The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning (10 page)

Cheri says, “Now it all makes sense. Now I understand why you’re building all of the security features into our homes. I understand why you bought the house next to us, why you built a backup for the electrical system and dug the additional wells. Do you think the rioters will find us out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Cheri, we’re 43 miles north of Nashville. When the crash happens and Nashville is a smoking ruin, people will be streaming out in all directions. Most won’t make it this far, those that do will be the ones who are survivors, ones who’ve learned how to adapt to the conditions. The ones who find us will be the hardened ones; they’ll be the ones who’ve gotten this far by killing to take what they need to survive. There are three options I see. One, they’re going to be hungry, begging for handouts or two, there are going to be mobs of college students who are used to handouts. They’re going to be worst of the survivors, hardened criminals and gangs who survived by taking what they want.”

“Would the fences you planned keep the refugees off our land?”

“I think they might have slowed them down, but not stop them, which is one reason I stopped the project. 250 acres is a large area to fence.”

Cheri continues, “Jay, speaking of which, three of our neighbors would like to sell you based on similar terms as you gave us.”

“How many acres do they have?”

“The three of them have a little over 700 when you combine their farms together.”

Fred says, “That would give you 950 acres, not counting your 5 for a grand total of 955, more than enough to keep us self-sufficient forever.”

Shaking my head, “If we can’t fence 250 acres, how are we going to fence and protect over 950? We don’t have the bodies to protect that large of an area. I like the idea of being self-sufficient, it’s just, I never thought about such a large area.”

Lacy responds, “Honey, we have time, maybe we’ll think of an idea, Cheri, how much do your three friends need to join us?”

Cheri tried to whisper the answer, afraid the number will scare us away from the idea, “Lacy, it will take close to $2.5 million to acquire them from the banks.”

I’m thinking of something nice to say when Cheri says, “Jay, I know that’s a lot of money. Before you answer, think of this, the three farms are the ones on our other three sides, the four of us form a large box.”

Thinking about it, I ask, “Does anyone have a map of the area to show me? I’d like to see what this box looks like. What’s on the other side of the box? Other than land, what else would they bring us?”

Fred and Cheri smile, Cheri says, “When you two get settled, we’ll arrange a dinner together. That way you can meet them, let them explain why they think they would be a good fit for our little group.”

I’m starting to get angry, I’m afraid Fred and Cheri broke our security by telling their neighbors what our plans are. “Fred, Cheri, did you tell them why I helped you with the bank? Or what we’re doing? Did you breach our security?”

Cheri said, “Jay, maybe just a little, they came over for lunch last week, they saw all of the activity, they saw the new barn being built. They couldn’t help but see it's being built with steel and cement versus wood. They saw the solar panels installed on our roof and the windmill foundations being laid. They’re not dumb, they know what our crop yields are. They wanted to know what changed. Just six weeks ago we told them we were going to lose our home and farm, now they see all of this money being spent. They knew something was different. I couldn’t lie to them, we knew not to tell them anything important. We told them we couldn’t tell them anything. Rich, one of our neighbors said our property looks like a prepper homestead. Jill, his wife, remarked she’d seen a program on TV about preppers who lived off the grid and she asked if we could tell them how we’re affording the changes. They have been thinking of doing something similar too.”

Trying to hold my voice under control, and hold my temper in check, I knew my face was getting red, I said as slowly and quietly as I could manage, “Cheri, what did you tell them?”

“I told them we came into some money from a family member who passed away. I felt so bad lying to them. I didn’t know what else to tell them. The next day Jill called telling me she knows our mortgage was paid off, she said she was at the bank when the manager told her our mortgage was paid off. The manager told her someone bought our farm from the bank. They came over and asked me if our house and the work being done on your house were related.”

“So they guessed the person who bought this house was also paying for the upgrades being done to your house?”

“That’s what they think. Jill asked if they could meet the family that purchased the house. I told them we didn’t know when you were moving in. Once you did, we’d check with you.”

“I see, I want to think about it for a couple of days.”

“Sure, no problem. I hope you’re not angry with us. You’ve done so much for our family.”

Before I could answer, our front doorbell rang. Since it was 7:30 PM, I knew it couldn’t be any of the workers, we had everything that was supposed to be delivered. I looked at my phone which showed me the video from the hidden camera looking at the front door. I turn my phone to show Cheri, “Could this be Jill and Rich?”

Looking at my phone, Cheri nodded yes.

I open the front door to welcome our guests, “Hello Rich and Jill, welcome to our new home, I’m Jay.”

Rich asks, “How do you know who we are?”

“Come in, I think a couple of your neighbors confirmed who you are.”

“You have a camera by the front door? I looked for one and didn’t see it.” Rich said.

“If you had seen it, then the security company I hired should be fired. Come in, would you like some coffee and dessert?”

Rich and Jill entered our kitchen, they pause seeing Fred and Cheri sitting in our family room. Lacy smiles at our guests saying, “I think it’s nice you came over to help us unpack with Fred and Cheri.” I laugh, patting a very surprised Rich on the back. “Rich, I guess you stopped by to give us a pitch, something about a deal we can’t refuse right?”

Fred and Cheri laughed at my attempted joke.

Jill handed Lacy a bakery box saying, “We come bearing gifts.”

We all laughed, realizing the cake was going to cost me over $1 million.

