Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie

by R Kralik

  Livestock, Zoo animals, and pets are being left behind to fend for themselves.

  Northeastern folks are headed either South to warmer climates, or into the Catskills and into Canada.

  There are watercraft traffic jams all along the Mississippi river.

  Mid-westerners are locking themselves in their homes and shooting anyone who steps foot on their property, or hiding out in community tornado shelters and event centers.

  Boatloads of refugees from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti along with other island nations are being blasted out of the water before they can get anywhere near the Florida shores.

  The Gulf of Mexico is closed to any incoming vessel and is heavily guarded by water, and by air.

  Hawaii is reporting no casualties or problems with only sporadic and manageable outbreaks of HDI. Every island port is off limits and heavily guarded.

  The US has gone to hell in a hand basket.

  And if that isn't bad enough...

  Europe is in much the same shape as the USA. Heathrow has been bombed, the subways have been bombed, and chaos has ensued. Paris is burning and the Louvre is being looted.

  There's not a lot of reliable information coming out of Europe, and the numerous news reports conflict one other left and right.

  Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are dark, and last reports say there are numerous bombings, rioting, and destruction.

  I have no reports from Germany or Russia.

  In Asian countries, reports of HDI outbreaks and victims are too numerous to count. Japan's infrastructure has collapsed and people are fleeing to outlying areas or boarding themselves up in tiny little skyscraper apartments and office buildings.

  The countryside near Tokyo is experiencing such a large influx of people from the city that crop fields and farms are being destroyed. Farmers, along with their families, are being murdered at alarming rates.

  North Korea has attacked South Korea with ground troops, tanks, and massive bombs. The ground troops are ordered to march from the top of the country to the bottom of the country, killing any South Korean they come across including women and children. The South Korean military and citizens are responding and there is all out war.

  I have no news from the Vietnamese.

  Iran attempted to fire nuclear weapons at Israel.

  Israel has intercepted every one of these weapons and, basically, taken Iran and much of Iraq off the map. Refugees from all over the Middle East are swarming into, and out of, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Sudan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Syria. All law and order has been lost.

  No new reports are coming out of Australia. The last reports claimed overwhelming numbers of attacks in Sydney with huge numbers of casualties from dirty bombs and chemical weapons. They're such a peaceful country. Why would someone attack them on such a grand scale?

  There are no reports from South America or Africa in the handful of articles that Mick and Jason brought home.

  Mr. P gave Mick several other articles describing local events and small outbreaks of HDI in the rural areas and little towns across the country. It's all the same.

  Caleb is stuck to Marisa and Amber’s getting a little jealous. I need to find time and play a couple hands of "Go Fish" with her today.

  We're gonna spend the remainder of this day gathering firewood, taking inventory, cleaning our weapons, and licking our wounds. Actually, Tig is licking his wound and trying to gnaw off the Ace bandage we used to splint his leg.

  We’ll prepare to be completely on our own. I have a large amount of water stored in twelve 55 gallon barrels. I also have water stored in two-liter bottles and water jugs. There’s a little stream that runs down the hill in the woods to the right of us, and there’s the big pond on the other side of Mr. Peterson's field along with the little creek behind his house. It won't be enough. It'll never be enough.

  We have the generator shut down to try and conserve our gasoline. I know Mick can go back into town and get more from the tanker trucks, but I want to keep his trips to town down to a minimum.

  I'll ask him about driving an entire tanker truck back here to our property. He’s driven construction equipment but he's never driven anything that big. I don't know if he can.

  Jason said he drove his uncle's big rig one afternoon a few years ago. Maybe he can get the tanker here. Maybe I’ll be too nervous to have a tank of explosive, flammable, gasoline in the yard... Oh, I don't know. I'll figure it out tonight when we all sit down together.

  I plan to send Mick to Nana and Pop's tomorrow and insist that they load up everything they need and come stay with us. I hope they're still okay.

