Desperation, Fear, Death, Surviving the “Intruder”

Desperation, Fear, Death, Surviving the “Intruder”

Reposted from a not so long ago happening!

I shot a man in desperation the other day and haven’t been able to sleep since. I had often wondered if I had to, would I be able to, now I know. Pulling the trigger was not that hard, not with what I could see was going to happen. I am hoping that in telling my story it may ease my conscious a bit but in order for it to be understood I have to back up some.

My wife and I live in a fairly secluded area; in fact, you need four wheel drive just to get to the house no matter the weather or time of year. In winter we rarely venture out as it requires snow shoes or the dogs and sled. Our home is made of logs that I cut myself from the surrounding forest. It is comfortable and well away from the city.

Our nearest neighbor, his name is Jack, lives alone about a mile further down the mountain and it’s only by chance that we see each other from time to time usually while hunting.

Living up here on the mountain is our life style. There are those that say they envy us and some that may call us recluse or even hermits.  I like to think of us as independent and free, living with what our creator has surrounded us with. Make no mistake; it is not an easy life, Anne, my wife and I work from sun up to sun down each and every day that we may live here in reasonable comfort.

It was not always like this, living in the mountains as we do. Many years ago I lived in a small but growing town in northern Arizona where I met and married Anne. I worked the nine to five like most everyone else did. It was a good job and I made good money but over the years I found myself becoming restless and of course there was more. The little town we were living in was growing and with that came more people, more traffic, more laws and regulations, more crime, and more headaches. The economy was tanking and we could see little hope with ever increasing corruption in government and it’s ever reaching control. Call it a hunch if you like but all around us things were looking bad and it was time for change!

Anne wanted much the same as I and it did not take long to come to an agreement. We sold our home and all our other assets that gave us ties. What we had to have we loaded into the truck and the trailer we bought and headed north.

In Idaho we found what we were after, 24 acres in the mountains near the Canadian border surrounded by national forest, a year round running stream and all the other natural resources we could want. The nearest town, with only a grocery store, gas station is twenty four miles from the property. A private sale was made with the land owner and we began building our home. That was twelve years ago.

Having little contact with others is quite pleasant but we are not completely without knowing what’s going on in the world. It has been more than a year now since the state of our economy has been downgraded from recession to depression. Our government has all but collapsed and chaos has taken over all the metropolitan areas. Millions upon millions of people not prepared are starving to death and crime is at an all-time high. Those that live in urban areas are experiencing what must be hell on earth and those that live in outlying areas not fairing much better, with the desperate spreading out and taking from the ones that have.

Five days ago our neighbor Jack came to visit, a surprise for sure but with good reason. “They took my cabin” he said “and all that I had, I had nowhere else to go”. I can’t say I was surprised, desperate people will take desperate measures. We invited Jack to stay and it took no convincing. There was no doubt that once they went through and used up Jack’s stores they would find their way here.

We made ready the best we could with warning devices, traps, etc., for what we did not know would come our way. We slept in shifts watching and waiting. We were glad to have Jack with us, we had the supplies and the weapons we needed to last a long time.

It was my watch; I sat in the rocker on the top deck, which wraps around both sides of our home, looking out over the field in front of our home. The moon was half full and the sky clear giving me pretty good light to see with, for that time of night. The back of the house was not as big a concern as it rested only a few feet away from the mountain and just too steep for access.  Even still, every so often I would walk around that way to watch and listen. It was on one of these walks back to my rocker that I heard him.

The sound I heard was familiar, often times I have thrown something up onto the deck from below rather than to carry it through the house.  As I came around the corner with my rifle at the ready, I saw him. He had just climbed up onto the deck and was reaching for the rifle he had thrown up ahead of himself. I yelled at him to stop but he continued to reach for his weapon. I yelled once more as he was bringing his gun to bear on me.

The sound of the shot woke Jack and Anne up. What seemed like a long time was only a minute or so before Jack yelled from inside the house asking if I was ok. I did not hear him at first, my eyes being focused on the man that lay before me. I knew he was dead even as the muscles in his body continued to flex and twitch.

With none of us being able to sleep now for worry of more intruders, we maintained a silent watch until the sun rose the following morning. This was yesterday.

With no phone service and hours of trying to reach someone on the radio, we wrapped and buried the man behind the wood shed. He had no identification only the clothes he wore and the rifle that we added to our own arsenal.

Last night again brought no sleep for myself and very little for Anne and Jack. Today we will continue to fortify and keep a vigilant watch for others that are desperate enough to venture our way. I don’t know that I will sleep, with thoughts of surviving another intruder and recurring vision of the man I shot, as he laid there dead but still twitching. In two, maybe three weeks the snow will come again for another long cold winter. Our house will be almost impossible to reach until spring. Maybe, when the snow falls I will be able to sleep again.

This story Desperation, Fear, Death, Surviving the “Intruder” is fiction!