Bug Out! Part 8: RV Park Terror (5 page)

“Don’t stomp around yet!” Jeb shouted. “Let’s check for tracks.”

The men all froze, except Jerry, who started looking at the ground around the gate. Jeb walked up and down the road, and then joined Jerry by the gate, looking closely at the ground in front and behind it.

“Nobody’s been here for a long time,” Jeb said. “Agree, Jerry?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We bring bolt cutters?”

“Sure did, in the back,” Gabe said. “It’s under the tarp, where the rest of my tools are.” He walked to the back of his SUV, and returned with them. “Here goes nothing.”

He struggled with the cutters, but they got through the padlock. He carried the bolt cutters back to the SUV while Jeb and Jerry unwrapped the chain and pushed both sides of the gate open. They drove in. The place was a mess. It was overgrown, and there was trash here and there, sitting in large clumps. The windows in the front office were broken out. Behind that was a courtyard, and then the clubhouse. It had broken windows too, and the doors hung open. Gabe pulled over to the side of the clubhouse, and Jeb pulled down a little ways, across the road, next to the building by the swimming pool area. There was evidence of fire at that building, with black soot marks flowing out of the tops of the windows. Jeb got out and grabbed his rifle. Frank got out too, and then Terry.

“That pool has seen better days,” Jeb said, laughing.

“This place is a dump,” Terry said.

“True, but it’s fixable,” Frank said. “Wonder what’s in that big building back there?” He pointed to a barn-like structure behind the clubhouse, not far from the water tower.

“If we’re lucky, there are generators,” Jeb said. “But there’s also city electric. Look at the wires.” He pointed to the poles, with wires going into the barn.

They walked over to meet Charlie and Gabe and the others. Duchess was walking around, sniffing and looking.

“Kind of a mess,” Charlie said. “But fixable. These are all cinder block buildings, except for that barn back there.”

“It’s nice in here with all these trees,” Jerry said.

They walked into the clubhouse. It was fairly bright because of all of the windows. There was broken glass all over the floor. The tables inside looked okay. Same with the chairs. There was a big fireplace on one side of the room, and a stage on the other. There were doors on either side of the stage. They walked over to the door on the right side and pushed it. It opened up into a kitchen that was mostly intact…the windows weren’t broken, and the elements hadn’t gotten a foothold. Gabe turned the faucet. Water flowed out.

“Wow, the water still works,” he said.

“Well, until we run out in the water tower,” Jeb said. “Unless we can get the pump working.”

“Howard said this place has a spring,” Charlie said. “Wonder if he’s got enough pressure to get up into that tower on its own?”

“No way,” Jerry said. “I think he’s probably pumping it from a reservoir someplace on the property.”

“That’s a big tank. If it was pretty full when the pump was shut off, we may have enough water up there to last quite a while.

“I’m going to go look outside,” Gabe said.

“I’ll go too,” Dobie said, bringing Duchess along.

“Me too,” Terry said. They walked out and headed back into the area where the coach sites were. The first trailer they saw was burned out. You couldn’t even tell if it was a travel trailer or a 5
^th
wheel anymore. Terry’s heart sank. “Shoot, that’s not good.”

Then they got around the back of the barn. There were five more trailers back there, and they all looked reasonably intact. No broken windows. They were dirty, and there was a lot of debris that had collected around them. The three men approached them.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gabe said. “These look like they can be saved.”

“Yep, they sure do,” Dobie said. “We need to clear the crap away from them, though. Looks like a big fire hazard to me.

“You look awful happy, kid,” Gabe said, chuckling. “Hoping for a little love nest here, are you?”

Terry just smiled sheepishly at them.

“Wow! Look at this!” shouted Charlie. His voice was coming from the barn.

The men all trotted over
to the barn where Charlie and Jerry were standing, looking inside. Jerry had Gabe’s bolt cutters in his hand, and both he and Charlie were still breathing hard. The large chain and padlock were hanging down from one side of the door.

“How’d you guys cut through a lock that size with those bolt cutters?” Gabe asked.

“It took both of us,” Jerry said, still a little out of breath, “and we cut the chain, not the lock. That lock is way too big for these cutters.”

