The Great Unraveling (A Preppers Perspective Book 1)

by Ron Foster

  3

  A World At The End Of A Rainbow.

  Dennis finished loading his truck and was sweating like a race horse from the exertion but he still managed to be out of the house and on his way by 7.30 the next morning.

  The town was very quite but he did see one police car and was wondering if they had gotten the National Guard mobilized yet to keep folks acting civilized.

  “Curfew! Good old state governor mandated curfew orders. Damn that’s just about a half step from the President declaring full blown martial law and he wanted to be as far away from here as possible if that occurred. Probably got the same thing curfew thing going in the small town next to his farm but they were a whole lot less police and a bunch more friendlier people than in the city of Montgomery.” David reminded himself as he headed towards his country home down the highway.

  Dennis decided he would take one of the country boy local backwoods alternate routes home and turned off the highway and slowly drove down an intersecting dirt road all the while checking out his distant neighbors land and homes. He had been down this little stretch of dirt road hundreds of times and pretty much knew who kept chickens or a cow or two but he did not know the owners at all, other than waving to them occasionally as he passed by. Charles had said he knew a few people back over this way. He certainly hoped that was true, because they sure were going to need to be networking with these bigger small farms that might produce some kind of surplus they would be willing to trade for.

  Dennis didn’t even stop at his neighbor’s house as he drove by it and instead went directly to his home to reassure himself that all remained in order. The house was exactly as he had left it and he went directly to his gun safe and opened it. One 12 gauge shotgun, one SKS rifle and a CZ 52 pistol is what he had as loners for Charles at the moment. These firearms he carried out to the truck along with a few bandoliers of ammo. Next he went and filled his ice machine with water and then plugged it into his SUNRNR solar generator. He looked at the dripping thawed mess in his freezer and decided it was still good enough to eat and began loading it into an empty ice chest.

  “Hey anybody home!” a woman’s voice called out coming down his driveway and startling him.

  He went to his wide open front door and saw Charles and Monica walking down his driveway with two of their three big dogs on leashes.

  “Hello my friends!” Dennis called back to them and waited on them to finish approaching his house.

  “Come on in! Charles you want a hot beer?” Dennis said heading towards the refrigerator and removing one.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Charles said reaching for the one Dennis was offering.

  “Monica? Want a hot beer? Sorry I don’t have any wine.” Dennis said holding up another can in her direction.

  “That’s ok Dennis, well yea why not I will take one too. Thanks!” She said reaching for the proffered beverage.

  “We saw you drive in. I was wondering when you were going to show up. Actually, I was starting to worry about you a little bit.” Monica said sitting down next to Charles on the couch.

  “I darn near got stuck in Atlanta but that’s another story. I have been at my mom’s house looking after her. How have you all been making out?” Dennis gushed happy to see them while sitting down in a chair and making a face from his first sip of a hot beer.

  “We have been ok. Well man you sure were right, the shit has definitely finally hit the fan.” Charles said meaningfully fixing Dennis` glance at him.

  “Yea it damn sure has. This is one time I wish hadn’t of been right about that NASA solar storm warning affecting us this year or terrorism or anything else. I got you some guns and ammo in the truck by the way and I was just loading up some fresh meat to share with you. It’s thawed out now but it will be ok if you will cook it soon.” Dennis said hopping up to finish filling and closing the ice chest.

  “I will throw whatever you got on the big smoker and cook it up for us. I assume you are here to stay or you going back today?” “Charles said questionably, most likely wondering what Dennis was doing arriving here without his mom.

  “No I am dropping off a load of supplies and then I am heading back to Montgomery in a few hours to retrieve my mom. We will be coming back to stay for the duration together with the other car. I will be back sometime tomorrow or the next day hopefully.” Dennis said watching Monica lighting up what was most likely one of her last few cigarettes she had left. Dennis hadn’t been too long quit smoking himself and felt for her being forced to quit cold turkey sometime in the near future.

  “You want us to be doing anything besides cook up that meat in the cooler Dennis?” Monica asked still looking at the nuclear survival manual.

  “No, we will have plenty time enough in the future to figure out what we are going to be doing when I get back down this way. Cooking up all that meat or smoking it for storage is the most important thing for now. Have yourselves a big gigantic feast and eat up whatever you want. I don’t care if you choose rib eyes or filet mignon. I got my portable icemaker running by the way and I will give you some ice to refrigerate what’s left over before I leave. We should be able to get at least 3 meals for the four of us I figure out of the amount of meat represented in the cooler. I didn’t realize I had so much in my freezer. However, I am just guessing, feed them dogs the cheaper cuts if you have too. “Dennis said deciding this hot beer wasn’t so bad after you got past the first sip.

  “Charles you got plenty of water stored up?” Dennis asked looking out the window towards his neighbor’s house across the street that sat about an acre back from the road on a slight hill.

