EMP; When The Grid Went DownCh 5

The following is chapter 5 of an original story that I am writing. This story is ongoing and I hope you enjoy it. If you do please upvote and consider following my page. Also on my page is chapters 1-5. Thank you

We all woke early on the morning following the attack on the church. Steve had final watch in the tower and as we all convened in the pavilion he came down to join us. Breakfast that morning was simple. Steel cut oats with honey and raisins, strong coffee, and fresh apples picked from the apple trees that lined the dirt driveway leading up to the pavilion. We talked about the events of yesterday and our need to fortify our positions. We discussed a few other issues as well but all agreed the fortification issue took top priority. The church sat on just over ten acres in rural New England. The frontage was heavily wooded with one driveway leading onto the property and up a hill to the church. The church could not be seen through the woods from the road. Directly behind the church is the parsonage where Aaron and Kallie lived. Off to the right and up a dirt drive was the pavilion. We had four disabled vehicles on site. Pastors Caddy, Gregs pick up, the old impala driven by the intruders yesterday and an almost new thirty four passenger shuttle bus the church purchased last year to take church trips in. Greg, who is retired and comes out faithfully every week to mow the grounds had voiced his opinion against the shuttle bus purchase. He wanted a new zero turn mower and a tractor with a snow blower attachment instead. He viewed the shuttle as a luxury and said it wasn’t justified. We bought the shuttle bus. So we used Steves power wagon to pull the two cars down onto the main driveway about one hundred feet from the road, placing them bumper to bumper perpendicularly in the driveway to block it. Then we placed the shuttle bus parallel to and just behind the cars. Nothing short of a tank was going to push through that blockade. We then rolled Gregs pick up to block the base of the stairs to the pavilion. There was a handicap ramp that was too narrow for a vehicle on the side by the fireplace and that would provide adequate egress for foot traffic on and off the pavilion. There was a pile of pressure treated two by sixes behind the pavilion that were used to build the perimeter frame for the skating rink that we put up every winter in the pavilion. We took several of them and drove framing nails through them at different angles every inch or so. We laid them across the very beginning of the driveway and secured them down by driving large galvanized spikes through them into the asphalt driveway. We then broke the men up in three two man teams so that we could address several of the other issues simultaneously. Richie was a ham radio enthusiast and he and Steve had built a faraday cage out of a steel tool box made to bolt to a truck bed. They lined it with copper mesh panels that they soldered together and grounded to a piece of re bar sticking out of the concrete floor in Steves basement. Then they covered the entire exterior with rolls of lead that old school plumbers used to use which they got from Steves uncles barn when he passed. He was a plumbing contractor in the area in the fifties and sixties. They overlapped the seams and hammered them together until they were flat. I used to joke with them about it, asking them if they were sending it into outer space. I guess the joke is on me because when they opened it and took the gear out, it all worked. There was a solar charge controller and invertor, as well as an old ham radio Richie put in there. In the bottom of the job box was three two hundred watt solar panels as well as two small fold out tri- fold solar panels the size of a notebook when folded up. There was also six hand held CB radios with chargers and a base model CB radio that ran on ac or dc power. There were several other electronic items as well. Steve was a veteran. He was in the navy in the late 1970s and early 80s. During that time he served the majority of it on a small island off the coast of Africa which served as a forward staging area and airfield during the cold war. Diego Garcia was actually a series of very small islands. Steve was a communications specialist there for seven years. Steve and Aaron were tasked with setting up a solar array and the ham radio station. They had an antenna with sixty feet of cable which they would mount on the tower platform. Steve, Richie and I were Preppers. Because of that we had what we had. I couldn’t help get a little upset, angry even, at these guys who made fun of us for prepping. They joked and called us fear mongers and conspiracy theorists. Now they weren’t making fun. Imagine how much further advanced we could have been if they took it seriously also. Linda and Cheryl, Steves wife were also a little skeptical. They thought we were going a little too far with prepping but they supported us just the same. In marriage money is often a source of contention between spouses and without their support it would have been real hard to divert a budget into preps. Richies wife, Sharon was in total denial. She didn’t even come here with him. She stayed behind at home believing the authorities would be coming any time to render aid and assistance. She was a financial consultant for a large corporation and made