As during the previous winter, Percy threw a huge Christmas party, providing mostly everything except the decorations. While there’d been a few outsiders the previous time, quite a few people managed to show up for the party. The invitation with RSVP had gone out through the radio network in the area, now kept manned daily. Several government officials attended, from various jurisdictions.
The news coming in that winter was much better than that they’d received the winter before. Theirs was not the only community doing better than it had the previous winter. One final blizzard dragged on until April the next spring. There was a short break, with the snow beginning to melt, when the rains started. They were not alone in the devastation wrought by raging floods. The estate and the town fared well, but the roads suffered tremendously. There had been some maintenance the previous summer and early fall, bringing the road system to a slightly better stage of repair, making for an easier mode of travel.
The rains and the floods wiped out many of the repairs and created much new damage. Percy used the bridging sections they’d created during the move south to span the stream he’d put a culvert in the year before. The culvert had been washed away. The parts of the bridge that had not been salvaged shifted and dammed the stream. This caused the stream to find a new route for a half mile before it merged into the old streambed again.
It took some time, after the initial rains had ceased for a while, to get a permanent low water bridge put in, using concrete rubble from the old bridge, plus rock and gravel from the nearby gravel pit. It would be washed away, probably, in another storm like the first one of the spring, but things were set up to rebuild it relatively easily and quickly.
Percy and Tom got their crops in all right that spring. Percy conserved much of the seed he had stockpiled and used the seed provided by the federal government, through the Iowa Department of Agriculture, which was one of the biggest government departments in the state now. The federal government had rescinded the laws restricting the production of hemp. Percy no longer had to grow it in violation of the law. Those in power had finally recognized the importance of the crop to the recovery of the nation, much as it been instrumental in the early days of the republic when it was a crime to not grow hemp.
Percy went back to his plan of rotation of his land. With the additional acres he’d acquired adjacent to the original estate, he was able to bring a full six hundred forty acres under cultivation, leaving three times that much each lying fallow, being built up with compost and manure from the much larger animal population, and having nutrient building cover crops planted.
Assuming reasonable harvests, there would be an excess of every product, even after harvesting for seed and local use.
EPILOGUE
Seven years later Percy was still able to retire early, at age sixty. The estate was being ably run by Susie and Andy. The new regional hospital was nearing completion at the site of where the clinic was to have been so many years and events before. The old town site was now one large farm, as productive as the estate, owned by Tom and run by his children and their spouses.
New vehicles were seen on the freshly paved road that ran on the south edge of the estate. The new town had grown up on the other side of the road. Percy’s estate was now in town and Tom’s place was five miles outside of town.
The statistics were showing between a four and five percent increase in cancer type diseases. A few of the locals that had survived heavier doses of radiation in the days after the war were beginning to show signs of the diseases brought about or hastened by radiation exposure. Only three children out of twenty-seven born in the years after the attack had shown any signs of abnormality. Only one of those cases had been severe.
There had been slightly more than an average number of naturally aborted pregnancies, some of which were attributed to the radiation. The area was about average for the nation. Some places the problems were worse, others less severe.
From all appearances every reactor sunk during the war had finally failed to function. The climate wasn’t getting any warmer, but it was getting drier. People were prepared for it now.
The anthrax and smallpox pandemics in the United States had finally run their course. They cost the country another twelve percent of the population surviving after the first year after the war. Whole communities had been wiped out by both smallpox and anthrax. Apparently the Enhanced Bubonic Plague that had been used as a weapon in the United States had been destroyed by nukes from other countries that hit New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Unfortunately the same could not be said for Europe, most of Africa, and much of China. The New Black Plague took over half of those that survived the war itself. Countries were making progress, some much more than others.
The Unimogs and Bobcats were still doing their work running on plentiful hemp biodiesel and so were the Kenworths. Sara and Percy were ready to do a little sightseeing of this rejuvenated nation. They were up to it and so was The Beast. The barge trailer had been expertly modified over the years. The Suburban and the Harley could now be carried both trailered and on the water with The Beast.
Percy finally decided to use up some of the rations he’d put aside in the preparation days before the war. Some of that freeze-dried and dehydrated food was pretty good.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This has been a cautionary tale. I have tried to paint a picture of what life might be like for those that have chosen to prepare for natural and man-made disasters. I make no claim that this is exactly what would happen if something like the events in the story were to take place. This story was written so people would think about the so-called unthinkable. It must be remembered that it’s not that Chemical Weapons, Biological Weapons, and Nuclear Weapons cannot be used because they’ve all been used during wars in the past. As a matter of fact, all three were used in World War Two alone. Chemical and biological weapons have been used several times since then. Human beings have always and will always seek progress. It is part of human nature. They even seek progress in warfare. It is simply a matter of time before weapons of mass destruction are used again.
THANK YOU FOR READING “PERCY’S MISSION”!
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Copyright
Creative Texts Edition
Copyright 2015
By JERRY D. YOUNG
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published by
CREATIVE TEXTS PUBLISHERS
BARTO, PA
COVER PHOTO USED BY LICENSE
CREDIT: MIKE FISHER