A Distant Eden (5 page)

Fortunately, Dave and Shirley were near their children’s school, and would be able to collect them on foot as Karen had done. However, Dave would likely have to walk home; he had a modern car with fully computerized engine control. It wouldn’t be running now. Jerry decided to drive his T-bird to their loft, pick them up, and bring them home while there was still daylight.

Jerry had a little more trouble in the downtown area, sometimes having to take to sidewalks to get around traffic clusters. Finally, three blocks away he parked and locked up and walked the rest of the way. When he arrived, Shirley had her kids with her but Dave had not made it home yet. Leaving a note on the door, they explained that they would be taking Jerry’s car to his, and if they didn’t see him en route, Jerry would drop Shirley and the kids off and come back for him. Fortunately, they did find Dave within a short time, picked him up and they drove back to Jerry’s house in a very crowded T-Bird, where Karen had dinner waiting. The stove was still working, although the gas pressure was fading fast and she had to light it with a match. It was the last meal prepared on the stove.

After eating, the children were sent upstairs to play as the adults considered what to do. The sick girl was kept downstairs in bed. One of Shirley’s boys was also showing signs of fever. Flu was sweeping the schools again.

Shirley had packed some clothes, all the canned goods, winter gear for each person, and their guns and ammo into Jerry’s trunk. There wasn’t room for anything else. Those were the only things from their home that would be of use anyway.

Jerry said, “To sum up, we have about fourteen weeks of food, twelve that Dad packed up for us and two in normal groceries. Our main problem is going to be clean water. We have about two days of water in the water heater that we can drain out of it. Sanitation is going to be difficult; the toilets won’t work without a lot of water poured into them. We’ll need an outhouse. We have enough guns and ammo to hold off an attack for a few days. The main question is, do we stay and hope things get better soon, or do we leave right now?”

“If we leave,” Dave said, “looters might rip your house to shreds. You could lose everything. No telling about fire either—did you notice how many fires were burning around town? Our apartment will be looted but we can’t stay there and wait; it’s too crowded. On the other hand, if we stay and things don’t return to normal soon, we might not be able to get out at all. If things get really bad there will be roving bands of armed thugs stealing and killing. But if we can figure out a water source, we could stretch out our supplies for five months.”

“There’s a creek a quarter of a mile from here. It can be approached from the field, avoiding the road. I think we can get enough water from there, but it will have to be filtered and pasteurized. Dad put those solar cooker kits into the supplies, and we have cardboard and foil that we can make more with. We can cook most days without a fire, and we can pasteurize the water in the solar cookers as well by UV radiation from the sun. We can set up a simple sand filtration system using sand from the kids sand box. We should save canned goods to be eaten cold when it is cloudy out, and cook beans or rice and cornbread when there’s enough sun.”

Dave said, “I can’t see us traveling with two sick kids, and it’s a week’s journey to the river. We can use plastic sheeting to make solar stills and we can bag up plants to make transpiration traps. If we keep our use of fire to a minimum, we should be able to keep a low profile. Another big problem is keeping warm. It’s already cold, and the next three months are going to get colder and wetter. Staying warm and dry are priorities. Part of the Big Five that you dad is always talking about. Breathing, staying warm, drinking water, eating, staying dry. As he says, take care of those in that order and the rest is self-defense.”

Jerry agreed. “I don’t know of any better place to hunker down than right here. Dad knows where we are, it has good sight lines, it’s innocuous since it looks like just about every other place around here, has good drainage, isn’t too far from a potential water source, and the food we have will be difficult to carry. But I suggest that we consider moving into the crawlspace beneath the house.”

Dave arched an eyebrow. “Move into the crawlspace? What’s your thinking on that?”

“For one, we can dig out a sleeping area that we line with blankets and insulation materials. It will be warmer since the heat of the earth is warmer than the air temperature most days. Two, we can make the house appear to be abandoned, even looted, and hide if raider gangs appear. With camouflage and discipline, we can be invisible. Three, by digging fox holes along the perimeter and cutting out firing ports, we can be effective in a firefight. Four, if we live above ground like normal, we are eventually going to stick out like a sore thumb as everyone else leaves or dies of starvation—making us a prime target.

