I’ve tried a new method for proofreading my chapters. I drastically change the fonts and background color to help me look at my story anew so I can hopefully spot more of the mistakes I’ve been skipping over. Hopefully it will make for a more pleasant reading experience for you.

Linda, Sandra and their mother were sitting in Linda’s house as they saw their father, and ex-husband slowly walk by the window, he looked exhausted. James, Linda’s husband, had returned well before dawn to collapse into his own bed. He had loudly refused to let go of his rifle or take off his shoes.

Sandra turned to her mother. “Mom, why did you do all those nasty horrible things to Daddy? And don’t give me any more bullshit this time.”

“I guess, I was simply selfish, lazy, envious, and I wanted the best of everything. I was no longer sexually attracted to your father and instead of working on that problem I hooked up with one of my clients instead. But while he was very attractive, he was also a dope and his business failed. So for years I was supporting him, or rather your father was supporting him. I expected your father to look at our family’s finances at any time but he didn’t because he trusted me. Then I talked Vince into taking out loans instead of paying cash for all of those big purchases we made over those last few years. I had to lie myself blue in the face and falsify some information to convince him. I’ve known for years that I was no damn good. Hell, one of my titles which everyone can see now is Complete Scum. I would do anything to earn back a little self respect but I don’t know how. So how about you Sandra, why did you so easily believe the lies I told you about your father? You knew I was cheating on him, and you also knew that I was mismanaging the family’s finances years before I left him. Later on, you were even visiting me in Europe and in order to pay for those trips you were spending some of that very same money I had stolen from your father and bribed you with. So Sandra, why did you do it?”

“Just greed, pride and stupidity Mom; Daddy warned both Linda and I that the college degrees we were trying to get were valueless but we wanted to show him that he was wrong and we were right. As for visiting you, you were always more fun than Dad. He was for emergencies and the hard stuff. You were there with chocolate cake and ice cream when we were little and then later on you gave us wine, pot and a night at the casino. I got to hand it to you Mom you raised us right. Well I got to get going now. I have to work milking some cows this morning; who would believe it, me milking cows? I just wish that sometime soon Dad decides to trust me with a weapon. I would feel a whole lot safer and I hate being one of the few adults here that isn’t carrying one. You’ll keep an eye on little Johnny while I’m gone, right Linda?”

“Yes, but remember I got my own afternoon work shift, so you have to watch Angela when you come back.”

Nancy left her daughter’s house since she had to get to her own job in the pig pens. She felt a few tears trickle down her face; neither of her two daughters trusted her to watch their babies. And the worst part for her was that she felt they were absolutely right not to trust her.

I had called a conference. We were in my garage next to the shop because I wanted to at least look at my Desoto and the Belvedere. Man, those were pretty cars. I began speaking. “We might pull through our current situation as we are or we might be nibbled to death by constant attacks. I’m going to spend the entire day making us repeating firearms but I don’t think that will be enough. Very reluctantly I’ve come to the conclusion that we need more people here. I think we need some professional warriors. I would love to get some Army Rangers or Marines to join us.” And if they’re drunk I know how to lead them. “Clyde and Grace are our only trained ex-military personnel and they’re busy with too much other work that is equally vital to our survival. So how do we go about finding and recruiting some orange or green screen former soldiers? Do any of you have any ideas or thoughts on this subject?”

Clyde spoke, “Boss this wasn’t the only place that I and my wife could have gone to for refuge. I was made another offer by some older guys at the VFW, they were fellow Nam veterans. The only problem was that the guy leading them has a blue screen and he’s an asshole in my book. He’s actually slightly younger than most of us Nam vets and he became an officer just after the Vietnam War had ended. Somehow while he was in the army he managed to acquire a shit pot of combat medals but to the best of my knowledge he left the military before either the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts. I’ve never liked or trusted the man. Whenever I asked about his military service he would get a smarmy look on his face and say it was all classified. I now worry and wonder about those families that decided to hook up with him; since a lot of those people are my friends. He’s got an actual estate about sixteen miles from here; his plan was for everyone to fort up there.”

“How would we get there and how could we safely approach them? But there is no way in hell, that I will let a blue that you say is an asshole be in charge of our defenses here, hell I don’t even want him near us. So you have to figure out a way to convince your friends to join us while leaving the blue you’ve been talking about behind on his estate.”

