Shelter: Book 2, A Long Days Night (34 page)

Rich yells back, “How bad do you think we’re going to find things?”

“Rich, if it were me, I’d assume everything in your homes is trashed, think completely destroyed.”

“Do you really think we’re going to find it that bad?”

“Actually, I think you’re going to find it much worse than anything you can image. It wouldn’t surprise me to find bodies in your houses.”

That stopped everyone, they stare at me with their mouths hanging open.

Cheri asks, “What should we do if we find bodies?”

“Bury them in a mass grave. And clean everything in sight with lots of bleach. Lacy and I will be occupied with the ruins of our home, if you urgently need us, come over, but it better be really important. I want all of us back in the shelter one hour before sundown.”

Fred frowns, “Jay, I know some families want to spend the night in their homes.”

“Then they do so on their own. We have no idea what’s around us or where the mob went. They could be across the street just waiting to see if we reappear. So long as anyone who stays agrees they’re on their own, I’m good to go.”

Fred smiles thinking, Jay, I know you too well, you can say this now, but if anything happened, you’d be the first one dressed running to help them.

Chapter 24

Thirty-nine excited, scared and nervous people exit the shelter carrying their weapons and backpacks filled with bottles of water. John stayed behind to monitor what cameras and sensors were left after the storm. They exited the shelter in groups of two, three and four, families that had faced death together. The bright sun hurt their eyes, they haven’t seen the sun or smelled fresh, clean air in fifty-two days. As each exited the shelter, they took a couple of steps and paused, they covered their eyes while filling their lungs with as much of the middle Tennessee air as they could. They’d lived underground breathing air that smelled of too many unwashed bodies, machinery and cleaning fluids. The smells clung to their clothes and hair, they didn’t feel clean while in the shelter. Since they had to conserve water, they bathed every other or every three days. By the second week, they stopped paying attention to their own smell. Many of the men had grown beards while in the shelter. While the adults exited the shelter and tended to pause to take it all in, the children exited the shelter as if they were fired out of a cannon. They ran into the sunlight, they ran in circles playing tag with each other cheering their delight at finally feeling the sun on their skin & fresh air in their lungs. They didn’t have to whisper now, they were overjoyed to be able to play outside. They were excited and playful until they realized their swings, slide and playground were gone, they ran to where it had been and stopped. They didn’t understand that the winds picked up the play equipment and turned into splintered debris, scattered across the state. Their large sandbox was a muddy pit. They looked towards their homes and started running when their parents told them to STOP and wait for them. At first the young didn’t understand, why they couldn’t go to their homes and check out their rooms. When they watched their parents unsling their rifles the children knew things were back to the new normal. The children then returned to their parents and started praying their house and rooms were going to be fine. They didn’t understand why their parents walked so slowly towards their home. The children tried to make their parents walk faster. Usually, one of the parents whispered to their children, they had to be very careful until every inch of the farm was checked for the bad people. The kids nodded, not really understanding, but not wanting another long lecture from their parents, they nodded their understanding while they continued walking behind their parents wishing they would hurry up.

While the families walked towards their homes, Lacy and Jay went to investigate their home which was now a large pile of debris spread over a few acres. Jay and Lacy held hands as they walked the zig-zag path to what had been their dream house. They pass articles of clothing, pictures frames and small pieces of their mementos. Jay squeezed Lacy’s hand, “Honey, everything can be replaced. Much of our mementos will be found and restored. Don’t get depressed or upset. There’s an old saying a very wise and beautiful woman always told her husband…”

Lacy smiles at Jay, “I think I know this saying, ‘things happen for a reason.’”

“That’s right.”

“Jay, what’s the reason our home was destroyed?”

“We’re not supposed to understand why God does things. God never gives us more than we can handle, He has his own plan. We don’t have to understand it. All we need to do is have faith in his master plan and realize we didn’t lose anything of real value.  We’re both still here, as are the girls and our granddaughters. What did we lose, some pictures? Most are still on my hard drive, furniture? It can be replaced. Dishes and appliances? Everything can be rebuilt and replaced. We’re going to be OK. I know it hurts, just trust me, we’re going to be fine. We’ll rebuild.”

“How are we going to rebuild? Where are we going to get the supplies?”

“We have a special, very secret source.”

“Huh? Don’t bullshit me, I’m depressed enough by our loss.”

“Let me say just one word.”

“I’m waiting.”

“Tony.”

“Tony?”

“Tony, our favorite local mob boss, he has sources for everything. He controlled the unions and has warehouses full of everything. He was stashing supplies as the economy was coming apart. He prepared for the rebuilding, he thinks he’s going to make a fortune.”

“I’ll give you ten points for Tony, what about who’s going to rebuild our house? We don’t know how to build a house.”

“Another single word.”

“I’m waiting.”

“Franco.”

“Oh my God! You’re right. He and his son’s, plus Tony’s construction foreman is still with us.”

“That’s right. This time, I want to build a different type of home.”

“What do you want to change?”

“No more wood structure. I want to build the walls and roof of reinforced concrete. It’ll hold up to a storm and also be bullet and fire proof.”

“We won’t have to go into the shelter again?”

