Chapter 6

I had to smile. "How do you know we're not from here in town?" I asked.

"Mister, I've been all over this town at least a dozen times. There are only three people who live here now. Where are you from?"

"I'm Ed James. We're from over near Lexington."

"I'm Bill Jenkins. Do you mind if I come over where you are?"

"No, come on, Bill. The big ugly guy behind me is Jim Fox. The pretty redhead is his wife, Ellen. This is my wife, Sandy, and the other two are Fred Davis and his wife Jenny. Jenny is the pretty one." Even Fred had to grin at that.

"I'm pleased to meet you all," he said as he walked toward us. "We saw your three trucks go by, and I just had to see who you were."

"We just came in to pick up one of the water treatment plants they made here," I told him. "We're building a community where we live, and we're worried about having enough fresh water."

"I might be able to help you a little bit," he said. "I worked here two summers while I was in High School. My brother worked here for five years before he died."

"Any help would be appreciated, Bill. We've got a hell of a lot of work to do in a short amount of time." I went on to explain what we were doing and that we expected a lot of people to show up in October. "You are welcome to come and join us if you'd like," I told him.

"Actually, I'd like that very much, Ed, but I don't know if you'd accept us. I have two wives. One of them is black."

I had to laugh, and all the rest of our group joined in. Bill was looking a little confused, so I told him what we thought was funny. "Bill, I have three wives. One of them is black. Jim has two wives. Fred only has one wife as yet, but I've seen Jenny trying to convince him he should be helping out at least one other woman."

You could see Bill visibly relax. "In that case, we'd be happy to join you. That is, if my wives agree. Let me get you started in the right direction here, and then I'll run back over to the house and bring them over to meet you."

We broke into the building and Bill showed us where all of the spec sheets were kept. "You'll find the completed systems over on that side of the warehouse," he said while pointing. "When you pick out what you want, I'll show you what all we shipped with it."

Bill took off, saying he'd be back within half an hour. We looked through the spec sheets and found that the biggest one they had would supply approximately five hundred people. We went down to the part of the warehouse Bill had indicated and found two of the five hundred person units and three more one hundred person units. The things were huge.

When the plant had been in operation, an overhead crane had been used to move the tanks out to the loading dock. Without power, the crane was useless. I could see we were going to have to move several things before we could get to one of the five-hundred person units, so I sent Jim and Ellen to get one of the trucks backed up to the dock while I went looking for a large forklift.

I was about ready to give up when I saw just what I was looking for. This forklift had two forks on it that were about eight feet apart and were at least twelve feet long. It looked like it had been used to bring the empty tanks in for assembly. I got it fired up and arrived back at the shipping area just after Jim had brought one of the trucks in to the loading dock.

The dock he used allowed him to back the trailer all the way inside the warehouse. That way it could be approached from the side for loading. Fred had gotten a normal forklift running while I was gone, and was busily moving things to clear a path so we could move one of the big units.

We already had the sedimentation tank loaded on the trailer and chained down when Bill came back with his wives. I was pleased to see that both of them were armed.

Bill introduced his wives, Diana and Shelly and we all introduced ourselves to them. "Jenny, would you be so kind as to tell our three new friends about our setup while we continue loading this monster? Be sure to mention the prejudice thing and the nudity thing. Sandy, you and Ellen need to keep a close watch while the rest of us are all busy," I said.

We loaded the main sections of the water plant, and then Bill started telling us the other things we would need to go with it. We dropped one of the flatbed trailers and hooked on to a regular trailer. We loaded that trailer with the smaller things like pipe fittings, filters, and chemicals. It was a full load, but we did manage to get everything we'd need for at least six months.

After we were loaded, I asked Bill and his wives if they would be interested in joining us.

"We definitely would," Bill said.

"How about you ladies?" I asked.

Both of them nodded.

"You'll probably have to sleep in one of the RVs for a while," I said. "Until we get the first house up. Even then, you'll have to share the house with other people. We're not going to have the luxury of having a house to ourselves for a long time."