“I think by this time, they might be running low on supplies and we got plenty of extra thanks to all the millions you spent. We can offer some of the good ones an alternative home and I know for a fact that there are some good men and women that went to his estate. We can trade a few things to the former Major Martin Kilmer to make it look like he can profit more by working with us than by fighting against us.”

“Kilmer? I might actually know that asshole. If it’s the same one I’m thinking of, he labeled me as redundant and fired me.”

“It’s probably the same asshole.”

“But Clyde, aren’t we forgetting something? You’re talking about recruiting some old Vietnam vets, emphasis on old. You’re doing okay now but how is a bunch of old guys supposed to fight for us?”

He and Mack started laughing. “Vince have you really looked in the mirror when you shave every morning or have you just been too busy?”

Jennifer interjected, “He’s been too busy.”

Mack spoke, “Vince, I’ve probably dropped at least ten years since this all started a month ago. You need to find a mirror and take a really good look at yourself.” He chuckled and shook his head when he finished speaking.

This shit just keeps on getting weirder and weirder. I glanced around searching for a mirror and finally I just looked at my reflection in the Desoto’s window. I must admit that I had been ignoring some things and I did look years younger. My bald spot was gone and my hair roots were dark again instead of gray. For that matter I had stopped using my reading glasses three weeks ago because I had found them to be annoying and unneeded. My quick powers of observation absolutely astonished me, I thought sarcastically. “Okay, how do we approach them?”

“I know of a lot of back roads which should get us to his place without too many people seeing us. He actually lives further out in the country than you do. We’ll go there with your light bulbs and some muzzleloaders as trade goods to sweeten any deal we strike with him. We’ll need to take at least two armored vehicles and they’ll tow trailers. We’ll armor up some of those utility trailers we got laying around here and put some benches inside them; then we’ll use the trailers to transport whoever decides to join us. Actually I’d like to take three of our armored vehicles. We could send the Scorpion in to negotiate, the Hellcat stands off to guard the Scorpion and the Sherman remains on over watch behind both of them. Kilmer will have nothing that can harm the Grizzly and it’ll keep him scared and therefore honest. You’ll have to come too Boss, in case we need to convince some of the good ones there that you’re a better alternative than Kilmer.”

Objections were raised about me going and using three of our four armored vehicles but if we left tomorrow at midmorning it should be safe enough, maybe. Besides that everyone should have repeating firearms by that time and I’d order those staying behind here to fort up while we were gone. Hell, I’d even tell them all stay in my house. It’s got reinforced concrete walls that are over sixteen inches thick and a heavy gauge steel roof but they better not leave any messes behind. “Grace, do you know of anyone that might want to join us?”

“I might but I’m not sure how I can contact them. They all stood behind me when I was convicted but when all this shit came down a month ago, they had to start making plans and preparations to keep their families safe. Let me think about it, the last time I saw one of them she mentioned a rendezvous point.”

“Okay, I’ve got some magic stuff to do. Mack I need four really tough solid rocks. The kind you can drop onto concrete and it won’t shatter; the kind you can throw into a roaring fire and it won’t crack. The rocks have to be fairly big too. Glen, we’re going to need special metal boxes to hold those rocks that Mack finds. Those boxes have to be able to fit inside the fire boxes on our vehicles. Here’s the idea. I’ll put almost the same magic that I’m putting into the fire pins into the rocks. When they are fully enclosed inside the boxes they won’t heat up but when you retract the cover on the box or open it in some other way, heat is released and that heat now generates our steam instead of us being constantly forced to use firewood.

For the time being, Grace or I will have to refill the rocks with magic but I think I know a way for them to absorb excess heat in the future, however that’s a little tricky and it’ll take too much time for me to figure it out right now. Mack, once you find those rocks bring them to me and the same goes for the boxes, Glen. I’ve got more rifles to enchant so I’ll talk to you all later.” Glen stopped me with a raised hand and began speaking.