“I thought this was just a ramshackle old wood barn,” Dobie said. “Look at it. It’s steel. It just needs paint.”

The men pulled the other side of the door open to let in some light.

“Oh, I see what you were yelling about,” Dobie said. There were two diesel generators in on the left hand side, sectioned off by a chain link cage, with yet another chain and padlock on it. There was a large fuel tank in the cage too, along with a water pump and a water purification system.

“Yeah, there’s the generators, but look at the rest of this stuff,” Charlie said.

In the middle of the barn was a diesel tow truck, and then a couple of snowmobiles and a riding lawnmower. On the right wall was a large workshop area, with a huge workbench and lots of power tools…drill press, lathe, vertical mill, air compressor, arc welder, and some sheet metal tools.

“Holy crap,” Gabe said. “Why didn’t the tweakers ever bust into this place?”

“Probably too stupid,” Dobie said. “Besides, except for the snowmobiles, this kind of stuff is almost impossible to fence.”

“That was a pretty damn big lock on the door, too, and there aren’t windows to break into,” Jeb said. “Probably too much effort. They were making reliable money cooking meth.”

Frank was staring off into the corner, next to the workbench area. There was a large metal cabinet over there, with cables coming out of the top and going out to the roof. He started to trot over there.

“What, Frank?” Jerry asked, trotting to catch up to him.

“That might be a Wi-Fi set up,” he said. “Look at the wires coming out of the top. You see a dish anywhere around here?”

“Nope, not yet. This place is big, though. There’s going to be a lot of exploring to do.”

“Hey guys, I’m going to go walk the fence,” Jeb said.

“I’ll go with you,” Dobie said, walking Duchess over. “We might need to mend some fencing…might as well find it now.” They walked off together.

“Well, what do you think, Jeb?” Dobie asked as they walked to the section of fence that was behind the barn.

“I don’t know,” Jeb said. “Lots of exploring left to do, and if we can’t get power to our rigs, this’ll be a short stay. None of us can boondock for that long.”

“We’ll have to make some supply runs, I suspect. Batteries, fuel, and so on. Wonder if we can get the power company to turn us back on.”

“Good question. We don’t own this, but I’m not sure that matters, as long as somebody’s around to send a bill to.”

There were trees all the way around the property, just inside of the fence. They were old trees, with large trunks.

“There’s our first place to mend,” Dobie said, pointing.

“That’s a big enough hole to drive through,” Jeb said, rubbing his beard with his fingers. “Look, there’s tracks there.” He walked over and squatted down to get a closer look.

“How old?”

“Real old,” Jeb said. “It was probably muddy when they left. I think these tracks have been through more than one winter.”

“Wonder if we can find a fence stretcher in town,” Dobie said. “We could probably re-fasten it if we can get it stretched back out.”

“Hell, if we can find a fence stretcher, we can probably find a gate that’ll fit here. It’d be nice to have a back way out.”

“Good point,” Dobie said.

“We’ll have to do some work out front for the dogs, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dobie said. “That vehicle gate ain’t gonna cut it.”

“Hey,” Jeb said. “Look over there. That’s a pond.”

They walked up to it. It was in the far right hand corner of the property. It was obviously man made, because it was almost square.

“That’s big enough to have fish in it,” Jeb said, smiling. “Excellent.”

“Think that’s fed by the spring?”

“Yep. You see that water purification stuff? It’s cleaning the water from this pond before it gets pumped up into the tank. Somebody spent a lot of money on that.”

“Wonder if it was the kid or the dad?” Dobie asked.

“I’m guessing the dad. That purification stuff is old. It might be a little difficult to get parts if something breaks.”

“Look, there’s a small brook that’s coming out of that pond,” Dobie said, pointing.

“Yep, if it’s fed by a spring, the water has to go someplace,” Jeb said. He stood on his tiptoes and looked. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said. “There’s a small lake over there. Wonder if it belongs to this property? See it? About three hundred yards over there.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Why hasn’t anybody bothered this place?”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere,” Jeb said. “Not enough people have found it. If this was on the outskirts of a big town like Phoenix or Denver or even Colorado Springs, it’d be gone by now. Hell, the county governments around those towns probably would have foreclosed. The land is worth too much.”

