by Pete Thorsen
I looked where the trip wire was and carefully dragged the man back towards the road a ways. When I was no longer worried about setting off the other pipe gun, I just dragged the body way over to one side. Well out of sight of the house. Then again staying well away from the trip wires I returned back to the house.
Once I was inside, I unloaded the chamber in the rifle and put it back in the rack. I made sure the door was locked, and I washed up good. Then I eventually went back to bed quite sometime later where I never went back to sleep.
Chapter 14
Having not slept anyway, I was up before sunrise. First I disconnected all the trip wires on the pipe guns for the day. Then I took a shovel, and after dragging the dead body even farther away I dug a shallow hole, and after going through the pockets and taking everything from the body, I rolled it into the hole and covered it. When done I traded the shovel for a rake and raked the area then scattered dry grass and leaves around to mask any disturbance from the digging. If the dead guy had partners I did not want them to see a fresh grave. Better to leave them guessing about what happened to their partner during the night.
I went over to where the man had died and retrieved the rifle he had been carrying. After putting away everything, I had taken from the man I went out and reloaded the pipe guns. I had expected only one would go off, but in this case, two had done so and caught the man in a crossfire. No wonder he had died.
I reloaded and reset the two pipe guns. Everything was ready to reset the trip wires tonight before bed. I then went in the house and took a long hot shower before sitting down to breakfast with the family. Cassy asked about the loud noise last night, and I told her a silly varmint had tripped the alarm when it came here to try to steal from our garden.
She accepted my answer and asked no more about it. I had told Karen last night what had really happened in the front yard. We worked in the garden and made it into a regular day so Cassy would not think any more about the noise last night. I do not doubt that she sensed something anyway because both Karen and I were so subdued and quiet all day. We can only do so much to shield our children.
After supper tonight we let Cassy watch a kid’s DVD on one of the laptops that I had saved by putting them in the metal trash can or from just being in the basement or maybe a combination of the two. Anyway, they worked, and she got to watch one of her favorite movies. She was almost asleep when the movie finished, and I carried her to bed.
Karen and I held each other, and I did finally fall asleep. I was restless over the next few nights, but I am now sleeping normally. So far there has been only the one incident, but likely there will be more at some point. And next time there was the very real possibility that someone here could be hurt or worse.
Our garden produced more than we expected. Karen was able to can many jars of additional food, and we also dried some using a dehydrator. As the garden wound down the orchard started ramping up. Soon the dehydrators were going constantly. I also used the solar dehydrators this year. We were determined that nothing would go to waste. Most years we shared with friends, but this year that would not be happening so we had more to process for ourselves.
I shot one deer that tried to get at our orchard, and we took the time to process that meat besides the constant work with all the fruit. To speed it up we just froze almost all the venison. Only the little we used fresh was not frozen. We did not have time to make any into jerky with this deer.
When the orchard was finally done, and the garden was tilled in for the winter, I turned to hunting full time. But this year the hunting was much different. I was not driving way away someplace to hunt. I walked from our house in the morning and after I was a couple of miles at least from home only then did I start to hunt.
And I did not use a shotgun this year. Everything was hunted with a twenty-two rifle. It was so much quieter, and there were no longer any laws against its use. Game birds were shot while sitting and not on-the-fly. This made it nicer to eat because there was no shotgun shot in the meat to pick out.
And where normally one season would be open, and you would hunt for only one species this year it was just hunting for what you could find. Every season was open at the same time you might say. Another difference was now I shot every predator that I saw. They were in direct competition with me, and I eliminated them at every chance. The small number of predators that I actually shot likely made little difference, but I knew it couldn’t hurt either.
Migratory birds I hit the hardest. They would be leaving here and just be killed by other people and were the opposite from the birds and animals that stayed here year ‘round. With the migratory birds, they were just passing through, and I took a heavy toll on them.
I was more selective on the other game animals and birds in our general area. I certainly did not want to decimate any of them, and I wanted a sustainable supply and hopefully an excess. Contrary to popular opinions on what would happen in a similar event to what we were living in, there was still wild game around.
The numbers could have been reduced some, but I was still able to see quite a bit of game. I shot as many as I thought I could without damaging the local populations. At this point, the only deer I had shot was the one trying to get at our fruit trees. Now I would change that and shoot a couple of deer at least. At least I hoped so.
While I was out hunting, Karen was much more on guard at home. She was the only shooter there, and she had to protect herself and Cassy. She pretty much kept a constant watch and did not worry about any daily chores or much of anything else. The complete safety of her only daughter was paramount.
When I was gone hunting, she had me leave the pipe gun traps in front active instead of deactivating them during the day like I usually did. She would be with Cassy all day, and there was no worry of Cassy tripping one of those pipe guns.
