Free Empty Aisles & Empty Hearts (Preppers Perspective Book 3) by Ron Foster

Canned Chaos
     
     
    Dennis sat on his wooden backyard deck starring intently at his woods and thinking about all the things he had to do or should be doing today. His friend Charles had gone inside to check on how his mom and Monica were getting along with arranging his kitchen cabinets and to utilize the bathroom.
     
    It had been seven days since an electromagnetic pulse (
EMP
) caused by a
nuclear
explosion high over the United States took out the electrical grid. Dennis reminded himself at this point that they were very lucky indeed that they still had running county water in the pipes. A lot of the big cities up north already had huge water shortages occurring and in many places people had no running water at all because of pump system failures. His little town had boil water warnings and be conservative usage advisories broadcast on the emergency channels, but as of yet no dire warnings were being issued by the water authority of when they had to quit pumping water because they lacked emergency power backup or fuel for the generators.
     
    Dennis had started his day off with big plans for what he was going to do today, but he soon got sidetracked and overwhelmed mentally reviewing all the tasks at hand. He had decided on talking out all the possible projects which needed to be done and which one should get done first with Charles. He and Charles had managed to get a few chores done earlier, but after several beers worth of discussion, treating their situation as sort of a hurricane party for the rest of today started to seem logical to them in a fuzzy sort of way.
     
    “ Partying with so much to be done is not going to go over well with his mom but she needed to somehow realize that’s the way he and Charles got things done at times correctly. Play hard and talk all about it, get up the next day and do it with or without a hangover regardless and until it was fully completed. They didn’t have that much beer to consume anyway.” Dennis mused to himself.
     
    Charles came out the backdoor of the house leading to the deck and Dennis turned towards him.
    “ Are the ladies having themselves some fun and playing nice in there?” Dennis asked speculatively.
     
    “ They are pretty much done organizing all that canned food and seem to be getting along great. I told them they really should take themselves a break and come outside and have a beer with us when they had a chance.” Charles said as he was picking up his half empty beer can he had left on the table.
     
    “ How did my mom act? She seems ok with it?” Dennis asked arching one eyebrow.
     
    “ That’s what I have been doing the last 5 minutes was standing around talking to her. She was telling me she would drink ONE beer and hadn’t drank one in a long time and wasn’t sure if she wanted a whole one. Then I heard about your grandmother when she was alive drinking ONE beer occasionally and saying she could feel the effects of it etc. and got a buzz” Charles told him with a slight grin that the conversation had pretty much gone as Dennis had suspected it would.
     
    “ Well eventually I will get her on the subject of some of my old relatives being bootleggers during prohibition of one of the funny stories about my grandfather getting a buzz and falling into the Christmas tree.” Dennis said hoping he could influence the conversations.
     
    “ You must take after your grandpa” Charles said chuckling as he bedeviled Dennis.
    “ And my father and his. There are a lot of hard drinkers on both sides of the family, men and women as well as a few hypocrites and abstinence followers. Mom knows I drink to excess and gives me hell about it when she decides it disrespects her or hurts me, so we in for interesting times in the future. She has got a lot of preconceived notions regarding the effects of alcohol on me as well as the mother’s trump card of a guilt trip so it won’t be no picnic.” Dennis said having second thoughts of having his mom hanging