"That's okay," Diana said. "Maybe that will help overcome the prejudice we all experienced before IT happened. It may also let us become a lot more open about things like nudity and sex. That can only be good."

"Okay, how are we going to do this? Do you guys have a vehicle so you can follow us?"

"Yeah. It's already packed. We're all ready to take off."

"Let's do it then," I said.

The trip back went quickly. When we arrived, the girls greeted us enthusiastically, then welcomed the newcomers to the group. Bill, Diana and Shelly were blown away by dinner that evening. They hadn't had any fresh meat in a while, and the women got together and fixed steaks for everyone.

Day 71 - July 31

God! What a month! I'm so tired I can hardly wiggle. We now have seventeen people in our group. Two of them are children. That leaves fifteen workers. We keep three people on guard at all times, so that leaves twelve who are actually working at any one time. The women rotate at the guard positions to share the actual burden.

I'm not going to go into the boring details of what we did the past month. Let's just say we worked our butts off. As of this date, we have installed the water plant and the water tower. We have installed the sewage disposal system, and we've run the main lines for water and sewer to the edge of the area where we are going to be putting the houses.

We have leveled the sites for ten houses and have three of them ready to install the houses themselves. Fred, Jim, Bill and I along with Ellen and Syl are going today to pick up the first house.

Jim did the truck driving since he was far more experienced than the rest of us. We had scouted out the dealer in Lexington beforehand and knew they had three that were the exact same outside dimensions. Jim had also brought in a huge crane he obtained from the same dealer. Jim got us through the loading, and then we followed him back while he drove the first half of the new house back to its permanent location.

Setting the house into place and putting it together wasn't nearly as bad as I was afraid it was going to be. Most of what we did that summer included a lot of hard labor, but it wasn't beyond us.

We also had a lot of fun during the warm months before it was time to start thinking of making the trip to Missouri. We took days off from working on the new village to do things we just enjoyed doing. One of our most interesting pursuits was of course exploring and scavenging. Part of the scavenging was beneficial to the community, but part of it was just for fun.

A couple of the women decided to build a music and video collection. By the end of summer we had so many music CDs and movie DVDs we were thinking of building a storage facility just to hold them. They started out cataloging them on paper, but I eventually convinced Tina to set up a couple of databases for them on a computer. That way they could print out a list of what we had before they went scavenging and they wouldn't end up with so many duplicates.

Watching movies with busy street scenes was bittersweet at best. It tended to remind us just what all we'd lost.

Day 103 - September 1

We had almost everything in place by the first of September, so I called a town meeting to decide when we were going to leave for Missouri and who all was going to go.

We now had four family groupings, which broke down as follows:

My Family: Me (Ed James), Tina Baronkowski, Sylvina Lathrop, and Sandy Callahan.

Fred's Family: Fred Davis, Jenny Wilkerson, Liz Mitchel, and Jane Frazier.

Jim's Family: Jim Fox, Sue Higgins, Ellen Bascolm, and Mary Clark.

Bill's Family: Bill Jenkins, Diana Spencer, and Shelly Cox.

Children: Kammie Winslow and Cindi Taylor.

We still considered Kammie as our daughter and Cindi spent so much or her time with Kammie; it was assumed by most that she was part of our family too. Cindi was a little sweetie, so I didn't mind at all.

After we had read the wonderful letter from the last of the family who had owned this place, we had all decided to call our village Weisberger in their memory. When we had all gathered together for our meeting, Sandy said we should officially elect a mayor for the village. This made a lot of sense, so I asked for nominations for the job.

"I nominate Ed James," Sandy said.

I waited for other nominations and when none were forthcoming I said, "Come on people. This is not a monarchy. Would anyone else be willing to take this job?"

"I'd be willing to do it if you weren't around, Ed," Jim said. "As long as you're alive, the job is yours, as far as I'm concerned."

There was a murmuring of agreement from everyone there. Sandy stood up again. "All those in favor of Ed continuing as mayor of Weisberger, signify by saying 'Aye'."

A rousing round of Aye's was heard.

"All those opposed signify by saying 'Nay'."

Total silence.

