Doing The Apocalypse Shuffle: Southern Prepper Adventure Fiction of Survival Grid Down (Old Preppers Die Hard Book 2) (12 page)

Survival and safety was at the top of his list as well as familiarizing himself and his charges with the territory. Good old “stay out of the trouble” advice or watch out over here is one of the best survival lessons one can learn- Stay out of the trouble, practice avoiding it. Life is very real and it is easy to forget how brutal “real life” or nature can be. With real life, I mean life without our civilized society to patch you up or just life without all the support and help we take for granted.

When you have to deal with young people or inexperienced people in general and there are. criminal elements or gangs fighting around you, then it is the perfect combination for some people to act like fools.

“Wow, I feel like I am back in the military!” Charlie said with a grin at having to get up and meet at that early hour.

“Yea, it’s a little early to start stirring around fully but we all go to bed early so it’s not a big deal. You will get used to it. Besides we are going to be doing it at 5 am or sooner in the coming weeks, fishing or hunting. You got to see what’s going on during these hours, get with the rhythm of the land and nature. That’s why I want to move the meeting area around every other day, gives everyone a chance to spend a bit of alone time coming and going to observe or reflect on things for themselves. You will also be able to notice if any game is moving around or acting differently. It’s a pretty good distance to walk between camps and doing it at dawn will teach you a lot.” Farley stated.

Before you can be successful at harvesting wild game, you have to do some pre-work. The first thing you need to know or figure out is what kind of animals are in your area. Then you need to learn their habits, habitats, breeding cycles, and choices of food. What do the tracks look like, how do they react to various weather patterns, are they a prey species for another animal?

Generally speaking, small game animals are most active in the early morning and early evening. They are usually very wary of being spotted by predators and tend to cling to areas of dense vegetation and cover. Not so much at this resort, though. A lot of these critters had been imprinted one way or another by the constant presence of man. The animals still naturally travel along the edges of open ground however, using fencerows and waterways as a corridor. They are predictable and habitual; keep in mind, that trait is just like us. Try to break up your patterns of movement. The animals as well as people tend to travel the same trails and will usually choose the path of least resistance. All of these traits can be exploited to put meat in your cook pot.

“I always get up early so no problem for me.” Feng said looking at Fong who was definitely not a morning person no matter how much sleep he had gotten.

“Oh, I will be up, are we having breakfast in the morning, Auntie?” Fong asked hoping he wasn’t going to have to be up even earlier than anticipated.

“I suggest you skip it but if you all got the food and want it, go right on ahead but be on time. I am just going to grab myself some coffee and eat an early lunch. Hopefully, I can show you some greens in the form of wild edibles to forage on as we wander the trails. You can try them out later for yourselves and start adding to your diet by foraging all these little fields we have between us. The longer we can stretch our food out and get our bellies to accept, expect and want wild foods to eat, the better off we will be here. I know we will have leftovers from that little bit of a wanton party we are throwing but try some dandelion greens or something anyway. Got to take the bad with the good and you will have less of a hard time forcing yourself to be rationing the good.” Farley chuckled.

“So you saying some of those plants you are going to show us don’t taste so good?” Becky asked questionably.

“Well, let’s just say some of them take an acquired taste. I am not big on anything but iceberg lettuce salads so your taste and mine will be different. They all have their flavors from mild to wild and taste better than plain old grass, you might say. I have several ways to cook them but they are best just dumping dried herbs or a sauce on them to my tastes.” Farley declared not even considering a vegetarian diet be it one cultivated in the modern world or wild. He wanted meat; everything else to him was secondary.

For the most part he knew that plants are low in calories. They excel at supplying trace minerals and vitamins, but lack the cellular structure to provide you the energy-rich food you need in a survival situation. That energy comes from animal products in the form of protein and fat.
 

6

The Utility Shed

“Hey Charlie, let’s go look at that maintenance shed you said that you didn’t have a key for.” Farley said thinking that there should be all the gardening tools they needed in there to add digging up a garden place to his projects for the next few days.

“Sure, I will show it to you but it’s going to be a pain to get in. That thing has got a heavy steel door and deadbolt security lock on it. It isn’t like you can beat the padlock off it easily like you did the gate.” Charlie said envisioning how much trouble they were going to have with it even if they did have an axe to think about using.

“I have a little something put away to help us with that chore that you probably never have heard of. Hopefully we are going to get in there like magic!” Farley said with a grin.

Charlie looked at him skeptically and asked, “Ok, Mr. Magician, how you going to pull this off? You got a chainsaw that will cut steel or something?”

