2nd Earth 2: Emplacement

2
ND
EARTH

EMPLACEMENT

EDWARD & EUNICE VOUGHT

Text Copyright 2011 Edward & Eunice Vought

All Rights Reserved

Dedication

This book is dedicated to those people

who survive by their ability to adapt

and being prepared for whatever is thrown at them.

PART II

1

              It’s early fall and we are about as busy as I have ever been around the house. It seems like everything in the garden and in the fields is getting ripe at the same time. The fact that we planted at different intervals to prevent this doesn’t seem to matter. With the addition of our new group or family, I think we need to clarify the different groups that all form our extended family. There is our original group, at least mostly, which totals seventy men, women and children at last count. There are three other groups in our extended family. The leader of the next largest group is Ryan, they total thirty-six at last count. Doc McEvoy’s group is right at thirty, and Barb’s group has sixteen. We consider ourselves one big family even though only a few are actually related by blood.

The one common bond we have is that all of us moved here within the past year from northern cities. As far as we know the population of the Earth we are on has been just about wiped out, except for some scattered groups like ours. We have had radio contact with other groups, only most of them are nowhere near as large or as strong as we are. We all left the cities to get away from the two legged predators, plus the food in the cities would eventually run out, and the groups depending on the scavenging way of life would perish. I know this is going to be difficult to believe, but there are currently five of us who came to this alternate dimension or alternate Earth, whatever it is. Four of us have strong military background, that’s myself, Tim, Ken, and Gary. The other one like us is Sara; she was a civilian pilot before coming here. We feel, as do the rest of our families, that we have been sent or brought here for the purpose of helping these good people survive.

All of us read the Bible, and although we are not what you would call religious fanatics, we can’t help but wonder if perhaps Heavenly Father is giving us the opportunity to start mankind over again, like he did in the time of Noah. Only this time man almost wiped everyone out with a neutron war. It was more practical than the more damaging nuclear and atom bombs. The neutron bombs killed off most of the population, but did very little damage to the cities and the countryside. The world the others and I came from has neutron technology, but they still choose to kill each other off more systematically, with wars and poverty. I can’t complain because I was as efficient at killing as anyone I knew in that world. Tim and I were Navy SEALs, but we were working with a joint military operation with the Air Force Para-Rescue teams. My medical training as a corpsman has helped us tremendously here. So have the ability and the willingness to fight that Tim and I brought with us.

Before we got so busy with harvesting and preparing the food for storage, Tim and I were working with all the men and about half the women from all the families, training them in case we have to fight off a concentrated attack. A majority of our family has already been trained for the most part, but we are still fine tuning and adding to what they know. So far everyone is willing, and is showing that they are more than capable, if what we are seeing is how they will react if attacked. Tim, Ken, Sara, and Gary all feel that it is not if, but when we are attacked. All of us from the other world or dimension, lived lives that didn’t exactly make us trusting of our fellow man. We are the most concerned about Barbara’s group, because they are the smallest group with the least number of adults. We are all within two to five miles of each other, but a lot can happen in the five to ten minutes waiting for help to arrive.

Barbs group and Doc McEvoys group joined us a little late in the season to get a full crop in, but thanks to Frank, our group and Ryan’s group planted enough for all of us to have plenty. Between what we are putting up and the stores that we are able to get from markets in the surrounding cities, we should do fine through the winter. Since we already survived one winter, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect. We are definitely more prepared than we were last year and that was the best winter that all of our family ever had. Prior to coming here, they spent their winters trying to keep from freezing or starving to death. Last year everyone had plenty to eat and was at least warm, that was a very big relief for the mothers in our family. No one wants to see their children freezing or hungry.

Harvesting our crops is a lot of work, but many willing hands make it seem much easier, because we get to know each other better when we work together. One of the topics of conversation is where we should start looking for other settlements like ours, or even individual groups that may want to join our family. We have heard from some groups on the shortwave radio, but it is so intermittent that we are not sure where they are. We know of some groups like ours in Texas and California, but they say they are much smaller than our group. We have decided that when we get the harvesting and the canning done, we will take some trips to see what we can find. We all agree that we will leave most of the fighting men home to protect the family, so only a couple of us men will go at a time along with probably our wives.

Dayna says she would love to go with me, but little Timmy is much too young to be traveling like we will have to. Tim can’t go yet because Carrie is expecting most any time now and he should be here with her. We have tentatively agreed that Ryan and Carol will go with Robin and me, at least on the first trip. We have even traced out a route to take, and are marking off several to cover the area in an ever widening circle, beginning here of course. I can’t speak for the others, but my life has never been as enjoyable as the past year has been. I don’t ever remember working as hard as I have since moving here, nor do I remember ever feeling better about it. I know Ma and Gunny Horton would love to be here with all of us.

The days slip past, and the pantries and shelves in all our basements are getting full of the bounty that we are seeing from our labors. Dan, Don, and Andrew have been joined by another hunting enthusiast named Kyle, who is about the same age as they are. He came with Doc McEvoys group. Those four young men have kept us all in fresh meat, and have also made several large bags of beef and venison jerky, as well as enough smoked sausage and pepperoni to keep all of us happy. They found the recipe for making both types of sausage in one of the file cabinet drawers in the big room where we take care of meat. One very big accomplishment that we have enjoyed tremendously is making cheese. One of the books we brought with us from the city was on the making of different cheeses. We also found several books in the library in town on the subject as well.

