An Unwelcome Homecoming

by Darrell Maloney

  “My Explorer? Some jerk stole it.”

  “Really? How rude.”

  “Well, he paid a heavy price. Rolled it down an embankment. Serves him right.”

  “Daddy! That’s not very nice. And not very Christian either.”

  “You’re right, honey. I apologize to Mr. Jerk, wherever he may be.”

  “What did you bring home?”

  “I’m surprised you can’t smell them.”

  “Fish?”

  “Yep. Four fair-sized cats.”

  “I haven’t been able to smell much of anything lately. My nose has been stopped up since you threw me in that snow bank four days ago.”

  “Should I feel guilty?”

  “No, it was fun.

  “Hey, how come they call catfish catfish? They don’t look like cats.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s because they have whiskers.”

  “Oh. Or maybe it’s the way they meow.”

  “Stop. They don’t meow.”

  “They do, they do. Don’t they, Red?”

  “Leave me out of this.”

  “Do they really meow, Dad?”

  “Yes. Not very loud, mind you, and not very often. But sometimes when you camp next to a river or a creek, and it’s a very quiet night, you can hear very soft meows as the catfish swim by.”

  Beth turned to Red and asked, “Should I believe him?”

  “Probably not. I wouldn’t.”

  Chapter 28

  The snow in Blanco lasted a couple more days and then melted, but residents had little time to enjoy the respite. As it had the winter before, a major ice storm struck a week before Christmas and made just walking around treacherous.

  At least there were no downed power lines this time to hinder travel even farther.

  Blanco, like every other city in the land, was a place where few people had the luxury of parking themselves in their houses for days at a time.

  Long gone were well stocked supermarket shelves and well-stocked kitchen cupboards.

  The supermarkets were locked up, boarded up and abandoned.

  Most towns had community kitchens or “soup houses” which used federal government stockpiled food, augmented by local volunteers, hunters and growers, to provide one hot meal per day for its residents.

  Able-bodied residents had gotten better at growing crops and hunting, trapping and fishing to put extra food away for the winter.

  Canning was the preferred method, but canning supplies were hard to come by for those who didn’t already have them on the day of the blackout.

  And canning was a lost art.

  Few people knew how to do it before the EMPs hit, and as hard as they were trying to teach the skills to a younger generation, there were still critical shortages in jars, lids and seals.

  Still, more and more families were able to grow enough subsistence foods like corn and grains to dry them out and sock them away to get them at least partially through the winter.

  Dave and Woody took great advantage of migrating geese stopping to rest on area lakes and provided some two hundred pounds of the birds to Jake’s Café. They bagged more than two dozen ducks. And they continued to bring in fish two or three times a week.

  If the town was relying strictly on their efforts they wouldn’t be able to keep up with demand.

  But other men, and sometimes women, also went hunting and fishing every chance they got.

  And area ranchers did their part, donating a head of beef or hog when the kitchens needed them.

  There was a lot of bartering going on. Mostly labor for meat.

  But there was also a sense of teamwork. Of taking care of your neighbor. Of helping out however one could.

  When Dave wasn’t out hunting or fishing, he was in the woods turning trees into firewood. And when he wasn’t doing that he was delivering the firewood to shut-ins and those who were elderly or disabled.

  Long stretches of cold weather mean an awful lot of wood was being burned.

  Luckily this was the hill country, with plenty of wood to be taken.

  The ice on the ground was a constant thorn in everybody’s side. It slowed down everyone and everything and made doing even the simplest tasks ten times harder.

  It didn’t take people long to start praying for snow instead of cursing it.

  The snow, you see, gave walkers at least a little bit of traction.

  And it made it easier for hunters to track game.

  As the winter dragged on, each and every person in Blanco fell into a routine.

  Some worked harder than others.

  Those who did less still generally did as much as they could.

  And there was absolutely no ill will against those who took more than they gave. For they were mostly folks getting up in years or physically unable to contribute more. For the large part they were folks who’d toiled for many years for the good of their community. And now they were being repaid for their kindness.

  While Dave was out gathering each day, the Spear women – all three of them, now that Sarah was mostly healed and Lindsey was getting around much better – were toiling as well.

  They were volunteer cooks at Jake’s Café four days a week.

  When they weren’t doing that they were doing the laundry and housecleaning for four women on widow’s row.

  Even Beth, as small as she was, was carrying her share of the weight.

  All of them were smiling politely each and every time someone told them they were Blanco residents now, and they should just give up that notion of moving back to San Antonio.

  Truth was, as much as they enjoyed the kind words Blanco’s residents were showering upon them… and as much as they enjoyed Blanco’s small town and homey feel… they were looking forward to getting back to their own home in San Antonio.

  All agreed that if one had to be laid up somewhere for three or four months, there were a lot worse places to be than tiny Blanco.

  But home is called home for a reason.

  There’s only one place, after all, where a Texan can tie up his horse, hang up his Stetson, kick off his boots and relax.

