Chapter 23

As December, and the final countdown, began, I started to slowly relax. Even the minor problems which had been mostly kicking our butts were now slowly resolving themselves and occasionally even without our direct intervention. Critical skill gaps (personnel) was still our number one bugaboo, but this wouldn't likely improve for the better until the humus did finally hit the oscillating device and the lights did go out for good. More or less rightly, our little tribe was considered a bunch of 'kooks', thanks to some creative (but mostly true) recent stories in Austin's largest alternative newspaper, and I admitted as much in most of our internet advertising. Honesty, being the best policy and all that, but except for our delightfully eccentric new historian/librarian, most of our potential would-be recruits were polite and rather dubious of us at best and invariably politely declined.

Keeping Austin Weird™ wasn't just a slogan in Ranger Heights Village these days! We were adding names to our 'pursue in January' list and we figured we'd snag at least half of them once even the most optimistic of the lot realized that the lights were off to stay, but that didn't help me much with planning and forecasting now. Lori's brain tended to be rather direct and overly practical, without many shades of grey. For her, things either 'were' or they 'weren't'. 'Maybe's' tended to confuse her.

My number one concern, my quest to find an old-fashioned master blacksmith was becoming laughable. The skills I was looking for didn't even seem to exist, at least down here. I almost considered flying up to Pennsylvania to find an Amish or Mennonite traditional craftsman or even a handful, but then realized that I'd never get them on a plane back down here.

At first, I thought I'd have no trouble finding some geeky iron monger from one of the numerous medieval reenactment groups, like the SCA. Texas hosts several large Renaissance Festivals, with one locally and other even bigger groups near Houston and Dallas. A famous Austin game designer, Lord Albion had even bought a bunch of land near La Grange a few years ago and had built a pretty decent modern replica of a medieval castle on the site to be opening next spring as a tourist destination! It had taken him about ten years to build this genuine stone recreation ... unfortunately this was preparation time that we didn't have for our new home.

The issue wasn't finding a blacksmith ... but finding the right sort of blacksmith! I must have called fifty different guys that all called themselves blacksmiths, and while a few actually knew how to shoe a horse, the vast majority's skills tended towards recreating arms and armor. Make a knife or a sword? Sure, most of them could. Turn that sword literally into a plowshare? Huh ... what? Most of them either didn't have a clue ... or didn't want to. Hammering plows or farm and hand tools wasn't 'cool', or lucrative in the medieval reenactment business.

I even had a chat with the famous Elric, the guy who had forged DD's great Dwarven battleaxe, and while I did admire his craftsmanship, it was going to be a long time before guns and ammo ran out in this world. My daughter wasn't going to be facing too many hordes armed solely with swords and spears for the long foreseeable future. Even crazed cannibal berserkers are usually bright enough not to bring a knife to a gun fight! Since Elric did live about three miles away from us on the south side of the river I added his name to our 'B' list to check upon later, just in principle. The ammo would run out some day, eventually, and Elric could/should be passing down his weapon crafting skills to our great-grandchildren, who actually might someday need a very sharp pigsticker.

Anyway, by early December I had just about given up finding my dream blacksmith when I received an intriguing email from Colonel Blimp in La Grange. The Colonel was a survivalist himself, complete with his own underground bunker complex and enough weapons and ammo to start another Middle Eastern war, and he had his nose close enough to the grapevine that his already eagle shaped beak could sniff out opportunity from miles away. Someone told me once that the Chinese symbol for danger also had a second meaning, opportunity. While I liked the roguish military surplus dealer, he lived for opportunities ... and now he thought he knew a way to help us both.

"Have I got a deal for you!" He chuckled, right at once the moment I got him on the telephone. "You're looking for an old-timey blacksmith, right? Well, I don't know of one of those, but I know someone else who might work out better? Care to make a trade?"

"Cash is getting a little tight, but what did you have in mind?" I cautiously replied.

