“When John and I were searching for the killer we checked the place out.
“After all, we knew he had a chain saw and a blow torch. They had to have come from somewhere. We figured that might be a place he frequented and hoped to catch him there.
“He wasn’t there, but one thing which surprised us was that the place seemed practically untouched since the blackout.
“The only things that appeared to be missing were all the plastic barrels and the generators.
“Other than being cleaned out of rain barrels and generators, the place was almost pristine. Even after two and a half years.
“John made a casual comment. That he bet there was everything we’d need to build a house from the ground up.
“I didn’t believe him, so we took a few minutes to look around.
“And he was right. They had everything we needed. The concrete, the lumber, the pipes and the plumbing. All things electrical.
“Shoot, in the rental department they’ve even got all the tools we need. Most of them are pull start, and those that aren’t Charles can probably fix so we can run them off one of the generators.
“So we’re gonna build a small house in the back of the compound. Nothing fancy, but it’ll have three bedrooms. Tillie, you and the kids can move back there. That way you can have your privacy but everybody will still be together.
“John and Hannah are gonna take over my old place.”
“I didn’t know you had an old place.”
“Oh, yeah. Before I moved in here Scott and I were next door neighbors. I’ve got a six acre ranch right next door.
“Of course, nobody’s lived there in awhile. It needs some repairs. And we’re gonna run a fence around it to incorporate it into the compound.
“That in itself will be a good sized job, because expanding the compound to incorporate my old house is gonna take about half a mile of new fence. But the home improvement store just happened to receive a shipment of fence pieces on the day the power went out.
“It’s still there, backed up to the dock but never unloaded.
“We figured every day when we got off work we could stop and grab some building supplies, and on the weekends we could spend some time building.”
Hannah said, “Don’t just ignore the girls and I. We can work on the project while y’all are at work.”
Scott said, “I hate to rain on the parade, but we’ve got harvest coming up in about three weeks. And we have to plant our second crops right after that.”
“Right,” Tom said.
“But we can work around that. A week to harvest, a week to recover, another week to plant, another week to recover. Then we’ll be back on it again.”
“Look,” John added. “It’s not a project that’ll get done overnight. It might take a year to get everything done.
“But once we’re finished, Everybody will have their own place, but all will be inside the compound.
“And then Scott can finally have his house back.”
And so began the largest construction project the group had ever undertaken.
The compound, and the house which made up a large part of it, were actually built by contractors a full year before the power went out the first time.
Scott himself wasn’t a builder, though he’d learned a lot of things since the world went dark.
As for John, he’d always built things as a hobby.
It wasn’t too many years before that he had an impressive set of power tools in his garage, and he spent a good portion of his weekends building furniture for his family and friends.
He’d never built a fence in his life.
But he figured if he could build a dining room table and chairs to match, a six-foot privacy fence should be a piece of cake.
-50-
Using a tip he’d obtained from the United States Army contingent in San Antonio, John found an abandoned 2006 Saturn sedan in a grocery store parking lot in downtown Kerrville.
He had it running in no time, and Sara helped him paint it up as a Kerr County Sheriff squad car.
It wasn’t pretty, but then nothing was pretty in the new world.
Before long the three of them… Tom in his 1963 Ford, Sara in her Silverado pickup, and John in his Saturn, made up the entire day shift of law enforcement in the county.
The Kerrville Police Department was in the process of coming back on line, now that they had a means of doing so.
They collected every other Saturn in the city limits and got eleven of them running as well.
And they reassumed the duties of law enforcement within the city confines.
That greatly lessened the burden of Tom, the county Sheriff, who was now just responsible for the county outside the city limits.
The three of them… Tom, Sara and John, left the compound each morning and patrolled for eight hours until the second shift of deputies came in to relieve them.
Then they met up at the home improvement store, where they loaded Sara’s pickup down with construction materials.
Lumber, fence posts and pickets, PVC pipe, and more sacks of concrete than they cared to count.
Little by little they got it from the city to the compound.
And each evening and weekend somebody… most often several somebodies… were swinging hammers and digging holes and cutting wood.
They were working very hard to make sure everyone had a home to call their very own.
One of the first things they did, though, was to clear the wooded area between the corn and wheat fields just outside the compound’s original ten foot walls and Tom’s house.
The woods covered about an acre or so of ground, and took several weeks to clear.
Once they were done, though, they had several things they never had before.
They had an additional acre of cleared land, allowing them to extend their crops of corn and wheat almost to Tom’s side door.
Or, more accurately, John and Hannah’s side door, since they were living in Tom’s old house now.
They also had a clear line of sight between John and Hannah’s place and the main house.
