When the Power Is Gone: A Powerless World - Book 1 (15 page)

“I’d love to. What do we need to do?”

We grabbed one of the camp stoves, a big stock pot, and one of the canning pots I had left out for this purpose. I handed the stock pot to Marietta, the canner to Janet, and grabbed the camp stove.

“Ladies, follow me. Gentlemen, we’ll need about an hour. You are in charge of your own cleansing and monitor the boys. You can use all the sun showers. Go out back and do it community style. Keep your drawers on though, in case anyone is snooping around out there. You don’t want to get caught with your pants down – or off, as the case may be.” They laughed, grabbed the showers and towels, and headed out back.

We gals went upstairs to the master bath. We had used the water in this tub’s waterBOB first, so it was already empty. We had folded it up and it was down in one of the trailers. We set the stove up on the bathroom counter and put the stock pot on it full of water to boil. We took the canning pot, filled it about half way with cold water, and set it by the tub. As we worked, we explained to Marietta what we were going to do.

“Since you’ve gone the longest without, if you want to go first, you are welcome to, Marietta. Basically, we strip down and get in the tub. With things the way they are, I’d say keep your underthings on, so they can get a washing too. We’ll mix hot water from the stove with the cold water in the canner, get it as warm as we can, and pour it over your head, getting your whole body wet. Then, you lather up, starting with your hair, and work your way down. When you’re done, we’ll pour the water over your head again. We’ll try to keep it warm, but depending on how long it takes you to get lathered up, it might be tepid by the time you’re ready to rinse. We’ll have more water heating if we need it for yours, and if not, it will be used on the next one. This way we can be a little more liberal with the water if we need to, since it usually takes us a bit more to get our hair rinsed and such. Sound good?”

Marietta nodded, but seemed a bit apprehensive.

Janet noticed and replied, “Honey, if you’re shy, you’ll need to get over that real quick. We are all about to be as close as humanly possible. When we get to the farm, there is one house, six bedrooms, and two and a half bathrooms. All the bedrooms will be full, so you and Brian will probably end up in the attic or the basement. We’ll figure that out when we get there. What I’m trying to say is there will be 10 of us in the house, and we will soon know everything there is to know about each other. Are you okay with that?”

Marietta gave her a slight smile. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be difficult. I’ve never really had any women friends. When you’re considered “rich”, people are either jealous of you or intimidated by you. I don’t know how to act with women, you know, just us girls. I’m excited, but scared, you know?”

Janet and I both looked at her and smiled back. “We’ve been friends for over 10 years now. We know each other like sisters. We will do our best to help you join “the family”.”

I did the air quotes and everything. She laughed, and started stripping off her nasty clothes.

“Okay, sisters, let’s get clean.”

****

Janet and Marietta were close to the same size, so Janet brought her some clean clothes. I thought Marietta was going to cry. You’d have thought we took her on a shopping spree or something. Marietta got dressed, and Janet went next. We kept water heating, even after I got my “shower”. We plugged the tub and threw Marietta’s traveling outfit in. We poured the rest of the hot water in, then about the same amount of cold in and dumped a bit of body wash in. Soap is soap, as far as I’m concerned. We took the plunger from the linen closet and created some action in the water. We did a little scrubbing, and the water turned dark. We drained the tub, plugged it back up, and dumped cold water in. We swooshed it around to get the soap out, then wrung the clothes out as tight as we could. We pulled the plug again, then hung the clothes over the shower curtain rod.

I turned to Marietta. “I doubt they’ll be dry by morning, but they’ll be in a lot better shape than they were when you got here. We’ll hang them out when we get to the farm.”

Marietta looked on the verge of tears. “Thank you so much, Anne. I don’t know what I would have done if you all hadn’t still been here. If it had taken me one more day to get here, you wouldn’t have been. I can’t even bear to think of what I would have had to do.”

I hesitated just a moment, then wrapped my arms around her, in one of my famous snug hugs. “Well, you won’t be finding that out. You are part of our family. Now that we smell better, let’s go get some food in everyone’s belly.”

We went to the kitchen and pulled everything out of the freezer. We had spaghetti, shit on a shingle, some soup, a few pork chops, hot dogs (no buns though), and a few helpings of a number of different veggies. Not enough of one thing to feed everybody, but more than enough of a lot of little things to fill us up.

The boys, Rusty and Ben, wanted hot dogs. There were a few slices of loaf bread left, so they made do with that in place of buns. The compromise was they had to eat a veggie with it. They chose green beans. We set them up at the breakfast bar, so we’d have room for all the adults at the table. We heated what needed to be heated over a couple of the camp stoves. We set up a buffet type line, and everyone filled their plates. We had tea and water to drink. We sat at the dining room table, talked about the trip to the farm, and what the plan was.