"For this deal, I prefer something harder and shinier, strictly gold or silver, at current valuation of course. Like you, I'm trying to get of my greenbacks also, but this deal is worth it. For the trade, you get the contact information and get to relieve me of one relatively small item that you'll really want ... I get ten gold eagles, circulated and of any age is fine ... your pick. Are you interested in principle?

Even with the recent madness of the world now calming down, the gold market was still within climbing distance of record territory. Gold had gone well over $2000 an ounce back in the summer, peaking at about $2300 or so, and now it was back near the 2k mark. After the lights went out, gold (and silver too) would double and probably double that again as well. I figured $5000 an ounce or so by next spring, and $10,000 for a US Mint gold eagle wasn't impossible. That was about how I had our dragon's horde in the money pit mentally appraised and I wasn't eager in dig into our bullion wealth just yet. We'd need those precious metals for the rest of our lives, and our children's children's futures as well.

"Hmmm ... are you sure you won't take cash? I can do eagles, but you've got to really sell me that I really do want your 'relatively small item'."

"You will. I found this gem at a naval salvage yard auction and it's a full radio communications suite pulled straight out a decommissioned destroyer tender built in the 1960's. AM, LF, MF, CW, MCW, shortwave, you name it and you'll be able to receive it, and probably transmit back too ... just as soon as the FCC goes out of business once the shit hits the fan someday. I had it shipped straight to a buddy who restores old vintage radio equipment for museums and now he's shipped it on to me, completely pristine, as-new and cherry! It's all vacuum tubes, but he sent along a box full of spares, plus the original Navy operations and repair manuals, with a listing of all of the replaceable parts, if you want more from off of eBay. The motor generator's been rewired new and so have the motor starters and controllers, so you'll be able to receive and transmit upon any frequency across the dial at 2500 watts for a long, long time. I'd keep it myself, but I've already got something better from off of a heavy cruiser. So, do you want it?"

"I guess I can't pass that up. I assume I can use something preexisting like a big eighty-meter ham radio antenna?" Our village already had one of these, mounted by a retiree who still consulted as a radio engineer for a local AM station. I figured that his equipment would all turn to crispy bacon (if we didn't protect it), but his antenna might still be functional afterwards. It was rather seriously grounded and built to handle lightning strikes. Being on our hill, we'd have a pretty good radio reception range too. I hadn't even considered transmitting because for awhile I wanted our survivors to keep a low profile, but I definitely see the usefulness here. The more that I thought about it, my 'C' grade retiree might have just earned himself a promotion up to at least 'B' list.

"Any big mast antenna should work, so ok, it's a deal then. The comm suite is packed up in three crates but they'll all fit into the back of a pickup. You'll get the name of the uber machinist at checkout, but it's not a bum steer. What you really want someone who can turn crap junk metal into something useful. Also, he has the tools that can make tools, if you follow. He's got a barn full of equipment that's older than shit, half of it belonged to his father, I think, so with a little care it should all be EMP safe too. I know that's your primary concern. Anyway, I think this is your guy ... a self-trained machinist that can make anything out of anything!"

And he was!

Jason drove with me the next day down to La Grange and we loaded up the radio gear from the old naval destroyer tender. It was crazy heavy but the Colonel had a forklift all ready for us. We took a token look inside the crates but the Colonel's word seemed to be good. He did have a spotless reputation. Everything was clean and new looking with no hints of remaining corrosion. None of us had any clue how to use this massive hardware, but that was a problem for my ham radio guy to deal with. I'd talked to the previous evening and he was already salivating to get his hands upon this military surplus radio gear.

We looked over the Colonel's stock one last time but we'd already bought a ton of stuff from him earlier and didn't see that much that was new. There was a bit more winter gear now in stock, arctic survival stuff and the like and we added a few more things that I hadn't noticed on our previous shopping trip here. For that stuff we paid in green paper Franklins.

