Time Lost: Teenage Survivalist II Read Free Page B

this. He kept repeating those old sayings from my namesake, Benjamin Franklin, Time is money and Lost time is never found again . I got so tired of hearing about it that I finally told him to just get over it. He kind of freaked out on me then, yelling about how were we going to survive after the electricity comes back on, and how hard he’s worked to get us where we were, and how he didn’t want to lose our apartment and his new Lexus, etc. I knew we were all frustrated by the situation and we all reacted differently to the stress, so I just let it drop and ignored him every time he ranted about money after that. I wondered if he’d always been this uptight about making money, then it dawned on me that that was probably why he was hardly ever home when he and Mom were still married. I stopped myself, though, before I could continue down that thought trail. Better to let all that remain locked away in my head.
    Every couple of days or so, a policeman named Officer Ortiz, would come by our building and give us news and updates on the situation. After about nine days without electricity, Officer Ortiz came to tell us that stores had been ordered by the military to open their doors to the public and give away provisions. Armed troops were stationed in each store to ensure proper conduct and enforce strict rationing guidelines. Officer Ortiz encouraged people to get what they could as soon as possible. He said the government had promised the storeowners that they would be reimbursed by FEMA when the emergency was over.
    Dad and I headed down to the market a few blocks from our building and waited in the long line that stretched down the block. Policemen were everywhere trying to keep people calm and orderly. After about an hour, we finally made it into the store where, sure enough, armed and uniformed soldiers stood guard near the doors. The grocer handed us a brown paper sack that was half-full of items; we didn’t get to pick out what we wanted. As we were heading back to the doors to leave, one of the guards was confronting a man who was trying to force his way back into the store. The man began to yell that he didn’t get what he needed and he was going back to get it. I couldn’t hear what the guard was saying—he was trying to stay calm and keep the man from freaking out—but the man just got more and more frantic, yelling that he had to have ketchup or he would die. Dad looked in our sack and found a can of tomato paste. He offered it to the man and after the guard told him that was the best he was going to get, the man took it sheepishly and left, murmuring his thanks to Dad.
    Outside the store we took a quick look in the sack. It contained a pound of ground cornmeal, two cans of green beans, two small cans of deviled ham, a box of trashcan liners, a can of V8, and a canister of salt. I was hoping for some toilet paper, as we had been out for two days and I couldn’t imagine what we were going to use instead. We were feeling pretty gross by then anyway. We hadn’t had a shower or bath in over a week and though we used a little water on a cloth to wipe the sweat off our bodies, we didn’t dare waste enough of it to wash our hair. The toilets had become a problem, too. With the decrease in water pressure, the toilets didn’t have enough water to flush. It was a good thing that we weren’t eating very much or else it would’ve been really nasty.
    The next day, the army brought in big trucks full of water and food from the USDA Commodities Warehouses in the huge storage caves along the banks of the Missouri River. They told people to bring buckets, bottles, jars, or whatever else they could use to carry water in. Again, we had to wait in a long line to get our containers filled. Dad and I brought two buckets and four empty two-liter bottles, but the soldiers would only let us fill up the buckets and two bottles. We were able to get several cans of food, too. Everyone was being pretty decent and patient that first