A story that needs editing and advise is appreciated on composing and punctuation

[happyearthhomes]

Dam it started like any other day I was sitting in my basement smoking a cigarette and drinking a coffee getting ready to play some Xbox .I turned on the TV. and game system when i seen a national emergency alert that there was solar flares and that cell phone service might go down for little while that day. I didn't think anything of it how ignorant I was than it is a wonder i am still alive. well there i was drinking my coffee and playing call of duty. when i felt something like a warm wave of electricity washed over me. and everything shut down. my TV and my lights i seen my backup battery packs kick on for my pc and game systems. my two rechargeable flashlights that i had plugged into the wall kicked on, two rays of brightness lighting up the basement which also informed me that all the power in the house was off. because they only kick on when the power shuts off. I picked up my cell phone from where i had it plugged in and looked at it getting ready to call the electricity company to complain that my service went off while i was kicking ass on C.O.D when i noticed that I had no service it had the little symbol showing that it was trying to locate service. That was when I got my first inclination that something was wrong the image of the solar flare alert flashed thru my mind and i thought dam it knocked out the power also that’s crazy i went up to my bedroom to wake up my wife lauri and tell her about what was going on and i looked out the front room window and the skyline was full of clouds dark and menacing looking clouds with a red haze in the background above them. it was disconcerting to see and apparently i wasn’t the only one to think so i could see cars stopped in the street and people out in their yards looking and pointing at it to the southeast of us and than i realized i had never seen clouds coming from the southeast before they always came from Iowa and went towards Indiana these where coming from Indiana it looked like they were over Kankakee from where i was but i couldn’t see any further due to their covering of the skyline so i hurried up and went and woke up lauri but she was already up because the a.c. unit in our window had shut off and the summer heat was already making the room warm up she was looking at her cell phone a real fancy new one like three years newer than mine and cursing she started telling me how the outage must have fried her phone and i told her that that was not all that was going on i told her to come look at the sky and i told her about the emergency alert i had seen an hour earlier she is more educated than me and quickly grasped the wrongness of the sky she said she thought it must have been some sort of volcanic explosion in the south or something again how naive we were at that time. we watched the sky for awhile and when we were sure it wasn't coming any closer we went and opened all the windows to air out the house we took our two dogs a 4yr old female black lab named chunky and a ten year old red mastiff mix named Chas out to the yard now we had noticed people standing by their cars looking at the sky for awhile but we hadn’t realized all of the newer ones were broke down along with all the semis but a couple older cars and trucks were moving around and a guy on an older motorcycle was cutting around traffic fairly recklessly being as the stop lights were off and vehicles were stopped all over . So we each went to our cars and they wouldn’t start than I went out to the garage and was able to kick start my little 150 cc moped an older model that lauri would drive to her work at the hospital a few blocks away during good weather to save on gas money and just to have fun on. We talked for a little while about what could have had the effects that we were experiencing and we just were not knowledgeable enough to figure it out so we decided to sit out the power outage by grilling some burgers and having a private barbeque just us and the dogs .We didn’t have much meat in the freezer but we thought we might as well cook it if the power was out much longer it would start to go bad so we had a steak each and the dogs made fools of themselves begging for hot dogs. It was a tense but good time something we hadn’t done in awhile so sucked up in our electronic worlds of video games and TV. We sat five feet away from each other every day but we didn’t really talk or hangout anymore. We just kind of existed with each other in a well used comfortable sort of way we had been together for eight years and married for five of them

 

[happyearthhomes]

We had met at So. Il. University back in 03 I was working at the college building a new admissions building and she was finishing up school that year and interning at a local hospital.
We had met at local bar and hit it off pretty quick but we had busy schedules and lightly dated for a few months and than we became inseparable moving in together and starting the family plan of buying a house and getting married three years later after moving to Chicago burbs for our jobs . That went well until the Bush recession started in 07 and I lost my job in 08 and she lost hers in 2011 so we had grown despondently comfortable in each others presence sleeping late gaming and living off our savings and the small short term construction jobs I could acquire just being bums. She amazingly was still in great shape 5’4 120lbs smoldering red hair sky blue eyes and a great body where as I had gained a hundred pounds since our first date I was still in ok shape though cause I am a big man that had took pride in my physical strength lifting weights every day but not much cardio just some light running that I had only recently started doing again but I was up to a jog for three miles without stopping and had already dropped 30 pounds of weight so I was around 270 and 6 ft tall dark almost shoulder length hair a imposing looking guy with a big bushy Viking beard and tattoos on my arms I had worked construction since I was 16 and was a mid evil science fiction enthusiast reading the books, playing the games, buying the novelty weaponry I loved it little did I know I and my world was being thrown into a situation twice as fucked as anything I ever read about or played at. A place where mothers feed their children poison to ease them the suffering of diseases and starvation or the degradations of stronger individuals and count it a blessing they could even get it to do the deed before they take their own lives in desolation and desperation .We were wrapped up in each other moderately annoyed by the lack of power but spending time together like we hadn’t in a long time the people who had broke down gradually left and we weren’t paying any mind to it anyways sitting by candlelight and talking and than making love in the hot august night the sky it was amazing the clouds we had seen earlier in the day had turned into an aurora of reds, blues and purples in the southeastern skyline we sat naked in our back yard drinking wine and making love the last night of true peace we were to share for a long time.

