by Boyd Craven
“I’ve got the dishes,” Angela said standing up, “Do you want me to run you two out another couple of beers?”
“I’d love one,” Steve said, feeling slightly tipsy.
“One more should do it for me,” Dwight said, “Then I gotta mosey home.”
“Ok, I’ll be right back,” she said, taking the last of the dishes and empties and heading inside.
“She’s something.” Dwight said.
“I know. I got lucky she’s so blind,” Steve told her.
“She’d have to be blind to marry an ugly ass like yourself,” Dwight said with a grin.
Angela walked back out and put the beers down, kissing her husband on the head.
“Thank you,” Steve told her, and both men waited till the door closed to talk again.
“So I wanted to know if you could help me with the axel on the spreader? I hit a rock last month, and I don’t know if I have to cut the bolts out or if I can just weld a fix in place.”
“Did you crack the mount?” Steve asked.
“Now if I knew that, I wouldn’t need your help. My hip has been….”
“Yeah, for sure! When do you want to do it?”
“I probably won’t need it for a couple of weeks. I can spray it out and put it in the sun so it won’t smell so bad….”
“I wish you could get away with running over the Arellano’s lawn with it fully loaded,” Steve said taking a big sip.
“I know, I regret selling the land, but I couldn’t use it anymore and needed a new tractor. I didn’t know that ten years down the road it was going to be a pain in my ass, present company excluded.”
“Of course,” Steve said.
“It ain’t so bad. I guess if I didn’t have something to complain about, I’d be dead. Hell, we all might be sooner than later.”
“How so?” Steve asked, noting the abrupt subject change.
“You ever worry about the state of the world, if we might be going down the wrong path?”
The words hit Steve funny, it was the only secret he’d kept from his friend. They had moved across the country, so Steve could go to work at a new IT startup. They had done everything but make a lot of new friends, with the exception of Dwight. He didn’t know if the news would put his friend off or make him think any less of him. He’d already contended with his daughter and wife’s mild ridicule, and he didn’t want to risk a friendship over his preps.
“All the time,” Steve admitted.
“This new president…I think he’s everything this country needs…and I think he might be too late.”
“What do you mean?” Steve asked, a hundred possibilities and conspiracy theories running through his head.
“This whole ‘Auditing the Fed’ thing. We’ve been living in a house of cards for a long time now. It’s why all these bubbles keep popping. The money is gone and only the richest of the rich have got any decent amount.”
“You’re worried that we’re overleveraged as a country?” Steve probed.
“Not just us, the whole world. It’s all funny money. I’m not a financial expert, but I know that when you have three hens, you don’t tell the world you have ten and then promise a dozen eggs a day when the most you’re going to get is two or three. You keep putting off your obligations and soon your chickens come home to roost.”
Steve laughed immediately, understanding what his friend was talking about.
“I worry about that too. If they only went back on some kind of gold standard….”
“I know, but you know what happened to the last president who tried to do that? They killed him,” Dwight said.
“Ahh man, now it’s getting deep,” Steve teased, but he’d already known the conspiracies his buddy believed in.
“I know, I know, I was kidding…mostly. I just worry about what’s going to happen when the next bubble bursts. When the money isn’t worth nothing. You can’t feed your family on gold and silver coins, that’s for sure. My parents and grandparents told me about the twenties where all the gold had to be turned back in for dollars, and how when the great depression hit the money wasn’t worth nothing. They didn’t starve none, but it was hard times.”
“What did they do?” Steve asked, interested, because his thoughts ran along those same lines.
“Why, they planted more crops, hatched a few more chickens out and made do. My dad said it was many a year he didn’t have no store-bought clothes, but he always had something to eat and something to wear.”
“At least y’all live down here where it’s warm. Up where I grew up, it got cold and froze in the wintertime.”
“It gets cold down here, don’t you be fooled none. It’s just been warm because of that global warming hoax. Trying to fake us all out.”
“Yeah, I hear that,” Steve held his bottle out and clinked it against Dwight’s.
“But say, if something ever happens like them books…if you ever need to…you and the family are welcome to head over to the farm.”
“Thanks,” Steve said with a smile. “I really appreciate that.”
“Yeah well…things haven’t been the same since Lucy died and Carter’s been off fighting one war after another. It’s good to have friends.”
“Yes, it is,” Steve said taking a big swallow. Yes it is, he repeated in his head, thinking it was time to let his friend in on his secret.
CHAPTER 4
“Hey Steve, can I see you in my office when you get a sec?” Brandi, Steve’s boss and owner, asked.
“Sure, now good?”
“If it doesn’t throw you for a loop, I know how it is when you’re coding.”
“Nope,” Steve said standing up, “No problemo.”
He followed his boss, a woman who was closer to Dwight’s age towards her glass-walled office on the North-East corner of the building. He shut the door behind her with a feeling of dread. She’d never asked to speak to him alone except when he was first hired and they were negotiating terms.
