Alone: Book 1: Facing Armageddon (23 page)

     But then he remembered the stray bullet hole he found in his fence, and a second one he found in the side of his house later. And he decided the safest place to sleep was in the safe room, despite the overbearing heat.

     The day was quickly coming when he’d no longer have plants to irrigate every other day. Yet most of his rain barrels were
still full or partially so. And it occurred to him that since he had plenty of water to get him to the spring rains, he could begin using some of it for other purposes.

     He
employed an old trick he’d learned as a boy, when he’d camp with the boy scouts. He used it later on, too, when he was a United States Marine stationed in Iraq. He started taking off his t-shirt and saturating it with water, then putting it back on when he went to bed. The wet t-shirt kept him cool enough to enable him to fall asleep.

     Sometimes, when the heat was particularly oppressive, he’d wake up halfway through the night when his t-shirt was dry. Then it was just a matter of resoaking it. The tac
tic worked quite well to get him through some otherwise sleepless nights.

     Still,
he was glad when he noticed the nights were getting cooler. He was by nature a winter person, in that he preferred cold weather over the heat.

     But the cooler nights also reminded him that he had three major projects that had to be finished before the heat went away.

     He was irrigating the crops and garden every other day. Because each plant had to be watered individually, it was an all-day process. But it left every other day free to do other things.

     So on his off-days, the days he didn’t
irrigate, he spent his time preparing his winter supply of drinking water.

     Dave had two good reasons for revisiting his water situation.

     First of all, the hundreds of bottles of water he had squirreled all over the property were too full for winter. In an effort to stockpile as much water as possible during the rainstorms, he’d filled each bottle all the way to the top.

     And that was fine for
the warm weather months.

     But Dave was well aware that the two liter soda bottles he stored his bulk water in had no room to expand, like the smaller water bottles did.

     That meant at the first freeze, every one of the soda bottles would burst. The water would go to waste, and the bottles would be in shreds and worthless the following spring, when he’d need them again.

     The solution was daunting, but necessary. He had no choice but to empty one third of each bottle, to allow the other two thirds room to expand when it froze into ice.

     The other reason to revisit his water situation was because it took five times as much fuel to boil a pot of water for ten minutes when it was thirty degrees outside than when it was eighty degrees. Another thing he’d learned in the boy scouts. In the winter, it took longer to cook anything, because the heat from the fire was competing with the cold air temperature around it. In warm weather months that wasn’t a problem.

     Dave knew that boiling his rainwater in the winter time to make it safe
to drink was a bad idea. Therefore, he decided to boil enough of it, when the weather was still hot, to last him through the winter and into springtime.

     So on the days when Dave watered the crops, he used the soda bottles instead of the water from the rain barrels. He needed two hundred empty bottles, so he could pour one third of the water from the other bottles into them. He needed another two hundred bottles to hold purified water that was safe to drink over the winter.

     It was a lot of work, retrieving the bottles from their hiding places and lugging them outside to the garden. But it had to be done. Unfortunately, Dave saw this as an annual event in the future, much like the plantings and harvests. It would be labor intensive each time, and not something he’d look forward to. But he saw it as an essential part of survival.

     He took the first two hundred empty bottles, removed the caps, and let them dry completely in the afternoon sun
over the course of two days. He was pretty sure that would kill all of the bacteria inside, but as an added measure he planned to add two drops of chlorine bleach to each bottle as he filled it.

     He took a sharpie and wrote a large “D” on all two hundred bottles. The “D” stood for drinking water. It would be his method for deciding which bottles were safe to drink over the course of the winter.

     On the days when he wasn’t irrigating the crops, his little camp stove was going full bore on his back deck, heating water in the stew pots to the boiling point. And then continuing to boil for an additional ten minutes.

     After each pot cooled, he p
oured it into the marked bottles, added two drops of bleach to each, and returned them to their hiding places.

     While he was waiting for the water to boil and cool, he retrieved the rest of the full bottles from here and there and poured one third of each into the
second two hundred bottles he’d emptied.

     When he was finished, he’d go into the winter season with the same number of bottles he had before. Only this time each would be only two third
s full, and many would be safe to drink from.

     But the water
was only one of his winter prep projects.

     Another would prove to be equally time consuming. And perhaps a little bit more dangerous.

     He built his safe room around the fireplace in his den, specifically so he could use it for warmth during the winter months.

     The problem was, they only had half a cord of firewood, stacked up against the side of the house, when the EMP hit.

     And half a cord wouldn’t be enough.

     So Dave would have to gather more wood from the only place it was available.

     The empty houses around him.

-51-

  
 
Dave felt a bit guilty when he walked into the Hansen house with a saw, hammer and crow bar, with the intention of dismantling it.  

     After all, it was one thing to utilize the back yard to grow his crops, and the rain water that came off the roof to water those crops. It was okay, in his mind, to use this place as a
bug out location in the event he was ever overrun.