  And that’s home.

  Lindsey and Dave were walking back from Mrs. Montgomery’s boarding house one afternoon and slogging through the snow when Lindsey said, “You know, San Antonio is farther south than we are. It’s way over a hundred miles closer to the equator than we are now.

  “Wouldn’t it be ironic if we spent all winter here, fighting our way against the snow and the ice, and the whole time we were here it was sunny and warm back home?

  “I mean, I close my eyes at night and try to imagine our street in San Anronio. And I see green grass, leaves still on the trees, and birds washing themselves in the birdbath next door at the Castros’ house.

  “And I wish I could just snap my fingers and be back there again.”

  Chapter 29

  Of course Lindsey’s vision of San Antonio as a tropical paradise was anything but true.

  For the second consecutive year the Alamo City was hit with a ferocious winter.

  It was now almost three weeks since Kristy and Angela were invited in to the Spear house and Amy asked them to stay.

  Robert objected, claiming that Amy disrespected Monica and her wishes. But he did so only in private, when the two of them were alone. He wasn’t one to make waves, and he knew darned well he was outnumbered by three older women.

  Really, now, what else could he do?

  He made his thoughts known and dropped the subject.

  And the lives of all four were changed forever.

  Amy took the new residents on a grand tour of the basement. And it was a grand setup indeed. Each of the basement’s outer walls were lined with cases of commercially-bottled water, stacked floor to ceiling.

  The water reduced the living space, sure. But knowing they had enough safe, clean drinking water to last the four of them for at least a couple of years was worth it.

  And besides, they knew the space would be recla
imed a little at a time as the water was used up.

  A separate room, insulated for sound and vented to the attic crawlspace, contained a good-sized generator which survived the EMPs because it had a pull-start. Like a lawnmower. There were no electronic parts to short out and therefore it was left undamaged.

  “Momma said to always run it just long enough to charge the batteries, and then to turn it off to conserve fuel,” Amy said. “And to always leave the door closed when the generator was running so we didn’t all die.”

  To bolster that point, she pointed to a large skull and crossed bones drawn on the door with a red crayon. Immediately beneath the drawing were the words: KEEP CLOSED WHEN RUNNING, followed by thirteen exclamation marks.

  “Where’s your fuel supply?” Kristy asked.

  “Right there behind the generator, in those big metal cans.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yep.”

  Kristy thought it rather odd that the Spear family would think to stock a two-year supply of drinking water but only four Jerry cans of diesel fuel.

  “Of course, they’re all empty except for the one on the end. It’s about half full.”

  Kristy made a mental note to search the entire house, including the garage, for additional fuel. And if none was found, to start scrounging it immediately.

  The Spear house had a full basement in the same footprint as the two stories above it. All interior walls were made of reinforced concrete, and only the two largest rooms had a concrete column in the center of each room to provide additional support for the floor above them.

  They progressed into the next room, a storage room with a wide assortment of food.

  Most of it was dried food: jerky or dehydrated fruits, vegetables or cooked meats.

  The Spears had taken their prepping seriously. It seemed they had enough food to feed an army, or at least four children, for a very long time.

  The next room held more food, as well as supplies of every sort. Medicines, bandages, ammunition and cold weather gear.

  Dave had taken many of their weapons with him, but a few still remained: two rifles, three handguns, and an array of knives.

  Kristy asked Amy, “Do you know how to use these things?”

  “No. Momma said to leave them alone until we were big enough to use them.”

  “I’ll teach you both when you get a bit older. In the meantime, please don’t play with them.”

  Amy glared at her brother, who said nothing but studied his shoes.

  Kristy assumed the boy had already gotten caught playing with the weapons in the past, but didn’t inquire any further. It was obvious he was embarrassed and she didn’t want to pile on.

  The setup looked pretty sweet.

  Kristy could only see one shortfall, and she told the other three it would be the first thing she’d address.

  Chapter 30

  Kristy was certain Dave had a backup source of diesel fuel somewhere close by.

  It just didn’t make sense that he’d stockpile a large amount of water and food, but allow for a major shortfall in something as critical as fuel for his generator.

  She went off in search of the fuel, looking in every little nook and cranny. Everywhere she could think of, and many places she didn’t think of but checked just because they happened to be in front of her.

  In the course of her search she found many secret stashes.

  It seems that Dave Spear was just as adept at hiding things as was Kristy’s mom. She started to wonder if he was a shoplifter too, but quickly discounted it.

  He was a prepper, though, and apparently a good one.

  Kristy was never either one of those things: a shoplifter or a prepper. But she assumed such people shared their notes with others like them.

  Kristy’s mother wasn’t particularly smart. She was probably told to stash her loot in an upside-down box spring by another shoplifter friend.

  Dave the prepper likely purchased books about prepping, or was told by another prepper that an upside-down box spring was an excellent place to stash valuables.

  In the course of her search she found that not one, but two box springs were upside down and had ammunition and weapons stored in them.

