by Pete Thorsen
Some tried burning different things inside their houses to stay warm and most of those died from asphyxiation, either from carbon monoxide or just from the smoke or from the fire burning up all the oxygen in the room.
Here it really did not get all that cold except occasionally at night. During the day if you were in the sun it would warm you up nicely. Often, in the mornings, I would often cook something for breakfast on the propane cook stove and that would help warm the room in the mornings when it was the coldest.
The cold and loss of electric power were not the only things that killed many of my neighbors that winter. A small group of bad guys or bandits or whatever you want to call them came to our small community that winter. They came just to take whatever we had that they wanted.
I heard the shooting several houses away from mine and it woke me from the funk that I had been in all winter. Judging by the amount of shots I heard, I could tell it was bad, and I loaded every gun I owned and made ready to meet the threat when or if it came to me.
My house was made from slump block and, other than the windows and doors, it was basically bullet proof. I had my guns laid on the floor next to me by one of the front windows. I opened and removed the window so the broken and flying glass would not cut me. Then I waited.
I saw several men come and enter the now-vacant house next to mine and in just a very few minutes they re-emerged and headed towards my house. When they turned up my walk I yelled for them to stay away. I waited just a single moment when they did not stop and I started firing.
I shot two of them before they reacted much at all. I shot the two that I saw were carrying guns. I swung on another with a gun but they were all diving for cover or running away at that point. The one with a gun was diving for cover but he never got out of my sight fast enough and I made a solid body shot on him. By that point the only other one that I had a shot at was running away, so I shot him in the back. Back or front made no difference to me—I knew it would make no difference to them if it was me running away from them.
Then it was quiet as could be and I reloaded my favorite rifle by feel as I watched out the window for another target. When one that had gotten out of sight behind a couple bushes made a run for it, I shot him in the back also. Then again I just watched and waited. I had shot five of them and all five appeared dead except for one who was thrashing on the ground and making wailing/moaning noises. I just let him lie there making noise for awhile. After it was very plain that none of his buddies were coming to his aid, I shot him again to shut him up. I was not sure if all the bad guys were now dead or if some were still alive. I thought it safer to assume some were still alive and were armed and desired revenge.
When I heard a noise at the back door which I could just see from my position, I swung around and put two bullets through the door about three feet off the ground. I heard something fall and then some more moaning coming from on the other side of that back door. Several minutes later the moaning was getting softer, then finally it stopped. I still just laid there watching out the front window.
I could not see a clock from my position and I had quit wearing a watch when I had lost my job, but I must have watched out that front window for well over an hour, maybe even a couple of hours, before I finally got up as quietly as I could and opened the back door. There was a man’s body lying in a pool of blood just off to one side of the door outside. The blood was smeared all over, likely from him thrashing around after I had shot him. I saw nothing else out of place in the back yard and so I closed and relocked that door.
Next I went to the front again and, slowly and quietly, opened the front door. I stood to one side as I opened the door so I was safe behind the solid blocks. There was no need as no shots rang out and after a couple minutes, and a couple of quick looks out the door, I stepped outside.
Once outside I stood and just watched and listened for awhile. I was in no hurry. When I saw and heard nothing, I walked out down my driveway to the street. I did this very slowly, looking everywhere for any kind of movement. I saw nothing except the bodies of the men I had shot. I looked at each in turn but I could detect no movement of their chests from breathing.
Next I walked over to each body and gave each a sturdy kick in the midsection. None gave a response of any kind. All of them were really dead and not just faking. Carefully looking around again, I then searched each body and took everything I thought might be of some value to me. Two of them had long guns and the rest had handguns. They did not have much in the way of ammunition for any of the guns, but of course I took what they did have.
I took everything I had taken off the bodies into the house and did the same with the body in the back yard. While I was in front I had seen the Suburban and the four door Ford pickup they must have driven up in parked a couple houses down. Two of the bodies had keys and I had put those in my pocket when I had searched the bodies.
Back outside I walked down and drove each of the two trucks into my yard, one at a time. Next I unloaded every single thing out of both vehicles and carried it all into my house. It was a lot of stuff but some of it looked like it was now worthless stuff that had once been valuable. I would sort through it all later. It took some time for me to transfer everything they had from the trucks into my house.
When that job was done I dragged all the bodies together on the edge of the street and lined them up side by side, including the dead one from behind my house. Then after taking some rope from my garage I drove their pickup next to the bodies and tied the rope to their legs and the other end of the rope I made a loop which I put over the ball hitch on the back of their truck. Then I drove the truck out of the community, dragging all the bodies behind me. I then just drove into the shallow ditch at the edge of the little town and unhooked the rope loop from the hitch ball and then drove back to my place and parked. I noticed the truck had almost a half tank of fuel left in it.