"Okay, I guess I'm stuck with it," I said. "The first order of business is to decide who is going to Missouri and who is going to stay and protect our home. Both jobs are equally important. I think we need to divide pretty much in half with half going and half staying. I'll tell you up front that since this was mine and Tina's idea that we will be going."

"If it's all the same to you," Fred said, "I think it would be better if my family stayed here. I want to keep my eye on the power plant and Jenny wants to keep a close watch on the ranch."

"That would be fine, Fred. You know you have seniority if you want to go though."

"Nope, we'll stay."

"How about you, Jim?" I asked.

"Well, we're a little like Fred. We'll go if you want us to, but there are a lot of things we could get done if we stayed. My wives and I have been talking about getting a fence around the housing area. I think we could just about have it done by the time you guys get back."

"That sounds like a great idea, Jim. I was thinking that an eight-foot chain-link fence with razor wire on top would be about right. We haven't run into any zoo animals yet, but I think it's just a matter of time. So, what do you think, Bill? Are you guys up for a road trip?"

I could see the excitement in Bill's eyes as he answered. "Absolutely! I didn't think we'd get the chance. We've talked it over and would really like to go."

"Great. Now let's talk about provisioning. If our family takes the RV we arrived in, we have that huge freezer already in it. Jenny, can you fix us up with enough beef to feed all of us, with some left over if we need to share with the new people?"

"Not a problem, Ed. I'd like to get the beef from one of the neighboring farms though if it's alright. I know we have plenty of cattle here on the ranch, but we might as well take advantage of wild beef while it's still readily available. There's not going to be any pork or poultry for this trip though. I know there have to be hogs out there somewhere, but so far we haven't run into any. Our flock of chickens has had an increase, but they're not ready to be eaten yet."

"Yeah, I know, Jenny. It's definitely something we need to be looking into."

"We should also be thinking about getting up some pole barns. If we end up with a couple of hundred people here, we're going to need at least six or eight hundred chickens to feed them and that's just the laying hens. We'd need four or five times that many for eating." Jenny said.

"You know, I was thinking. The power is probably still on in California. Maybe we should make a run out there and bring back a couple of semi loads of frozen pork and poultry. I think everyone here has been trained to drive an eighteen wheeler now, so we could really stock up," I said.

"It's something to think about," Jim said. "We could get some of those really big walk-in freezers and keep everything in there. We'd need pole barns or something to put the freezers in as well. One thing I'm really missing is my orange juice with breakfast."

"Okay, we'll see about making that a priority, right after we get back from Missouri. Bill are you and your wives checked out on the weapons we'll be taking with us?"

"Yeah, I guess we could all use a little more practice, but we can usually hit what we're aiming at."

"Okay, see Tina tomorrow. She'll give you all some practice and some pointers about how to become experts. Jim, do you need any help before we take off?"

"I could probably use some help getting the fencing in. I think I'll be able to load and unload everything by forklift, but It would be nice to have some assistance. I've put up survey stakes where I want the fence to run, but I haven't measured it out. If I could get someone to do the measuring, I'd have a better idea of what we need."

"That's no problem. Syl and Sandy, would you guys measure out the fence line tomorrow?"

"Sure, Ed," Syl said. "We should have someone to stand guard while we do it."

"I'll do that," Sue (Jim's wife) said. "I don't have anything scheduled for tomorrow."

Day 110 - September 8

Getting things ready to go proved a lot easier than we thought it would be. We decided to take the motor home we originally came in, and the one Fred had driven. Kammie had kicked up enough of a fuss that we ended up taking her with us. She had really adapted to life as it is now, but she still wanted to be with her new family at all times.

It would only take a couple of days to travel to Missouri, but we decided that since none of us had been east of Lexington since IT happened, we'd make a run to the east and drop off a bunch of new signs. These scheduled a meeting for November 1st at the Wal-Mart in Ironton, Ohio.

By now, almost everyone in the village went nude a good part of the time, even Fred. Sandy was nude almost all of the time, and Tina and Syl were almost as bad. They wore shoes when they were outside and work clothes when they were doing something that their bodies might need to be protected from, but at other times I got to enjoy seeing them walk around in their altogether.