 

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I woke up the next day and everything was still off that was unusual but not unheard of with the rising oil prices we had started having rolling blackouts during the summer and had been out for 2 days earlier that year but my old phone was still off also so I decided to wake lauri and let her know I was wanting to walk down the street to the city hall and police department to see if I could get any news she said she wanted to take a bath and was going to warm up some water on the grill’s stove fixture so I left her to it and I took my black lab Chunky with me I always carry a large multi tool and a small pocket knife on my belt but for some reason I felt like I needed some thing more and I took this old walking stick I made years ago a little bit bigger than a pool stick my best attempt at a staff as I could get out of a oak closet pole for hanging clothes on. I had carved it up and wrapped some leather around it at hand hold height for hiking when I used to go Indian arrow head hunting with my stepfather as a teenager and I had hammered a set of copper plumbing caps on the ends to make it look cool and so I could strike sparks off the concrete when I struck it a glancing blow I was such a nerd as a teenager.
So me Chunky and my staff walked down to the city hall and I could hear the wind and the birds and only faintly a vehicle off in the distance every thing was fairly quite I seen people looking at me out the windows and a few came up to me to ask if I heard anything about the power or phones and I told them no and that I was on my way down to the city hall to find out what I could a couple of them asked if I was coming back that way and if I could let

 

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them know what I found out I said ok it was weird how frightened some of them were not wanting to leave I had a friend that lived a few blocks away from my house kind of on my way downtown. He lived with his girlfriend in a little house they rented he was a tattoo artist and musician she was a bartender and a culinary school student, His name was Timmy and he was a punk rock dude he has that rocker look tall thin tattooed and dark in decent shape but not a fitness guy just natural good body build typical punk rocker style of dress and anarchist mindset all about saying fuck the man and politics lets burn one and burn one down. Her name was kati and she was short dark and attractive in a punky Brewster sort of way she was quiet and doted on Timmy as if he was the rock star he wanted to be. They are good friends some of the only people we hung out with they had been our roommates before they got their house on the other side of town. Fun to hang out with and Timmy was my fishing and hunting buddy I had a little john boat that we went out on regularly and we went deer hunting together in the fall. In other words my best friend it took me awhile to get to his house but I got there around 9 am and let myself in he was passed out on the couch and she was up doing some house work she said that he and stayed up late getting drunk and partying by himself and that neither one of them had had to work due to the lack of power but that his old band van was running just fine but her car wouldn’t start and both their phones were dead. I got a pitcher of water and against Kati’s protests I dumped it on him to wake him up. He came up like a 175 pound bear cussing and throwing stuff at me. I retreated outside for safety while kati calmed him down and explained what was up and why I was there. He got dressed and came outside to where I was sitting by his van with Chunky. We discussed what was going on while kati brought us both out some toast and eggs and coffee. After we ate and I thanked kati for breakfast we started walking down to city hall which was still about a mile from timmy’s house he had decided to bring his pistol a snub nose .38 perfect for sticking in a pocket and big ass knife after he seen my stick. As we got closer to down town we saw more people and we joined at the back of a mixed group of people walking to city hall as we came within a few blocks of it we could hear screaming and yelling and some one repeating over a bullhorn “ quite please I said quite please” and more yelling it became almost deafening in its loudness after the relative silence of the rest of our walk there now we had both been in and around the bar and concert scenes enough to know when the crowd was getting ugly and this one was the cops had the building

 