Chapter 6

The 92-year-old King of Saudi Arabia suddenly died from natural causes, his brother became the Kingdom’s new King. He announced he was lowering the price of ‘sweet crude’ to $39.00 a barrel. His intent was to force the American fracking industry into bankruptcy. Once the American fracking industry collapsed, he planned to increase prices again giving his family control over the world’s oil industry. He could afford to take the financial hit as long as it drove his new competition out of business. The negative result of the reduced oil prices is the employment surge happening in the Dakotas, Texas, West Virginia and other states came to a halt. New unemployment claims in the first week after the King’s announcement jumped by more than 600,000 new claims. Construction companies started failing as their orders were canceled. The unemployment rate multiplied. Since unemployed people don’t go out to eat, nor do they purchase new cars or televisions, even unrelated companies like mom and pop dry cleaners failed. The Department of Labor reported new unemployment claims are running at a rate of 750,000 a week, home foreclosures are quickly rising to levels not seen since 2008. The banks that in 2008 and 09 were too big to fail started to fail. The only lesson they’d learned from the previous meltdown was the Federal Government would bail them out. Their investment portfolios were losing money, their mortgage-backed investments were losing money, mortgages, car, and personal loans are being defaulted on it numbers that exceeded 2008.

The US dollar, which had risen in value when the EU collapsed and was now in freefall. The dollar’s collapse pushed up the value of gold and silver, By March 23, the cost of an ounce of gold was $3,800.00. An ounce of silver sold for $1150.00. Both continue to climb, setting new records every day, I internally laughed, because every penny the price of precious metals went up, the more our portfolio was worth.

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March 21
st
, the first day of spring, was the date the Russian Federation launched their attack against the US dollar. The Russian Ministry of Finance had previously issued a short sell order for a trillion dollars worth of US public company shares, which went effect the moment the market opened on March 23
rd
. The New York Stock Market opened down 700 points, taking every broker by surprise. The market continued to fall for the following four days. At the end of the week, the market was down 4,800 points and in free fall. Other investors and countries also issued sell orders increasing the downward pressure on the market. At the close of the market on March 31
st
, the Dow Jones index fell from a high of 19,000 to 3500. The market continued to fall until it hit 1550 on Black Friday, May 17. Tens of millions of people were wiped out in the great market crash of 2015. Like the crash of 1929, investors jumped to their death from brokerage offices all over New York City. Average families lost their pensions and their life savings. There were so many foreclosures the banks couldn’t keep up with the paperwork. Courts became backed up nine months hearing foreclosure cases. Shootouts took place among people who tried to stop repossession companies from taking their cars for non-payment of their loans.  Stores closed at record rates, large shopping malls became empty spaces that were taken over by the homeless looking for places to stay out of the weather. Every day saw additional families move into the closed malls, the ‘old timers’ helped the new families settle into the malls. The ‘to large to fail’ banks were all begging the Department of the Treasury for a bailout, which the Republican-held Congress refused to pass. The Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, “We have to allow the markets to correct themselves. In 2008, the government bailed everyone out which caused today’s meltdown. The markets never corrected their core problems and the bailouts only delayed the inevitable. The Senate today has taken action to send bills to the President’s desk to cut all personal and corporate taxes to a flat 4%. The House has passed an emergency revised budget, which cuts Federal Spending by 30%. The President has vetoed both bills, saying his administration demands an increase in government spending. Congress and the President are at an impasse and we call upon every American to write to the President to tell him to sign our emergency budget and to cut taxes.”

On March 31
st,
the modifications to our home and Fred’s were finished. The hardest part of our independence was getting the local approvals for our fuel tanks. It took two weeks and a large monetary gift to a bureaucrat to get our permits issued. It took another week to get the tanks installed and a further five days to get them filled. I’d like to have more fuel on hand. However, we couldn’t get permits for more than we had been issued. Lacy and I ended up buying the other three farms for just under $2 million. They were each only able to get permits for a 1,000-gallon propane tank and two 200 gallon tanks, one for gasoline, and one for diesel. Fred’s farm has three 1,000 gallon underground propane tanks each holding 800 gallons of propane. We also had one 20,000 gallon tank of gasoline standing in Fred’s new barn. In addition, we had two 5,000 gallon tanks filled with diesel fuel. I’ve reminded everyone not to touch the stored fuel until the town’s fuel was gone. We treated the fuel to keep it fresh and we planned to check it monthly to ensure it was usable.  The tanks are going to be our strategic reserve. I bought two tank trucks so we could keep our cars and equipment topped up from the stations in town. Every week one of us drove the tanker trucks into town to top them off. If we got overrun and lost the farms forcing us to bug out, we’d have our own fuel trucks to keep our vehicles fueled. The only real problem with us bugging out was, we’d be just another roving mob looking for safety and security. We started building reinforced concrete shelters around the fuel tanks so they couldn’t be shot and explode. We needed a more secure place to stay if we got overrun. We needed a shelter, one that could protect us and allow us to remain hidden and secure for years if it came to that. Finding a company to sell us a shelter was another problem.

We all knew this was the end of the American dream. While Congress and the President argued with each other, the country was dying. As America died, so did freedom. Without a welfare safety net, 50% of the country will starve having nothing and no one to catch them when they were hungry. They will take to the streets using violence to take what they think they are entitled to. I tell Lacy, “This is the beginning of the end. This is how the American dream dies. The dream is going to die not with a whimper, but with violence and blood. Too many Americans don’t know how to work, they have an entitlement mentality. They’ll sit home waiting for their government check which isn’t going to come. When they realize no check is coming, they’ll turn to violence. They’ll take what they want. They don’t know any other way. Crime rates are going to soar, people will be afraid to go out, more companies and businesses are going to close. The closings will add to the unemployed who will be looking for help and handouts from the Feds who don’t have anything to give. I’d be surprised if the Stock Market index isn’t under 1,000 by July 4
th
.”