Our machinist savant lived relatively nearby outside of Bastrop and taking the county road going up the Colorado River we did pass by Lord Albion's new medieval castle and tourist playground and stopped to take pictures and look things over. They were having a holiday season pre-pre-grand opening and the place was open to visitors. The site was built to occupy one of the large 'U' bends in the river and the castle keep and abbey were built up upon a hill overlooking the river and the flood plain. Built upon Normal Hill (the abbey itself thus named 'Abbey Normal'), the place was just a millionaires' playtoy, complete with cheesy vendors and the usual lot of SCA renaissance faire knights, knaves, jesters and wenches but it looked fun. It even had a working drawbridge and functional parapets upon the walls for guards. Once the lights went out this place could be a pretty decent survival shelter, even if it was still only 95% completed.

I talked to a few of the senior staff but didn't encounter anyone whose services I wanted to poach. Their mission was to sell admissions and provide entertainment to tourists and not prepare for the end of western civilization. We did stay for the luncheon buffet medieval banquet and I made a mental note that we needed a firepit so that we could roast a whole cow upon a spit. A minor concern for later.

Our machinist Ray Johnson was perhaps the biggest and blackest black man that I've ever seen. His skin was so dark that it seemed to glow purple. He was also about Lump's size, but with an even bigger barrel chest and shoulders. I found out that he'd played his college football at Prairie View A&M as a left guard (the hardest of the O-Line positions) and he even managed four seasons in the NFL (mostly on the bench, but still he'd been to the show). He could have snapped our friend Mark like a twig but his mannerisms were anything but gruff. Both he and his wife Clara (a Caucasian woman) were in their late 40's but looked good, healthy and had good attitudes towards life ... and more importantly for us, were interested in making a situational change.

They'd been running the machine shop here for two decades and the business had been actively up for sale for much of that time. Business had never been good but they got by, mostly because Clara kept a large organic garden over most of their five acres of land and what they didn't eat themselves they could sell. She also kept a large pen of about one hundred heritage breed Rhode Island Red laying hens and sold the superior quality brown eggs to a local upscale restaurant.

Kristin had done well getting our own village chicken coop established but she was still quite a rank amateur, learning by doing as she went along. Clara was a professional and from the moment that I saw her coops I was more than ready to entice them to join us. They weren't survivalists or kooks like us, but they found us likeable and were willing to listen. We took the full tour, and then Clara and I returned into their farm house to sip some lemonade and discuss particulars, but in a non-serious or binding sort of way. She just wanted to let me talk and explain our little operation in more detail.

I did have a passion for what I was trying to accomplish and I must have blathered on for nearly an hour when I noticed that Ray and Jason hadn't returned from the machine shop out in the barn. Jason had been acting a little odd and had been mostly very quiet since we'd arrived but I guessed that he and the tool guru had found shop related things to talk about. Clara had an alternative explanation.

"Your friend Jason, is he gay or a bisexual lover of yours?" She casually enquired as she refilled my drink glass, as she noted that I was looking around for my friend.

"We're not lovers. He's one of my very closest friends though, and if it matters to anyone, yes I think he's bisexual. As far as I know, no one cares about his sex life ... or anyone else's' at the Village. Mine gets pretty colorful, as I do have several live-in girlfriends, but really no one cares a hoot about what two or more consenting adults do in the privacy of their own house."

"I thought as much, and no, that won't be a problem for us, either way. Ray and I have our fun, sometimes with others in our bed too, and we both enjoy same-sex relationships on the side. Ray's got a sense for sniffing out the bi-guys and I'll bet they're getting introduced to each other out in the barn. He's got a bed out there. Now that's not going to be a problem, is it? Now, with just you and I left all alone, I could offer you a blow job on the sofa, if you're so inclined?" She laughed, and smiled and unfastened my jeans.

"There won't be a problem with me or anyone else. All of our friends are in pretty open and 'anything goes' sort of relationships. Jason does like older women though ... you're actually just about his ideal type!" I laughed.

"Threesomes are good." She admitted, while starting to give my cock a workover, kneeling down on the wooden floor in front of me. "Bastrop is pretty small and a bit too old-fashioned or 'traditional' for much of that sort of fun around here. We're already kind of on the edge, not being born here and being a bi-racial couple. That's no longer really taboo here but not everyone in town is completely comfortable with it either. We'd wanted to sell and move to bigger city where attitudes were more liberal, so in theory Austin would do."

