Doing The Apocalypse Shuffle: Southern Prepper Adventure Fiction of Survival Grid Down (Old Preppers Die Hard Book 2) (19 page)

“Farley, if you don’t want to go just say so, I don’t know you from Adam as you say but I’m damn sure not giving you fifty percent just for you hauling it around in your van. Now, I can see how you’d be wanting a better deal than I offered you and I can make it up to you but I ain`t giving you half!” Dump said adamantly.

“Don’t get me wrong I wasn’t asking for fifty-fifty, I was just saying you got to sweeten the pot a little bit and seeing there’ll be extra ammo and whatever available, that means I might be wanting part of that.” Farley said countering.

“I have no problem gifting you an extra gun or maybe two and a bit of ammo to go with them, but keep in mind, Farley, if I wasn’t sitting here buzzed I could go round up half the county but you’re sitting here with me convenient at the moment.” Dump said with a sneer.

“Hell, I’d be proud and happy if I had an extra pistol and some ammo.” Farley said extending his hand.

“You got it, brother.” Dump said amenably then shook his hand and scared the shit out of him by grabbing him in a bear hug.

Once Farley got his breath back from the big heathen that just got done squishing him he got in his van and proceeded home to tell his tribe he’d be back in a day or so.

     Farley wanted him a new toy.         

Photo c. Patricia Ann Lambert 2015  

10

The Departure

Farley pulled into the back gate and unlocked what was as far as he was concerned, the last functioning lock on this place. Note to self: find usable padlocks, Farley said to himself with a grin that his set of bump keys made anything he could find ineffective to normal folks depending on that type of security. Locks were only made to keep honest people honest, Farley thought. What is honest these days? What’s the new definition of that? And how in the hell was he going to explain to Becky and Mr. Wu that he was going off with a biker to collect a murdered man’s supplies.

Farley looked over on the side of the road and saw of all things an armadillo “hot damn- possum on the half-shell”! Those dang things had finally made their way all the way up here from Texas. What most people don’t realize is documented and looked upon as truth or fallacy that there was evidence or conjecture that they carried leprosy or not. Folks been eating them those armor plated things for years but if there’s one thing nobody wants it’s that dreaded disease and Farley wished he had the internet to ask those questions but it was a foregone conclusion in this world. No, its knowledge that you carry in your head or an old paperback book on the shelf that would determine a man’s fate from here on out, Farley mused. Things like how much to plant, how to handle insect problems, first aid for unknown ills, what roots, berries and leaves were medicinal and how to identify them was all contained in a non-electronic world of voices gone past. The latest greatest knowledge that so many of us were dependant on stored at the touch of a finger was past now, only those individuals with access to old paper books and what they carried in their heads was useful now. Memories would dim, books would be lost and would this survival knowledge ever be recovered or remembered in these post-apocalyptic times? No one man is an island or a rock, as Farley well knew.

Farley unloaded at Charlie’s house with all the repercussions and scolding Farley predicted and all he said was ‘It’s all right’ before he started to explain that he had to go do something that they weren’t going to approve of but he didn’t have much time to go explaining about. He was kind of gruff and condescending and after he saw the words would have no meaning for them, wished them well and left to go on his mission with sayings that would be ok and they would remember the crap that he had taught them.

“What’s up, Dump? I’m back! You ready to go?” Farley said as he pulled in front of the horseshoe bar seeing Dump sitting on his hog like he was ready to leave out before Farley got back.

“I was considering looking for you but I didn’t know which way you were going, so let’s do this!”

“You want another beer?” Dump asked.

“Does a dog have fleas?” Farley said reaching for one.

“Let’s do it!” Dump replied.

Farley followed Dump on the cycle for about eight miles of country road before arriving at a red dirt hill going up to Connor’s place. Dump set his motorcycle helmet on top of his seat and grinned at Farley and said “Hey, look! That gate’s only about a hundred yards from us. Let’s walk up there first and see if it’s been messed with or not before we drive the van up.”

Farley said ‘Fine” and then advised Dump to get on the far side of the road and they’d go up that way and see if the gate had been breached or not. After careful walking and listening, they approached the gate and saw that it had not been broken into and gave each other a high five that the road appeared to be clear.

“Go back and get the van; matter of fact, you walk your ass back there and get the van and I’ll have the gate open by time you get up here!” Dump said with a grin.