They walked to the left now, along the back fence. There were ruins of a horseshoe game and a volleyball court back there, also a few broken picnic tables and old iron barbeques. Over further to the left, almost to the far corner of the park, there was a broken down children’s jungle gym set, and some swings. It was eerie back there, like a ghost town. The fence was intact around it.

“Wonder how many RV spaces there are here?” Dobie asked.

“I was trying to count earlier. Just under 200, I think. It’s sizable. Probably was a good business before I-70 came along and mucked it up.”

They turned left again, and walked along that side of the park. The only thing close by that side were RV spaces, until the front third of the park. Then there was the swimming pool area. In front of that was a large clearing, which looked like it had grass on it before the sprinklers got turned off. They got all the way up to the front corner of the park. No problems with the fence on that stretch.

“Too bad that pool is so messed up,” Jeb said.

“It might be fixable.”

“Maybe,” Jeb said. “I don’t know that we should become too attached to this place, though.”

“Why?” Dobie asked.

“Because it’s not even a little bit defensible. The enemy could surround us on all sides from a long way off and just move right in. They could also bring tanks in here and just pound us from a mile away.”

“True,” Dobie said. “Our safety here completely depends on the safety of this state. We all knew that going in.”

“I know, I know. I just feel like my butt is flapping in the breeze. Doesn’t matter - we’ll end up here anyway. We have a lot of smart folks with us, and they’ll get this place running again in no time. I can feel it.”

“We’ve only got until winter, though, right?” Dobie asked. “It’ll be tough to stay here after that.”

“Oh, I don’t know. There were old folks living here year around. I’ll bet it wouldn’t be as bad as I was thinking. Some rigs would do better than others. Mine’s set up for winter use…it’s got tank heaters and insulated plumbing and dual furnaces. There’s things we can do with the other rigs too, especially if we can get the city power up and running. Ceramic heaters, for instance, to supplement the propane.”

“Let’s take a look at the front area and see what we could do about fencing,” Dobie said. Jeb nodded, and they walked over there.

Back in the barn, Charlie, Terry, and Gabe struggled with the lock on the chain link cage. They got through it, but it took two of them pushing on the bolt cutters to do it. The gate creaked open.

The first thing Charlie checked was the fuel tank. “It’s about 2/3rds full, from the look of it,” he said.

“How long is that?” Terry asked.

“Depends on how much we run it. Could be weeks if we only run it every so often to charge up coach batteries,” Charlie said.

“Can we get these things started?” Terry asked.

“Yeah, we can,” Gabe said. “These things are pretty simple. The starting batteries are probably shot, though.”

“Any chance we can jump them?”

“Maybe. Might be worth a try, but even if we can get it started, the batteries might not hold any charge.”

“Maybe Howard sells them,” Terry said. He took out his iPhone and took pictures of the batteries.

“Before we go trying to start these things, I think we’d better go looking around for switches that are on…especially in those trailers out there. We don’t need any fires.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Gabe said.

“I’ll go shut off all of the breakers on the power masts,” Terry said. He turned and walked out of the barn.

“I’ll take a look at the fuel system on the first generator and see if it’s messed up,” Gabe said.

“I’ll work the other one,” Charlie said. “I know quite a bit about these things too.”

“Comes with the territory, I guess,” Gabe said, laughing. “We
are
the best people around to fix up a place like this. Howard was right about that.”

Jerry and Frank were on the other side of the barn, looking at the metal cabinet in the corner. It had a hasp and lock on it. Jerry saw a crowbar leaning up against the work bench. He used it to break the hasp, and then Frank opened the double doors.

“Satellite,” Frank said. “Probably both modem and TV here. We need to find the dish.”

“Do these have much bandwidth?”

“Not great,” Frank said. “This thing is from about 2006. Maybe Jake has something better. A lot depends on the dish. This is a heavy duty unit, so he was probably feeding some Wi-Fi antennas, but I’ll bet it’s slower than molasses in winter time.”

“Let’s go out around the back of the building. The dish is probably on the roof.”

Frank nodded, and then went out the front door and around to the back side of the barn.