Compass Call: Survival & Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 3) (11 page)

“Thanks John. Are you sure it’s OK to carry the sword around with me?” asked Paul, as he began to attach the bandolier sling to his shotgun.

“Why not,” said John, “I’m sure it will come in handy for clearing brush or something.”

“What!” replied Paul, “I would never clear brush with this sword,” he added with genuine horror.

John chuckled and said, “Well, I’m glad you like it. I’m actually looking forward to seeing you use it one day.”

“Really? You think it’ll come to that?” asked Paul.

“I have no doubt,” replied John. “When everyone runs out of ammo, we’ll all be using swords.” At that moment the kitchen door opened and Pete stuck his head in. “John, are you OK with us opening up the back door to bring the sandbags in?”

“No, not at all. Here, you’ll need this,” said John, as he handed Pete his cordless drill.

“I need some lumber too. What do you have in the shop?”

“I’m heading out there now,” said John. “What do you need?”

“A couple of four-by-fours, and a handful of two-by-fours,” said Pete.

“When you’re done moving the sandbags you’ll find me in the shop,” said John.

Pete slipped back into the kitchen and Paul asked, “What’s he building?”

“He’s taking the sandbags from around the pool and using them to reinforce the alcove OP. I’m not sure what he needs the lumber for, but I’m sure it’s related. Are you ready to go?” asked John.

“How long have you known Pete?”

“About eighteen years,” answered John.

“You guys fought together in Iraq?”

“Yes, we worked together there, and stateside. Why?”

“You guys think alike. Is it that brotherhood thing they talk about with Soldiers?” asked Paul.

“I guess so,” said John. “But our friendship is deeper than that. Come on, I need to get some food from the shelter. Do you want to see it?”

“Yes, I do,” said Paul.

“OK then, I want to perform a test. When we get to the shop, I want to see how long it takes you to find the entry door,” said John.

Paul studied John’s face, as if gauging the challenge. “The door
is
in the shop . . . right?”

“It is. And I won’t give you any clues about where it is. I really want to see how long it takes you to find it,” replied John.

When they reached the shop, John unlocked the side door and immediately stepped in to raise the heavy rolling door. The shop seemed to sigh as it absorbed the fresh air, or maybe it was John who breathed in the fresh air and he only imagined the shop doing the same. Regardless, the fresh air and sunlight drove the shadows away and made the shop feel warm and comfortable again, like it did before the disaster. Paul sat his shotgun on John’s work bench, directly over the hidden shelter entrance, and asked, “Can I move some things around?”

“Sure, as long as you put them back when you’re done,” said John, as he began to examine the neatly stacked lumber in the corner of the shop. Paul was still looking for the hidden shelter entrance when Pete and the boys arrived for the lumber several minutes later.

Pete selected cuts and sizes that suited his needs and handed everything to the boys to carry back to the house. “Who’s on watch?” asked John.

“Abby is, dad,” said Adam, as he moved past to accept the first of Pete’s selected four-by-four’s.

Satisfied, John turned his attention back to Pete and the alcove construction project. Pete informed John that they needed the four-by-four’s to reinforce the underside of the alcove, that the accumulated weight of the sandbags might collapse the ceiling. Pete also wanted to make a hand-railing, and build a gun port box that would hold the weight of at least three stacks of sandbags. He told John he wasn’t worried about providing overhead cover, which would keep the total weight down, but he did want to put at least one layer of sandbags on the floor.

John turned and pointed to where the last of his empty sandbags were stacked, only to find Paul on his hands and knees at the base of the workbench. Pete gave John a quizzical look and silently mouthed, “What’s he doing?”

“He’s looking for the shelter door,” replied John in kind. Pete nodded and left with the last of the lumber over his shoulder.

Paul pulled a box out from under the workbench and thumped the plywood panel with his knuckle. When it returned a hollow sound he let out a sigh, and said, “That’s a pretty good hiding place. I don’t think I would have found it if I wasn’t looking for it,” said Paul.

“It’s not perfect, but it was the best I could do. If you move the boxes on the shelf, you can lift it out of the way,” said John. “Here, let me show you.” John removed the shelf and reached down to lift the plywood panel up from the recessed shelter door. He fished a key from his key chain and bent to unlock the padlock on the steel door.

“Wow, that’s pretty cool,” said Paul, “are we going in?”

“Yes. We need to get some food for Jenna. Care to climb down?”

“Do you have a flashlight?”

“Is the Pope Catholic?” answered John, and handed Paul a flash-light from the workbench.

Paul shined the light into the hole and whistled, “That’s deep . . . much deeper than I thought it would be.”

“It has to be. The container is about eight-foot tall. Then there’s four feet of earth on top of it, and the shop’s concrete pad, so yeah, it’s a long fall to the bottom. There’s a light switch to the left of the shelter entrance,” said John.

John illuminated the shaft with a flashlight while Paul cautiously lowered himself down the ladder. When his feet crunched the gravel at the bottom, John told him to look for an insulated switch box. Paul opened the box, flipped the switch, and the shelter entrance was bathed in red light. “This is really cool,” he said, “but why a red light?”

“It’s to protect your night vision. There are white lights inside, so no worries. Here, I’m tossing you my keys. The shelter key is the brass one with the notch on the side.”

“Done,” said Paul. “Now what?”

“Now open the door and go in. There’s another light switch on the left when you enter, it’s for the interior lights,” said John.

“Got it,” said Paul, as his voice echoed up from below. “Wow, you have a lot of stuff in here. What do you want me to do now?”

“First, find the pails that say pinto beans, and rice. There are labels on each pail. Grab two of each and set them at the bottom of the shaft while I hook up the pulley.”

“Got it,” said Paul.

