Doing The Apocalypse Shuffle: Southern Prepper Adventure Fiction of Survival Grid Down (Old Preppers Die Hard Book 2) (21 page)

“But he doesn’t let us drink it!” Jeremy squeaked.

“Damn right he don’t and it’s a good thing too! I catch you drinking that crap you are going to find out what a mean grandpa is all about!” Charlie said dismissing the boy as Fong put his hands up like he was surrendering from being caught with his hands in the cookie jar.

“Houston! We got us a problem! Man, I can’t see any way out of this damn situation except that nobody needs to say a word about this situation! How about that, Charlie?” Farley said exasperated.

“That won’t work, either. You’re caught, son. You know that old woman of mine! Man, I guarantee you she’s going to get it out of me eventually or she’s going to saddle up and corral one of the boys and get it out of them and I am not getting in Dutch all the time for crap you come up with, Farley!” Charlie said not wanting any part of Farley’s lack of judgment.

“Ok, I got it: you know if I mix this stuff with gasoline 50/50 we can run your generators and the cars a lot longer. That’s transport, refrigeration, battery charging, etc. I am going to give to Miss Feng 25 gallons for her birthday. She can use it to trade, make tinctures with or mix with gas to run the generator and I will hook a hot water heater to it so she can have a warm bath.” Farley said, looking like he was going to get a bit tipsy by nervously sipping on his recipe for inspiration as he tried to come up with a story.

Charlie regarded him for a moment looking at Farley’s sly grin of achieving a “Eureka moment” before busting out laughing and declaring, “Farley you got balls like a big brass monkey and some of the damndest, weirdest ways I ever seen about getting out of trouble but that offer of a hot bath once in awhile might just work. Congratulations, boy, you have achieved the impossible!” Charlie said as the boys whooped up this getting the hell out of the frying pan and the fire moment.

“That story might work for Miss Feng. If I tell her, your good intentions might not get lost in the translation but I don’t think Becky will buy it and will probably see right through you. That woman studies you by the way, Farley. I see her looking for hidden meanings in what you say or admiring you when you do right. You better have all your ducks in a row and a straight face if you are going to pull that one off. Did it for Miss Feng! Ha! That is funnier than hell and what’s worse is that you might very well get away with it! I better heed my own advice and not bust out laughing when I hear you trying to tell it to her. Boys, if you get caught up in this grandiose bending of words, you best say that you didn’t understand what was going on because your butts are on the line also.” Charlie said with new admiration for the man to fabricate such a tale to save his ass that somehow seemed to end up being believable. The only problem was he wasn’t sure if everyone could carry it off with out letting the cat out of the bag.

“OK, we got to act like this stuff is poison and not fit for human consumption. It needs to sound like you will die by just getting it on you at a certain stage if you’re not protected so they won’t think about us possibly consuming it.” Farley said polishing the apple for sale.

“That is going to get you in a world of trouble, Farley, you need to rethink that. You putting those two young boys in danger is bound to be going to cause you a world of grief worse than having them help you make a batch of moonshine.” Charlie cautioned.

“Wise words, buddy. You got any suggestions then?” Farley said revaluating the situation.

“Well, you could allude to just adding food coloring to it like you did about making something appear to being agricultural gas for trade that they understood.” Charlie ventured.

“Yea, I could say something about if you add it to shaved ivory soap you get napalm or something or other but they would be back on my case again.  Guess the main thing is I don’t get caught drinking it and you neither, Charlie, or them two song birds are going to try to peck our eyes out. Hey, they don’t know shit from shinola when it comes to
different forms of alcohol. We can tell them this stuff is like rubbing alcohol that everybody knows you can’t drink and that they are dumb to even accuse us of such!” Farley said loving it when a plan came together.

“You just ain’t right, Farley, that’s one devious mind you got working for ya.” Charlie guffawed and shook his hand.

“You know what’s a bitch, Farley, after you give it to her for her birthday, she’s going to send Fong down to help you make it and if he don’t she’s going to fuss at him to get going!” Charlie laughed.

“I could also put a small amount of it in a solar hot water heater I been thinking about so it won’t freeze this winter.” Farley said coming up with a further use.

“I love it when a plan comes together! Hey, Jeremy, you going to make sure Fong gets up and helps us run the still?” Farley said.

“Boy, I heard some whoppers in my day, but Farley, I don’t know about you!” Jeremy said slapping his buddy Fong on the back that now he was going to have to get out there and carry the load and thump the still and tend fires instead of him sneaking out in the middle of the night.

