The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning (16 page)

“Franco, you’re the expert, what do you propose? I’m all ears.”

“Jay, my suggestion is, you drop your plan for a shelter under one of the barns. We think one shelter equal distance from all four homes may be a better idea. We propose a very large shelter, one with bedrooms, a large kitchen, living room, bathrooms, and of course storage space for the supplies required to keep everyone alive until we can surface. If we’re going to be in the shelter for any length of time, we’re going to need a lot of room. Room for our own privacy, room to breathe, room to be alone and to be together as a group. Without a lot of room, we’re going to go stir crazy. We’re also going to need an engineering room to make any needed repairs. Power will be supplied by the external solar panels and the windmills which will charge large submarine quality batteries. Water will come from your existing wells and waste will be pumped to a large underground cesspool field. In addition to the family’s entrances, I suggest an emergency escape tunnel that will exit at the far edge of the farms.” Everyone nods in agreement, “Jay, think about a Navy submarine, some stay underwater for seven months. They provide movies, they have workout machines and the best food the Navy can supply them with. Even with everything the Navy’s provided to the submarine’s crew, it still takes a special type of person to live in a metal tube underwater for seven months or longer. If we want everyone to end up sane, we’re going to have to think of building a small apartment complex underground.”

Franco’s last comment stopped me in my tracks. I thought about a shelter as a last resort, I hadn’t thought about living in one for any length of time. I hadn’t considered the effects of living in a small box underground with all of us almost on top of each other, without daylight, without being able to go for a walk or the space to be alone. He was right.  Our plans are going to have to change in a very big way. I should have studied how the submarine service deals with people being cooped up in a sub for months at a time. I didn’t even consider some people may just go crazy being confined in the shelter. I also didn’t consider the issue of food fatigue if we only have the same or very similar food every day. Damn it, there are basic things I should have thought about. I feel like a fool. “Franco, I blew it. You’re correct, why don’t you tell us what you’re thinking?”

“Jay, don’t beat yourself up over it. Most people wouldn’t have thought about these issues. You were thinking shelter to protect your family and friends, not how they may respond to being in one for any length of time. I spent ten years in the Navy, eight of them in a submarine. I know something about how being in a small space for months effects people.”

“Thank God you showed up on our doorstep.”

Franco unrolls a hand drawn blueprint, “This isn’t finished, it’s not a full blueprint, but it should provide a good starting point. The foundation will be poured cement, the water and waste pipes and channels for wires buried in the floor. The walls will be preformed cement sections. The beams will be steel ‘I’ beams which will be load-bearing support for the roof. Fresh air will be drawn in from the tunnels and fans that open in the woods that surround the farms. The ceiling will be covered with soil that has crops planted so no one will know there’s something out of the ordinary hiding under the crops. I’m thinking a group of bedrooms for the kids, a private bedroom for each adult pair, kitchen, bathrooms and storage rooms.”

Paul says, “If you dig up our fields, we’ll lose a lot of crops, we’ll have food problems. We may lose most of our summer crop and since it’s our main crop, we can’t afford to lose it.”

Franco says, “From the time we start till you have access to the roof for your crops will be less than four weeks. Is that workable?”

Paul thinks over the timeline, responding, I think we can make it work, if you start now, we’re on a very tight timeline with the weather, crops need a certain amount of time to grow and mature before we can harvest them.”

Fred asks, “How large a shelter do you think we need?”

Franco smiles, “How many people does it need to hold?”

I start counting heads, adding mine to the count and Franco and his sons, “I’d say we should plan for a space large enough to hold 30 to 40 people. This counts all of us, plus my kids and hopefully a doctor or nurse we can convince to join us, plus a couple of extra people, just in case I forgot someone.”

“How long will everyone stay in the shelter?”

I nod smiling, “Franco, that’s the key question. We don’t know. It’s supposed to be a last resort if we get pushed out of our homes. I hope the attackers take what they want and leave allowing us to reclaim our homes.”

Randy adds, “Jay, what if they decide to stay, say for the winter or summer. We should plan to stay in the shelter for at least six months. Maybe they decide to stay and work our fields? We’ll be screwed living underground while they live in our homes.”

I nod responding, “Then we should move our stored food and other supplies into the shelter so if we’re overrun they won’t find anything useful. Maybe that will cause them to move along quicker. In the worse case, we can sneak out at night and take some of them down every night. We might be able to scare them into leaving.”

Franco says, “The shelter has to be doubled in size to hold all of the supplies, what about the farm animals?”

We look at each other trying to figure out the answer out when our front gate alarm sounds.

We sprint to the kitchen to look at the monitor, we see three black SUVs slowly drive by all of our driveways. They turn around and drive back stopping at Fred’s gate. A man dressed in all black gets out of one of the SUVs and walks over to inspect the gate. He pushes on it, he looks at the barbwire fence, he tries looking up Fred’s driveway. He slowly walks back to his SUV. They drive to each gate doing the same recon at each house. I say, “It looks like we’re going to have unwanted visitors soon. I don’t like this. I think we should prepare for an attack tonight. Franco, why don’t you park your equipment behind my house? Draw up some plans and show them to us tomorrow. We have some things to take care of.”

“My sons and I are ready to stand by you in the defense of our new home. We brought our rifles with us, we have five AK47s.”

I nod, saying, “We’re standardized on the AR platform, I have some AK47 ammo put away if you need some.”

