Chapter 2

We had to manage our space, considering that we HAD to eat, and everything else could be found again elsewhere. We did over-stack those semis, though. Since we never went over 45, who cared? We started to think about making a wider sweep for equipment, but decided to limit ourselves to passing thru areas with the places we wanted to salvage from. For example, Bass Pro Shops and Cabella's were two national sporting goods chains. We wanted to hit a couple of military bases to see what was available

Mark Twain's bluffs got a uniformly positive vote. By April we'd shaken out pretty well. We'd combined lists and stolen an idea from the Walgreens warehouse. We kept everything in transport tubs with labels on the tubs and each tub labeled. When you took something out, you marked off on the label. Another database kept track of all the tubs and what was in them. It worked pretty damned well! With ten people (more on that later) consuming and replenishing stock levels we really needed a centralized inventory. We walked the inventory once a week for a while to see what we were consuming. Yeah, I was a programmer way back when. I fixed computers too. Fat lot of good that'll do me now.

We ended up the spring by picking up two more women that wandered into our lives.

Pat was a real surprise at a seventeen-looking sixty-two, was attracted by the music when we were out playing Frisbee one afternoon. She was a retired organic- and bio-chemistry teacher from the next college town over, Dekalb. Damn, but I'd missed the ball. I didn't catch any trouble for it though, because everyone else forgot about the college library too. That was another semi full we pulled out. They had a REAL nice agronomy and animal husbandry section. April was a black girl we picked up at a truck stop near Springfield Il. She scared the hell out of me, a hitch hiker in the middle of a desolated highway like that. It was like something out of a twilight zone episode. She was my age, 49, looking like 17 like everyone else but the young kids. April was a helicopter mechanic, back in the day.

Ruth started talking turbines, gearboxes, collectives and mount points. We never knew what hit us. Next thing we knew, we were headed for Fort Knox, Kentucky. I never thought it was so big! We spent two weeks there prepping a Sikorsky dual bladed whirlybird for a test cruise. It sure made finding a place to settle down easier.

We left the semis at Fort Knox until we knew where we were going. The next addition was a real surprise. It was a rescue, really. It was almost comical, except for Tom's viewpoint. That's Big Tom, the farmer we found half stomped to death in his bull's field. Terri spotted him and Cindy damned near landed on that bull. It took a while to get the story out of him, but we finally did. The bull played dead until it was between Tom and the gate, then went after him. I must say, that bull made a nice May Day barbeque once Tom was back on his feet. Tom's place was just what the doctor ordered. It was damned near perfect. It was up on the bluffs a half mile from the river. There was a blacktop out to the highway, not a gravel road. The bluff was over eighty square miles, split over several farms, and over 70 feet high. We had to put up a couple of pole barns for storage of all the semi's, and expanding the kitchen with commercial gear was actually fun. We got tired of filling propane tanks, and connected four delivery trucks into a two-tier distribution farm. I set up the lines to feed two sets of two trucks at a time. When one set ran out, we switched over and went to fill the others. I knew we'd be in trouble when the propane ran out, but that was a question for many tomorrows.

We found a mobile hospital at Fort Knox, and a couple of ambulances, four water buffalo (tow able tankers), a fire truck and MREs galore. I kept an eye out for explosives and grenades, but all I could find were 25 M-79 grenade launchers and a couple thousand rounds of HE. I found four field mortars and 60 cases of rounds. It would do.

One morning I woke up with a stiffy planted somewhere soft and warm. I'd never even thought about sex since the die-off, and here was my closest friend. Cindy woke up and sort of nuzzled me with her back end. "Damn, that feels nice. We thought you were neutered." "Looks like not. Lucky me." "Lucky you? Don't expect to sleep alone for a while. You're going to see some improved attitudes around here. Now stop teasing me." Well, I stopped. Or started. Whatever—it sure felt nice. She was right. As soon as she left the bed I started hearing bits of conversation— just the loud parts. "You what?" "About time!" "Me next!" "Hot Damn!" I felt like a pouter pigeon.

I got buttonholed by Jean that morning. She wanted to do a motility test to see if I was shooting blanks or not. Nope. Well, I got cut off again for a month until the birth control cycled. What did I do? "Well, it looks like it's you and me again, Rosie." I wasn't the only one grousing, believe me.

Pole barns aren't that hard to build if you can borrow the trucks Ma Bell uses to plant telephone poles. The concrete floors were harder. We dug out and concreted ramp pits to accommodate the semis so that we could load and unload directly to the docks at each pole barn. We had to keep pumping 'em out because we forgot drains and lines—the damned things kept flooding with each rain. Think mini-swimming pools. With oil slicks. Guess what we re-dug as soon as planting was over the next spring. You damned betcha.

We had about 400 head of whiteface cattle. Ruth spotted some light brown cattle about 30 miles away. Tom called 'em Swiss, and said they were good milkers. Lots more butterfat. We went to get 'em, Tom and I. If there's anything I dislike it's herding cattle. Now THAT was an easy discovery to make. We did eventually get 'em moved. It took over a week. Good news—there was a bull, too!

