The Journal Of The Life Of Tom Marks

Chapter III: The First Stronghold

I finally arrived and wiped the police car in my driveway. My wife, who was in tears over what she had just witnessed on the news, came flying out into my arms and the scent of her mango shampoo filled my nose. Both of us rushed inside after a short embrace. My wife's name was  Liberty, But she went by Libby for short. She was petite in stature with a curvy frame and the most gorgeous red hair you had ever seen. O how I loved her. She was also a LPN with her own fast care building, witch was also covenant in the present and the future at this moment. Libby took a look at my hand. She asked what had happened to put it in such a miserable state, so i told her everything I had witnessed up to this point. Tears filled her eyes as she held me an apologized for what I had went threw. I told her she had nothing to apologize for as she proceeded to stint my hand. Libby said that the bone inside my hand would probably never heal right. Man was she correct this thing looks like a depreciated prosthetic then a normal hand now. Apparently the brute had crushed my third metacarpals to a dust. I told Libby that we had to prepare to run if needed and that i was going out to prepare the yard. Thinking back my neighbors all thought i was crazy because i was one of those "doomsday preppers". I had a Six foot tall privacy fence around a acer of my three acer plot. around the remaining two acers I had electric an barb wire for the live stock that we had. inside the fence I reinforced the wooden privacy fence with thin sheets of metal that i had originally planned to electrify later, but unfortunately I would never have the chance to. I went into my shop and proceeded to fortified our escape vehicle I had been working on. It was a 2000 model BlueBird school buss I had bought at an auction for cheap. I had gutted it to add beds an living arrangements incase we needed to survive on the go. I was in the process of installing solar panels on the roof to avoid the happen stance of running out of propane i also converted the original gas engine to a hydrogen gas engine, because trying to find gas in a apocalyptic future would be impossible or very hard, at least that's what I had thought. Man did I how right i was on that one. the initial shock left everyone scurrying to the gas stations in attempt to fill all the jugs they could find. the second was when the power system had failed due to no one working on it the pumps didn't work with out power, so that left old manual labor witch took time. An well time wasn't something many people had, especially out in a open parking lot. I also had two fake walls in my bus that concealed can foods and weapons. I had about 5000 can food items that ranged from pot roast to fried apples, as for weapons I only had what would benefit my family a couple of 9mm hand guns, one AR15, a few hunting rifles ad two hunting bows with about 100 arrows. I had two children. My oldest Tripp who was 9 at the time was a excellent shot with a 9mm. My youngest child Micah who was my hunter was 8 at the time, he loved hunting anything big game or small game it didn't matter he was a natural shot with his .30-30. I preferred a bow and Libby well she was a lover not a fighter she would shoot the sky while aiming at the ground sadly, but she had other skills at her disposal that non of us had like her herbal knowledge on top of her doctor knowledge. on top of the bus with the solar panels were removable garden boxes to crow food when we sat still for a while. Inside the bus the back was a bedroom for me an Libby it was big enough to fit a full size bed and some homemade over head storage for clothes an what not. moving forward there was a hallway that on the left was a bedroom for the boys it had a twin size bunk bed in it as well as storage on both sides for there clothes an what not. to the right was a small bathroom with a stand up shower an toilet. Moving forward was the Livingroom/ kitchen then the drivers area. under neither i had modified the suspension with a left to fit a all the accommodations I would need for the inside and to expand the fuel tank to hold more water. Now I'm sure a lot of people reading this have been wanting me to explain how I made a school bus hydrogen gas capable since we mainly use buggies an stuff to move around now. So here it goes i expanded the fuel take to hold more water and kept the old pump in it. I replaced the old fuel lines with rubber lines so they didn't rust out and ran them to a pickle jar, yes a big pickle jar that I mounted under the hood. i drilled two holes in the lid one to run my wiring for a coil to head the water an the second to carry the has over to another smaller jar. from there i ran a hose from the smaller jar to the fuel rail and used the vacuum from it to supply the gas from the jar. I'm not going to go on about how boiling water creates the hydrogen if you don't understand that then this isn't for you. i sealed all the lids with a putty I seen on a commercial seemed to work fine. Now the outside of the bus had old awnings from a older style mobile home on each side for protection they also lifted up to make makeshift patios. On the front of it was a homemade ram bar I had welded together. This was to be our mobile home if it ever came to it. Thankfully we didn't live to close to a city an we where located in more of a countryish setting so we were able to stay there a while before having to move onto out mobile fortress. The house was built from brick and was dead center of the three acer lot so there was open fields on both sides of it perfect for seeing anything coming to us, or for us. i had converted it to solar panels four years prior to the world ending thankfully. i also had a rain water system to collect water storage with a filtration system so it was drinkable, I also had smaller version of this on the bus. The house held about 150 gallons at any given time. I also had plenty of plots to grow food an a small storage stash of seeds for just about everything. My wife had a canning station at the house an she also had a small building she used as a support clinic for people nearby who had problems since her clinic was about a hour away, there she fixed up my hand the best she could an gave me some antibiotics and something for pain. Here in the near future we would make our first stand as a family against the Brutes.