The housing market was still very upside down yet no one thought much of it. Then europe tanked and defaulted. Their banks went and pulled ours down with them. The tea party, with all good intentions, would not let the debt level be raised, and so no stimulus #3 could happen. It was a perfect storm. The whole thing fell like a house of cards. The people left their homes in droves, tired of paying a huge mortgage on a worthless home. The empty home just fueled the fire.
Those evicted lived in tents like Hoovervilles in city parks. There were no soup kitchens, there were no libraries, there were no fire stations. There were no police, no ambulances or hospitals. It all had come apart.
John had been working on the farm for years. Planting fruit trees, shoring the place up and stocking up. He bought salt, hand tools, weapons, medical supplies and ammo. Propane would no go bad and he had bought used tanks and filled them. He had dogs and horses. He was ready.
Young girls, pretty young girls were looking for a place to land. John would seek them out, going to the tent cities with food. And they came out for it. God there were some beauties.
He liked the 18 and 19 year olds. Even with the grime, they looked great. And it did not take much talking to woo them away from the tent cities where rape was a constant fear.
John was a geezer, an old geezer. He had a band of other Viet Nam vets with him too. John brought the girls home and gave them to his man. His little army. His defenders. For there were roving gangs who would take if they could. But John had good men with automatic weapons to decent, dogs and night vision equipment.
They made attempts but soon moved on. He kept the young girls out of sight when they came around.
Tom was a younger man. Perhaps about 29. Overweight and a bit slow he had never been laid. He was a follower, a plodder. But loyal to John and true blue. He would lay down his life for John and the group.
John found him a very pretty 18 year old blue blonde. She had a nice body and was very frightened. Being with Tom was better than the alternative. Tom was in heaven. The young girl morphed right into the role of Tom's mate. Tom would sit and look at her beauty at night. She called him Sir and performed unnatural sex acts upon demand.
Jim was old, he had collected some shrapnel in Nam. He used a cane. John brought him Wendy. A hot red head with big boobs, she was 19. The gangs in the tent city had been after her and she was staying in a neighbors tent. The neighbor was about out of food and trading supplies and she was the next thing to be traded.