When the Power Is Gone: A Powerless World - Book 1 (7 page)

“Um, if I have bad breath, you can just tell me. I brushed this morning, but I’ve had an electric toothbrush for years, so maybe I’m out of practice. Is bad breath an issue out there?” We were all looking at Brian like he was slipping into minor insanity. Then, at almost the same time, we all burst out laughing.

Bob got control of himself first, and explained. “We make mini first aid kits out of those tins. After the mints are gone, we put in a few band-aids, some alcohol wipes, a bit of triple antibiotic cream, a needle and thread, some gauze and tape, a razor blade, and some waterproof matches. It isn’t everything you would need in an emergency, but it could help. Russ, don’t forget the 550 cord and duct tape.” Russ nodded and grabbed a small six-foot length of paracord, and a lighter with duct tape wrapped around it. He handed all of that to Brian. Brian added them to his bag.

“Can you guys think of anything else? It’s been a while since we put a BOB together.” We all thought about it but didn’t come up with anything more they needed. After all, they weren’t going far – they shouldn’t need anything but the water, and maybe a few energy bars.

With no more suggestions, Russ led us out to the garage. He wanted to make sure Rusty’s bike was in good condition and the tires were aired up. After he verified the bike was ready to go, he went back in the house to grab his own bag. He looked at Bob. “We shouldn’t be gone more than two hours. Does that sound about right, Brian?” Brian agreed. Russ continued. “If we aren’t back in three, lock this place down, because anybody who could stop us would be too close to the house.”

When he said that, I jerked my head up and looked at him, full of alarm. He put his arms around me to calm me down. “Babe, it’s just a precaution. I’m sure we’ll be fine. It shouldn’t be bad out there yet. Some folks will probably have figured out what is going on and will be hunkered down at home. Some will still be waiting for someone to come help. A few will be causing problems, but those tend to be more active at night, since it’s harder to see them coming. We probably won’t run into anyone, but if we do, we’ll see if they know anything. I promise, we’ll be fine, and we’ll be back soon. Keep the boys focused on the preps room. I love you, Anne.”

With that, he kissed me, grabbed his bag, and headed back to the garage. Brian followed him. They looked out front and didn’t see anyone, so they took the bikes around the fence and headed out to the woods behind the house. I took a breath, that I’m pretty sure I would be holding until they got back.

****

Since Brian had been through the woods on a pretty regular basis, he led the way. Russ told him to take it slowly and keep his eyes and ears open for other people. Not being noticed was the game plan for longevity at our current location. Brian took it to heart, and was trying hard to stay alert for anything.

The path through the woods ran beside the main drag into town – well, the strip mall. “Into town” was a relative term for us. Fortunately for the guys, it was still within the tree line, so they could stay in the cover while they looked around. Brian noticed that all the cars were still there that he had seen the first day. That made sense, as they were all pretty recent models. Different than the first day was the fact that many windows were broken, all the doors and trunks were open, and they looked like they had all been checked and ransacked. If there had been anything useful before, there wasn’t now. There was no one around. He shared his previous experience with this area with Russ.

“There were a bunch of folks here when it happened, but nobody is here now. I hope everyone got home alright, especially those kids. That bus over there was about half full of teenagers. Who knows how many other kids – younger, like elementary school – might have been on buses when this happened. I’m glad I don’t have kids. No offense, Russ.” Brian had a concerned look on his face as he said it.

              Russ smiled at him. “None taken. We were fortunate that our kids hadn’t gotten on the bus yet, or our day would have gone down a lot different that first day. And I’m with you – I hope those kids, and any others who weren’t home, made it back. You can make yourself crazy thinking about what others are dealing with in these types of situations, but we can’t worry about anyone but us now. It sucks, but you can’t save everyone.” Brian nodded in agreement. It did suck.

Russ had pulled out his binoculars, and was scanning the area. Seeing no movement, he motioned to Brian. “Looks clear here. Let’s try to get closer to the mall, but don’t leave the woods. If we can do this without revealing ourselves to anyone, that’s the preference.” Brian headed back down the path.

The closer they got to the mall, the more evidence they saw on the streets of people – not people themselves, but signs that people had been there. Trash, lots of trash, the smell of decaying food, and – bodily fluids. Seriously? People were already peeing in the streets?? Disgusting. Then they picked up the smell of smoke. Heavy smoke. That couldn’t be good. They edged closer to the mall.

When they got close enough to see the mall, it was a shock, especially for Brian, who had just been there a few days ago. All the store windows were broken. While they couldn’t see inside, they could tell from what was outside that the stores had been ransacked. There were broken bottles, empty food containers, broken appliances – none of the stores had been missed. Russ wasn’t surprised. Those who weren’t prepared for something like this would have panicked when they realized there were not going to be any more deliveries, at least not for the foreseeable future.  There would have been a bunch of idiots who had stolen TVs and blu-ray players. They wouldn’t have figured out yet that those things were now worthless. They would have wasted their time stealing worthless items when they should have been gathering food and water. But some people had figured that part out, because the grocery store was empty as well.

