Grid Down the New Reality, page 14
Finally, Clint said, “I’m tired of this. We’ll take you up to the front. Shift your grip a little to put yourself in front of us. They’ll be able to see it’s you.”
“No, no! Whatever you do, don’t pass that ribbon until they give you permission!” There was panic in the man’s voice. Something wasn’t right.
Preston and Clint started looking for a trip-wire or something at the post with the ribbon. Why was the old man so scared to pass that ribbon? They studied the house, saw nothing unusual except sandbags piled on the porch to give protection. No trip wires visible. Then Clint noticed a six-inch steel pipe sticking out the window of the detached garage, pointing their way.
Clint had finally had enough with the old man’s stalling. He growled, “What is going on here? What are you not telling us?”
“I wasn’t supposed to say, but we’ve got a security system. Even if one of us is out here, we might be a captive. If we cross that line, it means to open fire. Just in case I was forced to come here.”
“Oh, great! Now you tell us. Well, we’re giving it five more minutes, then we’re leaving you right where you stand.”
“I don’t blame you, I’d be alright with that,” the old farmer said.
One more minute clicked by. Finally, a man’s voice called from inside the house. “Fred! How’s the horse doing?”
“The horse threw me for real and ran off. You got it, Tom.”
The door opened and an elderly, gray haired woman came out, waving them forward.
Clint looked at the man. “Safe to go forward now, Fred?”
“Yes, it’s fine. Come on, let’s get up there.”
Clint and Preston walked Fred up to the porch. The woman came down the steps, getting in the way of hoisting the man laboriously up each step to the house. “Is he OK? What did you do to him?” Clint guessed this must be Marla.
The woman finally got out of the way, and Clint and Preston said, “One, two, three, hup!” and hoisted him up the steps.
Preston answered her, “Nothing, ma’am. We found him crawling on the highway. Now that he’s safe with you folks we’ll be on our way.”
The woman, Marla, looked up into Preston’s eyes and said, “Sorry. My manners are horrible. Of course you were only helping him out. We have no money to pay you.”
“Ma’am that’s fine. Please tell us where to put him and we’ll be out of your hair.”
“Take him into the living room, please. This way.” They walked through the clean and tidy entry way and into the well-kept living room. There, they helped Fred down onto the couch.
“Remember what the Doc said,” Clint told him. “Stay off your feet for two weeks. Let it heal up.”
Marla asked hopefully, “You have a doctor with you?”
“Yes, but we’re moving on tonight,” Joe said.
“Can you have the doctor stop in before you go? I need to know what to do and what to watch for. We can pay you in food. We don’t have much but we do have some whole wheat flour and some parched corn you’re welcome to.”
The old man smiled. “My wife is right. You folks have been really great.” He called out, “Tom! Show these folks our security cannon and why I wouldn’t let them cross the line before you gave the OK.”
A much younger man, probably the couple’s son, came down the stairs holding a sawed off double-barrel shotgun.
“Put that away,” his father ordered. “These folks mean no harm.”
Tom said, “Are you sure? They just might want to take this house for themselves!”
Marla interrupted. “For Pete’s sake! They helped your father and they have a doctor. Don’t be rude.”
Tom put the shotgun in a homemade holster. “Come on, I’ll take you outside and show you.”
Clint said, “Ma’am, we’ll stop in just before dark and have the doc talk to you.”
“Thank you. I’ll have some food ready for you.”
They walked outside and Tom took them over to the garage. Behind the six-inch steel pipe, there were sandbags piled up around the window. The pipe was set up like an artillery piece. It was a Rube Goldberg affair, with gears for elevating the pipe, and others for turning it side to side. It looked like it would shake apart if it were ever used, but looks could be deceiving.
“I’m not going to show you everything,” Tom explained. “We have a warning system that works day or night. Once the people cross the line, we load it up. We have it pre-aimed at the fifty yard line, so if they’re running it gives us time to set it up.