And they had a fence around everyone they considered a compound resident.
Things were looking up for the people of Junction.
They’d come a very long way.
*************************
Thank you for reading
COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON, Book 12:
It Can’t Be Her
Please enjoy this preview of
The last installment in the series,
COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON, Book 13
The Final Chapter: Five Years Later
*************************
It was a big deal, really, the night Millicent finally professed her love for Charles.
Everybody knew it was there. Millicent and Charles did too. Neither would admit it though, until now.
Looking back it was hard to explain why, exactly.
Perhaps because at their age they were afraid people would dismiss it as “puppy love.”
Or maybe they considered their relationship more a brotherly and sisterly type.
They’d been together for so long it was hard for either of them to remember the day they’d met.
It came out of the blue, Millicent’s pronouncement did.
She was in the kitchen, preparing a fruit salad she was becoming famous for.
Charles and Tillie sat at the dining room table nearby playing dominoes.
Linda sat next to them watching and waiting for them to finish their game so she could jump into the next one.
“Aunt Tillie,” she began, “How old do you have to be to get married?”
Since another thing Millicent was known for was asking an endless series of inane questions, Tillie put no particular stock in it at first.
“Oh, I don’t know, honey. I’d guess probably sixteen. You can have Sara look it up when she goes to work later. I’m sure she can find it in one of the law books at the Sheriff’s
Office. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I’m fifteen now, and Charles will be soon. I think it’s time we should start planning our future. Away from here, I mean.”
That got Tillie’s attention.
Even Linda raised an eyebrow.
Charles just smiled.
Tillie turned to Millicent and said, “I wasn’t aware you two wanted to be married.”
“Oh, sure. I mean, that’s what people do when they love each other, right? First comes love, then comes marriage. Then comes baby with a baby carriage…”
“Slow down there, honey,” Charles said. “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”
Tillie looked at Linda and asked, “Did Charles just call her honey?”
Linda responded, “Did they just mention a baby?”
“Oh, not right away,” Millicent continued. “We’re not in any big hurry or anything. But it would be nice to make plans on where we’re going to live and all.”
Charles chimed in, “We were out riding the other day and were looking at some of the abandoned property on Riley Road…”
Tillie interrupted him, “I’m not sure I like the idea of you moving away from the compound. Where is Riley Road, exactly?”
“Oh, it’s not far. Two roads south of here. Maybe three quarters of a mile, as the crow flies.”
Tillie muttered under her breath, “Well, I’m not a crow.”
“It wouldn’t matter, Aunt Tillie,” Millicent said. “We’re hoping you’ll come with us.”
“Really?”
Tillie looked across the table at Charles, who nodded his head and smiled.
“Really.”
He continued, “I’ve been saving the blue dollars from all the electronics I’ve been repairing. We have enough to pay the transfer fee, and we’ve checked out the new city ordinance.
“It says any property that’s been abandoned for more than two years can be laid claim to, as long as no one knows where the previous owner is.
“There are three homes on Riley Road that are up for grabs, and Millie and I figure we’d better grab one before somebody else does.”
Linda shook her head.
“Wait a minute. You lost me at ‘Millie.’ Millicent spits fire whenever somebody calls her Millie. What’s up with that?”
Charles smiled broadly.
“She lets me.”
Linda and Tillie looked at Millicent, who was also smiling.
Millicent added, “All three of them are good size. Two of them have four bedrooms. The third one has five bedrooms and a separate room that can be turned into a sixth.
“It’s my favorite.
“It was occupied before the blackout, and it’s already furnished. Nice stuff. So that’s a plus as well.”
“Any idea whether or not it’s a death house?”
“We went inside and looked around. We didn’t see anything that looked like anyone had died there. And there were no graves in the yard or anything.
“We asked a neighbor and he said he thought they were on vacation in Europe when the lights went out. He said he remembered seeing a property management truck coming by the day before the blackout to check on it.”
“Wait a minute,” Linda said. “How did y’all manage to go over there and look at the houses without any of us noticing?”
Charles smiled wickedly.
“I guess we’re a little sneakier than you guys give us credit for.”
Tillie said, “I have an even better question than that. Why in the world do you need a house with six bedrooms? I hope you two haven’t been intimate. You’re way too young, for crying out loud.”
Millicent and Charles protested, in almost perfect synchrony, “No!”
Linda added, “Well, it’s a fair question. After all, you two are ‘sneakier than we give you credit for.’
She stuck her tongue out at Charles.
“Look,” Millicent said. “We know all about the birds and the bees and all that. We’re fourteen and fifteen years old, after all. We’re practically grown up.