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surrounded in their riot gear and shields while some nervous portly politician looking guy was trying to bring the crowd to order with his “quite pleases” it took a little while for that to happen in which time Timmy and I had maneuvered to a set of stairs across from the city hall in front of some lawyers office building. The man eventually labeled himself as the acting deputy mayor and that the mayor was unable to make it here due to travel difficulties being as all the newer vehicles were broken down and he lived on the farthest richest side of the city. They did not have any information to impart to us so we left the deputy mayor just kept saying that everyone should go home and stay inside that everything would be back to normal soon that we were causing a disturbance and that it was making the job of getting stuff fixed harder by not being in our homes and out of the way he didn’t know about the clouds or the aurora or why the electric problems had happened .Me and Timmy decided he was the only suit to show up for work and didn’t know anything he was sweating like a pig and could barely answer questions so we split because we were pretty sure there was going to be trouble the people were pissed off by the circular talk and pushing against the cops barricade and throwing things at them when we left I warned any one we came across not to go down there and spread the word that the government was just as confused as us and that they were saying to wait it out in our homes. As we were coming out of down town we heard gunfire in the distance and saw some gang bangers looting a cell phone store and a jewelry store we stayed away from them and hurried back to timmy’s we had decided him and Kati would come wait it out with us since we had an old well in our basement and the basement was a lot cooler than his house what with it already 95 degrees out at noon when we got

 

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back to his house they loaded up some small stuff in his band van and we headed over to my house in the van we waited to tell the girls all of our news until we were all together at my house than we told them what had happened and what we had saw I also walked down and told a couple of my old timer neighbors what had happened. We had decided to wait it out like they deputy mayor had said it wasn’t so bad we cooked and ate what was left of our meat and Kati made some different dishes out of our cabinet goods that went on for two days we played cards, talked and Timmy played his guitar for us. Me and Timmy walked around a little bit the streets were to much of a pain to try and drive on we had had to drive thru a couple yards to get his van and us to my house. So we walked over to the grocery store and it was all messed up some one had drove their car thru the doors and it stunk of rotting food being as we had been without power for 3 days by then we went in any ways and grabbed some canned goods and I got a 50 pound bag of rice and a couple of bags of beef jerky there was a couple of other people also grabbing stuff but the stayed away from us as I said I am a big imposing guy and Timmy is all punk rocker looking so they stayed away and we got ours and left pushing a shopping cart back to the house ma and him talked bout how jacked up stuff was getting all the store fronts had been broken into people were busting up all the cars that were stranded. We got back to the house and the girls were crying Anna had been going around checking on our elderly neighbors even bringing water from our well to a couple down the block that had ran out but she had not checked on any of them since the morning before we had been hearing gun shots at night and apparently some one had broken in and killed the waterless couple and robbed their house after she had found that her and Kati went around and found three more elderly couples dead from indeterminate reasons heat, no medicine, stress, suicide I don’t know but as we spread out we found more and more dead people alone in their homes half baked and bloating apparently some one had been in their ahead of us in a lot of the houses ransacking for valuables and money. We decided to put the dogs up stairs and to keep a watch on day three the dogs barked a few times that night and it had us all on edge and I don’t think any of us slept much and we hadn’t talked much either I think now we were all numb with what we had seen that day. And in the morning we decided to get out of town Timmy and I had went hunting in Wyoming In 2011 up near Jackson hole and we had rented a cabin from a guy that lived in new York that had built a private hunting ranch on 1200 acres of fenced land he had it all custom built on top of

 

[happyearthhomes]

a old time ranch that had a hand pump well and Ferrier shop attached to the stables. Me and Timmy had joked that it would be the perfect retreat from the world if world war three broke out food in the forest and fields water from the well safety in our isolation from other people almost 20 miles to the nearest town of like 150 people and hundreds of miles from any major city an outdoors paradise with a ready made home site Being the dork I am I had already determined that we could take my little john boat almost all the way there on the rivers and canals that we have carved thru the country. I had been off work for along time at the point when we had got back from that trip out there and saw it as a mental exercise to kill time one day I was often awake and alone in front of my computer for as much as 20 hours a day and would randomly research interesting things well at least to me they were I learned how to make poisons and bombs from household chemicals how to tie knots and make snares how to kill a person 101 ways with my bare hands I learned about ancient cultures and their fighting and building techniques how they made tools and how they made food these were the things that I found interesting my stepfather was part Indian and an avid outdoorsman he set my mind on these paths as a youth along with my avid interest in the mid evil times science fiction stories I thought I was prepared for a new age of man And I was prepared to lead my wife and my best friend and his girl out to a safe spot because it was only getting worse and scarier where we were 25 miles outside of Chicago I knew that there was only so much food in the city and that there was not enough to keep everybody fed with electric out and the roads blocked just finding enough tow trucks that didn’t have a computer in them and were still running would take weeks or even months we had learned only pre computer

 