Over the next couple of days I went through all the stuff that I had gotten from the outlaws. I kept anything I thought might be useful to me either now or in the future. I even kept what clothes they had that I thought would fit me. I would wash it all and pack the clothes away until such time as I might need them. What I thought held no use for me I just left in a pile for now. Who knew how long it would be until manufacturing and everything else came back and things would get back to normal. Any manufactured items might someday be valuable again. Who knows, so best to just save it all.
There was a fair amount of food. At least for me there was. But for all those guys, the food they had would not have lasted all that long. The stuff I did not want and thought I would never have a use for I took over to the vacant house next door and threw it all into a pile over there.
The guns were an eclectic mix of several different models and of different ages. Some appeared quite old and some quite new. There was some ammunition for each one but overall there was not a whole lot for any of them. But it was more guns that I just might need later. The handguns were of limited value to me but there was one shotgun that I could use for hunting, but I found only a little more than one box of ammunition for it. There was a bolt action rifle with a scope on it that would make a very good hunting arm ,but again there were only 18 rounds that I could find in the stuff to fit it.
I was now much better armed than I was before. At the time I thought this was important for my survival, but as the years passed I found that it was not so important after all. I used the guns for shooting animals for food, but there were no bandit groups of any kind that attacked me at the community again. Only single travelers, or sometimes a pair of travelers would wander into this community.
Even in the days before things went bad this community was on a road that really went nowhere. Anyone who came to this community came with it as the destination and not just because they were passing by.
Chapter 5
By the time spring came around I was the only one left in my little community. I had gone into each of the other houses by that time.
I had found many, many dead bodies. A fair number of the bodies appeared to be suicides. I had also taken the time to bury every one of the bodies. It was a grueling and very disagreeable task, but one I felt that had to be done. The graves I dug were not very deep but I saw to it that they all got a separate grave. I put them all in a line on the very edge of the community. I put up a single cross that I had made in the middle of the line of graves. I made a notch in the cross for each body that I buried. By the time I was done, and it took a very long time, there were many notches on that big cross.
After the big shoot-out with the bandits I had rejoined the “living.” I realized that Jennifer would have wanted me to go on and not be a quitter. So after I had buried all the dead neighbors I started working in earnest to secure my future.
I thoroughly searched every house, every attic, every shed, every vehicle, and every garage near me. I looked at everything I found and tried to determine if that item could be of any use to me in the future or right now. What each item was originally designed for was immaterial to me, only what I could now use it for mattered to me.
As an example, I found many women’s purses. Useless or not? Some were leather and I figured that the leather material might very well come in handy for me later. A leather patch over the knees of my jeans would make them last much longer for example. Even other purse materials could possibly be used for patching material if nothing else.
I looked at all the clothes and shoes and separated out items that would fit me and I might want to use later. I had a feeling that my clothes would see a lot of wear and tear in the times ahead and I would need replacements.
I looked at every propane tank in the community to see their fuel levels, both the big permanent tanks and the small portable tanks. To make it easier for me later I carried a can of spray paint and sprayed the fuel level on the outside of each tank. Twenty-five percent full or fifty percent full, whatever was left in each tank. The portable ones I guessed the level from their weight. These I also gathered together in one garage.
And books. I was always on the lookout for books. Whether fiction or non-fiction it did not matter. I gathered them all up. The fiction books would provide entertainment and the non-fiction would provide education. I found many books that I knew would prove to be invaluable to me. Like books on edible wild plants, books on how the Indians lived in this area, books on gardening, medical books, the list of valuable books I found was almost endless.
I did not just spend all my time in “town” either. I had siphoned gas from several cars and other vehicles and used a quad I found the keys for and explored the area for maybe twenty miles in every direction. There were almost endless little roads and trails going here and there around the area.
I carried a couple of books with me on many trips, to help me identify native plants, and then books on whether those plants were edible or had medicinal uses. I also found all the water sources in the general area using maps that I had found here and there in houses. Then I had an idea.
Wildfire was certainly a possibility here just like anywhere. We would often get dry storms with a lot of lightning in the summer and wild fires could happen anywhere. Now those fires would be worse because there was no one to fight them, so they would just burn until they stopped.
I thought about my little community if a fire ever came there. It would possibly all burn to the ground. So I decided to not put all my eggs in one basket so-to-speak. I had an idea.
Like many places here in Arizona, many people owned some type of RV, whether they used them or not. My community was no exception to this rule. So I started putting some of my gathered supplies in these RV’s and then moving those to widely scattered locations around the general area.
I always parked them near a water source of some kind. I had found several working windmills that were out by themselves and just used for livestock. I parked an RV near each of these. There were also a few springs and each of these got an RV. Ponds, permanent or even occasionally-running creeks also got an RV parked near them.
