Chapter 20

Rob did an aerial recon of the other road later that morning and since he didn't see any vehicles, we decided to go over and look at the barns.

Jim asked John, Jenny, and Doris to go with us so they could tell us the status of what was being done. Jenny started explaining things as we walked over.

"The dairy barn actually turned into two barns," Jenny said. "One barn is for feeding and milking. It also has stalls for birthing. The other barn is for storage of hay and grain. We've run electricity over to the livestock valley and after doing a little research, we installed automatic milkers. We have the potential for milking up to thirty cows at once."

"That's impressive. How about the hogs?"

"The hogs require even more room than the cattle. Again there is one barn for food storage. There is one smaller barn that is split in half. One side is for birthing and the other side is a nursery, where the sows and piglets can be together. There is a very large barn for pigs that are being raised for slaughter. One end of that barn is partitioned off for sows and boars that are the breeding stock. Then there are the outside pens, part of which are covered by another pole barn roof."

"The chickens are basically treated like the hogs. I learned that chickens require about three square feet of barn space per chicken. We have one barn that is fifty feet by one hundred feet for chickens being raised for slaughter. There is another barn for chickens being raised for egg production. Both of these barns have food storage in one end of the barn. There are outside lots for both types of chickens. Part of each lot is covered."

"How are you coming on supplying water to the barns, Doris?"

"We had to do a lot of thinking on that, Ed. We're using a pump to pump creek water up into a water tower. Jenny tells me the low temperature in the winter months averages around twenty-five degrees. We had to take that into consideration too. We have watering troughs set up for the cattle and we have most of the equipment in place for the chickens and hogs. We should have everything completely operational within a week."

"It sounds like you guys are really on top of things."

"We're working hard at it," Jenny said. "John is champing at the bit to start bringing in hogs and additional chickens. That should be happening soon."

We looked around at all of the buildings. John showed me the waste disposal systems for all of the animals. We planned on using most of the manure for fertilizer. We also looked over all of the stalls and he explained why they were set up the way that they were.

Martha Occhuizzo was waiting for me when we got back to the house. "Could I talk to you for a minute, Ed?" she asked.

"Sure, Martha. What's up?"

"I was just thinking about storage for the things we are going to try to preserve. Do you know if anyone has given that any thought?"

"Not that I know of. I do know it's going to take a lot of room. Some of the storage areas don't have to be close to the village, but other things like computer storage will have to be where it can have access to electricity 24/7. Also, food storage should be fairly close."

"Do we have anyone in the village who knows anything about long term storage of things like machinery?"

"I don't know. Maybe June would know. You should at least talk to her. I know that years ago they used something called Cosmoline. It was sprayed on anything that was to be stored and it formed an airtight seal that prevented the thing from rusting. There has to be better ways of doing it now. The Cosmoline was a pain in the butt to get off."

"That's something else we'll have to do research on. Maybe we'll even have to invent a new method."

"I think we do have at least one chemist in the group. Maybe he or she can help."

"That's a good idea, Ed. I guess I will talk to June. Maybe I'm getting the cart before the horse, but I'm worried about how badly things have deteriorated in just the last six months."

That evening we had quite a surprise at dinner. It was Bell and Brenda's turn to fix the meal. Homer had been talking with me for a while, then had gone off to the upstairs bathroom to clean up.

When the meal was ready, Homer's wives went off to get him. They came back a few minutes later with a very nude, very red-faced Homer in tow. They practically had to drag him to the table, but when he was seated, he seemed to relax a little.

My wives ignored his nudity and didn't make any remarks about it. It was only when the three of them had gotten up and headed for bed that anything was said. They had almost reached the bottom of the stairs when Tina said, "Homer." Homer looked back over his shoulder at Tina. "Nice butt," Tina said.

I think Homer's entire body was red as his giggling wives led him up the stairs.

Day 181 - November 18

Evie was sitting on my lap and we were sipping our morning coffee when she asked, "We didn't get a chance to talk yesterday. What was Della talking to you about yesterday morning?"

"She said she wants to marry us, but that she's a little afraid."

"What did you tell her."

"I told her there was no rush and that I was kind of enjoying having her as my daughter."

Evie nodded her head. "That was probably a good thing to say. What was her response?"

"She said she was enjoying being my daughter too. She also said she was enjoying my rubbing her butt and she wanted me to continue with that."

I was afraid Evie's laugh was going to wake the rest of the family. "That is fantastic. She is coming along. She is definitely not afraid of you any more and I've noticed she is even a lot more relaxed around Homer, Fred, and Jim. Even if she is still a little afraid of sex, she's starting to enjoy the contact with you."

"I want her to enjoy sex, whether it's with us or with someone else. I'd still prefer she found someone closer to her own age and someone without six other wives. She's like a puppy that's been kicked. She didn't trust anyone at first. I know that she said she trusted us, and she did trust us more than she trusted anyone else, but there was still something there that caused her to not open up completely. Now, she seems to be blossoming."

"You're right, but now I think she trusts us completely. Especially you. I think it's time to take it up a notch."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the next time she's sitting on your lap, start out by holding her and stroking her back as you usually do. Then when she's relaxed, stroke her butt for a few minutes. After she is completely comfortable with that, caress her side for a few minutes, then gently run your hand over her breasts. When you've done that, go back to stroking her back and see what her reaction is."