[happyearthhomes]

vehicles were running any thing that had a computer of any kind was dead they might turn on and have power but they didn’t do any thing or indicate that they could ipod cell phones laptops newer cars they all just didn’t work my older TV. turned n and showed static I hooked up my Xbox and the TV to an inverter in Timmy’s van but the Xbox just showed a blank black screen same thing with my laptop Timmy and Kati had had there cell phones and they showed just blank white screens after talking about it we had decided it was like something had wiped out the hard drives on all of our stuff our cars power would come on but wouldn’t start the batteries were good we checked them. Timmy didn’t want to give up his van it was a 79 dodge 4x4 and had abed in it was pretty tough and we had drove it out to Wyoming last year camping in it and pulling john boat behind to do some fishing when the opportunity arose .We decided we would pull the boat behind the van and put the moped and the grill in it and just use the boat as a trailer and we went around all morning siphoning gas out of our deceased elderly neighbors cars and trucks we talked to a couple of the neighbors about what we were doing and why they all said we should just wait it out that this was the usa and everything would be fine soon . We politely disagreed with them and went about our business lauri and Kati went thru the neighbors cabinets and got what food they determined would be most needful and easiest to prepare on our limited methods we had discussed and decided that we were going to try and hit up a store on the way out of town we decided on menards as the store we would go to because they had a diverse selection of things and if looters were going there they would be after high end items not the outdoor gear and dried foods they have a ton of its also a great spot for battery powered things and batteries. By the time we had the van and boat trailer loaded up it was approaching evening. And we decided to back the trailer with our stuff into the garage and get the van already for a quick departure in the morning we ate a very lavish meal of spam and fresh vegetables out of neighbors gardens throughout the evening we had neighbors coming over giving us letters and asking if we could stop here and there to check on relatives which than set us to individually thinking about our families we decided to write on the walls of the interior of our house a statement of our plans to our families if they made it out to our home but we were not to hopeful mine and lauri’s parents lived 500 miles into more heavily populated areas of the Midwest in between st.louis Louisville and Cincinnati we knew our parents wouldn’t make it here but I had a younger brother that lived an hour away but we had grown distant in the last few years

 

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as he began living his version of the family life with his fiancée and I hadn’t even spoke to him in like a month before the occurrence happened I didn’t want to add 2 hours of clean travel going to his house which in our current state it could take all day driving there so we left a message saying where we were going and prayed our loved ones were ok . We barely slept and we left at the first sign of daylight and stopped at Timmy’s so him and Kati could do the same her parents were in Michigan and his were in Florida we were all quite on the ride out to the menards closest to the interstate we had noticed that the night sky had not had the aurora that was showing the four night previous and in the morning as the sun rose clear from the east we couldn’t see the haze that had hung in the sky in the southeast either. We pulled in to the back of store by where the construction materials are picked up and we seen signs that we were not the first to come looting here but we were the only obviously moving thing around I had my 20 gage shotgun and Timmy had his .38 which we had previously decided to leave with the girls in the van the girls were ready to go we had them back the van up to a bay that was already open and we seen a bunch of small copper fittings laying around the door way it looked like they hooked a chain up to the door and just pulled it off with a truck or machine the chain was still there dangling from the stretched out and twisted metal of the door that was hanging off to the side of the opening partial blocking the view of the van from the one side Me and Timmy went in he got a cart from nearby and we quickly seen what the other guys had been after by their dropping of copper pieces and copper wire I

 

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guess if it hadn’t been the end of the world it would have been a great theft of untraceable wealth but it just made me smile we went to the food isle first and grabbed all the trail mixes and dried foods we could put in the cart we brought it back and told the girls to start loading it up we decided it was safe to split up and we each took a cart and split up Timmy went after a generator and he grabbed an double bladed axe a couple of machetes and some rope and tarps along wish some duct tape I went after the power tool section and grabbed a couple of the big kits of rechargeable cordless tools and as I was coming back I grabbed some boxes of screws and nails and spotted some dog food I grabbed two big bags and hurried back as I was getting to the door saw lauri go running in and towards the front of the store by the garden section I yelled to her but she told me to go load up that she’ll be right back so I did Timmy wand Kati were unloading his cart and I shoved mine to him and said I was going back in after Anna and to get ready we were leaving as soon as we got back Timmy was to drive I went in and I called out lauri's name and I heard her answer off towards the front when I got up there I heard her coming apparently even when you are the only one in the store you can still get the cart that squeaks I seen her coming towards me with a big grin and her hair braid flying behind her using the cart like an old school push scooter she had it full of seeds and first aid kits apparently her and Kati had realized after our first cart one of them had to go in also when we got outside Timmy was lashing down a new tarp over the boat he wasn’t done yet as Kati had told him what lauri was after and he was ready to help dump the whole cart into the almost over flowing boat we had to bungee the hell out of that tarp we had quite the haul of stuff . We got into the van and started to leave I checked my watch and what had seemed like along time in the store turned out to be only fifteen minutes I was proud of us and I said so but I was tired after that mad dash in the store and the losing of that adrenaline rush drained the hell out of me and I started dozing off in my seat as we pulled onto the high way next thing I know I am waking up to us hitting bumps as Timmy driving down the side of an off ramp because he had come to blocked section of highway and had to go off and on the highway to keep moving and that was my first sight of the under pass camps they were the people who had got caught on the road when it had happened most of them were to weak to try to approach us as we passed slowly by apparently everyone else