Clint looked around. On the shelves were lemon juice, two liter bottles of Coke and Mentos. He coughed into his hand, trying not to laugh, and succeeded in keeping a straight face when he looked up again.
“So, you have Coke to drink and can munch on Mentos,” Joe said. “What’s the lemon juice for? You have fish fries?”
“Nope. You ever watch the Mentos/Coke thing on YouTube?”
Joe answered. “I watched Myth Busters when they tested to see how high they could get it to go.”
Tom continued. “Well, if you dump a little of the Coke out, and fill it up again with lemon juice and Mentos, then seal the bottle, you have one hell of an explosion. We tested it. We put three pounds of #4 buckshot in the cannon, which is around a thousand pellets. The lemon juice decreases the pH level, giving a more intense explosion.
“The old man welded this all up. You pack the pellets in newspaper, several layers worth, and feed it down the tube like loading a cannon. You use an empty Coke bottle as a spacer, so you can get the payload in just the right place. Then, remove the empty Coke bottle. That’s the pre-load.
“Now, when the enemy is approaching, you mix the Coke and lemon juice. Have the Mentos in the cap so it doesn’t go off prematurely. Don’t slosh! When they hit the red ribbon, drop in the bottle and hit this lever. The rolling block comes up, sealing this end. You have about twenty seconds before it goes off, so the gunner’s job is to track the target until it fires.”
“Huh, it’s like an aimed Claymore mine! Impressive. What kind of speed are you getting?”
“No clue,” Tom answered. “We’ve only had to use it once on people. Ten guys thought they could take what they wanted. All ten died trying. It’s a very devastating weapon.”
“I imagine! A thousand rounds of buckshot coming at them. It would be like hell on earth to be in front of that.”
Clint asked, “How does your sensor work?”
Tom smiled. “I said I’d show you our weapon, not everything. Just being safe, you understand.”
“Sure, no worries,” Clint assured him. “We’ll be going now. Just before dark I’ll bring the doctor and myself back to check on your father. Remember we’re coming. It’ll be just the two of us, so don’t load the cannon, please.” After the explanation, Clint had a lot more respect for the contraption.
“Of course we know you’re coming.” Tom led Preston and Clint out of the barn. “Thanks for helping my old man. See you before dark.” Tom watched them go.
Preston and Clint walked out to the road and met up with Junior and Jane. “Come on, let’s walk for a bit and then have a talk. We don’t know who might be around, listening,” Clint said mysteriously.
They’d covered about a mile when Clint stopped and called everyone over. “Those folks have some impressive armament.” He explained about the sawed off shotgun and the cannon. “Just because that cannon looked funny and worked funny doesn’t mean it wasn’t deadly. I’d never heard of the Coke bomb they were talking about but I did see a homemade mortar once that used gasoline with a spark plug, a coil and a battery. They were using about two tablespoons of gas. The way he was loading it, and the space behind it, I thought at first that was what they had rigged up. And despite the nature of the aiming mechanism, this was no simple farmer. There was hardened steel in the back plug and a smooth closing mechanism. I’m very impressed with his cannon.”
Preston asked, “So what are you getting at?”
Clint answered. “I think we should just pull out at dark and not come back. I’m not sure, maybe I’m just being paranoid after the last time we trusted the wrong folks, but I really don’t want to test out their ‘other security arrangements’.”
Preston piped in. “I got a bad vibe from the kid. He might just be playing it safe, but something’s not right here. I can’t put my finger on it. Why would you show someone a cannon like that? To impress us? To warn us? We’re leaving so what’s the point?”
Junior agreed. “My vote is we get the hell out of here now.”
Clint was looking back at the farm and saw the kid riding up on a bicycle. “Speak of the devil. Here he comes.”
Clint gave the hand signal and everyone spread out, Junior turning around and covering their backside.
The kid puffed up to them and handed Clint a sack of food. “Mom said I should take this out to you now. She said it’s no big deal—the Doc doesn’t have to stop in. We can take care of Dad, but thank you for helping him.” Marla wasn’t a fool expecting they would bring a doctor into such a dangerous situation.