“Is…did I do something?” Steve asked.
“No, no,” Brandi said motioning for him to sit, “I just wanted to go over some business stuff with you.”
Feeling relieved, Steve took the chair across from her desk and sat on the edge, still feeling momentarily nervous.
“Have you been watching the news lately?” Brandi asked.
“No ma’am, I know I should but…”
“The central banks in Eastern Europe have called the losses in Greece….” she winced. “Our contract for the development of the Omni project is going on hold until we can get paid in a currency that’s good.”
“Wait, the Euro is collapsing?” Steve asked, feeling thunderstruck.
Brandi picked up a remote and pushed a button. The TV on the far side of the room turned onto FBN and it showed long lines outside of buildings.
“There was Brexit, now there’s been a bank run, they’ve suspended trading in Greece. The EU central banks are working overtime, but it’s not like it’s the first time it’s happened….”
“You’re worried about a domino effect,” Steve said after a second.
“Most of our development contracts come from overseas. Over sixty percent of our income comes from EU nations—the other in Asia.”
“And losing the Omni project is going to hurt bad,” Steve said quietly.
Brandi nodded and then stood. Steve went to stand himself but she motioned him to sit back down. She walked over to a small wet bar on the side of the office and poured scotch in two tumblers and brought them back over.
“I don’t know if you drink, but I need this,” Brandi said taking a long sip.
Steve followed her lead, enjoying the smoky peaty flavor of the scotch. It did little to calm his nerves though.
“I am probably going to have to lay off a third of the developers to start, at least—”
“I hate to interrupt, but what about me?” Steve asked.
“Don’t worry,” Brandi said. “I have faith that things will turn around. I
wanted you to know what was going on and why, so when tomorrow comes, you aren’t sitting at your desk worrying yourself into an early grave. You’re one of my most senior and trusted programmers. If you go, it means that IT Bytes is closing. Please, just keep it under your hat, and let me break it to them?”
“Yes ma’am,” Steve said, taking another long sip.
“If this thing in China blows up though, it’ll probably be hard for us to recover.”
“You mean the South China Sea? The man-made islands?”
“Yes,” she said, tossing back the rest of her scotch. “The president is pushing, and China is pushing back. I get not wanting to have islands with missile bases on them, but if we get into a shooting match with them, their stock markets and currency is going to go the same way as Greece’s is.”
Steve finished his drink and walked over to the wet bar. He rinsed his glass out and put it in the bottom of the sink there.
“I think we need to hope it doesn’t, then.”
“Agreed.”
The layoffs happened as she had predicted, and he tried not to picture everyone’s expression of horror and terror as one by one they walked in the office confused and came out near tears. Most of the crew at Mrs. Swartz company, IT Bytes, was female by some quirk, and one thing Steve had a hard time dealing with was tears. He threw himself into his work, putting in even more hours to take up some of the slack and was home later than normal. That went on for a good while, until school was almost out.
Without having to pay for Amber’s Jeep anymore, Steve started buying more and more preps. He seldom shared with his wife and daughter that he’d started making extra trips to buy food, but they did notice when he started working in the garage. Already half dead from overwork and no sleep, Steve started framing a wall four feet from the back door of the back wall. He did that across 75 percent of the garage and ended it with a door that ended just short of the entryway into the house. He cut a louver into the door and then hung a small sign on it that said ‘Mechanical Room’ on it and started moving his boxes and crates of stored food.
The room he created was almost four feet wide and twenty feet long. At the far end was the trapdoor that led down to the three short steps to their storm shelter. Along one wall, he moved his preps. His buckets made much of the base, stacked one in front of another, and then plastic milk crates that held a lot of food in cut down five gallon Mylar bags. Each was labeled and then put out of sight. Angela was upset at first, not having as much room to park her car, but he started parking his truck behind Amber’s Jeep to give her more room. It made her happy, but she knew some of what was going on.
The price of milk was the first indication that things were slipping. It had gone up by almost a third in the time between spring and summer. The real shock was when their mortgage was sold to another lender who kept asking the Taylors to refinance. It was Angela who’d found that the interest rates were creeping up. That’s when she decided to allow Amy to go for a long ride with her sister in the Jeep and opened a bottle of red wine and called her husband who was half dead from exhaustion to the table.
“Honey,” she said, pouring him a glass.
“Hey beautiful,” Steve said and took the glass, taking a sip.
She started using her hands to work on his neck, kneading the knotted muscles until he let out a groan of pleasure.
“You’re worried about work?”
“A little,” he admitted. “But more, like, the creeping inflation. Losing the Omni project hurt, but it’s little things that keep popping up here that are getting to me too. The uncertainty, living so close to the city. The riots…like, the whole country going insane after this election cycle.”
“Why does that worry you?” she asked, already knowing the answer but wanting him to speak it out.
“Because if anything happens, we’re too close to people. There’s too many, and I feel like a fish out of water here. There’s not enough land to grow our own food and—”
“Don’t forget about Dwight,” Angela said softly. “He said if things ever got bad we were welcome to head over there. He’s almost a prepper himself.”
