Rise of the Prepper: A Story of the Coming Collapse Read Free Page A

drove towards the pickup, slowing down as he approached it. He pulled up beside it and got off his truck. Moving carefully towards the pickup, he opened his jacket to reveal his badge. He placed a light hand on the grip of the Supergrade tucked on his hip—a gun that his friend and fellow officer Norton Sivers had given him a few years ago.
                  Everything was quiet inside the car. There didn’t seem to be anyone inside the pickup. Seth saw that the driver’s side window was open. He put a hand on top of the rolled down window and took a peek inside.
                  There were three dead bodies inside. The surprise at his discovery made him step back a bit. Catching himself, he took a closer look at the dead bodies sitting on the cloth bucket seats.
                  The driver, a male in his mid-fifties, had his head down against the steering wheel. He was shot through the right temple. On the front passenger’s seat beside the driver, were two females—an adult and a child. They were both shot through the heart.
                  Seth thought it better to leave the crime scene untouched. He took a last peek at the bodies and stepped back from the window. He took a turn around the pickup, looking for clues. He went back to the driver’s side. The only clues he’d found was that the shots to all three looked very precise. It was almost as if the victims let themselves be shot . The circular powder burns on the front of the women’s shirts suggested that the perpetrator had time to put the gun right on their chests before firing a shot. The same could be said for the man in the driver’s seat. His gunshot wound looked too precise, too perfect to have been done by some criminal who would’ve been most likely feeling panicked after killing three people. This was either done by a professional or… It was strange and rare, to be honest, but that didn’t mean it doesn’t happen. This was a triple suicide. Why these three people, who looked to be a family, now that Seth thought about it, killed themselves, he didn’t know. Judging by the way the corpses hadn’t started swelling yet, he guessed that they had been dead no more than two or three days, tops.
                  Seth went back to his truck and took out his two-way radio. He turned it on but only static could be heard on the other side. He frowned. The radio was a modern wideband digital transceiver. He couldn’t manually control the channels. He decided to see if he could use his phone. Nope. No service. His best option now was to drive down to town and let the local authorities know what happened. Before going, he made sure to take some pictures of the crime scene with his phone for evidence.
                  All set, Seth got on his truck and started the fifteen-minute drive to town. As he drove, he noticed the lack of travelers around. There were usually several out on any given day. Some went fishing in the river for some trout while others went biking. 
    He spotted two cars up ahead. One was a white Lincoln Town Car and the other was a black Honda compact. They appeared to have suffered from a strong head to head collision. Both of the cars were badly mangled. The front parts of the cars were totally smashed. There was no doubt in Seth’s mind that the drivers and passengers of both cars did not survive the crash.
                  Never in all his years in his line of work did he encounter two gruesome scenes in the span of a few minutes in the same day. Both scenes were unattended too.
                  What was going on? Seth checked the cars and took pictures of the scene for evidence just as he did with the pickup before. Once he was done, he got on his truck again and started driving away. He really needed to get to town and get some sense of what was happening. This wasn’t normal.
                  He took a turn from Buckeye Road and