The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning (9 page)

“Honey, he’s OK, he’s always liked to stock up on things. He’s always been worried about different disasters. He’s always liked to be prepared. When we were young, after the divorce, he used to visit us every other week. He would take us food shopping and stock us up with food, even then, he stocked us up on a couple of months worth of food. He was always worried we’d be hungry. He didn’t have to give us anything, but he gave us $100,000 plus any new car we wanted and don’t forget he’s paying for Linda’s college education.”

“I think he should have given us more. You’re his oldest and we didn’t get enough to buy a new house. I bet he’s expanding the number of guns in his house too. I don’t want our daughter staying in his house since he has guns in his house.”

“I’ll tell him we’re thinking about it, it’ll buy us time.”

“You can tell him anything you want, I’m not moving and giving up everything we have here. He really needs some professional help. If I talked to Lacy do you think she will be able to guide him towards professional help?”

“Don’t approach her about my dad. She will eat you up and spit you out. They’ve been together for 22 years, you didn’t know him before Lacy. He’s much calmer now. They love each other. If you go to Lacy, she’ll tell my dad, you’ll be driving a large divide between us. I love my father. He may be a little different, but he means well. He’s trying to protect us. He wants to protect us if something bad happens and he wants us to know we have a safe place to go.”

“He’s so full of it, nothing’s going to happen. President Obama has reduced our military, the rest of the world no longer sees us as the threat Bush made us into. Our relations with the rest of the world are much better now. If I can’t talk to Lacy than I’m thinking of reporting your dad as an unbalanced person who owns guns.”

“Ricky, please don’t do that. It’ll backfire. You don’t want to piss my dad off.”

“OK, but if he does anything to introduce our daughter to guns, I’m going to report him.”

“You know how much he loves Linda, she’s his princess, he would never do anything to put her in harm.”

“He’s too radical for my tastes.”

“Ricky, he thinks the same about you. One day the two of you should sit down and try to clear the air.”

“Not going to happen. He’s everything I’m against. He thinks Obama is the worst President we’ve every had, I think he’s the best. We’re on opposite sides of every issue.

“I’m asking you, just please don’t rock the boat between my dad and me.”

“Okay, for now. As long as he doesn’t place our daughter in a dangerous situation.”

“Okay, Ricky, please, just go slow and don’t piss my dad off.”

Chapter 5

Three weeks to the day after winning the lottery everything we own in Virginia is on an Atlas Van Lines moving truck on the way to Nashville. Fred has been great in helping us move in. He lined up companies to install the fire suppression system, security bars, solar panels and the windmills. Three new wells have already been dug and plumbed. The windmills are going to be installed the week of March 23. I can’t forget Fred laughing when I told him we got the bank to accept $650,000 to pay off the mortgage on his farm. Lacy and I now owned Fred’s farm, he said he now had the best lender in the country. Fred told us his, and now our neighbors might be interested in doing a similar arrangement with us. I told him we’d to look into it sometime after we moved into our new home. I thought it might make sense to increase the size of the farm. The next day the EU officially died when the United Kingdom announced on Valentine’s Day they were leaving the Union. The Euro will cease to be a traded currency on March 2. Since the UK’s announcement, the dollar has increased in value by 30%. Gold is currently trading at $2,895 an ounce and with the average cost of our gold at $1,670, means we’ve made $1,225 per ounce! I requested the agents to convert our holdings into gold coins and send them to us. We agreed to purchase an additional $100,000 of gold coins and $200,000 of US Silver Eagles. The sales agent was so happy, he gave us a discount on the new purchase. Due to the quantity and high value of our purchases the agent kept trying to get us to leave our coins on deposit with them. We declined, demanding all of our coins be delivered to our new address. The dealer agreed and suggested that they send our coins in an armored truck. Lacy and I decided to purchase a couple of safes, ones we’ll have bolted and then cemented to a secret sub- basement we had dug. It takes six people to manhandle the safes into the sub-basement.

Winter held on with a late winter storm that dumped nine inches of snow on us just as we finished loading our townhouse. The unexpected snowstorm delaying our exit from Northern Virginia for a couple of days. Interstate 81 runs through the mountains and the moving truck driver didn’t think it was safe to continue the journey. We hung out at a Hampton Motel for a couple of days waiting for the roads to clear. We spent the time looking at the pictures Fred sent us, spring had arrived in Nashville. Fred started his spring planting which hopefully should yield us a good crop of peas, corn, soybeans, green beans, tomatoes, and peppers.

The moving van driver said it will take him two days to reach our new home. He laughed saying, it could have been done in one day. However, the new government regulations limited them to drive only six hours a day. Lacy and I drove without stopping for the night. We arrived in time to take Fred, Cheri, Mark and Ryan to dinner. Fred and Cheri brought us up to date on the work that was done on our house and their farm the previous three weeks. After dinner we checked into a local Hampton Inn, the Atlas Van Lines driver called to inform us he’ll be at our home the next morning at 9:00 AM. He estimated he will have us unloaded in four hours. I agreed since we sold or gave away most of our furniture before moving. We figure we’ll buy most of our furnishings new. We spoke with a furniture store manager who agreed to open early for us. We met him at 7:00 AM, he agreed to show us what they have in stock and what they can get in a very short time.

