Chapter 11

The biggest things that I thought made a difference having four of us now were the extra ideas. Sure, I’d had a starter of a plan to stock up. But with four of us we came up with better ideas to start securing our area. One that would definitely start improving our security was to expand our perimeter. Sure, a quarter mile perimeter was nice. But there were three routes of traffic into the neighborhood.

Victor brought up the idea of setting up motion sensor cameras along each approach road up to a two mile radius. Each camera unit could be powered by a small solar panel similar to some of the school zone signs in the area. Additionally, Brandi pointed out fiber optic cable could be run well over ten miles, so running it from the compound to each warning point wouldn’t be a problem. The thoughts on using small solar panels to power the cameras also brought to mind the idea of raiding the local solar business for supplies. Batteries, panels, wiring, generators, etc would all be needed whether as primary or for backup/expansion. Not just for the compound, but also for potentially traveling or setting up other locations.

Lindsey brought up an idea that came to mind as one that I thought I should have considered earlier. Medicines. Not just the basics like Tylenol or Aspirin types, but first aid kits, antibiotics, penicillin, and the like. My computer network had a few basic things that would talk about how to treat a variety of ailments and injuries without actual medical training. But a lot of that would be dependent upon what type of drugs were accessible. I had checked some of the pharmacies in the area when I first started branching out again and wasn’t surprised that they had been picked over. But it was also pointed out that the distribution centers for the larger area might not have been thought of yet. After all, we had hit a couple already for food and other goods that hadn’t been touched.

Most of these ideas were going into a notebook, noting down and prioritizing them to see which should be done first. By popular vote the idea was to work on the medicine run first, shoring up our defenses second, then starting to scout the area better for where others might be, especially if my gut feeling was right about there being a group of “evil” types floating around. There were bound to be singles and small groups with the number of people in the area and unfortunately we couldn’t just assume who would be good or evil. Especially not with the way bad/evil could be very relative. Society morals were most likely thrown out the window long ago. Morality also depended on your point of view. I had already killed someone in this new world. Granted, it was in defense of Lindsey. But that could arguably be called a crime. I had taken the law into my own hands and jumped straight to killing instead of disabling him. The old laws didn’t really matter anymore. Desperate people were capable of desperate things.

I couldn’t help the thought that came to mind: if this were a book it would be about this time we’d be having visions about the need to join Mother Abigail and head to Colorado like in “The Stand”, Stephen King’s book. The reality? Hostiles could be anywhere and planning anything, but then, so could our next potential ally.

We started planning out our next runs. The first would be for the medical distribution center. We weren’t going to be conservative here. If we thought it would be needed, we were going to grab in bulk with emphasis on pain meds and antibiotics, but also still getting the every day cold, flu, and other medicines. That would be a seperate trip using the delivery truck as we had the hope we would be able to get a large variety and amount of medicines. I had to wonder how many of the druggie types would have been the ones in the early days targeting the oxy and fentanyl type drugs and how many of the people who actually needed them would have to go without and die in more pain because addicts were quicker to the draw.

Lucky for us it didn’t look like our being late in thinking about another medicine source would hurt us. The building had been still secured and looked to be in one piece when we got there. It took Gonzo and I about a half hour of scouting the place to start deciding on pallets of medicine we would get. We made the tactical choice of prioritizing the antibiotics, higher pain meds, penicillin and the like since others may target them quick and they were naturally more important than a cure for a stomach bug or sore throat. In the end though the delivery truck was a good idea. By the time we were pulling out the two of us were soaked with sweat from loading hundreds of boxes onto pallets and then rolling them into the van. We also weren’t generous enough to leave our high priority supplies for others. If it was important we took all of it. Gonzo also had one request that I had to admit made me chuckle: he wanted us to grab a good supply of birth control, condoms, lube, as well as prenatal medicines as well. His reasoning was simple: “You never know how soon it will be needed. We’ll do better to have them and be prepared than try to scramble if we can’t get any. Right now we can.”