Home Coming (The Survivalist Book 10) by A. American (best business books of all time .TXT) 📗

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

HOME COMING

A. AMERICAN

Home Coming

Copyright © 2018 by Angery American Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.

First Edition: August 2018

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of Angery American Enterprises Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

CHAPTER 1

After waking up, Thad stayed in the bed. The room was quiet; only the soft sound of Mary breathing beside him disturbed the silence. Light filtering through the blinds cut across the room in sharp beams. Thad watched as tiny particles of dust drifted in and out of the beams in a silent dance. Slowly turning his head to the side, he saw Mary’s bare shoulders. They were covered in only a sheet and he could see her form lying beneath it.

A pang of guilt swept over him. The image of Anita and Tony came into his mind. He’d had such a hard time dealing with his feelings for Mary and the ever-present memory of their loss. But he wasn’t disrespecting them. He carried their memory every day with him and thought of them often. And he would never forget them. Looking again at Mary, he thought, no, this isn’t wrong. He loved Mary. It wasn’t the same love he had for Anita and never would be. But it was just as strong, and he would give Mary as much as he gave Anita.

Moving slowly, Thad slipped out of the bed and pulled his pants on. Glancing back to make sure Mary was still asleep, he eased out of the room and quietly closed the door. He made his way through the kitchen, which was now a useless space in the house. Modern kitchens simply were not designed to function without the luxury of power and running water. It didn’t matter though. Thad had adapted to the new reality a long time ago.

In preparing the house for him and Mary, he’d installed an elevated water tank to supply the house. So, the sinks and toilets worked. You could take a shower, but the pressure was weak. He didn’t have another of the large tanks like the one sitting in the road not far from his house. Instead, he’d connected two fifty-five-gallon drums together and put them on a platform, eight feet off the ground. He connected the output to the house in the same manner as previously, using a garden hose to tie into the hose bib outside the bathroom. And that bathroom was his next stop.

After taking care of nature’s requirements, he picked up a bowl of eggs sitting on the kitchen counter and went out the back door. The house was small, which was fine with him, but it had a terrific patio on the back of the house. Unlike most of the houses in the area, this one was concrete block sitting on a footer directly on the ground. The patio was a solid poured cement pad.

Thad set the eggs on a table and pulled a Weber grill away from the wall. He dropped a double handful of pine needles into the bottom of it and lit them with a lighter. He waited for those to burn away and the small pieces of oak he’d piled onto it to turn into a sustainable fire. Once it was ready, he put the grill top on and placed a cast iron skillet on it. Taking a spoonful of bacon fat from a Mason jar, he banged it on the side of the skillet and waited for it to melt down.

While the fat was melting, he went back in the house and collected the rest of his breakfast materials. Miss Kay had given him a loaf of bread the night before when he and Mary left to go home. It was in a basket with a small jar of butter and jar of jelly from Gina. There was also a small piece of bacon wrapped in a towel. As Thad sliced the bacon, he smiled to himself, remembering how people used to react to food being left on the counter overnight. Today, no one would throw something out that sat out overnight.

With the bacon sliced, he laid the strips in the grease. He liked to add a little extra grease to the pan when cooking bacon. It would be added to by the bacon he was cooking and create a nice skillet to cook his eggs in. As the bacon popped and hissed, he sliced up the bread. It would go on the grill later for a light toasting. Then he filled a percolator from the sink and spooned some coffee into it. The grounds had been a gift from the old man and he smiled as he watched the dark grounds fall into the basket. He couldn’t help but wonder how it ate the old man up to give it away.

The coffee finally boiled as he was toasting the bread. Two plates sat on the table with eggs and bacon. Initially, he intended to wake Mary up and have her join him for breakfast on the patio. Then he had another idea and went into the kitchen to go through the cupboards. In the back of one, he found a tray that would suit his needs. It was the kind you’d use in the oven, but this morning it would carry Mary’s breakfast to her in bed.

He carried the little tray carefully towards the bedroom. At the door, he fumbled for a minute, watching