“I didn’t say that. By changing the construction to concrete, we’ll get a lot of benefits. We have pallets of bags of cement. We have a few pallets of cinder blocks and reinforcing rods left over from the shelter, we can use them to start, Tony will get us whatever else we need. The biggest issue we’ll have to deal with is cleaning the mess that the storm left behind.”

“Are the backhoes still in the garages?”

“I don’t know, we’ll find out what’s left and what’s missing.”

“Honey, we’re here, what a mess. It looks like a giant crushed our house and tossed the remains all over. How are we ever going to pick through what was our house?”

“Very carefully.”

Lacy and Jay stand at the back end of what used to be their home. Lacy’s looking at the mess in front of her, she has tears running down her cheeks, “Jay, should we even try to rebuild?”

“If not where are we going to live?”

“Could we update the shelter, now that we don’t need it anymore we can redo the inside giving us bigger rooms and more privacy, make it into our own home. It will be quicker than rebuilding here and it will be more secure.”

“Honey, the only problem is, who said we won’t need it again? What happens if another mob or gang comes? What if there’s a war? Or what about another storm? Where would our friends and family go?”

“We could make rooms for our family.”

“And the other 34 who were in the shelter with us?”

“OK, ok, we’ll rebuild. I hope we’ll be able to rebuild quickly.”

“Honey, we will. The first thing I want to do is give the two that died a proper burial.”

“Jay, I’d forgotten about them. That’s very kind of you.”

“I could never forget. Let’s plan to hold the ceremony tomorrow. I’ll ask everyone to join us.”

While we’re looking at the ruins, we hear the noise of a motor coming up behind us.

Turning around, we smile seeing Franco and his sons driving three backhoes to our ruins. Franco says, “Our home in the back was fine, you can’t rebuild until you remove everything from the basement and foundation. We came to help.”

Lacy runs to hug Franco, “You’re an angel.”

“Don’t get carried away. We both know I’m not an angel.”

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Captain Sarnoff moves his men south as quickly as they can move. Their target is a series of farms forty to fifty miles north of Nashville. Sarnoff plans on arriving at his destination in five days. He’s sure he can locate unoccupied farms his people can hide from the army and militias in.  His worst nightmare is for the militias he sold the weapons to figure out who he really is. He knows if the militias find out he’s Russian on a mission to pit the people against the army they’ll both come after him.

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The families went to their homes full of hope, full of joy. Their joy turned to sadness and despair when they saw what was left of their homes. The floors and walls are covered in trash, open cans, rotting food, moldy vegetables and meat, due to the lack of refrigeration. All of their furniture is broken, windows shattered, walls ripped open, even their floor titles have been ripped up. Their sheetrock is cut open, cabinet doors have been ripped off their hinges, even their sinks have been broken. Water pipes have been cut from the walls. The people who took over their homes tore up everything looking for anything of value that may have been hidden in the houses. All of their stored food, water and alcohol were consumed. Many of their homes have burn marks where the mobs set fire to different things in their homes. They find buckets of human waste in the bed and bathrooms. Their homes smell of rot, death, and human waste. Most of the families broke down crying, their homes, their memories, their dreams are destroyed. They don’t know where to start. The mess that greeted them is worse than anything they could ever have dreamed. Parents stop their children from entering their homes. Most decide they can’t deal with the mess in front of them, they turn around, leaving the disaster which was their home, they sadly walk back to the shelter. Their morale turned upside down, the joy and hope they felt in the morning has been replaced with depression and despair. They don’t know what to do, they’re facing a task too large for most of them to contemplate. They decide to return to the shelter and exchange stories. They hope they can come to agreements with the other families to work together on each home.

Fred exited his home and sat on his front steps crying. He and his family have lived in their home for twenty years, he’s not sure his family is ever going to be able to return to the house which is more a standing wreck than a house. He wishes the storm has destroyed all of their homes so they could be totally rebuilt. If the storm had taken his home, his family wouldn’t have to have seen the remains of his house, he was almost envious of Jay. Fred’s trying to make a list of the items that need repairing, he figures the list would be easier to make if he wrote, new house. He considered suggesting to everyone that the group bulldoze their homes and start over.

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Captain Black shared a pot of fresh coffee with three militia leaders who discussed with the captain where they got their weapons. “Captain, we discovered a number of posts on various prepper sites offering AKs and ARs. We paid in gold and silver coins. The rifles, as you saw, are brand new, they came with magazines and ammo. When we inspected the rifles, we realized the AKs are Russian manufacture, as are the AR magazines and the ammo. A couple of our people remember a few of the people in the camp spoke English with an accent, an Eastern European or Russian accent. We think the group that sold us the weapons sold them to us so we would use them to attack you. We think the Russians are selling weapons across the country to stir up a hot civil war. If they succeed, we’ll never pull out of the mess we’re in. We’ll be making it easy for the Russians or Chinese to crush us if we’re busy fighting ourselves.”

“That’s good thinking, what did you do your previous life?”

“I was a Marine captain.”

“You were a Marine captain? Why didn’t you say so right up front?”

“Our previous lives means nothing anymore. If we don’t work together to save the country from our elected leaders, there won’t be an America. We’ll end up like a footnote in some history book.”

“Please tell me everything you can about the group that sold you the weapons, if you’re right, I would like to meet them and have a discussion about their plans. If you’re right about who they are, I’m going to put an end to their gun sales. We might have to ship their sorry asses back to wherever they came from.”