“Exactly, little lady. The more preppers the better. Someday, whether it’s your volcano or something else, the earth will be brought to its knees. Few people will survive. But the more survivors out there who make it through, the quicker we can work together to make the world normal again. It just makes sense if you think about it.”
“Okay. I’m ready to learn.”
Joe opened a cupboard door and pulled out a huge stewpot.
“This thing holds about three and a half gallons. It’s enough to feed me for two weeks. By that time I’m tired of chicken noodle soup and want something else. It’ll feed the three of us for four or five days.
“The soup will be tasty, filling and chock full of calories. Those, in my opinion, are the three essential elements to any prepper food.
“If it’s not tasty you won’t eat it. You’ll get weak and lose your edge.
“If it’s not filling you’ll be tempted to eat something else. You’ll burn through your food stores faster, and unnecessarily.
“Lastly, if it doesn’t have enough calories, you’ll lose weight. And with weight loss goes loss of strength and stamina. And that would put you at a disadvantage if you’re fighting with someone wanting to take your stuff.”
“Okay. How do we start?”
“We start, young lady, by putting three gallons of water into the stew pot and putting it on the stove to boil. I only have a two burner stove, but it’s sufficient for our needs.”
He placed the pot upon the stove and Gwen handed him three gallon water bottles from a stack in the corner.
He filled the pot with the desired amount and said to Gwen, “Would you look behind you in that cupboard? Take out the dried chicken and two boxes of spaghetti noodles.”
“Sure.”
She placed the noodles on the counter in front of them and examined the zip-lock bag full of dried chicken pieces.
“The chicken is already four years old, but that’s okay. As long as I can keep it dry it’ll outlast both of us. But when it’s in the soup it’ll taste just as fresh as the day I cooked it up, I promise.”
“How’d you prepare it?”
“Oh, it was easy. I just baked it in the oven and then took it off the bones and cut it into small chunks. Each chunk is about half an inch or so cubed.
“After I cut it into cubes I put it back into the oven, spread out on a cookie sheet, and cooked it for about four hours at two hundred degrees. When I took it out, viola! Dehydrated chicken. I let it cool off and then bagged it in a waterproof bag. It’ll last forever.”
“How much do we use?”
“Each bag contains about six cups of dried chicken. I generally put about two cups in each batch. It’ll expand quite a bit as it softens. It won’t ensure a piece of chicken in every bite, but it’s still quite a bit of meat.”
She poured about a third of the bag into the heating water.
“Now what?”
“Go back to that same cupboard. There’s a bunch of jars of powdered chicken bouillon. Take out one jar and dump it in.”
She did.
“Now what?”
“Take the spaghetti noodles and break them into pieces three or four inches long. Throw them into the mix.”
“Both boxes?”
“Yes, ma’am. Both boxes.”
Once that was done she asked, “Okay. What’s the next step?”
“That’s it.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Well, almost. We have to stir it until it boils so it doesn’t stick to the pot. And once it starts boiling we’ll turn it off, cover it and let it sit overnight.”
“And tomorrow we’ll have homemade chicken noodle soup?”
“Prepper’s soup. Not quite as fancy as what your mama used to make. It won’t have any of those little pieces of celery in it. But I guarantee you it’ll look and taste just like the best selling canned soup on the market.”
Melvyn interjected.
“Seriously? Just like my favorite brand?”
“Just like your favorite brand. Overnight the noodles will swell and be several times their normal size. They’ll absorb the bouillon and the water and with it the chicken taste. And the meat will be soft and tasty as well.
“It’ll look and taste just like the canned version. Except this variety will keep for twenty, thirty, forty years as long as it stays dry.”
Gwen looked at Melvyn and said, “This is cool. Who’d have ever thought a man could teach me things I didn’t know about cooking?”
Chapter 28
“Bud, something’s been bothering me.”
Tony sat up on his bunk and looked across the cell at his friend.
“Only one thing? That’s pretty good. There are a lot of things that have been bothering me.”
“How come they put us in the same cell? Doesn’t that seem kind of odd to you? I mean, there were other cells that had no locks on them. They didn’t have to put us together.”
“It’s because the walls have ears.”
“Huh?”
“Listening devices. Bugs. Probably hidden in the light fixture or behind the bars where we can’t see them. Unless I miss my guess, they’re monitoring every word we say, hoping we give them the information they’re looking for.”
“And what happens if we don’t?”
“I’m not sure. Normally I’d expect the interrogations to come next, then the beatings. But so far they haven’t done anything. That’s puzzling to me, to be honest.”
“Maybe they’re playing mind games. Waiting for us to crack.”
“Maybe. They don’t know we’re hardened criminals. That we’ve both done time in the joint. That jail doesn’t bother us.”
“What are you talking about?”
Bud winked and said, “They don’t know about all that time you pulled in the Wright County Jail. Real hard time down there, yes siree. They probably found out about the years I served my time at San Quentin. It’s pretty hard to cover up that whole mass murderer thing I was involved in. But that’s ancient history now. I’ve put it all behind me and served my time.”
