The Wars: Chapter 7

This is the seventh installment of my short story “The Wars”. If you haven’t already read Chapters 1 – 6 you can

Please read the Chapter 1 intro to understand a little more of this story.

Also, there is a disclaimer that you can read there as well.

Okay, I’ve thought about it and let’s talk about the first year or so. That is, if it’s alright with you. If it isn’t, too bad. [Dad still chuckles once in a while. He use to laugh a lot. Not so much since Lisa died.]

I already told you about your escape from Florida and getting here. You guys all went straight to bed, didn’t blame you a bit, I would have too. Lisa started cooking, a real feast that night! Me, well I got geared up and went to guarding the place. I had no idea if anyone was following you, who it might be, what they might do, nothing. So, guns it was. Sometimes violence is the answer.

I just kept moving around, find a spot sit there for 30 minutes, move, repeat. Stayed on the higher ground mostly. No problems showed up. Glad for that tender mercy. Should have stayed put longer. Anyone with a brain that was watching the place would know to lay low for an hour or so and just watch for movement. My mistake.

Funny, how the house was so full of people sleeping everywhere. Man, Robbie could snore. Sounded like a freight train at times. The kids were cute, all flaked out, blissful slumber. Oh, how I wish we could have frozen life in that moment! Just kept it right here.

That night was one for the record books! We ate till we almost busted apart at the seems, laughed, carried on, and enjoyed that campfire like there was no tomorrow. Actually, I think most of us thought there might not be a tomorrow, or at least not many of them. Thankfully we were wrong. There were plenty of tomorrows, just not all of them real pleasant.

And you didn’t fool me for a minute, I knew you and Robbie had a bottle.You guys would “go check on” something or another and sneak a swig. I could smell it on you. Never said a thing to you, it had been a hard few days. Me, well I downed 3 cans of Pepsi that night. What a party!

The next morning we started. Yeah, got out the checklists from the website and went down them item-by-item. Of course you and I and Robbie were into the threat of violence more than the other lists. But we got a reality check pretty dang quick. Food!

I don’t even remember the day of the week it was but it was the second day I know. We got the tractor fired up and tore up the yard, disc’d it up, then planted the rest of the Anasazi beans, more potatoes, then what corn seed we had left. It all looked good, and I am thankful we did that extra planting, we needed that food to help subsidize the stored stuff.[I think he meant supplement.]

I do remember we held back 10 of the Anasazi beans. I said I wanted enough beans for seeds leftover in case the stuff we planted got trashed. It was important to have something to plant next year. We never did need them, but I am glad we kept them all the same. Then we went to work on planting the rest of the raised beds.

It was hilarious! We were out there all arguing about what to plant and where and how…a real clown show. Then Alice came out. Yeah, we turned it all over to her and we became nothing more than day labor. That was real tough for me to do since it was my garden. But I remember my ICS days, turn over areas of responsibility to those with the most skill in that area.

Dang, we got a great harvest out of the garden that year, even with the annual hail storm every September. I can’t imagine what that first year would have looked like without the garden. We had enough food but I definitely think there would have been some food fatigue had we not had all that fresh stuff.

And Hayden, I didn’t think I had any competition for loving strawberries until I saw him pack em away. And you and your blueberry obsession! Lisa cut you a lot of slack there son, she sure did. Those blueberries came in real handy when it came to stepping up all that oatmeal. Remember all the care we took with the canes starting new berry plants that fall and winter. Even starting new blueberry plants. It was hard work but it sure did pay off. I wish the fruit trees had done as well. But man-o-man, no one has a berry patch like we do! It was really nice having all those sister plants to share and barter with the neighbors.

Thank goodness we had planned for this eventuality and had a decent stock of food stored. Without it we would have been like so many other families, starving and desperate. There was so much compassion and charity back then at first. Families who ran out of food were offered the basics, sometimes more. Most of those families were very grateful, some even exchanged work for food; they got preference.

Then there a few families and individuals that raised a stink over being given wheat, oats, and beans. How many times we heard “we can’t eat wheat!” or “I hate oatmeal!” and then there was “beans give me gas.” They wanted meals, lasagna, fresh bread, meat, french fries, and steak!! They thought those of us with food were holding out on them, that we were selfish somehow, that we had an obligation to share. The worst of those folks would use the line, “Christians are supposed to have charity.” I hated that one. We are Christians, we did have charity, we did offer food, we didn’t want them to starve. They just wanted to be treated like damn kings and queens!