"Are you sure that's wise?"

"Not entirely, but it is the next logical step. If she seems upset, wait a few days before trying it again."

It wasn't but a few minutes later that Della joined us. She got herself some coffee and claimed part of my lap. We said our good mornings and Della snuggled in. A few minutes later, Evie winked at me and said she wanted to start breakfast. Della started to get up and help her, but Evie told her to just sit still.

I took Evie's advice and started rubbing Della's back. I did this for a few minutes, then lengthened my strokes to include her butt. She smiled at me and snuggled closer.

At the end of one of my strokes, I just left my hand holding one of her butt cheeks and started stroking her arm with my other hand. After a while, I brushed my hand across her breast. Della's whole body jerked and she gasped.

"I'm sorry Della," I said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"It did startle me, but it didn't scare me. Actually, it felt kind of good."

I brushed my hand across her breast again and she just snuggled closer. I continued stroking her arm and occasionally caressing her breast in passing. Then, I gently cupped her breast and held it for a minute. When she didn't object, I started playing with her nipple, which immediately started to grow in my hand.

When her nipple was long and hard, I started rubbing it between my thumb and forefinger. This elicited another gasp and she arched her back, pushing her breast against my hand. I leaned down and kissed her. When we broke apart, I removed my hand from her breast and said, "I think that's enough for today, love. Besides, I think Evie has breakfast ready."

Della just smiled at me and got up. When I started for the kitchen, Della put her arm around me and walked beside me.

Homer and I were sitting around after breakfast talking about what would need to be done soon on the helicopters for maintenance. He was telling me that the big Sikorsky had about one more California round trip before it needed service, but that the little Bell needed it now. I told him to go ahead with it and he asked if Rob was available to stand guard while he did the work.

Rob came in before I could even answer Homer. With him were Jim, John, Fred, and Glen. Homer immediately asked if Rob could help him.

"I could do it tomorrow, Homer, but why don't you ask June to get Les Gannon to help? He's as good with the Bell as I am and it would give him some experience," Rob said.

"Homer, how hard would it be to train an auto mechanic to do maintenance on the choppers?" I asked.

"Well, for the general run of things, like what I'm going to do on the Bell, it wouldn't be hard at all. It wouldn't even be too bad on any of it, I'd just want to oversee it the first few times they did it."

"I know George Simonson is an auto mechanic," I said. "There may be a few more. Why don't you get June to assign all of them to you tomorrow and use the maintenance as a teaching session?"

Homer grinned, "I could do that. Are you planning to do a lot of flying?"

"Yeah, some," I said. "I'd like to get some medicines brought in and maybe do some other exploring. After we've had some time to consolidate and to get some more houses put in (Jim groaned) I'd like to travel through the south and the southwest and try to find more people to join us."

"That brings up one of the things I wanted to talk to you about," Jim said. "Do we want to continue putting houses in?"

"I think so," I said. "I don't know how many people are left alive out there, but I'd like to have a couple of thousand people here if we could. For one thing, it increases the gene pool and for another we need as many people as we can get to work on this preservation thing."

"We're going to have to increase the size of our fenced area if we add that many more houses. We'll also have to bring in some more water treatment plants and sewage disposal plants to service them."

"Yeah, I know it's a lot of work, but at least in this climate we can work on it year round. We're also going to want to look into what kind of building we're going to want for Eve's computer system. It can't be a pole barn."

"I worked on one computer building a few years ago," Jim said. "It was a lot different than regular construction. I was just a grunt, so I wasn't privy to the planning or anything, but they had some really big assed air conditioners. The floors were panels that could be removed for running wiring under the floor."

"I'm pretty sure we can find plans at the library or at the UK library for what we need, but we will need to build it once we have the plans. We have some good people here and any kind of equipment we could possibly need to help them, so the building shouldn't be a problem. We do need to figure out where we're going to put things like that."

"Okay," Jim started, "What are we going to..." A distant explosion cut him off.

"What the hell?" I asked.

Glen was grinning. "I think we may have just solved our problem with the sniper," he said.

I had several M-16s in the house, so I passed them out to everyone and along with Tina and Sandy, we headed out to see if Glen's land mine had netted our sniper. Glen told us all to stay behind him, as he knew where all of the mines had been placed.

It was a pretty good hike up to the hill where the sniper had hidden before. None of us said much as we made our way there. We were all very vigilant as we hurried toward the site.

Glen motioned for us to stop as we neared the top of the hill. Up ahead, we could see a body dressed in camouflage lying on the ground. Glen approached it cautiously.

When he was standing by the body he motioned us forward. We all made sure to follow in Glen's tracks. The man was lying in a large pool of blood. His left leg was missing, just below the knee. Bits of meat and bone were strewn around over the entire area.

"He almost made it through," Glen said. "He hit a mine in the last tier."

Jim moved forward and turned the body over. It was Bob Roberts, or at least what was left of him. He was dead. Even if he hadn't been, there wasn't much we could have done for him. We couldn't have taken him into our village, and a man with one leg wouldn't have been able to make it on his own, even if Chris had nursed him back to health before we made him leave.

"What should we do about the body?" Glen asked.