Her oral skills would do as well. No one sucked cock like Amy, but Clara had experience and wasn't in too much of a hurry to make me shoot so I laid back on the sofa and enjoyed the experience. In fact, I was just getting on the verge of blowing my load when Jason and Ray finally returned. Ray seemed happy enough and not at all put out or even surprised at finding his wife on her knees sucking off another man. Jason was more than a bit embarrassed, as if he could tell that I'd known what he and Ray had been up to. I didn't actually, but the guilt spoke volumes.

I finished my ejaculation and casually fastened my jeans back up. The situation was just complicated enough now that I didn't want anything to escalate. Clara could politely inform Ray later, if necessary, that I didn't play that way.

We ended up staying for dinner and when the last home-made cobbler was consumed Ray and I made a handshake deal. Contingent upon the world coming to an end near the end of this month, I arranged to 'lease' Ray and his barn full of machine tools for two months for the amount of $20,000 cash, half up front. He'd pack up starting immediately and move everything up to the Village in Austin. If the world didn't come to an end, I'd help find a buyer for his equipment there and they'd move on.

Clara would of course pack up the hens and coops, along with all of her organic farming equipment and materials, and her stocks of heirloom seeds. I'd already hired my organic farming 'expert' to manage the greenhouses but I was already to give Clara the #2 job. The women would probably get along fine but I was willing to be dictatorial and order them to coexist if necessary!

I paid Ray half of the money up front, to hire a large moving truck and temporary labor to help port the equipment, with the final payment upon arrival in Austin. They hoped to arrive by the fifteenth, when I'd probably be in Houston, and they were warned to try and have everything delivered, stored and EMP protected underground no later than the 20^th. Anything after that was living on borrowed time.

Ray did have a comprehensive collection of semi-vintage machinist equipment, tools that indeed could build other tools, and he did have a forge and could heat and bang iron with some degree of adeptness. I had no doubt at all that he could build us anything we ever required.

Jason was still very quiet during the relatively short drive home, but once we passed by Bergstrom I grit my teeth with impatience and pulled over my truck just long enough to clear out the air.

"Bud, I couldn't give the slightest shit with whom you have sex with, where or even how you have it. No one else that I know of does either. We don't ... really, and if anyone privately does, then they can keep it private or the rest of us will kick their ass. So hold your head up and screw whomever you want to and stop slinking around hiding your affairs. No, Garry, Lumpy and I have never said 'boo', even when you were screwing those assholes the Thomas's. We're your friends, and if Ray and Clara would enjoy your regular visits to their house, then all I can say is 'go enjoy yourself'! Just be happy my friend!"

Jason didn't really have much of a response to that but he did give me a rather tight bro-hug. I'd cleared that air that no one would feel the least bit down on him because he preferred MMF threesomes rather than our usual MF+ indulgences, or even outright public orgies. Very shortly no one in our entire village was going to care in the slightest how any two or more people got their jollies ... and the world was going to need all of the human love and comfort that it could get.

Our new friends started their deliveries even earlier than we hoped and we crammed the machine tools into every last corner and walkway of the Secret Garden. The equipment was old enough to maybe survive a hard EMP, but this stuff was critical to our future. Definitely 'A+' territory, so we moved out food and other less critical stuff temporarily to make it all squeeze in. Kristin was happy to surrender being the chicken boss and she at once let Clara take over the operation and make dozens of small but helpful improvements to our starting operation. Her hens adjusted to their new home and were happy to start laying eggs once more, and in time to become broody, hopefully by spring increase our flock five fold, to five hundred laying hens which might be enough to provide the entire tribal village with eggs.

Lori assigned them a house and within a few days Jason's suitcases moved in with theirs to stay. No one said 'boo'. Clara came over to our house occasionally just to play with the women but their trio didn't usually join our group sex parties. Everyone seemed happy and that was just the way we wanted things to stay!