“Damn! Back to walking again, huh?” Farley said proceeding on his way before turning. “Hey Dump! You know this walking thing is something we’ve got to keep in mind. How much gas you got, man? The reason I’m asking is you probably get something like a hundred miles to a gallon of gas and I can’t even consider what a quarter of a tank is.” Farley considered.

“I’m sitting on about half full, are you sure you got enough to make it up and back?” Dump said questioningly not knowing Farley was sitting on damn near full.

“I got it, let’s do this!” Farley said resuming his way.

Dump and Farley drove up to the house and noting nothing was amiss as they presumed, set about looking over the goods in the house for future potential use after Truck used that key to get them in.

Farley was impressed that evidently his former boss had trusted him enough to supply him with the ‘keys to the kingdom’.

Farley’s idea of a gun in every room did not prove true although they searched high and low for whatever might possibly be there. They did end up with a couple firearms and the traditional ‘It’s a snake!’ gun at the back door but evidently most of the firearms and ammunition were under lock and key. The booze on the other hand in back of the well-stocked bar in the rumpus room was something that became a distraction and even though they were not supposed to be imbibing they decided to partake of a shot of Jack or two after the scowls were off their faces and the grins began again.

“Yo, Dump, does he have any boxes around here? Seems like its moving day, you know what I mean? I mean it would take me a liquor store of boxes to carry all this out with us!” Farley declared contemplating the amount of bottles behind the bar.

“That’s a damn good question! How in the hell are we going to carry all this shit out of here?” Dump asked.

“I don’t know, dump all the dressers out and use the drawers?” Farley questioned.

“Yeah, like your mini van could fit a chest of drawers in there!” Dump said studying the wealth they couldn’t take off with them.

“Screw the whiskey! Let’s go in the kitchen. How much food did he have or whatever? Whiskey is nice but I want some rice and beans, you know what I mean?” Farley said heading in that direction.

“I don’t know what he had.” Dump said, following him in to what looked like Old Mother Hubbard’s bare cupboards.

11

Planning The Birthday Bash

      “Hey Farley, you got any ideas what we can give Miss Feng for her birthday? I was going to give her a fancy hair comb that I had with me, problem is I still like it for myself. Those boys came up with the greatest gift imaginable so far!” Becky said.

“Charlie asked me the same thing yesterday and I’ve been pondering on that question myself. We could give her some jewelry but she wouldn’t want it because she’d think I probably stole it from somewhere. Wait a minute now, I got it! Go find Charlie and bring him down here. We got to go in this together.” Farley said with a big grin.

“What is it? Tell me!” Becky implored.

“No, I am not telling you. Go find Charlie and come back here while I see what we can put together to make the gift while you’re gone. I haven’t done this in a while and I got to see if my old fading memory serves me.” Farley said smiling gleefully antagonizing Becky by not giving her any further hints.

“Damn it, Farley. Don’t be a pain in the ass. Come on now tell me what it is you have in mind!” Becky said reaching over to snuggle Farley and trying to con him into telling her by teasing and flirting at him.

“No, that’s not going to work! No cheating now! Go find Charlie and I’ll tell ya’ll what we got in mind.” Farley declared.

“Ok I’ll be back in a minute but this better be good after you putting me through all this misery! You sure you won’t tell me before I leave?” Becky said looking at him all puppy eyed.

“Now quit that and go get Charlie!” Farley chuckled giving her a hug back and sending her on her way.

Becky took her car instead of walking to go get Mr. Wu and Farley just shook his head at the waste of precious gas but it would have taken her at least 20 minutes to walk over there and twenty more to come back if she hadn’t taken her vehicle. Farley went back to his cabin and commenced to rummage around finding bits of this and bits of that to create what he thought might be one hum dinger of a birthday gift if he could manage to pull it off.

“Damn it, I got everything I need to get this thing done except some alligator clips! Now where the hell am I going to find me some alligator clips in these days and times? Hmmm, what can I use instead? Paper clips? That might work, I don’t know about the plating on them things, though. Darn that Miss Feng, I know I could get exactly what I want from that marina up the road, but my three weeks ain’t up yet. At least I had fun with Dump going through that house the other day and I can still remember Miss Feng’s face when she saw me carrying that pillowcase of goods I brought home with me saying “You bad Farley!” until I calmed that old woman down. I swear I’m going to ask Charlie one of these days if he’s sure or not if she wasn’t Viet Cong instead of being on our side! I best not start that shit!” Farley said chuckling to himself, trying to figure out what a replacement for alligator clips was.

