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Post by suvalley on Aug 15, 2011 12:20:47 GMT -6
Should probably be in the previous chapter, but......
Chapter Ten
I grabbed up my jacket, shrugged into it as quick as I could, and telling Joey to stay out of sight, went out the door with the shotgun casually pointing out and down. It would take only a second to shoulder it and let loose a couple rounds, I knew, and the alternating slug and double ought rounds would put anything down in short order. I quickly slid the safety off as I went down the steps, as the truck rolled to a stop behind the delivery truck and was turned off. The driver rolled down the window and I heard a familiar voice.
“Well, that’s a fine welcome for your little sister!”
And with that I was running over to the truck and she was piling out the door and we grabbed onto each other like we hadn’t done in many years. Eventually we let loose of each other, and were surrounded by two excited dogs and a very happy boy. I hadn’t noticed that my sis had company in the truck until then, but then I saw shapes getting out of the back and someone getting out of the passenger seat, and felt overwhelmed and relieved at the same time. My nieces and their kids were still in town, and the three others in the truck were on their way into Wasilla when they’d seen my sis walking along the road.
I had about a million questions but it could wait, and I offered the guys who had given my sis a lift a hearty thank you and asked if they needed anything. Nope, they were good, they said, and were headed back into Wasilla. They’d been working out at the correctional center at the Point, and had been stranded at the Pt MacKenzie store the day before. It had taken them over18 hours to get from the store nearly to Settler’s Bay when they ran into my sister walking along KGB Road. They were headed home, and I told them the go-arounds they needed to make to get down to Wasilla proper. With a handshake, they piled into the cab and were off.
Urging everyone inside, we were all soon sitting down and we were all talking at once. I got the story in bits and pieces with many interruptions, and I was amazed at her good fortune. When she had gotten my call, she had yelled at everyone to get into the back of her pickup, and they’d piled in, with another vehicle on her heels. They’d taken a few minutes to warn everyone, honking and getting everyone into cars right then, and in no time had a convoy of sorts. They’d headed across the highway and up, as far as they could drive, then had gotten out and started working up the slope. They got as far up as they could and happened to find a small clearing that was fairly level and had a view of the tsunami, from up above. A wall of silt is how she described it, a big dirty wave, that just went on and on. It had washed through the tiny village alongside the highway, and some water had actually risen up to the overpass. When it receded, it carried anything loose with it, and succeeding waves came and retreated and when it seemed over, all that remained was an incredible amount of mud, silt, water, debris, with a few trees sticking up here and there. The village itself looked mostly wiped out, only a few of the newer houses remained standing. They’d spent a miserable night, alternating people in and out of the vehicles for heat.
As luck would have it, two of the tribe members had had small boats attached to their trucks when they left, and it was this good fortune which had gotten my sis across Cook Inlet. It had taken some very fine boating skills, to get across the inlet to my side. And they’d had to wait for high tide to try it too, only having a window of a few hours to navigate the new channels and avoid all the debris. The hardest part had been getting the boat actually to the water, a great joint effort had managed that. A sixteen foot long riverboat still weighs a lot, even empty, but with wet, half frozen mud and silt to grease the way, they had basically towed it on foot to the new shoreline, and had to wait for high tide to leave. They had made it to a fish camp, which was located at about mile 12 or so of KGB, and with great difficulty she had climbed the bluff and made her way up and had been making her way towards my place since around 2 that afternoon. That explained her silt laden pant legs and shoes.
I realized she was running on fumes, and quickly threw together a sandwich and poured a glass of milk for her. As she was wolfing that down, I found my bottle of ibuprofen and handed that over too. Gratefully, she shook out a couple of them and washed them down. Then it was our time to relate our story, and I let Joey tell his side too. She remarked that we were both pretty lucky, all of us were lucky. And we were, I knew it.
Conversation drifted off as the warmth of the wood stove penetrated our sore muscles and tired bodies, and it wasn’t long before everyone was sound asleep. I got up one more time and turned off the lamps, and as I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over me, I had one final thought: Those guys writing that prepper fiction had no clue.