Charlie said “Farley, I still am not over how actually funny this might turn out. You painted your damn self in a corner and the only one looking like they may be a pole cat would be Miss Feng if she don’t accept your present! This is going to be one hell of a birthday party! Too bad we can’t drink some of this shine to celebrate it!” Charlie said, grinning at Farley.

“Who said we can’t? How are they going to know any damn difference with what I spiked the punch with. They already know I’m going to do or try something like that anyway. Don’t drink the fruit punch, by the way boys.” Farley said, messing with his moonshine helpers.

“Farley, you are what my old school teacher used to call a scoundrel!” Charlie said.

“Yea, but I’m a damn good one!” Farley said chuckling.

“Now then, you boys blackmailed the hell out of me to let you help out in this little endeavor and you nearly got me fried so guess what I got on you now? If I hear one word spoken about this stuff, I’m gonna go off and get amnesia and leave you with the ruckus you created.” Farley said, patting Jeremy on the head just to piss him off because the boy hated that and Farley knew that just to aggravate his new charges once in a while.

Charlie laughed seeing the boys’ response as he reached over and did the same thing to Fong saying “I got ya!”

.

“Now the shoe’s on the other foot isn’t it, you little hobgoblins!” Farley said as the two boys looked at each other and went ‘Uhhhh” as they realized Farley wasn’t going to let them get away with putting it over on him.

“Hey, Jeremy, you know next time I need water from the lake to fill up my toilet we got us a new word I’m going to whisper to you, you know what that word is? Moonshine!” Farley said while contemplating a new way to mess with the younger generation.

“Works both ways, Farley! Don’t you start nothing! Next time you want to come over to the house and act all innocent and tell me to go to bed, I’m going to tell you the same!” Jeremy said.

“OK, truce then! We know nothing, we say nothing, ain’t that right, guys?” Farley said as they all a round of high fives.

The motley crew gathered up and put the fire out on the still and headed for home and tried to put on happy faces to go see the Feng.

   “Where you been? What you do?” Miss Feng questioned as she inspected her nephew for cuts and bruises and wondered why Farley seemed to be suppressing a grin.

“Now, Mama, they were just down there skipping rocks on the lake, doing what boys do. We just hung around awhile and checked on the smokehouse” Charlie began before Becky started questioning Farley on the same subject.

“You been up to something, you are smirking about something, Farley! What are you smiling about?” Becky asked.

“Nothing much we were just talking about all the surprise things we have for Miss Feng’s birthday. Aren’t you a darlin’.” Farley said patting the diminutive woman on the head to piss her off just because he could.

“I tell you, Farley; no pat me on the head! Big tall ugly Farley! Why you pat me on the head? I no like.” Miss Feng said pushing him away.

“Because you so cute!” Farley said leaning to give her a kiss on the cheek and then going ‘oh hell’ as he noticed her eyes narrowing as she smelled his breath.

“I don’t understand you, Farley. You walk outdoors sober and you come back stinking! You been drinking with my boy?” Feng said hands on her hips.

Becky reached over at Farley and grabbed his shirttail and said “What the hell? You have only been gone an hour! Where did you find something to sip on this early in the day?” Becky said in anger just to be on the side of Miss Feng, Farley’s favorite nemesis.

“Now that’s a hell of a thing. I get run off walking a mile or so to round up the boys and some woman wants to spank me because I forgot I had a few of them itty bitty miniatures like you used to get on the airplane in my vest pocket that I forgot that I had left over from one of the Prepperstock’s I had attended. I showed it to Charlie and we both went what the hell does cinnamon flavored rum taste like and it was just the one, so we gave it a try.” Farley said trying to appear sober.

“Yeah, right, how many did you actually have?” Becky asked and Miss Feng looked at Mr. Wu considering the same.

“Now sweeties, don’t be fussing today, we just had us a little wandering and pondering. The boys are here and we’re all safe and it’s Miss Feng’s birthday party in a few days so we are allowed a few secrets we don’t want to discuss! And we were just having us a conversation about how this lovely day should be spent.” Farley said.

Charlie who was the far more sober of the two for the moment saw the opportunity to save Farley’s ass and said, “We thought that you shouldn’t do any cooking for your birthday at all and we were just going over the menu.”

“It smells like brandied cherries were on the menu.” Becky said before going ‘oh hell, don’t say anything about booze around Miss Feng’.

The boys decided they needed to help out on this little bit of conversation here and told everyone that they had set out extra lines to try to get a great big blue catfish for the menu because Miss Feng seemed to like that kind of fish better than whatever else lived in the lake.

Miss Feng chattered and stuttered and said in her beloved broken English what wonderful boys they were to consider such and Farley and Charlie, in spite of themselves, could not stop grinning at each other. They did however, look over at the boys to tell them not to lay it on too thick or they would surely get caught and the conversation moved on to the here and now and more important things.

