When the Power Is Gone: A Powerless World - Book 1 (5 page)

“Brian, I have to tell you. I am beyond impressed with your comprehension of this whole new world. I need to talk to the others, but if they are in agreement, I think we should consider an alliance. No one will be able to make it alone once things start to get really ugly, and I believe we could help each other. In the meantime, let’s make sure you can cook food, and safely dispose of the aftermath.” Russ laughed at his own attempt at a clean joke, and Brian grimaced, but joined in the fun.

Rusty set the bucket down, and Russ started unloading it. He pulled out the cans first. When he had the tin snips in his hand, he asked Brian if he had a marker. “Sure, let me grab one.” Brian went through his kitchen junk drawer (doesn’t everybody have one?) and pulled out a fine tipped permanent marker. “Will this work?”

Russ took the marker, gave it the once over, and a quick nod. “Perfect. Rusty, hand me the soup can.” Rusty was still in the dark as to what they were going to do. He handed his dad the can. Russ took the soup can, held it up against the side of the number 10 can close to the bottom, drew an outline of the soup can against the larger can, and set both aside. He picked up the snips, and addressed his captive audience.

“We’re building a rocket stove. The premise behind the design is you get a lot of heat for a little bit of fuel. Especially for one person, this is a great design for cooking food and boiling water for purification. First, you take a number 10 can – the size you find in the bulk section of the grocery store. Then, take a soup can, or any regular sized vegetable can, and cut a hole in the big can the size of the smaller can. The cylindrical design channels the heat created by the fuel – in this case, sticks you find in the yard. Rusty, go out back and pick up any twigs you see.” Rusty went out the back door, while Russ continued his work on the stove. Brian watched with rapt attention.

Russ cut the hole in the larger can and inserted the smaller one. “We could get more efficiency if we had a shelf for the fuel source, but this will serve the purpose for now.” He slid the smaller can in the hole he had created. Rusty came back in with a handful of twigs. He handed them to his dad. Russ took the twigs, laid them beside the stove, and looked at Brian again. “Paper? Lighter? Matches?” Brian went back to his junk drawer and pulled out a lighter and a few books of bar matches. He handed them all to Russ. Russ took one book of matches and handed the rest back to Brian. “Put these someplace you can find them quick. Hand me that pad of post it notes.” Russ took a few notes, crumpled them into little balls, and pushed them inside the smaller can. He lit a match and touched it to the closest paper ball. The paper lit quickly. Russ put some of the smallest twigs in with the burning paper. It lit almost immediately.

Brian was very impressed with how quickly a small fire got started. “Wow Russ. That’s awesome. I can’t believe how fast that started. How long will it burn?”

Russ stood up, looked at Brian and smiled a very self-satisfied smile. “As long as you feed it. Hold your hand over the top of the big can. Feel that heat?”

Brian did as he was instructed and quickly pulled his hand back. “Oh man. That is super-hot. I’m pretty sure I can cook some ramen noodles on that bad boy. I have a small charcoal grill under the house. I bet I can use the grate from that grill on this and get a stable platform. Thank you for this. I’m going to start by cooking the meat in the freezer tomorrow. I think it will be okay until then.”

Russ nodded his head in agreement. “Yes, if you keep the freezer door shut it will be fine until tomorrow, probably longer. Okay, next up, porta-potty.” He grabbed the five-gallon bucket and handed it to Brian. “You’re going to need another bucket, or a can, to save your ashes in from the rocket stove. Do you have something?”

Brian went to the garage, and brought back a metal ash bucket, used for hauling ashes from a fireplace. Russ nodded his approval. “Perfect. Whenever you aren’t using the stove, dump the ashes in that bucket. The big plastic bucket will be your ‘toilet’. You can actually remove one of your toilet seats and place it on the bucket for a more comfortable feeling. When you use the potty, dump some of the ashes on the top. It will help cut down the smell. That’s about the best you can do, short term. Of course, you should use your toilet as long as it flushes. This is for after that service stops.”

Russ looked at the items on the dining table again. “You did really well, Brian. I misjudged you. I’m sorry. We need to talk again, maybe tomorrow. Does that work for you?”