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Post by suvalley on Aug 15, 2011 12:42:06 GMT -6
Chapter Eleven
The next morning, I was very sore and stiff from building our makeshift dam. With a grunt and an “Ow!” I levered up and onto my feet. Back, legs and even my feet were tender, as I struggled to get dressed and into socks and slippers. The first thing to do was to take acetaminophen, washed down with water from a bottle. After I ran a brush through my now greasy and tangled hair, I put it in a pony tail for the day, washed my hands and face and brushed my teeth at the kitchen sink. It was just coming daylight as I fired up the lamps, taking one to the garage so I could see to pick up firewood. With the woodstove loaded, I worked on making coffee, and soon had a new pot on my makeshift cook top. Jody and Joey were still sound asleep and the big dog watched me from the love seat as I puttered around, tidying up what I could as I waited. Soon enough I had hot coffee in hand, and snapped the lead on the big dog to make my morning trek to the barn in the growing light.
We burst out the side door of the garage, as usual. With a strong tug, the Dane led me to his “just right” spot, and I waited, sipping coffee, while he did his business. I called up to the barn, and heard a whinny in response. With a small grin, I began the walk, being very careful on the icy surface. I checked the dam, and it looked okay, although not full and the surface was frozen over. Up at the barn, the stock tanks were frozen over, so I took a shovel handle to them both, punching holes in the top until it broke up. The chickens’ water had frozen over too, in its little dish, so I punched that loose as well. Soon it would be light enough to feed without rummaging around in the near dark, I thought. Mostly by feel, I tossed out their morning rations and called it good for now. I could see high, thin clouds coming in from the south and west, and knew that meant a low pressure system was coming our way. Which meant we were likely to have some wind later in the afternoon too.
Once back at the house, I found Joey stirring, and he was quietly putting together his contraptions of Lego’s. With the stove damped down for the day, I was giving some thought about what to do for breakfast when my sister stirred awake on the couch, groaning in discomfort. I quickly poured her a cup of coffee and handed over some ibuprofen and said “There ya go, breakfast of champions” and with a small smile, she thanked me. I asked Joey if he’d like cold cereal or oatmeal, and he opted for cereal, as usual. I looked at the remaining milk and told him it might last another week if he chose oatmeal instead and he gave in. Warming up another pot on the cook top, I dumped out the hot water from the woodstove, adding it to our stash in the cooler. I told my sis what I was doing, and she was happy to know there was a way to wash up. I couldn’t refill it unless I used what remained in the house pressure tank, but I knew that with a few hours’ wait it would start melting again, and I‘d have more in the water barrels.
Once we’d eaten the amazingly good oatmeal, topped with a spoonful of brown sugar and a scant bit of milk over the top, I washed up the dishes and told my sis what I thought I needed to get done that day. I also listed what resources we had on hand. Her face fell as she realized the amount of hard work ahead. I nodded my agreement at her dismay but said with her help, I could probably manage to get everything done in a couple of days. First things first though, and that was to tend my vegetable starts. Once again I was put at ease that the cooler temps and low light were not causing a great amount of harm yet, but I knew I would need to move them into the main house. It was just too dark in there for the flats away from the window and on the seed starting racks. My third set of starts, I had just about everything going-broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, squashes, tomatoes, sweet corn, pumpkins, lettuces, herbs and more, over 100 flats’ worth. My tomatoes would need to be potted up inside a week, and if I didn’t get better growing conditions pretty soon, everything else would really bolt or damp off. It was going to be at least another week or two until it would warm up enough to warrant risking putting everything in the greenhouse. Another thing to figure out, how to rig up the living room to get them in front of the windows.
Then I had outside chores to do. It had already warmed up to 30 degrees by then, so I had Joey get dressed and come help me. Our gloves were still wet from the previous day because I had forgotten to put them in front of the stove, so we dug out dry ones and piled into the truck. The radio was reporting that the Governor had been able to make a partial aerial tour the day before, having flown from Juneau to Fairbanks the afternoon before. He was going to formally ask for a federal disaster declaration, which would free up a lot more resources, including more National Guard troops. I learned that power was being restored to essential sectors first-the hospitals, emergency service, public safety, and schools. And that looting was starting to take place in Anchorage, which had led to gunfire and several wounded overnight. Residents were being urged to be careful, stay out of damaged buildings, not provoke tense situations, and report looting to authorities. A list of damaged roads, overpasses and bridges followed, with Troopers again asking everyone to remain calm and stay where they could if they were safe. If not, they should head to one of the six shelters the Red Cross had set up. The airport was still closed and so was the port. No news from the utility companies except that they were working on it as fast as possible. There followed the weather forecast which relayed that a large low pressure system was headed our way, with winds and rain likely by nightfall. After that, I turned if off and Joey and I went to work, unloading the hay. With his help, it went fairly quickly, although I was panting pretty good by the time we were done.
