by Tj Reeder
A long Lonely Road
By TJ Reeder
Copyrighted 6 -5-2012
The Beginning
I have a request I’d like to make to all who read this, the first part of my on going story.
I’m not an overly sensitive type person. In fact I’m pretty crude and usually say just what I mean and I respect those who do the same.
On the subject of reviews both good and bad. If you are looking for perfection then by a Clancy or a Patterson or any other big name, pay the 25 bucks and be happy.
If you are an English professor or a journalist or even just a well schooled person and the improper use of commas, periods. or lack there of or bouncing from first person to third or no person don’t cream your Twinkie you may want to pass on this tale.
If you are such a person and by chance you decide to go ahead and read this tale then remember you were forewarned.
Thus the need for a nasty scathing review really isn’t needed. If you hate it so much simply request a refund.
Let others decide for themselves.
But if you are the type of person who insists on believing the entire world waits with bated breath for your wondrous opinion of how much smarter you are compared to the writer you are disparaging then of course please do so. But if you do and you’ve ever written anything please post the title info so we can all check out your work.
Oh! And if you need chapters to read then don’t bother.
But if you enjoy a tale as told around the camp fire with a jug of “Who Shot John” passing around then pull up a stump and kick back.
If you are a person who has ever in real life fired a rifle, killed an animal for it’s meat, gutted it, skinned it out, built a camp fire to cook it. Rode a horse in the wilds of the high country, boiled coffee over the fire. Slept out in a blizzard. Or if you’re a person who always wanted to do these things, then please read on and I hope you enjoy it
This is the story of a man in his later years who finds himself a very long way from home and hearth when the SHTF. It’s a tale of the drive to get home come hell or high water.
I’m writing it about the way I myself would get home after an event. I can only hope I would do as well in real life.
I have the will and the drive and know how but maybe the ol body is low on fuel. Time will tell.
And no, I didn’t finish school, in fact I’d say I have about a 6 grade education, But I have a PHD in life.
A long Lonely Road
The Beginning
Dusk found me sitting by a small fire sheltered among an outcropping of boulders. It was out of the wind and an unlikely spot so I felt secure for the first time since the trouble started .
Well this batch of trouble. God knows there’s been trouble enough to go around several times.
I really have no choice since I’m waiting here with a bullet in my ass! And even worse the ice sickle of fear in my heart. Not for myself but for the person who has come to mean so much to me. Waiting for her to return with some badly needed supplies.
So much has happened since the event as I’ve come to call it so while I wait I’m writing it down as it happened …is happening? I’m a long ways from where the tale starts and a long way from the end.
Well maybe trouble was the wrong word . Maybe there is no right word . How do you describe the end of all you know ? The end of your country, the end of the world?
I guess the term SHTF is pretty good . Hell who knows? Maybe it’s just a bad speed bump . Or maybe it’s so much more…..
I’ve been a prepper for a long time. Meaning I believed there was going to be an event of some kind that would change the way we live, think, exist. I never had any idea just what it might be but I just knew “IT” was out there watching. lurking waiting to strike down the unknowing . The unprepared or unwilling or the plain stupid .The fools more interested in what some bimbo named Kim was last seen wearing or not wearing .
I read all the stuff on the net about EMP’s and Monetary collapse . World bankruptcy . You name it and I’ve read about it. For these reasons as well as a deep distrust of the Government. The ignorance of the fools who continue to vote in the people who were creating the problems . I had long ago set out to be as well prepared as I could be which wasn’t to bad .
I had gone thru the Guns and Ammo stage of getting carried away . Then got into the food storage thing . I had stacks of ammo and food all in my sweet little ol concrete underground home ….. In Texas
Yes sir I had it all!! Me and mine could last a year at the minimum and we have all the tools and seeds to grow enough food for our little community of family and friends.
Yep we were prepared!! And I hope they are all safe and well fed out there in the East Texas Piney Woods!!! Yep, well prepared!! I’d laugh but if I did I’d most likely start crying so I’ll just sit here feeling sorry for myself!
Coz I’m sitting by a small fire so tired and cold I can’t hardly think about fixing some hot tea. And my ASS HURTS! Not to mention freezing said ass off or so it seems in the high country of wherever the hell I am!
You’d think if my ass is froze it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Maybe it’s my pride, I mean if ya gotta get shot why in the ass? And since I’m riding a mule to Texas that makes a bullet hole in the ass a big pain in the ….. Ass!
When your up to the aforesaid ass in Alligators it really sucks to have to remind yourself that you voted to drain the swamp!
Not that there was any “Gators” up here in the Mountains. I digress..
As I tend to do…a lot.
