Chapter 26

Load Up And Move Out

I quickly close up the container and calm down. I need to locate empty half containers. Next I have to relearn how to drive a forklift. It has been years since my last job that required it. Then we have to decide what to take and what to leave for the group behind us. I want to take it all, but that is impractical with the capacity we have right now. There are enough containers in this port that it would take literally years for our little tender to be able to transfer them all. It seems like after we get settled I am going to have to put a crew together and go find an actual container ship. I want all of this on my island. We may not use some of it for years, but I want it where I can keep an eye on it. It is only a matter of time before someone else has the bright idea to raid the ports for supplies. I want to make sure we have what we need before that happens.

I spent the next few hours taking care of the to do list. Helen pointed out several half containers filled with furniture in shipping. The group then spent an hour locating and then figuring out how to drive and use container forklifts. I don’t know why but when I tip a container and empty it out letting everything hit the ground I get this great feeling. It feels like when you are a child and you do something naughty and you know you are going to get away with it. It is a lot of fun.

A lot of repetition now occurs. Olivia and Captain Trika even join in to help things go faster. Michael, Helen, Sally, and Olivia are on forklift duty. Myself and Trika, are driving semi-trucks with containers from the far areas to the receiving area where we have decided to stage everything. Olivia is working with me, Michael is working with Trika, and Helen and Sally are in the receiving area. The way we have it set up is very simple. I drive to the secure site. Olivia then loads a container on the trailer. We don’t even bother to tie it down, I am not going that far. Then I drive to the receiving area where Helen unloads the container. Michael and Trika are repeating the same thing but coming from the shipping area. Sally is moving the containers we want by forklift alone in the receiving area.

5 p.m. rolls around and I realize that this is going to take more than just today. We have made great progress and are over halfway through the list, but we have not even tried to put anything on the tender yet. I decide that we will knock off at 6 p.m. and then clean up and have some dinner. We will make our satellite call to Gerald at that time and update him. Soon enough it is time. We all park our various vehicles in preparation for finishing tomorrow and make our way back to the boat. After a great dinner of casserole, I love having a full kitchen and refrigeration, I call up Gerald.

“Gerald can you hear me?”

“Yes Mark.”

“We found everything we need at the first port. Do you have enough people for a container ship?”

“We are now up to around 200 people Mark. Your momma’s group came in with around thirty and we have picked up a few more survivors. We will be bringing a small cruise ship, one tug boat with refueling barge, two large yachts, and a small container ship. The container ship can hold about 30 full size containers. We plan on loading about ten containers worth of material before we leave.”

“That sounds great. Say hi to momma and give her my love. Stop at Jaxport first. There should be over 100 containers waiting to be transferred. Green spray paint is food, red is weapons and ammo, and black is miscellaneous. If you would grab ten food containers and five each of the others that would be very helpful.”

“We can do that.”

“After that go straight to the island. No need to stop anywhere else. We will explore the other ports at some other time. My group is going to finish loading up tomorrow and make our way down to Miami for one quick pick up and then on to the island. We should be on the island in two to three days maximum.”

“We plan on leaving in two days ourselves Mark so we should arrive 48 to 72 hours behind you.”

“Sounds good we will see you then.”

After talking with Gerald I explain the plan to the rest of my group.

Sally was confused on one point. “What do we need in Miami that we don’t have here?”

“Have you ever heard of a Duck Boat?”

“You are going into Miami, which is probably filled with zombies, for a boat shaped like a duck?”

I had to laugh at that. “No Sally, a Duck Boat is from world war II. They are military vehicles that have six wheels and can drive on land and on float and move on the water. I want one to make entry and exit of unexplored areas and island much safer.”

“Well that makes sense, why didn’t you just say that in the first place?”

Kids these days. After that exchange we all break off and head to our own cabins. I read a little on my kindle. I have over a thousand books downloaded, but even that will run out eventually. I wonder if my kindle will last longer than my books. It’s not as if I can just switch them to a new device like I used to. The world is going to have to switch back to pen and paper soon. I start to wonder about how many other innocent things we take for granted in our technological world are going to disappear soon. With those thoughts running through my head I drift off to sleep.