We found the double burner unit in the connex, along with the hose and regulator for it, not too far back. With a bit of struggling, we got it out and then managed to get it on the truck bed. The heavy steel stand was complete, but I had not used it for cooking-I’d only tried it out after picking it up at a garage sale, but right now it might save most of the contents of the freezer. I also had him grab the three gas cans I saw in there, just in case I found a way to fill them up. I was knew I was going to need a lot more gas than I had on hand. I was just thinking I was forgetting something when Joey mentioned we needed the kerosene too. Oh boy, back into the connex we went, climbing over and around stuff until I spied it, half buried under a bunch of fishing gear, near the corner. It was not an easy task getting it out, but we managed. It hadn’t been opened and it had sat in the storage connex for years, I hoped it was still good. In fact, did that stuff ever go bad? I had no idea. The heck with trying to load it up into the back, I thought…why hadn’t I thought of the four wheeler and trailer instead? Annoyed with myself, I told Joey we’d come back for it with the ATV, and load up more firewood too.
Back at the house, I found my sister reading up on canning, nose buried in one of my guides. With a frown she commented that we had four of five days of canning ahead, and I agreed. Then she asked why I didn’t just fire up the gas generator and plug in the freezers. I had to confess that I only had maybe seven or eight gallons of gas on hand-aside from what was in the vehicles. We’d never got around to getting a storage barrel or tank just for gasoline, although we’d talked about it several times. Now, this oversight was coming back to haunt us. If I had 100 gallons of gas on hand, I would have done just that-running it only a few hours a day-just enough to keep everything cold.
She closed the book and was lost in thought for a minute, and then looked at me with a grin.
“I know what we can do, we can move those freezers out overnight, and then back in the garage when it warms up!” Going on, she said “That will give us another week or two for sure, don’t you think?”
It was an idea I had written off, with just Joey and I present. There was no way to roll those freezers into the garage on their dollies with just us. Too heavy and too difficult to maneuver through the door. I would have to find a sheet of plywood to roll them on to, or they would hang up in the gravel in front of the garage doors. And, with the plants in there, plus plumbing, there was no way I could risk just opening the sliding door in the pantry to cool it off either.
“Well, we could probably move the small freezer, but not the 25 footer, no way, too heavy” I said. “I need to work on emptying that asap, so that means transferring stuff into the coolers. Joey, why don’t you start bringing in our ice bag thingies, okay? And we’ll get that chore done right away”
With three of us, it was short work to stuff the coolers to the brim with meats and veggies. We set them in a line along the north side of the garage wall, and I fervently hoped they would hold for three or four days. I had set aside the chicken and those items that seemed to be softening up, they needed processing first.
I told Jody what I planned to do-just simmer up the whole chickens and parts I had, right into my largest stainless steel pots. We’d use what I had on hand to make a stew of sorts, and the rest would be just plain meat in broth. There was still ice on the water barrels, but I wasn’t confident in using the water without boiling it first. So, the first thing to do, was to set up the double burner, and get that going. With some fiddling around, and a wrench, I managed to get the set up hooked up to one of the propane tanks I had brought with me from the shop. I had no idea how long the bottles would last, but hopefully I had enough to do all my processing.
I had Joey run up to the barn and get the ice chipper, which I used to break the ice on the water barrels. They were each less than half full, but there was plenty to dip out and fill the pots with. Lids on, it was a matter of waiting until it came to a boil, and then timing that for ten minutes. I set my battery powered timer and stuck it in my pocket, and then went to work finding the supplies I would need to process-jars, lids, rings, both canners, salt, and all the rest. By the time the water had boiled, I had the spare card table set up in the garage, with the burner set up just outside the doors on the gravel. Carefully transferring the hot water from pot to pot, we added in the chicken we could pry apart, covered it, and let it start to cook.
I reminded Joey I would need lots of hot water for cleaning up, and his job was to change out the pot on the woodstove and put it in the sink cooler for us. The jars, lids and rings needed their usual wash, so I managed that, and then put the needed lids into a skillet for the woodstove top to stay hot while I worked on filling the jars. The first batch was in the canners inside of two hours, complete with veggies from the freezer. I set the timer for the required 90 minutes and waited for the canners to vent the needed ten minutes. About this time, the wind picked up a little bit, and I was forced to close the garage doors nearly all the way to keep the flame lit.
