When the Power Is Gone: A Powerless World - Book 1

  When the Power is Gone

  A Powerless World - Book 1

  By

  P.A. Glaspy

  Copyright 2016

  All Rights Reserved

  P.A. Glaspy

  1st Edition

  No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, except to quote in reviews or in the press, without the express permission of the author. Any unauthorized reproduction of this work is illegal and punishable by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Any parallel to persons alive or dead is purely coincidental, and is not intended by the author.

  Chapter 1

  The digital clock on the microwave read 7:15. Late again.

  “RUSSELL GORDON MATHEWS! If you aren’t down those stairs in five minutes, you will miss the bus AGAIN, and this time you’ll be WALKING to school, because I do NOT have time to take you this morning, because I’M late for work now from trying to get YOU out the door on time!!” Yes, it was a really long rant, but I was frustrated to no end. My son stayed up late playing games online with his friends, and now he was paying the price for not enough sleep. And I was paying the price as well. And it was Monday.

  My husband, Russ Sr., was on his way home from an emergency call for his maintenance business. Being in business for yourself has its perks, like setting your own hours, but loyal customers like Marietta, who called at 4:00 AM with a busted pipe in her bathroom, garner some favor. Marietta Sampson was a well to do widow whose husband had left her a boatload of money, and only lived about ten miles away. She was completely clueless when it came to how to actually “do” things. She was Russ’s number one customer. I think she might have had other designs on my hard working, handsome husband, but he was oblivious to this aspect of their relationship. Just one of the things I love about him - clueless.

  Rusty finally came down, dragging his backpack behind him. With his electric toothbrush going in his mouth, and his earbuds from his iPod in his ears, he was the epitome of a 21st century teenager. Months away from being able to get his driver’s license, he was dependent on the generosity and good will of his parents to get anywhere without walking or riding his bike, which he had just recently gotten “too big” to ride. Right then, my good will was non-existent. He could just consider himself a walking everywhere kid for making me late…again.

  “Mom, I need…”

  I cut him off. “What you need is to get out that door and on the bus NOW!”

  He came back with, “But Mom, I really need it!”

  My cell phone started buzzing. “Need what?” I shot back while checking the caller ID. It was Russ, calling to let me know he was almost home, I was sure. Good, he could deal with this kid. I was so late for work. I held up a finger, signaling him to stop talking while I answered the phone. A finger and a mom look got me the silence I was looking for.

  “Hey Baby. Everything okay?” I said into my cell. I checked the clock on the microwave again. 7:25. Crap. I was going to get a load of grief when I got to work.

  “Hi Honey. Yeah, all good. I’ll be home in five minutes. Is Rusty out waiting for the bus?”

  “He’s walking out the door RIGHT NOW.” I placed emphasis on the last two words as I gave my son a look that could take out a small village. He looked at me with his own bit of frustration, I’m sure because he never got to tell me what it was he needed, then headed for the front door, walking dejectedly.

  Laughing over the line, Russ said, “Okay I’m turning down our street now. I’ll--“ The call cut out, as my phone died, and the lights went out, the compressor on the fridge stopped, and the display on the microwave and oven went dark.

  “Russ? Baby? You there?” I looked at my phone, which was off. I pressed the power button, but nothing happened. I had just charged it last night, so I knew the battery was good. I had a sinking feeling that I knew what this was, but I did not want it to be true. To test my theory, I rushed over to the table and tried to start my laptop. Nothing. Tablet was the same. Nothing electronic was working.

  Yep, I knew exactly what this was. And it was going to really suck.

  EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, which fries everything electronic, or so the doomsday preppers say. Guess what? They were right. Dammit.

  Rusty was looking at his iPod with a bit of confusion. “Mom? I charged my iPod last night while I was sleeping. It’s dead. I’m going to need a new one.” Rusty had no idea what had happened – yet.

  “Rusty, shut the door. You’re not going to school.” His hooray would be short lived when he found out nothing was working, and why. My 21st century kid was about to get a history lesson; specifically, what life was like before electricity.

  Yep, REALLY gonna suck.

  I went to the garage and tried to start my SUV. No joy. My 2012 Ford Escape was too new, with too many computer chips. I think the salesman had beamed over it having like 32 of them. No help to me now, dude. As I was closing the door, I heard Russ pull into the driveway in his 1980 Dodge pickup. His beater work truck, which had no computer chips, was running fine. He was right when he said it would run if this happened. So, two doomsday questions answered: nothing new and reliant on electricity worked, but old stuff – not so “modernized” – did.

  Russ burst through the front door. “Is everything down?”

  I looked at him with what I know was a look of dread. “Yeah, anything with a chip, or that was plugged in to the grid.” I was not happy to report it, but he had come to the same conclusion I had. One of the things we had hoped wouldn’t happen, but planned against, was coming to life right before our eyes. The lists started in both our heads. What we needed to do, when we needed to do it, and where we would be going now.