Russ was scanning the mall with his binoculars, and he spied a few people coming out of one of the stores. Probably looking for any scraps someone might have missed. It could happen. There were things that could be eaten that some people might not have thought about – pet foods, for one. Yeah, sounds gross, unless you’re really, really hungry. Dog food is made with meat (don’t ask what kind, or what part), soy beans, grains – all things a human could ingest as well. Desperate times…

As Russ looked around, he found the source of the strong smoke smell. A huge cloud of smoke was off to the right. As he tracked it back to its source, he found what appeared to be an enormous fire. It looked like a whole neighborhood was burning. Actually, it probably was. If someone had tried to build a fire in their house to cook on, or to heat the house, and was careless, they could have set their house on fire. No fire department, no firetrucks, and the fire would burn unimpeded. If the houses were close enough, and the wind was against them, it would spread to other houses. As if things weren’t bad enough, the people from that area were now homeless as well. They also would have lost any supplies they had in the blaze. More desperation. This was not an area we wanted to be around.

Russ told Brian what he’d seen and what his thoughts were on the area – that it was not a place they wanted to be seen around or near. This place was five miles from our street, so it was easily a day’s walk to the house. They needed to get back, fast. “Since the fire is still burning pretty fierce, the residents are probably still watching it, waiting for it to burn itself out, so they can check if there is anything left they can salvage. Once they find out there isn’t, they’ll start looking for empty houses close by. They’ll work their way through those, then start on the ones that are occupied. They’ll try asking at first, but after that, they’ll take what they can. Anyone who can’t protect and defend themselves is in trouble. Let’s get back.”

Brian took them back on a more direct path, at a quicker pace. Russ was trying to watch the ground for signs of traffic, to see if anyone had been through there. He didn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean no one had been there. Tracking wasn’t his best skill. He just wanted to get home as fast he could, because he needed to be where he could protect his family. Us.

When they got to the edge of the woods closest to the house, Brian stopped and scanned the area. He didn’t see anything out of place, or anybody else, so they went on to the house. They were met in the garage by the family, all of us very relieved they were back. Russ hugged us all, then turned to the group. “Gang, we may not have as long as I was hoping we would. There are a bunch of houses up by the mall that are burning down. The people who lived there will be looking for housing, but more importantly, food. It won’t take them long to work their way through the houses between there and here. We may have a week, two at the most. We have to get the trailers loaded. We’re bugging out in a week, no more.” Well, crap.

Russ filled us in on their trip over lunch. We were still eating pretty rich, since things were still thawing, so we had cooked steaks out on the grill. Russ let us know he had smelled the food cooking while they still about a half mile away. Right then, no more cooking outside. Russ and Brian’s field trip served another purpose – it let us know how far the smell of our cooking food had traveled. Hopefully, the smoke from the burning neighborhood up the road would disguise the cooking smells if anyone was close – which we were really hoping wasn’t the case.

“All the stores at the mall have been cleaned out. The road is covered with cars that aren’t going anywhere. That will slow us down getting to the farm. We may have to move vehicles out of the way. That will also be dangerous – any time we have to stop, once we get on the road, we will be susceptible to attack. People see two vehicles, pulling trailers, that run? They are going to want it all. We have to have a plan before we hit the road. For now, we need to start packing everything up in here to get it loaded. Ladies, I suggest you start packing clothes for everyone. Us guys and the boys will work on the supplies for the trailers.”

              While we were glad that we would eventually be at the farm, which was our final destination, we weren’t happy about the changes to our plan. We hadn’t wanted to be rushed when we left. There was always a chance to forget something when you were rushed. For this reason, I had made lists. With Russ’s input, I had lists that would hopefully cover everything we needed to do.

I went to the desk and grabbed the folder titled SHTF. Inside, I had a list of supplies and where they were in the house. Some of the things were not necessarily in the preps room. I had a list of tasks that we needed to complete before we left. I had a list of things we might find useful on the trip to the farm. The last list was of who would do what. A little OCD, but in a good way. 

“Okay gang, here’s everything we need to do or gather for our trip to the farm. I think if we split it up, we can do it all in two days. Will that be fast enough, Baby?” I looked to Russ for confirmation.

He smiled, and nodded. “Let’s get busy then.”

****

We spent the rest of the day working our butts off to get things done. We made a really big dent in the lists. At this rate, we’d be done tomorrow afternoon. Just after dark, we collapsed all over the living room, in chairs, on the floor – we weren’t picky. We were dirty and sweaty, and we all needed a shower. Janet and I decided we’d go first, then we could throw something together for supper while the guys got cleaned up. Janet told me to go first, and I didn’t argue.