“Bud, please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Okay, if you insist, I’m kidding.”
“You don’t sound very convincing.”
“And I sounded convincing when I said I was a mass murderer? Man, I must be a better actor than I thought I was.
“Actually, the only time I’ve ever been in jail was a couple of stints for contempt of court. In my younger days I considered myself a maverick in the courtroom. I wanted to pick and choose what rules I wanted to follow. I thought courtroom decorum was a waste of my time.
“And I had a couple of run-ins with judges who saw things differently.”
“You’ve always been a bit of a rebel, haven’t you Bud?”
“I prefer to call it selective rule-following.”
“How long has it been?”
“Since we’ve been in here? This is the third day.”
“It seems like forever.”
“That’s why they don’t sell tickets to get into jail, son. Nobody would buy them. It’s not supposed to be fun.”
“How much longer do you think we’ll be in here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe forever. But my guess is just a few more days. Once our plan goes into effect and the world finds out about Yellowstone, there won’t be a reason to hold us anymore.”
“Then what?”
Bud raised his voice a little and spoke a bit more slowly. He wanted to make sure his captors heard and understood his words.
“Then they can do the honorable thing and set us and your wife free. Or they can kill us and have a lot of explaining to do. Like how we were seen and videotaped going into DI headquarters and never came back out again.”
Tony opened his mouth to object, to ask who videotaped them.
Bud stopped him in time by placing a finger to his own lips.
The old man stood up and started pacing again, back and forth across their tw
elve foot cell.
“Why do you do that, Bud?”
“Do what?”
“Pace back and forth.”
“Gotta do something to pass the time. Might as well pace. Besides, it’s very important you stay in shape when you’re in jail.”
“Oh, yeah? Why?”
“Well, a couple of reasons, really. First of all, women dig bad men. A certain type of woman is attracted to men who’ve been in prison. When I get out of here I plan to hit the bars in Norwood and strike up conversations with some of the ladies. Tell them I just got out of the joint.
“They’ll ask why I was in here and I’ll make up something cool. Like I was in a bar fight and beat up four bikers or something. They’ll ask why I did it, and I’ll say they made a pass at my woman.
“Then they’ll get all goo-goo eyed and say they’d like to be mine. They’ll want to take me home and will tell me to make them feel like a woman.
“Now how in heck am I supposed to make them feel like a woman if I’m all tired and out of shape because I haven’t been doing my pacing?”
“Bud, you’re so full of it.”
“I know. It’s fun.”
“Fun for you, maybe. I’m not having much fun at all.”
“That’s because you’re not pacing, my young friend. If you were pacing you’d have fun.”
“I doubt it. Besides, you’re hogging the floor.”
“I’ll let you have your turn in a minute. After I pace a few more laps. And just for the record, there’s a second reason you should pace while you’re in the joint.”
“Oh, brother. I probably shouldn’t ask, but… why?”
“Because if there’s a jail break, the guys who are fat and slow and out of shape will be easily caught. The guys who have been pacing will be in better shape. They’ll be able to run faster and will have a better chance of getting away.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Then why did you?”
“I don’t know. I’m a sucker for punishment, I suppose.”
For a couple of minutes neither man said anything. Bud seemed to concentrate on pacing back and forth across the cell.
Tony seemed deep in thought.
Finally he broke the silence by asking, “Are there really women who are attracted to men who’ve been in the joint?”
Chapter 29
In a listening room several offices away a DHS analyst sat at a workstation listening in. He was a small man by DHS standards, barely meeting the height requirement by wearing three pairs of thick socks and rising up on his toes at his entry physical.
His head was also too small for his body, and as a result he looked like a little kid as he sat there wearing a headset that was way too big for his head.
The man who’d walked up behind him just a few minutes earlier had to stifle a smile. He wanted to comment, “Hey! How come nobody told me it was ‘bring your kid to work day?’”
He held his tongue because Jake, the man with the small head and the headset, was the best at what he did. He was an expert at catching subtle changes in a suspect’s voice tone. At picking up whispered words which stumped other analysts. At breaking through the vain attempts suspects had at speaking in code.
The man standing behind Jake was his supervisor, Tom Copaus, the agent in charge of the detail. It was his call to place Tony and Bud in the same cell in the hopes they’d discus the whereabouts of Gwen Lupson.
Everyone involved in the gathering of the Yellowstone data, to their knowledge, had been neutralized. Some by murder, some by taking prisoner.
Everyone, that was, except for Gwen.
They thought they had her when they blew up her house. Faulty intelligence. One of the surveillance agents was using the restroom when her garage door opened and she left. By the time he came back she was blocks away, the garage door was down again and he hadn’t a clue she’d left.
The other blunder in that operation was that Melvyn left the house to visit his neighbor quite literally at the last minute.
The surveillance team saw him leave. But the go/no-go line had already passed. The three minute delayed timer had already been pressed and couldn’t be undone.