“Boss before you go, I need to talk to you about a problem we’re having in the shop. Ever since we hit the five hundred hour mark we lost the ability to gas weld, and at six hundred hours we lost arc welding too. Now we all expected that and we did all those welding jobs we could foresee needing before that final day, like for our mortars. We can still machine parts and bolt them together but without the ability to weld metals we’re limited in what we can do and make. Ron Lewis is trying to learn how to hammer weld but he has no confidence in that. He’s hoping that since you were able to give Grace Fire Magic, that when you have the time, you might be able to teach him to use it as well. Then it will be up to him to figure out how to use that magic to weld and cut metal. He’s been a welder all of his life and a damn good one too, but now with him not being able to do his old job, has kind of mentally pulled the rug out from under him.”

“Glen, I’ll be happy to try and teach Ron. I’ve been thinking about the loss of our ability to weld too but there’s just so many other things keeping me busy. When I get back from the trip to Kilmer’s I’ll talk to Ron about it then. But now I have to get back to working on rifles.” Glen nodded his head at me and I left.

I had a lot of guns to engrave and not much time. Some people that came here like Clyde and Mack brought their own firearms so using those weapons along with my own collection should give us more than enough long arms. The problem was that we had a lot of different calibers which meant a shit load of different cartridges were needed. Well, loading cartridges was somebody else’s problem. I just had to make all of our rifles and shotguns work with magic now and not percussion caps. At least our shotguns were all twelve gauges.

It soon became clear that we were not going to get all of our preparations done in time for our departure tomorrow morning so we decided to delay it for another day. I was forced to take a three hour nap too; I was just too tired to keep on working. By dusk I had enchanted two fire stones, their boxes and four rifles. I was falling into a grove now and I began picking up speed. Grace was now busy charging our lights. I continued to work until one a.m. and I managed to enchant five shotguns that had been urgently requested and two revolvers that I thought we also needed. As I got done with the guns my daughter Linda, who was assigned as my assistant for the day, would run them over to Glen or Steve for testing, ammunition and distribution.

With the new firestones the Priest and the Hellcat could stay on active patrol all night long. They were like two great monsters prowling the night. While they might have scared any attackers or monsters away they were comforting to us. Twice the sound of gunfire woke me up, and on one occasion it was actually the sound of the Hellcat’s cannon being fired but runners came to my house each time, catching me just as I was leaving to tell me that everything was under control and I could safely go back to sleep, which I promptly did.

The next day I went back to work. I was now enchanting a firearm or firestone in an hour or less. The firearms were far trickier to engrave but the stones took a lot more magic. My engravings were not artwork and I made the occasional mistake but it worked, which was the important part. I did sixteen more firearms and two stones working until midnight. The two tanks now joined the nightly patrol. Clyde was training additional crews for them. There was a furious but short lived battle at three in the morning. The bats had returned but by the time I had made it outside, it was already over. Repeating rifles, shotguns and a lot more enchanted light bulbs had made a huge difference. I have to start making black powder soon, we still have plenty of it left but I worried. I should have ordered potassium nitrate too and a lot more sulphur. I know both are sold in drug and hardware stores so maybe we can trade or scavenge for some of the chemicals we need. I still have to see if I can develop any skills in alchemy.

The next morning I enchanted two firearms for myself and I recharged all four of the already enchanted heat rocks before we left at noon; which was a little later than we had originally intended to depart. Two weapons I enchanted for myself; one was a lever action rifle and the other was a revolver, both were in 44 Magnum. I liked buying weapons in sets or pairs like that; I would sometimes daydream about the life of a lone cowboy with his trusty rifle and pistol by his side and both chambered for the same cartridges, though I have never bought or owned any firearms that could shoot the traditional 44-40 cartridge. I have two other sets of the same thing in 357 Magnum and 45 Long Colt. I would have enchanted the set in 357 Magnum which I liked better but since we were stuck using black powder I went with the larger cartridge.

Each vehicle had only a gunner and a driver; we couldn’t risk taking any more people from home. I was a passenger in the Hellcat and riding in the center of our formation. The two lead vehicles were towing trailers. Clyde planned a route for us that took us down lonely dirt and gravel roads. We were stupid, we thought we wouldn’t have to fight but we were forced to twice. Once by the lizard men and that was soon after we left our compound. They may have been watching our base but the attack came when we were already two miles down the road, so how did they catch up so quickly? Did they have more mammoths left? But we didn’t see any when they attacked our expedition.

