The Work Of The Dead: A Post Apocalyptic Prepper Fiction Series (Aftermath Survival Book 1)

by Ron Foster

  “David, please take a minute or two and talk to me before you lose or trade all that jewelry metal away. I think I got a proposal for you, well for everyone present for that matter that might be pretty profitable.” Farley said smiling at everyone.

  “Well, I don’t know Farley, we are kind of busy right now. I'm a dirt person. I trust the dirt, always been a sharecropper. I don't trust diamonds and gold I never did learn to tell fake from real.” Clem said wanting to move on to trading in silver or other commodities.

  “Oh, you do to like some gold to wear,Clem! David, heis very proud of his gold pocket watch.His grandfather Sirus, on his deathbed, sold him that watch. Show him the picture of it you drew in my book, Karen.” Bertha said and Karen winced at how many times she was going to have to pull that book out to write in it or show something today.

  “Karen is my scribe and my artsy! She going to need her a pretty something present today for putting up with old Bertha and Clem.” Bertha said beaming a smile at her and hushing her arguments about not needing anything before Karen finally thanked them for the gift she would receive later.

  “That is real pretty, Bertha! Hey Clem, you have no fear of buying fake metal around me, I can assay it for you with my gold test kit and tell you what you have.” Farley said dragging out a wooden box from a satchel he had with him.

  “Uh, Farley, I know this has something to do with your business you are proposing but don’t be trying to sell a service to Clem and Bertha to test all that metal I got. I already checked it with one of those old style kits as well as by eye and can vouch for all of it.” David said not liking the direction this conversation was going.

  “I trust you David, but we can’t buy a pig in a poke now can we? Just let him test one piece so I can see how that box works, ok? That will prove what you say is gold and I can see how assaying is done.” Clem said, excited as a kid doing a science experiment that has a good use outside of class.

  “Works by acid, I am surprised you carry that stuff around Farley. On the same note, check this out!” David said producing an electronic gold and platinum tester out of his case.

  “Well, we test two things then, twice.” Clem said before asking if he could try the two kinds of tests for himself.

  While they were playing gold testing, Farley described the professional jewelers practice of getting things on “memo” or credit for a certain period of time from the manufacturer or supplier in which he either had to give back the item or pay for it when it came due in order to increase his inventory or sales capabilities.

  It didn’t take long for everyone to figure out Farley was long on ideas and short on money but he had great potential as a middleman servicing accounts or acquiring goods and was granted two lines of credit in gold jewelry. Karen and Neil also agreed to showcase any memo goods he might want to leave with them and to take stuff in for his ring sizing and assay services, etc.

  Bertha didn’t think the business of selling jewelry in the apocalypse would make any money but it would be fun to play with all that jewelry before it got melted or to keep some. Clem figured there would always be a market of some kind in it and asked if Farley could supply him with costume jewelry for the store as well and David offered his trading posts to help sell it and a party-like atmosphere was instantly created and thoughts of a mega business by Clem and Farley had it sounding like they were trading beads to the Indians for furs by the time they were done haggling and price gouging one another in friendly bickering of slicing and dicing the profits.

  Crick came in and advised them all that it was time for them to get underway for Rendezvous and that Jimmy had been yakking at him to hurry his butt up for 30 minutes already. David and crew conferenced and decided they would get their gear out of the vehicles and go on a scenic river boat ride courtesy of Clem and Bertha and see just what it was going on at Rendezvous. They were sure that they could make their own way back from there later because of the number of friends they had in attendance at Rendezvous.

  For once the squabbles about when and who was driving the boat between Clem and Bertha were forgotten as they gave Crick his rare turn to man the helm with PD supervising, of course.

  David got out the smoked beef brisket he was taking back with Ted to the lake and had Bertha cut it up on biscuits for a bit of an appetizer feast on the way to the boat quay. He told Ted they shouldn’t feel bad about it because Dixon was over there and Weatherman would probably be spending community money on a feast of some sorts.

  Rossy Ross came running back into the boardroom about 35 minutes later after they were underway, shouting that there was something to see at the bow before zipping back out the cabin door and resuming her place at the guard rail staring at the far bank.

  11

  NEW FRIENDS NEW BUSINESS

  “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” Heraclitus

  Some folks like “Randal”, (that’s one of the survivors of these hard times that decided to keep a diary in this apocalyptic world so he wouldn’t be forgotten if anyone ever found his writings) However, unfortunately he was destined to lose his journal.

  He considered putting down on paper today his situation but how do you reduce to a line or two how you feel about so many things? He figured his current woes were similar to what had gotten him into the Army and a few militias a time or two as being “A bare ass, bare pockets and a bare cupboard” will make you join some branch of the military. But these circumstances added to a grid down world were more dire and unpredictable than those he had encountered with his own economic collapse long before the solar storm.

  One thing about that solar storm that had taken the grid down those many years ago was that it was a great leveler of the “haves and have- nots.” Everyone woke up the next morning after the worldwide geomagnetic storm took modern technology down to the same empty bank accounts and gas tanks. It didn’t matter much what you used to have in life money wise, all you had now and all you would ever have for the near future was what you could still touch, feel and smell and call your own. If you had a million dollars in the bank and five dollars in your pocket, all you had was five dollars. Bank balances disappeared in an instant, plastic cash was meaningless as was modern medicine, fire and rescue and any kind of law enforcement to help you out when needed.