Farley was still rummaging around in his stuff and staring at various odds and ends trying to figure out what he could use to complete the birthday present when Charlie and Becky drove up.

“OK, Farley, tell me your big damn secret now. I got Charlie with me. What is it you got in mind that we should give Miss Feng?” Becky asked as Farley smirked at her that he wasn’t going to tell her just yet, enjoying the moment.

“Come on, Farley, tell us what it is! Miss Feng is beside herself because she can’t come along she has an idea it has to do with her birthday and she’s going to be needling me as soon as I get home anyway. The longer it takes you telling me the more hell I got to pay when I get home!” Charlie said smiling at Farley to hurry up and spill the beans.

“Aw, come on now! It isn’t often I can create my own form of entertainment around here, are you up for a guessing game? I’ll give you a hint!” Farley said before two synchronized moans shouting “FARLEY!” encouraged him to quit bedeviling the pair.

“OK, I will tell you. This is a good one! I thought about this long and hard. You know that woman isn’t the easiest to buy for in the world and those boys came up with the gol-durndest idea I heard in a month of Sundays! So it’s pretty difficult to one up or compare to that idea. That’s pretty neat; I still can’t imagine how they came up with making an incubator out of a pizza warming display! Them two boys are some ingenious little critters!” Farley said, laughing.

“Damn it, Farley, you’re doing it again! Would you hurry up and just tell me what it is!” Becky said threatening him playfully with a table lamp next to him.

“OK, unhand that thing, Becky, and I will clue you all in on what it is.” Farley said, pointing at his bedspread that didn’t contain anything but a few wires, a jar, a transistor radio battery and what looked like a couple bits of silver wire.

“There it is! Isn’t it magnificent?” Farley said smirking.

“What in the hell do you think you are doing, Farley? Tell us what it is and quit toying with us. I told you that old woman was beside herself with curiosity and anger she couldn’t come along and I need to be getting back there before she blows a fuse!” Charlie said.

“Well I did tell you! We’re going to give her health and wealth for her birthday! But I’m missing some parts.” Farley declared.

“You going to be missing some of your own parts if you don’t explain what that pile of junk is all about!” Becky said, tired of Farley’s aggravating toying with them.

“We’re going to make her a colloidal silver generator! Why those things are about as useful as can be right now. It’s a business, it cures what ails you, she can dose the boys with it and it doesn’t taste bad and it will keep her busy and out of our hair!” Farley said still smirking.

“Now what in the hell is a colloidal silver generator? You aren’t just making that up to screw me more are you?” Becky asked eying the pile of junk next to Farley.

“Now calm down, this is for real. I ain’t making up anything, Becky. Silver is a cure all, don’t you know?” Farley began before Becky informed him she had her own cure for his meanness that he seemed to be relishing way too much in explaining whatever goofy idea he seemed to be taking his dear sweet time getting around to explaining.