 

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had already seen a few of them as that wasn’t the first time we had had to circumvent blocked stretches of road I had fallen asleep for about 2 hours and we had only traveled 25 miles on the highway what with pulling the trailer and the blocked sections but we were coming up on a big junction point of I 80 and I 55 and we were heading west on 80 that had a huge snarl-up of dead vehicles and there was two large camps in that under pass where we sped thru as fast as we could. As the all the people were asking for food and water and a ride but we were full and we needed what we had and wound up having to fire off a round from my shotgun to get them to let us past they threw stuff at us and cursed us for being cruel the girls took it hard and I felt like shit but this was ours our only for sure means of survival I couldn’t just give it away that was when Timmy showed the first signs of cruelty by clipping some man with the van as we went past and laughing about it lauri called him a dick and Kati told him he was an asshole I looked at him and said that wasn’t cool man and we were all quiet for awhile as the camp people hurled more things and insults at us as we pulled up the off ramps grassy area back onto the highway we could see that the traffic was a lot further apart and that we would be making better time as we headed out west the event had happened some where around noon on a Monday and there was not a lot of small cars we began seeing more semis and those spread out in groups of convoys we made it out to Morris without incident and without seeing any one else until we came up to the exit ramp for Morris and seen there was a blocked section of road we hadn’t seen many wrecked vehicles the power had went off but people had been able to brake and guide their cars to safe stops but not this time a car was under a semi and they both has burned and the semi had been a fuel tanker and exploded and all the other vehicle for a 100 ft were burned it looked like the little bit of woods on the side of the highway had burned as well. It was not going to be easy getting thru this mess so we slowly drove down the off ramp maneuvering around the burned out vehicles we saw a couple of stores and gas stations to the north of us but we did not want to stop even though things looked normal at them. We wanted to get as far as possible from the city we had been seeing people and their possessions traveling west like us and on bikes, on foot and in some of the older cars and trucks that were still running like our van. lauri had a cousin Jamie that lived about ten minutes outside Morris off of the first exit west of town down some gravel roads. In an old farmhouse with her husband Jacob and their three kids

 

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they were both former military and had been posted in Afghanistan so they were some one we thought might have an idea about what was going on. We decided to head there and camp for the night the roads were clear all the way to their house from the highway it was the beginning of the truly country areas outside Chicago the last of the real working farms in will county. When we pulled onto their lane we could see their house set back about a half mile from the road an old two story country house blue paint chipped and peeling it looked like they had been scraping it off to repaint the house but now it just looked a little sad the wraparound porch was sagging in front by the stairs and the house looked like some weird tired face . There was trees and bushes lining the road and a big tree house at the end just to the left of the house in an old willow tree over looking a pond and the road we seen a young boy jump out of the tree house and go pelting up on the porch we could vaguely hear him yelling for his mom and dad . As we came up to the big circular turnaround in front of the house Jamie and Jacob came out on the porch carrying assault rifles and they took up position behind the porch railings and supports aiming their rifles at us . We hadn’t thought about them not recognizing us until a burst of gun fire and a spattering of bullets hit the road in front of us causing Timmy to curse and slam on the brakes. lauri quickly opened the side door and jumped out yelling out to them that it was us and that we had Timmy and Kati with us they eased up on their weapons and jenny quickly ran out to lauri grabbing her in a tight embrace she was crying and she was talking very fast I couldn’t understand what she was saying from the van so we all climbed out Kati went over to the girls and Jacob waved for us

 

