I would only need a fire for cooking dinner and coffee, nothing more.
I found some old man’s beard, some small twigs, and some larger dry wood. I wrapped it all in my shemagh and carried it back to the cave. Using my lighter again, I started the fire. The fire kit I had contained several lighters. They were light and inexpensive and were literally life savers. I also had the ferrocerium rod, but I wanted to keep that for later. I heated up water for dinner and coffee. By this time, it was raining outside, so I took my Klean Kanteen outside to the mouth of the cave and set it up to catch the rain water. This would be good, clean water that I would not need to boil.
I decided that I was going to stay here for a couple of days, get some rest, do some hunting and trapping, and try to supplement the food I had left, which wasn’t much more than a few pieces of jerky, some oatmeal, and the packs of tuna.
In the morning, my plan was to take out the two rat traps and the conibear trap that I had and set them up to do what was called passive hunting. I also had the slingshot that used arrows that I would use to do some active hunting. But for now, I was going to get some sleep. I took my tarp and unwrapped it, enough to give me some cushion on the cave floor. I placed my pack at an angle against the cave wall to use it as a makeshift pillow. I unwrapped my sleeping bag and soon drifted off to sleep.
I woke up the next morning and checked the coals of the fire. They were still warm, and with some TLC, I was able to restart the fire so that I could heat up some oats. It was still cloudy and drizzling outside, so I decided to stay in and stay dry. I’d hunt and trap when it quit raining.
I lay around the cave all day with nothing to do but think. Out here in this cave, things were quiet and peaceful. I wondered how things were everywhere else. How violent had the world become?
We were about six weeks into this event. The most vulnerable would be the elderly, children, and those who needed medication to survive. The medications needed to live would eventually run out, not just in their own homes but everywhere, and there was no longer any type of transportation that could resupply the things needed like medication and food.
Hospitals and nursing homes have generators, but they would eventually run out of the fuel needed to run them, and the machines needed to keep people alive would shut down, and the people attached to them would die, if they hadn’t already.
Those people with illnesses like diabetes, who needed medication to survive, would soon run out. If they had enough to last a while, it would need to be refrigerated, but without electricity, it would soon lose its potency and go bad.
This event, this NEMP, would eventually end up killing hundreds of thousands of people. They would die of medical complications, lack of medication, and starvation. Because without the knowledge of how to hunt and grow their own food, and the inability to go to the grocery store to buy their food, people today are lost. Hundreds of thousands of people would die because of their reliance on technology. With these morbid and depressing thoughts running through my head, I soon drifted back to sleep.
A crack of thunder and a lightning strike brought me back to the here and now. It was still raining outside, but I could see that the sun was starting to go down. I decided to skip dinner and just have a cup of coffee. I relit my fire, made my coffee, and went back to sleep.
I woke up the next morning, and it looked like it was going to be a better day. I gathered some firewood, lit yet another fire, and heated up some oatmeal. Once my belly was full, I dug out the rat traps, the conibear trap, and the slingshot. I slung my AR and set out. I had a couple of MRE peanut butter packs that I was going to use to bait the rat raps.
It was no longer raining, but the ground was still wet, and water was dripping from branches and leaves above me. I found a tree that had a branch about face level. I used some generic string to tie one of the rat traps to the branch. I set the trap and baited it with peanut butter. I found a similar tree a few yards away and set up the second rat trap the same way. If I was lucky, I’d get a squirrel or two.
I then began to look around for a game trail. I found what looked like several small animal paths leading off in the same general direction. I followed one of the trails, which led to a small stream. I made four stakes that I could use to secure the trap, setting it up a foot or two from the stream along the game trail. I had also brought along a piece of jerky that I had soaked overnight in water to soften it up. I used the jerky to bait the conibear trap. Again, if I was lucky, I might be able to catch an opossum or raccoon that I could then use to make some jerky of my own. Once I was done with that, I set out to actively hunt with the slingshot.
I went to one of the other game trails, sitting and waiting for something to come along. Nothing did, so I decided to move around a little. I hunted for about three hours, walking, stopping, and watching, but I had no luck. It was about noon by this point, so I went back to the cave to take a break. I unpacked the oatmeal and made some more oats. Oatmeal was pretty much all I had left. I had a few pieces of jerky left, but I was saving that for dinner.
It started to rain again, so I relit the fire again and chilled out in the cave for a few hours. After the rain let up, I slung the AR and went out to check the traps. One of the rat traps produced a squirrel, but the other rat trap and the conibear trap were empty. I left them there, thinking that they may produce something overnight.
I stayed in the woods about two hundred yards from the cave. I used a sharpened stick to dig a hole about a foot or so deep. I placed my hands on the squirrel’s body and thanked it for its sacrifice. I also thanked God for delivering it to me. I then gutted and cleaned the squirrel, burying most of the guts and skin in the hole. That way, if predatory animals smelled the scraps, it wouldn’t bring them to the cave where I was sleeping. A couple of pieces of the intestine I kept to use as bait for the conibear trap.
I went back to the cave, put the guts in the empty oatmeal bag, and buried it in my pack. I then put the squirrel on a stick, seasoned it with some pepper and smoke-flavored powder, and roasted it over the fire. It tasted pretty good. It was starting to get dark out, so I kept the fire going and relaxed, leaning up against my pack. I wasn’t tired so my thoughts turned toward Josh, Heather, and their boys, Bill and Chris.
I met Josh when I started working as a sheriff’s deputy. We soon became friends, and our friendship grew over the years until I was spending my days off hanging out with him and his family. Soon, his family became my family. I wasn’t afraid to say how much I loved them all. I hoped with all my heart that they had all survived this thing and were doing well. Josh had also spent time in the military, and was my assistant team leader when we were on the sheriff’s department SWAT team. He was smart, tactically oriented, and would be able to protect his family if the need arose.
Mike was also married. He and his wife, Mia, had a boy. Tony was twenty and was away at college. I hoped he was at home when this all went down. Mike was also a sheriff’s deputy, but we had met several years previous when I was at college and on the college shooting team. Mike’s dad, Mike Senior, was my shooting instructor. I met Mike Senior’s family at that time and soon became a friend of the family. The whole family was shooters and participated in the shooting sports. Mike Senior taught shooting skills, tactics, and reloaded his own ammo. Mike Junior was SWAT trained and also had a tactical background. I’m also sure that Mike would have been able to take care of his family if need be.
The cool thing was that everybody lived in the same community, so they were all together and would be able to support each other. I wasn’t sure how bad things were up there though. Indiana, Pennsylvania, was a four-square mile town, but there was also a college that had a lot of students. The area surrounding the town was mostly farmland, with smaller towns sporadically placed throughout the county. The community where Josh, Mike, and Senior lived wasn’t quite country, but it also wasn’t a town or city either. There were several miles of woodland around the area which could provide the community with meat if people were taking the initiative to hunt. The only problem was that this area had a lot of hunters who would also be hunting to support their families. With that many people hunting, eventually the available meat would dwindle down, and meat would be hard to come by. I hoped that Mike and Josh were able to take control of their area and get everybody to work together. They were both leaders, and if they were left to