Tom Copaus almost lost his job over that one. He was chewed out up one side and down the other and told in no uncertain terms he had one more chance to get it right.
“Get Lupson. Get her and bring her back, or figure out a way to silence her. Screw up again and you’re gone.”
For Tom Copaus it was personal. It had to be. His job and a prestigious career depended on it.
He stood behind Jake and read his notes, even as Jake jotted down new entries in a separate log book.
And he grew ever more frustrated.
He’d hoped that both men would be terrified when thrown into the cell together.
He’d hoped they’d openly discuss ways to get out of their current predicament.
And that somewhere in the course of their conversation they’d disclose Gwen’s location.
But it hadn’t worked out that way.
It turned out the kid… Anthony, though his dossier said he hated that name and preferred Tony… was unnerved at his sudden loss of freedom.
It was Tony who’d pointed out the blood spatter on one of the cell walls and wondered aloud whether they’d ever get out alive.
Tony, Tom Copaus believed, was someone he could work with.
Tony wasn’t the problem.
Bud Avery was the problem.
Bud was showing himself to be a tough nut to crack.
When Tony pointed out the blood stains, Bud kept his cool.
“I don’t think it’s blood at all,” he opined in a statement meant more for the analysts than for Tony. “I think they served toast and strawberry jam and the guy who had the cell before us was just a messy eater.”
Since then Bud seemed to taunt his captors, referring constantly to mysterious “friends” who would announce to the world whatever the DHS was trying so hard to hide.
Bud was right. It had been three days since they’d been tossed in the cell together.
Copaus was impressed. Most of his prisoners, tossed into a cell with no clock, no window, no way to tell time, soon lost track of it. It was a mysterious phenomenon, really. Although it was noted in the logs that neither Tony nor Bud was wearing a watch when they were taken into custody, even people with watches lost track of the number of days they were confined.
He’d seen it dozens of times. Prisoners overestimating the number of days they’d been confined, sometimes believing they were locked up several times longer than they actually were.
Nobody ever underestimated it. Nobody ever said, “I’ve been here a week? I thought it was only a couple of days.”
No, they always overestimated. “I’ve only been here a week? It seemed more like a month.”
But Bud had hit it dead right. Three days.
That fact in itself told Copaus Bud wouldn’t crack.
He was further convinced by Bud’s general attitude. He didn’t seem frightened. He just seemed pissed off.
He conveyed his attitude every chance he got, by alternately cursing his captors and mocking them.
He was right in that every word he and Tony said was being recorded and analyzed. Yet he didn’t seem to temper his anger or his words. He was unconcerned about infuriating his captors. And that could only mean one thing.
He was confident he had the upper hand.
And that concerned Copaus. For it meant Bud was dangerous.
Copaus left the listening room and went back to his office. It was a quarter of three.
At three o’clock sharp he’d scheduled a meeting to discuss what he called his “Avery problem.” He’d told his security detail earlier in the day that what they’d been doing wasn’t working. If Bud Avery was to be believed, there was a ticking time bomb out there somewhere that would soon explode, spilling their secrets near and far.
He told them all to meet in his office at
three for new instructions.
Fifteen minutes to go and he still hadn’t a clue how to deal with Mr. Avery and his young partner.
Chapter 30
“Gentlemen, I’ll be honest with you. I’m at a loss.
“Passive monitoring hasn’t worked. Odds are it won’t work. And we’ve lost three precious days. I’m getting queries from the Secretary twice a day now bugging me for updates.
“He’s getting tired of hearing we’ve made no progress. I’m tired of admitting it. It’s time to do something different.
“The trouble, as I see it, is that Mr. Avery holds the cards. He’s undoubtedly given the information to someone with instructions to share it with the media.
“The problem is, we don’t know who he gave it to and we don’t know how long they’ll wait. The stuff could hit the fan tomorrow or it could hit the fan six months from now. We just don’t know.
“I’m looking for your input, gentlemen, and your ideas. Consider the matter open for general discussion.”
A man in the back of the room said, “Why don’t we separate them? Then we can lean on the kid. He appears to be scared shitless. Let’s capitalize on that. Tell him one of them is going to turn State’s evidence. The other will go to prison. Tell him it’s his choice which one he gets to be.
“Has he been to prison?”
“Four nights in a chicken shit jail in Missouri. Piece of cake by anybody’s standards.”
“There you go. We’ll explain the difference between the country club he was in and a real man’s prison. We’ll describe hard time as a place where you cry yourself to sleep every night and spend your days serving whichever sadistic thug made you his wife. He’ll crack and roll on his partner to save his own ass.”
He smiled as he wrapped up with, “No pun intended.”
Copaus wasn’t particularly fond of the idea because he thought the two men he had in the cell were too close to turn on each other.
Still, he didn’t want to stifle anyone else from speaking up. So he’d entertain the thought. He nodded his head in noncommittal acceptance of the idea.
“One possibility. Anybody else?”
The Yellowstone Event (Book 2): A National Disgrace Page 10