Ya see, I had decided to load up my truck. Hook on to my trailer and head north for a nice time shooting prairie dogs in Wyoming with another old fart Marine .
Then head on over to MT to see friends as well as check in with the VA and see if I was still alive . I did and I am, alive I mean. For now, but that can change damn fast as I’ve learned .
I guess I was very lucky because the event or whatever it was happened at night . I had pulled over and spent the night in a BLM / USFS camp ground about a mile off the highway . Cooked some dinner ( meaning a can of chili and some cheese and crackers and washed down with some very fine…beer.
When I woke up it was full daylight and I had the place to myself since it was kinds late in the year for vacation campers and too early for the hunters so I just wondered over to the outhouse and took care of business.
After cleaning up I cooked a good breakfast . Really , I mean I cooked it. Bacon, Eggs and fried spuds, and plenty of hot coffee , I prefer using my old Coleman camp stove on a table to cooking inside and I use my old cowboy coffee pot . That’s why I didn’t notice that I had no electrical power from my 12 volt system .
As soon as I did notice it I hooked my Honda Generator and started jerking the cord…nothing, nada.. now I was getting pissed off . I still had the truck hooked to the trailer and plugged in so I got in and hit the key…dead… I could feel a cold little chill moving up my spine .
I pulled my cell phone out of the holder and yep, it was deader the last years garden!… That small chill just grew to major cold!..
They had done it . Somehow somebody had done it . An EMP or something like it had fried a lot of electrical stuff we Americans had come to depend on and here I was just short of the state line between MT and Idaho .
Winter was coming on like a freight train . Of course I could be wrong maybe a lightning strike had fried my equipment .. Or maybe not.. I was getting worried and started thinking about all the different stories I’d read about SHTF . And that led me to my steel gun box in the truck .
In less then 5 minutes I was strapped into my 3 gun rig I use in competition which was part of my reason for being up here in the first place..
My Para P-14 in a
drop holster with extra magazines in a matching drop rig on the left side and I was feeling much better . I also dug out my AR-15 rifle and loaded it .
Now I felt safe and I needed time to think. But first I needed more information then I had at the moment. So I called out to my traveling buddy. Molly the Duck killer . So named because the day I got back from MT a year ago and let her out to meet the family for the first time, She raced around a corner and scared the crap out of the 5 Snowy Mallards so lovingly raised by the Lady of the Manor.
It was bad things from that second on, the ducks took to wing and Molly, this gentle lady who had never hurt a thing in her life went airborne and snatched a duck right out of the air…
Suffice to say, a very loud SHIT!! was only the beginning of the string of cussing that turned the air blue … But it was too late the duck was done… Miz Luna was not a happy camper… nuff said..
Molly and I headed down the dirt road back to the highway to see if it was just my bad luck. It wasn’t..
There wasn’t a lot of vehicles in sight since the highways in Montana can be rather empty as a rule . The few I saw were mostly stalled out on the side of the road where they had coasted to a stop.
I saw no people at all so I walked toward the nearest car which was sitting with the doors open .
Right about then I felt a small bit of my old training kick in and I stepped into the trees and watched a bit .
Nothing but the wind in the trees and a still quiet that was rather discomforting , there should be some noise , I looked up and saw no
jet trails , nothing but the breeze.
I stepped thru the trees watching the car and wondering about the tightness in my guts .
Rifle at the ready I slowly walked up on the car and found a dead man laying in the ditch , he had been shot …a bunch .
I looked around and saw nothing at all .I slowly stepped out onto the road and walked around the car and found a blood trail moving toward the middle of the road where it ended abruptly meaning that person had gotten into a vehicle of some sort .
I finely eased over to the man and checked him , he was cold and stiff and scattered around his body was a bunch of 9mm brass and no gun .
Now I ain’t saying I’m some kind of tracker but after reading what I could from the scuffs in the dirt I decided the 9mm was his and he didn’t go down without a fight . Good for him.
There was nothing else I could see, his car had been ransacked and the fuel tank cap was laying on the ground . I checked for his wallet and found it still in his pocket , with around 300 dollars in it and his credit cards. Meaning he was most likely killed for his gas … had it already come to this? So soon?..
I knew enough about EMP’s to know I knew nothing about EMP’s except for all the internet speculation .
I noticed the mans watch and looked at it, it stopped at 11: 21 the night before , the world as I knew it ended and I slept thru it .
I realized rather a little late that if the shooters here had driven down the road to the camp ground I’d be dead and Molly too most likely .
We were lucky because I would have just walked out into a bullet not knowing what was going on.