  Right then, there was some kind of – I don’t know what it was – commotion outside. The house shook, like an explosion, but there was nothing else. We rushed to the door, and out into the yard. No noise, no fire – we had no idea what it was. Right now, it wasn’t a priority. Our immediate future was priority number 1, and as long as whatever it was didn’t touch us, we had more important things to worry about.

  Russ looked at us both with a face full of resolve. “We know what we have to do. Let’s get inside and get started.”

  ****

  About three years ago, Russ and I had a “come to Jesus” meeting regarding preparing for disaster scenarios. I was going along in my day to day life, looking no further into the future than what we would have for supper this week. We could have made it maybe a week to 10 days off the food we had in the house, including the freezer. There was no long term planning for even a short term disaster. If the power went off and lasted more than a day, we would be having a big cookout, because the freezer held most of the meat we had. A couple of cases of bottled water in the pantry was the only water stores in the house.

  Whenever Russ tried to bring up “prepping”, I would shudder at the thought, and try to change the subject. All I could think of was a bunch of mountain people holed up in a cabin on a hilltop with no running water, no bathroom, but lots of kids and guns. I knew nothing about it, and wasn’t really interested in learning more. I couldn’t fathom losing modern conveniences, like internet, electricity, and running water, for more than a few hours. It just didn’t happen.

  We had a couple of handguns and a couple of shotguns in the house, with maybe 200 rounds of ammunition for all of them. I knew my way around guns, and actually enjoyed shooting, but I never looked at them as “survival” tools. I considered them self-defense tools, nothing more. If anyone broke into our house in the middle of the night, they were in for a bad experience, as we both had a pistol in our bedside nightstands.

&
nbsp; Russ persisted, sending me links to blogs on the web of people theorizing all sorts of doomsday scenarios. At first, I was completely skeptical. No way any of these things could happen. An economic collapse? We’d know way in advance if that were coming, and the government would help us get through it. No, the irony is not lost on me now that my thought process did not take into consideration the government would be the cause of that particular one.

  A foreign invasion, taking our country into war on our own soil? Again, my thought was that the government would take care of that. That’s their job, right? They command the troops. They control the money. They wouldn’t need me meddling in their affairs, and whatever they did wouldn’t affect my day to day life. I lived in Tennessee, for God’s sake. No one attacks Tennessee. What were they going to do, invade Dollywood? Camp out on the lawn of the Hermitage? Take up residence at Graceland? Yes, I was very naïve.

  The EMP was the one I thought least likely to happen. Surely the government (yes, still on that path at the time) had considered this as an option, and was prepared for such an unlikely event. They would make sure we didn’t lose our precious utilities, no matter what happened.

  As I read more and more opinions on the matter, however, the dull light bulb in my brain kept getting a little bit brighter with each passing theory. Maybe it could happen. Any of them. To combat my confidence in the government, Russ only had to remind me of one thing – Hurricane Katrina.

  While those of us living in middle Tennessee only had to deal with heavy rain, the citizens of New Orleans lost everything. The people were stranded on their roofs, or in their flooded homes for days and days – no power, no clean drinking water, no food, no emergency services – while a stunned local and federal government sat around trying to figure out what to do. When they did finally start into the flood ravaged neighborhoods, they declared martial law – and went about confiscating everyone’s firearms first thing. You know, for everyone’s safety. Now, not only did the people not have a decent home anymore, they were suddenly left defenseless against looters, rapists, pretty much every level of low life that slithers out of the chaos of a catastrophe to prey upon innocent people. Lawlessness was rampant, and many people were killed, both during the flood, and after. It took months for some of the people to get any sense of normalcy, and others lost everything, never to get it back.

  When the light bulb finally went full on bright, Russ had his partner in this venture – we were going to start prepping. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Even if none of the SHTF scenarios happened, what if a tornado came through and wiped out the town? How would we survive? There was a major flood in Nashville in 2010. Thousands of people were flooded out of their homes. What would you do if the grocery stores in the area were closed, due to flooding? How would you get to some in higher, drier sections of town if your car was under water? If you could get food, where would you keep it, if your home was uninhabitable? These kind of thoughts were on my mind every time I turned around. That old saying, “It’s better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it” was my motto. I got it. Now, what was I going to do about it?

  We started small. I bought a 20-pound bag of rice, and 20 pounds of pinto beans. We could live for months with those two items as our food. It would get old, but we could eat. Next was water. Over the next few weeks, we added 10 cases of water to our stores. You could get a 24 bottle case for less than $3. Two or three a week picked up at the grocery store for less than $10 added up fast.

  I was really starting to think about all the things we could use or need in an emergency situation. I went to the local wholesale store and bought flour and sugar in 25-pound bags. I bought food grade five-gallon buckets online to store them in. Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers gave me a sense of security that I could store these items long term, and the buckets would withstand water and sunlight – two big issues in keeping emergency food stores. To buy the things you need to survive in a disaster, you have to have a large surplus, but some food items have a short shelf life, so you have to plan accordingly. I tried to work on items that had a longer shelf life, like freeze dried foods with a 30-year shelf life. If I lived that long, and nothing happened, I’d test that longevity statement. For now, I was relying on the claims to be truthful. Even if the food lost some of its flavor or nutritional value, you could still eat it. It might taste like ass, but you could survive on it.