Our vehicles had been maintaining a steady pace of twenty miles per hour. Grape shot fired by both the Hellcat and the Sherman chased the lizards off, with them leaving a handful of dead bodies behind. The second attack was by a flock of enormous ground birds. Pissed off super chickens and our armor saved us from their fast and furious attack, we were forced to keep firing until they were all dead. At my insistence I harvested some of their meat, the mammoth feet had been tasty so why not bird legs? All three of our vehicles had air compressors that could be powered by their steam engines. I took out one of our air powered chainsaws and cut the chickens up. We would be bringing Kilmer a gift of giant drumsticks.

We had passed many a lonely house and too many of them had been severely damaged. Finally, Clyde led us up a very long driveway, the Sherman stopped and our two other tracked vehicles proceeded on to a wrought iron gate that looked like it was barely hanging together. There was a very small old cannon pointed down the drive. Clyde stopped the Scorpion about seventy-five feet from the gate. Some people there were cheering and some were looking terrified. There was one guy there wearing an old officer’s full dress uniform, which looked a little tight on him. Yes, it was indeed the Kilmer that I knew, the same man who had fired me. I used appraisal on him and just examined his titles.

Name: Martin Kilmer

Title: Major Asshole

Title: Legally Not Guilty

Title: Morally Guilty as Sin

Title: A Smart Crook

Title: An Expert and Accomplished Liar

Clyde got out of his tank and went to talk with him. Clyde was carrying a Hawken rifle and not his new weapon. We had brought ten of the Hawkens with bayonets, five pounds of powder and lead bullets for trading purposes.

Kilmer looked pretty excited while talking to Clyde. However, Clyde kept on shaking his head no. He walked over to the Scorpion’s trailer and opened it, showing all those gathered around the giant bird legs. They had been heavy and I had loaded every one of them since the others had to man their vehicles. Clyde made a gesture that seemed to indicate that they should help themselves and the crowd of people gathered there, eagerly unloaded the trailer. They looked a little hungry; I had to wonder what was going on at Kilmer’s estate.

Clyde came walking back to the Hellcat, I popped the hatch.

“Boss these folks are hungry. Kilmer says he ordered truck loads of food but they never showed up. Thanks to true sight I know the fucker is lying.”

“Well your Kilmer is the asshole that fired me, I recognize him. We are not a charity. We might come back here if they have some things to trade but we had to fight twice this time, next time might be worse. Is there anyone here that wants to come back with us?”

“I haven’t asked yet but I will. You want me to see if they got any brass?”

“Ask them for brass, copper, steel pipe or any other metals we can melt down or machine into something useful. Of course any modern firearms they have would be good too but especially those with manual actions; use your best judgment though. Offer them muzzle loaders, powder and shot in trade. Give them the light bulbs but I want incandescent bulbs back in exchange, they can be any type of incandescent bulb even auto headlights. Cheap metal scrap has no value for us, but you already know that.”

Clyde went back to resume talking, Kilmer seemed to be pretty upset with some of the things he was hearing. Clyde suddenly spoke very loudly but not quite loud enough for me to hear, in response Kilmer jerked his head up and looked at the Hellcat. I wondered if a big shot like Martin, even remembered my name.

Clyde came walking back. “Vince we got a problem. I think they all want to come with us. I finally had to tell Martin your name and he remembered it. His most loyal people are staying with him but we’ve got over forty people who want to come with us. There’s not enough room for all of them in our trailers.”

“What do we do?”

“Martin has let his true nature show and he only lets those closest to him, live in his mansion. The other people here have been crammed into the few travel trailers that they have. Others were camping out in tents trusting in Kilmer’s six foot decorative fence to protect them. I think some of those Night Stalkers showed up here. Something came on two different nights and killed over thirty people, so now no one lives in tents anymore. I don’t think the trailers are that safe either. I propose that we take everybody. We cram them into our trailers and hook one of their travel trailers onto the Sherman and tow it home. Then for the next few days we can travel back and forth bringing the rest of the travel trailers back home with us. The trailers don’t belong to Martin and we’ll probably need them to house all of our new people. For every safe trip we make, I’ll promise Martin one muzzleloader so hopefully in that way we’ll buy his willing cooperation and he won’t mess with us. I’m trading six of them today. He’s got no steel or copper pipe, all he has is empty brass and a lot of loaded useless cartridges. He’s bringing a box of various bulbs too. I told him I had surprise for him if he brought them.”