I went upstairs, grabbed some clothes, and headed to the bathroom. I turned the water on, shucked my nasty clothes, and stepped into the shower. As soon as I got done lathering up, the water stopped. No. Freaking. Way. Now? The water stops now?? I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around my soapy self, leaned out the door and yelled. “RUSS! Help!!” Russ was at the door in like five seconds.

“Anne! What is it? What’s wrong??” He looked at me and grimaced. “No water?”

I gave him a snarky reply. “How’d you know? Did the lather give it away?” He laughed. “Hang tight. I’ll be right back.”

Russ was back in just a few minutes with one of the sun showers. We’d been leaving them out in the sun, since we didn’t know how long the water would last. “There’s only about four gallons of water in here, so just leave it on long enough to rinse off. We have four sun showers, and seven people who need a shower. I’ll go down and tell everyone we need to modify our shower methods.” Russ left me with the little shower.

With it hanging from the shower head, it had decent gravitational pressure. I switched the valve open and got a bit of water on myself to dampen the now dry soap. I quickly closed the valve, re-lathered, scraped off as much soap suds as I could by hand, and turned the valve open again. Hopefully I had left at least a gallon of water, maybe a little more for Janet. She’d need another sun shower bag to finish her shower, but if we did it right, we could get through seven people with the four sun showers we had. Maybe.

I got dressed, got a comb through my hair (since I didn’t get a chance to condition in the shower it was kind of tangled), and went downstairs. Everyone was waiting for my verdict on the sun shower.

“If you get wet quick, shut off the water, lather up, scrape off the suds, and rinse quick, we can probably get all of us a shower. Janet, you’re next, but she’ll need another shower bag, Russ.”

Russ was heading for the back door. Brian stopped him. “Russ, I have two fifty-gallon gas water heaters at my house. The gas is still on, which means I have 100 gallons of hot water over there. Is there any way we can use that?” Russ and Bob looked at each other, and seemed to get the same idea at the same time. They were freaky like that sometimes.

Bob chimed in. “I think we can, Brian. We’re going to need a lot of hose, so we can reach from your house to the fence. Us guys can do an outdoor shower, like the military. It’s dark, no one will see us, not that we really care.” He laughed at the idea, and the other fellas joined in. Men were so uninhibited. It probably came from being able to pee anywhere.

Russ brought in the next sun shower and gave it to Bob. He went upstairs with Janet and got her fixed up. While he was doing that, Russ and Brian worked on the “guy” shower set up. As I was thinking about dinner, I got an idea. I went out back and called to Russ. He came running.

“Is something wrong Babe?”

“No, no, nothing’s wrong. I just had an idea. Can you rig up a faucet on that hose, so we can use the water from Brian’s for other things? We really need to wash clothes before we head out if we can. Hot water would help with that.”

He thought for a minute. “I think we can. I’ll talk to Bob, and we’ll get it set up.” He headed back out to the guys.

I whipped up some soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on the camp stove, set up in the kitchen. Not the safest with the gas canisters, but safer than someone outside smelling our food cooking. By the time everyone got done with their showers, they would all be ready for food. I think the guys must have had a good time with what they rigged up, because they all came in laughing and dripping.

I took one look at them and shook my head. “Did you guys use the entire 100 gallons? I would have thought it would be too hot for you to use directly.” I went to the laundry room, grabbed a bunch of towels, and passed them out.

Brian smiled at me, and grinned at the guys. “Apparently the gas has shut down too. The water was almost the perfect temp. We might have used a little more than we meant to, but there should still be a full fifty gallons for laundry duty. If it helps, we kind of washed our smelly clothes we were wearing while we showered.”

They all started laughing again. I looked at them like they were all drunk and they might have been, at least the grownups. I was sure I smelled booze.

“And what else did you guys get from over there? What did you do with your clothes?” They pointed out the door. I leaned out and looked where they were pointing. The clothes line was covered in their clothes. Not really hung properly, more like tossed onto the lines. Oh well, at least they were semi clean.

“Fine, since you did laundry, you’re forgiven for drinking without me and Janet. Besides, you’re going to sober up when you eat. Coffee to follow. Strong coffee.”

They were grinning like they had won the lottery or something. I shook my head and pointed to the table. They sat down and started eating. Right about then Janet came down, looking quite refreshed. She saw that I had taken care of dinner and frowned at me.

“Anne, you shouldn’t have done all that by yourself. I’m sorry I took so long. When the guys said they had an alternative, I went ahead and used all the water in the sun shower bags. It was much better than I thought it would be. What can I do now?”

I smiled at my friend and threw an arm over her shoulder. “You can sit down with the rest of us and eat. You’ve done most of the cooking the past couple of days, so you were due for a pass. Let’s eat, before the guys devour it all.”