“No, I am not talking about anything so destructive as that. What I got in my bag of tricks is a set of what you call “Bump Keys”. Think of them sort of like master keys or skeleton keys. If I have one that will fit the pattern of whoever manufactured that lock, and I think I do because commercial industrial locks are quite common, eventually I am sure I can get in. I say eventually because I know how to use them in theory but I have never practiced or played with them except on a house door.” Farley said.

“What is there to practice if they are master keys? I have a master key to those cabins and it works like a regular key.” Charlie inquired.

“Well, it’s not quite the same; what you actually have is a pass key for a certain set of locks keyed similarly. A bump key is made to get into locks by the same manufacturer that can be keyed differently. They call them bump keys because you give the key a little rap or a bump with something like the rubber handle on a screwdriver while you are trying to turn it. It takes a little bit of a feel for it, like lock picking, but this is faster and easier. I can easily get into those cabins Kwikset locks, by the way, in about a minute.” Farley declared.

“Farley, were you some kind of a burglar before the grid went down?” Charlie said eyeing him.

Farley laughed and assured him that no, it was a skill and some tools he had picked up to add to his preps just in case a need or an emergency like this arose. He also said he had one of those sillcock keys to open up the fire hydrant like water spigots you see on lots of commercial buildings and apartments. They were just an unusual something he had added to his bag of tricks to help him overcome a need he had anticipated.

“Pretty slick, Farley. Well, come on, let’s go try our hand then at safe cracking.” Charlie laughed and they went by Farley’s cabin, got the keys and proceeded to the maintenance shed on the far side of the property.

“Schalage, oh hell yea, I got one of those manufacturers keys.” Farley said searching his key ring for it after looking at the locks manufacturer codes stamped on them.

Farley jiggled and fiddled with the lock tapping the key while trying to turn it when finally, after about 5 or 10 minutes, he cried “Eureka” as the mechanism gave and the lock opened.

“Good deal, Farley! Let’s go see what we got!” Charlie said as an exuberant Farley opened the door.

When their eyes adjusted to the dim interior of the building, which was only illuminated from the light from the door as they entered, they saw two big tractors with bush hogs on the back and a couple smaller lawn tractors.

“Let me get this garage door open so we can see better.” Charlie said and set about doing so.

“That’s a lot better, looks like we just got ourselves pretty damn wealthy. Hey, they got the keys in this one.” Farley said examining a big tractor.

“I am really glad for that, I didn’t know where they kept the keys at. Hey, this one has its keys in it also.” Charlie said going over and looking at the other tractor.

“Way cool, I got a set of operator keys for bull dozers and backhoes and such but I never got around to buying me any tractor keys. I guess I should have bought me some but I could never decide on what models to look for and money was always tight.” Farley said.

“With the amount of stuff you brought with you and managed to somehow accumulate, I suspect you made quite a lot of investments. I had heard of preppers before but I never met one until you come around, don’t sound like such a bad idea now. I wish I had of stored some stuff for emergencies. I always thought preppers were kind of “out there”, if you know what I mean. Do you have gas masks and stuff like them doomsday preppers on Natgeo?” Charlie asked.

“No, the need for a mask was not a risk I felt like I needed to prepare for. We both have worn them damn things, they are hotter than hell and unless you are just wearing them during a tear gas drill or some other short period they are not very practical.” Farley declared.

“Well, there’s a lot of lawn gear in here, there’s shovels and rakes over there. We got some mechanic tools, oil, a few chainsaws, hey now, we got some more gas cans!” Charlie exclaimed.

“We are always going to need gas and cans; hey, I got me an idea. Does Feng have any food coloring in her kitchen?” Farley asked.

“Uh yea, she has some, uses it for making cakes and such, why you asking?” Charlie questioned.

“Well, if she has some green coloring or dye we could add it to any gas we are trading and call it agricultural gas. The reason being is that we will then have an excuse for having access to all that gas we got in the underground tank. That is, of course, whenever I figure out how to get into those locked covers. I will tell the folks down at the bait store I got me a farmer with some agricultural or AG gas for trade. That will up my value as a trader and keep the heat off of me about where I am coming up with all that gas. We got to be very careful about being followed home when we are trading, anyone who thinks we are carrying anything valuable or have access to anything edible might try to follow us home or rob us on the way.” Farley said while contemplating if he had any use for a couple rolls of barbwire that he saw sitting over in one corner of the garage.