We ordered two sets of bunk beds for our young grandkids, two king bedroom sets, one each for Sammi and Shells, couches, love seats, a kitchen table and chairs, coffee tables, and lamps. We finished at 8:30 AM when we had to rush to meet the movers at our house. Pulling up, we were surprised to see the movers were waiting for us, as was Verizon and Best Buy. The Verizon installer asked us which number was going to be our prime and where we wanted the WiFi modem installed. The Best Buy installers wanted to get the large screen TV’s wall mounted before the movers brought the furniture in. The first couple of hours were a mad rush of people running in and out of the house. At 3:00 PM, just as the movers are leaving, our new furniture arrived. By the time they left at 7:00 PM we were so tired, we couldn’t even think about dinner. We were surprised when our doorbell rang, Fred and Cheri stood on our front porch with arms full of home cooked hot food. The four of us broke in our new kitchen table sharing our first meal in our new home. We spent the next three days unpacking and getting to know our new home. The solar panels had been installed, along with a battery room filled with large submarine batteries. We also ordered four multi-fuel generators which are going to be wired into the network powering Fred’s and our homes. The windmills will be installed in three weeks, enabling us to completely live off the grid. Even without the generators we were creating more electrical energy than we used, our system automatically sold our excess back to the grid. We had a switch installed to block the transfer, allowing us to store the extra electricity in large batteries. We were now assured of electrical power even if the grid failed, our water came from our own wells, enough to irrigate our crops and provide both houses with all the water we’d need. We have our existing wells and the three new ones we sealed for future use. The new ones drew from different underground streams hopefully ensuring we always had water. Our windows are covered with steel security bars with the space between the bars covered in stainless steel heavy duty mesh. Construction people were coming to start building a patio/barricade in front of both of the homes. Our next major project is the fence around our land. Fred sent me a quote for the fence which almost knocked me out. I’d forgotten we now had over 250 acres. The fence was way too expensive, we’d have to think of another way to protect what’s ours.

Early the next morning two large gun safes arrived with the crew to install them. They were installed in the secret sub-basement. Unless someone knew where the hidden access in the sub-basement was, no one would ever find the safes Lacy started to plan dinner, for the first time since we moved in, she’s going to cook dinner for us and Fred and Cheri.

After dinner, Fred, Cheri, Lacy and I sat in our family room watching the news on our new 80-inch television. We had both cable and satellite TV services, figuring that if one went down the other would function as a backup. We also had both set up for internet support. The news was very depressing. China and Russia had started dumping their US dollars, pushing the dollar’s price down and the price of gold up.  Living conditions in Greece were quickly falling apart because no one outside of Greece would accept Drachmas in payment for anything. Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal found themselves in the same situation as Greece. Basic necessities like toilet paper, over the counter medications and spare parts which have to be imported from anywhere outside from the countries, were nonexistent. Fred asked, “Jay, how bad do you think things are going to get?”

“I think it’s going to get much worse. When the US dollar collapses, it's going to be much worse here than what’s going on in Europe. Many of the countries in Europe have had a year’s experience living with shortages and brown-blackouts. They voted for the socialist government in Greece because they were tired of the shortages and having their pensions and pay cut. Had they thought through their situation they would have realized the only way out was for their government to cut spending, not increase it. They got what they asked for. Here in America, the current administration has created an entitlement mentality and the administration’s pushing us to the edge of a race and class war. Our poor would be considered the upper class in many countries. What’s going to happen when people’s Obama phones stop working when their monthly government deposits aren’t made? We have 100 million people out of work, they have no savings, when the government has to stop payments people are going to starve, they’ll quickly turn to crime to feed their families. Things are going to turn bad very quickly.”

“Jay, how quickly do you think this is going to happen?”

“Fred, Russia and China are dumping US dollars, they’re destroying the value of the dollar by dumping it for pennies. They’ve declared financial war against America. Our problem is, the smartest man to ever be President isn’t smart enough to realize they’ve already declared war. The Fed is buying dollars at inflated prices doing even more long term damage to the dollar. Can you imagine what would happen if China would demand immediate repayment of our debt?”

Fred frowns asking, “Do you think they would do that? It seems a little extreme to me.”

“Remember, I said Russia and China have already declared war. If I were in their shoes, I’d crash Wall Street while I placed billions of dollars worth of short sales. That way, when the market goes into freefall, they’ll make hundreds of billions off of our slide into hell. When the collapse of the free world happens, they’ll be in a position to take over the world. There’s no one who can stop them in Europe. Putin will move into Europe promising to restore order, promising to feed and care for the people. The people of Europe will welcome the Russians with open arms and lifted dress hems. When the dust settles, Russia will control all of Europe. Their empire will stretch from the English Channel to the Pacific. Their second goal will be to take over all of the oil reserves in the Middle East. They’ll create wars among the various Middle Eastern countries when they’re all weakened by the wars the Russians will just roll in and take over all of the oil. They’ll kill the fanatics so they won’t have to deal with any insurgency. They may leave Israel alone because they don’t have any oil. While Russia is taking over Europe and the Middle East, China will absorb all of Asia and ultimately even absorb Hawaii.”

Fred looks at me, “Holy shit. It’s going to be World War 3.”

“I don’t think so because we won’t have enough of a government left to order an attack on Russia or China. When the dollar crashes, the government will order the banks and stock markets closed so they can stall for time. Time they won’t have. American’s aren’t used to shortages so when the market crashes and the banks close, they will get scared and panic. When the government welfare programs end, the people won’t have any money. They’re going to be hungry, tired and really pissed off. Almost no-one is going to know what happened to them. They’ll riot. The rioting is going to make the worst of the race riots look like a college protest march. They’re going to tear everything in their path apart looking for food and water. The cities are going to be burnt to the ground, tens of millions are going to die.”