We had a nice dinner, followed by the promised coffee. By the time we had finished, the men were sober, and the boys were falling asleep. We sent them up to bed. They had worked their butts off today and needed to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow would probably be just as busy. Brian, Russ and Bob decided to keep their security schedule the same, so Brian was up first. As his was probably the easiest one to serve, we felt he could handle it alone. Janet and I put our foot down with Bob and Russ though. We told them we were going to be up with them. We would keep them in coffee and give them another set of eyes, probably out back. They didn’t like it but did see the logic behind it.

With Brian set up with a thermos of coffee, the rest of us went upstairs to try to get some sleep. That probably wouldn’t be too hard, since we had had a very physical day. It would be harder to wake up than go to sleep. But we had to – wake up, that is. We couldn’t afford to lose our supplies, and that threat was coming closer – closer than we knew.

****

Brian heard them before he saw them. Not really stealthy there, guys. Same pickup truck, from the sound of it. It was just before 1:00 AM, and dark as a black hole outside. Since it was almost time for Bob’s shift, he crept up the stairs and knocked on their door. Bob came to the door almost instantly, as he was a very light sleeper.

“Hey buddy, give me a sec to throw a shirt on, and I’ll be right down.”

Brian looked at him and gave him a curt nod. “Grab your boots, too. I think we’ve got company coming.”

Bob jerked his head up with a start. “Where? How many?”

Brian shook his head. “I’m not sure. I haven’t seen them yet. I just heard something out front. Should we get Russ up?”

Bob thought for a minute. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with before we wake the house up.” With that decided, they headed down to the living room.

Still black as coal outside, with the new moon phase, it was a perfect time for someone to be out scavenging, since no one could see them. Of course, that works both ways – they couldn’t see anyone else either. As Bob and Brian were peering through the window shutters, they saw a flash of light. Actually, it was a flashlight. There was someone in the yard of the house across the street. They seemed to be going from window to window looking inside. Definitely not the Nelsons, who lived there. We hadn’t seen any sign of them since everything went down. They both worked the 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM shift at a plastic container plant on the other side of town. A good 30 miles away, with a car that was only about three years old, meant the only way they were getting home was walking. They probably could have done that in the time that had passed, so we feared the worst for them. They were younger than us but lived in the today. They ate out four or five nights a week, so there probably wasn’t a whole lot of supplies in the house. If you’re hungry, though, anything was better than starving.

As they watched, Bob and Brian tried to count how many were out there. It looked like four, but there could be some on the back side of the house, or even other groups their size, checking other houses. They decided they needed to get everybody up, but as quietly as possible – and without lights. No sense bringing attention to themselves if someone out there was looking our way.

Bob went to get Janet and the boys, while Brian knocked on our bedroom door. He also called out softly, “Russ, we got company outside.” Russ was out of the bed, dressed from head to toe, with his S&W .40 pistol and his Mossberg 500 shotgun, in just a matter of seconds. We were sleeping in comfortable clothes these days/nights, but clothes we could walk out the door and leave in if we had to. He rushed to the door, opened it and looked at Brian.

“Where? How many?” Exactly what Bob had asked. Brothers from another mother, I’m telling you.

Brian had a grim look as he relayed what he and Bob had seen. Russ turned to me. “Grab your 9mm, and the .308 rifle. No lights, no candles, no lamps. Tell the boys to keep it quiet, but get everybody downstairs, armed.” I nodded, finished putting my hiking boots on, grabbed the guns and headed for the boys’ room.

Janet and Bob were there already, getting the boys up, dressed and packing, and I don’t mean a suitcase. They both had 9mm pistols and were quite proficient with them. Rusty had a Beretta 92FS; Ben’s was a Taurus 111G2. Mine was a Beretta Px4 Storm subcompact. Bob carried a Glock 22, chambered in .40, like Russ’s S&W. Janet carried a Glock 17, which was a 9mm, like me and the boys. We were able to keep the majority of our ammo in two calibers for the pistols this way. We all had belts that held at least three extra magazines. At 15 or more rounds per mag, that gave us at least 60 shots if we needed them. I hoped and prayed we wouldn’t.

We headed down the stairs to the living room. As we rounded the corner, Russ was holding up a hand, telling us to stay put. Bob ducked down and kind of squat walked over to where Russ and Brian were standing. I motioned the boys behind me, as well as Janet. I leaned out and peeked around the corner at the guys. Russ was looking out the shutter crack with his night vision monocular. As dark as it was, this was the perfect time to use it. He must have pulled it out of the faraday cage while we were getting everyone ready upstairs. It wasn’t military grade, but it worked, and right now it was a life saver. He looked at Brian and Bob and held up four fingers. Four people out there. Doing what? I wanted to go to the window so bad, to see for myself, but when it came to threat assessment, Russ was in charge. He left Bob and Brian at the window and came back to where we were waiting.