When we rolled up on the home of Frank and Jeanette Foster it was eerily quiet. They lived off the beaten path on a country lane . Frank was a carpenter and had his own small contracting business that he ran out of a barn in back of his house. Jeanette was a secretary who worked part time in the first selectman's office. Both were home when the EMP went off. They had two kids both of whom lived out of state. Frank jr ,21 was in college out west and Bart ,19 was in the army.
We knocked on the door,,no answer. We walked around back and we saw Frank standing over what appeared to be a grave. It had fresh earth on top of it. He was standing looking down, hat in hand. When Greg called his name he didn’t seem to hear him. Greg called again a little louder. Frank just looked up at us for a moment and then lowered his head again without speaking. The well pump didn’t work without power and they had to haul water from a creek which was at the bottom of a long steep bank about 500 feet from their side door. On day 6 after the EMP attack, while frank was out hunting Jeanette descended the hill with two 2 gallon pails to fetch some water to boil for dinner prep. On her way back up she lost her footing and slipped in some loose gravel. She tumbled all the way down to the brook coming to rest near the water after hitting her head on a rock and blacking out. She regained consciousness almost instantly and picked herself up, refilled the buckets and went back up the hill. She had a heck of a knot on the back of her head but felt fine otherwise. When frank came home from hunting he walked into the house and found water boiling over on the wood stove. He called Jeannette's name as he slid the pot off to the side. When he didn’t get an answer he walked into the living room where he found her stretched out on the couch. He thought it odd that she would fall asleep in the middle of the day while she had something on the stove. He went over to to wake her and discovered she was dead. What he could not have known was that she had a severe concussion and while at the stove started to feel dizzy and nauseous. She went over to lay down and fell asleep and never woke up. Frank had some clue as to what happened to her when he examined her and found the softball size knot on the back of her head. The details forever a mystery.
He buried her out back in the garden area she loved so much. Greg put his hand on franks shoulder and asked , “what happened Brother”? A confused frank just shrugged and said “ I don’t know” as he continued to stare at the grave. “I just don’t know”. Pastor led him inside and they sat at the table. Frank was distraught and it didn’t take much convincing to get him to agree to come with us back to the church. Jeanette had a fully stocked pantry and Frank had several cans of gas and three cylinders of propane out in his barn. He had guns and ammo and we loaded everything we could salvage onto a landscape trailer he had and headed for the church. It was dusk when we pulled in and unloaded the trailer. Our small group now had one more member. One more set of hands to work. One more mouth to feed.
We gathered together as a group that evening in the pavilion. Pastor led us in prayer. We gave thanks to God for getting us all this far safely. We all knew in our hearts that we would face challenges in the times to come. We also knew that we had each other. We had a community. People that loved and supported each other. We knew that in this new world we found ourselves thrust into, that we would be OK. With the help of God and each other we would survive.