“And we’re not stupid, you know. We’re not going to do anything dumb. We’ve got the rest of our lives to do that yucky stuff and have babies and stuff.”
Linda and Tillie looked at one another. Tillie smiled, happy that Millicent still considered teenage experimentation “yucky stuff.”
Still, she was concerned.
She asked Linda, “Think we need to follow them everywhere they go?”
“Oh definitely.”
Charles decided it was time to go back to the original subject.
“Anyway, the only thing the ordinance doesn’t address is age. If they say we’re too young one of you might have to sign for us.”
Tillie asked, “Have y’all talked to Sara about this?”
“We mentioned it to her this morning. She thinks it’s a great idea. She asked us what took us so long to admit we were in love.”
Millicent said, “And back to the whole ‘Why do we need six bedrooms’ question, the house we’re hoping for is on the corner. One side of it fronts Highway 83.”
“So?”
Millicent turned to Charles and said, “Go get the sign and show them, baby.”
Charles was already behaving like a married man. He immediately followed Millicent’s instructions and darted off.
Linda and Tillie looked at one another and Tillie asked in a whisper, “Did she just call him baby?”
“She did, she did.”
Despite their comments they were glad the kids’ close friendship had finally blossomed into love.
And they would indeed keep a close eye on them.
Charles returned carrying a large hand-painted sign.
It read:
ELECTRONICS REPAIR
All Work Guaranteed For Six Months
Blue Money, Gold and Silver Accepted.
I ALSO BUY GREEN MONEY
“We’re going to post this on the Highway 83 side of the house. And two of the rooms are going to be for Charles’ business.”
Tillie was impressed and her smile said so.
Linda was impressed as well.
But she had one question.
“Why on earth are you buying green money? It’s not any good anymore, remember?”
“Oh, I know. I’m not paying very much. Only ten cents blue for a hundred bills green, regardless of denomination.”
“But why do you want it at all?”
“Because most people are using it as toilet paper or for tinder to start their fires. It’s disappearing at an alarming rate.
“Someday, either in our lifetimes or our children’s lifetimes, it’ll be very rare.
“I think people will collect it, and it’ll be worth much more than I’m paying for it.
“You always tell us we should think ahead and plan for the future. Well, I’m thinking ahead and planning for the future.”
Tillie still wasn’t convinced it was a good idea.
“Millicent, honey, do you think it’s safe for the two of you to be out there alone, at such a young age?”
She walked over and wrapped her arms around Tillie’s shoulders.
“Well, like I said, we were really hoping you would move in with us. Aren’t we Charles?”
Charles didn’t hesitate for a second.
“Oh, yes. You and Hero. You said yourself he’s the best security system in the world.
“But he’s getting so old…”
“Yes, but his hearing is still sharp. He’s always the first one to bark when someone approaches the compound. Even if he can’t run anymore, he can still alert us when somebody’s outside.
“And if you want, we can take one of the puppies with us too.”
Tillie asked Linda, “You feel like a road trip?”
They were on the same wavelength.
“To Riley Road? Sure. I haven’t been house-hunting in a long time.”
COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON, Book 13
The Final Chapter: Five Years Later
will be available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers in June, 2018.
*************************
Please enjoy this preview of
Darrell Maloney’s
upcoming series,
PANDEMIC
Book 1: The Thaw
*************************
Scientists knew it was coming for decades.
At least they claimed to.
And perhaps some of them did.
Most of them, though, were as surprised as everyone else when the ice packs started to melt.
Thus began the great debate on what was causing it.
Those with a certain political leaning claimed it was greenhouse gases, the exhaust from machines and smokestacks, which was causing global temperatures to rise.
Others, with different political agendas, scoffed and said it was a natural occurrence of the earth, going through its normal heating and cooling cycles.
An American vice-president used a poorly thought out choice of words and the term “global warming” was born.
The term made him a laughing stock with nay-sayers when winter temperatures dropped to all-time records all over the globe.
A Nobel Prize winning geologist named Martin Sorenson noted that if he’d used the term “global climate change” instead of “global warming” he’d have been taken more seriously and not set a program to combat the problem back many years.
In any event, and regardless of who was right and who was wrong, the earth was indeed changing.
The rising of ocean waters, which all reputable scientists agreed would be a major problem, would happen gradually.
There was plenty of time for seaside communities to build sea walls or elevate homes close to the water.
The climate itself would also change slowly, allowing human beings a chance to adjust.
In short, there was no real need to panic.
Everybody agreed that clean air was important, and the world community continued to work to that end. But the “sky is falling” attitude some had was largely unfounded.
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