“Sounds good Clyde, when my trailer is loaded, the Hellcat will go back to where the Sherman is parked. I’ll tell the crew there what’s going on and send them back to you, and then you can show them which travel trailer to hook up to. But make damn sure that none of Kilmer’s people manages to slip inside one of our tanks and simply takes it away from us.”

“Got it; Vince.”

I saw Clyde talk again with Kilmer; boxes of empty and full cartridges were exchanged for the six Hawken rifles and the black powder. Martin seemed amazed when Clyde demonstrated our new magical light bulbs.

It took time but eventually we all got loaded up and left. Two miles down the road I hit the air horn to stop our convoy. I met with Clyde and handed him two rifles and ammunition from my vehicle.

“Clyde, the travel trailer is tail end here and has no defenses. Get at least one firearm from all the other vehicles and give them to your friends inside that trailer in case we run into trouble. Make them understand how the guns work and that we get them back when we arrive home. I’ll enchant some more firearms for them later.”

He smiled at me and nodded, “that’s a great idea Boss.”

Dusk was coming and we needed to get home. But we had more problems, those abandoned homes we passed earlier, weren’t so abandoned and this time they were ready for us. We came by the first house and four people came running out screaming at us to stop and waving their arms wildly, two of them were children. We shoved them into the travel trailer and continued on.

This kept on happening all the way home. We packed them into the trailers and we were forced to put more air holes into armored utility trailers so they could breathe. We now had people riding on top of our vehicles and on the trailers’ roofs. It got dark and I became very afraid, we un-shrouded our lights which thrilled our new passengers. I took back my lever action rifle. We now had four miles to go before we were home. I was using every bit of my true sight ability and hoping to turn it into precognition because I knew that they were coming.

But it wasn’t the fliers this time, it was the Cat hybrids. We were moving fast enough that they couldn’t surround us, so they attacked us from our left flank. I was riding on the Hellcat and we had six small children stuffed inside. I started firing, the turret turned and BAM! Good thing I was wearing earplugs. The Sherman with its bigger cannon also fired. Clyde had stopped the Scorpion, we could have sped away but the lion hybrids would have concentrated their attacks on the slower moving Sherman and its travel trailer which was packed with people. Because of the lights and their new enchantments everyone could see the Night Stalkers that we were currently fighting. I jumped down at one point to prevent our enemies from getting to the travel trailer and I was careful not to get in front of our own cannons; which were firing about two or three times per minute. I took my station to the rear of the trailer and I emptied my rifle into the cats. They were still coming so I swept them with elemental fire; thankfully I had gotten much better at it. Once again we were forced to kill all of cats since they wouldn’t retreat. For some reason I felt or sensed that they had simply had been too hungry to turn away from us but I also had the impression that these monsters were always starving or felt like they were always starving. On the other hand it could have just been entirely in my own imagination.

We were in sight of home when a flight of owls made a try for us. Please, only four owls that was a piece of cake. The compound was well lit and all of our passengers started cheering. The gates opened up and we drove on in. We had brought back over ninety people and they were all crying with relief; I let Steve and Jennifer take over. I had to get back to enchanting weapons, with luck I might get four more done before I fell asleep. Grace and Mack seemed especially relieved to see me.

Linda was walking back to her own home from her father’s house where she and many others had been temporarily sheltering. She paused to watch as her father leaped down from the Hellcat. People were tearfully clutching at his hands, thanking him for their rescue. She and others in the compound had heard the cannons firing in the distance and they had all instantly realized that the expedition members were probably fighting for their very lives at that instant. There had been many times now when she felt that she didn’t deserve to be her father’s daughter. What was worse for her; was that many of her fellow inhabitants of her father’s little village didn’t believe she and Sandra were in fact Vincent Standish’s biological daughters. They were loudly saying that since her mother was a blue and Complete Scum that they wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the Scum’s daughters were not in fact the Boss’s biological children.

