Chapter 2

Day 22 - June 12

We did some kissing and snuggling before we got up the next morning, but we still got an early start. We had a quick breakfast and decided we needed to find out what size we needed to make the signs.

I knew where there was a realtor, so we headed there. We found the place without any problem, but whoever had been in the office last had locked it. I told Tina to stand aside, and used the butt of the M-16 to break the glass in the door.

We rummaged around inside for a few minutes before we found the storage room that had the sign holders. We took about twenty holders and loaded them into the trunk of the car. We looked for the plastic boxes to hold descriptions, but didn't find any. Then, we saw what this realtor used instead. They were heavy plastic envelopes that snapped around one of the regular sign holders. The flap on the envelope snapped closed, providing a weatherproof home for any papers inside.

There were six boxes of the plastic envelopes in the storage room and each box contained 200 envelopes. I liked the system so well; we ended up taking all six of the boxes. I didn't think there was any way we'd put up more than a thousand signs. We also loaded in another eighty holders and a couple of their signs.

We went back inside for one more look around. We didn't see anything we wanted, but before we left, I pulled Tina to me and kissed her softly and lovingly. When we broke apart, I could see the love in Tina's eyes and I hoped she could see it in mine.

The print shop was a very modern establishment. It was also locked. My conscience was bothering me about breaking glass. This was an irreplaceable commodity in the near future, so I wanted to break as little as possible.

There was a hardware store just down the street, so we went there to see if we could find anything to help us with our breaking and entering. Yes, I had to break the glass in the door of the hardware to get in, but hopefully it would be the last time I'd have to do that.

We found a number of things that would be useful to us on our trip, and dutifully loaded them in the police car. There was a very nice reciprocating saw that would make short work of the lock on the print shop door, if electricity was available at the door. I took the saw and an assortment of blades to the car. I came back and found every metal cutting blade that would fit the saw they had in the store and loaded them up as well. I also took twenty, fifty, and hundred foot heavy-duty extension cords.

"How are you going to use the saw without electricity available outside the print shop?" Tina asked, a mischievous look in her eye.

"Well, my love, we've just had a change in plans. The car is loaded to the gills, so I think it's time to go check out your neighbor's motor home. If it's something we can use, we'll load everything from the car into it, then bring it back and park it right in front of the print shop. An RV should have an inverter in it that will provide enough electrical power to drive the saw, and we can then bring the stuff we print straight to our new movable home."

"All right! Do we bring the car back too?"

"Can you drive?" I asked teasingly.

"I'll have you know I'm a very good driver. I've had my license for six months now."

"Good for you. Yeah, I think the car will be handy until we're ready to leave. It'll be easier getting around in it than in the RV."

As we were driving out of town, we saw the first indications that dogs were soon to be a problem in Orange. A large bulldog of some kind, maybe a pit bull, was eating something just off the road. He raised his head up and watched us as we drove by. I reached over and took Tina's hand. It was shaking. We both felt better holding on to each other.

The Beaver motor home was a beauty. It was primarily gunmetal blue with accents of white. It was forty-five feet long and looked like it had just pulled off the showroom floor. It had a 525 horsepower Cummings diesel engine and two one hundred-gallon fuel tanks. Even with the five or six miles to a gallon it probably got, that was around a thousand miles before we had to worry about refueling. The thing even had keyless entry. It had to have cost at least half a million.

I broke in the glass in the door of the house and Tina led me directly to a key rack in the kitchen. It was easy to pick out the keys to the RV, as there were only two sets on the rack.

We went back out and opened up what was going to be our new home for quite some time. We took a quick look around. The furnishings were posh, with a king sized bed in the master bedroom that had a very comfortable mattress.

Tina went over and bounced on the bed. "Hum," she said. I wonder if we could find a use for this?"

I laughed and gave her a little kiss before we continued exploring what was going to be our new home.

I was more interested in whether or not the thing would start, since it had been sitting for at least three weeks than I was in how it was outfitted. I knew we could add whatever we wanted, within reason. I had driven a diesel pickup for a while, so I knew all the tricks. I soon had the big engine purring.

