“With that being said, this is why I keep telling you guys that you need to get into that compound. You need those supplies for everyone. You all need to work together. Now you guys get going. Keep me up to speed and I’ll be talking to you later. Don’t forget about the bodies. The sooner the better.”
Rob said, “They’ll come get them before it gets too dark out.”
“No, wait until morning.”
Dawn went and brought the horses back. She found them in the neighbor’s barn, which was a cinderblock built barn, but it looked like they hadn’t had horses in quite some time. Seems they didn’t want anything to do with the battle. Romeo and Max were still afraid to come upstairs. The kids were kept in the house; they didn’t need to see any of the bodies. The day was about over now.
Dinner was cooking and Haliday went back over to the radio. He started writing down some more notes on what he heard. He even asked for other frequencies so he could gather more information. Any frequency he was on he would listen for specific information or he would ask a few questions. He had quite a note pile going on now. Still no word on any government activity.
They sat down for dinner and enjoyed the meal. They had some meatloaf that Bev had canned, canned corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn bread muffins and pudding for dessert. Haliday even told a few corny jokes to lighten the mood. “Blake, you ever look in the sky and see a flock of geese in their ‘V’ formation?”
“Ya,” Blake said.
“You ever notice how one side of the V is always longer than the other?”
“Ya,” Blake said again.
“You know why that is?”
“No, I don’t,” Blake answered.
Roger looked at him, “It’s because it has more geese in it.”
Blake rolled his eyes and said, “It’s going to be a long night.”
Rich called Roger over to the radio, “Go get ma’,” he said, “hurry up.” Roger went and got Bev and they both went over to the radio. Susan down in Texas had managed to find a ham and finally got through to them. They were doing fine she said, they caught up briefly and said they would keep in touch. This was great news. Now they need to find out about Greg in Missouri.
Now the one thing Haliday had noted and now confirmed was that the lower part of Texas was more functional than the rest of the country, they even had power in some of the southernmost areas. He had heard the same about California, Arizona and New Mexico. That’s what really struck him as odd.
The next few days were extremely uneventful. The prisoners, while under guard, had picked up the bodies and taken them away. The group cleaned up the area the best they could and replaced the glass in the windows with Plexiglas that Roger had stocked. Easier to cut and handle than glass was. They plugged all of the holes in the sides and roof of the cabin and checked for leaks. It was pretty much all back in order now.
Haliday had extra shingles, putty, Plexiglas, screws, nails, insulation, wood boards, piping and all sorts of building materials to maintain the cabin. This was all kept in the storage building and pole barn. They would be able to fix practically anything that had broken or became damaged.
Haliday accessed his underground Faraday cage. This thing was quite different. It was a beast as far as a Faraday cage was concerned. The effort put into it was extreme in nature. If it worked, great. If not, he had a big tub of modern antiques. He borrowed the back hoe from the neighbors. He felt odd using it, but he would pay whoever laid claim to their property if family ever happened to show up.
He dug down and hit a piece of rotting plywood. It was marine grade and he had treated it practically six times sealing it up, but it was meant for indication of the cage and not protection. Once hitting it, he knew he would have to finish digging the cage out by hand. He turned the tractor off and jumped down. “Grab a shovel guys, let’s get going.”
They cleared the dirt off and removed the piece of wood. Sitting there was a big metal box that had been buried five feet under the ground. The box itself was roughly 48X48X48 inches. It was actually constructed of a couple of boxes nested inside each other. Redundancy was the key to keeping the contents safe, Haliday thought. He had looked up info on cages and everyone had a different idea of what would work, so he went with his own.
He built the first box with one eighth inch steel and lined it with rubber. The contents were placed inside and the top sealed with a rubber gasket and then metal tape. This was covered in rubber and then a copper shell applied to this. He was able to sweat the lid of the copper on in order to seal it entirely. Next was another thin metal skin and sealed again. They hoisted it out using the tractor and some slings.
Haliday started the slow process of opening the cage. Once it was opened, everyone looked inside. You would have thought it was Christmas with all of the oohs and aahs. “Don’t get excited yet,” he said. “We might have boat anchors here.” He carefully pulled the contents out and the guys took it all inside.
He walked inside and looked at the pile. Two 32” flat screen TV’s, two DVD players, two small surround sound set ups, a couple of portable radios, a couple of Ipads, two laptops and a massive computer tower filled with hard drives along with some other various electronics. He grabbed one of the laptops and walked over to an outlet.
He plugged it in as everyone stood there and waited. A few lights blinked and then the tell tale Microsoft windows sound came on. Roger looked around, “Solitaire anyone?” he asked. They all cheered. They set most of it aside and got a TV set up downstairs along with one of the laptops on the desk. The large computer tower was loaded with files. E-books, dictionary, digital encyclopedia, music and over 5,000 movies.
They would be ok for entertainment, this would help keep some of the normalcy of life flowing. That had been the reason behind having back ups for the TV and such, in case something broke before the country was back on the grid. They would limit the use of everything in order to avoid burning through it in a short period of time.
Next on the to-do list was to complete an entire inventory of everything they had and to work out some menus in order to maximize the food stores. They were actually much better off than they thought. The small caches around the property were just a bonus. Farming and bartering would allow them to sustain themselves.
Dawn called down to Roger; “Rob needs to speak to you.”
“Ok, tell him I’ll be there in a second.” Roger went up the stairs and sat down by the radio. “Hey Rob, what’s going on?”
“Roger, we had a problem today. We had the fuel truck from the airport come out with six armed guys. They went to one of the gas stations and took the gas. Well, they took a truck load. We didn’t have enough people to try and defend it.”
“There’s more,” he said. “They dropped a bunch of flyers on the ground. They said they were going to be taking more gas and other supplies as form of payment for the vehicles and equipment we took from them. There was to be no interference or they would defend themselves. They also said they would consider anybody on the streets armed and hostile.”
Roger replied, “Rob, that means they’ll shoot anyone for any reason. They say anything else?” Rob went on to say that they wanted their prisoners back, that they expected full cooperation at all times, and most importantly they would not be setting up any trade or distribution of food or supplies until spring. “Roger, not a lot of people can make it that long.” Roger told him that was because that’s what they wanted; to cull the population. For some reason Roger kept thinking about that.