The number of deer in our area was pretty limited. It had always been that way. There just wasn’t very many around there. I think there was less now. So now that I switched to hunting deer, I used the buggy for the first time since the event. I had started it off and on during the summer to make sure it would always be ready in case we needed it. And now I did need it.
I drove away from the nearest town to do my deer hunting. I left very early in the morning. There was a simple wire fence gate on one side of our property. It was not easily seen or found unless you knew where to look. I had placed one set of the pipe guns there to guard this gate. That is where I left the property when I went hunting using the buggy.
I drove several miles with my rifle ready and my eyes open. I was not averse to ‘road hunting’ anymore. Things were way different than before, and now everything was no longer illegal. There was no more ‘fair chase.' There was now only hunting to survive.
When I was at least five miles away from home, I started looking for a spot to stop and hunt. The buggy was fairly quiet. I knew the animals could hear it, but I hoped to not draw the attention of any other people that might be in the area.
When I found a likely spot, I pulled well off the road on an old field driveway. I drove back until the buggy was well out of sight from the county road. There were obvious tracks from the buggy leaving the road and crushing down the grass and weeds, but I could do nothing to hide that simple fact.
I got out of the buggy, and I started hunting in earnest. The land here was a mix of treed areas next to open areas. I hunted the edges of the timbered areas keeping a practiced eye for any trails the deer would make going from the cover of the trees to the more open feeding areas.
Chapter 15
It had taken little time before I started to see deer sign. When I did, I slowed down dramatically. I was now still hunting where before I was walking and looking. Now I would walk slowly forward a few steps and stop then do the same again and again. It would be likely the deer would see and hear me before I did them. But often they would only stand up and look before running. That often brief time when the deer stood and looked was the perfect opportunity to
shoot at a stationary target.
So I was now covering very little ground. I was looking for deer or pieces of deer. An ear, an eye, part of an antler or whatever other part of a deer I might be able to see before they bolted out of there. I was at this for some length of time.
Then I saw something that did not fit. So I stared and stared at first. But when I raised the rifle and used the scope I realized I was looking at the bottom jaw line of a deer. It had caught my eye because it was horizontal and most everything else was vertical. With the scope, I could then make out most of the outline of the whole deer. But there was light brush between the deer and me.
I waited for a moment then took another step forward. There was a small opening in the brush. I could still not see the whole deer with nothing in the way, but there was a clear opening to the front shoulder on back to the middle of the deer’s stomach. It was enough.
I took careful aim and gently squeezed the trigger while keeping the cross hairs from the scope centered low just behind the front shoulder. It was almost a surprise when the gun fired. The bullet’s path was clear and was not knocked askance by any small twigs or brush. The bullet entered just where the cross hairs were placed. The spinning bullet drilled through the supple hide of the deer and then through the thin layer of muscle just under the hide. Next, the bullet encountered the more solid mass of muscle of the deer’s beating heart. The mass slowed the bullet as it absorbed some of the bullets energy.
The bullet continued through the heart and exited out the hide on the other side. The heart was destroyed, and the deer collapsed. I just waited. Like any true marksman, I could call my shots, and I knew this one had gone true. I just waited to make sure the deer was indeed dead.
Then I walked up to the deer I had just killed. I double checked to be sure it was dead and then I debated whether to gut it out immediately or not. Not won out and I double-timed it back to the buggy. I did slow when I approached the buggy looking for anyone who might be waiting for me near it. Either I just missed them or they were really good, or there was no one there.
I went to the buggy, and after starting it, I drove quickly back to the waiting dead deer. Only then did I gut it out before loading it and driving back home. Things were fine at home, and Karen was surprised that I was successful so quickly. I was honest and said I had just been very lucky.
I hung the deer where I had things all set up just for that purpose. I used a rope style fence stretcher to hoist the deer in the air so I could easier skin it. I’ve had plenty of experience with skinning deer and other critters, and I was quickly done with that job. Karen in the mean time had gotten things ready in the house. I brought in one deer quarter at a time, and we worked together as always to process the meat.
As we worked, we talked about jerking some or most of this deer. I had done very well with my other hunting, and we had that other deer already in the freezer. The freezer was pretty full with mostly meat but also some fruit and other items. And we had the time now, so we sliced this venison into thin slices and turned most of the meat into jerky.
We had fresh tenderloin for our evening meal and froze the rest of the tenderloin. The rest of the deer meat was soon jerky.
I was somewhat apprehensive for the next few days. The gravel county road had no traffic for a long time and now had tracks from our UTV buggy. It was like a neon arrow pointing at our property. After two days it finally rained which helped the track situation tremendously by washing the slate clean pretty much.
Relieved I took up some small game/bird hunting again. Mostly just to keep me busy. Very carefully I reconnoitered a wide area around our place. I snuck up to within sight of some of the neighboring places and watched through a pair of binoculars looking to see if anyone was still at any of the places.
