That was several months ago. Now it was time to decide what is worse: Awakening all wet or awakening all wet and covered with the effluvia of the skirmish of the day before. Dealer’s choice I guess. At least my hound didn’t mind, probably because her wet dog smell could trump just about anything.
My overnight water catchment had collected several gallons of water.
Enough to rinse off most of the muck and dirt, was even able to use a bit of soap. Wow. Too bad I could not dry my newly sort of clean clothes but I didn’t feel that I could risk a fire, even if I could have gotten one started. ZK made herself scarce during my ablutions, although she was smelling a bit wiffy.
I needed to get back to the supplies I had cached prior to my encounter at the well. If you’re scouting around, you don’t take all your stuff with you. This means a lot of doubling back, but hey, cardio! This strategy was good if you could remember where your supplies were. And if some Zombies hadn’t looted it. And if the elements hadn’t destroyed them. If, if, if, if and godsdammit, IF.
Enough with the negative vibes. Time to get moving.
To get across a smashed country, you are never going make it humping 40 pounds in your bug out bag. Not unless you are a Navy Seal or Iron Man. If you knew what you really needed and how to get it, you could actually travel quite lightly. It wasn’t about supplies so much as it was about tools and knowledge and ingenuity.
Oh yes, you also had to Embrace the Yuck.
A sharp knife, a way to sharpen it, some tarps, antibiotics, vitamins, bar soap, extra socks, some big garbage bags, pool shock, a can opener, white towels, zip lock bags, duct tape and bungie cords. Oh, you can add in some freeze dried foods, a small cooking set and some bottled water if you wanted to be posh. That’s it, really. Tons had been written about bug out bags preCrash but many people were intimidated by the technical details. The Perfect is not the enemy of the Good. Just do it. And by doing something, you were already way ahead of the Zombies.
It isn’t like all the stuff produced for the world’s greatest economy just vanished in a puff of smoke. The trick was to get your hands on it.
Aye, that was always the rub.
I put my stuff into my knapsack, shook the water out of my hat and my duster and set out. The rain had cleared off and it was looking like the beginnings of a nice day. Here’s me, taking my doggie Zombie Killer out for a walk in the Apocalypse, oh looky here, the little birdies are singing and everything. It really was a nice very half day’s hike back to my little stash.
You know how you know that your whole day is about to go totally to crapolla on a stick? When things are looking the calmest, when you actually have 10 whole seconds of peace and calm, when you think your plans are going to be working out. Any 1 out of the 3 will do it. Lady Luck is a bitch that way.
So I guess I should not have been surprised to find way back to my cache positively swarming with Zombies.
Damn, damn, damn.
Time to go foraging. Again.
The hound and I dropped to the ground. The zombies looked upset about something, probably my close encounter with their buddies the night before. Their leader was a big, bald, tattoed and body pierced Mad Max Minion wannabe. There must be a universal mold for the Bad Guys, I swear.
“Find those bitches! Right now!!! Rip their fucking heads off!!! I am fucking tired of those fucking bitches fucking with my fucking people!!!!!” he screamed. That many italics and profanity would have bought him a lifetime of anger management in the preCrash world. This had the effect on his followers of throwing gasoline on a cloud of bees and lighting a match.
They began to swarm in all directions.
Roh roh.
I knew I was south of Bastrop, Texas, but still 150 miles back to my home and another 100 miles to my deer lease. The freeways were death traps. Full of stalled or burned out vehicles, broken bridges, Zombies still trying to make it somewhere or preying on the people still traveling. You know, the usual commuter crap. It was enough to make a guy in a Honda Insight want to commit hari kari, or start his own website, same same. Cutting across county in a straight line would keep me away from the bigger towns and (mostly) avoiding Zombies. However this also would limit my scavenging opportunities so I would have to 1) find more food and 2) carry more food.
And I left my bionic legs back in San Antonio, more’s the pity.
The Zombies began to fan out from the leader but their woodcraft was so poor, a deaf person could have heard them coming. ZK and I kept up a steady pace through the trees heading north and soon left them behind. See how important cardio is? Still, even though we left few tracks on the soft pine straw, I knew that their leader was really pissed off and would not give up until he had our heads on a pike and our bodies on the spit.
He was clearly such a people person.
Must have been reading the wrong Human Resources or OSHA memos, clearly.
About the pool shock – calcium hypochlorite or sodium hypochlorite. Realize that the stuff outgasses chlorine, and the chlorine gas corrodes metal. Rapidly. You probably don’t want to breathe it, either.
You’ll want laboratory glassware to store it in. Glass container with a ground glass stopper – in a dark, well vented, dry, location. Store it away from metal. Don’t store it inside your house or garage. Keeping it away from brake fluid is probably a good idea, too. A lock on the door of wherever you put it is probably wise.
Also, a 40 lb. pack? That *is* funny.
Great stuff.
I had to stop reading at the second sentence tho, where you said you woke “all wet”, and wait for the heart palpitations to settle.
Look forward to #4!
Jesh llpoh, now throw in some packs of roaming dogs, just when it looks like you’re cornered, out of ammo and broken blade, you get saved by an American Indian warrior.
Love this Hope, can’t wait until the next installment!
As for your bug out bag, contrary to popular belief, pool shock is not just good for disinfecting water. It will kill various bugs, fungi, and illnesses when taken internally.
Please, if you’re head is exploding, quit reading now. I’m talking about I’m dying, or I just found out I ate/drank something bad (explosive shits) and I don’t have antibiotics or pepto.
I’ve taken it myself, and used it to clear up some weird rash that I still believe was a fungus. All the digging I do in the dirt, I guess it is to be expected.
I started by using a pool shock that contains as much sodium hypochlorite as possible, 70% has been the best I’ve found. Then I used empty pill capsules, started with a very small dose and lots of filtered water, and slowly upped by dosage to a couple 3/4 full capsules a day (I believe 00 size). Within 5 days the rash went away that nothing else could touch.
Necessity is the mother of invention, paid for science be damned.