Having stuck lightning in a bottle, so to speak, finding our blacksmith/machinist, and also a damned good chicken breeder and gardener, I was ready to ignore most of the remaining critical personnel vacancies until after the lights went out when serendipity stuck again. The gods or the Goddess were very definitely with us trying to get us exactly what we really needed, even if we didn't know it at the time.

I was staying up late Monday night, the week of our self-imposed deadline for having everything important done, pre-disaster, and reading discussions on the message board of my favorite Texas survivalist website when I saw a new thread on post-apocalyptic farming. The collective conventional wisdom seemed to be that 'yeah, we're all screwed' by not having a population of Amish, or something similar, when one poster made a startling pronouncement. There was a guy in Llano named 'Pioneer Patrick' who did the rodeo and county fair circuit giving public demonstrations of 'old-time pioneer life'! Plowing, seeding, reaping, churning butter, spinning cotton into thread and even how to make homespun cloth!

Everything done all with hand or horse power tools circa the mid-19^th century!

Two further readers on this thread had commented that A) 'Pioneer Patrick' was older than the hills, in his 70's at least, and B) that the old coot was crazier than a coon with rabies. Still, I didn't have any better leads than this!

A Google search for 'Pioneer Patrick Llano' did generate a business phone number and address for 'Pat's Pioneer Living' and I started dialing that number right after breakfast the next morning. At around 9:30 a.m. someone finally answered the phone, a young lady with something of a crisp and very distinct posh New England accent. In any case, she (Brenda) was quite polite and authorized to accept reservations for public appearances, but hedged her responses carefully when I suggested a longer term assignment. Still, she posed no objection when I suggested that I'd like to drive straight out to Llano to pay them a visit, other than that 'I should be prepared to be open minded'.

Well, I laughed and told her that I could do that in my sleep!

I wasn't expecting much from this really, so I was surprised when Katherine immediately attached herself to me the moment I started looking for my car keys. Then Garry and Lori wanted to come along too, so we took Kathy's sedan instead. Just as well. It was time to start getting the last use out of the gasoline vehicles and preserving the diesel and wear and tear on our primary survival vehicles.

So, trooping out all together, we decided to make a daytrip out of it and I left Amy in charge. Anne-Marie was definitely busy all this week with last minute long term catering planning and was doing a bit of last minute shopping of her own. She'd miss her mid-afternoon bondage session but we promised her an extra long one for Wednesday instead.

It's a nice drive to Llano. This is in the real Texas Hill Country and Marble Falls has always been one of my favorite weekend places. My ex-Kelly didn't like to camp or even remotely rough it, but there was a rural motel lodge near Lake LBJ that she'd consent to be taken to once or twice a year. It had electricity for hair dryers and flush toilets, no flying or crawling insects, and a sit down restaurant ... her minimum qualifications for 'roughing it'. We drove by sort of near it, but it wasn't on our direct route and we just didn't have the time for 'fun' stops and detours. This trip was unfortunately all business.

Pat's Pioneer Living was located just south of the town, on the eastern Hwy-71 side of things, nestled in the hills. Not particularly great farming country, especially without a big ass John Deere tractor doing the grunt work for you. Of particular interest was the numerous For Sale signs we noted along the rural county dirt road leading to their ranch. The economy hadn't been good this year ... that was something of an understatement. Two years of drought plus fuel shortages and a breakdown of interstate transportation for the entire summer had probably crippled most of the farms and ranches in the entire state. With the poor economy, educational bookings for fairs and rodeos had probably been down as well. Pat might be a proud and crazy old coot, but it looked like he was going to need our money, probably like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver. That was if the old bastard wasn't too proud to accept it...

I noticed the sun-faded yellow sun decoration on the gate fence as we crossed the cattle guard onto the dirt ranch road, and after parking in their driveway which only had an old truck even older than my dad's or our new survival diesels, and one late model subcompact. A woman's car from the looks of it, and it belonged to Brenda, who greeted us on the porch ... entirely in the nude. What a greeting!