I was getting more than a little tired of all the work I was doing and having to rush from task to task like a fireman. The previous night I had enchanted a number of firearms including one SKS. I know everyone says that black powder won’t work in an automatic weapon because black powder doesn’t have enough power to properly cycle the action and it produces too much fouling but I thought it was worth a shot. Steve and I took it out to our gun range; we rigged up a stand for it and pulled the trigger using a string held on with some duct tape. That simple improvisation brought up some serious questions in my mind, things I had been ignoring because of the sheer horror of it. Will mankind ever be able to make duct tape again? What will we do when we run out of duct tape? Truly these are dark days.

We already knew from experience that black powder was extremely filthy, our guns and brass had to be cleaned as soon as was humanly possible after every use. So it was no surprise to us that our experiment managed to screw up even the famous SKS, a semiautomatic variant of the even more famous AK47. We started to experience jamming problems with the fourth shot. We had to pound on it a bit to get the cartridge case out but then the sixth shot jammed as well.

This rifle wasn’t something that we could with confidence give to people and expect them to be able to successfully protect themselves and others with it. We gave up but Steve and I both had the same impression that during our test firings, that the bullets fired out of the SKS had sounded much weaker and had penetrated far less into our wooden target than we had expected them to, even allowing for the fact that we were using black powder. To get a comparison, I fired a bullet from my own 44 magnum rifle into the same piece of wood and it went in over three times as far as the 7.62 x 39 bullets did, which didn’t make much sense to either of us. For now we’re giving up on automatic firearms, Steve is keeping the SKS and he’s going to play with it as he has time to do so.

Clyde was organizing an expedition to go back to Kilmer’s and to pick up some more travel trailers. Maybe we could find some closer to us but that felt a little too much like unneeded looting to me. The owners of those trailers that are now living with us have a right to them. All of those people are furious with Kilmer; they feel that he deliberately deceived them. He had promised to make his estate into a fortress with plenty of supplies but according to Clyde, Kilmer had instead waited until the very last minute before he attempted to improve his defenses and order provisions. They all think that he had been reluctant to spend any significant amounts of money until he knew for a fact that all of this shit that is now coming at us was in fact real. As a result all the people he had promised to help keep safe had been soft targets when the monsters came for them.

Richard Jacobs was probably the most vocal about his hatred for Martin Kilmer. Rich had lost his grandson and his grandson’s wife to some predators that took the both of them the same night. Luckily his great grandchildren had been sleeping in his trailer with him and his wife. “Clyde, I’m telling you that Kilmer did as good as kill all those people. He talked big at the VFW but he had squat for us when we got out to his place. I should have turned around right then and gone home but I kept on believing in Martin. He made more promises about workmen being on the way and that trucks full of food and weapons; were coming too but no one and nothing ever came. Because of me and Kilmer, my grandson and his wife are dead. I spent hours convincing them to leave home and go with me and Martha to Kilmer’s and all I did was get them killed! If my Martha and my great grandchildren didn’t need me, I would eat my own gun if it still worked but I would kill Martin Kilmer first!”

“Listen Rich you can’t keep blaming yourself. Kilmer has always been a champion grade bull shitter and all around asshole. I haven’t liked him for years but even with his blue screen he had almost convinced me to go to his place with my wife. I just got lucky and met up with the Hermit. I saw Vince actually doing shit to get ready for all this nasty stuff we’re facing right now. If you want to make things up to your grandson then shut up and soldier, do your best to keep your great grandchildren alive. We’ve faced heavy attacks here on three occasions and I’m sure we’ll be facing more. That’s why I talked the Boss into offering all of you a new home here. But I can tell you one thing for sure and that is that Vince will do his damndest to make certain that you’re well armed enough to face any monsters that make another try at you or your family. You’ve seen the machines already, hell they even towed you home! Vince went out and spent a small fortune buying four old tanks and the new steam engines that were needed to replace their old engines, so they would still be running when we hit the five hundred hour mark.

He planned for the loss of electricity too and he had his machine shop ready to switch over to steam and air power when we hit the final day. If you listen you can clearly hear the men and machines in his shop making us cannons and other weapons as we’re talking right now. Just recently, he figured out a way to make magic lights that can let us see the invisible monsters. Hell, he even managed to figure out a way to give us back repeating firearms.

