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Chapter 22
Southern Oregon – The Clark ranch.
Granny B knew the home had burned, but seeing the heap of smoldering ashes made her sick to her stomach. She gazed at the heap of rubble that had been her home. Granny B grew unsteady, so Tom had to move her to the bench in front of the barn. She watched as small puffs of smoke randomly shot out of the debris. The once nice-looking old two-story home had been reduced to a pile of ashes with a few charred planks sticking out at odd angles.
The huge propane tank had exploded about fifty feet from the house and had destroyed several of Jackie’s favorite fruit trees. “The house fire didn’t make the tank explode. I’ll bet those asshats shot it and blew it to bits. What a waste of propane.”
Tom walked toward the barn. “Come on if you want to see your new home.”
He led them into the barn, and then Tom cursed. “The SOBs found our caches of survival stuff.”
There were several piles of dirt around the holes where the drums were buried. Tom shinned his flashlight down into all three of the drums and found the drums empty. “Now, I know where your friends actually found their new AR15s. How did they do all this searching and digging without you knowing about it?”
Jack stuttered. “I … uh … they sent us on several scavenging trips into town. They could have searched then.”
“Did you see them with a map?”
“Yes, they had a map of the ranch with a lot of markings. What were the markings?”
Tom shook his head and clenched his fists. “They marked where all of our hidden supplies were buried.”
Tom then took them to a stack of hay bales. Tom pointed at a horseshoe on the wall behind the bales and then lifted the horseshoe and pulled it toward him. They heard a click, and the bales moved slightly. Tom reached out to bales and pulled on an old bent nail, and the wall and bales moved toward him. “See, this is one of the doors into our new home. Now, before we enter, no one besides this group can ever know about our underground bunker.”
Tom reached into the doorway and flipped a switch. The dark entrance was lit by a soft glow, as were the stairs down into the earth. “Follow me.”
The steps led them down to a concrete walled landing with a steel door with a combination lock built into the door handle. Tom pushed the buttons and said, “Pie are round. Cornbread are square.”
The door opened. “The combination is 31415.”
The room was a combination of root cellar and supply storage pantry. It was approximately eight feet wide by twenty feet long. Wires were running to two large truck batteries and then to a wall switch. Rick said, “This is an overseas shipping container. We all can’t live in here.”
Jackie laughed. “Yes, it looks like a traditional root cellar with some food, and I might say, not much of that. Look around you. If you found this room, you’d think you’d found some food and look around at the supplies. The worst case is, you might try to live in the room. Now, watch this.”
Jackie reached under a shelf and then pulled the set of shelves toward her. “See, another hidden doorway. This room is just a redundant security entrance meant to stop intruders before they get to our home.”
The next room was lit from above by natural light. Rick was amazed. “Where’s the light coming from?”
“Look up the light tube. It goes up to the roof of the barn. Our living quarters are under the barn so we could install these light tubes to the roof. The barn has a false roof around the real roof to hide the clear plastic bubbles. I thought of that back when I was a kid,” said Tom.
Tom walked further into the room and waved his hand around, pointing at the cots, tools, and plastic drums. “This is our warehouse and living quarters. The room is made from three forty-foot shipping containers, with most of the sides cut away. Rick, does this meet your approval?”
“It’ll beat the cabin. I’ll bet it’s cool in the summer and warmish in the winter.”
Tom snickered, and Jackie and Granny B joined into the laughter. Tom motioned for them to follow him. He moved several empty drums and opened another hidden door. “This is our destination. It’s half under the barn and half in the backyard. Ten of the forty-five-foot containers were buried side by side, with three more small containers used as fake food storage room. They’re really entrances with hidden doors. Take a stroll around, then Jackie will show you to your rooms.”
Jackie gave them an extensive tour of the underground bunker. The kitchen and dining area were designed to also be the living room and meeting room. It was sixteen feet wide by twenty feet long and spanned two different containers. It had a regular size kitchen with both a gas and wood stove. The three refrigerators were small by usual standards but were camper refrigerators and ran on electricity or propane. Brenda checked under the sink and noticed the plumbing was not different from regular house plumbing. “How do you get rid of gray water?
Tom started to answer when Sam asked, “Where does poop go? We passed two bathrooms.”
Tom looked at Granny B. “Let’s show them the view.”
He walked to the outside wall of the kitchen, where he stopped in front of a wall with two large framed pictures of Oregon forests. He lifted