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not to and to pull the van around to the side of the house in between the modern metal pole barn and work shop where they kept their tractor and her minivan and his old pickup we saw the boy go running back out to the tree house as we pulled the van and trailer up by their pole barn i saw the little chicken coop and fenced in shed that they kept their three little pet goats that they had for the kids and I saw that the chickens were running around in their garden eating all the bugs that they could find amongst the carefully laid out rows of vegetables that they had planted and used to subsidize there food and money needs by selling the vegetables at the farmers market and eating them during the summer. Jacob approached us as we got out of the van he was a sun darkened wiry man about 5’7 160 pounds muscular in a hard working sort of way. You could tell as he was walking towards us he was perfectly at ease carrying his rifle a civilian style rifle modeled after the m-16 and he was constantly scanning the fields and tree line at the edge of his property behind us he was an ok guy, a kind of quiet and unassuming guy who didn’t speak much and always doing stuff by himself or with his family I only vaguely knew him from the few times we had family functions since they had got back from being stationed at Fort Collins in Colorado two years ago. He had been discharged after doing his two tours of Afghanistan and being injured in combat by a road side bomb and subsequent ambush that left 6 dead and 13 wounded in as he said less than a minute he never even had a target to aim at so he didn’t fire a single round and than they sent him back to Fort Collins to where Jamie was stationed with their family and they finished out his time he had been an infantryman and Jamie had been a MP at the base. They came back to be closer to their parents who had lived over in Indiana. ‘‘Hey’’ he says like he hadn’t just shot in our direction and like he always had a gun in conversation I mean I was comfortable with guns but I didn’t feel right just walking around with one but I had never been a soldier and had only ever been in schoolyard fights and a few drunken bar brawls nothing where anyone was really hurt I said to him what was with the shooting at us and he apologized and told us that he had went to town yesterday and some of the people that had been stuck on the highway had been caught stealing from a farm and that the farmer had been killed in the ensuing struggle he didn’t know Timmy so I introduced them and I could see Timmy playing with his pistol and looking at Jacob’s rifle with obvious envy he asked Jacob what kind it was and he said it was a modified ar-14 as close to his old m-16 that he could own legally we discussed what we had seen back in Joliet and on the road out there

 

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and he agreed that we had to get further away from the big populations of the Midwest and east coast he was familiar with where we wanted to go being as he had been stationed about 6 hours south of Jackson hole in fort Collins Colorado and he told us that jenny’s dad had just come to stay with them the week before because he was on a breathing machine but that he had passed away early that morning because the machine had quit working with out the power 5 days earlier they had tried doing what they could and he had been going into town every day to talk to people and that they had took her dad to the small hospital but it was full and was not operational and had been sent home after a very long wait and a brief talk with a doctor he had gave them some methods to try but they were already out of medicine what with the massive amount of people there and the place was only a temporary treatment facility with ten beds and Jacob said there had to have been 500 people there that were ill or hurt so they had went home and Jamie’s dad had quickly gotten worse and had been unconscious for the last two days He showed us where he had been digging a grave behind the chicken coop near the compost pile he grabbed one of the two shovels and went back to work after setting his gun within easy reach I grabbed the other and started at the other side Timmy stood around for a minute and said he was going to go let the dogs out of the van and check on the girls Jacob said he could get some water from the spigot on the side of their house he had an old style wind powered well that was working and they had a large propane tank for their cooking and heating so they were fairly unaffected by the lack of power in the daily routine of their small farm Jacob said there was some beer in a bucket in the workshop if he wanted to grab some for us on his way back out. Timmy said no problem and headed

 

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up towards the house as we worked we said very little Timmy came back as we were finishing up the grave and gave me a hand getting out Jacob jumped up easily despite my having six inches on him I was more frequently regretting my weight and general fitness the beer was luke warm but it was at least 95 degrees out and it felt like ice cold refreshment to us after digging for 20 minutes in the afternoon sun Timmy said the girls had wrapped up Jamie’s dad and wanted to get him buried before dark their youngest son Alex had been on the second floor watching out the windows and had warned Jacob that we were pulling into the drive way when he had been working on the grave out back by yelling out the window just as their oldest boy ken was yelling to their mom in the front room where she had been preparing her dad for burial they couldn’t keep him out of the ground for long in this heat he had already started to swell up and they didn’t want to get sick when we got up to the house the sky was darkening and Jamie had all the kids together in the front room saying good bye to their grand father they had wrapped him in his bedding and taped it closed with just his face showing I had met him before his name was Bryan and he had been a thin man with sallow skin but now his face was looking little swollen and shiny it didn’t really look like him at all We waited as They said goodbye and then carried him out Timmy and Kati stayed back in the house and Kati started making some food we carried him out back Jamie in the lead carrying her 2 year old daughter Emily we walked into the last of the sunset and buried him without any words the boys had made a cross and drawn some pictures earlier that they put on it at the end I said a prayer for him and for ourselves silently Jamie simply said goodbye dad and we went back to the house when we got back Kati had made a salad and some flat bread on the stove they were out of canned goods and had not resorted to looting for it yet we all ate very little after dinner we all pitched in to help clean up and Jeremy sent the boys make sure the chicken coop was locked up and that the goats were taken care of the girls got some wine and wandered out to the front porch quietly talking one of the boys came in and Jacob sent him right back out to get some more beers out of that bucket he had in the garage the boys came back in together and they had three more beers with them and they gave them to us and the older one said that there was no more out there in the bucket. We all were disappointed at that and we stood around on the porch for little while watching the sky and listening to the crickets and bullfrogs by the pond jamie had the boys set out some canola tiki candles and we watched them argue over lighting them they eventually worked

