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Also, better pack all the food you can especially if you aren’t a fan of seafood all the time.”
    “Thanks.” Ben hung up and slid his phone back in his pocket. Dave gave him a lot to think about. Fortunately, he brought his bug out bag because he never left home without it. But it really wasn’t packed with all the things he would need if he was abandoned in the wilderness in Alaska. He really hoped the boat was managed by some honest men.
    After the dance was over, many of the families he had grown close to over the past few months were offering him food to take with him. He knew he wouldn’t be a fan of the dry fish at all but he welcomed it and it would be worth having in a pinch. He eagerly accepted the moose jerky even though they didn’t season it with anything. He had grown accustomed to the gamey taste since he had been there. Maybe he could try flavoring it with something before he left.
    Martha Fancyboy was the last one to say goodbye. “We really do appreciate you and I hope you can get home to your family safely.” She placed a bag of jerky on his palm and held it there with both hands. “This is muskox. We don’t have this meat often but we wanted to share some of what we have with you.” She smiled warmly. She had always been so welcoming every time she had him over to dinner. He enjoyed his evenings when he sat at her table with her children and the little ones she had taken in to foster. He struggled with guilt accepting her gift knowing how hard they both worked to care for their large family and that things could become even more desperate for them in the days to come.
    His eyes filled with tears that he had to blink away and he struggled to speak, “Thank you.” If only he had something he could share with them. All the things he had that could benefit her sweet family was back at home.

9
Tammy
    When Tammy had wanted to dig out the crawl space under the main floor of their tri-level house to create a safe room, Ben had been resistant. It wasn’t until he met a few friends that were convinced there was going to be a crisis during Y2K that he finally saw the potential for a real disaster and took prepping far more serious than Tammy. Even though they knew there wasn’t going to be a great event when the clock struck midnight on the first day of the year 2000, Ben and Tammy
did
know that it was only a matter of time when they would need it.
    What had been built under the house was a reinforced basement with a secret door on their bottom floor, that was only a half-basement. It was the most structurally sound room in the house when they finished.
    The thing about Idaho was they didn’t need to prepare for tornados or crazy weather. The windowless room was practically a small apartment where they could hide away and be safe. Half of the space was where they stored their food storage when they were in Boise. They spent their summers at a small cabin working on a bigger underground shelter underneath it in the mountains. When in the privacy of their home, Ben called the cabin their bug out shelter. However, no one was to call it that to anyone else.
    There were a few times when Ben was gone that Tammy would feel anxious about being home alone with the kids and those times she would tell the kids they were pretending when they’d go camp in the safe room.
    Fortunately, that night as the girls packed everything they wanted for their shut-in, it wasn’t as nerve-wracking because of all the “practice”. The tension in the house was thick with worry, though. It wasn’t just Tammy worrying about Amanda. The later it got, each one of the girls had a meltdown in their own way.
    Zoe was the silent crier, sitting in her bed turned away from everyone and would sniff now and then.
    Charlie aggravated everyone with her nit-pickiness about everything they were doing wrong according to her but made sure that Amanda’s favorite pillows and blankets were arranged neatly on her bunk bed in the safe room.