“I’ll take the lead, Bob will follow. Since he has a back seat, Brian and Marietta will have to ride with them.  I’ll take the animals in the truck. We’ll cover the bed with a tarp, so no one can see what’s in there at a glance. We need to cover what’s in the back of the SUV with a tarp as well. The less people can see, the better the chance we don’t get stopped. I don’t know what we are going to come up on out there, so we need to be vigilant and ready for anything. We’re going to stand watch tonight in the sunroom, so we can keep an eye on the rigs. We should be able to hear anything that happens outside from out there, the way sound travels now.

“I want everyone who is not on watch in bed sleeping tonight, including watch buddies. If anything happens, we can come get help. I don’t expect the scavengers back, at least not tonight. I’m pretty sure our show of force will have them moved on, for now. By the time they get back down our street, we’ll be long gone. The Baxters should have raided enough from the empty houses on the street to hold them for a while, so I expect them to still be asleep when we head out. I want us to be on the road as soon as possible, but I don’t want us to forget anything. We’ll get up, eat breakfast, and go through the house one more time. I want to put the boards up on the windows before we leave. I don’t doubt that someone will break in here sooner or later, but I don’t want it to be easy for them. We’ll let the ladies gather the linens, any clothes left, and any food we can take. Rusty and Ben can pen up the animals. Brian, Bob, and I will take care of the windows and get the vehicles ready to go. Can anybody think of anything else we need to do before we leave tomorrow?”

We all looked at each other, but no one offered any other input. So, this was it. We were leaving first thing in the morning. We were leaving our home, possibly for good. I was close to tears. My heart was hurting. We have lived in this house for most of Rusty’s life. I have my chicken pen, rabbit hutch, and garden out back. Russ planted the trees in the front yard the year we moved in. There was so much of our lives rooted here, and I wasn’t ready to let it go. Tomorrow was going to suck so bad. But, if the choice was stay here, where we were close to too many desperate people, who could potentially hurt us, or worse; or get to the farm, where there weren’t a lot of people close, and we had almost unlimited resources for food and water – there was no choice. We had to go. I hoped I could sleep tonight.

Russ woke me up early, just before dawn.

“Anne, we need to get moving.”

I stretched, grumbled, and got up. The smell of coffee pulled me into the kitchen. Janet was already up, dressed, with a coffee cup held out to me. Bless this woman. The tea kettle started whistling, so she pulled it off the stove. She had eight paper bowls set out with instant oatmeal. The boys came down the stairs, followed by Bob, and stumbled to the table. Janet mixed their oatmeal and took it to the table. Ben looked at his mother.

“Mom, it’s too early. I can’t eat yet.”

Janet set the bowl in front of him. “Sorry honey, but you’re going to need to wake up, and quick. You and Rusty have animals to get penned up, then see if your dads need any help with final preps. We need to be out of here as soon as possible.”

Ben’s head dropped back down to his chest, and he fake snored. That got everyone tickled. He raised his head, smiled, and grabbed his spoon. I must admit, I was with him. I’m not a big breakfast person. Yes, I know, the most important meal of the day, gets your metabolism started, yada yada yada. I just prefer to eat like an hour or so after I get up. But, I’d try to set a good example and picked up a bowl myself.

We ate and cleaned up the kitchen. We had thermoses we filled with more coffee. I was pretty sure we’d need it this morning. After tooth brushing, everyone headed off to their appointed duties. Marietta joined Janet and me upstairs, where we started stripping beds. The sheets weren’t clean, but they weren’t disgusting either, so we folded them, somewhat, to make them easier to handle. We put sheets and any extra pillow cases into one pillow case per set. That would keep them together. We could wash them when we got to the farm. We stuffed the pillows into more trash bags.

We gathered up any clothes we found. Most of our clothing was already loaded in the trailers. We had kept out just enough to get us through a couple of weeks, including washing. We hadn’t done all the laundry, due to the time frame being moved up on us, so we tossed anything dirty into trash bags. Clean got loaded into suitcases and duffel bags. With no way of knowing how long things would be down, we couldn’t afford to leave anything of use behind. Shoes went into another trash bag. We didn’t worry about whose were whose – in the coming months, we would be wearing whatever fit, especially Marietta, who wasn’t able to bring any with her.

We went through every room, every closet, every cabinet, and drawer. We grabbed anything we thought we might need, which was pretty much everything. The only things we left was furniture. We didn’t have room for the beds and chests, plus we had that already set up out at the farm. We took everything down to the bottom of the stairs. Ben and Rusty were coming in from the garage, carrying chicken cages.

“When you guys get finished loading the animals, you can take these bags out to the trailers. Nothing breakable, so they can be stuffed anywhere there’s a spot. Let your dads know.”

I pointed to the trash bags and the duffels. We had a few breakables from the bathrooms, but those were in a box we kept separate. They nodded, and continued out to the sunroom. We moved on to the kitchen.