Bill, Diana and Shelly had been a little hesitant at first about the nudity, but they soon came around as well. The two girls, Kammie and Cindi, both acted like things had never been any different. They took to being naked like a duck takes to water.

So it was that on September 8, we loaded eight naked people into two motor homes and headed east on I-64. I don't know how many stops we made going across Kentucky but we used up a fair number of signs. We left I-64 and went into Ashland, Kentucky. We didn't see anyone, but the dogs were numerous and very aggressive. Many of them ran after the motor homes as we passed them.

We went across the bridge into Ohio, then went on to the Wal-Mart store. It had been pretty well looted and the broken doors were hanging open. The rain that had blown in had ruined much of what was left at the front of the store.

We all got out, fully armed, and looked around. "From the looks of things," Bill said, "there have been several people scavenging here. Let's put up some signs. We may get lucky."

"Yeah," I said. "My only problem is that I don't like how they left the store. Smart people would have made sure the door was covered so all of this stuff wouldn't have been ruined."

"It could have been just one bad one in the bunch," Syl said. "The thing that worries me is that this is getting into redneck country. We may find a lot of prejudice here."

"Well, with Syl and I here we should find out pretty quick if there is prejudice against blacks," Diana said. "So, what are we going to do if there is someone who shows up that is perfect in every way, but thinks blacks are second class citizens?"

"We tell them politely that they are not welcome to come with us," I said. "If they try to follow us, we tell them more forcefully. If they still don't get the idea they're not welcome to go with us, we kill their sorry asses."

Diana looked a little shocked, but Syl hugged me and said proudly, "That's my man."

We decided to spend the night in the parking lot, so we moved the motor homes into a comfortable position then leveled them. Tina suggested we find a barbecue grill in the Wal-Mart and grill some steaks for dinner.

I have no idea why we hadn't thought of a barbecue at home, but the meal that night was the best we had since IT happened. There is something about steaks done over charcoal that beats any other way of cooking them. Diana and Shelly had gotten out some canned beans and made baked beans while my lovelies had made potato salad.

We had to keep a watch out for dogs while we were doing the steaks and we had to eat indoors, but it was a very nice evening. It was especially nice because we had more time to get to know Bill, Diana and Shelly than we'd had all summer.

Day 111 - September 9

We took off early that morning. We decided to go down through West Virginia and cross into Virginia at White Sulphur Springs. This is an exceptionally beautiful part of the country and is very rural for the most part. I thought there might be quite a few survivors in this area.

We spent quite a bit of time going through WVA, stopping to put up signs, and to just look around. On at least two occasions I felt like we were being watched, but no one came forward. We pulled into White Sulphur in the late afternoon and decided to spend the night there.

We found a nice spot to camp for the night and then decided to explore a little. There was a nice suburban station wagon in the parking lot where we had stopped. Bill and I were looking it over, wondering if we could find a spare key for it so we could do a little exploring, when I leaned against the hood. I jumped like I had been shot. The engine was hot.

All of us had started carrying radios with us whenever we were out of the RV. I clicked the transmit button and said, quietly, "We have company. This car was driven here within the last hour. Get some weapons and keep us covered."

Tina answered immediately, followed by Diana. Now I felt a little better. I started scanning around the area we were in, trying to get an idea of where the car owner might be hiding. Bill had crouched down by the side of the car and had his shotgun resting across the hood.

"Stay put," I told Bill. "I'm going to get a bullhorn."

Bill nodded and I used the radio to insure one would be waiting for me when I got back to the RV. Syl opened the door and handed me one as I reached the door. "I checked the batteries," she said, then disappeared back into the vehicle.

I walked back to where Bill was still crouched and raised the bullhorn to my mouth. "Hello people. We mean you no harm. We're just passing through. We're looking for people to join us in a new community. We have electricity 24-7. We have cattle, horses, sheep and chickens. We have fresh milk and eggs every day. If you'd like to hear more, join us for dinner. We're grilling steaks with potato salad and baked beans."