     None of those things caused any damage to the property.

     But this, this was different. He was actually here to destroy something that belonged to someone else. Just to make himself a bit more comfortable when the cold weather hit.

     Oh, his guilt wouldn’t stop him. He knew the world had changed. He knew the bank which owned this property no longer really existed. He knew that no one would challenge him, or ask him to stop.

     So even though this went against everything he believed in, it wouldn’t deter him.

     It would just make him feel bad while he was doing it.

     He’d thought out the method of the project the night before while he was lying in bed. He knew it was a bad idea to remove the studs from the downstairs walls first.

If
he done so, the weight of the upper floor and roof would eventually have been too great for the weakened lower floor to handle. And it would have come crashing down on Dave’s head.

     No, it made much more sense to go into the attic
first. And to carefully remove selected support beams. One at a time, evenly distributed across the length and breadth of the attic.

     He did some rough calculations, and figured he could get several hundred board feet of two by fours and two by sixes, before the roof started to sag.

     Coupled with the firewood he already had, that might be enough to get him through a mild winter.

     But he couldn’t rely on the winter being mild. The climate had been changing, even before the EMP, and winters had been a lot more harsh lately.

     And it seemed that the last couple of winters lasted longer than normal, too.

     No, he’d hope for a mild winter and prepare for a bad one. It was the prudent thing to do.

     He’d pull wood out of the attic until the roof started to sag, and then he’d get the hell out of there.

     On the second floor, h
e’d remove every third stud from each of the interior walls. He figured that doing so would weaken the structure, but not so much it would collapse. And the studs from the second floor would provide him the additional wood he’d need to get through the winter.

     The following year, gathering the wood from the structure would be a lot
harder. Then, it would be weakened and a lot more prone to collapse.

     But that was a problem for the following year. Here, now, he’d proceed cautiously, and hopefully wouldn’t endanger his life.

-52
-

     Hi Sugar.

     I almost didn’t pick up my pen tonight. I was having what you used to call a pity party, and was feeling sorry for myself. I was disgusted because I’m so lonely and miserable and sometimes I really struggle with all that has to be done.

     In the midst of that, I almost threw this journal away. I got the sense it was a waste of time. It’s something you’ll probably never see, or want to see.

     I fully expect to come and get you next year. And on our trip back here we’ll have plenty of time to talk about everything I’ve done and experienced since you left. Just like you’ll have time to tell me everything you and the girls have done.

     By the time you get back here, there won’t be any reason for you to read these words.

     So in a short fit of rage, I actually threw this book across the room and called myself stupid for writing it. In fact, I almost tore it into little pieces.

     Almost.

     Then I slowly got over feeling sorry for myself and realized a couple of things. First of all, you guys are going through hardships as well. I know that since Tommy and Susan live outside the city, you don’t have to deal with some of the things I do, like the looters and the stench of bodies.

     But I also know that living with others, even when they’re family, can be stressful in its own right. And I know that it takes a lot of hard work to provide and care for so many people, and I know you’re pulling your share of the load. In fact, knowing you like I do, I’m sure you’re pulling way more than your share.

     And I know that the winters in
Kansas City are much worse than they are here. I remember that Christmas we spent up there with Tommy and Susan in their old house, before they moved outside the city. Remember, we were scheduled to fly back and they had a vicious snow storm? We were stranded for four extra days and the city came to a standstill. I hope to God that you don’t have to endure a winter like that one.

     So as bad as it is down here, I know now that I’m not the only one who’s suffering.

     No more pity parties for me, I promise.

     The other thing that kept me from tearing up this journal was the realiz
ation that I’m writing it for myself as much as for you. Even if you never see it, it’s our time together. That may sound odd, but when I write in this thing it feels like I’m talking to you. And this will sound really bizarre, but I feel something else too. When I write in this journal, it’s almost like you’re here with me.

     In other words, I’ve
decided that this book is therapeutic for me. It actually helps me get through the hard times emotionally.

     I’m so glad I didn’t destroy it.

     Okay, that was a five cent comment that I stretched into a fifty dollar novel. That wasn’t even the reason I picked up my pen tonight.

     The reason I decided to write you tonight was because I wanted to tell you what I did today. You’ll never believe it.

     Remember that charcoal powered camping oven you bought on the internet? The one I made fun of? I remember telling you that you were nuts, and that you couldn’t bake bread with charcoal.

     And you proved me wrong by baking two loaves of the most delicious bread I’ve ever tasted.

     Well, I pulled that oven out of the garage today. I found the recipe you used for sweet bread, and even though I’m not kitchen literate at all, I was able to find the flour and all the other ingredients and put them all together.

     And I managed to put the layer of charcoal in
the pan beneath the oven and get it lighted without burning down the deck.