Gary actually worked at a place where they made several kinds of cheese. Don’t ask me how they do it. But with his help, the girls have made some very good cheese that is very close to Mozzarella. With Tim’s and my help we have made some pretty good pizza. Of course the girls made the dough, and we made some really good sauce with some of the tomatoes from the garden. Speaking of sauce, the young men found a recipe for Italian sausage with those other recipes. We got the spices we needed from town and made a large batch of the sausage which came out very good. I remember how Ma Horton made spaghetti sauce, so Dayna and I whipped up about twenty quarts of sauce with Italian sausage and meat balls. Now everyone in all the families loves Italian food.

I love the great breakfast sausage we make with ground pork, and the recipe the kind people left behind. They also left instructions how to dehydrate many of the fruits and vegetables that we grow, to preserve them. We have successfully dehydrated potatoes, carrots, onions, apples, peaches, pears, cherries, and apricots. Those we are able to put in plastic bags, inside of plastic cans, that we found with lids that seal them. The books we have on preserving say that food preserved this way can last for a very long time and still taste good when you rehydrate it for use. To be honest we doubt if the fruits will get a chance to last a long time, because everyone loves to snack on them when we are sitting around reading or just listening to music and talking. There are still a lot of apples, peaches, and pears left in the orchard so we are planning to do more as soon as we can get the time.

While we are busy putting the last of the wheat into bags and sewing them shut, Frank and Dayna’s dad, Tom, Rich, and Ryan are getting the fields ready to plant winter wheat again. We have already laid out where we are going to plant our crops this year and what we are going to plant. Ryan and Carol decided that this would not be a good time to be away from their family, so Sara and Gary are going with Robin, me, and Don, who is one of our best hunters. Sara and Gary are now married as she predicted they would be. We still tease her about the way they decided to get married. We were picking peaches during the summer when Sara, who was picking from the same tree as Gary, turned to him and said that it is about time that they got married. Gary said he couldn’t think of any reasons not to, so they were married that evening when we finished picking for the day.

Today is Saturday so we figure we will rest on the Sabbath, and leave on Monday. We are taking two vehicles in case we find anybody to bring back with us. We have the CB radios, but we will probably be out of range to use them. We wish there was some way to remain in contact with the family while we are away. We are planning to mainly check the cities and towns, because if people are living like we are, they will probably not want to leave to join us. Robin’s children, who are like my own, want to spend as much time with us as they can before we leave. Teddy wishes he could go with us, but I tell him that at twelve he has to be the man of the house while I am gone. That makes him feel better even if Kathy, who is ten, and Karen who is eight, tell him that he is not the boss of them. They will only listen to Dayna and Melissa.

Tammy and Tina the twins tell us we can take Zeus with us to protect us if we would like to. I tell them that he needs them to watch over him, so it will be better if he stays here. At five those two don’t go anywhere without that dog. He will not allow them to go away from the house unless they are with one of the adults. If they try, he barks his head off, and does his best to push them back. As big as he is, he can usually push them too. Now that the time is here to leave, Dayna doesn’t want me to go. It is only going to be for a few days so it will not be too bad. Billy and Ramona come over on Sunday afternoon to make sure we know what to do in case we get in trouble. I tell them not to worry, I’ll have my cell phone, and all I have to do is dial 911. They look at me like I am crazy, but that is nothing new, so I explain what I am talking about and they can laugh at my joke anyway.

When Monday morning comes around, I have to admit I would prefer not to go. Before coming to this world and meeting Dayna I never cared where I went or for how long. The hardest part is going to be not seeing little Timmy every day. He is almost two months old and is a lot more fun to play with. Sara and Gary come over and tell me to get a grip. We will be gone for less than a week. We are taking some of the jerky and dried fruit as well as some canned food to eat while we are gone. We are taking the van and the pickup with several cans of gas just in case. We will probably be able to get gas at some of the stations along the way. Tim comes over and asks if I need to use the credit card, or if I have enough cash for the trip. It’s a good thing everyone knows our sense of humor, or they would think we are nuts.

We start out going south, we have been to the closest towns or cities and those are more east and west of our location. There is a city about seventy miles due south of us, plus some that appear to be small towns in between. Having to pick our way through the cars and across broken roads, and other debris that has accumulated, only allows us to make about twenty miles an hour. Around here it is mainly because of the broken roads more than the cars. This is primarily farm land so it wasn’t so heavily populated. We see many farms that look like they could easily be put back into use, so we are keeping a log of where we are when we see items of interest. About two hours from home we find a small town that has a gas station, a tavern and a store. The store is pretty good sized and looks like no one has been in it since the war. There are also several houses in a row that looks like they made up the town. This is what Gunny used to refer to as a blink and miss town. If you blink going through it, you will miss it.

We mark on our log sheet to remind us to stop on the way back to check out the store. An hour later we go through another town about the same size as the first one. As with the other one there are no signs of life or even that anyone has been through here in many years. We get to the city about an hour after going through the second small town. There are several stores in this town and all of them show signs that someone has been using them. We stop and go into the first large store we come to and see that the shelves have been just about emptied, and so has the stock room. The only things we find that are of interest to us are the canning jars, lids and rings. We find several cases of each, so we put them in the pickup and go on. The next two stores in town show the same as the first did. Again we find canning supplies that we can use, so we take those. Apparently the people who have been visiting this city or who are living here are not into preserving food.

We see smoke toward what looks like the middle of the city, so we head toward it, being very watchful that we don’t wander into some kind of trap. We get close to where the smoke is rising and we see two young children coming out of a store that is close by. They are carrying some canned goods, but when they see us they drop what they are carrying and run. We try to tell them we will not harm them, but they continue running. We follow in the direction that they went and come to an old building that is obviously being used as a home for some of the people here. The people are staying inside and are looking out of windows or doorways at us as we approach the building. We have the ladies along to help anyone we might meet perhaps trust us. Knowing how the people up north had to survive I think we can pretty much rule out trust until they get to know us.