  Some folks would call this type of society a “dog eat dog” world but that is a reckless and wrong saying because a dog won’t eat another dog. He will be aggressive, he will kill others of his species, but he will not break that taboo no matter how hungry unless they go mentally mad like some dogs’ mothers or fathers will occasionally kill a pup. Still killing and eating is usually different, not so with humans. Cannibalism in all its shocking and grisly history is normally reserved as a human trait to be evidenced by horrible acts committed mostly from unholy wars and the result of famines. The same truths were evident today but with more twists and turns than Carter had liver pills.

  Domestic dogs and cats were kind of scarce now. All the pets got eaten up like they do every time humans hit bottom from strife, wars or hunger. Randall wished the same held true with all the more frequently encountered feral dogs and cats that seemed to out number humans here and there in these wastelands of humanity that he sometimes traveled through.

  The wild dog packs were what he feared most in life at the moment. Well, that wasn’t quite true, he said to himself with a shudder.

  “What I fear most is Cannibals using dogs to hunt with!” Randal thought with a shudder, checking his back trail even though he had thought he had left such a horror far behind days ago after he had jumped into the river to escape such a horrendous encounter. He remembered it like it had just happened though and twitched a bit.

  “It was bad enough that when he jumped into that God awful reddish brown river with its murkiness and strong currents but he had also been forced to swim underwater as far as his lungs could stand it. This was because when he surfaced them bastar
ds that wanted to possibly eat him he reckoned commenced to take pot shots at him with a rifle or pistol causing him further distress while he was trying to play porpoise by submerging and swimming a distance before coming up gasping for air.

  When his submerging and zig-zagging underwater trying to avoid the splashes of what he knew were bullets impacting the water disoriented him enough to be half drowned already the current had grabbed him in it’s deadly undertow and he had found himself dragged downstream and treading water in the middle of the river trying to decide if he had any energy left at all to make it to the far shore or not.

  “Better to die trying to swim it and deny them son of a bitches a meal, he thought.” Until his military and school days training life guarding reminded him of his water survival skills. He flipped to his side and began to alternately slowly do the side stroke and ponder his problem.

  “Drown proofing!” Now that’s the ticket, he reminded himself, drawing from his survival training and he quit trying to swim or tread water before he drowned and then assumed the jelly fish float swim position with his face down in the water and holding onto his ankles or knees and just let the current carry him. He would have done the trouser flotation device thing but he was scared he would lose his knife he had strapped on his belt.

  “Now this sucks! I can’t see where I am now in relation to where I was at all. Screw it; I escaped that’s all that matters! I might just live through this; at least I can rest a bit.” Randal thought and reached down inside himself to bring up some more resolve to see him to the far shore.

  Worn out, broke, bleeding and half dead he eventually had made it to the far shore of the Alabama river where it joined the Tallapoosa river and after a few half hearted attempts to swim or float down the current a bit further to find a less snaky looking place to come to shore, he finally drug himself up on the bank.

  “Shit Fire! Damndest thing I ever thought of and hell of the worst luck possible to be forced to bail out of camp and jump in the river escaping what I think were danged cannibals and dogs only to be worrying about the cotton mouth snakes doing me in now.”

  “I know there are some lurking around this place somewhere!” Randall fumed to himself spluttering on another of far too many mouthfuls of that muddy river water trying to find it’s way to his lungs he had swallowed.

  “Great, now if I can make it through this hurdle then I probably got me a bout of diarrhea or worse to look forward to in a day or so. Be sunset in an hour or so, I best be thinking about how I am going to dry out and find some shelter. Won’t be too cold tonight but it will be cold enough.” Randal thought and after resting longer than what he should have, set off.

  All he had left in this world now was his pants, a T shirt and that boat anchor of a knife setup he had been tempted to let go and sink to the bottom of the river several times. His boots had gotten left on shore or torn off in the water; he forgot which but lost them real quick. The main thing that weighed the most on his knife sheath was the big Trail Master Bowie he carried, the little Schrade Sharpfinger didn’t weigh much and neither did the two pouches containing a fire making kit and a water purification kit with a few fish hooks and line.

  He could survive with just that rig and nothing else for a little while anyway. Now without decent boots in these woods that was another thing; unless he was damn careful he wouldn’t be walking away from this one very soon. Hell, it looked like you had to go through a bunch of stickers and around a blackberry patch or two just to find out what was beyond these high river banks.

  Randall did what he called possum living mostly these days. He would try to go find him some shelter somewhere on the edge of the woods with available food and water near it and just stay until the seasons changed or the food ran out. He tried to stay away from people that seemed not to want him around much and lived a pretty solitary life. He was headed towards something he had heard about called Rendezvous though in hopes of picking up some kind of work and some bullets for the .22 rifle he no longer possessed when all this shit started. He winced thinking his journal now was forever lost, it was back there in that falling down trailer he had stayed in several nights ago and woke up to the sounds of dogs and gunfire heading straight for him. He had time enough to grab his boots and gun and had made a break for the river and his canoe but he had been driven away from his original destination and ended up taking that swim before he was overtaken. His first night out he about froze to death because he didn’t want to build a fire in case those on the other side of the river had decided to pursue him using his own canoe or something. He filled his clothes with leaves for insulation after drip drying a bit and just stuck it out.