Clint smiled briefly. “Glad to help. Tell her we appreciate the food.” It was probably a matter of pride. Some people didn’t believe in owing anyone. It was a sign that they were probably decent people after all.
“Which way you folks heading? If you’re going east, I should warn you there are some unfriendly folks that way. We heard they like to shoot first and rob second, if you know what I mean.”
“Thank you,” Clint replied. “That’s the way we came. What about north?”
“Not much up that direction for quite a ways. We haven’t heard anything really bad. South at the next crossroads you’ll find a small town about five miles down the road. They close it off at night. They don’t mind strangers coming through, but it’s a ‘be gone by sundown’ kind of place. West around Sioux City is supposed to be really bad—lots of gangs. But I haven’t heard anything for sure in a couple of months.”
“Thank you for the info.”
“Sure thing. Thank you all for helping my father, and safe travels.” The kid climbed back on his bicycle, spun out a little on the gravel getting turned around, and sped off back home. They watched until the boy was out of sight before resuming their walk down the farm road and back to camp.
* * *
(Present day)
Kaitlin was doing a little shopping downtown before heading home after work. Clint had wanted her to pick up some pants, a size bigger, for him. He was sure his old ones had shrunk in the washing. Kaitlin was thinking about picking up some larger pants for herself, as well. Maybe there really was something to the “shrinking clothes” theory if it was happening to both of them.
Just to be sure, however, she decided to also pick up a cloth measuring tape. She bought the clothes, and the tape, and took them home.
“Clint?” she yelled from the back porch. Clint emerged from the shed with a metal file in his hand. “You got a minute?”
“Sure,” Clint answered. He put his tools away and joined Kaitlin on the porch.
Kaitlin had rehearsed her approach all the way home. “I got the clothes you needed, and I got some for myself, too. I’m also having a hard time fitting into my pants. Neither one of us has suddenly become a couch potato, so I got a measuring tape. I want to know if the pants have shrunk, or if we’ve expanded.”
They went inside and did the measuring.
“Oh,” Clint said with his shoulders drooping. “I guess it’s not the pants, is it?”
“No, not for me, either.”
“Well, I, for one, need to do something about it,” Clint announced. “You are perfect just the way you are, as always,” he said with smiling, loving exaggeration.
Kaitlin corrected him. “My waistline is expanding, too. Even if you’re OK with it, I’m not.” She drove one fist into the air. “Sir, I will join you on your quest!”
They decided that general exercise was probably not the key to the problem. It wouldn’t hurt to pay attention, though, and both decided to add a half hour of calisthenics to their before-work routine. Clint would work mostly on strength, because that was occasionally called for in his job. Kaitlin would work on both strength and flexibility.
That afternoon, while fixing supper, Kaitlin got to looking in her cupboard. How did all this starchy food get in here? There was pre-prepared food available again in the grocery store, and it seemed to be all starch and fat. It was quick to fix, but Kaitlin hadn’t realized how much she had come to depend on it. There’s the real answer!
Kaitlin boxed up all of the grains, flour and starchy convenience food in her pantry and took it over to Gayle’s house. “You want this stuff?” she asked. Gayle was only twenty nine years old, and Junior was only twenty eight. Their waistlines hadn’t yet started to expand, and Kaitlin was dead set against ever again wasting food. “Clint and I are changing our diet. We both need to lose a few pounds, or trade fat for muscle, or something.”
“Sure,” Gayle agreed. “Junior will love it.” She put the box on the counter. “I hadn’t noticed a problem with either one of you.”
“Kind of you to say, but we’ve both expanded out of our pants, so we’re going to do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“Exercise, for one thing, though that’s mostly to keep our muscle mass and tone while we lose the weight. If you diet without exercise, most of the weight you lose is muscle.
“The real change is in how we’ll be eating from now on. Even after we lose the weight.”
