Into the Apocalypse

by William Dunaway

  After brushing her teeth, she walked into the kitchen where Mia, Brandy, and Angela were already getting started.

  Mia laughed, “I wonder why you’re so late. A little early morning delight?”

  The other two started making ooooh sounds, but Kim just laughed, “Well, if it would’ve been up to Vince we would’ve.”

  Again, the women made the ooooh sounds.

  Kim laughing but trying to change the subject out of embarrassment stated, “You know, we have to use canned food more and more so we need to come up with some new recipes or at least invent some.”

  The ladies started talking about different things they could do, and then Kim remembered something and walked to the bookcase in the back room and grabbed three books. When she walked back in, she put them on the table, “I forgot Vince bought these.”

  “What are they?” Angela asked.

  “Well, they’re survival books and some of them are filled with all types of recipes and how to do a bunch of different stuff.”

  Mia picked up a book and read the title aloud, “The Prepper’s Cookbook. 300 Recipes to Turn Your Emergency Food into Nutritious, Delicious, Life-saving Meals.” She flipped through the book, “Oh wow, these look like easy recipes, and they look good.”

  Angela picked up the next one and read, “Doctor Prepper’s Making the Best of Basics. Family Preparedness Handbook, Oh my gosh, he’s really into this stuff isn’t he?” She then flipped through it saying, “It has a little bit of everything in this, from medical, gardens, and even how to be a prepper.”

  “Don’t let Vince hear you say that word. He hates it. To him, “Preppers” are the nuts you saw on the television show.”

  Brandy replied, “Well, the truth be known, there was a lot of people that thought if anyone prepared for bad times and emergencies, they were just being paranoid. Of course, most of the people that thought that way are probably dead or starving to death.”

  Mia popped up, “Yeah, thank God Vince and you did all of this, or we’d all be suffering or worse.”

  “Alright girls, quit talking about such dark things,” Kim instructed.

  Angela picked up the third book and groaned slightly saying, “Good grief, this book is thick,” and then read, “The Encyclopedia of Country Living. The Original Manual for Living Off the Land and Doing It Yourself.” Then looking through it, she said, “This has even more than the rest. How to farm, garden, mill your own flour, and even forage for wild food.”

  “Yeah, he has all sorts of books in there. A bunch of medical books….”

  Brandy interrupted and asked excitedly, “Medical books? Really?” and she walked into the back room to where the books were.

  Soon they heard Brandy scream with delight. She ran back into the kitchen all excited and started reading the titles of a stack of the books she was carrying. “Survivalist’s Medicine Chest, Where There Is No Doctor, Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook, US Army Special Forces Medical Handbook.” Then she squealed, “Oh, Emergency War Surgery and Ditch Medicine.”

  Mia burst out laughing, “Brandy, you better check yourself. I think if you do, you’ll find that you’re wet from excitement.”

  All the ladies broke out laughing.

  “Almost! I know of Ditch Medicine, and I’ve heard of Emergency War Surgery.”

  Kim still laughing from the wet comment said, “Brandy, do you want us to give you and your new friends some privacy?”

  Everyone was laughing when I walked into the kitchen, “You guys make enough noise to wake the dead. What the heck is going on?”

  Brandy had a big smile and held up the book, Ditch Medicine. She ran over to me and gave me kiss on the cheek, “You’re a genius for buying these.”

  Mia choked on the coffee she was drinking and said, “Kim, you better watch out…. Brandy may end up taking the book and Vince to her bedroom.”

  Everyone was laughing so hard they could barely stand except for me, who didn’t have a clue what was going on.

  Brandy stuck out her tongue at Mia, grabbed her books and walked into the living room saying, “Well, I think I’ll take my books and go.”

  After they had stopped laughing, Mia said, “ I have to check out these books of yours. Do you mind, Kim?”

  “Go ahead, we have this.”

  I grabbed my cup of coffee and headed into the living room where Brandy was reading up a storm. When I walked in she looked up, gave me a thumbs up, and went right back to reading.

