Chapter 21

By the time the long awaited Ranger Heights Village election to choose the next mayor came around I didn't want the job. Really ... but I also knew that I was in enough of a legal pickle with my rampant semi-commercial construction in a strictly residential neighborhood that if I didn't become the next boss, then there was likely to be legal trouble that could interfere with my last full month of preparations. And the last thing that I needed right now was more trouble!

On October 11^th, our local JP Henricksen had by the slamming of his gavel, legally disbanded the old formerly all-powerful HOA, dissolved it's rules and merged everything back into the power of the mayor's office. We still didn't have one. Neil Boulton and his wife Tina were both legally FBI wanted fugitives and extensive fraud charges had been filed in both state and county court. Even the previous treasurer had been hauled into the county pokey to politely explain how millions of dollars of village accounts were now all missing. He had done his own bit of skimming too, and had lawyered up like a closed clam shell. There wasn't enough cash left in the village accounts to buy a package of chewing gum.

All of this meant that anyone stupid enough to want to inherit the job of mayor was going to find a complete train wreck waiting for him or her, and even our so-called 'opposition', a collection of the long time residents who'd benefited most from or just liked the prior regime, or were scared spitless of me and my friends (not to mention our plans for the village), didn't want the job either. None of them!

Our Justice of the Peace had set the village election to be held in one month, Thursday November 11^th, and at my insistence he set liberal and generous nomination rules. Ten signatures on a petition was enough to be nominated and stand for election. I had those signatures easy, and two full dozen more, but I was hoping that someone sort of neutral to the current political situation would get a sudden urge for wielding extreme and absolute power, and if he or she and I could work out a few prior arrangements and a firm very private understanding of sorts, I was more than willing to let someone have the job and become mayor.

Alas there was no greater fool willing to stand forward. Even the old HOA clique of the old regimes' best supporters and friends were either conspicuously absent or hiding in the back rows of the village meeting hall and spending most of their time either inspecting their manicures or the cheap floor carpeting.

Old Henricksen was now also presiding over this election and he even waited an extra twenty minutes for any last minute king making or power brokering to occur, but the vast majority of the residents were patiently sitting on their hands and waiting impatiently for me to get stuck with the job. Bastards! I would have my revenge!

When the election did get officially called to order it was pretty plain that only one candidate had gathered the required ten signatures necessary for nomination. Me. One other potential candidate had acquired four and I gleefully motioned that he, Oscar Goodwin, be accepted as a valid mayoral nominee. Oscar stood up and laughed, and he instead officially nominated me from the floor.

"Looks like you're fucked!" Lumpy giggled from his uncomfortable folding chair next to me. He and Ella were officially residents now, legally for the record, as they were now renting one of the empty houses from the subdivision directly across the street from ours and they'd already moved most of their stuff from San Antonio that they wanted to keep or use for the future. Garry and Lori had already taken the main guest bedroom upstairs, so we'd offered Lump and Ella our other larger guest bedroom on the second floor and they'd taken it, but they really needed more space for the rest of their stuff. With two large king-sized beds now in our upstairs master bedroom for frolicking, the room was getting too crowded for extra armoires and clothing dressers. Both of our other sets of lovers were already sleeping with us at least half of the time now, but everyone needs a place to really call home and just sleep in peace and quiet when they're tired.

It looked like Lumpy and Ella's votes tonight weren't going to be needed.

Goddamn it! Didn't anybody want to be our next mayor? No ... apparently not.

The nominations were complete, and limited to just one candidate – me. Just before the official vote was held I stood up and gave a short but very candid stump speech designed to worry or concern my fellow residents about my unsuitability for wielding supreme power, or at least coax out another semi-willing candidate.

"Look folks, I only agreed to consider taking this job a few months ago because I was tired of the way that the previous crooks were running things around here. They were petty dictators and common thieves of the worst sort but if the truth be told, some of my own long term plans for the village are probably even more tyrannical. Let's make this quite clear, my morals and intentions are not purer than the wind driven snow! I have three live-in girlfriends and we're swingers on top of that. If you knock on our front door, the odds are that you'll see nudity, if not something entirely perverted instead. I don't promise to reform my character either!"

