Dark Days Rough Roads (41 page)

The front
of the cabin was completely open as well. They had chairs, couches and coffee tables
spread around for seating and there was a fireplace. There hadn’t been any
sense in wasting the space on bedrooms. If they had to, they could use the
basement to create space for privacy.

When you
looked up at the second floor, it was almost completely open. With the cabin
being 30 by 40 and an “A” frame style roof, the sides had high pitches. You
could walk around the entire upstairs close to the opening, which was railed
off for safety. The opening was almost 10 by 30. This loft space had bunks galore
spread out with under-bed storage and small dressers. There were thin panel
walls between bunk areas and curtains toward the fronts. It looked like a large
hunting lodge.

The
storage containers provided space for storage of all of the food and supplies.
The basement was left open as a recreation area. Pool table, dart board, card
table, bubble hockey, couch and chairs, small library and games. They even had
a space for a TV and entertainment system if it worked. He wouldn’t know yet.
It was buried underground in a Faraday cage along with a few other items, with
a grounding rod pounded deep into the ground.

Everything
they would need was here. They would be able to farm the land, hunt if the game
population wasn’t decimated and not far from the lake’s shores to put a small
boat in and do some fishing. They had plenty of firewood stored already and
access to as much as they needed. It had been a labor of love and now a labor
of sustaining their lives.

They had
compiled enough food stores to sustain 20 people for two and a half years on
normal diets. They could ration and extend this if they needed to. This didn’t
include any farming, hunting or fishing or what they brought with them. That
would all be extra. They had the other two containers buried as well. One
served as a hidden cache and the other as a storage unit for gas, kerosene,
diesel and whatever else they put in there.

The cabin
was built using eight inch logs and they up-armored the bottom 30 inches inside
with 3/16
^th
inch steel plate. It would stop all 5.56 rounds and most
7.62. The areas around the windows were even more heavily armored to provide
more protection as a gun port. This was all covered with wood paneling. The
doors were all steel. There were only two of them. He hadn’t had the money to
put ballistic glass in.

The doors
to the pole barn and outbuilding had all been re-enforced to keep them as
secure as possible. Tools, the trucks and trailers and an old tractor were all
kept out there with the two horse stalls. They would move the trailers out
shortly to make more space. Around the property he had a few more upgrades to
help keep them safe.

The
shower felt good. The water wasn’t hot, but was warm enough. He had plumbed a
coil around the wood burner that ran the course of the hot water pipes normally
supplied by the hot water heater, which no longer worked. The coil worked just
fine and made it easier to boil water. The cabin was on a well pump and septic
system which operated ok, too.

 Kayla
had worked up a watch schedule which was posted on a big dry erase board near
the kitchen. Same with chores, wood retrieval, cleaning, laundry, cooking and
whatever else needed to be done. Haliday walked out after getting dressed. “Can
I have more coffee please?” Bev put the percolator on.

Haliday
walked over to the desk with the radio. He checked in with Mike and Linda. “How
you guys doing?”

“We’re
doing fine, Rambo.”

That
struck a bad chord with Haliday. “Not in the mood, Mike. Just doing what I hope
any other American would do, that which was necessary to keep order in a place
that didn’t have any. You guys going to be set for a while?” he asked Mike.

“Ya,
we’ll be fine, sorry. I got a deer and we plan to use that up first.”

“Ok, talk
to you later,” Roger said.

Haliday
changed the frequency and called Rob. There wasn’t any answer. He would call
back later. He looked down at a note. “Oh ya, Alan.” He called on the frequency
that Kayla had written down. There came an answer. It was typical of a ham
operator. Call sign and everything. Haliday apologized for not knowing the
proper protocol and such.

The man
said, “No problem, I understand.”

“If you
have a chance, and Alan Haliday asks, can you get him on for me?”

“Sure,
I’ll leave a note up for him. I put a message board up for folks.”

“Hey, my
name is Roger by the way; can I ask a few questions?”

“Yes sir,
how can I help you?”

“You hear
anything about the military or feds doing anything?”

“I only
hear what you’ve heard. They are locked down on the bases, they have had a lot
of deserters and they don’t plan on doing anything.”

“What do
you mean?”

“Just
like I said, they don’t plan on doing anything any time soon. That’s the
rumor.”

While it
didn’t surprise him he still thought it was odd. “What’s going on around you?”

“Detroit.”

Roger
asked, “What do you mean, Detroit?”

The guy
said, “The city itself is pretty much a wasteland and the suburbs have become
like Detroit itself. Looters, robberies, people shooting each other, it’s
really bad. You can’t leave your house and you have to be careful. Hearing that
some gangs are on the move. People aren’t putting up with a lot though.”

“I
appreciate the info. Mind if I add you to my friends list or whatever it’s
called.”

The man
laughed, “Ya, go ahead. I’m Adam by the way.”

“Thank
you again Adam, it’s been a pleasure. I’ll be talking to you again soon.” He
sat back and tried Rob again. Still no answer at all. He flipped to the militia
freq. This was interesting indeed.

It
sounded like they were just attacked by Al Qaida themselves. “This is the Bad
Axe Minute Men. Last night we were provoked by a group of terrorists. These
terrorists have turned members of our community against us. They attacked us
when we were openly attempting a cease-fire.”

“Bullshit,”
Haliday mumbled under his breath, along with some more choice words. Our
community? Oh, that was good. These guys are playing the psychological warfare
game quite well. He couldn’t wait to hear what else they were saying. These
guys are playing the victim role really well.

