After The Virus (Book 2): Homesteading Read online

  After the Virus: Homesteading

  Book 2

  Simon Archer

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  20. Raymond Price

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  39. Raymond Price

  A Note from the Author

  1

  A few months passed, winter turned into spring, and Jackie Purcell, the Auburn Wildlife Management and Ecology student, cheerleader, and the first person I’d met after waking up to find out that most of the rest of the world had died, had it in her head to start planting.

  We had supplies for years in the form of canned and preserved goods, as well as boxes and boxes of military-grade Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs. Much of this was from our own efforts, along with those of Doctor Estelle White, formerly of the CDC, and Angela Powers, former Marine guard, also from the CDC. The rest was courtesy of the old survivalist, Bruce Gassler, who’d driven all the way from Arizona to Atlanta, just to confront the surviving doctors at the Center for Disease Control.

  Quirky as the man was, he certainly knew his stuff. Through a bit of radio work and a fair bit of driving around, he’d found five more survivors in the Atlanta area, and they were all tucked away at the center’s campus in the city’s northwest.

  With their help, I had built the groundwork of a bank of solar panels and was well into wiring it into a large storage battery and the main house and cottage. Unfortunately, I’d hit a snag and was in the process of working through it while Jackie, Angela, Estelle, and ten-year-old Tommy Flint, marked out a sizable chunk of the yard and started digging it up.

  That was where our startup garden was going to be. We had plans for a couple of nearby fields, too, but Jackie hadn’t finished all the research on what we needed to do for a larger garden, and it wasn’t like I’d ever plowed a field in my life, despite being a farm boy.

  “Henry!” Tommy ran over and hugged me as I walked up. I grinned and hugged the kid right back, then let him pull away and head back over to where the women were starting to break ground.

  Powered tools still worked. Gasoline should last us a few more months with all the stabilizer I’d dumped into our stores, and the generators would keep the battery-powered stuff going a while longer.

  That was why I wanted to get the solar rig finished and why I wasn’t digging in the dirt with everyone else.

  “Problem?” Jackie asked. She wore jeans, a t-shirt, and a denim jacket against the slight chill in the air, along with a slightly grubby pair of chucks.

  I frowned, then shrugged.

  “I ain’t sure if it is or not,” I admitted. “I’m getting current, but the battery doesn’t seem to want to hold a charge.”

  “Could be bad,” Angela suggested. Unlike Jackie and Estelle, the former marine wore shorts, kneepads, and combat boots with wool socks. Her long-sleeved “Marine Corps” sweatshirt seemed to be more than enough for her.

  Meanwhile, Doctor Estelle White was dressed in a full set of coveralls with boots and gloves. She grinned up at me.

  “Might be,” I drawled, then looked back to the array of panels that we’d attached to a steel and wood frame in one of the fields. It was the one spot on the farm that got sun all day long. “I’ll run some checks on the inverter and the cables, but I checked each panel and the output from them. No problems.”

  “I’m afraid you’re outside of our expertise,” Estelle said, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “But if you need medical care, violence, or have animal problems, the three of us can accommodate you.”

  “Yeah!” Tommy chimed in. “I can dig holes!”

  “Why don’t you check on Irene while you’re taking a break,” Jackie suggested.

  I nodded.

  “I can do that,” I said. “Any of you need a drink or anything?”

  “Water,” Estelle said before either of the others could chime in.

  “Juice!” Tommy crowed.

  “Not right now, buddy,” I said to him. “Water now. Juice later.”

  The kid huffed and then let out an exaggerated sigh. “Okay.”

  When Estelle wasn’t looking, I flashed a wink to both Jackie and Angela, getting a blown kiss and a very suggestive flick of the tongue in return before I took off for the house where Estelle lived with the two kids, Tommy and Irene.

  Of course, we shared parts of the main house, since it had the larger kitchen and common room, but Estelle and the kids had the cottage, while Jackie and Angie shacked up with me in the house. It hadn’t taken too long for the three of us to decide that not only did we click mentally, but we did physically as well. Neither of them minded sharing, either taking turns or all together.

  Needless to say, I was a happy guy.

  The inside of the house was comfortably warm, and Estelle had Irene’s crib in the den. Charley and Sasha, our two smaller, indoor dogs, were splayed out, napping. She was on the couch, and he was on the rug.

  I smirked and snuck closer, getting a few steps nearer to the crib before both dogs popped their heads up and looked at me. Irene, our youngest, was asleep on her back, tucked beneath a small blanket. Pepper the cat had hopped in with her and was curled up at the baby’s feet.

  I crept on over to get a better view. The baby was completely out, an empty bottle sitting on the hearth nearby. All three animals eyed me suspiciously, and I imagined them “suggesting” that I not wake the child.

