Chapter 14

An hour later Bryan was in the shed unloading the trailer and sorting the supplies into categories diligently. The three trailer loads of supplies had seemed like so much when he had paid for them and hauled them home, but stacked into piles they really didn't look like all that much.

He frowned, wondering how he was going to get all the food into the storage room without anyone knowing. He could enlist the kid's help, but quite honestly what they didn't know they couldn't tell. He really didn't want Silver to know how much they had. He had made it a point over the years that this was something she did not need to know. If anything was to happen to him there were adequate notes for her to fend for herself and the kids. There was also a printout of the inventory in the filing cabinet of the storage room.

Bryan stowed all of the building materials in the back corner of the shed. Concrete and plywood, wire, nails and anything else building related was piled neatly and stored. That amounted to over half the entire haul.

Deciding that he wasn't going to get anything done with the rest of the supplies without actually hauling some of it down to the house, he loaded the back of the truck down with the bags of flour, sugar, and rice. He drove down to the kitchen entrance and backed up to the door. Quickly and quietly he slipped in, pulled the two wheeled cart from the store room and made four frantic trips back to the preparation room, dumping the dry goods in a pile on a convenient pallet. He left them there temporarily and closed all of the doors behind him as he left the storage complex. Another trip to the shed got him cases of canned goods, this time seven trips were required through the doors and down the hallways.

Again he left them quietly in the prep area, un-inventoried and in no particular order. He checked the clock on his phone, noted that it was almost time to start dinner, and closed the hidden doors behind him again.

He drove the truck back up to the shed, parked it inside, and picked a bit of lettuce in the greenhouse before coming in for the night. He kicked off his boots and stepped into the kitchen. The night before he had placed two frozen rabbit carcasses in the refrigerator to thaw for dinner. He pulled them out and unwrapped them, feeling to see if the flesh had fully thawed or if it was still frozen in the middle.

With a knife he cut the carcasses into chunks that would probably confuse someone who thought they were chicken, but was easily recognizable around their kitchen table. He pulled a flat pan of home-made breading out of the freezer and rolled each damp piece of rabbit in it, setting the breaded pieces on a cookie sheet until the time came for them to be dumped in the frying pan.

He prepared a salad from the greens and lettuce that he had pulled from the greenhouse, then put some potatoes on to boil.

The potatoes that Bryan grew were a variety that most people wouldn't recognize as potatoes. They were slightly more mealy than the typical russet potato, but the main difference was that they were blue in color, through and through. He boiled them with their skins on until they proved to be soft under the prod of a fork, then poured them out into a colander. With a spoon he peeled the soft skins back from the long slender potatoes and dropped them into a bowl. One by one he peeled the blue skins away until there were none left.

He scooped the skins into a bucket that was stored under the sink. He would have one of the kids go and throw it to the chickens after dinner was over.

He placed a large frying pan on the stove and scooped in a few spoonfuls of lard. Medical science hadn't determined if it had any ill effects, but Bryan's research had determined that margarine and vegetable oils were wholly unhealthy for the human body. On the other hand, animal fats like lard had been found to be the healthiest alternative, as well as traditional. It was also exceptionally cheap and easy to produce at home.

He waited until the lard had melted and begun to sizzle a bit before dropping the pieces of breaded rabbit into the pan. He turned the heat down and placed a splatter screen over the top to keep the grease from getting all over everything.

He sat an egg timer for the appropriate amount of time, then tended to the potatoes. The mixing bowl that he had put them in was nearly full. He opened a small jar of butter that had been home canned and stored in the cabinet. It was soft and came out easily. With a soft spatula he wiped the jar nearly clean and all of the butter was in the bowl with the potatoes.

In the refrigerator was a small container of baby onions. He chopped the top of one up neatly on a cutting board and poured the contents into the bowl with the potatoes. He spooned out two teaspoons of garlic salt and again, added it to the mix. Then the secret ingredient: three chicken bouillon cubes. He sat them on the same cutting board that he had chopped the onion top and gently mashed them with the spoon. Once they had formed into a neat powder he wiped the pulverized bouillon into the bowl.