Alone: Book 1: Facing Armageddon (10 page)

     Dave worked part time at the cabinet shop not because he had to. They could have survived easily without
the part time job. He took the job at the cabinet shop for the express purpose of funding their prepping efforts.

     And every time he got paid, he visited the local Walmart to stock up on canned goods, dry goods, ingredients for trail mix and frozen meat.

     The meat was cooked and then slowly dried in the oven until it was shelf stable. The idea was to soak it in water later on to soften and rehydrate it, and serve it in gravies or stews.

    
Now, Dave’s game plan was simple.

     First, he’d eat the rest of the food in the freezer. Then, he’d eat the canned items
that he knew would be ruined if they were still around when winter returned. Then he’d eat the other canned goods; the ones that would survive a freeze and still be good.

     Lastly, he’d eat the dry good
s, like the spaghetti noodles, macaroni and cheese, dry beans and trail mix. He could live off of those indefinitely.

     During the late summer and fall, he’d augment his diet with fruits and vegetables he planned to grow in the large back yard of the Hansen house, and fruit and nuts from their trees.

     He hoped to be able to grow enough to put aside over the winter months

     And all year around, he’d enjoy rabbit stew
. Once all the canned meats and trail mix was gone, it would become his primary source of protein.

     Dave went out and looked at the sky. It was the middle of March now. He never was much of a gardener. Sarah was quite good at growing things, and he
’d assumed she would be around to tell him what to do. It was another dreadful mistake.

     He’d have to muddle through without her, and hope for the best.

     He had enough common sense, though, to avoid making even more blunders. Like, for example, he knew that San Antonio occasionally had a late freeze in March. He’d therefore wait until April, when it was no longer cold at night, before he’d start his planting. He didn’t want to get his crops in the ground only to watch them freeze to death.

     With the planting delayed for a few more weeks, he had only one major project left.

     He’d spend the next few days building his safe room.

-21-

     Dave realized he should have built his safe room long before. It was an essential part of his survival. If Sarah and the girls had been here, it would have taken precedence over some of the other things… the outhouse, the generator, securing the food.

     But now, all of those other projects were done. It was time to tackle this one.

     And there was a bit of added incentive as well. The day before, he’d walked around the perimeter of his yard, making sure that the rabbits weren’t trying to dig their way out. A small hole in the fence caught his eye.

     I
t was perfectly round and fresh. A bullet hole made the night before.

     He had no clue where it came from.

     He was certain he wasn’t the target, though. No one in their right mind would waste a bullet on a fence. He’d heard several gunshots the previous night, and some were fairly close.

     He assumed it was a stray bullet that was meant for someone else, and found his fence instead.

     The bullet came through the fence at a steep angle, and probably embedded itself in the dirt of his yard. He guessed a 9 mm, based on the size of the hole, and was tempted to look for the bullet to see if he was right.

     But then he decided he had more important things to do.

     If the bullet had come in from a different direction, at a different angle, it would have penetrated his house instead of the fence.

     And that would be a problem.

     The number of gunshots he was hearing each night, and sometimes during the daytime, had been increasing. There were more and more people out there who were getting more and more desperate. The chances of stray bullets finding the house would be getting greater by the day.

     Eventually the shooting would subside, Dave figured. Eventually all of the looters would be dead. Or the homeowners. Eventually the only shots he’d hear would be from the people who had given up and couldn’t take it any more.

     But he had no idea how long that would be.

     The safe room wouldn’t be an easy thing to build. Half inch plywood wasn’t light, and it was clumsy as hell when you tried to maneuver it through a house. Moreover, b
y the time he lugged all eighty sheets of it from the garage to the den, he’d likely have no strength left to build it.

     The solution was to build it over the course of several days.

     He’d start with the west wall of the house. That was the side he’d found the bullet hole, and the side he considered most vulnerable.

     It was also the only side of his safe room that had only the exterior wall between it and the outside. The other
three sides had interior walls and furniture to help stop bullets.

     He moved the dining room set into the garage and put it behind the generator box. It was the only way he could swing the plywood in the dining room to make the turn into the den.

     When he picked up the first sheet of plywood, he realized how tough this job was going to be.

     It wasn’t just the weight. He had to pick it up in the middle, his arms stretched four feet apart, and balance it
so that the corners didn’t hit the floor and get damaged. Moreover, he had to walk sideways through the doorways.

     It only took him one sheet to realize there ha
d to be a better way. By the time he got the first sheet to the den, he was exhausted and had to stop and rest. And even worse, his back ached something fierce.

     He knew if he threw his back out, he wouldn’t be able to finish the project for days, if not weeks. And that would mean he’d be vulnerable for a lucky bullet any time, day or night.

     He’d been afraid to do any more damage to the house. It was bad enough he’d had to punch holes in the bedroom walls upstairs. As essential as it was, it still pained him to do it.