While that was going, I had Joey take the wheeler with the trailer, and go load up firewood. A chore that normally elicited much griping and groaning, this time he cheerfully left to do it.
“He’s really growing up” said my sister.
“Yes, I can’t believe how much help he’s been since the quake. He’s been great, no complaints, he’s just scared like all of us”.
Nodding agreement, she went back to work chopping and deboning chicken on the kitchen counter. We’d be ready to put whole chickens in the two large pots in maybe another hour or so.
After the canner vented and I had the weights on, I knew I had about five minutes before I would need to dial back the flame. I wanted to show my sis the dam we had built, which I could not have done without Joey’s help. She was impressed at both the size and speed at which we’d managed to get it done. She asked me how much water it would hold, and was stunned when I told her it would easily hold over two thousand gallons. With a wry grin, she said “And I bet we’re going to need every single drop” to which I agreed.
And so it went-cleaning jars, filling and then processing, then making room for the hot jars to cool on the garage counter. By the time early evening came around, I was more than thankful I had had the good sense to become proficient at home canning, otherwise all the food would have been lost. We’d managed lunch and dinner turned out to chicken of course-grilled with barbeque sauce from the fridge, washed down with milk. I had finished washing up dishes while the canners cooled when it occurred to me I was really, really dumb. Talk about your V8 moments, I felt pretty silly when I realized I should have had everything from the fridge in boxes outside to stay cold. Sheepishly, I asked for help and we got everything piled into empty canning jar boxes and outside for the night. I figured it wouldn’t hurt most things to freeze a little bit, but I did throw a heavy blanket over it just the same.
With lamps lit, it dawned on me that I should be doing something better with the hot water from the processing, but what? Since it had been boiled, we could surely use it for drinking, right? I filled up three gallon jars and sent Joey up to the connex just before true dark, to find the potable water jugs I knew were in there somewhere. From here on out, only boiled water would go in the water jugs, everything else could be used for cleaning. We still had a sink full of very warm soapy water from cleaning jars, and I realized we all needed to clean up. I had Joey get towels, and with wash rags and much rinsing, we all managed to get our hair washed and a spit bath of sorts too. My sister is a large woman, and she needed clothes too. I hunted around in the closet by lamp light, and found our largest sweat pants and shirts. She was most grateful for clean clothing, and I was just happy that I had caught up all the laundry before the quake.
Jody and I talked about how we were to clean and dry clothes and whatnot for a few minutes, and we decided that the next day, we’d begin with a tote. Put the seriously dirty clothes in there, then add whatever leftover hot water we had, and use a bit of powdered laundry soap and just work the heck out of the clothing. I couldn’t figure out what else to do, since both bathtubs would be too big to fill. Drying them would be easy, it was the washing that was going to be hard.
Before I knew it, evening chores were done and it was nightfall and I realized I had forgotten to turn on the cell phone. My stomach turned and I found the phone and turned it on, quickly snatching up my reading glasses. I saw that I had missed three calls, and I just about lost it…..I was so upset that I could barely see the buttons, so I had Jody read them for me: My husband, twice. And my SIL once. I grabbed the phone from her and began fumbling to check for messages when it rang right in my hands. Kirk!
“Hello!” I shouted.
“Hey” I heard, then nothing but static. After a few seconds the call was dropped.
Staring at the phone and willing it to ring again, I waited anxiously. Joey was hopping around in excitement, and as I motioned him to settle down, it rang again…..this time, a decent connection.
Well, the first thing I got was an excited “Are you okay?” and then his questions tumbled out nonstop. I was so relieved to hear from him, hear his voice, that I almost started bawling right then. With many interruptions I was able to tell him what all had happened, and I was able to ask him about his situation. His normal rotation was two weeks on, two weeks off, and he was not due to rotate home for another eight days. Scheduling was very messed up because flights could not go in and out of Anchorage, leaving only Fairbanks for crew shuttling. The majority of workers flew in and out of Ted Stevens, so hardly anyone had rotated in or out. He could not reach his alternate, and at that point, was pretty sure he’d be staying up there for quite a while. Nothing to be done about that, I knew. The company had some sort of contingency plans, but he did not know the details. With that, we agreed I would have the phone on each evening around 7:30, our normal time. I had a great many more questions and I am sure he did too, but the connection was worsening so I handed to phone over to Joey.