John smiled and shook his head in amazement. Paul’s enthusiasm reminded him of Adam’s. It didn’t matter how many times Adam went into the shelter, every time was like the first time. He bubbled with energy just like Paul was displaying. John liked the shelter too, but for him it was more about achieving an elevated level of preparedness than actually providing the family with a practical tornado shelter. In all the years he lived in the house, there was only one tornado watch, and it wasn’t enough to send everyone to the shelter.

For John, the shelter was little more than his prepper pacifier. He laughed at himself for actually having considered living in it with his family. Still, he didn’t consider it a complete waste of money. It would make an excellent storage vault, which is exactly what he planned to use if for when they left.

John attached a single-wheel pulley to the underside of the workbench and fed a weighted rope over the wheel. He attached a hook and let the rope slide through his hands as it dropped to the bottom of the shaft. When the hook hit the bottom, he waited for Paul to reappear. Paul emerged from the shelter, and after placing the hook to the pail’s handle, John began to haul the first bucket up.

When John pulled up the last bucket of beans and rice, Paul asked, “What else do you want?”

“Let’s get one each of flour, salt and sugar,” said John, as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

Paul disappeared into the shelter once again, and in less than ten minutes they had three more white plastic pails sitting on the shop floor. “Do you see anything else in the plastic buckets that we haven’t included?” asked John.

“Just a second . . . let me look,” said Paul. John could hear him talking to himself while he searched through the pails. There was still more than forty pails in the shelter, and Paul had to touch each one to see what it held.

Five minutes later, Paul reappeared and said, while reading from a list he had written on the palm of his hand, “I found honey, popping corn, lots of wheat, powdered milk, hard candy, brown sugar, rolled oats, black beans, cornmeal, kidney beans, and baking soda,” he yelled from the bottom of the shaft. “I think that was all of it,” he added, “at least in terms of variety.”

While waiting for Paul, John began to consider what they might need to feed the entire group during their travels. When it came to survival, food was food, but he also knew that variety was important. Having once lived for six months on nothing but MREs, John knew the challenge of pallet fatigue and what it meant for morale. But the consequence of variety was storage and rotation.

Now that the food containers were up, he had to get them inside without anybody seeing them. He might not be able to hide the fact that he had solar panels, or a covered pool filled with water, but he wasn’t going to advertise his food if he could help it.

“So what do you want to start with?” asked Paul.

The honey was too heavy to carry, and very messy, so that would stay in the shelter. He also didn’t want to mess with any more beans, or with much of the wheat. He knew Jenna would want some of the freeze dried and dehydrated fruits, vegetables and such, but he wasn’t prepared to guess what or how much she would want, so he decided to give her his inventory sheet and tackle it later. John leaned over the hole and said, “Let’s grab one cornmeal, the hard candy, two buckets of wheat . . .”

“What kind?” interrupted Paul.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, right. Um. . . grab one of each . . . one hard red, one hard white, and one soft white, and we’ll let the ladies decide what they want to use,” answered John.

“What about the canned food? And there are some paint cans down here too, and some kind of other food in square shaped plastic buckets . . . and some military meals, what do you call them . . . MREs?” finished Paul.

“You mean the metal cans in the boxes, or the stuff Jenna put in the paint cans?” replied John.

“The cans in the boxes . . . they look like coffee cans with white plastic lids,” answered Paul.

“Leave all of that for now. I’ll have Jenna review the inventory sheet and we’ll come back and get what she needs later,” said John.

He had close to a hundred boxes of freeze dried and dehydrated food stacked in the far corner of the shelter. Each box contained six, number-ten cans. Unfortunately, there was no order in how he stored the canned food, so it would be a challenge to find the stuff Jenna would want. At least he would have help. John hauled up eight more food pails and told Paul to leave the shelter unlocked and climb up. Paul studied the underside of the hatch door when he reached the top and said, “I see you rigged it to close and lock from the inside.”

“Yeah,” answered John, “but it’s not a vault door. It wouldn’t take much to pry it open. Concealment is our best defense here. The shelter door also locks on the inside. It’s sturdier, but again, it wouldn’t take much for a determined enemy to either pry it open, or flush us out,” said John, as he reached out to offer a hand up to Paul.

Paul accepted John’s hand and emerged from under the work bench. He immediately counted the buckets and said, “Fourteen! I guess now we have to carry them in the house.”

“I thought we’d get the boys to do that,” said John with a wink and a nod.

“I like how you think, boss,” said Paul.

John smiled in reply. He carefully avoided overreacting to Paul’s use of the title, “boss.” He figured Paul must have heard Pete use it, though Pete used it more as a place marker than an actual title. Paul probably thought John liked the title, which he didn’t, but he was glad to see Paul was becoming more comfortable around him. They stepped outside to quickly scan the area and make sure no one was watching, then with two pails each, they quickly carried them into the house through the back door. Preparations for their departure had begun. And though John didn’t yet know it, the timing for their effort couldn’t have been more precise, or important.

CHAPTER 3

T
he smell of taco meat cooking in the kitchen hit John’s nose as soon as he walked through the back door with the first load of food pails, and he immediately began to stress about how the aroma would carry through the neighborhood and alert everyone that they were eating well. He shut the door between each trip as a feel good measure, but it still bothered him to think that his neighbors could smell the taco meat. Visions of hungry people assembling in his yard began to fill his mind, and it took a great deal of effort to push those thoughts away.

When they carried the last of the pails into the house, John closed and secured the back door. No one seemed to notice his stress, but he knew he would have to explain the importance of discipline in all areas, especially with the smell of cooking food, if such a thing was even possible. John doubted anyone in the neighborhood had fresh meat to cook, let alone the means to cook it, and he wondered if they should go to cold meals until they left. The last thing he wanted to do was entice his neighbors to further investigate his already obvious preps.