 

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out a fair system after Jacob said to take turns little Emily had started to fuss and jamie took her in to feed her and to get the boys ready for bed. Jacob asked us to follow him out to the work shop where our talking in the now quiet night wouldn’t be over heard by the women or kids we went in and were surprised to see it had a working light inside and Jacob explained he had hooked that one light up to a small solar panel he had found at the side of the road near the highway on a deer crossing sign yesterday he told us we idly talked about the alternative energy methods that existed and we skated around the subject of the grid coming back on everything going back to normal Jacob told Timmy and I that he wanted to go with us bringing his family to safety we started earnestly talking about what would happen and was happening in the cities and their surroundings we decided that we needed a few hundred miles of space from the cities anything within a months walk was going to be consumed and over ran by the people in the cities of the Midwest and the coastlines we knew there was a lot of food in the late summer fields but Jacob pointed out that without modern machinery most of the grains would be un harvestable or mill able and that most people wouldn’t even know which part of the plants to eat or how to store it for future use he pointed out that the military and law enforcement was just as handicapped as us the navy would be stranded planes would be down and unable to fly any time soon. He thought that we as a country were being attacked and that either the Taliban terrorists or the north Koreans whom we had had growing tensions with as oil prices rose and they continued to develop nuclear weapons had detonated multiple EMT’s over our country or in the atmosphere he hadn’t seen the solar flare alert I had on the occurrence day and when I told him about it he said it may have been

 

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a government cover up designed to keep us peaceful with the hope of normalcy returning at anytime. Then Timmy pointed out that it was 2012 and the Mayan had a calendar that ended in 2012 and it prophesied the end of the old age and the beginning of a new one a week earlier I would have argued with him but I didn’t say anything and neither did Jacob. Jacob than told us that he didn’t want to go back to town because the local cops were commandeering running vehicles and he had took off after he had heard the news from an older guy he knew in town. He also showed us an arsenal of guns and told us that he had went past the hunt and gun club he worked at as shooting instructor and he had cleaned out the gun smith shop and all the ammo from the range their was variety of weapons and 8 Kevlar vests of the civilian grade he told us that he and Jamie both had their combat quality vests from their time in the service and their personal side arms he said we could take what we wanted and Timmy went straight for the only ak-47 and he grabbed a 30/30 with a big scope I took a 22 semi with a scope and a colt 45 I also took two small 22s for the girls and he had cases of ammo for everything. we talked for awhile about things the things we had got and when we told him we had a generator Jacob got real excited he told us he had a portable welder and that if we could wait for a few days he would armor his truck and our van lightly in the more vulnerable spots like the window and tires and also this way if we were over reacting we would be giving the government a few days more to get their shit together and he wanted to customize his little lawnmower trailer for the animals to ride in and to load up his truck with their stuff we agreed and we headed into the house to tell the girls what we had decided and found them helping jenny to pack their stuff and to sort what they needed for the kids. We knew they had made the same decision as us and we told them to take it easy we had a few days till we were leaving that we wanted to do some work to the vehicles and give them a good tune up. We were told that the only bedroom had been jennies dads and no one want to sleep in there so me and Lauri bedded down in the front room and Timmy and Kati crashed in the van we woke up to the rooster crowing and the smell of coffee I had slept like the dead and felt really refreshed and the coffee’s strong aroma was urging me up off the floor I found Jacob and Jamie quietly talking in the kitchen they gave me a small smile and Jacob got up and headed out the backdoor towards the workshop and barn I heard the generator startup and Jamie offered me some powdered cream and sugar

 

