Free Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie by R Kralik

Carisa’s playing Candy Land with Amber and Caleb in front of the fireplace.
    Marisa and Jason are at Caleb's house "looking around" (snort). Mick made sure Jason took Sam Colt along. I'm surprised that Caleb let Marisa go without him , but he seems to trust Carisa almost as much as he does "You Momma," and he absolutely idolizes Amber.
    Our meeting was more fruitful than I expected because Pop and Nana were able to be here. Pop and Nana know a lot about a lot of things.
    First of all, there i s no news from my sister. Nana’s so worried about them that she’s been sick at her stomach. She had to stop Pop from getting in his big pickup truck with an assortment of weapons and heading out to find them. I'm at a loss about what to do, but I don't think that sending the men after them is a good idea. They could be anywhere between here and Chattanooga and that's a four hour drive on a normal day. I pray they can get home somehow and that we can figure out a way to get the boys back. One of the articles Mr. P gave us has a list of the National Guard training camps in the Southeast and their locations, which might be helpful.
    We all agree that we need to have a fence of some sort around the entire property. Mick wants to fence in Caleb's house and the old Stang house with our house and Marisa's trailer.
    Marisa and Jason wanna move into Caleb's house with the kids. They plan to completely gut the kitchen and add things as they can. There's a fireplace in the living room and the master bedroom, so I know they'll stay warm.
    We'll need a large amount of fencing. We decided to go with chain-link , if we can find enough. We'll take it from any abandoned business or house we come across, and we'll need to find some way to reinforce it.
    We have plenty of trees around here , but we only have three men and a bunch of inexperienced females. It would take years to build a strong, solid fence out of logs. I don't want Pop out there, at age seventy, trying to show us that he still has mad skills.
    We'll have to cut away any trees that are tall enough to fall over and be use d as bridges into our property. We also need concrete for the chain-link fence posts. Pop says we can "stretch" the chain-link by using a 2x4, a heavy duty strap, and his pickup truck.
    We all agree d that we need to visit the properties near us and find out if there’s other people hiding out in the community. We'll need to be very cautious doing this and we'll have to take along Mr. Winchester and Mr. Colt.
    I hope we find someone out there. I hope they’re not infected and we can use each other as partners in keeping ourselves safe and healthy. I told everyone we need to approach with caution, but also with a friendly attitude. We don't want any enemies, especially living close to us.
    Pop says he’s gonna "outfit each of us with more suitable weapons." So, I guess I'll be getting a new gun. I like my Glock (pout).
    If the houses are empty, we'll loot them. Yep, we're gonna be looters. We’ll take all the food and personal hygiene supplies, and anything else that might be of value in keeping ourselves alive.
    I have a good number of plastic totes full of personal hygiene items. I got them a couple of years ago when I decided I wanted to be a coupon queen. I'll bet there's still 50 bottles of shampoo and 25 tubes of toothpaste in the plastic totes downstairs. I also have mouthwash, toilet paper, paper towels, soap, body wash, shaving cream, razors, deodorant, dish liquid, washing powder, fabric softener, candles, bleach, Lysol, Clorox wipes and a bunch more that I'll spare you the pain of reading about.
    My coupon queen totes take up an entire corner and a good part of one wall in the basement. There's all kin ds of “over-the-counter” medications. There’s also band aids, antibiotic creams, Ace bandages, leg and arm braces, lotions, gauze, and other medical supplies
    Even though we have all this stuff, we'll still take any we find from empty houses. Those