Sharecropping The Apocalypse: A Prepper is Cast Adrift

by Ron Foster

  “Me too, I sure wish we could have made it but we just couldn’t swing it. We did make a camping trip or two this year though. How much lead time did do you imagine that them cross country preppers, the ones that traveled in by airplane or drove it have to get home before this shit hit? I am having problems with associating this shit to dates and times. They changed the dang date of that thing so many times I am confused. Hell I don’t know even what today is, do you?” David said straightening up after securing a tent peg.

  “March 22nd I think. I guess folks attending Prepper Stock had maybe a week or so to get home?” Julie said looking in David’s direction with her brow furrowed in mental calculation.

  “Sounds about right. I wonder if they are ever going to get some kind of phone service working regular, well just fixing the landlines anyway. From now on you and I need to try the phone every once in awhile for service and call Crick Miller (as in “down by the crick (creek.)” any chance that we may get. I want to find out what shape his area is in and how him and his buddy Morgan is making out. Julie, if for some reason we have got to bug out north then we will be heading somewhere in his general direction I am guessing.” David said starting to reveal some plans he was considering for their safety and security.

  “Ok, if your not around when I get through I will tell him that, but why all this talk of bugging out David? That is not like you at all. I thought we were remaining here from now on. The whole count your blessings, stay with all your stuff and bug in thing. What is it that’s seems to be worrying you David? You know that I want to know and I bet you know I want to know now.” Julie said looking very anxious and concerned about what ever might be bothering David.

  “Nothing special, well maybe just a small concern or two has me puzzled for the moment. Do you know what kind of business was operating about 8 or10 miles up the road?” David asked more subdued than he meant to be.

  “Some kind of aerospace thing wasn’t it? Are you thinking that it might be a target of some kind?’ Julie said trying to understand what it was about the place that David had some kind of apprehensions about.

  “Well they build missiles, actual missiles or assemble missile parts for the military I don’t know but I am going to ask Mike first chance I get about that. If there is something down there that can explode and make a bigger boom than I can imagine well then I want to know something more about it. Another thing is that if its primary function is manufacturing for the department of defense then maybe our area will get relief attention quicker than somewhere else. I also want to watch that place like a canary in a coal mine for a bit, might find out something interesting.” David concluded looking at the little campsite being setup and ready to waterproof.

  “Like? What kind of information do you think you might learn from seeing if that place opens its doors or not?” Julie asked thinking about what the possibilities might mean.

  “Like whether or not the workers go home after a shift. Probably not, there is not much gas and there is precedence for workers staying at factors in emergencies or during times of disaster. I am wondering if they will work folks maybe two weeks on then a week off or something; remember there are a lot of families attached to those workers. Feeding the plant workers cafeteria style is one thing, but what about the families staying back alone? Folks wont stay on a job very long if they are worried about the families at home. How that situation is handled will be the biggest indicator I can think of as to what our chances are and where the regular unaffiliated folks like us stand in the pecking order of things.” David explained.

  “Ok I think I understand you David. You want to see like if they bus the workers families in to feed them at the plant or will be holding there own worker family food drops and the rest of us ain`t supposed to notice. Yea sounds like a good place to get news about and watch if we can. Are there any other places we need to be being paying special attention to?” Julie asked while spreading some clear gummy seam sealer on the first tent.

  “I don’t know right off hand; I am still trying to think of some more places that might bear us watching. We probably won’t be able to watch nothing much though anyway, why waste the gas if there is nothing to see or gain? I am going to undertake to drive down and ask that farmer with the geese what he sees traffic wise on the interstate once in awhile though. Outside of the radio news we are pretty much cut off. Come to think of it, I might have my apprehensions about driving up to that farmer’s house in the state of affairs we are in. I am sure half this road remembers his chickens and geese for sale signs and has already gone over to talk to him one way or another. I wish I had gone over there to begin with instead of putting it off so long and forgetting about it. I think I will just stay where I am at and keep a low profile for now. I have too many unknowns going on outside this property to be venturing out just for news and I doubt he has increased his flock to a surplus yet that maybe I could trade him something for.” David said spraying the rain fly with water sealant.