  Today was different however and he had gotten rid of his scarecrow suit and washed up at the river and had plenty of sunshine to warm him as the temperature during the day time got hot.

  “What in the hell is that coming down the river? He thought peering upstream.

  “Looks like a tug pulling a garbage scow or something?” He considered catching glimpses of all different kinds of colors on the huge barge barely making slow time being towed up the river.

  “I don’t give a damn why anybody would be hauling trash on a barge these days; it looks like possible rescue to me.” He decided and quickly began gathering drift wood for a fire.

  Looking up from his task of getting a fire going quick he noted it wasn’t a garbage scow at all but some kind of boat that looked like a paint factory had thrown up on It. Didn’t matter to him, he fed the fire and then piled on green stuff for smoke and waved his shirt manically trying to get the tugs attention.

  Jimmy spotted him and swung the big antique tug dragging the barge towards the far bank. When he got in hollering distance he called out to the man and asked him want he wanted.

  Randal just hollered out one word “RESCUING!” before asking could he catch a ride a moment or two later with another bellow..

  Jimmy hollered back that sure he could give him a minute to get a boat off the barge but Randall had hollered back he would just swim it and like some danged kind of otter had slid down the muddy bank and jumped into the water and started swimming towards the barge while all it’s riders oohed and aahed and shouted encouragement to this crazy man apparently trying to drown himself.

  Eventually Randal, tired and exhausted, got to the boat and Crick and Gauge jumped in to help the failing swimmer onboard.

  “Look at him; he’s as happy as a dead pig in the sunshine.” Rossy Ross said looking down at the grinning prostrate man trying to catch his breath on the deck.

  Author note: When a pig dies, presumably in a sty outside, the sun dries out its skin. This effect pulls the pig’s lips back to reveal a toothy “grin,” making it look happy even though it’s dead. This phrase describes a person who’s blissfully ignorant of reality.

  “No wonder he is all wore out! Look at the size of that blade he went swimming with!” Crick said pointing at the heavy sheath knife affair the man had on.

  It didn’t take long for the man to quit muttering a hundred thank you’s and panting like a dog in August to sit up and take notice of his surroundings.

  “You left your fire going, mister.” Rossy Ross advised him.

  “So I did.. It’s on a mud flat, won’t hurt nothing if it burns out. My names Randal, thanks, uh, what’s you boy’s names?” he said indicating Crick and Gauge who introduced themselves.

  “Give the boy some space you all, he doesn’t need to be drowning again from you all breathing on him.” Bertha said hustling her bulk in over the man to darn near smother him with them giant bosoms of hers under a loose calico dress that was threatening to trip him up while she pulled on his arm with the strength of a mule as he made it unsteadily to his feet.

  “Ah, thank you!” Randal said to the big beaming black women’s face under a frilly hat smiling down at him as he tried to come up for air.

  “My names Bertha and this here is Clem. We owns this big boat!” She said proudly pointing at an old
man in overalls and some kind of homemade blue and black yachting hat with an anchor above the visor.

  “Slow now, pardner, take it easy. You need to go sit yourself down.” Clem said as the man tried to take a step to shake his hand but stumbled in the process.

  “Come sit in here.” Clem said leading him to the forward observation deck.

  After Randall recovered more he told his terrifying story to a small group about how he happened to end up on the riverbank they rescued him from.

  David said he thought he knew who might have chased him and that he didn’t think they were cannibals at all but a bunch of ex-soldiers from the K-9 corps that had banded together with a fancy hunting dog club that controlled that side of the river from a big country club type lodge. He didn’t know them personally but Farnsworth had told him some trader’s stories about the group. They didn’t range out too far or interact much with others and took their security duties entirely too far it was said. Maybe a representative of theirs would show up at Rendezvous or maybe Farnsworth could get word over there to get his canoe and stuff back, that is if Randal was as innocent as he was making out to be?” David said now looking like he was regarding an interesting bug as Clem did the same.

  “Hell, I don’t know why them boys would have the ass with me unless it was general trespassing and they’re just plain trigger happy. I been staying at that place about three days, it didn’t look like nobody had been in that old trailer somebody had for a fish camp for some time, as far as I could see. They just came roaring up through the woods shooting and dogs barking with lots of guns going off. Like I said, I shagged ass and took me a dip in the big muddy and here I am! I ain`t done nothing to nobody, I figured they was cannibals ‘cause I couldn’t think of any other reason for them to be chasing me through the woods like that. I don’t know if I want to talk to them or not now though come to think about it, I shot one maybe 2 of their dogs while making my escape. Mistaken identity about me or they just bat shit crazy they ain`t going to take kindly to me killing one of their dogs at all.” Randal said looking around the room at everyone’s faces puzzling out this new bit of news.