  When she started taking down posters and paintings and mirrors she found that most of them had holes behind them. Holes in the walls where bags of dried food or jerky or trail mix were stored in quart-sized zip-lock bags.

  Most of the holes were head-high and the bags were tied together with twine. The end of the twine extended out the hole and was fastened to the wall with a flat thumbtack just beneath the hole.

  The first string she pulled yielded thirty one quart-sized bags full of dried foods which would seemingly keep forever.

  As she pulled bag after bag after bag out she said to herself, “Holy crap, is it ever gonna end?”

  She didn’t pull any more. Instead she replaced the posters and paintings and mirrors to keep their existence secret.

  In the master bedroom she pulled up the corners of the carpet to find that Dave had cut out large pieces of carpet padding and lined rifle bullets up neatly in their place.

  It seemed rather odd until Kristy replaced the carpet and felt it with her hand. It felt perfectly normal. And while someone stepping on that particular part of the carpet might well notice it felt harder than the rest of the carpet in the room, that prospect seemed rather unlikely.

  Indeed, she couldn’t remember seeing anyone walking in the corner of any room, just three or four inches from the wall.

  Not ever.

  In other corners Dave left the pad intact beneath the carpet. But he did lift it up and place silver United States coins and Sarah’s gold jewelry beneath it.

  Kristy didn’t expect to find much of anything in the attic crawlspace. Especially diesel fuel. But she searched anyway.

  The attic crawlspace in any modern house is a jumble of electric wiring, heating and cooling ductwork and blown in or rolled in insulation.

  Kristy had spent a lot of time in such places in recent months, finding out it’s where a lot of suicide victims hid their valuables from looters.

  And while she wasn’t exactly an experienced handyman or heating and air conditioning specialist, she was a person of better than average intelligence.

  Standing at the top of the drop-down ladder which led to the crawlspace, she studied the scene in front of her.

  She was struck by two things.

  First, the attic was very well insulated, with several inches of blown-in insulation.

  Second, there seemed to be an over-abundance of ductwork.

  Now, it may just have been that Dave had his house over insulated to make it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

  And that he provided extra heater and cooler vents in each room for the same reason.

  But she doubted it.

  She spent more than an hour digging through the insulation and found all kinds of stuff, from forty pounds of dried beans and sixty pounds of dried rice to more silver coins.

  What she really admired Dave for, however, was his fake duct.

  Normally preppers have to limit what they hide in their ductwork, because in normal situations anything they put there will block airflow.

  Dave Spear worked around this problem by putting in a phony twenty five foot piece of ductwork.

  Oh, it was a real piece of duct, in that it was manufactured for that purpose.

  But it wasn’t manufactured to have both ends attached to opposite ends of a working heating unit.

  To anyone other than a trained HVAC specialist it looked perfectly legitimate. All heaters and air conditioners, after all, have ductwork protruding from them.

  However, the ends of Dave’s phony ductwork weren’t connected to actual exhaust ports.

  They were screwed to the flat sheet metal sides of the unit. No air blew into the phony ductwork, and that meant no airflow was blocked.

  It also meant Dave could stuff the twenty five feet cho
ck full of whatever he wanted.

  In this case Kristy found much more dry stock and a wide array of seeds, shrink-wrapped in airless packages which would keep the seeds viable for many years.

  Included in the seed stores were corn, rice and a strain of wheat especially suited for San Antonio’s clay soil and hot summer temperatures.

  Still, she didn’t find what she was looking for the most.

  There wasn’t a single drop of diesel fuel.

  Chapter 31

  Kristy fussed and fumed for days about the diesel fuel issue.

  She stole away one night with one of the Jerry cans and a short section of garden hose on a resupply mission.

  By then she’d found the trap door on the back fence which led to the abandoned house behind them. By using the trap door as an egress site she was able to leave, and later to return, without being spotted.

  If anyone saw her emerge from the abandoned house they’d assume she was just looting the place.

  Because she was well-traveled in the neighborhood, she was well aware there was a city garbage truck sitting smack dab in the middle of the intersection one block south.

  The driver had been right in the middle of a left turn when the EMPs struck and his truck died.

  Since then the truck had gathered a considerable amount of dust and had become a favorite dining spot first for stray cats, then for squirrels and then for rats.

  One by one, those species were killed off by desperate people who also flocked to the truck in the same way hunters wait at streams and creeks for thirsty animals to come by for a drink.

  Now, a year and a half after the EMPs stilled the smelly behemoth, only ravens and pigeons swooped in occasionally for food.

  Kristy didn’t know for sure whether the beast was diesel-powered. She suspected it was, based on her general knowledge of other big trucks. This wasn’t as big as a semi, but she assumed it must be equipped with an oversized engine to handle the weight of the truck and the load it carried.

  She also surmised that diesel engines would surely power such trucks, as they were more fuel efficient.

  Just to make sure, she carried in her pocket a disposable lighter.