Empty Aisles & Empty Hearts (Preppers Perspective Book 3) Read Free

and started heading towards the backdoor.
     
    “ Before you do that, I wanted to tell you that Monica’s brother Floyd came in last night from Birmingham.” Charles said watching Dennis stop in his tracks and give him an inquiring look.
     
    Floyd had recently got a job about 85 miles away from Dennis working in the big city doing IT work after a long spell of unemployment. The reason for Dennis’s questioning look Charles was sure was one of a bit of trepidation. Dennis and he had not planned on having a extra mouth to feed and Dennis’s preps were going to be stretched thin as it was.
     
    “ Ah, hell, we got to play adopt a puppy then?” Dennis questioned? He liked Floyd well enough on normal days and they had talked a bit of prepping in the past, but having him suddenly thrust in their midst with little to no preps of his own sort of freaked Dennis out a bit.
     
    “ He will most likely be moving in with me eventually, he is going to stay in that old trailer down at the trailer park for awhile first though.” Charles said thoughtfully.
     
    Floyd and Monica had inherited an older three bedroom trailer and had not sold it yet. It was parked in a mobile home park about 10 miles away from Dennis and Floyd had stayed there until he took his new job. Dennis and Charles looked at each other for a moment with neither one of them wishing to talk first.
     
     
     
    Charles finally broke the silence by assuring Dennis that it would be alright and they would all muddle through somehow.
     
    “ I guess your right Charles, we can certainly use his help on a lot of projects, but he is a pretty big boy with an appetite to match.” Dennis said stating the obvious.
     
    “ Look Dennis, I am not asking you to feed him much. It’s not fair at all to you to take on so many people. Monica and I will share rations with him and we will just have to make do and hunt more to make up the difference.” Charles suggested.
    “ That sounds agreeable now but we don’t have our bellies trying to touch our backbones yet. There is going to be some jealousy issues as well as other emotions going on amongst us all soon enough over food.” Dennis said trying to foresee some of the squabbles that might go on over sharing the least little thing.
     
    “ I got it under control, you just tell me how you want things done and we do them that way.” Charles declared in voice that said he was the patriarch of that side of our little tribe.
     
    “ I know you do buddy, shit that means I got to arm him too with something. Well we will sort that out later. If I remember right he has been deer hunting before so that old 303 British Enfield of mine might be the ticket. Damn I sold off a SKS and a Shotgun last month curse my luck, oh well I got some kind of outfit for him. I just got to ponder it. I got that short Mossberg cruiser but it’s not a hunting weapon. It’s a good carry for him though if he is doing some field work putting in some gardens though. We got a lot of tilling to do and no friggin fertilizer for the crops by the way.” Dennis said thinking about their situation.
     
    “ Are you going to talk to talk to Lomax about planting some wheat on his land?” Charles asked referring to their neighbor at the entrance to the dead end road. Lomax had some open fields and a couple fish ponds that were probably going to be a point of contention soon enough with the neighbors all along this road wanting to fish ot get drinking water from.
     
    The ponds consisted of one small catfish pond that Lomax fed the fish on and one somewhat larger so called wild pond he didn’t feed that had a variety of fish in it.
     
    Dennis and Lomax had talked about a “what if” hypothetical SHTF situation and mutual cooperation when Dennis originally moved in years ago but outside of an occasional neighborly chat the subject had not been brought up again. Lomax had said he wouldn’t mind sharing fish but he wanted something in trade for them. He wasn’t