Dave was stunned. “Wow, you’re more like your dad than I thought!” Those are all good points, but living in a hole in the ground isn’t exactly conducive to good health or much of a life style.

“We’ll have to stay clean and hygienic at all times,” Jerry cautioned. “That won’t be easy with the water situation or if we live in a hole—but we can line the hole with insulation from the attic and then with the big blue tarp. We’ll stay healthier by staying warmer. It’s dry down there too. It will take quite a bit of work to set it up, but right now we’ve got a lot of time on our hands. In fact, about the only activities we are going to have are fetching and processing water, cooking, eating, and staying clean. Truth is, this could be really boring, if we’re lucky that is. Outside of looters and other people, fire is our biggest danger. If the house catches fire we have to have escape plans that are efficient and well rehearsed.”

Dave said, “The women are going to hate this.”

A pause, and then Jerry said, “Yep, until the first time some thugs come along and search the house for food. After that, I think they will love it down there. Plus, we can’t use candles at night in the house; any light will be like a beacon. But in the crawlspace we can use a candle or two. We’ll build a pit with a top tarp as well as a bottom tarp. Install a couple of end tables to hold things on, fill it with blankets and pillows like an Arab tent, and settle in.”

“So what’s the end game? When do we leave? We can’t stay here long.”

“When the kids are healthy, when the weather turns good for a few days of traveling, and when we are fit and trim enough to walk all night cross country through brush. I’m guessing six weeks to two months, tops. While we’re sitting here let’s get out one of the radios and see what kind of reception we can get.”

Matthew was one of Roman’s oldest friends; they had been college room-mates. Matthew had qualities that Roman admired. They strongly disagreed on a few fundamental things, but no matter how much they disagreed, they never took it personally.

Matthew was a top executive at a downtown Dallas accounting firm. Matt, as he was called by his friends, was a wizard accountant but far from stereotypical. Like most of Roman’s few close friends, Matt was also a veteran of the Vietnam War. It was the GI Bill that allowed Matt to get a master’s degree in accounting and to move into the upper echelons of the downtown elite.

Matt was also a survivalist, but in a minimalist way. Like Roman, he made basic preparations—albeit different ones. Not preparing would be ridiculous, and it couldn’t hurt.

Where Roman lived as far away from the metroplex as he could get and still drive in each day, Matt lived in a downtown high rise condominium. Where Roman stocked food and specialized tools, Matt stocked guns and ammunition. Where Roman was ready to survive in the Brazos river bottoms, Matt’s plan included far west Texas. Matt had purchased and restored an early model Ford Bronco. It had no electronics beyond battery, generator, plugs, condenser and points—and a few fuses and fusible links. Matt had performed the restoration with his two sons. Typical of Matt, the project served at least two purposes: survival and family bonding, not necessarily in that order.

Matt’s plan was simple and direct, typical of Matt’s style. If the situation arose, he would gather his family, load the Bronco with supplies that were pre-packaged and waiting, and drive to a friend’s one thousand acre hunting ranch. This ranch was as remote as it was possible to get from any major city. Included in Matt’s evacuation gear were a multitude of rifles, shotguns and pistols; in the vicinity of five thousand rounds of ammo, five days of MREs, five days of water, and four ten gallon jerry cans of gasoline. Matt habitually kept the Bronco tank full. He had no intention of stopping between Dallas and the ranch once he was under way.

One of the fundamental differences between Matt and Roman was their attitude towards other people if massive disruptions took place. Matt didn’t foresee the mass starvation that Roman did. Matt was also extremely religious, a fundamentalist Christian. All the decisions he made were founded upon his religious beliefs. These two varying attitudes had led to some lively, at times almost heated, discussions.