“You’re not becoming vegetarians, are you?” Gayle pleaded.
“No, the exact opposite. Some vegetarians follow their diet because they don’t want to kill animals. Pesticides and plows kill many animals even when vegetarian food is grown. Most vegetarians say they do it for their health, but a diet without meat is really hard on your body. The human body isn’t designed for it. Without meat, you need several different kinds of protein and vitamin supplements. But people do quite well on a diet of nothing but rare-cooked meat. If they eat all of the animal, including the fat and organs, they don’t even need vitamins to stay healthy.”
“Not even vitamin C?”
“That’s right,” Kaitlin agreed. “Not even vitamin C. You already know that humans don’t produce their own vitamin C like most animals do. For a long time, scientists thought that was an evolutionary error. But a person who eats only raw animal products doesn’t need vitamin C. There was a group of early Arctic explorers who got stranded up in the far north. Their supplies were all gone, and they had to make a cross-country trip to meet a ship. They only had one dog sled, so they had to take turns running by the sled. They ate only the meat they could shoot for 90 days. When they got to the ship, they were in very good shape—strong, and with no deficiencies. Kind-of argues that humans are really carnivores, doesn’t it?”
Gayle was still puzzled. “Are you and Clint going to just eat meat?”
“No, but we are cutting out all grains, all sugar and most other high-carb foods.”
“What will you eat?”
“Meat is the mainstay. Doesn’t even have to be lean meat. Vegetables, no potatoes except a few of the purple ones. Berries, eggs, cream . . .”
“Cream?”
“Yes. A low-carb diet isn’t about deprivation. Raspberries and whipped cream, butter, nuts and cheese are all on the diet. Just no bread, noodles, cakes, pies, and all that stuff. There’s a reason they call it ‘junk food’.”
“But we just got those back into our diet after all those lean years,” Gayle complained.
“You and Junior don’t have to change yet. But think about what you just said,” Kaitlin pointed out. “’Lean years’. Clint and I both want to be leaner. They call it a ‘Paleo diet’ or ‘LCHF’ (low-carb, high-fat). It does a lot more than just take fat off your body. It also cuts way down on chronic inflammation. That’s what causes your joints to hurt, your heart to give up, and most of the other diseases of old age.”
Gayle corrected, “You’re not old!”
“Getting there, both of us,” Kaitlin said. “I’ve seen Paleo work. I had a patient who was sixty-six years old, but who exercised and ate low-carb. If she put on a little make-up and a bikini, she could pass for thirty, easy. The difference is how you eat, regular exercise, and not sitting down much. I’ve studied it. I just didn’t realize until today that it was sneaking up on Clint and me. Well, old age can just go back in its bottle. We don’t need to go there, and we’re not going to.”
Chapter 11
If you’re going to play you have to pay!
“Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.”
~Henry David Thoreau
Robbie was yelling now. “Can’t this crate go any faster? They’re gaining on us!”
Joe remarked with irritating calm, “If we didn’t have the trailer slowing us down, it would help. Want to stop and unhook it?”
Robbie bent down so he could look out the side mirror. “Hey! They’re just pacing us. Why would they do that?” he asked in disbelief.
Joe shot back, “How should I know? Maybe they don’t want to commit murder on a public highway three miles from town. Just a random thought, you understand.”
Robbie grimaced. He was grateful that Joe didn’t fold under stress, but he wasn’t sure that letting his dry sense of humor loose under stress was much better.
They kept glancing in the mirrors, but the three trucks didn’t pull any closer. Within a few minutes they had reached town.
Joe pulled up to the police station and they got out of the truck. Carrying their rifles pointed toward the ground, they climbed the steps to the front entrance and, stopping before the door, banged on it. The trucks that had been following them pulled sedately up behind their truck, blocking any possible retreat. As Joe and Robbie turned to face the pickups, Bart stepped out of his truck’s cab and stood waiting, legs spread apart. He was not holding a weapon.