  Just about that time, Mia came walking in with three books, “My gosh Vince, U.S. Army technical manuals? Unconventional Warfare Devices and Techniques, Boobytraps and Survival.”

  “A lot of those manuals I brought home from the Army…. But yeah, I get in modes. All the medicals books were in case we didn’t have any medical people around in a crisis. Most of the books are how-to books.”

  “Well, obviously the other bookcase is Kim’s. I notice that’s where most of the romance novels are.”

  “What? Don’t you think I’m a romance novel kind of guy?”

  “Well, I just have the feeling that isn’t your cup of tea. Not reading it anyway,” as she winked at me.

  She took the books back to the bookcase and came back and sat at the end of the couch. I was in my recliner and Brandy was sitting in Kim’s recliner. Soon, Red came in and went to the kitchen and grabbed a cup of coffee, while saying good morning to everyone like the world was perfect. He had a smile from ear-to-ear.

  We hadn’t seen Red that much. He had been spending most night’s at Jake’s on the ham radio and even volunteered to work the early morning shift if he would be allowed to sleep part of the day. Mike had no problem with it, so neither did I.

  Usually, when he came in from his morning shift, he would grab some breakfast barely talking to anybody, and would then go straight to bed.

  Today was different though.

  When he walked into the living room and saw Mia, he formed a big smile and walked over and sat down right next to her, so close that their legs were rubbing together. I watched him walk in and when he sat that close to her, I know I had to have a strange look on my face, and my mouth was probably open. Red, as funny as he was around us, had never been that outgoing around the women. He was friendly and would talk to them when they talked to him or if it was us guys talking as a group, but one on one, he was actually shy. Today he really blew my mind though, and I think Brandy’s and Mia’s as well.

  As close as he sat to Mia she said, “Well excuse me Red, am I taking up too much of the couch?”

  I started to laugh, and he looked at me with the same smile, then he looked back at her, “Tell me something, Mia, how much do you love me?”

  Mia got a look of amazement on her face, and chuckled, “What?”

  “How much do you love me? Let me put it another way. Am I your favorite here?”

  “Vince, I think he’s been drinking on duty,” she remarked while laughing.

  He put his arm around her, “Mia, I want to take you out on a date. Would you go out on a date with me today? Now, before you answer, I promise it will be the best date you’ve ever been on or even wanted to be on.”

  Mia looked at me like she thought he was nuts but said with a flirtatious type giggle and smile, “Ok Red, I love you, and you’re my favorite, and I’d love to go out on a date with you. Where are you taking me? Out for a fancy dinner and then maybe the movies?”

  About that time, Kim and Angela came walking in as they had been listening to the strange conversation. Red, looked at everyone, “Did you hear that? She loves me, and we’re going on a date!”

  We all started laughing, and I said, “Get ready Red, I imagine she can get pretty wild.” Mia looked at me, tilting her head a bit and gave me a wink.

  “Mia, what I have in mind is taking you for a stroll. I suggest we walk to the east. Then, when we get to Jake’s, we’ll stop and say hi.”

  “Umm, sounds wonderful, is that the highlight of our date?”

&nb
sp; He smiled at everyone again and then looked at her, “Nope. We’re going to go in and after finishing our greetings, I thought I would take you into the radio room and show you what I do all night.”

  “That may be interesting.”

  “Then, at exactly 12:30 p.m. central standard time…… you’re going to get to talk to your mom and dad.”

  Mia’s mouth dropped open. Kim gasped loudly out of excitement for Mia. Tears immediately came flowing from Mia’s eyes, and while looking straight into Reds eyes, she said with a cracking voice, “Red, you better not be messing with me.”

  He smiled even bigger and actually grabbed her hand.

  “No, I’m not. Last night I made contact with a guy who is only a mile from where your uncle’s cabin is. He verified your parents are with your uncle and they’re doing fine. He said he’d pick them up as he has an older pickup that runs and would have them on the radio at 12:30.”

  Before he was finished talking, Mia was flat-out crying, and suddenly she grabbed Red on both sides of his face, “I do love you,” and gave him a big kiss on the lips.

