Stovetec things were definitely one of my better purchases.” I said looking across the lake slough at Donnie’s house.

“Why don’t we wait until Jack comes back to decide, he might have something interesting” Lois said scanning the shore to see if she saw some sign of him.

“That sounds good; I tell you in this heat it’s hard to get an appetite for anything” Mom said fanning herself with an old Life magazine she had found somewhere in Bernie’s house.

“I need to build us a proper outdoor kitchen if I can scrounge up some lumber one of these days but that job needs to wait until we knock out putting in a garden. I dread the thought of trying to get it to produce anything at the peak of summer with this drought and heat wave we are in.” I said surveying the backyards that needed to be turned from lawns to something more productive.

“What are you going to do about those Geese that come over every morning and don’t say eat them” Sherry asked.

I had been trying to figure out what to do about the dozen or so of them ever sense we got here. They swam all over the lake but had a routine down that was pretty predictable and they came up on our shore every morning about 8 and munched on any fruit that fell out of the crabapple tree, grazed on some weeds and then laid around for a bit. Sherry and I had feed them bread on our previous trips to the lake and they had no fear of humans. Sandra had asked me if we could pen them up or something and get eggs and I had told her there was no way I was fighting with a big mad goose over an egg and besides I didn’t really have the grain to spare to feed them. I had considered shooting one so they would avoid the place but everyone enjoyed watching them so much I just put off what was probably inevitable.

“I haven’t come up with a solution to them yet, at the moment I just keep count of them to see if anybody around this inlet starts hunting them. I wonder if their numbers increase when the migrations fly over in the fall. These lake resident Canadian Geese stay all summer and winter for some reason, I guess because they got used to people feeding them. Be interesting to have some live decoys to attract others” I told Sherry while turning to look at the lake to see if I could spot them making their rounds.

“How could you tell the tame ones from the wild ones?” Sandra asked.

“The tame ones will pretty much stay in their own group. I would have to watch where they go for awhile to figure out how to setup a blind to ambush the wild ones. That short barrel riot gun of mine doesn’t have the reach or the choke I need to get them when they’re flying over. Come to think of it I have never seen these lake geese fly, they just swim around the shoreline of this inlet and occasionally swim directly across it. There are a couple semi tame wood ducks around here too.” I offered and while rising to get me another drink pointing across the lake.

“Looks like Jack is back” I noted and waved across to him.

Jack waved back and Lois looked like she was about to wave her hand off her arm with excitement to see that he was safe. We watched him help Donnie unload some boxes from the trailer and reload the trailer with some other goods and then proceed to head back our way.

In about fifteen minutes Jack pulled around to the deck we were all sitting around on and we went down to see what kind of loot he had gathered on his foray today.

“ We got three trailer loads today, Donnie still owes us some stuff but check this out, he said pulling a bed spread off the back of the trailer which was half filled with food and a goodly assortment of wine and liquor. And there’s a case of beer under all of that David. You can have a six pack of it for those crackers you told me I owed you for.” he said grinning.

“Oh I like the odds of that trade, I got some more crackers” I began to say before Betsy cut me off.

“Just because Jack and Lois don’t drink don’t mean we don’t.” Betsy said pointedly in my beer hound direction.

“Got any crackers?” I said to her smirking before Sherry piped up and spoiled my fun I was about to have teasing Betsy.

“Share and share alike David, you and Jack can have your little side deals as long as it doesn’t hurt the group as a whole” Sherry said in her friendly mediator voice seeing that my playful comment had been taken seriously by Betsy.

“I was just kidding, but if you do have any crackers you should let me negotiate with Jack for you” I said grinning at Betsy in my best let bygones be bygones look.

Betsy smiled and said “And of course you will want your 10%, how much is 10% of a can of beer? Causing me to laugh.

“Lets see, 10% off the top and you and I each put in a pack of crackers, so that would be two six packs Jack owes us. 12 beers x 10% would mean you owe me 1.2 beers for doing the transaction. Me and Jack have a Non- Circumvent agreement so he won’t deal with you direct, ain’t that right Jack?” I said watching Jack play along with my bargaining.

“Yup, that’s right, we have had that agreement for years, no messing with each others customers or going around each other” he said watching Betsy try to think about my calculations and suppressing a smile.

“He is teasing you again Betsy, he is pulling some kind of weird vendor math on you” Sherry said giving me a nudge for not behaving myself.

“What the hell is vendor math?” Betsy asked looking at me like I was trying to steal her life savings by hustling a beer out of her.

“Vendor math is something I learned when I was in the bar business Betsy. Say you owned a bar and had pool tables with another vendor who split with you the revenue 50/50. I want your business so I would be willing to offer you a better deal. I would come in your bar one day and tell you if you put my pool tables in instead of the other vendors I would give you ten percent off the top and then we would split 50/50. How much is your percentage? I asked Betsy as Jack and Sherry watched her intently.

“I would probably do it, that’s a 60/40 split with me getting 60% right?” Betsy said wondering why she was being scrutinized.

“Well it sounds that way at first and most people think that, if I talked quick enough to get them to sign off for it. But actually its 55/45. Take a dollar and take 10% off it and your left with 90 cents, we split that which is 45 cents a piece, so with the dime extra you get you have 55 cents.” I explained to Betsy jovially so she could see it was an honest way of doing business but a good salesman’s way of gaining business without losing too much money discounting a product.

“Oh I get it! Hey but I would only owe you 1 beer then right?” She said, to which Jack started to laugh but stifled himself when I frowned at him.

“Yes that’s right only one beer” I replied and gave Sherry a little hug so she would not say anything different and ruin my chances of getting a whole beer for the trade.

I quickly changed the subject and asked Jack about what that shot I heard was about on the side of the lake he was on today.

“That was Donnie. We went in a house that somebody had all ready mostly looted out on the fringe of the inlet. There is another little slough over there by the way that stretches back about 10 houses counting both sides. Anyway, it looked like somebody had had a teenage party in there and there was empty beer cans and the place looked trashed for no reason like juveniles sometimes are apt to do and Donnie was walking out the backdoor to check out the tool shed to see if there were any weed eaters or other things of interest in it when he startled a big dog eating a discarded bag of Oreos. The dog looked up and growled at him and Donnie freaked and pulled his pistol and shot at it. Donnie claims he was only trying to scare it but I think he missed it from 50ft and just wont let on how bad a shot he is or how scared that big mutt made him.” Jack said semi giggling

“What were you doing besides watching Jack?” I said either going to have some fun with him or tighten up his response tactics if need be.

“Well the dog surprised me too, and that growl sounded like a werewolf but I had Donnie covered, if that dog had of even acted like he was fixing to make a go for us I would have dropped him. When that round Donnie fired hit about 8ft from that beast, that dogs back legs tried to out distance his front legs and it hauled ass out of there with its tail between its legs trying to catch up” Jack said telling the story with some hilarious hand gestures.

When we got done laughing and joking about Jacks encounter the conversation took on a more serious note.

“You see anyone or have a feel for how many teenagers probably partied in that house Jack?” I said searching for some answers as to who might be moving in our direction.

“I did not do the CSI TV show investigation on the place but the mud next to the shoreline said if they were kids they pretty good sized ones and no I don’t know all those tracker questions forming in your mind David. I just noticed they had on tennis shoes and big feet.” Jack said looking around like he was sniffing the wind to see where supper might be cooking at.

Sherry picked up on the old ham burglars look and told him we waited until he got back to decide about dinner.