Just to make this point clear, Katherine, Amy, Anne-Marie, Ella and Lori all stood up from their chairs behind us and linked arms, and gave the assembled audience a good clear view of their charms. They were all dressed identically this evening, wearing fire engine red leather miniskirts, black stockings and garter belts, and black fuck me heels, each of at least six inches in height. Anne had the most shoe fetish related urges of the women, although Ella was quite close behind, and recently they had been doing some serious stocking up of footwear. Enough to last them decades. Anne and Ella were both wearing black leather ballet boot heels that positively skyrocketed their arches, leaving them literally walking on tiptoes, and making every male cock hard upon sight. For tops, they were all also wearing identical extremely sheer white silk shirts, braless and unbuttoned down to at least their navels. Their tits and nipples were easily on display for anyone who had a frontal or side view. Amy had wanted to wear her favorite leather slave's collar too, the one that spelled out 'Whore' in rhinestones, but that was really too much.

I chuckled at some of the alarmed or confused faces and continued my final warnings of complete and full self-disclosure.

"Besides being utterly shameless nudists and swingers, we're also serious hardcore and fanatical doomsday preppers, which is why everything around our house looks crazy right now with new construction and other weird things happening in the neighborhood. As just your rather peculiar neighbor, we could just tell you to 'go to hell' if you complained, but as your mayor I'd have to be politer ... but if you complain we'll still tell you to 'go to hell'. If the world doesn't come to an end, things will settle down eventually around here and we can all drink beer and laugh about how crazy your mayor is or was. But if doomsday does come, which obviously we think it will ... then as your official designated and duly elected mayor, I'm going to need to do a lot of unpleasant and unhappy things afterwards to keep everyones asses safe and secure, minority complaints be damned! I'll be the real dictator then, the tyrant of the entire village. If you don't like it, you'll be able to freely leave ... but if the end of the world actually comes, then it's going to be my way or the highway. If I were you, I'd think twice about handing over that sort of power and obligation to me. Trust me, I don't really want the job ... but I don't want more crooks like Neil and Lila fucking things up around here either. At least when I fuck up this village, I'll be doing it in theory for the common good, or the majority of folks that share our particular crazy vision ... and that means that the minority is going to get pretty pissed off! So either vote in someone else that we can all live with, move the hell out of here while you can, or stay and be part of the solution to the problems that are going to come and not be part of the problem."

My pleas for mercy failed to swing over any new candidates and by the official tabulation, I was elected mayor of Ranger Heights Village by official acclimation. There were quite a few blank ballots, but no other write-in candidates. I was stuck with the job, officially for the next two years, but when the shit hit the fan late next month it was going to be for forever.

The women undid the last few buttons on their blouses and bounced their tits free in celebration. I had to admit that there were quite a few other smiles in the audience. Still the election wasn't quite over just yet.

"OK. I suppose people get the form of government that they deserve. You've been warned! Before the party goes back to my house, where the beer will be ice cold and the women will be naked and red hot, we need to vote for a village Treasurer and I'd also like three idiots, I mean wise enlightened citizens, to act as a village council. Preferably also with at least one person who isn't one of my fuck buddies or cronies who can be a voice of polite opposition and sensible reason. Yes, that means you Oscar, so stop trying to hide in your chair!

Wouldn't you know it, no one wanted the Treasurer job either! Well, the village was flat broke and had nothing in the treasury and the prior office holder was in county jail. I begged for nominations but no one would even meet my eyes, scared that I'd nominate them.

"I nominate Katherine Yates!" A giggling feminine voice shouted out. The voice was Amy's but our other women bounced up (jiggling delightfully) to second the nomination. I looked for other candidates but everyone else just looked relieved. Kathy didn't act like she wanted the job much either, but I had to admit that she actually was the best qualified person for the job. I didn't think that these duties would be too stressful for her, as opposed to the nightmares Amy had managing the Secret Garden or Anne-Marie's duties as commissariat, planning to feed four hundred people or more, semi-indefinitely, once the lights went out. Even Elle and Lori had been assigned other management positions; Elle was now our quartermaster (mistress?) handling non-food related provisions and Lori had the thankless job of handling my ever growing list of personnel talents that we'd need for the future, and how and where we'd house them.

We'd tried to keep Kathy's external burdens as light as possible while she was still mentally healing, and if I thought for a moment that this strain would have been too much, I'd have vetoed it, but she accepted the nomination and stepped forward to take my hand upon by the small podium, but she left her shirt open and the view congenial.