When we were coming back last night from Kilmer’s; Vince gave up his place in the Hellcat and put three kids inside instead. Then when we were attacked, he dismounted and took up a position behind the travel trailer to defend it. I don’t know if you saw him do it but he cut loose with his Fire Magic and he burned down half of those cats attacking us to their very bones. What he needs from us is time, time to build up this place into a fortress that no monster or army can touch. So suck it up. Now answer my question, do you still want to go back with us and pick up your trailer?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think we can trust Kilmer. When he saw that Scorpion show up his eyes took on a greedy glow. He doesn’t have any working modern weapons but he has a fair amount of black powder and when I was there we had already figured out that cooking oil could still burn.”

“Okay, let’s you and I talk about what we should do. But we should also get with George Mesquida and seen what ideas he has.”

I was currently multitasking. I was engraving some symbols onto a shotgun and yelling at Ron Lewis at the same time. It was great for lowering my blood pressure. Ron wanted to learn Fire Magic, so I had him doing all kinds of little experiments relating to heat energy while I constantly berated him. I am such a nice guy that the Dalai Lama would probably want my autograph and even move next door just to be closer to me. I had also given Ron a pile of books to read. If this keeps up I might have to open up my own magic school, I might call it “Hermitswart” and I’ll change my own name to “Stupidfucker” for getting myself into these messed up situations. I feel some more rage building up, I better release it.

“Ron what the fuck do you think you’re doing now? How many times are you going to try that little experiment with crayons and hot water before you get it right? How fucking hard can it be? You are a complete fuck up. But at least you’re not trying to burn down my house anymore with another FAILED paper bag hot air balloon experiment. I don’t think you were ever that competent as a welder in the first place! I think it would be better and safer for me, if a dumb fuck like you just gave up your dream of being a fire mage. Honestly, the idea that you could master something so difficult is stupid, just like you are STUPID!”

Ron was looking at me and his face was getting redder and redder. I had only been berating him for four hours now. My son-in-law had to put up with days of my shit. But I do feel kind of nervous now whenever I see Jim walking around with a loaded rifle. The glass of warm water Ron was holding in his hands suddenly started to steam. I kept yelling at him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing now ASSHOLE, MAKING TEA? I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO BE A WELDER AGAIN!” The water in the glass vaporized and Ron dropped it with a yell.

“Congratulations you are now a Fire Mage. Now get the fuck out of my house and learn how to weld. You can leave the books behind I don’t think you’ll need them anymore.” He stood there looking stupidly at me and slowly he began to grin. The moron even began to thank me. I had to push him out the door and I barely restrained myself from kicking him in the ass to speed up his departure. I am a fucking genius as a magic teacher! Every child will dream of coming to Stupidfucker’s School of Magic. I better change my address and move, maybe to a mountain in Tibet? Don’t the better class of hermits all live on mountains? If all the other hermits saw where I was living now they would probably laugh at me and I bet you that they wouldn’t let me play in any hermit games. Right now it’s like I’m living in a fenced in trailer park. What kind of hermit lives in a fucking trailer park?

I kept on engraving as I dreamed of moving someplace far away from people; and basking in my now blissfully empty home. Just then I heard my back door open and sadly I heard the sound of little children so I had to rein in my temper. It was probably Jennifer’s kids. They thundered into my kitchen which was now my magical laboratory.

They were followed in closely by Jennifer, Grace, Isabella and Faith. What the hell was going on now? Jennifer began to talk.

“Vincent, we have a slight problem with all the new people. We’ve run out of places to put them. Even when including the trailers you’re going to pick up today. It’s so bad that we’re even running out of good places to park the trailers when you bring them back this afternoon. Most of the land you have fenced in is for our gardens, greenhouses and livestock, and not for houses or trailers.”

“Jennifer I don’t have the time to work on expanding this place yet and Grace isn’t nearly strong enough to attempt what I plan on trying to do and even if my crazy idea does work, it’s going to take weeks to make this place bigger. Steve, Mack, Clyde and I all think that what we need right now are more repeating rifles which is what I’m working on right this minute as you can plainly see. I don’t know what more I can do right now to help with building this place up and putting roofs over people’s heads.”

“Vincent we have an idea. Every little bit of space we can save will help this housing emergency we currently face.”