“See, back in the day folks used to take a silver dollar and drop it in the milk jug to keep it from spoiling. Now hear me out, I ain’t bullshitting you, that actually works! See, silver in scientific studies was proven to kill, I think it was, over twenty six hundred germs on contact and no, I’m not talking about ones that come off of vampires or werewolves. I believe it was back in the 1930’s that modern medicine of that time came up with this cure all for man’s ills, but it was just too expensive back then for most people to be able to afford because the processes and technologies back then were just too complex to produce it easily. That’s the funny thing, they got all those cancer drugs and stuff nowadays that cost thousands and it’s not even comparable today. Now bear with me, Becky, I’ll get back to it now. The process today to make this magical elixir that I’m going to explain to you in a minute, and you hang in there too, Charlie, is simplicity itself! Now hear me out. You both know what electroplating is, right? Like for cheap costume jewelry, etc., well this works sort of the same way. If you want to plate a piece of metal with silver or gold or whatever, you hook a pure piece of precious metal to electricity and put a coating on the base metal. When you do this kind of process, you are transmuting the molecules of the precious metal through a medium like water and bonding them to another agent. Now when you leave those molecules suspended in the water and they got no where else to go we call that a colloidal medium. When you look at the water that you’ve done that to, it looks like regular water, you cannot tell that the bits of precious metal are suspended in that solution but they are there. Did you know that silver is the brightest of all metals? Now Biblically speaking or supernaturally talking, we know that light has been said to chase away evil. The silver has the properties of being able to reflect or absorb light and we know from our elementary science that light in it’s various forms is known to kill germs. Now I’m not saying that we are creating light we are merely turning this into another form. Colloidal silver can be ingested or topically applied to do many miraculous things. For example, you might not know this and I’ll be damned if I don’t know why it took modern science so long to catch up with what we already knew to be something as beneficial to the body as the discovery of penicillin was. For example, have you noticed now you can get bandages such as Band-Aids that have silver on them? And because the stupid doctors over- prescribed antibiotics and created superbugs that the chairs and sofas and such in hospitals now contain silver-impregnated fabrics so as to not pass on diseases by mere contact. The military even picked up on this and all your underwear and socks and such now contain either silver fibers or are electrostatically charged with silver to reduce microbes that can either infect you like foot disorders or it’s just there so you don’t smell like a goat after wearing them for a week or two.” Farley said clapping his hands together and saying “Hot Damn! Health and wealth! Do you get it?” to his now enchanted audience.

“Now what in the hell does them few bits of wires and those batteries have to do with the present? Hey, did you get those batteries out of the smoke detectors? I know you said the process is like electroplating but you also said it was a very difficult and expensive process and that’s why in the 1930’s it didn’t become popular. Where does the rest of this Frankenstein machine exist at that you said you were missing the part for?” Charlie asked.

“This isn’t another excuse of yours for us to let you go out pillaging is it, Farley?” Becky asked skeptically.

“No, it’s all right there, that’s it! All I got to do is find a better way of connecting those wires to those silver leads. Of course, I could just wrap the wires around the silver and be done with it but since it’s a birthday present I wanted to make it nice, pretty and easy. I need me some little alligator clips. I see ya’ll are still looking at me skeptically. I didn’t just invent this; this is true medicine that has been known for ages. Do you know why we call royalty ‘Blue Bloods’? That’s because this type of medicine and knowledge was only reserved for the rich and wealthy all the way back to the Middle Ages. Now before I finish the rest of my story, let me tell you this first. In normal usage, colloidal silver has no side effects but if you abuse it and overdose on it like some of those folks did back then, your skin will take on a grayish or bluish hue and you’ll look like a Smurf! But that effect only becomes apparent when you mega dose that over a long period of time.” Farley said fiddling with the bit of wire like it was the most important thing in the world to tell somebody and his disbelieving audience looked up at him like they were still waiting for the punch line.

“I see ya’ll still disbelievers, huh? I got in my preps my own commercially made version of what we’re doing and it’s the same damn thing that we are making except it don’t have a pretty box already made up for it.” Farley said reaching over to display his own unit for creating the best medicine he knew in a grid down apocalyptic world.

“Look here, here’s the directions come with the thing and a listing of the many studies and benefits of this thing so ya’ll will quit being such doubting Thomases.” Farley said as he handed them the directions.

Becky and Charlie examined Farley’s commercial silver colloidal maker and read over the paperwork describing it’s many benefits and both of them started grinning about how Farley actually had come up with such a wonderful present of health and wealth for Miss Feng.

“Now that’s cool as hell, Farley! You ought to give it to her. you came up with it!” Becky said somewhat deflated at the notion she couldn’t share in the giving because after all it was Farley’s thoughts.

“Becky, you got to contribute to this and you are going to have to give up something here that I happened to notice you have. You know that cobalt blue bottle dropper of Patchouli perfume you got around? Silver needs to be stored long term in something like peroxide does that doesn’t get light but isn’t that weird though? Silver is the most conductive and reflective material known to man to reflect or collect light but to keep the suspended particles in a water solution it needs to be hidden from light. You need to pour whatever is in that bottle in something else and wash it out good, and add your special gift that can no longer be found, to the present.” Farley said elevating her spirits.

“Now Charlie, as for your special addition to it, all you have to do is hand it to her and tell her that you are bestowing health and wealth upon her or if you want to you can take these various parts and pieces and find a special container to put them in. Now back to me wanting alligator clips. Can I go to the marina?” Farley asked with a wry smile.