  “We need to pack us a box or two and discuss what type of stuff you need to move to a FEMA camp if the occasion ever arose also besides just getting our camping gear together today. You won’t see me near one of those camps if I can in anyway help it, but you never know about relocations. It isn’t possible to move all our preps with us and we really have no idea how long they will last us until we can somehow replace foodstuffs. I don’t want you to have any illusions of never having to go to one at all, that would be foolish. A tornado could come through here and we could lose everything for example. Instead of thinking about not going, think about how you would survive in a camp and build onto your strategies and resources to maximize your comfort. I will give you some examples of bugging to a shelter versus bugging out to the woods. One thing is clothes; take everything you can winter and summer in your car and dress grey man in the trailer park with your older clothes. Think of it as starting out in a new life with just your cars contents and be ready for a ton of rules applying to anything questionable as contraband or not allowed on premises. Some things or rules might seem odd at first, like no outside decorations for your house, any media interviews or social worker questionnaires except government recognized ones on camp premises etc. Living in a FEMA trailer park is easy enough to get the hang of if you don’t make a spectacle of yourself complaining or expecting better than you got. Be careful how quick you make friends with those you don’t know and try to gravitate in line with like minded folks for lot assignment. One of those big electric frying pans is a good thing to have when traveling because if you get stuck in a hotel, first you have a means to cook and second technically it’s not a hot plate so not specifically banned. That reminds me, that induction cook plate is an ideal prep also. It’s a low wattage kitchen aide, pretty safe and efficient as well as versatile because you’re not restricted in pot sizes; only restriction is the pan you use to cook with metal composition. It mattered using the cook top if your pots and pans were thermo conducting or non conducting metals.

  .

  9

  A S.O.S is Received

  “Hey David come here quick, I finally got Crick on the phone!” Julie called out the door to David who was working on the garden fence.

  “Hell yea!” David yelled back and dropped his fencing pliers and ran back towards the house.

  “Hey Crick buddy! How are you? “David said quickly into the staticy crackling phone after Julie handed him the receiver

  “I can barely hear you David. I am fine. Are you coming?” Crick said quickly back.

  “Well only if I have to, I really was… Hello? Hello?” Damn phone went dead.” David said and put the phones handset back in the cradle momentarily before picking it backup to check the line again.

  “Ah Hell! What did he say Julie? “David said looking crestfallen and anxious that he didn’t have a chance to talk to his friend.

  “Oh David you are not going to believe this! We only talked a little and I missed parts of what he was saying from the static on the
line but he wants you to come up there. He said the dams had been blown by the terrorists and that the folks attending this years Prepper Stock had been cut off from the roads leading out of the park and for most practical purposes they were all living on an island!. “Julie said all in a rush.

  “They are got themselves stuck on an island? As in surrounded all around by water or is it they just can’t use the bridges or dam roads?” David queried.

  “Uh, well he didn’t really say why they were an island. Only thing he said was that they were pretty much stuck on an island for all practical purposes. . Maybe that means they can walk over a bridge but not drive? But he did say that he had just got home after rafting across the river to that big houses boat dock that you can see from the park. He said he rode a bicycle a few miles to his house after that and hadn’t been in long. I don’t know, I guess maybe they are surrounded by water or going the way he went was shorter somehow. He didn’t elaborate, he only said for you to meet him at his house at 397 Stone Crick roads, I mean creek road. Damn that Crick Miller sometimes his southern accent is worse than yours.” Julie said kidding David while checking the scrap of paper that she had scribbled down the address on in order to confirm that she had written the message down correctly.

  “He said to be sure and tell you that he would leave you a note and a key where you could find it if he wasn’t there to greet you when you arrived. That’s about when I hollered for you to come inside the house to get on the phone. I had just finished telling him that you and I had been trying to get through to him for days to ask some questions about bugging out to that area when I passed him and the phone over to you. I didn’t get a chance to tell him anymore about why we wanted to know so I bet he thinks we got problems here also….” Julie said looking at David with a raised eyebrow and a tight lip.

  “Hell I bet he does. Darn phone.” David said as he once again picked up his receiver to check for a dial tone.

  “Nothing, nada! Not a damn thing. No signal at all. The phone was just plain dead like he hadn’t paid his phone bill. Speaking of which had he paid it? Oh come on now David get serious, did he really think that the phone company had time at the moment to shut him of for being late?” David thought with a slight ironic smile.

  David related to Julie what it was that had caused his smile to appear while putting down the phone and after a brief chuckle with her about it, he had a bad premonition come over him.

  “You know Julie if someone can hack our electrical grid and shut it down, wouldn’t it have made sense for them to also attack the phone system? Nothing much, just some hacker somewhere tell a computer somewhere else that every bodies phone bill this month was in default and to shut down the service on xyz day. That’s an easy way to cause some serious stress and worry on the populace as well as insure that it is pretty much impossible to call up people to report for work as well as greatly slow down communications amongst first responders.” David said now eying his phone and wondering if his own phone line might be down for good this time.

  “Oh David, that means we might not be able to get back on the phone again with Crick! What are we going to do? You think the phone id down for good?” Julie said as the realization that the phone service might be being attacked or hacked at this very moment came to her.