We sure did back off after a couple of months, even with the Frisks. Remember them, Earl and Marry just south of us; you gotta remember them. Of course you do. I mean Robbie and family took over their place after they were killed.

[Of course I remembered them. I don’t know why Dad would have thought I didn’t. I just nodded my head to let Dad know I remembered them.]

Earl was a nice enough guy, a little lazy maybe. Then again he did say he was a disabled veteran with a knee replaced and all sorts of PTSD. He got stuff done, but he was real slow about it. He bought his place in 2018 I think. Had to gut it. Lisa and I did as much work on his place as he did, maybe a bit more. I kept telling him to step up the pace but he just plodded along. By the time everything went down the crapper he had the basics done to the house but nothing more than that. No garden for sure. And they only had about 10 days of food on hand when it hit.

He did try to put in a garden, used that junkie little roto-tiller. Or at least tried to. I told him that thing didn’t have the power to work that rocky soil. Even if it could, that soil was dead as a door nail, nothing but sand and rock. I told him from the get-go he needed raised beds like ours, even tried to help him. He was so cock-sure that a regular in-ground garden would work; he thought I just didn’t know how to do it. Not a damn thing grew in that garden! No organic matter, didn’t water it enough, doomed from the start.

We had them eat with us a few times, he wasn’t thrilled with the strews and soups; said there wasn’t real meat in them. There was, but only a fraction of what he thought there should be. We augmented the meat with cooked wheat berries and sometimes meat flavored TVP. He chided us about the TVP, said it was laced with estrogen and would make women out of us guys. He never realized he wasn’t eating near enough TVP to make any kind of difference at all. He just wanted meat, meat, meat.

I remember that day we offered food to him on a more regular basis if he would work on our place and in our garden, etc. I saw him turn red, red as a beet. He said he was our security to the south and we had a mutual defense agreement and that should be plenty, after-all he was a combat vet. Well first off, I was never convinced he actually saw combat himself. Second, by the way he acted and planned in defending his place, well, let’s just say I had my doubts.

I still regret not treating him better. The day he and Mary were killed still haunt me, I regret it. I regret it a lot.

Son, you remember that day? It was mid-afternoon late summer, maybe September, yes? We heard his dogs start barking their heads off. By the time we figured it was a serous problem, maybe 1 – 2 minutes went by, then shooting started. It was a bunch of shots, I mean a bunch. Remember all that brass we found?

Our first obligation was to our own people. We got the kids gathered up and to safety inside the main house. The women finished getting tactical. You, Robbie, and I started that way; probably 10 – 12 minutes after the shooting stopped, probably not more than 15 – 20 minutes after the dogs had started barking. Robbie and I headed straight down the 2-track between our places, you were flanking them to the west. I hated what we found, still can see it in my head like it was this morning. All that blood on the front porch.

The dogs were gone off their chains, Mary was crumbled up on the front porch. She was dead, maybe 15 or so pieces of brass laying around her. I know it had to have been from her AR. Earl was in the living room, shot maybe, what, 5 or 6 times. He was still in his underwear. Not a single piece of brass near him, or anywhere else in the house. Those boys who hit them were gone by the time we got there, carried off what they could. Mostly they got Earl’s guns. They didn’t have food to speak of just laying around to steal. They did leave a 5lb bag of oats we had given them. Picky pricks.

I still say Earl was taking a nap in the bedroom, Mary had been in the living room or kitchen. She heard the dogs, grabbed her AR, and headed out the front door. She put up a short fight but died doing it. I think somewhere in all of that Earl woke up with the sound of shooting and headed into the front room. By then they were already inside and shot him where he stood.

Man, do you remember that discussion about going after them!? I think we all argued both sides of the idea and then some. Three of us, 15 different opinions on what to do. I am glad we made the decision we did. Robbie headed back to be with the families, you and I started tracking them. That wasn’t hard, they made no effort to hide their tracks. I guess they figured no one had the balls to follow them. We did, for damn sure!

There was four of them, we got to their little shack about an hour later where there were those two women, if you want to call them that. I still think they were all meth heads. They sure did start to whoop it up celebrating their hit and run. I am so glad I listened to you. I just wanted to start shooting them right then and there, but you said no, we had to wait. You were right, glad I listened.