  I didn’t. Instead, I drifted back to the kitchen and tried to open the refrigerator without disturbing Ghost, Pepper’s sister. It didn’t work. She mewed at me and moved the moment I touched the door, then proceeded to yell at me from the kitchen table.

  We’d stocked the fridge with water bottles, food, snacks, and other things. With the generator running almost continually, we could both enjoy a little luxury and keep some frozen meats from going bad. I took five bottles out and headed back out of the house.

  Back in the field, I passed out the waters, then opened my own and sipped at it while they all took a break. As frustrating as the damned solar setup was right now, I kind of wished I had a beer instead of a water, but Estelle was at least nominally right, we needed to keep hydrated as the days got a little warmer.

  “How goes the garden?” I asked.

  Angie shrugged. She was there for the heavy lifting, such as it was. Estelle had a little experience, but mostly with potted plants.

  Jackie, though, was the expert.

  “We’ve almost got the space cleared,” she reported. “At least of the major roots. I’m going to take the tiller to it once we’re done, spread the fertilizer, till it again, then lightly water it and leave it overnight. We’ll plant in the morning.”

  That seemed overly complicated to me, but I nodded just the same. Jackie continued, “That’s how my
family did their gardens, and it worked. I’m not sure of the actual science behind it. It may just be tradition, but we did successfully take care of our vegetable needs, and even had some to sell at the farmer’s market or to the neighbors every year.”

  “The chickens have been busy,” Angie added. “We should have some eggs to send to Atlanta.”

  “We should schedule a trip or ask Bruce when’s the next time he’s coming,” Jackie said. “There is something I’d like to do, though.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “We should try to find other people,” she replied. “We’ve seen no-one around here aside from Estelle, the kids, and the crazy guy.”

  “I know,” I shrugged. “I’m just-”

  Hermit wasn’t the right word. I liked people. I just liked the size of my little family right now, and I was surrounded by people I actually trusted. Newcomers would just put me back on edge like I’d been for over a month after we’d dealt with Hunter Blake. Bruce took the information that we’d found in the psycho’s house and returned to Atlanta with it. He hadn’t talked about it much since then, though.

  Might be time to ask the old kook a question or three.

  All four of them looked at me expectantly, and I let out a long sigh.

  “You’re right,” I said, finally. “We should try to help people.” I waved my hand vaguely around the farm. “I’m just kind of… uncertain, you know?”

  “Oh, quite,” Estelle said dryly. “You had someone try to kill you. I’m actually surprised that Jackie is suggesting we do this.”

  “Because you can’t be afraid all the time,” the mostly blonde, former cheerleader said brightly. Her brown roots were coming in with a vengeance, but she’d never lose those lovely blue eyes.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled. “Maybe we can find people and send them on into Atlanta for Bruce to deal with.”

  Angela laughed and shook her head.

  “That won’t make us any friends,” she said. “But I do kind of agree with the sentiment. All of us have been through most of the same stuff, and we’re-” the former marine blushed faintly. “Close.”

  Tommy had wandered off to romp with the dog pack, and they were running around the yard barking and hollering and generally having a grand old time. Estelle had two bottles of water in her hands and a vaguely bemused expression on her face.

  “I’m all for finding and helping people,” the doctor said. “All of you are right, to one degree or another, but still, that’s my vote.”

  “We’ll start looking around some of the more secluded areas, then maybe put up signs on the interstate and in the stores that still have goods in them,” Jackie began to plan immediately.

  “Right,” I said, draining my bottle and stuffing it into the pocket of my windbreaker. “Let me get back to seeing if we can have power without the generators.”

  “That would be nice,” Estelle said. “While I appreciate having them, the noise is a bit much sometimes.”

  Angie and Jackie lined up quickly for kisses before we all headed back to our separate corners to get back to work. I caught Estelle’s eye as we parted, and she had a thoughtful look, almost wistful, as she watched the three of us together.

  Was the doctor lonely? I wondered. Maybe the girls and I needed to tone things down.

  Or maybe, some little part deep down suggested, we needed to invite Estelle in.

  I couldn’t help but ponder the ramifications of that thought while I fished around with the connections and the inverter for the solar array. It took a while, but I eventually found the culprit in the form of a tiny fuse that had gotten disconnected somewhere during the process. Once it was reseated, and I’d gotten everything closed back up, I double-checked everything and sighed.

  It was the moment of truth.

  “Hey,” I called out to the folks working in the garden. “Anyone want to go inside and let me know if things stay on when I switch off the generator?”

  “I will,” Angie volunteered a moment before Jackie did, and hurried off into the house. After a moment or two, she yelled out, “Ready!”

  I turned off the generator. If everything worked right, then the solar would immediately pick up the refrigerator load, along with the couple of lights that were on. I watched the readout start to tick over and grinned. The batteries were charging, too.

