Chapter 12

Needless to say, the laughter that greeted me as I stepped up on the stage had me a little red faced and embarrassed. I got up to the mic and looked out across the audience at the smiles and wondered to myself how many would still be smiling a month from now.

"Hi everyone, my name is Thom, if you didn't know it already. Now before the meeting was called back to order, I overheard our esteemed Sheriff saying I would be a fool to use the truck-stop as a backup position. Now that may very well be, but look at it this way; our fuel is in those tanks and without fuel we don't have generators when the electric goes out. It will, because there will be no one taking care of the lines and sub stations. The truck-stop has food which we will need and it overlooks the interstate so we will be able to observe anyone coming our way. This school has its own generators as well as considerable room for sleeping, eating, and our main supply of food is stored here. This will be the backup position for this end of town and the truck-stop for the other end. Whichever one you make it to when the sirens are sounded will be fine. I don't know how many of you have guns, but I want everyone who does to be armed at all times. Those of you who don't will be given arms to protect yourselves. The women will be in charge of the fallback positions and those of you who have a moral objection to using firearms will be assigned jobs to do so you don't have to fight."

"HOW COME THE WOMEN ARE IN CHARGE OF THE FALLBACK POSITIONS?"

"Well, to answer that question, have you ever seen a mama grizzly when someone threatens her babies? You men out there will learn to accept that women are three times as vicious as a man when they feel threatened or their families are in danger. If you don't like it then you can guard the barricades, but on that subject there will be no argument. What I am doing is the best way to protect your families from raids if anyone gets this far. The rules have changed folks; we protect what resources we have and our families to the best of our ability. When this is over, the world won't be the same and the people of this little town will survive or I will want to know the reason why. If I make a dumb plan, let me or my second Barry know and we will listen to any and all of you, if it helps all of us. We will start building our defenses in the morning. The school is in pretty good condition, but will need to be checked for security, and we have several hours of work at the truck-stop to make it ready. We will have lookouts on the roof of both places with binoculars to warn us, and the positions will be manned at all times. The women will do it here at the school and the teenagers can do it at the truck-stop. Those of you who have portable welders and cutting torches, I want you at the truck-stop at eight in the morning. I will also need a couple of trucks with flatbeds to do some hauling, so let's all meet there at eight. I want the women to decide who keeps inventory and all of you can work out who takes care of the children while the others get everything set up here. Now, we will be closing off several of the outside doors here so we won't have to guard so many if we get raided. That way we have more people to guard our main entrances. If any of you have a fuel tanker truck, I want the fuel tanks here topped off as soon as you can. Now I will touch on a sore subject, and I know it won't go over well with some of you, but it has to be done this way so we don't have people killed off before we are able to get to them. You ranchers who live way out there in the desert, I want you and your food supplies moved into town as soon as you can manage it. If you use propane to heat and cook with I want the tanks disconnected from your houses and moved to where they won't cause a fire if they are blown up. I want all the farm machinery and heavy equipment disabled so they can't be used against us here. Those of you who have dozers and backhoes I want them moved into town. We will be doing some landscaping around our town as a little surprise if anyone decides to try to sneak in."