We got heroes' welcomes when we returned. I swear, the next morning I laughed, because he was grinnin' like a shit-eatin' dog. Funny, he said the same about me. We were both walking funny. June. The birds were coming back. I noticed bees, too. Thank god, or we wouldn't have pollinated fields.

Ruth kept making wider and wider circles in her helicopter searches. She finally found horses near Lexington Kentucky. They were underfed and slightly wild. Twenty horses came to the salt block and found the grain we'd left. Tom and I'd set up a water tank, too. We quietly closed the gate on a seven acre field that we'd chosen as a pen. No troubles. They must have been truck fed before, because I drove out with Tom the next morning with grain and hay in a pickup, and they came right up to the truck. Within a week we were riding most of them. I didn't know any other way to do it, so we geared up and trailed them home. It took over a month and a half, start to finish. The girls took to the horses like kids to dogs. The things were spoiled in nothing flat. We had horses walking behind the girls all day long, hoping for a petting or a sweet.

August. The clan had been throwing excess milk away. That had to stop. I asked Terri to figure out how to make cheese. You'd think that I'd handed her the Holy Grail. I didn't see her for days. We had cottage cheese right away, and sour cream. Then white cheese, then Colby and cheddar. Pizza again! Mozzarella! Romano!

My schedule boiled down to replenishment. I pumped one LP tanker into the others via the piping and refilled it at the tank farm. I hit grain elevators for ground corn and wheat mix for the livestock. I stole hay from neighboring farms. We stocked up on canned vegetables and fruit. We collected straw and chipped brush for bedding. Who would have thought of stealing manure piles?

We mapped out the fields and scattered manure to fertilize 'em for the next year. I remember my uncle would run a three year cycle of crops—corn, hay and clover, plowing under the clover to bring the nitrogen back. Tom was surprised that I knew about crop rotation and fallow years. He found some books on no-till agronomy. Boy, that made the corn crops easier to prepare after that. We did spot some porkers, but they proved too hard to catch. I dreamed that night of my old book collection. The Foxfire books! I tore into my stored books like a wild man. I found them. It took a bit of reading, but there it was. This old lady used to dump corn and mast into the woods every day for a month before the slaughter to get them used to people feeding them. We kept looking for horses. We needed a stallion.

October. Who would have thought it? Horses in Ohio. We found our stallion and more. Karl was an old farmer, 72 years gone. His wife and family took the big sleep long ago, then this hit. He was tired of being alone. I held out my hand and he took it. It was funny, he looked 17 but acted ancient. The kids saw it and took to him immediately. We all looked to him for advice.

I remembered the foxfire books and decided to emulate 'em. I got the kids in on it, too. One book described the questions that they'd give anyone they were interviewing for the books. We started with that and went nuts. Karl was from the back of the back. He'd plowed with mules, hunted coon and deer, and knew his business. He's the one that taught us to store sausage in lard and how to butcher hogs. He remembered his ma cooking on a wood stove and learning as a teen. Where was that place? Layman's? Lyman's? I'd have to remember. They had everything from horse drawn buggies and wagons to wood stoves to grain mills. We HAD to raid that place. We kept looking for chickens. No good. It seemed that the avian symptoms were reversed to that of man's. The larger birds were gone. Everything larger than a crow was extinct. No more turkey.

What did we do over the winter? Why, get into trouble, of course. I took a long look at a bank, and my curiosity got the better of me. We found one with an open vault. The guys and I took a generator, big drill and lots of bits in there one day and started in on the safety deposit boxes. We collected the silver coins for smithing, the bulk gold for jewelry. Any nice jewelry we collected, too. That took care of the Christmas presents for the ladies. We had so much fun, we decided to do it again the next year. I told the guys what I'd read about a burning bar, also known as a thermal lance. It's a long piece of gas pipe packed with thermite (iron oxide & aluminum), with a small hole run down the middle. You run an oxygen hose to one end, crack it open and ignite the other with an acetylene torch. You need an aluminized suit, draft fan and welder's helmet to use it, but it'll melt about anything. We screwed up more safes than the James gang. We eventually found some bantam hens and a rooster. It took four long years, but that's for later.

Year Two

We were well into the winter blahs. Linda finally let me know that she took her job seriously. She came up to me with an open encyclopedia, pointing at a picture of a Persian rug. "Have you been holding out on me?" I had no idea what to say, so I deadpanned it. "Yeah." She just looked at me like I'd fallen off her boot. "Bastard." She turned and walked away. Well, hell. Time for some Linda stuff, I guess. Every city of any size has a Persian/cashmere rug dealer somewhere. We just had to find one. We knew the western Kentucky main track was clear. Lexington had a nice ring road to let us navigate the city. I talked it over with Cindy, and we agreed. Ruth flew us out and we drove another semi back. It was probably the most expensive—dollar-wise—semi we'd ever put together. We figured over six million bucks in silk and wool hand-made rugs. It sure brightened up the place. Linda was my best bud for a while after that, but I was in trouble and knew it. She had figured out that I could be had.