"I'll do the best that I can," Katherine calmly stated, taking my hand and squeezing it tightly. "But, while I'm fiscally educated and financially responsible, I've got the morals of cat in heat so don't come to me for advice that doesn't concern either fucking or double entry bookkeeping. I've been a banking officer for most of my career and I can do the job accurately and honestly, but frankly I'd rather be a whore. I've stripped, sucked cocks and spread my legs for cash and I was pretty darned good at it and by this time tomorrow I'll probably wish I was out whoring for cash again because I'm afraid this village is flat ass broke. At our slightly postponed fall carnival next week you'll probably get the chance to get a blow job from me at the kissing both, or from one my wonderful lesbian lovers, Amy, Anne-Marie, Ella and Lori. Unless anyone else wants to raise their hands to volunteer for a special early property tax. Get ready, because one will be coming! Or else, then we'd have to auction away all of your lovely wives, or husbands, for a night's rental too. I'm open to other ideas, but I'll balance the books on your asses, if I need to do it! I'm shameless, not to mention that I often call my wonderful and caring boyfriend, 'Master' and sometimes crawl naked to him with a whip in my mouth! Don't think for a moment I won't find a way to get the clothes from your back too, so get ready to pay up, if you want to keep this village running!"

She didn't scare off the voters either, and so by another unanimous vote she was elected village treasurer. Lumpy was then voted in as one of the three new council members, along with Oscar and a friend of ours, Evan from the gun club and neighborhood watch.

To close the official meeting I made just two official pronouncements, the first firing our existing rather incompetent Village Police Chief Max Crosslin and I appointed Garry in his place.

Together, Garry and I gave a brief announcement that 'law and order' was going to be our highest priority from now on and that improving the physical security around the village would be our first act (once we had some money in the village account). I did state for the record that all advance notices of village council meetings would be publically posted and open to public attendance. We might be making ourselves the next dictators or kings of this hill (not to mention also everything underneath it) but we were going to be as fair and open about it as we could. No one could say that they didn't see it coming! It was going to be hard, but I was determined to be fair and reasonable.

The second pronouncement, with the quick approval of my Treasurer and three council members, was an emergency tax assessment of village residents, at $500 per household. This would keep our police officers paid, and our necessary outgoing fees to the county for water service and support our local volunteer firemen. All necessary and non-frivolous expenses and money we needed immediately to stay functional for at least one more month.

No one was going to like the extra fee much, but most of our residents paid it and relatively promptly. Some didn't but we just put a black 'X' next to those names for future consideration later, after the lights go out.

The victory party back at the house was a wild one, even memorable. I was surprised to find that about half of the families of the village showed up, at least for a few minutes, to see what sort of degenerates their new mayor and his harem were. We didn't bother to hide it. We were providing the food and an open bar and folks were getting cheerful and colorful fast.

Our women undressed down to just their hose, garter belts and heels and didn't mind in the least flirting with every man or woman that came into range. Many of our guests just smiled and politely left, others stayed and enjoyed the view, and later the pole dancing shows, and surprisingly a few couples shed some or all of their clothes too and 'hung out' with us degenerate swingers. A few brave ladies even took their first swings upon the dance pole (naked or just in panties) and some even joined in the open sex later. Some couples just fucked together or just watched us but others decided they were open to a bit of swinging and exchanged sexual partners. One marriage later couldn't handle the jealousy and they soon divorced, but the rest handled the wild night of extracurricular fun OK ... and even came back regularly for more and a few wilder couples even became part of our regular open swinging group of friends and neighbors every Saturday night. These new friends told and encouraged their friends, and even before the lights went out, a small but growing minority of our constituents were also our lovers, and even with mattresses on the downstairs floors, open fucking room would be at a premium. Our neighbors were becoming our friends, and some becoming very very friendly indeed!

Normally, the Village would have held its annual fall carnival and potluck picnic back in October, but with no HOA, mayor or even anything in its budgetary coffers, it had been postponed until after the mayoral election due to financial necessity. Already, Katherine was starting to receive payments of our special property tax fee and that was going to handle our immediate critical external expenses, we hoped. Now a full week later there was still nothing much in the petty cash drawer of the village treasury, but I'd anonymously donated 100k out of our dwindling Secret Garden petty cash fund for special 'extra' civic expenses. This 'loan' would be enough to keep us functional until after the end of the world. After that, some sort of different economy other than annual property taxes would likely kick in. Another problem to figure out later.

Now with some minimal operating funds, I gave Garry most of it and he and I worked out an official shopping list for the police department. The four village police cars were late model and had gasoline engines, and each was likely to become a block of useless plastic and steel after next month. For daily intra-village use, we decided that human-powered mountain bikes for our patrolling officers were best and Garry was going to go right out and buy a dozen or so, but that department would still need post-EOTW motored transport for an emergency. We spent a day or so examining hi-tech modern urban combat options but we just doubted that any of them were EMP protected enough to be functional post disaster. Nearly all were gas powered too, which didn't fit our existing disaster preparations. Diesel again was the only semi-secure way to go.