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I refused and sat down sipping my coffee and lit up a cigarette thinking how different things were since my last cup of coffee Lauri came into the room and sat down on my lap snuggling into my shoulder I offered her some of my coffee she looked into the cup I and told me no that it was a crime to drink it that way and barbaric Jamie got up and started fixing a cup with liberal cream and sugar and gave it 2 Lauri who murmured a sleepy thank you I eased her off my lap and onto the chair as I squeezed off to go put my cup in the sink and to head to the bathroom to wash up and clean my mouth I got dressed in a pair clean jeans and t-shirt and went out to the barn where I heard Jacob banging on a piece of metal I walked in and he was shaping a piece of his pole barns wall to become a roof on his lawnmower trailer he had welded some rebar on the trailer in a support structure for the roof. I could tell what he was doing so I started helping him we got it shaped and put it up on the frame work of rebar held it while he spot welded it on and than he showed me how to peel off a section of the wall and we wrapped three side of the trailer leaving just the grated fold up ramp in the back as the fourth side and door we went out the chicken coop and just picked the whole building up and walked it to the waiting trailer we were able to slide it right on the trailer Jacob had built the roof like six inches higher than the coop with just that intent. He still had more than half of the trailer left and we went out and got the goats and walked them up and put them on the trailer we went and got some feed and tossed a couple handfuls onto the bed of the trailer for the animals it was fairly nicely done and he had a couple of dog waterers the kind that have a

 

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slow drip that he had already been using for the animals we cinch strapped them together and to the rebar to keep them from moving and we were finished with the animal trailer it wasn’t perfect but it would work they had a couple of 55 gal drums that he used to haul gas and water with for the farm and tractor the gas drum was like half full he hand pumped his truck full of gas and we loaded the drum onto the front of the trailer where the v of the supports went to the hitch and the empty water drum too we cinch strapped those down also. And than we siphoned out the gas from his tractor which over filled the gas drum we had mounted on the front of his trailer. It was starting to get hot Alex brought us out some eggs and flat bread for breakfast after I went over to the van and started banging on it yelling for Tim and Kati they climbed out Tim struggling into a white tank top and he had a big grin as he made some comment to Kati about cleaning the house and watering the lawn and letting the dogs out we all had a small laugh little Alex piped in that his ma was feeding the baby and that Lauri was making more food and he was supposed to get more eggs from the coop. Jacob told him that he should go check out the new coop and do what his ma had told him to and he ran off on to do his chores with chunky following him we headed in to the kitchen and Kati and Tim got some food and sat at the table Alex came in with 2 more eggs and Jacob sent him and Ben to get the chickens into the new coop setup and to load their feed into some plastic garbage cans out tin the garage we talked about modifying the vehicles and Jamie wanted to go talk to a couple of her neighbors Kati volunteered to stay with the kids, Jamie and Lauri decided the would take the moped and go out to the nearest three neighbors that Jamie was friendly with Jacob said to see if anyone needed to use the well to go ahead and that they had some feed in the garage if they needed it we were not taking . The girls went to get ready and us guys went out to the shed we worked all day on the vehicles tuning them up and putting tin sheets over windows and down over the tires we layered them and we dragged out Jacobs mattress and put it in the bed of the truck he had a bed cap for the truck and we covered that in tin also Jacob had a bunch of paint and Tim added some camo to the trailers and vehicles it all was looking pretty cool and tuff Jacobs truck had a plow and winch on it and was all sooped up for hauling his tractor on its trailer ben came out to tell us that lunch was ready we had some salad and early corn with tea as we were finishing up alex came in from the tree house where he had been watching the driveway saying that his ma and Lauri were back and they had a lot of stuff tied to the moped we all went out and to see what was going on . They told

 

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us they had found one of the neighbors a very elderly woman dead from medical reasons she had left a note on her door saying she only had 1day left of insulin 3 days ago they had nt made it to any of the other neighbors they had given her a funeral and took some canned jelly and a couple of old time kitchen appliances a mill and a sausage grinder they had also found 5pound of flour and beans we stowed that stuff and helped them load up their personal belongings onto the truck Jacob had cut a opening from the cab to the bed and the kids climbed all over inside checking it out the girls laughed and teased us that we had all became mad maxx after seeing our upgrades to the vehicle we had cut in gun slots and Tim had mounted AK out the front of the vans passenger window after we had broken out the glass and welded some sheet metal over them we had to laugh too the boys thought they were cool and wanted to play with Tim’s AK but we wouldn’t let them we spent the rest of the day tightening every thing down and adding finishing touches the girls went in and Jacob sent the boys to keep watch on the property. Jacob killed two of the chickens and dressed them out for supper Tim brought them up to the house and gave them to Kati who was making dinner with Lauri We cleaned up and tossed the dogs the scraps who had been hanging around the trailer watching the chickens and goats inside of it the bottom was grated and their waste was just falling thru we backed the truck and trailer out into the yard and loaded all the tools and generators onto the boat trailer and brought that out also with the van we set them all up for leaving in the morning and Tim came out after showering he said it was open and that dinner was almost done if we hurried we could both wash up before dinner Jacob told me to go