We planted corn, hay, oats, soybeans and wheat. Have you ever farmed? Spring is hell.

You plow, disc and harrow the ground. Then you plant. That's once over each square foot of the land for each step. Then you weed between the corn rows and bean rows with a special tractor. Then you harvest. Nobody sleeps during harvest. Then you've got to STORE what you've harvested. We found seed at the ag co-op the first year. We needed to keep our own each year thereafter—seeds don't germinate when they get old.

That's the livestock fields. Then there were the truck gardens. We planted sweet corn, tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, celery, lettuce, radishes, squash, potatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, beets, more tomatoes, cucumbers, peas and beans At least we remembered popcorn and sweet corn...

My god, we had 4 varieties of onions, six of peppers, eight of beans and peas. The six varieties of squash had to be kept from each other or they'd cross-pollinate. We dug and flooded lowland for rice. We had four varieties of tomatoes. Six of lettuce. It was insane.

I never wanted to see another potato hill again as long as I lived. We had over forty acres in truck garden, just to keep the seeds alive and survive the next year.

Oh, and did I mention marigolds? We had fucking marigolds growing out of our ears to keep the bugs and slugs out.

We had to put in two commercial refrigerated rooms just to keep our seed. Some seed needs to chill to under 40 degrees for a while to "prime" the germination, but they can't freeze for long durations. They dry out and die. I could never remember which did and which didn't, so we chilled 'em all.

The propane situation was bothering me. Our success or failure hinged on a non-renewable resource in our current environment. I decided to trace back the supply chain, and got a shock. The LP Gas delivery companies were supplied by the train car full.

What else was in train cars that we'd forgotten about? We figured we could find semi's anywhere. Ruth loaded a generator in our Sikorsky and we headed for St.Louis. There had to be rail yards there. There were.

It was a situation of too much success. Do you know how hard it is to figure out railroad switching? How to run a diesel engine? how much FUEL those damned things use??? Well, my old answer surfaced. Fuck it. I could tow anything with a D9 cat, and I did. Four cars at a time. Two hundred forty miles. twenty miles an hour. Over and over again. The stock would deteriorate before we could use it all. We spent weeks here and there flying into intermodal transport yards and just inventorying the containers. What do you do with twelve tons of baby food? At least we stayed in coffee and chocolate... I also made sure to bring in several rail cars of coal. Yep, coal. Best thing for blacksmithing. They came from long lines of cars destined for the old power plants. We could always find more.

I got hungry for fish. There was that big old river just looking at me. There I was. Hmm. I got fifteen people together in boats cabled across the river, with gill nets. I got up above them a quarter of a mile and set off four M-79 HE rounds into the river. We had more than we could deal with. Those old turkey fryers make nice deep fryers for fish, too. This might get to be our new thanksgiving party—deep fried fish and cornmeal hushpuppies.

One more thing to learn—how to press corn for corn oil? A hydraulic press? steam? A combination of both? No more olive oil. I guess we could use lard, but we'd need soap, too. Maybe corn oil soap would work. We needed Lye. By Christmas I'd finally gotten a library built, temperature and humidity controlled. By spring, I'd gotten most of it indexed and found some glaring holes we needed filled, like metallurgy, welding, and blacksmithing.

Lehman's! Kidron, Ohio! That was the place. Some big city bookstores kept copies of their catalog for sale. I could find tankers of kerosene easily. Kerosene lanterns would help a lot. We flew out and convoyed back three semis full of books, horse gear, blacksmithing gear, Aladdin lamps, grain mills, pumps, windmills—you name it. We took a flight to Kidron Ohio, found a truck stop, used our generator to start three semis and get them filled up. We loaded the generator onto one semi so that we could refuel in transit. We loaded those puppies to the gills.

Year Three

The next year brought in a few more stragglers, some worth it, some not. Some were just lonely, or not doing well on their own. Some thought they were entitled to a free ride. Not. We did kick two guys and a girl out. We ended up shooting one of the guys and the girl. She had a knife and wasn't bashful. She didn't think much of a single-six pistol till the end. It brought us from twelve to twenty-six people.

It had been a few years since the drugs we made had been produced, and they were losing their potency. We needed a good antibiotic in case we got something nasty and systemic. I asked Pat, our resident biochemist to look into it. She came up with Chloramphenicol—It had one side affect—irreversible aplastic anemia in one person in 25,000. That's pretty good odds, I figure. She began trial production. Another good thing—it's good as a veterinary medication, too. I introduced the Sauna to our clan. I swear, all you need to do to get really lucky is to show a woman another way to keep clean. It works every time. I damned near died with a smile on my face. Next year, a huge hot tub. We were feeding up 60 pigs in an open field supplemented by the whey milk and a grain trough. We had 'em in an open barn on wood chips over the winter, spring and fall. They got used to the end loader cleaning up in no time.