  “Yea you might say I was a good prepper and did my part just like we talked about. Day one I took my lawn tractor and trailer down to the creek and used that marine battery you gave me to run a sump pump and sucked up 50 gallons of creek water. I even added a tiny amount of Clorox to it. How long do you think we will still have county water to depend on?” Charles asked.

  “That I don’t know, if we are lucky I would say maybe longer than anyone else. They got that big water tower over by the volunteer fire department and they could gravity feed all the folks around us but I don’t know what their emergency plan is. I will stop by the fire house on the way out and see if anyone’s around to ask if they going to open the lines when the backup power generators run out of fuel in a week or two. That reminds me, I need to stop off and talk to the “gopher “ brothers on the way out and see if they want to do a little job for us. “ Dennis said and then walked over to his open gun safe in the adjoining room and surveyed his weaponry.

  Dennis had nicknamed them the “gopher brothers” because when he had first met them, their mom had told him the story about how she had gone off and left the 17 year old and the 14 year old at home while she did a business trip for a week. When she got back they had dug several giant holes out in an old walnut orchard on the property for a root cellar and a tornado shelter. She had them fill them back in because they were a hazard to mowing the lawn and the next time she went somewhere they started a 8x8x10 hole they ended up having to fill back in because no one could afford the lumber to finish it. They had both told Dennis if he ever needed a hole dug to call on them and that’s exactly what he planned on doing now.

  “Do you want them boys to come help you build some sort of fall out shelter; is that what you got in mind? You think we might really be needing one? “Monica asked scared there could be a nuclear war to worry about next.

  “God I hope not! But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. I am not too worried about that at the moment but it is a concern to think about. No I just run out of funds to get me a tornado shelter or bunker built and I figure this summer I will need a root cellar anyway. I am going to build the damn root cellar like a fall out shelter though. By the way Charles, being former military and all, you probably don’t need to read it but there is a book over their on the shelf of Nuclear war survival skills. You might want a review on improvised shelters until
we get my shelter constructed.” Dennis said but then handed the book to Monica first who looked like she couldn’t wait to get her hands on it.

  “I doubt that it will escalate into a global nuclear war. There would be no winners and only all losers so I am not worried about being obliterated. There will be some dirty bombs going off in the U.S. though I bet if we did do a full blown military retaliatory strike against Iran. Those suckers got their terrorist cells infiltrated in the states all over the place for just such an occasion. There is good chance of bioterrorism also. But hopefully we might have them scared enough of our nuclear power not to do that, well I doubt they try bioterrorism openly anyway.

  Israel has already told Iran if the used any of those missiles they said they have loaded with biological and chemical warfare agents that they could expect probably to get nuked in return. The bible says something about the total destruction of Syria in one day so that may well come to pass.

  “I am of course still quite curious if somebody in the U.S. wasn’t messing around with H.A.R.R.P and somehow short circuited our own grid. That would be the false flag attack of the century! Every time they experiment with that thing for weather manipulation or whatever else they do with it, there in Alaska. There are far too many strong readings of electromagnetic energy emanations in odd places. I can only guesstimate at what might actually be going on until we get an official causation confirmation or the government and the media false flag us into whatever we are supposed to believe about it.

  Remember my friends that they admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident with the Vietnamese was staged” Dennis said thinking about an entirely new twist and turn that might explain the national emergency they were in.

  “Damn Dennis! I wish you didn’t know so much sometimes, some of those conspiracy theories or terrorist capability assessments you come up with scare the hell out of me.” Monica said rapidly glancing through the survival book she had been given.

  “You asked the question and I gave you some answers.” Dennis told her smiling and ignoring the poke at his prepper knowledge that might throw a wet blanket on something in the conversation.

  ‘Hey Charles I got a little crappy radio that can receive the shortwave band. Maybe we can pick up what’s happening in the world and get a little heads up. Dennis said going to get it and then after putting batteries in it trying to tune to a station.

  “Here you fool with this for me and see if you find a station, I got sidetracked for a minute.” Dennis said handing the radio to Charles and going back to his gun safe.

  Dennis knew the Gopher brothers only possessed a single shot .223 Remington rifle and a single shot 12 gauge shotgun so he thought he had the ideal barter material for them to consent to dig out and work on his new root cellar. He had an old Russian 5 shot bolt action Mosin Nagant 91/30 rifle that was chambered in 7.62 x54. It was only a hundred dollar gun before the poo hit the fan, not telling what it was worth nowadays. It and 100 rounds of ammo for it to shoot were worth a good down payment on a little hard excavation work to Dennis.

