Two of our survivors are Lance Wiggins and Hunter Woolsman. They are both high school kids but I could not be happier to have them with us.
Lance goes (or was going to Vo-Tech) to get his electrician’s license. Lance goes to Ketchum High School but if you are in the Vo-Tech program, you go to that school in the morning and then show up at school after lunch for your regular classes. But Lance was such a go-getter that he finished with his course on May 1st. So he didn’t have to show up to school until after lunch. Not one to just sit around the house and wanting money, he finagled his way into coming in and helping us set up the produce department before leaving for school. May 1st was his first day of helping us out. And I am thankful everyday that he is here.
Hunter… well, let’s just chalk his survival up to dumb luck. Hunter goes to Vinita but spends as much time out of doors as he does in. He is always hunting or fishing or working on his pickup. He is a first class welder (taught by his father since he was nine). And on this day of all days, Hunter decided he would rather spend time fishing and sitting in a classroom. So he was skipping school when zero hour began.
Working a lot of evening shifts together, Lance and Hunter became fast friends and drinking buddies. (Gasp! High school kids drink? Beer? Oh the humanity!) So thankfully, Hunter was pretty quick on Lance’s speed dial when things started to go south. Thankfully the cell service had not quite collapsed yet. Being out on Grand Lake, Hunter got to the store relatively easily and I thank God for that because he and Alex rolled up to the store at the exact same time.
Hunter carries at least two weapons with him at any time. He keeps his hunting rifle in the back window of his pick up in the gun rack and a pistol under his seat. And clearly, Hunter came charging in with guns blazing and with no compunctions about putting bullets in some zom heads. Clearly, he saved Alex and got him inside the store with me. So to Hunter, I owe a debt of gratitude that I don’t know I can ever repay.
With Alex inside, I started to turn my attention towards barricading the store. I know several people tried to get others inside but Alex and Hunter were the only successful steals into the store. Then, we started securing all the windows and started building the barricades that I told you about earlier. This took several hours to get the initial barricades built. Okay, we did some fast barricades to keep the zombies out initially but they we kept constantly improving them to the point that they are at now.
Today, my theory is that if the zoms were going to bust through, they would have by now. So I think we are pretty darn safe.
After we were secure, Kasondra thought of the roof access hatch and we went up to the roof to do some zombie watching. To see all these things milling around, the screams of people echoing across the wind…
I will tell you this, this may not be Hell but we can see it from here.