  Red, has red hair of course, but we couldn’t decide if his hair or his face was redder.

  Mia then jumped up and gave Kim a big hug. Brandy jumped up and gave her a hug and Angela was soon to follow. They all started talking a mile a minute and walked into the kitchen.

  I looked at Red, “Well, you just became her hero.”

  He smiled, “It’s so nice to finally get ahold of someone that one of us is connected to. I’m really starting to learn how everything works; I mean the shortcuts and frequencies. I have a log book of people now; where they’re at, their frequencies and so on.”

  “Any news?”

  “Yeah, plenty but so much is just rumor. Let’s keep this happy for a while because when I tell you what else I picked up, it’s pretty depressing if it’s true. Nothing super important that’s urgent. I’ll fill you in later if that’s ok? There’s nothing you need to know now.”

  Not wanting to break the good mood everyone was in, I stood up, “Sounds good to me.”

  During breakfast, everybody was really excited for Mia, but we had to have our fun with her. Half the time she didn’t hear a thing we were saying as you could tell that all she was thinking about was talking to her parents. When I told her that she wouldn’t be available to talk to her parents as Mike had her on the duty schedule for working one of the roadblocks, all she did was flip me off and told me we were about to have our first AWOL.

  ****

  Santiago turned out to be a very hard and good worker. He and Tag had just about completed one side of the new living quarters that they were building in what was our double carport. They found some rolls of insulation in an old barn, and it would definitely help during the winter. They predicted they would have both sides done within a couple of weeks, at the latest.

  Santiago's daughters, Sofia and Isabella, were a Godsend to Lulu. Now, besides Jake’s children, she had two friends that she was able to play with on a full-time basis. The two girls loved the horses and were constantly asking people to give them a ride.

  Due to regular meals and a steady supply of milk to drink, the girl's health improved immensely.

  We had decided to contact all the neighbors that were within a 2 mile square of the house. If we were successful at bringing them into our community, it would mean that all the land bordering ours would be able to be patrolled by more people and all road intersections within that area would have a roadblock set up on it.

  We also wanted to bring everyone from Pine City into the mix. We would agree to protect them and provide as much help as we could on a continuous basis if they would agree to help secure roadblocks and patrol the area. We planned on doing it sooner, but because of the incident with the Pine City residents, we had been reluctant due to any bad feelings that someone may have bottled up. It was a ticklish situation, to say the least.

  Brandy and Mike became a thing. They wouldn’t admit it, but conveniently, Mike always seemed to schedule patrols of the farm with him and Brandy at the same time. It was funny to watch as Mike always took his duties very seriously, but when you’d watch them patrol the farm on horseback together, it looked more like a couple going for a romantic horseback ride.

  ****

  As 12:30 got closer, the more nervous Mia became. At 11:30 she asked Kim and I if we would go with her. Of course, we agreed. She must’ve thanked Red 20 times for tracking them down and for setting this up.

  While we were waiting, I decided I was going to check the ammo supply. I kept a lot of the extra rounds in ammo boxes in our bedroom closet. As I was pulling out the ammo boxes, I found an old laptop of mine which I meant to throw away but never did. Instead, I just threw it on the bottom of our closet and forgot about it. The battery wouldn’t hold a charge and the only way to use it was to plug it in. The computer itself was slow, so I didn’t try to find a new battery.

  The generator was on, so I thought, “what the heck,” and I plugged it in. To my amazement, it came on. It seemed like it took forever to boot up but finally, the desktop popped up. Of course, I knew there was no internet, and it’d be useless, except for one thing. It had a DVD player in it. I went out to the living room, grabbed a DVD and put it in, and it worked. I don’t know how or why but I could only guess it was because there was no power to it whatsoever as the battery was completely dead or maybe it was halfway protected by the layers of ammunition that had been laying on top of it. We probably will never know, but I now had one special surprise for everyone, especially the kids…. but it would be a surprise that I would save for later.