All appeared empty except for one place. I would guess that the people who had been living at the now empty places simply ran out of water. Even if they had a generator big enough and wired to their well pump, they would have run out of fuel at some point. From then on I don’t know how they could have survived without water. I assume they likely walked towards town looking for salvation, maybe hoping the federal government had set up shelters. Which was certainly possible but I fear was not the case.
The one place that still showed signs of someone living there interested me. I did not know these neighbors. They were over three miles from our place by road. I had just never met them. I never heard a generator running but I stayed quite a ways back from the place, and I was likely out of earshot.
It had been a long time now without electricity for most people. If they were using a generator even intermittently, it would have used up quite a bit of fuel by this time. Way more than most people kept on hand. It was not a working farm that would have maybe stored tractor fuel or anything.
From my vantage point, I could see no sign of them ever having a garden this year though I could not see several areas and a garden plot could have been in one of those places. Just not all that likely that I could not see a corner or part of a garden if they had one.
It looked like they had a couple of mature apple trees in the yard and those would have provided some food value to them. There was an old barn, but it looked in poor shape and showed no signs of any use. The place did have a garage, and there was a fairly new SUV parked haphazardly on the over grown lawn but the open garage door showed an empty garage.
I always stay well off the county road when I am out hunting or like now and just reconnoitering the area. Now working on a hunch, I made my way back away from the place and looped around to the road. I stopped back in the trees some and looked and listened. Then I advanced out to the road and looked it over good. There were fresh car or truck tracks on the road surface. And that vehicle had made several trips recently, or there were several vehicles judging by the number of tracks.
The odds were leaning heavy towards only one or two vehicles still running in the area. I was between the town and the only inhabited place I had found nearby. I faded back into the woods. Then I circled way around that house and checked the road on the other side, the side going towards our place. No tracks.
So I’m guessing that SUV was in the garage and was pushed out onto the lawn to get it out of the way. And now the garage was used for a running vehicle. And that vehicle was being used on a fairly regular basis it appeared. Used for what was the question. Was there government help in town and these people were driving back and forth for supplies or to work?
All I had were questions and no answers. And most likely none of this made any difference one way or the other to us at our place. We were getting along just fine. At least for now. But this place was just nagging at me. I couldn’t seem to let it go. If things were better in town why would anyone stay way out here? Why trips back and forth?
Chapter 16
At home, I talked with Karen about what I had found and how perplexed I was about it. She had no answers and did not share my curiosity about it. When she saw that I would just not let it go, she explained her feelings on the matter.
“We are safe here. Our daughter is safe here. We have food, water, and shelter. We have power and while things might be awful in many places this place has everything we need for right now. I don’t want you stirring up any trouble when we don’t need to just because you are curious.”
She said that just so I would understand that all she wanted was safety for Cassy. Karen’s whole life was Cassy and our happy home. She wanted nothing to change for right now. She did not want me to rock the boat and maybe tip it over, putting us all in danger.
But we had been together for a long time. She knew me inside and out. And she knew I would not just drop this and stay home. When I said nothing, and we had just looked at each other for several moments, then she came and wrapped her arms around me and laid her head on my shoulder.
“Please be careful. Think of Cassy.”
“I promise to be very careful. Bringing any harm to you or Cassy is the last thi
ng in the world that I would want to do. There is something about this. I feel that it is a threat to us somehow. I feel it. It is like an old abandoned haunted house that when you walk past you can feel the evil inside the place reaching out towards you, so you run to get past it.
“I am likely way off base here. The people there are most likely just like us and are trying to survive. They have not ventured in this direction. They appear to be no threat to us. But I still have this feeling.
“I will just watch them a little more. I will stay well back and away. And I will be very careful. But I have to see what is happening.”
We stood holding each other there for some time just feeling the fulfillment, happiness, and strength that being together always instills in us. This time there was a worry in our embrace too. Worry that our life together was now way more fragile than it once was and both of us did not like that part.
The next morning I left again. Very early this time, well before sunrise. And I carried water and a little food with, and I told Karen I would be back in the afternoon. Usually, I carried one of the twenty-two rifles but not this time. I instead carried one of the military style rifles along with two extra magazines of ammunition. Which was kind of silly. I was not at war, and I had never even seen anyone while out, let alone have anyone attack me but I carried that rifle anyway.
I went to the only occupied house. I stayed back even further this time. I was well concealed and in a comfortable spot. It was also a spot where I could leave through plenty of concealment. I could see the house, the garage, and part of the county road. I situated myself well, and then I just waited.
I had my watch on, but I refrained from looking at it because I could feel time moving so slowly. When the house door opened, I did glance at my watch before quickly looking back at the house.