Patrick and his clan were all nudists ... at least when at home and not demonstrating plowing or weaving techniques to outsiders! Well, my little band was mostly nudists too and we knew the words to that song and could happily comply with our host's customs.

"You must be Brenda." I commented, hearing the musical accent of the gal I had spoken to on the phone. She was a very tall and slim young woman in her late 20's of mixed black & white racial origin, accepting the better features of both of her parents. She could have graced any international catwalk as a fashion model with just a crook of her finger. Her breasts were high and somewhat small but absolutely firm without a hint of sag and her pubic mount was shaved utterly smooth.

"Shall I instruct our ladies to assume the apparent household attire and should we gents strip down as well?" I enquired. "Whatever the custom is around here, we can oblige. We tend to strip down at our home as well and I recognized the nudist sign down by the gate."

"Please do. Get comfortable!" She smiled and gave each of us a rather precise but friendly examination of our personal bits as we undressed and left our clothes on the porch bench by the door. For early December the weather was still rather mild. Weather in Texas at this time of year can change nearly instantly. It can be warm, almost hot at Christmas time, with shorts and t-shirts, or freezing, with very occasionally a short lived bout of snow. At the moment no cold front was imminent, and we were all quite comfortable running around outside in just our skin with temps in the low to mid 70's.

With Brenda now taking my other hand, with Katherine holding my left and Garry and Lori following behind us, Brenda gave us the full tour of the working ranch and farm, and gave us an overview of the pioneer operation. We also discovered that everyone on the farm was a nudist and rather delighted to discover that their guests were as well. It made things more cordial right from the start.

Old man Patrick was indeed a crabby old git, probably since his balls hung halfway down to his knees, and his family had owned this land since just after the Civil War. Some of the equipment dated from this early era and very little else had been purchased since the great Depression and nothing since World War Two. Pat was at least seventy but still spry and full of vim, piss and vinegar ... and currently poorer than a church mouse ... and much too stubborn to do much of anything 'new' to correct the situation.

His two grandsons (their parents were never mentioned) were in their mid-late twenties and more or less ran the farm to Pat's specifications, and completely using non-industrial 'traditional' methods without a single tractor or power tool. Assisting them with everything else needed to keep a farm/ranch doing were their wives, a pretty buxom assortment named Deborah, Hannah, Judith, Patricia & Sarah.

Yes, the brothers were keeping multiple wives, and sharing them all in common. This certainly gave us some similar experiences to discuss. They also certainly believed in 'barefoot and pregnant', literally. In short the entire household was some weird throwback to 19^th century fundamentalist Old Testament religion, but they did have extremely liberal attitudes towards sex ... especially when the kindly brothers offered the use of their wives to us for our comfort.

Wanting to stay friendly with the natives, Garry and I quickly agreed that a friendly wife-swap was quite in order and we handed over Kathy and Lori to the brothers in exchange and they were put to some immediate hard vigorous use.

Judith and Sarah were both really a bit too pregnant for much fucking, so we let them take a rest while I dallied with Deborah and let Garry enjoy himself with Hannah and Patricia. Then to make it interesting, Brenda, who was actually not family at all but an Ivy League university graduate student studying primitive (by modern standards) social structures for her doctoral thesis, came up along next to me and boldly offered me a kiss, and more. The socio-anthropology student was more than willing to go native and observe local customs and wasn't the least bit shy about wanting to be fucked. She and Deborah ended up upon a hay pile in something of a sixty-nine while I tried to alternate my screwing attentions, but Brenda's tight silky cunt was just too enjoyable to withdraw from for long. I unloaded my sperm inside of her and let the sister-wife of the brothers handle the cleanup.

Since we had shared wives between us, this more or less removed the last bit of their inherent suspicion towards strangers and it was relatively easy after that for us all to get down to business. No, I actually had no plans for Patrick's clan to plow up half of the village, or even most of Ranger Meadows, but we did own that vacant contingency farm about thirty roads northwest of Austin, along the banks of the Pedernales ... and we had no one ready to farm it.