Chapter 2

After a shower, and breakfast for the dogs and myself; I bundled up in long underwear, jeans, and a flannel shirt. Then I stuffed myself into a set of Car-hartt overalls, with the bib and coat. I strapped the Glock in a holster at the small of my back as I would carry the M1A.

I fed all my animals and got reacquainted with my horses and mule while cleaning their stalls. I milked Juggs, my Jersey milk cow; and poured three bowls of milk for Denali, Mally, and Mama (a pregnant stray cat I adopted while in Kansas City). I figured Mama would keep the rodent population under control in the barn.

I filtered the milk into small milk cans and cleaned up everything. I carried the milk back to the cabin after making sure the eggs in the incubator were rocking along. I had bought a twenty cubic foot commercial refrigerator on wheels for the mudroom. As planned, I put the milk cans in it so they would chill. I could mess with them, later. I was throwing out a lot of milk right now, but hopefully I could find a use for it, later. Juggs was due to give me a calf in a couple months, so her production pretty much would be tapering off, anyway. Hopefully, I could somehow get her artificially inseminated as one of my bonus requests.

Next on my agenda was getting the yard of my compound organized. Looking back at the cave, I could see that my hosts had installed the garage door I'd requested, and had painted it to match the rock wall, too. Nice touch! Luckily everything was as I had left. During my prep phase I had the bright idea to buy a half dozen six by eight foot flatbed trailers that I could modify for various uses. For example: one trailer was for welding and metal work, one for gardening, and another for tools and maintenance. The trailers were small because I only had a small Kubota tractor, a Bobcat skid steer loader, and a four-seat Kawasaki Mule to pull them.

I opened the cave's door and saw an alcove with stairs. I knew they would go to my escape tunnel. Sure as shit, there was an honest to god bulk-head door there, just like you would see on a Navy ship. Well ... at least the aliens were generous.

First things first! I had some green sheetrock and indoor building materials that needed to be moved from the shop, the yard and the barn. I wanted them in the cave, and safe from the weather.

The compound was on the south side of the rocky ridge which ran from west to east on the long side. The barn only had ten stalls on one side, but had a larger area for cows. There was also a chicken coop, a milking salon, and a tack and feed room, with a hayloft up above. The barn and various animal runs took up the west half of the lot, with plenty of room around the barn and pens. Eventually I would need to fence off an area outside the palisade wall for the animals to roam and graze. Luckily, I had planned for that, already.

The front gate was lined up with the cave entrance and splitting the compound was a six foot wide crushed stone road that ran between the barn and the cabin, then straight back to the cave. The cabin was in the northeast corner, nestled up to the rock wall. The shop was in the southeast corner. Another rock road ran in front of the thirty by forty foot shop, and out of the east gate. The only open ground was in front of the cabin, and I still had to build a smokehouse, plus I wanted a covered outdoor cooking and eating area.

All the materials were out of the shop and barn when lunch time rolled around. I fixed a quick sandwich with some potato chips for lunch, and played a bit with the dogs. As I ate lunch, I dropped a small roast with some onions, potatoes, and carrots into a crock pot, for supper. It was fifty to fifty-five degrees outside, now, so I shed the bib and coat, just keeping the overalls.

Getting the pods into cave and stacked two high against the walls was almost too much for my little Kubota to handle. Even with the heaviest implement I had on the back of the tractor, it about tipped the tractor over forward. With the pods stacked length-ways around the walls, I could still park the trailers with the tongues pointed out. I also still had enough room to turn around, inside, and back a trailer to where I wanted it.

When it started getting dark, and supper time was getting close; the only things in the yard were the white sand pile, the gravel pile, and stacks of concrete blocks, re-bar, fence posts, wire mesh, and rolls of fencing. I put a tarp over the white sand, but the rest could get wet without being harmed.

I parked the Mule in the shop by the two ATVs and three dirt bikes. Besides the workbench and other shop tools; the only things in the garage part of the shop, were the smoker and the grill. The shop also had my butchering room and walk in freezer, alongside my reloading room.

I had been putting it off long enough. I grabbed the binoculars from the Mule and climbed the lookout parapet beside the main gate. To the east, about three or four miles away, was a thick wooded area. A purple peaked mountain range loomed in the distance. Straight to the south was all grassland. It sloped down into the bottom of the valley. A band of green trees snaked across from northwest to the southeast. Buried in that depth I could see flashes of reflections from the river and my source of fish. All I could see, further to the west was a vast plain dotted here and there with trees.

I was on a wide raised shelf that dropped off about twenty feet or so to the valley floor. It started at the end of the ridge, and circled around back to the rock ridge right before the tree line to the east. I would have to engineer a way to get down to the river.

I took a good look around, and could see a few animals of the deer or elk persuasion. A shiver went down my spine when I saw an issue that would need to be dealt with pretty soon. Down at the tree line by the river, I saw a feline type animal take down one of those deer. I've got some cave lions in the neighborhood!