Steve turned to look at his wife, who paused, “What?”
“Well, he’s got a kitchen garden, grows his own food, does a ton of canning, and can practically live off the grid. That’s like being a prepper, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but he’s on a scale that’s not even the same as what I am doing,” Steve admitted. “He knows how to live when things go to hell. None of us do,” he told her, his hands going up in the air.
She started on his shoulders next.
“Ok, so what’s the worst that can happen? Why is today a lot worse than the others?”
“Have you been watching the news?” Steve asked her softly.
She stopped and turned on the TV in the kitchen and handed him the remote. He changed the channel and after flipping past one news station, he found another. There was what looked like a burning ship sinking, lifeboats surrounding it.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy. They sent one of their fast attack crafts to play chicken with one of our boats.”
“They ran into each other?” Angela asked, confused.
“No, the president and Sec-Def told Iran they weren’t playing chicken anymore. Not after they ignored a boat they thought was one of theirs and had a suicide bomber on it. So…in protecting themselves, they shot the bottom out of the boat.”
“That’s not our guys and girls?” Angela asked, already reading the bylines on the bottom.
“No, it’s not. The ship fell back to be reinforced by the carrier group. The Iranians are pissed, and it’s a diplomatic mess.”
“Why is that…what do you think is going to happen?” Angela said, sitting down and topping off her wineglass.
Steve took a swallow, not even tasting the wine, “At one point, our economy was three trillion dollars ahead of the game after the election. You remember that?”
“Yeah, new jobs, tax cuts, a fix to Obamacare.”
“Exactly. It’s slumping now. I’m just worried…there’s going to be another round of layoffs at work.”
“I thought you said Mrs. Swartz promised you that you’d be safe?”
“I am,” Steve told her. “I just need to…”
“I know what you need,” she said and poured more wine into his glass.
“Wine?”
“Drink up,” Angela told him.
He did, and then she took him by the hand and led him towards the bedroom.
“Why do we call this ‘Lead Therapy?’” Amy asked, as the four of the Taylors had their own bench at the outdoor range set up at Dwight’s property.
“Because it sends lead down range,” Amber answered, before her mom could, “and it’s relaxing.”
Angela sent off three quick shots downrange with the Bushmaster AR-15 Steve had gotten her a few years back. She was a little cross at him when it wasn’t jewelry, but he’d never taken it out himself to shoot it like she thought. She wasn’t anti-gun when they got married, but didn’t have the same background as her country minded husband. Once she started shooting the 5.56/.223, she soon became as much of a gun nut as her husband.
She knew he thought she had no clue about everything in the safe in the storm shelter, but she knew as much about what they had in preps as he did. As his partner, she made it her business. He would be surprised at how much she approved of his recent purchases. There were now matching carbines so one for every member of the family and several matching Colt 1911s. That had been last year, this year though, he’d been stocking up on magazines and ammunition by the case. That had made her angry at first till she found one of the receipts in the safe.
She had figured out the usual buy a box at Walmart versus buying an entire case of ammunition. It was a .10 per round difference and considering how much they both loved shooting, he’d actually spent the same amount on ammunition but gotten a lot
more. Still, she knew how much stress he’d been under and a Saturday at the range on the farm was good therapy. Dwight loved shooting as much as they did, though he used an old deer gun that she was sure was going to break her shoulder if she ever shot it.
For his part, Steve felt a little tension lift off of his shoulders. His wife’s lovemaking had been passionate, and Amber had kept Amy out until her curfew at first McDonalds and then the park she loved to ride her bike at. They had both known their father was becoming more and more nervous, but they didn’t understand why. Amber was old enough to know how much fun her dad had punching holes in the targets, and she was getting to be a good shot too.
“Can I try yours?” Amy asked Dwight as he was working the bolt on his rifle.
Everyone paused and Angela put her gun on safe to see what he would say. Steve shot his daughter a smile and mussed her hair up while Amber looked on in amusement.
“If your dad thinks it’s ok,” he said, after a moment, “but you’re going to have to sit on my leg so you’re tall enough.”
She didn’t mind. She was still enough of a little girl to not feel self-conscious about that. Dwight leaned back and Amy crawled on his left leg and laid back into his chest. She put the rifle against her shoulder and leaned in to make good contact like her dad showed her. She didn’t put her hand anywhere near the trigger though.
“You know how to shoot this one?” Dwight asked.
She shook her head no. He showed her how to work the bolt, and when the cartridge popped out, he caught it and put it back in the gun’s internal magazine. Then he showed her the safety near the rear of the gun. Then when it was time, he pulled her ear protection back a little bit and whispered into her ear. When he was done, he put it back and leaned into her as she leaned into the stock of the rifle. Steve saw that she had the gun as braced as she could and held his breath as his daughter reached out, looked through the iron sights, and slowly squeezed the trigger.