  At almost 12:00 noon on the spot, Mia started asking if we could get down to Jake’s. We gave her a hard time, but finally, the four of us started walking down. We knew what Mia must’ve been feeling. I know Kim would’ve given anything to hear news of her family.

  Red started telling us that he had learned most of what he did from other ham operators. He reminded us that during normal times you have to get a ham operators license by taking a test but now and during any time of emergency, you can operate a ham radio without a license.

  Then he laughed, “Anyway, it’s not like the FCC is monitoring communications any longer to make sure everyone is compliant.”

  When we arrived at Jake’s, they seemed to be thrilled for Mia. They offered us something to drink, and we talked for a short time, even though Mia wasn’t into the conversation due to nerves.

  At 12.25 she sat down at the radio which Jake and Red had set up in what used to be Jake’s office area. Red looked at his handwritten notebook, and double checked the frequency. At 12:30 exactly he keyed the radio. Instead of using call letters both Red and the ham operator at the other end basically went by “handles” or names people gave to themselves back in the days when CB radios were the thing.

  “Roadrunner, this is the Red Robin, are you on the frequency?” There was nothing but silence. Mia looked up with a little fear in her eyes, “Roadrunner, this is Red Robin, are you there?”

  “I’m here Red Robin. I have an anxious couple of people sitting here. I assume you have one as well.”

  “I sure do. Here she is.”

  Mia keyed the microphone, “Mom, Dad are you there?”

  After a couple of moments, a man's voice came over the radio, “Mia, is that you?”

  She immediately came to tears with a big smile on her face, “Daddy, yes it’s me.” She sounded like a young schoolgirl talking to her father that was deployed overseas.

  “Oh Munchkin, it’s so good to hear from you. Are you alright?”

  I looked at Kim and mouthed the word Munchkin with a smile. Obviously, that was her dad’s nickname for her. I knew at that moment that I was going to have fun with that in the near future, but for now, I think we all had tears coming to our eyes out of happiness for Mia.

  “Yes, daddy. I’m fine. I’m with Kim and Vince on their farm. You know the friends I told you about. Are you and mom doing
alright?”

  “We’re fine. We had a bit of a problem getting here, but once we did, we’ve been doing well. Your Uncle Paul has a generator set up, and there is plenty of game we can hunt from the national forest, plus an abundance of fish in the lake. Are you guys doing ok?”

  “Yes, they have a generator as well and running water from the well. They had a bunch of food stored up, and there is a lot of deer and turkey on the farm.”

  “I’m so glad, you don’t know how worried we’ve been. We’re so glad you’re safe. That’s all we really care about and we’re going to sleep so much better now.” We could hear talking in the background, and then he continued, “Hold on, your mom wants to talk to you.”

  “Hi, Mia. It’s so good to hear your voice.” her mom said with excitement.

  “Hi, Momma. You don’t know how much better I feel hearing you guys are ok. I almost left to come find you guys.”

  Suddenly her dad came on the air and firmly stated, “Mia, I don’t even want you to think that way. You stay where it’s safe, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, dad. Don’t worry. I’m fine now, and Vince wouldn’t have let me do it anyway. He chewed me out when I told him about it.”

  “Well good. You listen to him. No matter what, your safety is the most important thing.” her dad reiterated.

  Her mom got back on the air, “We heard such terrible things about Kansas City, we were so worried about you. Brandy didn’t go into the city like she planned, did she?”

  “No mom, she flew in with us. We had to land in their pasture. The airport we planned on landing at had wreckage on it. It was a scary landing, but all went well.”

  “So everybody is ok?”

  I saw Mia get a very sad look on her face and she started to key the mic, but I jumped towards her and grabbed her shoulder. She looked up at me, and I shook my head no.

  “Hold on for a second mom.”

  “Ok dear.”

  She looked at me, and I said very seriously, “Don’t tell her about Carmen.”

  “Why?”

  “If you tell them Carmen was killed, they’re going to ask how and whether they do or not, if they know Carmen is dead, that’s going to make them worry more about you. Trust me on this Mia.”