a lot of money annually. She was lost without her computer and cell phone and other electronic gadgetry. Their marriage was shaky for quite some time. She and Jolie didn’t get along at all. Jolie loved her Dad and despised the way her step Mom treated him. She wanted Richie to be happy and urged him almost constantly to leave Sharon and get a divorce. Richie would not do it. He tried to show his daughter that when you make a commitment you honor it. He had always said that he and Sharon stood together before God and promised to be together as one until death parted them. He tried to show her that you don’t break the covenants you make with God. Sharon herself had tried to get Richie to leave but he refused. Now that she refused to join him I could sense the relief in him. He had honored his vow. It was she who refused to follow him. He always said “when the time comes to go she will have a choice to make” God does give us free will to do as we choose, but he does not release us from the consequence of those choices. Meanwhile Richie and Pastor were charged with building a rocket stove and gathering wood to burn in it to boil water. We were going to try to conserve propane for the gas grills for cooking. There was a pile of cinder blocks down in back of the garage left over from construction of the pavilion eight years ago. They would work nicely for the rocket stove. Greg and I were going to take a hike up through the woods onto the side road leading back toward the school. We were going to check out the houses along that road to check on the status of any neighbors who might be there. We had heard small explosions randomly throughout the day and seen smoke coming from that direction. We decided to gout out and be back by dusk, about six hours off now. We each took a handgun with three mags of ammo, and I took my mini fourteen and Greg took his twelve gauge. Greg took a hand held CB radio and gave one to Lee. He assured her that we would not be going further than a mile and that we would be in radio range at all times. He told her sternly not to transmit on the radio no matter what she heard. That he would call her if needed. He told me to take a radio also but don’t turn it on. This puzzled me and he explained that by doing this if we did get caught or killed anyone who we encountered would just think we had the radios to communicate with each other and thus we would not be giving away the fact that we had others in radio range of wherever we were. I asked “Why leave it turned off”? He explained that if the battery wore down on one we would still have a full charge on the one that was off, effectively doubling our radio time. He then said “you don’t walk around in a jungle with people everywhere trying to kill you for three years without picking up a few valuable pieces of knowledge” “Amen Brother” was all I said. Once again I was happy Greg was stranded at church on that first day. We walked quietly through the woods without incident .Greg told me to stay a hundred feet behind him at all times. To move when he moved and stop when he stopped. He said “silence is our best strategy”. When we got to the first driveway we couldn’t see the house back in the woods but we smelled the smoke, Greg approached the house by walking in the woods parallel to the driveway. Walk fifty feet, stop. Walk fifty feet, stop. I followed likewise. The spot where the house was ,was just up ahead. Burn to the ground the pile was still smoldering. Greg motioned for me to come up to him. He was crouched behind an old stone wall. When I got up to him he quietly told me to stay there and cover him with my rifle, following his movements. He walked slowly around the burning pile and to a barn off to the right of where the house was. He slowly leaned in to look through a window. At that moment the door flew open and two men came rushing out single file. The first one had a shotgun. As Greg reeled around to face them I fired killing the guy with the shotgun. Almost instantly Greg fired two shots with his shotgun hitting the second guy and critically wounding him. He put up his hand signaling me not to shoot again and walked up to the man lying on his back writhing in pain. As Greg started to speak to him the guy on the ground lifted his sidearm aiming it at Greg .Before he leveled his hand I fired three times striking him twice. He was dead. Greg with his back to the barn wall right next to the door pointed into the barn, I nodded and he quickly spun around and faced into the barn. With the shotgun leveled he walked in slowly . I pulled my 45 and ran over and into the barn behind him. Nobody else was there alive. There was a man tied to a post. By the look of it he was beaten to death. Behind him was a woman on the ground with a bullet in her head. Her dress was torn off her and it was clear what had happened. Greg looked at me and said “I’ve seen enough for one day, lets head back”. I fell in behind him one hundred yards as we slowly walked back to church. When we arrived we explained to the others what we found. They were concerned after hearing the shots. Lee said “It took everything I had inside me to not call out on the radio”. Greg smiled at her and said “that’s my girl”. We had some pasta and sauce with canned veggies for dinner. We sat around the fire for about an hour and all turned in. Pastor had first watch in the tower.