We had packed up everything possible yesterday, so we just had a few utensils and two of the camp stoves. We washed what we had used after breakfast and packed it all up. The paper plates from last night and bowls from this morning went into trash bags. We’d take it out to the farm and burn it at night. Smoke is not easily seen at night. We kept out travel mugs for everyone, and a case of bottled water for each vehicle. Everything else got sent to the back yard with the boys. We kept out protein bars, peanut butter, crackers, canned sausages, jerky, the last of the radishes that were ready from the garden, as well as the last of the lettuce. We also had MREs, which I hoped we didn’t have to eat. Not my favorites. We put some freeze-dried meals, that only needed boiling water added to them, in the trucks, just in case we didn’t make it to the farm today. That 30-minute drive would probably be a lot longer today, and if something happened to hold us up, could take more than a day. We wanted to be ready for anything.

It took a couple of hours to get the last of everything loaded. By then the sun was up, but it was still early, not eight yet. Russ and Bob had gone over to Bob and Janet’s to see if there was anything of use still there, and Brian and Marietta went to Brian’s for the same final look. They all came back with clothes, missed in the attics from seasonal storage. Again, we couldn’t afford to leave anything, since we had no way of knowing if, or when, manufacturing plants would be able to start back up. We crammed everything we could in the trailers, stuffing every available space with clothes. We could sort it all out when we got to the farm.

              Last walk-throughs done, Janet and I must have had the same thought at the same time – we were leaving our homes, possibly for good. We both got weepy and hugged each other while the tears flowed. At least we all had each other. Had this happened during the day, while Bob and I were at work and the boys at school, how much different would this scenario have played out? Would we all have been able to get home? Would we have been able to get to the boys? In my mind, those answers were yes. Both of us had EMP-resistant vehicles, and I had no doubt Russ would have gotten to Rusty and me come hell or high water. But there was also no way of knowing what obstacles could have presented themselves to hinder his efforts. We already knew there were abandoned cars and trucks everywhere.  Had Russ been required to retrieve us, he would have had to broadcast to everyone out there stranded that first day that we had a vehicle that still worked.

I could just imagine the turmoil that the world had been in those first couple of days. Most people would have had no idea what was happening. They would have expected anyone with a running vehicle to be “neighborly” and give them a ride home, or on to work – those that didn’t get that work, as in jobs that paid money, were not what they were going to be doing now. When Russ had to pass them by, as he surely would have, they might have yelled, flipped him off, whatever rude gesture or thought came to mind. There might possibly have been a mob mentality already, where they tried to band together to get him to stop and help, trying to bar his way. It could have been bad, really bad. If we had anything to be thankful for in this life-changing event, it was the timing of the pulse. We talked about that, wiped our tears, and started for the sun room. It was time to leave.

****

Russ, Bob, and Brian spent the next 30 minutes putting plywood over the windows in both houses. While nothing we had done would keep anyone out that really wanted in, the thought was that if we made it difficult enough they might give up and move on. Not really likely, as desperate people will do whatever they have to in order to survive. The only thing we could do was try to protect our homes, in case we were able to come back some day. Brian didn’t have the supplies to do the same at his house, but he had a great attitude about it.

“It’s a roof and four walls full of ‘things’. The past week, I have found out exactly what is important in life. Food and water, shelter, and friends who have your back. The other stuff is just that – stuff. If someone wants to break in to see if I left anything, hopefully, it will be someone who needs it, not that there’s anything of value left over there.”

He was right, and it made the guys feel kind of bad for shutting the place up like they did, in case someone out there really needed a place to go, but it was done. Besides, it wasn’t our responsibility to take care of them, not anymore. We had to take care of us first.

We had the trucks loaded to the max, along with the trailers. We had left room for our bodies, our travel food and water, and that was about it. Every other spare spot was filled, as well as the rooftop cargo carriers on each vehicle. Russ and Bob went out front, into the street, to see who might be out and about. They didn’t see or hear anyone, so we decided it was time. They came back in and bolted the front door. Russ unlocked the gate from the back yard, and opened it wide. We loaded everyone into the vehicles. Russ closed and locked the back door and got in our truck. He started it, and that signaled Bob to start his as well. With both vehicles running, there was nothing else to do but head out. I tried, but couldn’t stop the tears from flowing again. I loved our home. I couldn’t believe we were leaving it, but I knew we couldn’t stay. Russ reached over and squeezed my hand, then keyed the mike on the two-way radio: “Bob, can you hear me okay?”

Bob immediately replied. “Five by five, buddy. Let’s get to the farm.”

We pulled both rigs out and stopped so Bob could go back and lock the gate back up. Again, if someone wanted in bad enough, they could get in, but we had to do what we could to try to dissuade them. Russ watched in his side view mirror as Bob reached through the two sides of the gate and latched and locked the hasp. He ran back to his SUV, gave us a thumbs up, and jumped in. Russ pulled out onto the street and headed toward the interstate. Bob was right behind us. We were on our way to a new home, with new friends. I had my fingers crossed we made it safe, and soon.