“Absolutely,” Jason said, “we’ll sleep better knowing we have our water situation figured out. Thanks. Great work. Let your guys know I said ‘thanks.’” Jason started back along the trail.
“Cool. I’m going to get back to it.” Teddy awkwardly shook hands with Jeff again and returned to his Bobcat excavator.
“So you have spring water and a reservoir?” Jeff asked as they climbed into the OHV.
“Yeah. I haven’t had time to catch you up on Homestead improvements since you got back from Afghanistan. I can brief you whenever you have a minute.”
Jeff had only been invited as the newest member of the Homestead steering committee the week previous. Nobody on the committee knew Jeff particularly well, but there was no denying how useful he might be as a member of their preparedness community. Still, Jason had been careful not to tell any one person everything about the Homestead. Outside of family, trust only extended so far.
Prior to Jeff’s last deployment to Afghanistan, Jason had given Jeff and Tara Kirkham a tour of the Homestead, launching into “The Conversation” with the couple. Many times before, and with many other couples, Jason had broached the conversation about survival and preparedness. He had even become pretty good at sneaking up on the big reveal―that they had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a survival compound, barely concealed behind the fancy architecture and the wrought iron gates of the Homestead.
Ross knew from experience that “The Conversation” could take many interesting turns. Once, when talking to a young doctor and his wife, the couple had somehow gotten it in their heads that the awkward conversation was working its way toward an invitation to swing with Jason and his wife. When the truth finally emerged, the couple’s relief had been palpable. Being asked to join a survivalist group was apparently much less awkward than being asked to wife swap.
With Jeff and Tara, “The Conversation” went a lot more smoothly. The couple had firsthand experience with the decrepitude of government, and Jeff had witnessed his share of post-apocalyptic suffering overseas. Considering their three children, Jeff and Tara didn’t take long to warm to the idea of contributing to a hardened facility near their suburban home. Plus, the work that had already been completed on the Homestead would have impressed anyone.
The orchard covered dozens of acres and included over a hundred fruit trees, plus a small vineyard. Scattered around the property were seven greenhouses, all with LED grow lamps and solar back-up power. The greenhouses contained almost four thousand square feet of raised planter beds with year-round gardening capability.
The summer garden was a work of art, with another two thousand square feet of raised grow space neatly laid out in square-foot garden plots and giant Grecian urns. The tomato garden was more than eighty feet in diameter and sat on a beautifully stacked-stone retaining wall, towering over the gated entrance to the property.
Everywhere the Kirkhams looked, there were heavy groves of berries, fruit trees and vegetables. Wherever possible, Ross required the landscape to be fruit-bearing and edible.
Nestled behind the orchard, the property played host to a small herd of livestock. Ross bought into partnerships with four local farms scattered around the neighboring valleys. Every so often, a farmer would come by with a horse trailer and drop off a few more goats, sheep, chickens or ducks, just to top off the Homestead herd.
While they kept farm animals on the Ross property in small numbers, there was nothing small about their rabbit production. One of the finest buildings on the property was the rabbit warren. The entire building held dozens of stacked rabbit cages and feed systems.
The Ross clan and their friends hunted wild game on the Homestead. Elk, deer and turkeys wandered the property in great abundance, with wild deer and gobblers meandering through the orchards daily. They had hunting and butchery down to a science and the only meat served on the family table was killed on their property or grown on one of their farms.
Along the base of the woods that jutted from the east of the gardens, tens of thousands of bees browsed the gardens, turning out light, fragrant honey. As an avid gardener herself, Tara Kirkham had been openly impressed by the gardens and the bees.
The Kirkhams didn’t seem to have a better plan at the moment, and the Homestead offered an alternative to “riding it out” solo if things went sideways. Jeff and Tara tentatively agreed to help with the Homestead, at least until everyone had a chance to feel out the new friendships.
That had been a few months back, and Jeff had spent most of those months overseas. He had barely returned home from his last deployment and, within weeks, a bomb went off in Saudi Arabia and the stock market started doing the herky-jerky.
Sooner than anyone would have preferred, the world took a precarious turn and, as Jason Ross drove the OHV down the hill, he looked straight ahead, uneasy with the formidable presence of Jeff Kirkham beside him. Like it or not, circumstances had forced them into relying upon one another—like two lions caught in the same enclosure, circling, never quite comfortable enough to lie down.
Federal Heights
Salt Lake City, Utah
Jimmy McGavin fingered the bump on his throat for the ten thousandth time and, for the ten thousandth time, he told himself that he needed to get it checked by a doctor. He had sliced it off shaving more times than he could count, but it always came back, dark and ominous.
Looking at himself in th
e mirror, two conflicting emotions washed over him.
First, he liked the way he looked in a suit and tie. He was a commercial realtor, respected by his friends. He had done a masterful job of providing for his family. Living in Federal Heights was no small feat. Financially, he had achieved more than almost anyone else in his high school graduating class.
Second, even in the double-breasted suit, he made himself a little sick. There wasn’t much of a man left behind those hanging jowls and pasty white skin. He rarely got outside and he almost never exercised, short of the once-quarterly trip to the gym. With work, church and mowing the yard on the weekends, he felt like a beast of burden. The edgy young man who once stole a neighbor’s car for a joy ride was gone forever. He couldn’t even remember the last time a woman looked at him with lust.
Other men treated him like he wasn’t the slightest bit dangerous. By smiling at everyone and doing whatever it took to keep other people happy, he had allowed the dangerous in him to erode to a point where he no longer carried the scent of a real man.
In a Hail Mary attempt to restore some part of his virility, he insisted that his wife allow him to go deer hunting with his brothers each year. She always complained, citing the dozen things that needed to be done around the house. They never talked about it plainly, but anything that might vaguely threaten her dominance in their marriage, like owning guns, speeding on the freeway or deer hunting, she fought with a relentlessness that only a woman with an expanding waistline could understand.
Jimmy knew that, if it weren’t for the four or five days hunting each year, he might actually kill himself, so deep was the silent despair of his life. So he made the hunting trip happen regardless of the crap his wife dished out.
Occasionally, he would go down to the basement, open his gun safe and hold his Savage 30-06 rifle, working the bolt a couple of times to enjoy the feel of it, stirring up the smell of Hoppe’s No. 9 bore cleaner. He knew he wasn’t much of a hunter, but those motions and smells restored something in him. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep him moving, enough to keep him plodding forward.