Brian smiled. “Sure Russ. Come by any time. It’s not like I have to get to work or anything.” They both laughed at the joke.

Russ got serious again. “What I said before, about not coming back to the house – come over if you need anything. We’ll talk again soon.” Russ called Rusty over, they both shook Brian’s hand, and headed back home. Brian had a pretty good setup for now. Russ had no doubt he’d be back to talk to him in the next day or so. Without even trying, Brian had transformed himself from an annoyance to a possible ally.

By the time they got back, it was getting dark. There were emergency lanterns burning in the house. After a dinner of warmed over chicken soup and some homemade cornbread, everyone was pretty wiped out. We made sure everyone had a place to pass out, and then promptly did. Tomorrow, there was more work to be done. A lot more.

The next morning, we awoke to differing levels of restfulness. The boys were fine. They could sleep through anything, no matter the circumstances. The guys were a bit less fully rested, but had still slept well. They didn’t know why they hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep, but they were no worse for the wear.

Janet and I were the most affected. I can only guess it was the “mom” hearing. Janet agreed. “I woke up all night long, because there wasn’t any noise. That sounds stupid, I know, but I think I’m used to fans, and electric motors running in the background of life. I know I’ll get used to it, but right now, I miss the hum of electricity in the world.” She had nailed it. It was the lack of background noise that had woken me more than once in the night. I knew I’d get used to it as well as Janet, I just wondered how long it would take. No fan while I was sleeping? That really sucked.

We made coffee on the camp stove in the sun room, then fresh eggs from the chickens, and bacon thawing from the freezer. Might as well cook it if we had it, because we wouldn’t have it for long. Janet topped off the awesome breakfast with biscuits cooked in an oven that worked off the heat of a camp stove, the same method she had used for the cornbread the night before. Between the two of us, we had four stoves, with probably three dozen bottles of propane, so we had plenty of options to cook on.

As we were eating a family breakfast, with everyone there, Russ said we needed to talk about Brian. Bob laughed. “Dude, we have a lot more interesting, and much more important, things to talk about than that douche. I figured after you went over there yesterday, you finalized our dealings with him. What now?”

Russ smiled, and proceeded to tell us about everything Brian had done after coming over yesterday morning. To say we were as impressed as Russ was putting it mildly. We all thought he was a shallow, self-serving rich boy, who would be one of the first to go down in a situation like what we were currently facing. Russ went on to fill us in on his idea.

“As things degrade, there will be more and more troubles headed our way. You can never have too many people when it comes to security. I think we should offer to bring him in here, and when we head to the farm, see if he wants to come along. He is smart and savvy when it comes to surviving. I don’t know what in his past made him this way, but he could definitely be an asset, now and in the future. When we get to the farm, there will be a lot more to secure, and we will need more bodies. I think we should feel him out, and if he doesn’t have any family or a fall back location, we can offer him a place with us. I’m ready to debate this if we need to.” Russ looked around the table at each of us.

As his wife, and after what he went through to open my eyes to prepping, I didn’t doubt Russ anymore. If he said Brian was a good guy and would be an asset, I was in. Bob and Janet would be the voters. Janet would go along with Bob, or me, for that matter, so it really came down to Bob.

He looked at Russ with a surprised look. “Brother, if you think we need him, we need him. I wouldn’t have believed it if came from anyone other than you. That just leaves one question: is he bunking in with you and Anne, or me and Janet? We could make him a pallet on the floor with the boys.”

He grinned at Russ, and we all laughed. “No, I think we can set him up in the den, at least until things start to get really ugly. I think we should invite him to dinner this evening. Can we cook a dinner that’s guest worthy tonight?”

Janet and I both smiled and nodded. “I’m sure we can come up with something enticing. Lord knows, we still have freezer food thawing as we speak. Leave that to us.”  I held up my hand for the high five that Janet returned while the guys laughed again. 

“Good deal. Bob and I will go over this afternoon and invite him for dinner. I think you will all be pleasantly surprised at who he really is. Until then, we have some stuff to work on. Boys, eat up. We have work to do.” The boys shoved the last bites of eggs and biscuits in their mouths, downed their orange juice (more frozen stuff thawing), and put their shoes on.  As they were all headed out the door, I held up my hand in that traffic cop stance again. Maybe I had missed my calling.