The fact the killers had driven off meant some vehicles were running, most likely old ones , so now I was faced with either walking to Texas or looking for an old rig to what? Steal or kill for? That wasn’t an option ..yet .
After looking at the cars further away I decided their owners were most likely in the ditch too and I wasn’t going to expose myself to that just to see it.
I headed back thru the timber to the camp ground, Molly in the lead as always, my days of walking in the road way were over for now…
After fixing some more coffee I walked over to another camp site and sit with my back to a tree with my rifle laying beside me . Molly laid down a few feet away and I knew I could count on her to alert me to intruders but I wanted to be away from the trailer, just being careful .
So, what did I know? Nothing except that maybe an EMP event had happened . And some man was laying dead for no good reason , meaning I needed to decide what I was gonna do..
By the way, my name is Johnny Long Walker , my mom never found out why folks smiled at my name until I was about 4 years old and from that day she called me Long . Her Family name.
It is funny that she never knew Johnny Walker was the name of some pretty good booze!! Lol… I think my ol man was still dodging stuff to the day we planted him .
Mom is living on the homestead in Texas with our friends and family all around . I’m not going to worry about them .
I have my hands full figuring out how I’m gonna get home. It’s a long ol road from here to there and it’s looking like I either look for an old truck or car that didn’t fry or start walking .
I’m not gonna try bullshitin anybody. I’m damn near “old” and still a bit over weight, not like a year ago but still…
Walking is out at least if I try to take all my road supplies with me.. And I’m sure not looking to leave any of it..
I was shooting in matches while up here and have several weapons and a lot of ammo with me and also did some hunting which reminds me . I have a lot of meat in my ice chest packed in dry ice so I need to figure this thing out and while I’m thinking I best get to trying to smoke some jerky..
I’d never made jerky over an open fire and that thought just reminded me I have 2 full propane tanks and an oven in the trailer , neither of which needs electricity !!!
First I needed to thaw out enough meat to get the first batch going so I did that. I’ve never been one for wild meat roasts even though I’m a pretty fair hand in the kitchen . I just couldn’t seem to make one that wasn’t day as a desert breeze . But I did cut some because the ladies at home do like it so that’s what I thawed first .
I figured it would take me a few days to get it all done and that would give me time to do some recon to see just who and what is around..
First thing though I took my Swede saw and started cutting what folks up here call squaw wood. Meaning dead limbs and such that’s still attached to the tree.
It’s good dry wood and I need it to do some of the jerky making. If I wait for the trailer stove to do it I’ll be here when first snow falls which ain’t very damn far off !
After I got the wood back to camp I set about enlarging the fire pit. After that I went to the creek and cut arm loads of willows which I used to build a rack to hold the meat while it dried .
Next on my list was to scrounge thru the trailer cabinets for whatever spices I could find which turned out pretty good. I had plenty of pepper and salt , powdered garlic and taco and chili seasonings which I could use to fix food to eat while I was working.
One nice thing about this was that it kept my mind off just how bad things were going to get real soon. Not to mention it’s keeping my mind off the folks back home.
I waited until the roasts were thawed about half way and sliced them as thin as I could. When the meat is half froze it’s easier to slice thin . I figured about a ¼ inch is about right so I went to work on that and it worked just like it should have.
After I had sliced a bunch I got a pan and added water and salt and pepper to taste and added some ketchup and then what the hell I dashed in some honey mustard and soy sauce from take out in the little packets we all save for some damn fool reason. Now I know why.
I let the first batch soak for a couple hours and turned the oven on to 200 degrees. I laid the meat on the oven grating and shut the door. Timing it was gonna be a bugger but I figured done was done so I won’t worry about the small stuff.
While the meat was soaking I had started the fire and keeping it small I had an area around 7 feet long and 3 feet wide , over that I would build the willow frame .
As I said earlier I’ve never done this kinda jerky making but I’ve read a hundred books describing how the old Mountain men and Indians did it and at least I knew it would be better then letting it spoil.
Not to
mention when I leave this place I may not dare fire a shot for fear of attraction unwanted attention .
Although I do have the means to do so, more about that later.
I don’t feel like I ever thought I would if this happened , I guess because I’ve spent damn near 40 years thinking about it. I know what I have to do and I have a pretty good idea how to do it and I believe I’m up to the task .
It ain’t gonna be easy, but life never is as a rule but if a person just stops jumpin around screaming “ I’m so screwed “ They will find there is a lot they can do.
I’m not young , but I’m not old , I’m able to do all I can do today and then maybe a little bit more and tomorrow a bit more until it’s done, whatever it is. Right now my life just got harder but also got simpler , head South , stay alive , stay healthy , and I’ll see my people again . Simple..