“We brought 10,000 rounds for our rifles, we each have four seventy-five round drum mags. My sons and I can look at your defenses, we’ll see what we can quickly do to help improve them.”

We all nod our thanks. Everyone goes to their homes to grab their rifles, extra magazines, and their battle armor before we check our defenses. We can’t afford to move around without our weapons in case we’re attacked. Franco makes some suggestions to quickly improve our defenses, he suggests we add screens over our motion activated lights and move them further away from the barbed wire. He also suggests we dig more small pits while covering them with a thin sheet covered in leaves or sod that blends in with the ground around them. We agree with his ideas, tasks we will look at tomorrow, which assumes we survive our first attack tonight.

Franco’s son Sandy asks, “Do you have any of the exploding gun targets?”

I reply, “We have a few, but not many, why do you ask?”

Sandy says, “I know where to get a lot of them. We can cover them with nails, place them midway between the fence and the trench when the attackers rush us, we shoot the targets, they’ll explode like a land mine.”

We smile and nod in agreement. I say, “Sandy, do you need money to get them?”

“I need money to buy cases of beer to trade for the targets.”

Laughing, I nod my understanding, “How much is a case of beer going for today?”

“Between $100 and $150 a case. A couple of thousand will more than cover it.”

I walk into my house. Opening one of the safes where I withdraw $3,000. Returning, I hand it to Sandy. “Please go make the trade, I like this idea. Can you sneak out and back tonight without being seen?”

“When they drive towards the house on the other side of the farms, I’ll try to slip out of your driveway.”

“Be careful out there.”

“I will, I’ll call when I return, if I can’t call, I’ll text the number 12378 which means everything is OK. Any other number means I’m under duress.”

“Got it.”

Franco starts digging holes, his older son, Lou works on improving our trench and removing any ground cover in front of the trench. Thus giving us an open field of fire the attackers are going to have to cross to reach us. I have another idea, “Lou, can you weld up supports that can hold a rifle? If we can strap or tie a rifle to a steady support, the rifle won’t rise when we fire in the full auto mode.”

“You have full-auto assault rifles?”

“You never heard me say that.”

“How many do you need to be made?”

“I think six will do for now.”

“I have some metal pipe on the truck, let me see what I can put together.”

“Jay, when do you think they’ll attack?”

“If they’re smart, they’ll wait until early morning, if it were me, I’d hit us between 3 and 4:00 AM. That’ll give us some time to prepare.”

“What if they’re not smart?”

“Then they’ll hit us as soon as it gets dark.”

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While working with Franco my phone pings with an urgent news alert. I look at the headline feeling a cold chill running down my back. The headline says, “Insurance companies announce stores, homes and offices damaged or destroyed by rioting aren’t covered by existing insurance policies. The insurance industry says they consider the riots an act of war, domestic, but still an act of war, which insurance doesn’t cover.” This devastates most business owners. I think this is the straw that is going to break the camel's back with respect to our economy. Without insurance covering losses the stores aren’t going to be rebuilt, no shelves are going to be restocked. I look at Franco saying, “Franco, the economy just took a swift kick to the balls. The insurance industry just announced they’re not covering any losses due to rioting.”

Franco shakes his head saying, “I was afraid of this. It means the riots will grow when they realize the shelves aren’t going to be restocked. The rioting will expand as the mobs looks for food and water. That’s why I came here. Our home wasn’t defendable.”

“I’m happy you came. I’m afraid we’re going to need the shelter, plus we can always use more bodies for defense and work on the farms.”

“My boys are young and very strong. They will help as needed.”

“Thanks, Franco.”

Franco wipes the perspiration off of his forehead while digging small holes asking, “Jay, how bad do you think it’s going to get?”

“Do you remember the TV reports from Katrina?”

“Yes, why?”

“Katrina was one city, multiply that times thousands of cities and towns. At least in Katrina, FEMA, and the Coast Guard showed up, this time they’re not going to be showing up. They don’t have the resources to be everywhere at the same time. People will leave the cities looking for supplies. They may come in small groups or in groups numbering in the hundreds or thousands. Katrina showed us society fails very quickly, what’s under the surface is very ugly. We’re going to have to fight for our lives.”

“Jay, we’re ready. We came prepared to fight if need be. We saw the rioting only a couple of blocks from our house. We knew the rioting and destruction were moving in our direction. Your agreement for us to stay here is saving our lives.”

“Franco, I’m glad we’re able to help save your lives.”

“Jay, you are saving our lives. We are going to build the shelter as if our lives depend on it because they do. My sons and I will man your front line tonight when the attack comes.”

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Two hours after leaving, Sandy texts 12378 to my phone letting me know he’s close and not being followed. When I see the truck approaching our gate, we open it, hoping Sandy can sneak in without any uninvited guests sneaking in with him. He returned with five cases of exploding targets. Matt helps him spray paint them brown and green to blend in with the ground cover after Cheri and Lacy spray them with glue and cover them in nails and BBs. Two hours later the mines are finished. We hide them between the street and our trench, checking to make sure we can see them. Finding them difficult to see because of the paint, we spray a fluorescent orange spot facing our trench, hoping they aren’t very visible from anyone coming towards us from the street. Now we could easily target them from the trench. All five families share an early evening meal together while we do everything we can to prepare for our visitors. We take turns spending two hours in the trench, so everyone can get a little rest and try to relax while we wait for the attack we think is coming. Paul asks me, “Jay, when do you think they’ll attack?”