12

Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep Will Scatter

You become the monster you fear the worst, so the monster won't overtake you.”

Suzanne Weyn
,
The Bar Code Tattoo

The will to succeed is important, but what's more important is the will to prepare. 

-Bobby Knight

That there were now plenty of armed people in the world looting to survive he had no doubt. The monsters he feared were good people gone bad, bad people gotten worse, preppers turned marauders
.
There is nothing more primal than a hungry man seeking food; actually there is nothing more primal than a hungry man with a child and a wife.

He does not care about laws, rules, the prepper community or anything similar.

He has simple tasks that he will try to do at all costs, to feed his kid, his wife and himself, to have safety. Does he obey the invisible rules? No, in most cases he will not. Who would just go into the forest to die because it is not appropriate to cause problems for your neighbor or because they were a fellow prepper?

If you looked at Farley for the last few months you would not find desperation, but determination, will and hope, but he felt himself changing. It was happening and Farley needed to deal with it, he was becoming the enemies he feared because he feared they would fear him and shoot him as one of them, the enemy.

That Farley would be fearless in trying to protect everyone they had no doubts, that this testosterone fueled trait of his would cause both them and him grief was pause for conjecture as he seemed to like to wave caution to the wind and want to do stuff on his own that needed reeling in from time to time.

If Farley got mad about something he was wont to go out and try to take care of it himself, he made it apparent he didn’t think you would be of any help to him and most likely get him killed and yell at you to stay in your place. Such outbursts usually came after he was taken to task for undue risks that could affect them all and if his begrudging explanation and apology was not readily received he would get mad and go demonstrate some kind of bullshit macho getting his pride and his honor confused schoolboy resistance to the notion by standing in front of trouble when he shouldn’t.

When you want a thing done, 'Don't do it yourself' is a good motto for Scoutmasters.

Robert Baden-Powell

Take for example the last time he had stormed off and said I am going looting or whatever you want to call it whether you all like it or not and grabbed nothing but his gun and survival vest and disappeared for two days.

The women worried, the boys cried and everyone started thinking the poor old bastard had died before Farley’s drunk ass had come wandering in about 10 o clock one evening with a bag of can goods he wouldn’t fess up to where he got them from and a deer haunch that came with a harrowing tale true or not of how that was all the meat he could salvage from the situation he regaled them with before passing out with a grin.

That the apocalypse was working on Farley’s mind was evident to everyone. You could catch glimpses of him in the early morning hours practicing hand to hand fighting with open palms and knife when he thought nobody was looking. He had accidentally drawn his small blade on young Fong and he said when Farley did it he looked into the face of the devil himself when he accidentally surprised him trying to figure out what kind of animal was robbing his traps.

Farley said he had seen a black bear in his trap line running but not to worry because the creatures were normally more scared of man than we were of them but thought a bobcat had declared our reservation as his hunting territory and that Farley thought it was necessary to drop everything and go try to kill it because it would reduce our hunting chances.

Charlie and Miss Feng saw the black bear Farley said was in their area one day when he was out on trap line. Farley’s trap line was 5 miles in a circle around them and you never knew if he would be home for breakfast or dinner or not because Farley in their opinion would whine he couldn’t make it back to camp, he was too tired etc after servicing the route. That he found occasional booze in a house close by and had a party to his own self was no longer talked about.

Farley provided, Farley was the strength of the group; Farley carried the weight on his shoulders of this entire clan and left his goods behind when he went out foraging.

The group was tighter than it had ever been before, Fong taught Judo to his new nemesis brother Jeremy. Miss Feng and Becky did dishes, cooked, cleaned and looked out for the boys, fished and guarded. Charlie took on a grandfather’s role as well as master of this former Air Force resort while Farley did what Farley’s do and stamped everyone’s name on the land.

Farley just wasn’t happy unless he was trying to out do himself explaining a security or survival trick in order to prove a point. If nobody seemed to be listening he got depressed and considered himself taken for granted with complaints or arguments for them to try to do or listen better before he quickly got over it and was back to joking around. Because it was known by all that Farley had at one time served as an enlisted man in the military, the thing that got him most in trouble was when he hollered at them about their own safety and security they felt justified in telling him that neither they nor he was in the military and for him to address them differently.

Well in his mind he already had been patient and as far as he was concerned he was treating them with kid gloves at first by not giving them near the hell he remembered receiving or giving instructions while training troops for battle or just learning  a job that has serious consequences if one makes mistakes. Farley was getting better though at modulating his tone or way of saying things and they were learning he didn’t really mean anything by being gruff, it was just his way of getting points across and not directed at them personally.