He heard
a familiar voice. “These are all lies people. We united to save our community.
The militia stole food, fuel and supplies from us. They want to sell it back to
us while they keep what they want for themselves. The murdered Jim Simmons last
night in cold blood, he was unarmed.” Haliday smiled; a propaganda war. The sad
thing was this could lead to a civil war here within this little part of the
state.

“We had a
kid who belonged to them. When we contacted them to turn him over, they set up
an ambush and killed the two guys who were taking him back to their compound.”
Haliday was taken aback at this. He wished he would have told them how to
handle the turnover. How the hell did that happen, he wondered.

The
bantering would go on back and forth every so often. Haliday flipped over to Rob’s
frequency. “Rob, you there?”

“Ya, I’m
here. They shot two more guys.”

“I heard.
Sorry to hear that. You didn’t offer to trade the kid for supplies did you?”

“No, we
told them it was a straight up return. We just wanted him out of our hair. The
guys were walking him down the street toward their compound and they came out
from the bushes and shot them.”

“I’m
sorry to hear that. Listen, you guys need to get busy with what we talked
about. You get everyone you can on board. You’ll get those who will be on your
side, those who will join you if they think you are winning, and those who will
care less. You’ll also have some against you. I know it’s only been a little
more than half a day, but time is important.

“Rob,
listen up. Someone needs to move into that feed store or co-op, whatever you
call it. You need to make sure that remains in your control. Fortify the hell
out of it. Don’t let those guys get it. See if the guy with the tooling shop
can build some boxes to cover the pintles on those trailers so they can’t be
towed away. I’ll check in on you late this evening, but you call if anything
major goes down. I suspect they’re still licking their wounds.”

In
another couple of hours, it would be getting dark again. He needed to get out
and check a few things. He went into the pole barn and got into the ranger. He
and Kevin took a quick ride around the property boundary. It was simple fencing
in most places. He drove toward the west property line and checked the woods.
He scribbled some notes on some paper.

He
followed the property line around and kept making notes. When he got up to the
front of the lot he looked across the street at the neighbors. He had noticed
the curtains pulled aside in one of the windows. He looked around some more not
to make it obvious, but he made a mental note. Someone was watching them.

They
drove back up to the pole barn. Haliday checked the vehicles real quickly. He
walked over and looked at his old Jeep. He jumped in and started it up, just
like Kayla said, ran like a champ. He looked up and saw Dawn and Diana bringing
the horses in for the night. They put some hay in the stalls for them. Each
fall they had a round bale delivered just as a prep. They rotated it out each
year.

Haliday
checked the small aluminum boat hanging over the Jeep. That should be fine,
oars were EMP proof. He walked over to an old outboard motor from the 70’s. It
was a simple engine, it too should work ok and if not, no big deal. Last but
not least, the tractor. If it didn’t work, the horses would. They secured
everything and went back to the house.

He could
smell the cooking. “What are we having for dinner?”

Sarah
said, “Burritos.” Karen and Bev were sitting there making tortillas and Sarah
was making the beans and the beef.

“Sounds
good to me.” He raised his voice slightly. “Everyone else please gather around,
we have some things we need to do in the next couple of days, and we may have a
problem.”

Everyone
gathered around sitting at the table or standing nearby. “We need to get the
concertina wire put in place. We also need to put out the foot spikes.” These
were much like the stop sticks he had described, only they were just a couple
inches wide and had slivers from the edge cut and bent upwards, then sharpened.
These had barbs cut into them to tear flesh as they were pulled out. These were
easier to hide in tall grass and bury under loose dirt. You’d spot them in the
daylight, but not at night.

“We also
need to make sure we clean out the holes and have them ready to go.” Near the
front of the house by the corners he had built some decorative plantings. Small
curved landscape walls, but when you took the grass off and removed the cover
there was a concrete culvert pipe sunk into the ground.

These
were just like the ones he had remembered using multiple times in basic
training at the rifle range. Pea gravel on the bottom and sand bags in each to
adjust the height of the shooter. These would let two gunners provide much
needed coverage to the front of the house and the sides as well. He had
installed planters around the whole area made of double rows of landscape
bricks stacked 2 and 3 high in places. A few spots of fieldstone built up and
holding garden sculptures.

The holes
near the back of the house need to be cleaned out and ready as well. These
appeared to be old tractor tires used as sand boxes. Those four holes would
provide coverage for all four sides of the house. He continued on with a few
other tasks to up the security and make it a more formidable structure to
defend.

At the
top of the house was a large decorative square with a weather vane on top. This
was actually a 6X6 fortified hide. One man with a rifle was protected by two
rows of wooden beams with 3/16 inch sheet metal sandwiched between them. The
roof was sloped, but under the shingles was some ¼ inch. Might not be perfect,
but it would work. He called it the crow’s nest.

He looked
at everyone. “The militia might have a spotter across the road. You guys didn’t
notice?”

“No, not
really. Just thought it was a nosy neighbor.”

“That’s
what I thought, too.” Nobody gave it much thought but he had. He told them what
he thought.

“After
watching them peek out through the window, I was turning around when I spotted
a whip antenna on the chimney. Not sure how long it’s been there. But with the
extra patrols around here it makes sense now. With you guys staying put inside,
I don’t blame anyone for missing it; hell, I almost did myself. I’m not sure
they heard or saw the bikes come in last night.”

“I’m
going to go over there tomorrow with a couple of you and we’ll introduce
ourselves. See what they are up to. Plant a little propaganda ourselves.
However, we need to prepare for a fight just in case. I would say we have three
or four days before that happens. It might not. I might be grasping at straws. But,
I doubt it. If they know where to find me, they will come on strong.”