  We're having a family meeting tonight to decide what kind of steps we'll take to keep ourselves, our family, and our property safe.

  I hear Mick and Jason talking on the front porch. It's cold out today,so I'll ask Mick to build a fire as soon as he comes in the door.

  Lunch will be sandwiches and some kind of canned soup heated in my cast-iron hanging pot over the fire.

  Writing all this out has worn my pencil to a nub, cramped my fingers, and fried my brain. I’m gonna lie down and try to sleep.

  Bye for now.

  Monday, January 6

  The generator is running, so I can use the computer!

  The phones and electricity are still down and I doubt they'll come back in my lifetime. The only good thing about having no Internet is that I'm not receiving dozens of spam emails to sort through each day.

  I don’t need to send Mick for Nana and Pop this morning. They showed up in their big ol' motorhome, packed to the gills, right as we were about to sit down for the family meeting last night. They got that thing maneuvered around and parked in the back yard near the barn. They have propane for heat and cooking.

  I told them that Mick and I would take the pull out couch and they could have our bed, but they insisted on staying in the motorhome overnight and I don't blame them 'cause it's downright freezing outside. We may sleep on the pull-out tonight, anyway. It's near the fireplace in the living room, and I know it'll be even colder outside tonight than it is this morning.

  Our porch thermometer says the temperature is 28 degrees this morning. Nana's feeding everyone pancakes with syrup, on paper plates, out the door of the motorhome. That thing is so packed that there isn't enough room for anyone other than her and Pop. Thanks for breakfast, Nana. God Bless You!

  Mick has a fire going in the fireplace and I have a little foot heater plugged into the generator strip. Carisa’s playing Candy Land with Amber and Caleb in front of the fireplace.

  Marisa and Jason are at Caleb's house "looking around" (snort). Mick made sure Jason took Sam Colt along. I'm surprised that Caleb let Marisa go without him, but he seems to trust Carisa almost as much as he does "You Momma," and he absolutely idolizes Amber.

  Our meeting was more fruitful than I expected because Pop and Nana were able to be here. Pop and Nana know a lot about a lot of things.

  First of all, there is no news from my sister. Nana’s so worried about them that she’s been sick at her stomach. She had to stop Pop from getting in his big pickup truck with an assortment of weapons and heading out to find them. I'm at a loss about what to do, but I don't think that sending the men after them is a good idea. They could be anywhere between here and Chattanooga and that's a four hour drive on a normal day. I pray they can get home somehow and that we can figure out a way to get the boys back. One of the articles Mr. P gave us has a list of the National Guard training camps in the Southeast and their locations, which might be helpful.

  We all agree that we need to have a fence of some sort around the entire property. Mick wants to fence in Caleb's house and the old Stang house with our house and Marisa's trailer.

  Marisa and Jason wanna move into Caleb's house with the kids. They plan to completely gut the kitchen and add things as they can. There's a fireplace in the living room and the master bedroom, so I know they'll stay warm.

  We'll need a large amount o
f fencing. We decided to go with chain-link, if we can find enough. We'll take it from any abandoned business or house we come across, and we'll need to find some way to reinforce it.

  We have plenty of trees around here, but we only have three men and a bunch of inexperienced females. It would take years to build a strong, solid fence out of logs. I don't want Pop out there, at age seventy, trying to show us that he still has mad skills.

  We'll have to cut away any trees that are tall enough to fall over and be used as bridges into our property. We also need concrete for the chain-link fence posts. Pop says we can "stretch" the chain-link by using a 2x4, a heavy duty strap, and his pickup truck.

  We all agreed that we need to visit the properties near us and find out if there’s other people hiding out in the community. We'll need to be very cautious doing this and we'll have to take along Mr. Winchester and Mr. Colt.

  I hope we find someone out there. I hope they’re not infected and we can use each other as partners in keeping ourselves safe and healthy. I told everyone we need to approach with caution, but also with a friendly attitude. We don't want any enemies, especially living close to us.