God, that was an awful night! I would never have guessed how bad it would get. They built that big old campfire like they were having a party. Started drinking the homemade hooch of theirs. Man, they got drunk. Then they started smoking that crap. The big guy walked over to Frisk’s dogs tied up to the tree. Before I could realize what he was doing he slit the throat of the smaller of the two dogs, Zephyr was his name. Poor dog never knew what happened, he bled out in just a minute or two. The other German Sheppard, the big young one, Ace, he went ballistic but that big guy hit him in the head with is pistol and I think knocked him out. Remember that?

Twenty minutes later the dead dog was gutted, skinned, and on a spit over their fire. I really think I was in shock at the time. But I did know I was going to kill that guy, kill him, kill him. And I did. [Dad drifted off for a minute. I let him be. I think he was back there in the past reliving it. His eyes reddened.]

Yeah, finally all of them were around the fire in a pretty close group, all drunk, high, or whatever. I told David I was going to take the big guy first, he took the guy that appeared to be the leader. We were going to leave the women for last.

I popped the big guy with a shot to the head, you fired almost at the same instant taking out the other guy. We both took our second targets with the next shot. It did surprise me that the women moved as fast as they did. They were disoriented at first with our initial shots and sound. But we dropped both of them as they were shouldering their guns. Remember that?

One of the most satisfying moments of the last 25 years was the fact that the big guy was still alive when we walked up to the campfire. I thought I did a clean head shot, nope. It hit his clavicle and took the snot right out of him. And although he was till alive he was stunned, bleeding and staring up at me. He didn’t say anything but looked at me like he was asking for help. I helped him alright!

I remember that smile of mine. Not sure what it looked like to him, I hope it looked as evil as he had ever seen. I pointed that AR of mine at his head and pulled the trigger as slowly as I ever had. I wanted him to know he was about to die. I was never so glad to kill someone as I was when I pulled that trigger.

We took all the guns and ammo we could find and hid them about 100’ from their shanty in some thick stand of junipers. Only took a couple of minutes. We talked about taking the guns, but there were too many and too much ammo. We came back later and recovered all of it. We didn’t want to hang around too long right then just in case someone came to help them or see what what going on.

Poor Ace, he was banged up pretty bad and kinda out of it. When I walked up to him thankfully he recognized me and allowed me to untie him. He ran off like a missile, other than a little stumbling at first.

We leap-frogged back to our place not wasting time, but not going too fast to forget the danger we might be in. The last 150yds we covered our tracks by dragging Juniper branches. Didn’t know if that helped or not, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Ace found us just as we crossed through the gate. He never left after that, he was ours from that moment on. I wonder why he didn’t just keep running?

Talking through it the next day, we decided that Robbie’s family would take over Fisk’s place. If any of their family ever came around to claim it Robbie would give it up. But it made no sense to just leave it there to rot away or have scatters come in and take it over. They are still there to this day. Place looks pretty damn nice if you ask me. Did a great job on it. Well, all of us did. No way Robbie could do that much work on his own!

[Yeah, dad smiled at that too. He has always given Robbie a hard time about his work ethic. Dad kids around with just about everybody. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t like you or doesn’t trust you. Most people get Dad, some don’t. I thinnk I got his sense of humor…unfortunately.]

It really hurt to have to bury them. In the cold light of day though, I don’t think they could have made it very long anyways. Just not the right combination of skills, knowledge, abilities, motivation, logic, and willingness to do what was needed fast enough. Then again, there was only two of them, and both in their 50’s. They needed more people there. Maybe if their kids and family could have gotten there soon enough, but they didn’t for whatever reason. What a shame.

[Dad kinda drifted again off at that point. I suggested a break, he didn’t even respond. I am worried when he gets like this. It is happening more and more. It’s like he goes somewhere, back into memories about all the stuff that happened.]

We were talking about the first year or so after you guys got here. A lot was going on, a whole lot. I remember the most frustrating thing was the Ham radios. Dang! We had all that nice Yaesu equipment, all the right antennas, power, all of it. And we struggled for months to get it all up and running right. Thankfully we had all the manuals and some third-party tip documents. The best of it was the Yaesu FT-897D multi-band. We had those two long wire antennas along with the dual-band antenna hooked up tot hat antenna switch. It sure gives us the ability to reach out and talk to folks. A reliable way to communicate with the right kind of people to get real information.