When I wake to the alarm in the morning I realize that either the new generation is going to have to use our old slang for things as stuff disappears or they will have to come up with new slang term. For once in my life I might actually understand what teenagers are saying around me. I then decide that the universe is not that kind. With my morning contemplation of the universe done and my shower and other business taken care of I head to the kitchen for a quick bowl of cereal. That reminds me. We are almost out of milk and I am going to have to raid another country to get more.

It may seem strange to many Americans but milk does not have to come in a plastic jug and expire without refrigeration. For many year’s milk has been packaged in foil boxes and placed on unrefrigerated shelves around the world. The expiration date is usually six to nine months later. Yes, you have to refrigerate after opening it to keep it fresh, but until then it can just sit on your shelf. This was one of the most bizarre things I had to get used to when I worked overseas for a few years. Convenient, but it went against everything I knew about the universe up to that point. Long story short, we should not run out of milk before we set up goats and cows to get fresh milk from on the island.

The crew and I headed back to the port to finish off our tasks. I wanted to leave the port before sunset if at all possible. I did not like being stationary in one place without defenses. I finish my staging of containers after about 90 more minutes. The shipping and receiving groups still have a bunch to do. I finish early due to the secure site being smaller and having less containers that we actually want. I switch myself and Olivia from container transfer into repacking. We located several empty ½ containers and we need to shift the material we want into them so the crane on our tender can lift it on board. Even if we could get one of the large cranes working at the port, there is no guarantee that there would be a corresponding crane on Andros island. So switching to a container size and weight that our crane on the boat can handle is just common sense.

Wait a second, just how heavy is a shipping container. I stop everybody so I can figure this out. “Helen, how heavy is a standard shipping container?”

“A little over 3,000 pounds I think why?”

Son of a gun, my whole plan is sunk with that statement. We can’t even use half containers. They are too heavy for our crane. I just assumed that two tons was a lot of lifting power, and it is. However, it is not enough to life loaded containers. It could barely lift an empty half container. I see Trika’s eyes get big also. She must have also just realized what I figured out. This is what can happen if you don’t have specialists. We all made assumptions based on what I wanted and not what was realistic.

“Ok, new plan. We still will load up what we can, it will just have to be on pallets and stored carefully on the main deck. The containers are too heavy for our crane. We may not be able to take as much as we originally planned, but we should still have more than what we can use quickly and we can always come back.”

When I announce this, everyone else suddenly gets the look that Trika and I had a few seconds ago. Well Gerald said the group was bringing a small container ship. Those should have a crane that is powerful enough to get the job done. Our situation became more complicated, yet easier at the same time. We are going to have to load essentially by hand. Well to be honest by pallet jack, but it should go quicker. Olivia and I start opening containers and staging the pallets we want. By lunch time everyone else had finished their sections and would be able to help us in loading the tender after lunch.

We eventually finished loading up around 6 p.m. We left so many supplies on the dock, just waiting for the next group. I wish I could somehow just magic them to the island. For many they might look like conveniences, but to me it represented either success or failure in our new life in the islands. We did come out with everything we needed even if I did not get everything I wanted.

On our tender we now had over 300 rifles of varying calibers. 500 pistols and over 200 hundred silencers that would fit those pistols. 100 shotguns and a huge variety of accessories and cleaning materials. My biggest joy was the ammunition. We were able to load over 100,000 rounds of every caliber of rifle and pistol ammunition. There are still three containers full of ammo on the dock. We should be set unless a miniature Zombie World War started. I was seriously worried about ammunition before we loaded up our finds. We had thousands of rounds that we brought, but the simple fact is that you go through ammunition much faster than most people think. First you have training, then you have multiple shots on the same target, missed shots, etc.

If we ever had to fight other people, the expenditure would go up severely. I had read an article that in the Vietnam it took an average of over 100 bullets to kill a single person. Most of the ammunition was used to keep the opposing side in place and behind cover so they could not shoot back. Not being professionals we would probably use even more than that. That means our thousands of rounds would not get us very far at all.

We also managed to get about three tons of food, various miscellaneous tools, and most importantly five giant pallets of the best quality toilet paper. I don’t know about others, but this was very important to me. I really do not want to wipe with a leaf. I don’t know how long it will be until the world can produce more 2-ply extra soft quilted wonderfulness, but I was not going to suffer while waiting.