“I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one, one, one.” Mother Teresa

Charlie had a single shot 12 gauge Farley had manage to abscond with somewhere and a handful of ammo, the kids were trained in the better aspects of cheating like hell to catch a fish, small game or how to eat somebody’s cat or dog if you had too which didn’t go over well with their parents and Farley had banished himself to the solitude of the woods once more.

“Give him some time.” Miss Feng said regarding Farley and all of their conjectures of this strange man’s attitudes to having to go out daily for their survival versus hanging around doing chores in camp.

“We don’t speak this way very often but I thought about that and we actually had that discussion once when he conned me into going skinny dipping with him. All he wants is being hugged on like he is a good dog or something and that’s weird to me. He has a lot of ghosts bothering him if you know what I mean. It’s like hug him and pat him and he will go to sleep like a baby, next minute he wants to protect, he is up and around 24-7 and waiting to defend us, very confusing man.” Becky said.

“He is just acting like an old soldier, he tries, and he really is the only outsider here because we have our own thoughts or family to depend on and he spends long periods alone. He asked us to take him in, we try, he tries but there is a wall I think he builds around himself so he doesn’t hurt.” Charlie said sagely.

“I think he is dinky dou” Miss Feng said referring to the Vietnamese word for crazy.

“I think he is gotten very tired and just don’t know what to do anymore.” Charlie said.

“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.” Mother Teresa

“I think I came home too soon, we got more problems than me!” Farley said exiting the woods on their late night campfire,

“Holy shit Farley I told you don’t do that!” Jeremy said to his sudden appearance sneaking up on the group.

“You no good sneaky man, glad you home but you bad!” Miss Feng said before rushing to his side noticing blood on his brow and vest.

“Ah you old Momma San I am fine. Quit petting and patting me.” Farley groused as everyone started worrying about the blood he had all over him.

“I was going to jump in the lake before coming home to you all and clean up some but this brandy I found is not so dandy when you’re too drunk to skewer a deer properly!” Farley said setting his weary bones down on a log next to their camp fire.

“Are you ok? What happened? Where you been?” Miss Feng asked began a host of other questions  before Farley got the point across what was on him was not his blood and look at the cool spear he had made!

“I tell you what I could have lived for a century and never had such a scare as I just had. I was bird-dogging a game trail to see where it went when low and behold a house in the woods presented itself.”Farley exclaimed.

“Why Farley you got to be no good leave steal all the time?” Miss Feng said evidently irked at him once more for his ghosting ways when they argued.

“Just listen to me for a minute and it will be all right folks, I told you I had to venture out farther each time as other people are out there hunting also.” Farley said happy to be home but disgusted that his tribe didn’t understand the difference in him only having an eight shot 22 rifle and a 380 pistol most of the time against every deer rifle, battle rifle or high capacity pistol carrier these days. He felt under gunned in someway but more outnumbered than anything else.

“I was out picking up traps, that’s not setting them, I spent a lot of time and energy setting them out the first go round in what I guessed were bad places and was moving them to another location trying to be more successful when I run up on this house in the woods that looked like a Taj Mahal to me. After sitting in the woods for an hour or so watching it I crept up on it to find out was it occupied or not and found guess what? People! About 6 that I know of, that thing is a hunting lodge of sorts I am guessing and the damn thing is occupied. I got spotted and ran.” Farley managed to deliver before the hell raising began.

“Shut up! Shut the hell up.” What’s done is done, I could have maybe hollered at them and parlayed but they run out like they were going to chase me down and shoot me.” Farley said before elaborating on a big a frame house he had found that just invited his bump key to try get into and he had got caught sneaking towards it.

“Yea I was going to play thief in the daylight but I had no idea anyone was at home.” Farley said explaining that he was approaching it sneakily and he was damn sure a thief, albeit a thief with a conscience.

“Anyway even if I had walked up on it hollering hello I don’t think it would of turned out good because those people didn’t look like they belonged there either. They had on a mixture of camo and regular clothes, and he figured whoever owned that property had plenty of money to well, look different and be dressed different in his thinking.

That this latest worrisome problem was brought to them by Farley because he wouldn’t leave places alone was diminished by the facts that the man could produce regardless of his somewhat obstinate temperament and declarations that he didn’t need them to survive on his own but they could see through this bluster. But Farley was changing; dancing with death was tiring. Doing the apocalypse shuffle was all he knew. How can we know the dancer from the dance?

“There is a monster in all of us.” Farley said.

“There is a monster in all of us.” The woods murmured back.

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, Dance, Dance till you drop.
~W.H. Auden

THE END BOOK TWO OLD PREPPERS DIE HARD

Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.

Robert Baden-Powell