  “Well let’s hope the phone is just temporarily out of service Julie. You know that the phone service has been very spotty to non existent last couple weeks to say the least, but it sounds like we got a hell of a mess to deal with either way. I wonder what in the hell it is that Crick expects me to do to help if I come way up there. I can’t imagine a single thing he could want out of me other than for me to bring a few items of comfort to those stranded preppers and help him out in someway to do the same. Must be something else he wanted from us but for the life of me I don’t know what it is at the moment. He knows that 2 ½ hour trip to the Park is far too long and dangerous for me to consider unless I thought I would actually make some kind of significant contribution or difference to those stranded.” David said trying his best to get into Crick’s mind and critical assessment of the situation so that he could possibly guess what it was that might be expected out of him.

  “Maybe he thought you might have on hand more food than you actually do? It could be David that he expects you to share some of yours with the stranded prepper community as you and he try to rescue them off that island” Julie speculated offhandedly while thinking about what might have been behind her and David’s friend Crick’s reasoning.

  “Rescue them folks how and take them now basically homeless refugees to where? I mean if Crick got off of that island somehow and he himself home ok then he is in a far better position to help them than I will ever be. He is from that area and knows the ins and outs of it as well has lots of friends to call upon maybe., most likely he will be rounding up some kind of a boat or boats to either bring supplies back to the castaways or use a boat to evacuate folks from the island. That’s kind of like out of the frying pan and into the fire if you ask me. Hell there has to be at least forty of fifty preppers there, maybe more. This years turn out was supposed to bigger than last years. Then you have got to take into account all the other campers that may be visiting the park getting stuck on the same campground along with them that does not include any park personnel that might be present. Watermelon road has small non producing farms and a golf course community development along it but depending on where on that road the park got itself severed from the mainland makes a big difference in resources and people milling around. I bet that the Preppers campground itself got cut off and blocked somewhere around the middle of the reservations access road between that Dam and its locks a mile or two from that spillway and pump station just up the road from the generation plant. There is another Dam around that area I know of that might have also impacted them. I don’t know much about that Dam; I just heard Crick mention a time or two that it was also an access artery into the road system surviving another park. That bit of road and campground they might be stuck on doesn’t leave them with very much of an operating area and its landscape is mostly pretty hilly scruffy pine woodland until you get to the park from either road.” David said trying to mentally picture how exactly big this so called island might be where his friends and fellow preppers were stranded.

  “That area of the road sounds about right David. We drove over that shallow but impassable spillway last time and if any part of that road you are talking about got messed up some kind of way I wouldn’t know how to get back in or out there from the side they are from town. Maybe I better get us a map out of my car and see exactly what’s on the backside of that place instead of the front way we are used to coming in.” Julie said rising to go get it.

  “I think it’s all National Forest or sort of swampy river bottom land with creeks leading to the reservoir. Deer Park sits on a bluff and on the map it looked like it just sort of jutted out by itself between two rives and the dams which made up what was called a lake.” David said following her outside to try to figure out more

  David remembered the panoramic camps lake view but actually the lot Julie and he had camped on last Prepper Stock looked more like the campgrounds were composed of a series of steep hills above a river.”

  .

  “Yea, you can see that there is no other way into Deer Park except these two roads coming in David and that point right there is that other Dam you were talking about earlier.” Julie said pointing down at the map and tracing a road that ran directly over a dam.

  “Thanks for thinking about this map Julie. It helps me to clear a few things up in my mind. I wonder if they got water damage or flooding up in that area as well as road damage. It’s pretty hard to blow any kind of giant gaping hole in an actual modern dam but somebody with the where with all could have done plenty of superficial damage or caused the dam to open its spillway gates for some major localized flooding. Without talking to Crick who knows what conditions are in? As far as we know, expect flooding and
them poor folks are stuck on their own brand new manmade island.” David replied

  “Not really what you might want want to own in the terms of waterfront real estate right now.” Julie said dryly.

  “You got that right, hell Prepper Stock was only supposed to last for three days so if you just packed for it and brought your 72 hour kit you would only have food for about 6 or 7 days. When did Crick say that the Dam or whatever else got blown up Julie? I don’t remember hearing anything at all about it in the news do you?” David asked pondering just how dire the circumstances were for the cutoff and for all practical purposes it appeared, pretty much abandoned preppers and campers.

  “I didn’t hear anything about Deer Park or anything about the Dam either. Something could have happened to them before or after we heard about the major cyber attack. We were pretty much off grid and out of communication with the outside for a day or two until we decided to eventually cut the radio on when the power first went out. We thought that the power not working was because a thunderstorm had taken down a transformer feeding the house or something and were just sitting around partying or arranging preps waiting for things to dry out and the power to come back on remember David. How dismissive and naïve of us to just not care that the power went out for awhile and just figured it was a normal occurrence after a thunderstorm. Worlds going to hell and it took us days to figure out we were part of it.” Julie said as David sheepishly acknowledged the fact.