Man, it was nice that Elon Musk was as smart as he was, and as rich as he was. He kept that StarLink system running when the Internet was basically shutdown by the NSA and CIA for awhile. Musk opened that system up to everyone and kept the web running for the most part. All those little satellites and servers worked. You remember how they called him the ring leader of domestic terrorism for a while. They tried to kill him so many times. That little army of his saved his butt! Those billions bought him those retired special ops guys who were extremely devoted to him. The government never could touch him. Thankful for that.

He really showed who he was when the rebuilding started. He built those vehicle plants so they could start building those EV’s and other stuff with almost no real worries. And those EV’s without all the government mandated BS. Now those trucks rocked! He almost single-handedly brought back manufacturing to America. I don’t begrudge him a single dollar he made, he earned every penny of it. The coolest thing of all was how he built those plants in solidly libertarian and conservative communities, then supported the communities with money to build up infrastructure, homes, shops, and everything else you can imagine. But did you ever think how he never gave a dime to schools? He was all about home-schooling not government schooling.

Back to the radio thing. It was tough with the bigger radios. But, those little walkies-talkies were incredible and valuable beyond belief. I’m glad we had the larger radio batteries for them along with plenty of extras. Some of them are still running just fine. But in those early days I just don’t know how much harder it would have been without them. Gave us a serious edge with good communications.

Remember when we ran that comm wire to Robbie’s place? Ran two sets of wire, one kinda underground, the other strung from tree to tree. Then put in those WW2 army surplus telephones. Didn’t have to really use those because of the radios but it was nice for the kids or when we wanted to talk in the open and not over the radios.

The women sure gave us a hard time about the two set of wires, remember that? We kept it to ourselves for two days till Lisa figured out it was for a back-up. The wire run in the trees was a decoy more than anything but it worked!

You know when you think about it, those checklists we used really paid off. Using the 7 areas of prepping made all the sense in the world, gave us order and organization to what needed to be done. You know, priorities.

[Dad, how easy was it for us to get reliable information that first year?]

Damn near impossible if truth be told!

The government always told lies since I can remember as a kid even. I never could figure out why they thought it was necessary to always lie about everything. It was as if they had to build this reality that suited them vs just telling the truth as it was. Now, looking back, it made sense; they just wanted to manipulate everyone about everything. Had they just told the truth I don’t think people would have lost trust and confidence in the government. And the crap would never have happened.

Governments are always about power, even our own back then. The Declaration of Independence laid out the sole purpose of government. The Constitution pretty much limited it to that. But over the years, based on the lies out of Washington, they were able to manipulate the US into that dark version of authoritarianism. I give them credit, those bastards in Washington were smart, they did it real subtle like. Hell, they actually made people beg for some of those changes.

Don’t ever trust government! Don’t ever trust politicians! Neither can be trusted, ever! PERIOD!! You have to stay on them, verify everything they are saying and doing. Then pounce on them even the first time they get out of their lane or lie. And I mean pounce!! If you don’t, then they just lie more and more.

I will give the new folks credit, that pre-law Constitutional review process is one of the best things to come out of the 3^rd Constitutional Convention. I think something like that might have helped prevent the authoritarians from building their little US Empire back in the day. Maybe not stopped it entirely, but helped slow it down. Maybe stopped it. Back then there just wasn’t the tools, the courage, or the balls to stop those slime ball politicians. Today they know if they start pulling their crap they pay a price and quick. Should have always been that way.

I don’t want to talk about this any more. Reliable news was hard to come by period. Nothing in the mainstream media was true. Nothing, or almost nothing, that came out of cable news was true, or at least agenda free. Most websites pundits were idiots, just idiots. Some were government assets, most were just plain idiots. Almost all of them had agendas, including me. My agenda was classical liberalism [civil-society libertarianism] like our Founding Fathers, advocating for the Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. And damn limited government!!

I’m going for a walk in the south garden, leave me alone for awhile. Have the kids come get me when supper is ready.

[Dad gets so frustrated talking about this stuff. I shouldn’t have pushed him. He gets so disappointed with himself that he couldn’t have done more with his website. He tried, man he tried. But, he just couldn’t reach enough people, or the right people, to make a real difference in the big scheme of things. There are dozens of families that I know who he helped. I am sure there are more. He just gets frustrated, then mad. The walk will do him good, he likes the garden. I am worried about him though. I don’t know what to do to help him. Having the kids around helps a lot. They tease him as much as he teases them. It’s good for him.]

<- click here to read Chapter 6 click here to read Chapter 8 ->

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The Wars: Chapter 7

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