I don't know if this thing had custom controls, or if things had just come a long way since I'd been around anything like this. The motor home my parents had was archaic compared to this. The instrument panel looked like the cockpit on an airplane. There were two fuel gauges, one for each tank. A light over each gauge showed which one was in use. The light would start flashing if the tank was in use and the fuel was low.

While the engine warmed up, I looked around. There was a fairly large propane tank on the back of the vehicle. I found it was used for the refrigerator, the range, and for heating. The tank showed a pressure just below the red line, so I knew it was full. I opened the valve on the tank and then went in and turned on the refrigerator. Thank God they had cleaned it out after they returned from their last trip.

Tina was busy unloading clothing from all of the closets, so I went out and checked out the luggage compartment. It was huge. I was really surprised at how much room there was in there. I unloaded all of the things we'd picked up at the realtor's from the car and packed them into the luggage compartment.

When I went back inside, Tina had a large pile of clothing in the living room floor. I didn't want to just throw it on the ground, so we carried it back into the house.

"There are four sets of sheets for the king bed," Tina said. "We should probably pick up a few more sets, because I have no idea when we'll be able to do laundry." She grinned really big and said, "We may use up a lot of sheets."

I grinned too, knowing what she was referring to. "Didn't you notice? The RV has a combination washer/dryer and even a dishwasher. We can dirty all of the sheets we want and just wash them."

"Oh, I wonder what you might be thinking about doing that would get the sheets dirty," Tina giggled.

"We need to be thinking about clothing too. I'm good with jeans and pullover shirts and maybe a few pairs of shorts. What are you going to need?"

"I'm pretty much a jeans person too." We shared a look, realizing we wouldn't have to worry about what other people thought about what we wore. "I'll need some blouses and some shorts. We'll both need underwear."

"We don't need to over do anything, because we can always pick up clothes. We'll need to think about food. You know," I said as a thought struck me, "we could pull out this small bed and put a large chest type freezer in its place. We'd have to make sure we got it fastened down well, but it would sure extend our meat supply."

"I was wondering what we were going to do for meat. I'll bet there's not much electricity once we cross the mountains. Can the RV supply power for the freezer?"

"Yeah, there's a 12.5 kW auxiliary generator that runs off of propane. We won't even have to leave the RV running all the time. The inverter in the RV will supply AC power while the RV is running, then the generator will kick in when the RV is turned off."

We went back up front and I checked all the gauges to make sure there were no warning lights. Everything was where it should be. One of the fuel tanks was showing empty and the other read a quarter of a tank.

"Are you ready to head back to Orange?" I asked. I was really starting to feel good about our prospects for survival.

"Yeah. Are you going to follow me or am I going to follow you?"

"If you know the way, I'll follow you. Just keep an eye on your rear view in case something would happen to the RV."

"Not a problem. Do you want me to take the shotgun?"

"Absolutely. I don't want you going anywhere without it. We'll pick you up something better tomorrow. I'm thinking of something semi-auto."

"Okay, let's move it. I'll wait until I see the RV move before I take off." Tina kissed me and slipped both hands down to squeeze my butt then headed for the car.

I watched Tina get in the car and start it up, then belted myself behind the wheel of the RV. I looked over the gauges once more and then dropped it into gear. I'll have to admit to a little thrill when it started moving.

We headed out for Orange with Tina in the lead. Damn, this RV handled like a Volkswagen. I knew I'd have to take corners wide, but other than that, it was a dream to drive.

When we got into Orange, I pulled up in front of the print shop and left the RV running. Using my new saw, I had the door open in just a few minutes. We had to look around for a while before we found the light switches, but there was really no problem.

We decided to print up a thousand signs. I started looking around at the different machines and found one that would take the size paper we wanted to use. Then we started a quest for the paper.

We found just what we wanted in a heavy card stock. I loaded five hundred sheets into the machine and brought another five hundred out to use as well.