  He had 223 NATO rounds that were militarily loaded too hot with smokeless gunpowder for that .223 Remington of theirs, so that caliber wouldn’t help them any. He had stored tons of 12 gauge shells for himself, so he added several boxes of buckshot and slugs to his barter pile to sweeten the deal. Speaking of sweetener he went and got two 10 LB bags of commercial deer attractant out of his stores and gave one to Charles and added one to the pile the Gopher boys would be receiving. Jack and Clyde could now have a good chance of keeping themselves and their mother feed by hunting deer on their back pasture and in the wood line.

  “Charles you might as well go set you up a saltlick on your back property somewhere with that trademarked Deer Cocaine stuff and get ready to feed you and those big dogs with some game. By the way I wanted to talk to you about borrowing one of your hounds as kind of security around here for me and my mom. We can talk about that when I return. I will get you set up with some traps and snares when I get back also and we can work out how we are going to run our trap lines for food procurement.” Dennis told him ticking off a mental list of things he and Charles had talked about doing before if a big disaster hit.

  “Sounds like a master plan to me, Hey Dennis you got any mash started yet?” Charles asked knowing Dennis had an alcohol still and a few hundred pounds of sugar stored, as well as assorted turbo yeasts packages packed in mason jars in his refrigerator for the purpose of making some white lightening should he decide the world was ending.

  “No that’s on top of my ever expanding “to do” list. How about we carry the mash buckets and some sugar over to your house and you can get started on that project while I am gone? I don’t want to clue my mom in just yet on my plans for moo shining for us to drink or as a barter item. She is going to fuss like hell when she hears about it. I drink too much for her snooping around already” Dennis said over his shoulder as he went to get the paraphernalia necessary to make some high proof drinking vodka.

  “How long until you can brew a batch off and it be drinkable once you start the mash?” Monica said perking up at the thought of having some liquor available.

  “I got some turbo yeast to speed the process up, so about three days until I can run the still and make us a few quarts of drinking whiskey. We can also mix that ethanol alcohol 50/50 with gasoline if we need to use it in the vehicles. But that’s such a waste.” Dennis said laughing at their shared love of some good stiff drinks sometimes.

  “I am wising now you had started that mash three days ago. You got another hot beer buddy?” Charles asked

  “Yea sure you can, go help yourself Charles. I got a case of it that I will split with you all. Glad that won’t be our last call for alcohol when that beer is gone.” Dennis said grinning that he would have access to some hooch for what he hoped was a long time to come as Charles and Monica laughed at his statement because of their already having heard about his preps and plans to insure just that.

  “You got any particular kind of timeline in mind on when society will really start to unravel Dennis?’ Monica asked worriedly. She had been listening to Dennis’s doomsday prepper tales for years and knew a lot about society and what he predicted might happen during a societal collapse.

  “That’s really hard for me to say with any precision Monica. Most likely it has already started or is happening at various degrees in some places. I say I would give it another week or so before the violence and looting starts going mainstream and also before it really starts to get out of hand. It all just depends. If the U.S. was the only one that got EMP bombed then other countries could help us out and get the transformers we don’t build here to repair our electrical grid. I am sure that who ever thought of attacking us probably has already or will bomb those overseas factories that build the electrical parts we need in order to add to the chaos.

  Of course if America and our allies were the only ones in the world to have an EMP problem that fool of a president of ours might bring in the UN and foreign soldiers to help quell the social unrest and that action might even provoke or start a civil war here stateside. I know a lot of patriots who have said they won’t tolerate foreign troops doing police actions on American soil.” Dennis said ominously.

  “You are just full of good news today Dennis you old damn doomer.” Monica said rising to go get herself another beer and muttering to herself.

  “Grab me a beer too please.” Dennis called after her good naturedly.

  “Charles I am going to finish this next beer and then I need to get the truck unloaded and get myself back on the road.” Dennis said wishing he had more time to spend with his friends today.

  “No problem, we will help you. You got lots of time, its only 10.30, in the morning, when are you planning on leaving and going back?” Charles questioned.

  “I guess about 12 noon or so. I need to go talk to the gopher boys and get them started if they want to do the job. That is a touchy situation for me to start getting back in conta
ct with them right now. They know I am a prepper and they were becoming ones themselves, but I have no idea if they started storing much food. There is not a lot of extra money around that house, so I don’t know what progress if any they have made. They are good hardworking boys though and we will need their friendship a lot in the upcoming months to help us if we are going to try and pull through this as a community. I just don’t really have hardly any extra food to share with them.” Dennis said watching conflicting emotions go across Charles face.

  “Yea you need to really think it through before you go inviting them over here right now.” Charles said returning Dennis’s scrutinizing look.

  “I just thought of something I want to add to their barter pile, hang on a minute.” Dennis said. Taking a slug out of his beer and rising to go get something.

  “You keep adding to that pile and I might just have to try to dig that pit for you!” Monica said laughing.

  “Oh I got lots more to trade with folks, this just gets them started on the right track.” Dennis said s he opened a cabinet and removed 3 big rat traps and a jar of peanut butter.