  Pop says he’s gonna "outfit each of us with more suitable weapons." So, I guess I'll be getting a new gun. I like my Glock (pout).

  If the houses are empty, we'll loot them. Yep, we're gonna be looters. We’ll take all the food and personal hygiene supplies, and anything else that might be of value in keeping ourselves alive.

  I have a good number of plastic totes full of personal hygiene items. I got them a couple of years ago when I decided I wanted to be a coupon queen. I'll bet there's still 50 bottles of shampoo and 25 tubes of toothpaste in the plastic totes downstairs. I also have mouthwash, toilet paper, paper towels, soap, body wash, shaving cream, razors, deodorant, dish liquid, washing powder, fabric softener, candles, bleach, Lysol, Clorox wipes and a bunch more that I'll spare you the pain of reading about.

  My coupon queen totes take up an entire corner and a good part of one wall in the basement. There's all kinds of “over-the-counter” medications. There’s also band aids, antibiotic creams, Ace bandages, leg and arm braces, lotions, gauze, and other medical supplies

  Even though we have all this stuff, we'll still take any we find from empty houses. Those things will be good for bartering or selling. The only thing I think I'm low on is toilet paper. There’s a lot of butts around here these days.

  We'll take any ammunition we find, regardless of what caliber it is.

  We need gardening equipment and a tractor to help in making a big garden without throwing our backs out, digging and weeding manually. My back is terrible. You don't wanna know about it.

  I reminded Mick of the Kubota in the tractor shed at Caleb's house and, after Mick told him what it was, Pop said that's exactly what we need.

  Pop was a little worried about seeds until I told him that I have two shoe boxes full of heirloom seeds in the freezer downstairs.

  Pop was also worried about having enough gasoline to run the tractor and continue running the generator so our freezer won't defrost.

  I mentioned the tanker trucks at town hall and Mick said "hell yeah, we're going to get those trucks 'n camouflage 'em somehow." I told him to check and see if there was anything left at the propane stand. Pop's eyes lit up because more propane means he can continue sleeping in a warm motorhome.

  I hope we can find the gardening stuff we need in people's sheds. Maybe we'll loot Lowe's, Home Depot, and TSC! (TSC stands for Tractor Supply Company). Pop says we probably won't find a lot of seeds at Lowe's because it isn't garden time yet.

  We'll take any dog food and cat food we find. We need every pellet of goat feed we can find at TSC. We should loot the feed store for goat feed and other grains, but its twenty miles away. I don't know if we'll be able to get that far.

  I’d like to find a wood cook stove for the kitchen. Our family spends a lot of time sitting at the table, eating, playing games, and talking. We'll probably be spending a lot more time there now, for family meetings and planning. It'd be nice to have some heat in there. Besides, we need it for canning any kind of meat Jason brings home and any produce we get from the garden.

  Pop says he knows how to run the pipe and ventilation for a cook stove. He says we'll need bricks or flat stones to build a base for it to sit on, and we'll need to brick up the wall behind it to keep the heat reflected.

  I have a good supply of my medication because I started saving it a few years ago.

  Nana says she doesn't have any extra of hers and Pop's medications saved up. She only has what’s left of the 90 day supply she got before all this started happening.

  We'll have to loot pharmacies because Pop and Nana can't go without their medications for long.

  Nana said she could start taking hers every other day, but I don't want her to do that unless she absolutely has to. She needs that medication, especially the blood pressure stuff and the diabetic stuff.

  Pop needs his pain medications for his rheumatoid arthritis and the nagging pains left over from the motorcycle incident.

  I want to loot Super Walmart. Nana told me not to get my expectations up because there’s probably a lot of people still alive, getting the same ideas I'm getting. That means we need to start the lootin’ as soon as possible. We can save the house looting until we finish the pharmacy and store looting.

  I feel like a criminal, planning my next heist. It's causing a little upset in my tummy.