  “Fridge is running,” Angie called out through the kitchen door. “Lights are on.”

  I grinned. Now I needed to build the second array and wire up the cottage. That was another week of work, but it would be satisfying to cut down our gas usage. Having a propane generator wired to fire up if the batteries ever dropped below a certain charge would be a good backup, too, and probably wouldn’t take me too long to put together.

  The air conditioner was another matter entirely. I wasn’t sure if the current solar arrays would be enough for it, so we might need to build dedicated setups for the HVAC stuff.

  I’d test it tomorrow. It was nice enough, for now, to just go with open windows.

  “Well,” I said as Angie wandered out onto the porch and looked from me out to the garden. “Looks like we’re in business.”

  “Yay!” cheered Jackie from the garden. She vaulted the hardware cloth fence we’d put around the garden plot, ran over, and threw her five-foot-six, athletic body into mine.

  I staggered as I caught her, then planted a firm kiss on her soft lips. There was definitely a promise of more in that kiss, from both of us. Moments later, Angie joined us for a three-way, standing make-out session that lasted until Tommy, with the usual aplomb of a kid his age, yelled, “Ewww!”

  We broke apart laughing and went over to join him and the doctor. Once again, she wore that pensive look, and I resolved to start that conversation as soon as I possibly could, which meant filling in Angie and Jackie to see what their opinion was about possibly approaching Estelle.

  She was a bit older than both of the young women I was with, closer to my own age and confident as hell. I reckoned she had to be to hold the position in the CDC that she’d had before everyone died.

  2

  Estelle smiled faintly at us as we came back over.

  “About time,” she said. “Nice job on the power.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll get the cottage next. Might not take as long, either, now that I’ve got some idea what I’m doing and a better idea of how to troubleshoot these things.”

  Jackie grinned and bounced on her toes.

  “We’ll beat this thing, yet,” the young woman said. “There’s a lot to do, still, but I think we can-”

  Wild barking and a scream from Tommy brought us all back. The boy darted into the middle of us as our dog pack converged on another pack of dogs that plunged past the house, the big brown and white coy-wolf in the lead.

  “Get Tommy inside,” I commanded, before noticing that the wild pack was between us and both the house and the cottage. “Or something.”

  Estelle moved to scoop the boy up, then dropped him on the other side of the pasture fence.

  “Tommy,” she said. “Head through the pasture to the barn, then get inside and close the door, okay.” The doctor’s voice was calm and soothing, but with an air of strength that almost had me doing what she wanted.

  I drew my Les Baer and held it at the ready, looking for an opening as the dogs scrapped. Angie had her Beretta M9A3 service pistol out, but Jackie was still unarmed. She had her eyes focused past the fight, on the big wolf-like creature that stood on four stiff legs, hackles raised and teeth bared while its mismatched pack darted and snarled and barked, holding our own dog pack at bay.

  While most of our outdoor pack, led by the indomitable Suzy and her beta Maggie, were bigger than the dogs nipped into shape by the coy-wolf, the feral pack were more numerous.

  There was no way I could take a shot at any of the fighting dogs without risking a hit on one of ours. But the coy-wolf was something else entirely. He stood back from the rest of the canines and watche
d, posturing.

  “Henry,” Jackie called back, without taking her eyes off the alpha. “There should be at least two coyotes. Do you see them?”

  I scanned the battlefield and replied, “Negative.”

  “This is a distraction,” she said.

  Oh, crap. I glanced back at Estelle, saw nothing, then turned my eyes towards the barn. The doors were closed, which meant Tommy was safe inside. Where the hell were the coyotes?

  A pig squealed suddenly, and I swore soundly. There was chaos in the pigpen, snarling and snapping, squealing, and banging against the slatted walls. We’d gathered most of the pigs in there while we worked, since they were nosy creatures and prone to get underfoot.

  The goats had disappeared at the first sign of trouble and were out hanging with the horses, cows, and Joe the bull in the back of the main pasture.

  “Take shots if you’ve got them,” I told the women, then headed off towards the pigs at a dead run. I trusted the pack to take care of itself, and Angie and Jackie to take care of the pack. Estelle would do what she could to keep the kids safe.

  That left me to protect the livestock.

  Two coyotes had hopped the low fence into the pigpen and had a young pig by its hind legs while it kicked and screamed. The rest of the little herd cowered back against the rails of the pen, and the wood bowed and creaked under their combined weight.

  I had a clear shot, and I took it. One of the ‘yotes went down, thrown into its packmate by the heavy bullet. The survivor looked up at me as I shifted my aim, then dropped the quarry and bounded the fence before I snapped off my second shot. Wood splintered. Two more shots chased the canine as it darted off between the trees as fast as its long legs would carry it.