Empty Aisles & Empty Hearts (Preppers Perspective Book 3) (4 page)

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Lets go do us some “wandering and pondering” Charles!” Dennis said referring to his personal way of doing a little work here and there on the property, while spending more time planning and observing the land than actually working on it.

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Sometime today we need to do a little wander and ponder around my place also. I want to show you what I got setup to start making a little mash.” Charles said as he walked towards Dennis’s small orchard.

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This will be the second year since I put these trees in so I doubt we are going to get hardly anything fruit wise this year,” Dennis said as he walked down the hill on a small trail leading towards a selection of peach, plum, apple and pear.

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Well at least you got hell of a start on next year, some of the trees might begin producing by then shouldn’t they?” Charles asked

I should think so, I have a few early bearing apple trees that might make crop this year and some plums also, but I really don’t know for sure. They don’t get much in the way of fertilizer because I haven’t really been able to afford to buy any yet. I did dump a 50 lb bag of manure and spread it in each of the 10 raised boxes I have trees planted in. The ones that I have just planted in holes along the path to the orchard are just on their own. “Dennis said surveying his little cleared orchard area about a hundred yards from the house.

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Looks like you got yourself some deer damage.” Charles said examining a bunch of peeled bark on the base of a sapling apple tree.

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Damn those pesky deer! Looks to me like they might have killed it. Dennis said seeing how girded the trees trunk was from their nibbling of the bark.

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That’s going to be my number one project for this morning. I got a bunch of daffodil bulbs to plant around these trees drip lines. Deer don’t like daffodils or rosemary; they are supposed to be good repellants for them and help keep them away from my fruit trees. I meant to have already done that particular job but I just hadn’t got around to it. I also have a bunch of onions and garlic I am going to plant around the orchard to mess with the bugs and maybe repel a field mouse. I was going to make this kind of a forest garden this year and plant grapes next to my apple trees etc. but no time for that now unless I can find some small wild muscadine grapes to transplant.”

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That shouldn’t be much of a problem, I got a backyard full of wild grapes that I think have just been to young to produce. They are all over the wood line” Charles advised.

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I will check them out when we go over there. Did Floyd say what town looked like as he passed through?’ Dennis asked as they headed to his storage shed to get some plant bulbs.

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He said he saw the guard troops and cops hanging out in Lowe’s parking lot and the Tractor supply store center but otherwise it was quite.

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I would like to spend what cash me and mom have left, but I have no desire to get anywhere near a store. Folks are going to be raising hell they can’t use charge cards and be in various levels of desperation. Hell I doubt the stores got much of anything left in them anyway. Still,
A fiat currency has no value in post-disaster realms all too soon if there are no goods to be had. I think we ought to just either stay here or go spend it on whatever and wherever we can.” Dennis said as he handed Charles a shovel and grabbed a pickax for himself.

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Everyone’s
world is now suddenly dark and dangerous, electricity is out for the foreseeable future and life is getting more primitive everyday. I say we either go now while there might be something to buy or forget about ever going to town for a long while.” Charles said as they walked back to the orchard.

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I agree with you Charles. Me, I just soon not find out first hand what its like to be around a crazed mob and say we just stay here. Tell you what though, if Floyd is up for it. I say we give him a few hundred bucks and send him to town to pick over what is left for his and our benefit. A couple hundred bucks worth of food is not really worth the trip, but if he can find any fertilizer or vegetable plants then we need to try. Hell insecticide and another hundred useful things might still be able to be purchased. I think I will follow him in my truck and see just what. if anything I can buy.” Dennis said contemplating which stores would just be closed most likely permanently and what might be still open.

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I will go with him Dennis, then you can stay here with your mom and work on other projects.” Charles offered.

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Damn that’s tempting, thanks. But I am wondering if my preppers eye and brain would be better used doing one more store run. I look at things different or multi use things than most people.” Dennis said waffling between wanting to stay at home, or the excitement of going on one last big prepper buying spree if he could.

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Don’t you think we need to keep some cash put back? I mean you never know what we might be able to buy later in the future and we haven’t even tried to buy any chickens yet.” Charles said logically.

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Tell you what, I will keep a little mad money back at the house for a rainy day and you go try to buy some chickens now from the neighbors. Send Floyd and Monica to the stores together to see if they can get anything. Monica has been listening to me talk preps for years and she has borrowed a lot of knowledge from my prepper fiction library in the past so she has a general idea what kind of things I would be looking for.” Dennis said as he leaned down to plant garlic and onions as fast as he could before they had to go back to the house and get some money together and share ideas on the shopping trips list.

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Sounds like a plan. It is hard to imagine all the people who suddenly have no money, no car or fuel for it, no phones, no electricity, no food or water and now are standing in orderly lines for long periods of time hoping to make a purchase.” Dennis said ominously.