  The remainder of this day will be spent planning our loot run and moving stuff to the attic so we'll have room for anything we bring home. I told Mick we need more outbuildings for storage and he just looked up at me and said "check," before he went back to planning with Jason and Pop.

  Tuesday, January 7

  It's pouring down a cold rain outside and we can't go lootin'. I'm depressed and disappointed. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow.

  I feel bleh.

  Wednesday, January 8

  It's still raining, but has slowed to a cold misty drizzle. It's the kind that makes you feel like you are sittin' in a steam room, and the steam is really cold and hurts your lungs a little.

  Everyone’s running around, trying to find a spot for anything that's non-essential so we'll have room for our loot if we ever get the chance to go. The attic’s getting full. I hope it doesn't fall in on us.

  We're having an early supper tonight. Mick has the pork roast we took from Caleb's house on the grill. We'll make cornbread muffins in Nana's motorhome oven and heat up some of my home canned carrots and red baby potatoes on her stove top.

  For dessert, we'll have a loaf of zucchini bread that I baked and froze a couple of months ago. I'll let it thaw in the motorhome 'cause I think it's too cold in the house to get it completely thawed. I might put it on the hearth, near the fire.

  We can snack on the remainder of the loaf or a bowl of popcorn if we get hungry later in the evening.

  Mick and Pop headed to town hall to try for one of the tanker trucks before we eat. We found out that Pop has experience driving a big rig but it was a long time ago. He says it'll be like riding a bike and it'll probably come right back to him. I'm in charge of watching the pork roast while they're gone.

  Jason's quiet today. I wonder what’s bothering him. He's in the deer stand again. I'll bet he needs to look for his son. He's been watching Caleb play with hot wheels cars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures. Yep, I'm pretty sure that he needs to find his son.

  We'll have another family meeting tonight and plan to go out tomorrow, good Lord willing, to start our looting. We'll probably head to the pharmacies first, then food places, and then Lowe's if we have time and all goes well.

  Hopefully, Mick and Pop will be able to get one of the tankers this afternoon.

  Nana's plans to make muffins for us to take as "breakfast on the run." we'll have coffee, Gatorade, juice, or water in our thermoses. That woman has endless energy. .

  I'm going out to the living room and get
into a game of "Go Fish" with Amber. I might write more tonight, or I might not. It depends on whether the generator is running and if I feel like it. I'm not writing anything out by hand tonight.

  I wanna sleep in the room with Carisa tonight. I'm missing her, even though she is right here in the house. I want to make sure she's staying strong and able to deal with the position we find ourselves in.

  3:30 PM...

  I heard a horn tootin' really close to the house and rushed to the front door to see the beautiful vision of a big tanker truck coming up the driveway with my favorite Chevy S10 following. We have a tanker truck! I'll have my computer and foot heater, and we can keep the 'fridge running for a while.

  Pop parked the tanker behind the house. Mick says it isn't full, but it's pretty close to three-quarters. It's the flavor we need to run the vehicles and the generator. Woo hoo!

  They found four 20lb propane tanks, so Pop can sleep in the motorhome and we can use the propane grill.

  Mick said there's another tanker truck there, and they think it has diesel fuel. They'll try to get it in the morning before we go looting. We'll park it in the front yard because the back is getting a little crowded. Mick says he'll put it up against the tree-line and cover it with camo netting and tree branches. We don't have any smaller diesel vehicles, but we can loot some!

  9:00 PM...

  Jason and Marisa moved the rest of their clothing and food up from the trailer while Pop was parking and admiring the monster tanker. They left all the furniture and non-essential things. We have plenty of furniture here and at Caleb's house, but we could use another bed or two. I just don't know where we'd put them.

  Amber and Caleb are already asleep on pallets in front of the fireplace. I had them put the pallets a good distance back, just in case a spark was to jump out and ignite a fire. We have the screen up, but anything is possible. Carisa says she'll sleep on the couch out there tonight, because it's cold in her bedroom.