  I added items I thought would be something we could eat in an emergency situation, and would break up what would quickly become monotonous for at least twice daily meals. Oatmeal, dried milk, crackers, peanut butter, honey, tuna – I chose things that could be eaten without cooking as often as I could. Honey is one of those foods that never goes bad and can be used for lots of things, so there was lots of honey. Protein would be needed for energy, to do whatever we needed to do to live in any doomsday scenario, and unopened peanut butter and tuna last well past their “best if used by” date. That theory I had tested.

  We set a budget for “preps” of $200 a month. I tried to do at least that. Within a couple of years, we had a 10 x 10 spare room (formerly known as my craft room) half full of supplies. Besides food and water, we had first-aid items, including extra meds of prescriptions and veterinary antibiotics (no prescription needed); extra toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap, anti-bacterial gel and wipes; LOTS of toilet paper and feminine products; batteries, candles, seed banks, yards of material (from when it was a craft room), books on survival – truly anything I could think of that might be useful, as well as hard, if not impossible, to get if the world went down the toilet. No pun intended, but I’m pretty sure Charmin and Angel Soft were not going to be readily available when the shit hit the fan – otherwise known as SHTF in the prepping community. We started keeping chickens and rabbits in our backyard. We had a couple of raised bed gardens where we grew veggies for us and the critters. Our privacy fence did a good job keeping the critters safe and keeping the neighbors in the dark – except for the Hoppers.

  We had met our neighbors from next door when our kids were in grade school. Bob and Janet Hopper had been our best friends for 10 years. They had a son, Ben, who was the same age as Rusty, and the two were like brothers. When we decided to go down the path of prepping, it was a natural progression to include them in our plans. As an established prepper, I was concerned they’d think we were whack jobs. A couple of years ago, if the shoe had been on the other foot, I would have thought that about them. I worried needlessly. Bob and Russ were like brothers from another mother, because they were so much alike. Bob immediately saw what Russ had worked so hard to get me to see. Janet was skeptical like me, in the beginning, but as a stay-at-home mom, who had grown up spending summers at her uncle’s farm, she was much more knowledgeable about a lot of the things we were trying to do than I was. In a very short time, their preps were as deep as ours. Our disaster plan, no matter what the scenario, included them. End of discussion.

  Next question: how were we going to make sure some douchebags didn’t come kick in the door and take all of our hard earned preps? We lived in a rural neighborhood – that is, we had neighbors across the street, but with a half-acre of front yard on each place, it was a walk to get there. That was the layout of the whole street. Close, but not too close. The problem was that big, open front yard. With a few trees for shade, it wasn’t really a defensible location. There was about a half-acre between our house and the Hoppers.

  When Russ first brought up defense, I kind of rolled my eyes. Really? You think people would just come kick in our door to get our stuff? Decent people don’t act like that, and I truly believed most people were just that - decent. Then there were riots in Ferguson, MO. Then Boston. Guess what? People were going around kicking in doors and windows and taking other people’s stuff. So we bought guns. Handguns, both revolver and pistol; shotguns, in 12- and 20-gauge; rifles in just about every caliber there is. And ammo – oh, the boxes and boxes of ammo. Thousands of rounds, hundreds in each calib
er, at a minimum. And of course, Bob and Janet did as well. We had multiple firearms that would shoot the same bullets among all of us.

  Everybody learned to shoot. We spent hours at the range with different handguns and rifles, until all of us, including the boys, were comfortable, loading, unloading, shooting, cleaning, safety application – the works. All of the adults had handgun carry permits as well. We didn’t go anywhere unarmed. We also didn’t go anywhere that posted “No Guns Allowed”. The world is a dangerous place, and the cops get there in time to draw chalk outlines and take witness statements. We would not willingly put ourselves in a position to be victims, because here’s the problem: bad guys don’t care if you have a sign. They still come in, with guns, sometimes out and shooting, and all the law-abiding citizens didn’t bring their lawfully owned and legal-to-carry side arms in with them because of your stupid sign, so there’s no one to shoot back. And now, they are among the wounded or dead, as well as your other customers and employees. Dumb asses.

  The biggest part of our survival plan kind of happened by accident. Janet’s uncle was getting on in years, but wouldn’t leave the farm. As Janet was his only surviving relative, Uncle Monroe Warren signed over the deed to his 20-acre farm to Janet and Bob a couple of years ago. His only stipulation was that he and his wife Millie get to live out their days on the farm, and that they be buried side by side on the hill behind the house. For that, they would keep the farm going, with our help and a couple of the neighbor boys. We went to the farm at least every other weekend. We made sure we had established gardens, with every vegetable we could think of to grow. Millie had always lived on a farm, and lived off of the land as a child, with her family. She knew how to grow and store pretty much anything we planted. We had all kinds of livestock, both for food and working animals, and a herd of big dogs, who loved us all and were fiercely protective of the folks and the place.