     They’d redone the kitchen right after they bought the house. Sarah had picked out the cabinets and floor tile and loved them. She said the kitchen was her favorite part of the house. The one thing she’d stressed to him when he’d laid out his plans for the safe house was an admonition:

     “Dave, don’t you dare damage my kitchen floors when you bring in that plywood.”

     But Sarah was no longer here.

     Screw the kitchen floors.

     By late afternoon, he’d b
rought in ten sheets of plywood by dragging them through the kitchen, and laid them in a stack on the floor of the den.

     The kitchen tiles were scarred now, and he’d even managed to chip a couple of them. The carpet in the den was frayed as well, and was pulled up from the tack strip where the kitchen tile transitioned to carpet.

     But it couldn’t be helped.

     He’d gladly weather the wrath of Sarah just to have her back.

     And he continued to hold out hope that he would, someday, somehow.

     Once he’d finished bringing in the ten sheets of plywood, he was exhausted. He laid on the couch that he’d moved out of the way and against the wall to make room for the plywood, intending to close his eyes and rest for a few minutes.

     He woke up four hours later. It was nearing midnight now, and dark outside.

     “Oh, crap!” he muttered to himself, and started to get up. But every muscle in his body screamed at him. He was stiff and sore and exhausted.

     And he began to wonder if two thousand calories a day was enough to sustain him.

     He’d never remembered being this tired before. Was it possible that his body wasn’t getting enough fuel? That he was slowly letting himself wear down? He’d noticed his clothes were considerably looser than they used to be. He didn’t see that as a problem, though. He, like many other men in their late 30s, had a few extra pounds to lose.

     But now, he was starting to wonder. And he was missing the days when he could just jump on the internet to find an answer to his questions.

     In the end, he made two decisions. One was that, as guilty as he felt for falling asleep on duty, he wouldn’t drag any more plywood tonight. There was sufficient moonlight coming through the windows to enable him to do so, but he didn’t want to overstress his body more than he already had.

     Instead, he merely leaned five of the sheets he’d already brought in against the outer wall of the den. Then he pushed the couch in front of them. He’d spend the night here tonight, confident that the two and a half inches of plywood would stop any bullets coming in from the outer wall.

     He hoped that bullets coming from any other direction would be stopped by the interior walls and furniture around him.

     The second decision he made was to modify his calorie count. When he was working major projects, that required a lot of strength, he’d increase his calorie count to 2500 calories a day. He hoped the extra five hundred calories would give him the extra boost he needed to get through the heavy projects.

     He could compensate by cutting his count down to 1900 between major
projects, when he was mostly sitting around watching the world go by.

     Once his safe room was built, he expected to be able to relax a bit. The only major projects he had planned for the fo
reseeable future were planting his crops, and then harvesting them later on.

     Both the planting and the harvesting would have to be done by hand.

     And neither would be fun.

     Dave po
pped three Motrin and laid on the couch, expecting his screaming muscles to keep him awake while he waited for the medicine to take effect.

     But he was asleep within seconds. His exhausted body just refused to function any longer.

-22-

     It occurred to Dave when he woke up around noon that the hardest thing he’d do today would be getting up off the couch. Every muscle he had, including those he didn’t even know he had, were stiff and sore. Every one of them rebelled against the movement, and he had to fight the pain just to get to his bottle of Motrin and the bottle of water across the room.

     After he walked around for a few minutes, he started to loosen up. He was still very tired. But he’d fight his way through the pain.

     The actual construction part of the safe room was easy, compared to dragging the plywood in. The plywood was eight feet tall when stood on its end. The exact height of the ceiling.

     It was a snug fit as he leaned each sheet of plywood up against the outer wall, because of the carpet and padding laid upon the concrete floor. The weight of the plywood compressed them to about half an i
nch in thickness, which meant the top of the plywood dragged against the ceiling.

     Dave had to pound the top of the wood to make it stand upright, but once it was in place it wasn’t in danger of falling.

     But he went an extra step anyway, by screwing a piece of pre-drilled two by two wood into the ceiling in front of the wood.

     The first piece of the wall was complete. He took the second five sheets of plywood he’d dragged in the day before and stood them up next to the first five, securing them the same way.

     Then he took a break and ate before he started dragging more wood in.

     By late afternoon he had the next five sheets in the den. The going was a bit easier this time, because he was pacing himself now. Instead of working non stop to move as many pieces as he could before he lost daylight, he was taking a rest break after every sheet.

     It seemed to work much better.

     With the
west wall completed, he turned the corner and used the next five sheets to start the north wall of the structure. Like before, the plywood was held snugly in place by the ceiling. But again, Dave took the added step of bracing it into place.

     He went to bed that night with bulletproof protection on two sides of the couch, four more sheets of plywood laying on the floor, and a bit less sore than the previous night.