Conflicted Home (The Survivalist Book 9), A American [top android ebook reader TXT] 📗

“That would take a lot of work,” Sarge said.

“Maybe,” I replied. “But I stopped by Altoona and Umatilla to tell people we’d be handing out food tomorrow. I was bombarded with questions and chased out of the parking lot.”

“What in the hell would you do that for? We’re taking all this to Eustis,” Sarge replied.

“And just what good does that do the people out here? How the hell are people supposed to get to Eustis? Then back with the food? Sure, they can walk. But why not just stop on the way and hand it out?”

“He’s right, Linus,” Kay said, supporting me.

He shook his head. “You know how long it will take to put that together?”

“Are we on someone’s schedule?” Kay asked. Her question caught him off guard and he didn’t respond immediately. “We have all the time we need.”

Sarge thought about it for a minute, before nodding his head. “You’re right. We can take some time to organize that. But we need to go through this stuff and separate a portion out for Sheffield’s people before we start portioning it out.”

“That’s a good idea. We can separate theirs out first. Then the rest we break up,” Kay replied. Then she looked at me and asked, “Can you find more of these bags? We’ll need a lot of them.”

“Maybe. We can go look for sure,” I replied.

She smiled, “Good. The sooner, the better.” She made me smile. As though it was just a matter of fact that I was going to be able to go out and get them. She clapped her hands, “Alright, everyone. We’re going to start preparing bags of supplies. We need to put flour in one, rice in another. Those can go into a separate bag into which we put other things, like the canned meats, beans and bottles of cooking oil.”

“I think we should make a separate one for the hygiene stuff,” Jess said. “Put in a bar of soap, tube of toothpaste, shampoo, that sort of thing.”

“And another bag with diapers and formula,” Fred added. The reasoning obvious, coming from her.

Sarge ambled up beside me. His arms were folded over his chest. “You realize how long this shit is going to take, don’t you? What a can of worms you just opened?”

“You think Sheffield would’ve done a better job?”

Sarge scratched his beard. “At least it would have been his problem.”

I laughed. “Lazy ass. I’m going to go see if we can find some more bags for Kay.”

The work shifted. The group started setting up stations to divide the foodstuffs and other items up. I found Aric and asked him if he wanted to go for another ride. He was more than eager. As we walked back towards the little truck, I stopped to talk to Mel.

“Hey, we’re going back up to town to look for more bags.”

She was working with Mary. They were opening boxes of hygiene products and setting them out in a row to make preparing the bags expedient. She looked up and smiled, “Okay.”

Aric was in the driver’s seat when I got to the truck. As I climbed in, he asked, “Why don’t you drive your Suburban anymore?”

As he started the truck, I replied, “The batteries are dead.”

“Aw, that sucks. No way you’re going to find a replacement.”

“No, probably not. But I’m going to try and restore them. It’ll last awhile anyway.”

As we pulled out of the neighborhood, he asked, “How in the hell are you doing that?”

“You can do it with Epsom salt.”

“Didn’t know that.”

We rode up to the Publix on the outskirts of Eustis and parked on the curb. The automatic doors stood open and we went into the dark store. Using flashlights, we went through the register stands just as we did in Save-A-Lot. We found several bundles of bags, many scattered on the floor. Putting them in a pile by the door, I suggested we check the back of the store. I had worked for Publix when I was in high school. Of course, in those days we used paper bags. But the extra bags were always stored in the stockroom.

Naturally, the stockroom was even darker than the store. “This is like something out of a horror movie,” Aric said as he held his rifle at low-ready.

I chuckled, “You afraid of Jason?”

“That shit ain’t funny. Never did like horror movies.”

In the stockroom, we found a grocery cart and I pulled it along with us. It banged and squeaked as we moved through the darkened corridor. There was light at the far end, and as we got closer, it was obvious it was natural light. Rounding the corner, we saw the rear roll-up door where the trucks were unloaded was standing open. This part of the stockroom was littered with debris, both natural and trash. Animal tracks were everywhere in the dust which made me immediately think it would be a good place to set up traps if one were really hungry.

In the Before, there were numerous books, websites, YouTube channels and other outlets dedicated to bushcraft and primitive skills. I was a part of that community as well. But I also realized there were a lot of manmade environments out there. Even in the post-apocalyptic world, such as we’re living in now, there would be a whole lot of it left behind that could be useful to the savvy survivor. Fortunately, we were not living such a hardscrabble life and not relying on trapping rodents in grocery store stockrooms.

But, it made me think of the countless posts on forums. The numerous online articles, as well as those in magazines that promoted the idea of bugging out to the wilderness when the SHTF. But seldom was there one talking about surviving in the urban landscape; and even those that were, I thought, approached it from the wrong angle.

I often thought about surviving in an urban area. This grocery store, for example, could be a lifesaver to the cunning survivor. The