“Attention! Dental hygiene alert! In case you hadn’t considered it, there won’t be a lot of dentists in business for a while. Until further notice, everyone will brush and floss after every meal. We can’t afford to get cavities, and there won’t be any root canals being done. Go brush and floss, everybody.” It’s the little things that can cause the biggest problems.

They all headed to the bathrooms to do as they were bid. As I was contemplating the lack of doctors and dentists, it dawned on me that I hadn’t even thought about my job, or my boss. I worked as a bookkeeper for a restaurant equipment company. My boss was an alright guy, but he gave me a rash of shit for being a prepper. Not that I let him know how in depth our prepping actually went, but he had seen my GHB in my SUV and asked what it was. When I told him, he laughed for five minutes.

“Anne, are you kidding me?  A woman as smart as you worrying about something as unlikely as that??” I wondered how he felt about all that now. I said a quick prayer for him and his family and then moved on. When the SHTF, my family came first. As the guys came back down the hall, I headed back to obey my own dental hygiene edict. I had a feeling it was going to be a busy day.

****

Russ took Bob and the boys out to the back yard. It was early spring in Tennessee, so the temps were mild, thankfully. Come the summer, if the power was still out, we were going to find out firsthand what our grandparent’s lives had been like before air conditioning. Did I mention how much no electricity sucks? They went to the storage building and started organizing the piles we had dumped there from what we grabbed at Bob and Janet’s. Russ opened the first trailer, pulled out the ramp, and walked in. He turned on a light and scooted some boxes against the wall.

“Alright fellas, we need to get these piles organized. I want us to be ready to go as fast as possible, in case everything turns to shit. Heavy stuff goes on the bottom, but don’t fill the floor up. We need to save room for last minute items that might be heavy or cumbersome. Oh, and watch out for the garden. If you step on those plants, you are toast. You know how your mom loves radishes.”

We had turned up a small plot for a garden. We would get plenty of fresh veggies from the farm during the summer, but it was also nice to have some right out back – tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes and best of all lettuce – those things we could eat every day, and did. The radishes were almost ready, the lettuce was ripe enough to start pulling, but the tomato and cucumber sets were still in the sun room. No reason to plant them now. I’d just keep them watered, and hope we could take them with us to the farm. Not that Millie wouldn’t have some as well, but they were already started. And can you ever really have too many tomatoes or cucumbers?

I was watching the guys out the back door when Janet walked in from garage carrying a half thawed roast. “Do you think Russ would fire the generator up again, so we can use the slow cooker? If not, I’m going to have to try to cook this on the camp stove, and I’ve never cooked a roast that way. If we can use the slow cooker, we can set it and forget it. Come to think of it, do we even know if the slow cooker still works?”

I shrugged my shoulders, and headed for the pantry. “No idea, but there’s only one way to find out.” I pulled out the cooker and crossed my fingers. Janet went to the door and called out to Russ.

“Russ, can we get power to run an outlet for the slow cooker? We want to make a roast for dinner tonight. That should be company worthy.”

Russ thought for a second, then smiled. “I can do you one better than that. I have a little gem that should work for you. Let me get it.” Russ went to the garage and opened his faraday cabinet. He pulled out a small portable power pack. “I just refreshed the charge on this last weekend. I think the charge will last through your cook time.” He carried the pack into the kitchen and set it on the counter. He turned it on, and showed Janet where to plug the cooker into it. She quickly put the roast and seasonings together, put the lid on, and turned on the power. The light lit on the front, and we cheered the cooker on. No chip then. Sweet! I went up to Russ, planted a big kiss on him, and shooed him back out the door.

We still got Russ to fire up the generator, since we were still working on dehydrating meat. He thought we would be safe to use it for today. Tomorrow was another story. But we were ahead of schedule, and almost done, so we should be able to finish it today.