Some of the RV’s were motor homes, some were fifth-wheel trailers, and some were standard bump pull trailers and I managed to get them all to the spots that I had selected. The easier spots got the motor homes and the rougher areas got the trailers that I could drag almost anywhere.
I found a trailer with a ramp and used that to haul bigger propane tanks out to sit near many of these RV spots and I salvaged enough piping to hook these big tanks up to the RV’s so they would have a larger supply of fuel for their stoves. Where I did not haul big propane tanks, I brought a few smaller tanks to use when needed.
I also found many gas grills and charcoal grills and made sure each RV had one of these near it as well. The gas grills I eventually revamped so they could be used with wood. Not any different than using a camp fire, but having the grill meant that it was more comfortable using as I did not have to squat down next to the camp fire.
I was a very busy man that spring and summer. I had found where one of my neighbors had a garden and I used that spot to plant my first garden that spring. It was a chore to carry water on a daily basis, but my welfare depended on watering that garden, so I made the effort to keep it well watered.
I made one trip into the city early in the spring. Actually I did not get all the way into the city before I turned around and came back on home. I could see smoke in the distance as I was driving towards the city and, when I got closer I saw part of it was apparently burning. I also saw an occasional body along the highway. Sometimes just one and sometimes several near each other. Vehicles were abandoned off and on along the highway as well. I saw no reason to risk my life entering the city, so that is when I turned around.
I had very little gasoline or diesel fuel left at that point. I had used much exploring and then moving all the RV’s to their new locations. The quad that I had used exploring used almost as much fuel as a full sized vehicle used. But it really did not matter too much. I knew I had very limited fuel but I also knew that the fuel would go bad and be unusable after some point in time anyway. The hot summer temperatures here in Arizona would very likely accelerate the breakdown of the fuels. So I used what gas I had freely without worry of running out of it.
Then there were all the solar panels. Many of the houses had solar panels on their roofs. The last few years before everything went bad there had been a big push for clean energy and many incentives to get solar panels on your home. I had expected these houses to have power in them during the daylight hours but none of them did. Eventually I schooled myself on solar power using the books and brochures I found on the subject. I then knew that when the power grid went down, the solar arrays were designed to also shut down.
I found I could change the wiring to provide almost unlimited DC power in a house using solar, but getting AC power was more difficult. I did find a few power inverters and many of the RV’s contained inverters and many things in the RV’s were made to operate on DC power anyway. So I removed solar panels from the roofs of many of the houses. I could not use all these panels but I figured they were not making any more of them and they would last longer inside, out of the sun.
I put solar panels on all the RV’s that I had scattered around the countryside and also put a few extra panels under each of the RV’s for back up. Additional extra panels I put inside garages at the community for storage to keep them safe and available for later use.
There was a large motor home several doors down from my house and that became my new home. I covered the roof with solar panels and carried water to fill the internal water tank as I needed. The discharge tanks were hooked up to the septic tank and I now had most modern conveniences again, including a functioning shower!
I dragged over the two fullest big propane tanks and hooked them up to this big motor home so I had enough propane to last a very long time. Then, before I was completely out of vehicle fuel, I dragged all the remaining propane tanks to either the big motor home or to my old regular house. I
then gathered car batteries from many of the now-worthless vehicles so I had a large battery bank for the rare times we had cloudy or stormy days when the solar power was down.
I was still eating some of the food that Jenny and I had stored away but it would have been gone long ago if not for what other food I acquired.
The houses that I searched had very, very little or mostly no real food in them. But each netted me a few things. Most had a little flour, sugar, and salt. Just about all of them had spices. Most had some cooking oil and things like salad dressings, bar-b-que sauce and other condiments.
I also hunted very often. Hunting was very easy. There were many rabbits around and also many quail. I admit I did not plan ahead very well and I used a lot of my ammunition shooting these rabbits and quail. I could not replace this ammunition, at least most of it. Later I realized my mistake and started trapping the rabbits and the quail both. It was quieter and used none of my precious, limited ammunition.
Besides the local meat that I was able to gather, I would sometimes shoot a deer and turn all the meat into jerky. At first I made this jerky in the oven, but eventually I realized that was needlessly using my propane so I then made a smoker out of a small metal building and burned a small amount of wood in there to make the jerky.
When I saw how easy it was to make the jerky this way I used the quad that I still had a little gas for and shot a cow and dragged it home and jerked all that meat. It was a big job but produced a very big pile of jerked meat that I stored in the many plastic containers that I had gathered. I also gradually ate more and more wild plants. There were so many things growing both in my little community and just outside of it that were very edible. I learned that many ornamental plants that people planted for decoration were also edible. Even trees like mulberry trees that were very popular down here as shade trees had both edible berries and edible leaves that could be cooked just like spinach. I admit I was going to miss the salad dressings when they ran out though.