I didn’t like where this was going. But I had some problems with being too vocal in my opposition. The biggest one was Isabella Gomez a really nice lady who had been framed by some city workers. She was our botanist and plant expert. Besides managing our greenhouses and teaching people, she was also helping with our outside gardens as well. When I looked at her with my appraisal skill, I could see that both her class and title said the same thing Expert Botanist, so I kind of felt that we were extremely lucky to have her. I also strongly suspected that she had some kind of plant based magic. I didn’t want to get her angry with me, since the next time I ate a salad she might command it to attack me.

Then there was Jennifer, who was the first aid cream that people spread on thickly after I pissed them off. I couldn’t afford to alienate her. Grace could use magic now and was a hell of a mechanic especially when it came to our steam engines. And I hated to admit it but I felt some kind of connection with Grace ever since I healed her. Finally there were the children, and so because of those five people I had to keep my cool. As for Faith, fuck her. When she starts pulling magic out of her ass then I’ll cut her some more slack. Damn it, I forgot she has true sight, I can’t really go pissing her off either. I am so screwed!

I schooled my features and tried to keep from snarling. “What is your idea Jennifer?”

She got suddenly nervous. “Well, we all thought of this idea.” Ah, trying to spread the blame now, you chicken shit. She pulled her two children in front of her and they smiled at me. “We think that,” then she said the rest in a rush, “Faith should park her trailer in your driveway to free up space in the other fenced in sections. Then Izzy, Grace and I will give up our homes and move into this house and into your second floor bedrooms. We’ll keep the house clean and cook all of the meals. So you won’t have to worry about that stuff anymore and you’ll be able to concentrate on your magic and enchanting things.”

The women looked nervously at me and the children smiled. I felt my head fall and hit the kitchen table. I thought I might be having a simultaneous heart attack and stroke from keeping my feelings bottled up inside. I then talked into the table top; “how can all six of us live upstairs and where would I work?” I lifted my head up and spread my hands indicating my cluttered kitchen/workshop. I’m going to break a molar if I keep on grinding my teeth like this!

Seven year old Elizabeth spoke because the adult women were too cowardly. “No; only the five us, will live upstairs. Aunt Faith will live in her trailer which is really nice and you’ll live downstairs in your office. We’ve got it all figured out.”

I counted the rage spots floating before my eyes before I asked my next question. “Honey, my office is full of stuff, there’s no room for me to sleep there. On top of that where will I do my work from now on if I can’t use this kitchen?”

“We’ll move all of your stuff out of your office and into the garage and then you can work out there.” She answered with a bright smile.

“Elizabeth I can’t work in my garage, because it’s right next door to the shop and it’s too noisy there for me to think. And besides that there isn’t enough room for me there.” No way was I going to move my Desoto and the Belvedere outside, they might get rained on!

Surprisingly Grace answered. “Not your garage connected to the shop but the garage that’s right there.” She pointed at the door leading from my kitchen and into my house’s six hundred square foot attached garage.

Oh yeah, when I had to stop using my two more modern vehicles I had kind of put that room out of my mind. In fact there was a little car out there that I had deliberately put out of my mind because it had depressed me far too much to realize that I would never be able to drive it again. Win the lottery, buy a fun car and the entire world goes all to hell. It was a Caterham Seven 280, it had taken me a week to put it together and it was a blast to drive. But there was now no place in this new world that I could safely drive that little car even if I did get it working with a small steam engine. Thinking about it now, I guess I could park my Grand Cherokee outside and squeeze the Seven into my other garage by the shop. It could then keep my Desoto and the Belvedere, company. In truth, the attached garage here would give me a lot more working space and it was insulated too but I absolutely refused to admit that it was a good idea, because of certain other factors.

On top of that what kind of magic using hermit uses a garage for a magical laboratory? A basement is acceptable, a hut deep in the woods is the norm, a tower is traditional, an abandoned half wrecked castle is great, and a cave is perfect, but a garage?

Now while I had been mulling over the rediscovery of my house’s attached garage, I had failed to notice the children bringing in several small suitcases, but they suddenly captured my attention when the small pile of luggage that they had stacked up, fell over. At that moment Clyde came in.

“Hey Vince, we’re all mounted up and ready to go. Are you all set?”

Jennifer quickly presented me with my weapons and rather forcibly helped me don my vest; then she and Grace pushed me out the door of my own home saying that they would take care of moving everything and that I needn’t worry. I’m doomed; at least they didn’t kick me in the ass!