“What do you have in mind for those rolls of wire?” Charlie said noting Farley’s interest in the items.

“I am not sure yet. I was thinking about stringing a fence across the road with a restricted access sign on it and putting a short fence on either side like an inspection point. That would be a visual deterrent but if I drove the tractor in and out and mowed the lawn there occasionally it would be an even better visual deterrent indicating recent activity of the sort not normally occurring these days. Who else besides the military would have enough gas these days to be maintaining and mowing check points or for that matter part of the sides of the road? If a hunter or traveler that made it this far out ever saw me mowing it, so much the better.” Farley said contemplating how that would appear and if it was an excessive or frivolous waste of fuel or not.

“That idea does have some merit, Farley. On the other hand, what other message does it send to any would be observer or person that discovers it. Does it say we got stuff, come have a closer look?” Charlie said pondering worriedly.

“You got a point there, like I said I am still thinking on it. Oh, by the way on that point I can kick myself for not thinking about it already, but last night I looked out on the lake and could see here and there camp fires on the far shores. You can see those things burning for miles across the lake. That means building night fires or burning any trash around the lake cabins becomes taboo from now on. Of course on the other hand, lighting all them fire pits the resort so nicely installed for us over there and some of them other ones down by the RV camp sites would, if we ever needed or wanted to make it look like we had a slew of folks staying over here. I am not saying we need to do it any time soon, but it’s not a bad idea to pick up some fallen tree branches around those places and have some fires ready to go should we ever have a call to do a bit of decoy work. Tell the boys when they are out on their wanderings to start accomplishing that task for us, Charlie, if you don’t mind.” Farley said contemplating the notion of having several campfires going to possibly scare someone off in an emergency situation.

“Might not be a bad idea to stash some gas out in the woods around them so you could light them in hurry if you wanted to.” Charlie said considering the same idea and providing a rain or shine solution to igniting them.

“Good idea, if I get the time and materials I ought to try to rig us up some electric lights off a marine battery or something for those campsites, then we would have an instant “Folks are living here” look to it; course what would be kinda cool to get that same effect would be to find a bunch of those cheap Wal-Mart solar landscaping lights and have those suckers turn on and off every night.” Farley said envisioning dozens of small lights twinkling on a darkened shore or seen from the woods marking out numerous campsites.

“Farley, I am still trying to wrap my head around exactly what this place is supposed to be right now. The military abandoned this place after the disaster, why would you think the military  would actually keep this place open other than that bullshit I told those fisherman about it being a rest and relaxation area for returning foreign deployed servicemen?” Charlie asked.

“Training maybe? Hell, when I transferred over from the Army Guard to the Air guard one time, part of Combat Crew training was playing escape and evade on the bases’ golf course at night in Oklahoma. The Air Force uses what it’s got, realistic or not, for training exercises; this campground would be a step above that and woodland skills like lashing together a lookout tower out of logs or something would add to the effect. That reminds me, Charlie, out here I guess you and me need to go back to wearing uniforms of a sort, I have some BDU,s and you wear whatever you got, not that dress uniform thing you got of course but something that looks like a serviceman wandering around at a distance.” Farley said thinking about how easy it was with just a pair of binoculars to make out people at a distance from one shore to another on the lake.

“I will find something, sounds like you don’t want very much going on close to shore is that it, Farley?” Charlie asked.

“Well, it’s not so much that, it’s just we need to be very aware of our actions and appearances sometimes. Light discipline or a lack thereof creates impressions, especially in a darkened world. I would suspect that drones or observation planes or helicopters are being used by the government to try to get a handle on the numbers and concentrations of survivors regardless if they can help them or not. Any type of military attached installation will probably have its own designation but I think that it’s doubtful a deactivated place like this warrants any particular attention. As for what we are or trying to appear to be or actually are, I just don’t really know.” Farley said thinking that just day to day surviving around here was going to take all his time and energy without worrying about any kind of psychological warfare actions or lack thereof.

“I say we just let the weeds grow and keep our heads low.” Charlie said evidently as overwhelmed with all the tasks that needed to be done now as Farley was to consider taking on anything new that might end up being more harmful than helpful.

“You and I need to come up with something to use for a makeshift plow for these tractors but I am kind of short on ideas at the moment.” Charlie said studying the three point hitch attaching the lawn mowing bush hog on the back.

“I have been pondering on that also; eventually I can find me something to try to build us one out of maybe but for now I am thinking a harrow or drag of some sort will be the easiest thing to create.” Farley said and began describing how to accomplish this task using wood or pipe.