The machine we were going to use was hooked up to a computer, so I turned both the computer and the printer on. The computer booted up to the program for controlling the printer. First I set the paper size, then selected card stock from the thickness menu. I set a half-inch margin on all sides, then found the area where you could design what you were going to print. Tina came up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders as I worked.

I selected a font with two inch high letters and typed in, "Help us re-start civilization!" I then selected a smaller type and typed, "Meet us at the Wal-Mart in Crestwood, Missouri on October 1st of this year."

"What do you think of this Tina?" I asked.

"It sounds good," she said as she rested her chin on the top of my head. "But, we're wanting to catch their attention. Could you make the top part in bright red letters?"

It took me a minute to figure it out, but I made the change and Tina said it looked much better. Just before I started printing I remembered we wanted double sided printing. I made that selection and then selected the number of copies as one. I hit the start button, and the machine grabbed the first sheet and sucked it in.

To me it looked perfect, so I asked Tina what she thought.

"It looks good, but we need to laminate it to see how it'll look then. There's a huge laminator over here," she said, pointing at the machine.

I went over and turned it on. The damned thing was huge, and thankfully, fully automatic. I keyed in the paper size and the size we wanted the laminate to be. There was a feed tray, so I put our single copy on top of the tray and hit the go button.

It took about twenty seconds for the laminated sign to pop out the other side, but it looked nice when it did. "Let's see if this will fit the sign holder," I said.

We went outside to get one of the holders, and I saw a dog off in the distance. "Keep your gun ready, Sweetheart," I said as I pulled out a sign holder.

The sign was just slightly too large for the holder. We took the holder back inside with us and I went back to the laminating machine. I cut down the size of the laminate and fed a blank sheet of the card stock into the machine and started it.

When it came out the other side, I looked it over and there was still plenty of laminate around the edges. It also fit the sign holder perfectly.

I went back to the printer and started a run of 498 copies. When the first few had come out, I took them to the laminator and started it doing its thing.

We found another printer set up like the first one, using eight and a half by eleven paper and fired it up to lay out the information sheet. We typed up a list of what we wanted to accomplish, and added that we were probably going to end up in Kentucky or Tennessee. We also reiterated where and when we were going to meet. The last thing on the sheet read: All races and religions are invited. If you are prejudiced, don't bother coming to meet us.

Tina started it up while I brought out four boxes of paper. I figured to leave around twenty of these with each sign. We put in about four hours working on the printing, then decided to call it quits for the day. I figured we were about half way through. We shut things down, and I carried a box of paper outside to prop against the door to make sure it stayed closed.

We went to the Sears store in the mall, but after waiting an hour we gave it up as a lost cause. We fixed a nice dinner back in the lab. After dinner I sat in the recliner again and Tina snuggled on my lap. We kissed and cuddled and got comfortable.

I told Tina that tomorrow night we should stay in the RV just to see how well we could sleep on the mattress. It had seemed good when I had lain on it for a few minutes, but if there were going to be any problems with it I wanted to find out now. "We should really make love and try it out that way too," Tina said seriously. "We wouldn't want a mattress we could sleep on but not make love on."

God I love this woman/child. "The first thing we're going to do in the morning is complete our arsenal," I told Tina. "We've seen dogs twice today, and that has me a little worried."

"You know, something else I was thinking about is, what happened to all of the zoo animals. Did they all die in their cages, or did some compassionate zoo keeper let them out to fend for themselves?" We both shivered thinking about it.

"Oh shit. That's all we need. I'd sure hate to run into a hungry lion or tiger."

"Yeah, so would I. Are you going to teach me how to use an M-16? Would an M-16 stop a lion?"

"Oh yeah. An M-16 will stop just about anything. I remember reading once about what a punch they pack. I don't remember the distance, but it said they'd punch a four-inch hole in a man. I plan on teaching you how to shoot every type of weapon we can find."

We went to bed early. Our lovemaking that night was even better than the night before. After her fourth or fifth orgasm, Tina sobbed, "Why the hell didn't I meet you sooner? I had no idea it could be this good."