Watching the tears slide down my son’s face at the sound of his father’s voice, it sunk in, just how much we depended on his presence. I was still pretty sniffly myself and got up to pace off nervous anxiety for lack of anything better to do. After he hung up, Joey needed some snuggle time, so we piled onto the couch, dogs and all, and we three chatted for a while. It seemed like a good time to have a talk, so I got their attention and began.
“Okay, here is the deal. This is going to last a very long time. Not just a couple weeks but probably for months to come. It’s going to mean a lot of hard work, a lot of doing without, and a whole lot of luck too.
Remember that almost everything we can buy in a store, comes in the state through the Port of Anchorage, and it is heavily damaged. Even if it was fine, there is no way to get freight out here to the Valley using either the highway or the railroad-both are very badly damaged. Nothing can come in from up north either-for the same reasons. I am pretty sure I heard a snippet about the Glenn Highway too, and since it was the Castle Mountain fault that went, you can be pretty sure that many miles of the Glenn have been destroyed also.
This means we are on our own, with whatever we have on hand or can get by ourselves. With no phones, we can’t call for help, and we can’t just hop in a car and get anywhere very easily either. This means we have to be very, very careful when we do anything-we can’t get hurt, or sick. It will mean planning ahead for every little thing we do…….”
I trailed off, noticing Dooms was on his feet, head cocked to one side. As I watched, the hackles stood up and he began his grumbling growl. I shushed Joey and with a glance at my sis to be quiet, I waited. A few seconds later, Jethro popped off Joey’s lap and began spinning circles on the carpeting. I had just enough time to yell out “Quake!” when it hit. I am not sure how long it lasted, but long enough for me to grab hold of the oil lamp as it was about to slide off the table and to be nearly deafened by the sound of the contents of an entire household shaking. As before, it increased in intensity until it felt as though we were on a boat on ocean swells, big swells at that. This time, a number of things were falling and crashing to the floor, pictures, knickknacks, things on my kitchen cabinets were sliding out and down. I could hear drywall popping and nails screeching in the wood frame, and at one point I heard a distinct pop-which had to be another window.
When it ended, we were all pretty shook up. My sis cut few loose with a few quips and jokes and we laughed in sheer relief, while the poor dogs tried to climb into any lap for comfort. Stroking the big dog’s head, I idly asked if we should check for more damage and my sister pointed out there wasn’t much reason to-if it was broke, it would stay broke. With that, I started giggling again, and then I couldn’t stop and before I knew it, we were all laughing our heads off like a bunch of fools-glad to be okay. When that petered out, I got us all settled, with Joey and the big dog in bed alongside. It was only a few seconds before I fell soundly asleep.
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Post by papaof2 on Aug 9, 2021 16:17:25 GMT -6
The additional 100 plus pages appear to have been lost due to my stupidity. Drat it. Which means, attempting to recreate it from memory. Bah humbug! It's been almost 10 years since that was posted and I wish the author had been able to finish the story - but I can appreciate the problems of trying to recreate a lot of story. It's sometimes hard to regain your train of thought when you're interrupted in the middle of a paragraph, let alone trying to reconstruct possibly thousands of words :-( Even if you keep good notes about what's in a chapter, some of the details don't happen until the characters start interacting. My solution to the "Oops!" events was to use some of the storage space (10GB) on a web site for my writing. I upload any changes when I make them, so the uploaded version is current - and the web site gets backed up regularly. Using FTP, I can download everything (story, references, supporting data) to a new writing platform in a matter of minutes if the laptop or the hard drive should fail. I haven't lost anything in several years, so it works for me - off-site backup of my files (in another state) with them doing daily backups of the systems. From the most recent invoice from qualityhostonline.com, the web site costs me $97/year which saves me from any "Oops!" moments when writing or editing and provides a place to share images that won't fit on the forum here. If I ever decided to part ways with Amazon, the hosting service supports ecommerce so I could sell ebooks from the site or start my own prepper supply company - hopefully with more intelligent ads than 4patriots.com places on Youtube :-( Pay attention, folks! People will NOT watch a 12 minute video ad to see a 3 minute video of interest - they just skip the ad as soon as possible and think how stupid the advertiser is...
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