After a lunch of fried pork chops and French fries (yes, I know not so healthy, but the freezer was still thawing stuff faster than we could cook it), Russ and Bob headed over to Brian’s house. The guys had spent a very productive morning getting the supplies and trailers organized, so Russ had the boys splitting wood. We had a wood burning stove in the den, and though he didn’t think we would run out of propane for the camp stoves, better safe than sorry. If we had to, we could cook on the wood stove. Plus, keeping them busy kept their minds off all the technology they no longer had. Both boys were huge gamers, playing pretty much every night and weekends, and a lot of the time past their gaming curfew. More importantly, tired kids went to sleep quickly, and slept soundly. I’d be willing to bet they crashed right after supper tonight.

Janet and I had been working on the dehydrated foods, packing them in food storage bags. The vacuum sealer apparently had a chip, because it was dead. So, we were using zipper bags and a straw. Not completely sealed, but close enough to keep the food edible for quite a while. We put the food in, slid the straw to the end, zipped the bag closed to the straw, sucked out the air, pulled the straw, and quickly finished closing the bag. We finished up the packaging and set a pot of coffee to brewing on the camp stove. We thought the guys would like a cup when they got back, and we definitely were ready for one. We had many pounds of coffee stored, as well as teas, and hot cocoa mix for the boys. When we were gathering our preps, we tried to think of things we’d miss the most, and coffee was definitely one of them.

We didn’t know how long it would be until factories started back up, or when deliveries would begin again, of even if either of those things would happen again, ever. We had been firing up the hand held HAM radio, but so far had gotten nothing but static. If we weren’t even picking up people in other cities, this event was very wide spread – possibly impacting the whole country, maybe the world. With no technology, there was no communication, so we were literally in the dark. No matter how much we thought we had prepared for something like this, who knew how vast this was, or how long it would last? We hadn’t seen or heard from another soul since it happened. We lived at the end of a short dead end road, so we didn’t get a lot of traffic, but none of the other half dozen neighbors had made it back from wherever they were when the lights went out. That didn’t bode well for society or the future.

And just as I was pondering the fact that we hadn’t heard another vehicle since yesterday morning, the unmistakable sound of a loud exhaust came in from outside. We quickly killed the generator, closed the shutters over the picture window, and looked through the crack to the street. An old truck, with people in it, driving down our dead end street. Trouble. No doubt.

****

“Man, I hope you know what you’re doing. I mean, he seems like such a douche.” Bob looked at Russ as they walked across the yard toward Brian’s house.

Russ smiled at his best friend. “I know, I felt the same way when I opened the door and saw him on the porch yesterday. But, I’m telling you, whether he realizes it or not, he has prepper in him. And we will need as many like-minded people as we can find to keep everyone safe.”

“Okay, buddy, but if he goes to the douche side, he’s gotta go.” Russ laughed and stepped up on the porch at Brian’s house. He knocked on the door. After a moment, about the time it would have taken him to walk from the back of the house to the door and look through the peep hole, the door opened.

Brian smiled at the guys, extended his hand and shook hands with both men. “Come in guys. Can I get you anything? Water, or water?” Russ grinned and declined. They went to kitchen and sat at the breakfast bar. Russ looked around, and saw that all the supplies that were on the table yesterday were gone, apparently stored out of sight of any prying eyes. Good job, Brian.

Russ started the conversation. “Brian, you probably figured out yesterday after we talked that we have an idea what happened. We are what you might have heard referred to as preppers. We have supplies to last without going to stores, and if necessary without services. Have you heard of this kind of lifestyle?”

Brian looked between the two men, and nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. I don’t know that I truly bought into the thought process, but now, it all makes sense. You guys should be in a great position to deal with this. I wish I had gone down that path. I bet there are a lot of people out there now that are wishing the same thing. I really appreciate what you did yesterday, Russ. I was able to get supplies that may help me make it a while, as long as no assholes show up trying to take my stuff. If they do, they’ll get a little surprise. I won’t give up without a fight.” Russ looked at Bob, who was grinning like a Cheshire cat. Bob took over the chat.

“We have a proposition for you, Brian. You know there is strength in numbers. We have six people at Russ’s who can defend what we have. I don’t know what all you have, but you won’t last long by yourself. We want to invite you to join us over there. It won’t be private, you’ll probably have to sleep on the couch, but we can offer you friendship, security, and some pretty decent cooking from our wives. In fact, we want you to come over for dinner tonight and get to know everybody a little better. Would you be interested? I think there’s a roast cooking as we speak.”