I smiled at her as I rested before working on my own climax. "Maybe it's just that old 'Last Man on Earth' syndrome. Maybe that's why it's so good."

"I don't think so lover. I think it's because you care enough to want to make it feel good for me. Roy was just out to get his rocks off when I did it with him. He couldn't care less if I enjoyed it or not."

"I do care for you Tina," I said seriously.

"And I care for you, Ed"

Sleep came easy that night. We were both tired and both well loved.

Day 23 - June 13

Our first stop the next morning was the police station. I found three more fully automatic M-16s, which we promptly loaded into the RV. I also found twenty clips for the M-16s, and ten boxes of ammunition. I gathered that up and loaded it into the RV as well, along with half a dozen clip pouches.

I came back in for another look around but didn't see much of interest. I had decided I wanted to get shotguns that could be used for game as well as for riot control. As I was getting ready to close the arms locker, I noticed the handcuffs. There was about a dozen pairs, each with a key attached. I loaded them into a box and took them as well. I looked around a few more minutes and found a couple of bullhorns and extra batteries for each. I grabbed on to these as well.

Our next stop was a sporting goods store. After breaking into their firearms locker, I selected two 12 ga. Browning Gold Hunter shotguns. These would take any shell from birdshot to 000 buckshot. I loaded up on all kinds of shells for them as well.

I selected two Remington Model 7400 Synthetic rifles in the 30-06 caliber for deer and cattle hunting, and all the 30-06 ammunition they had in the store for them. These semi-auto rifles were almost as light in weight as the M-16s, weighing only seven and a half pounds. Both rifles were fitted with ATN 8-24X75 scopes. I knew we'd have to sight them in later, but we weren't in immediate need of them, so we had plenty of time.

I picked out two 9mm Glock 17L handguns with 19 shot clips. I also found two extra clips for each handgun, and cleaned out the store of 9mm ammunition. After loading everything else in the RV we cleaned out the store of knives. I have no idea how many years it's going to be before we'll be able to manufacture knives of the quality we have today, so I want to preserve every one we can.

We spent most of the morning going through the sporting goods store. We also took several flashlights and lanterns and a load of batteries for them. We loaded up a couple of sleeping bags and some space blankets as well.

When we finished there, we went back to the print shop and spent the rest of the day finishing our printing.

We were so tired when we finished, we hardly had the strength to fix dinner, let alone make love. We heated some soup in the microwave and made a sandwich and called it good.

Day 24 - June 14

"Today's the day for finding us a freezer," I told Tina while we were eating breakfast. "There's an appliance store about ten blocks from here that should have what we need. Are you feeling muscular this morning?"

"I can help get it in Ed. I'm actually stronger than I look."

"That remains to be seen," I thought, but I didn't say anything. Our first task was removing the daybed where we were going to put the freezer. It really wasn't bad. Four bolts held down clamps, which held the legs of the bed. We moved it out and stored it in the lab. We cleared out a large path so we could get the freezer into place with the least amount of effort, then headed off to the appliance store.

We looked around the store for a few minutes, thinking about how many years it would be before anyone cared about the items on display. Then we found the freezers.

"I want a chest type freezer Tina. It will hold more, plus it will be easier to anchor it in place."

"What about this one?"

I measured it and could see there was plenty of room for it. It was a 21.6 cubic foot model and had two baskets inside. There was another similar one close by, so we took the baskets out of that one as well.

I went into the back and found a furniture dolly. It was a bit of a struggle getting the thing up on the dolly, but once we had it there we wheeled it out to the RV with no problem.

One of the things I'd liked about the RV when I saw it was the wide doors. If the doors hadn't been as wide as they were, we'd never have gotten it in. As it was, it took us over an hour to get the freezer inside and sitting where we wanted it.

The freezer was sitting directly above the luggage compartment. I figured if I drilled down through the floor that's where we'd come out.

We found a phone directory in the appliance store and I looked for a machine shop. We found one about thirty blocks away, and went to it. The door of the place was standing open, so we approached the place carefully.