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Your right buddy, hells look at the idiots at Walmart on a black Friday sale. It takes little or nothing to set off a stampede in some areas. If the crowds are too big or look the least bit unruly tell Monica and Floyd not to even bother getting close to the parking lot.” Dennis warned.

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You know neither one of them has a pistol permit.” Charles said raising one eyebrow.

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Ah hell back to me then. Tell you what, me and Floyd will go and Monica can stay with my Mom. You won’t be gone too long and you can help them with something when you get back... Dennis declared no longer that enthused about even attempting to go on a shopping trip.

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How much food do you think they have in the grocery store warehouses around here?” Charles asked as they went to put up the garden tools in the shed after they finished the plantings.

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The nation’s food system has many tiers Charles, and the “food stored in cities” level is but a minor component. The system encompasses many different levels of intermediate food storage components such as farms, cooperative grain-storage towers, processing plants, warehouses, shipping in transit, and distribution centers, each holding or supplying a significant percentage of our food supply and operating over a timeframe of weeks and months. It is a system in which flow makes up more of the capacity than storage.

Now the peanut processing plant here always has a lot more around than is used locally or maybe even regionally. Most of those farmers will still get a crop in this year of some sort so I imagine some enterprise will still go on as long as we can hold out for several months. But I bet the government is going to control it. Problem is there is no plan and depending on the level of societal breakdown, there is not a promise of any enterprise being able to operate safely or at all.” Dennis said trying to guess what a month or two months from now would be like.

Right now under the present conditions, he recognized that something was wrong and that they were facing several specific threats. Using the pistol analogy, in this condition you would chamber a bullet, though still keep the safety on. The mindset he had adopted is, "If that person does 'X', I will need to stop them," and we must be fully prepared to do just that. But what about in the future, safety off cocked and locked? It would be a matter of WHEN person does 'X', and he would need to stop them before they become a threat.” That’s the thought he didn’t want to deal with at the moment. Moving to less threatening environs was pretty much the only rational choice that is if he could manage it. But with the whole world gone to hell, he knew there was no where safe to bug out to for his little group.
Arms, ammunition, candles, lighters, antibiotics, gasoline, batteries and food was the concerns. People will fight for these things like animals. In these situations, it all changes. Men become monsters. It will soon be a much more seriously disgusting and horrific world to survive in.

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Dennis they are going to do a radio announcement in 5 minutes.” His mom called out the backdoor to him breaking his thought processes.

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Be there in a minute!” he called back.

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Come on Charles, let’s go find out just how deep this doo doo we are in is.” Dennis said and hurried towards the house. He already knew how deep they were, the rule is at first, the weak perish. Then the rest fight.

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Ok the very first things we will need to do is close and lock the driveway gates. I admit that it is merely a symbolic gesture because I only have that chain link fence run across the front of the property more for ascetics than true security, but it does send the right message. It represents when I don’t want visitors, open these gate at your own risk” Dennis said talking about attempting to do what little he could to increase his homes security

Dennis’s little band of Post-apocalyptic survivors gathered around the little portable radio with deep apprehension waiting for the next promised emergency broadcast report in 15 minutes.

Monica and his mom had listened to the previous broadcast and had breathlessly told Charles and him about a suspected bioterrorist release of smallpox virus in Chicago. The military and the CDC were trying to contain it and the whole nation was on high alert.

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Lord help us, that’s probably the start of Iran and Korea doing a little” tit for tat” because we EMP`ed their countries. I know friggin Iran has been messing with weaponized Smallpox and probably has no qualms about retaliating with some kind of nasty chemical or biological weapon. Of course you got them crazy bastards in Al Qaeda that will start up their own jihad with, or without approval of the Iranians. Everything is going to come unglued now, here is the big problem. Al Qaeda doesn’t have any mail home address or certain country so we can’t just obliterate the son of bitches. Israel already told Iran they would retaliate with nuclear missiles if they got attacked with any kind of WMD (Weapon of Mass destruction” so I imagine right now everybody’s got their fingers on some triggers I just soon not think about. Let’s hope sanity prevails and we don’t end up in a worldwide nuclear winter or something trying to turn Tehran into a glass parking lot.” Dennis said worriedly.

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I know what smallpox is but what is weaponized smallpox?” Monica asked.

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It is some extremely deadly shit !It is like the Russian scientists took an already very deadly virus and added horns and teeth to it for shits and giggles and made it even more contagious and designed it to kill you in a much shorter time .” Charles declared looking poignantly at Monica.

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That shit is going to go through and kill a minimum of 60% of the people around the release site even if it was normal smallpox. If Chicago got hit, you can be sure they did other releases in major cities. The next announcements I can pretty much tell you already but the main one is, IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE SMALLPOX DON’T GO TO THE HOSPITAL! “Dennis roared for effect.

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Damn ignorant people are going to flock to the hospitals anyway.” Charles said shaking his head.