Garry settled reasonably upon obtaining a pair of early-mid 1970's Ford E-series vans. One had been converted into something of a swinging shaggin' wagon and the other had been used for decades simply for delivery proposes. Both had reasonably low mileage and were pronounced fit and healthy for another decade or 100k miles or so, more or less, by our friendly local vintage car mechanic on the commercial strip along our county road between us and Ranger Meadows. The van sides could be armored up easily as well, to protect officers heading into a likely shooting situation. That was one of Garry's top concerns, but without a reliable SWAT vehicle option, these two village vehicles would do.

Also for village use, it wasn't too hard to find a pair of 1980's era twenty-eight passenger trolley buses with reliable Cummings diesel engines and also to my amusement even a 1974 Bristol UK-style double-decked open roofed passenger bus with less than 35 thousand miles on its new diesel engine and rebuilt transmission! The bus could hold at least 62 seated passengers and better yet we could place armed shooters up upon the open top seating area to cover every inch of potentially hostile ground around us. With a bit of extra phone book layered armoring inside each of these vehicles we figured we could move at least a quarter of our residents at a time in an emergency.

Faced with a lack of shopping time for transport shopping, we settled upon another trio of early 1980's Crown school buses with Cummings diesel engines (sense a trend?), each capable of holding 72 children, but probably about 48 adults fleeing in an emergency. Still they were better than nothing, and in an emergency maybe these would all suffice to get everyone the hell out of dodge in a flee or die situation.

Then, just when I thought our vintage van and bus buying days were complete, I found one last little gem so uniquely sweet that I plundered into our dwindling offshore bank account to rescue this vintage gem! It was a 1940 GM FUTURLINER – one of only about a dozen or so ever made and it looked just like a one-eyed completely streamlined vintage train engine that had jumped its railroad tracks to menace the roadways instead! The interior had been turned into a luxury passenger suite sometime in the late 1950's but all of the interior red leather and chrome was immaculate. It had been covered in tarps in a barn for over forty years but cosmetically it was virtually perfect with no corrosion noted anywhere I could check.

It was absurdly expensive, being a rare nearly unique transportation collectable that ought to be in some museum, but I wrote the check within five minutes of looking her over at the collector's home in northern Texas, despite the inconvenient fact that this demonic appearing terror of the highways was gasoline powered.

Yeah and I had to correct that, and automotive purists would undoubtedly be horrified at what I immediately had done to her! Near San Antonio, there was a private auto restoration company (a sub-offshoot of the military contractors Stevens & Stevenson, I think, that specialized in making luxury autos and SUV's high security, replacing the standard windows with bulletproof glass, etc. This was going to be an expensive custom rush, rush job (it was only money) but when done, promised in writing for mid-December, it would have a new more powerful military surplus multi-fuel diesel engine installed (post-EMP compliant of course) and its vintage metal sides temporarily removed and armored with layers of ceramic and Kevlar underneath to resist everything up to .50 caliber armor piercing rounds. The one-eyed demon only really had the large curved window high up at the top, and this and a the side pairs of round side portholes were relatively easy to replace with bulletproof glass. We did request that they add a small gunport to the front and make the four small side glass panels open up enough to shoot from also if necessary. We also ordered a big heavy cow-catcher to be mounted to the curved and streamlined front and for them to then seriously reinforce all of the front bus framework so that in a necessity we could ram our way through any highway roadblock at full speed without damage. When completed, our battling demon of the post-apocalyptic roads would be either invincible in a firefight or unstoppable, should we choose to run instead.

As I'd mentioned, the interior décor had been previously modernized and renovated to late 1950's standards, including vintage auto air conditioning and a built in small kitchen and refrigerator with enough sofa style seating areas for about twenty passengers. Enough for transporting our own family. Everything looked to be EMP resistant, but we could take a few extra precautions after the security renovations were completed just before the big night.

The owner of the security company kept trying to buy our lovely new one-eyed demoness from us, already as much in love with her as we were as a perfect EOTW mobile survival vehicle, but he accepted my polite but firm 'No's' with grace. Our family, and our future daughter, might need this mobile refuge more than a million dollar check that I probably wouldn't have time to spend!

Our only other major Village expense was for the security fencing. Most of that money was coming out DD's dwindling petty cash fund but this was one of our highest top priorities, established and approved as our first primary duty for our Security level of our new hierarchy of needs. It wasn't all that expensive really, but due to time constraints we decided to hire three different fencing companies to handle different sections of the fence to be assured of getting the entire job done on time.