Roman had once said, “Man has not progressed in anything except technology since the stone age. Scratch a modern man and a caveman bleeds. Man is no kinder or better behaved than he ever was. Man does not progress internally, only superficially.

“I have two puppies, brother and sister. They look so much alike they are hard to tell apart. They are like all animals though. Put their food into one dish and the dominant dog will fight the other dog off and eat all the food. Left to its own devices the dominant dog would cause the other dog to starve. If the dominant dog sees the other one with anything in its mouth, it takes it away. Animals are like that. Watch birds at a bird feeder and you see the same behavior.

“Men are exactly like that. Make no mistake; if one human sees another human with something he wants, he tries to take it away from him.

“When you step back and look at the way “society” is crafted, what you see are animals fighting over bones. Look at any corporate structure and what do you have? A dog pack. A dominant dog that gets the best of everything, then subordinate dogs in layers of status with each lower layer getting less until the bottom layer is struggling to survive.

“Look at politics. What do you see? Animals tearing and clawing at each other, trying to knock the other animal down so that he can take its place.

“Look at sports. Animals attacking each other in ritualized combat. Two packs of dogs fighting for possession of a bone. Nothing more than that.

“So what happens when the food supply ends? You expect civilized behavior and I expect animal behavior. I expect tooth and bloody claw.”

“I couldn’t disagree more,” Matt had answered. “Man is inherently good. The vast majority of people are civilized and will remain so. Man’s best nature will triumph over his base needs. Evil exists now and always will. Evil will take advantage of the chaos to proliferate, I’ll grant you that. The challenge for us will be to determine which people are evil which are not.”

“Hunger turns civilized men into predators,” Roman stated firmly. “I say shoot first and don’t waste time asking questions, because the answer will always be the same. Those that don’t have food will be actively trying to take it away from those that do have it. It won’t be rocket science out there. It won’t even be a matter of morality: it will be survival. If you want to be moral about it, though, survival is always moral.”

As Matt drove west now with his family, he thought of these many conversations.

The family was headed to a high fenced exotic game ranch. The ranch held ten times the number of animals that nature could support without man’s assistance. There was enough food on the ranch to provide for them. That said, there were downsides. While animal protein would be sufficient in and of itself, it would be a boring diet.

The dry west Texas climate did not lend itself to farming without irrigation, so there would be no large-scale farming. Small garden plots surrounded by high fencing near windmills and intensive growing techniques would provide some vegetables, perhaps even a small surplus. The ranch was a survivable place as long as the animals were not over-harvested. But it could never be a place of abundance.

Matt was worried that too many previous hunting clients might show up and over-harvest the game. The ranch had catered to hunters for decades. Just like Matt, the hunters that came were almost one hundred percent city dwellers. People who lived in the city would not have many rural destinations to choose from. What Matt feared was that the abundance of game animals would be on their minds and they would find their way to the ranch.

Once there, the only way to survive was to shoot to eat, which they would certainly do. If they stayed in small groups and lived close to the ground, it would be hard to know they were there, except for the sound of gunfire. It would not take much to upset the balance of the food supply inside the tall fence. The heavy concentration of game on the ranch was supported by supplemental feeding and by windmills pumping water to the surface. The supplemental feeding would end when the current stockpile of protein pellets was gone.

The water supply would last a long time because the various tanks were all served by windmills. The windmills required frequent maintenance, but there was a stockpile of the most commonly needed parts. Get enough hunters out there living off the land, though, and pretty soon there would not be enough breeding stock to provide enough surplus to live off.

Roman had tried to convince Matt that west Texas, while an excellent place to go during the initial stages of the collapse, would end up being a place of starvation. His argument had been that the land had a marginal natural carrying capacity for game. With artificial feed gone it would revert to native capacity, and once it did it would take huge tracts of land to support a small family, much less anything like a tribe.

Roman said, “Look at history. Before our modern civilization there were very few Native Americans living out there, and they had to move constantly to keep from over-harvesting. It will eventually return to that.”