If there was one tomato seed left in the world...

[Worth1]

We are being followed and I fear that the pursuers aren’t of the friendly type.
This day and age nobody seems to be of the friendly type, they all seem to be out for themselves.
You can’t blame them though now can you; we are all in this for ourselves.
Sitting in the 6X6, what Marines would call a Duce and a Half is a lady in her early 70’s.
She says she was in California at the time of the collapse and was headed back to her home in Up Sate New York when they shut the Airports down.
She is the one taking care of the tomato plant and is doing really well at it.
Her name is Carolyn and says she grows lots of tomatoes of all kinds.
One of those heirloom tomato growers I suppose.
There is a young girl in her 20’s with us from Seattle.
A real punker to say the least, her hair is dyed purple long on one side and short on the other.
She also has a tattoo on her left arm of a tiger and on her right a snake.
Lord only knows what other tattoos she may have.
Her name is Rebecca and has taken up with the girl and is taking care of her.
It is pretty strange how she joined us, she came running out of the woods and jumped in the truck without a word spoken.
I have to say it scared the devil out of us.
There is a man of about 40 or so driving the truck and won’t say a word to anybody about himself or who he is.
For now I will just call him driver.
The other folks I don’t know yet, we are all pretty worried and have taken up with the task at hand, survival.
I’ll tell about myself in due time I don’t trust anybody yet.
The truck has pulled up the vehicles in the sand and we are getting out.
Driver is the first one off the truck and I am next everybody else is just sitting there just looking at the horror they see.
Right there in the sand is a military convoy what looks like it is a mile long and every single one of those trucks still has the bodies in them.
Everything that was exposed to the storm was striped clean of paint right down to the bare metal or down to the bone.
It must have been worse out here than what it was where we were or we would be in the same shape.
We can’t just go on like civilized folks would and leave the dead to take care of the dead as we are not what you would call civilized anymore.
We have to scrounge for survival for that’s what scroungers do, scrounge.
So scrounging we shall go.
What I am looking for is weapons we need weapons for we can’t just keep running and some day sooner or later we will have to confront our pursuers.
Now I know some folks don’t like guns and I hate the fact of using one but a man has to do what is necessary sometimes whether he likes it or not.
Another thing we are looking for is food, we need food.
After digging around and moving a few things from here to there we have found some MRE’s and a few guns and ammo we will load up on the truck.
We also found a tool chest loaded with tools.
We don’t have enough room for everything and we hate to leave it but we have no choice.
All we can hope for is some good people can use this stuff and the guns we leave behind won’t be turned on us.
We have managed to get more fuel in the truck and are on our way, the tell tale dust cloud in the west is getting closer so we have to leave.
I can just pick up a glint of morning sun shining on a windshield, it is getting close.

[Riceloft]

I would hope that the seed is a f1 hybrid and not an heirloom or OP. That way we would be able to grow it out year after year and come up with some (somewhat) genetically diverse tomatoes in the end.

[kurt]

Should be the seed from the Tomato Tree they had at Epcot that produced enough for the restaurant there.

[carolyn137]

Sitting in the 6X6, what Marines would call a Duce and a Half is a lady in her early 70’s.
She says she was in California at the time of the collapse and was headed back to her home in Up Sate New York when they shut the Airports down.
She is the one taking care of the tomato plant and is doing really well at it.
Her name is Carolyn and says she grows lots of tomatoes of all kinds.
One of those heirloom tomato growers I suppose.

*****

WHAT am I sitting in Worth? I have no idea of what a 6X6 is other than to note that it can't be the size of a coffin.

One tomato seed left in the world? Well, if it's already left, as in the past tense, then I guess there's no participation on my part so fingers crossed that the darn seed germinates.

But, If I'm the one leaving just one seed, which I would never do, I'd create an F1 from two parents of my choice and it would have to be what's called a wide cross meaning that the two parents should differ with respect to MANY traits so that if that darn seed germinated I could save F2 seeds, go on my merry way of putting out lots of plants to see the wonderful gene segregation I would expect from such a wide cross.

But wait, if I did that cross and got the F1, there would be many F1 fruits to save F2 seeds from, so no way would I waste all those F2 seeds, so I'd make a seed offer here at Tville, to share them with others.

How about 10 non-organic seeds for maybe $100? After all, if they're the last ones around, who cares about money except for my neighbor to my south who is always saying she's cash strapped but then spends a fortune on having her hair color changed every couple of months. And that in Manchester, VT, and if you don't know Manchester, as I do, we're talking lots of lira, sheckles, pounds, euros, call it what you will.

OK, time to check the radar at my two fave sites b'c I thought we'd get some rain yesterday and last night, but no, looks like a possibility this AM, and the concern is b'c Freda just hasn't had the time to care for my tomatoes and some of them are wilting.

Just rain, please, not lightning, after my home was hit by lightning a few years ago.

[Father'sDaughter]

At what point do all those doomsday preppers from the reality TV shows start coming out of their bunkers? ;-)

Seriously though, loving how the story is taking shape!

[Solanum315]

Worth, are you a Marine? I was a 7208, most obscure job in the Corps. Oorah. LOL.

[Worth1]

At this time I will have to show you Guys what we are riding in.

I am a little afraid to get too articulate with the story but if I have a few followers I guess it is Okay.
Yes I was in the Marines and I know what air support is.
I went to school I 29 palms too.

Carolyn a 6X6 and a Deuce and a half are the same thing.
Here is what they look like.

Worth

[carolyn137]

Great Worth, I could drive that as long as it has automatic transmission.

Many of the tractors and trucks we had on the old farm were standard transmission, and despite my father yelling at me when backing up with a trailer hooked up to a tractor to turn left if I wanted to go right, and the reverse, it never tuned out to be the way I did it and would often jam the tractor wheels into the trailer.

And I don't have a close personal relationship with a clutch on ANY vehicle.

[Worth1]

As we move along I can see the glint of the windshield getting closer.
We have to stop and put more fuel in the truck so I fear they will catch up with us this time around.

Amongst the weapons we found I have obtained a Barret M82 that fires a 50 caliber round out to over a mile.


I figure with my past in long range shooting this little jewel will come in handy.

The car has stopped and I can tell from the looks of things something is about to happen.
Someone is getting out and they are laying down.

I already have the Barret set up and am looking through the scope at them.
They appear to be about 1.700 yards away. (about a mile).
About the time I think they are not going to do anything I see a flash and a puff of dust in my scope.
In a lot shorter time than it takes to tell I yell for everyone to get down.
I then squeeze the trigger on the Barret it kicks and at the same time the sound of a loud crack and a round slams into the back of the truck.
My round slams into the front of the car and a huge cloud of steam erupts from it.
Then another round pops the truck in about the same place as the other barely missing Carolyn and Rebecca and clipping a branch from the tomato plant.

The owl flies off, the cat jumps under the truck and the dog growls.
I squeeze off another round and it knocks off the drivers tire in an explosion of dust and rubber.

I had no idea where that owl went until I saw a flash of something in my scope.
It was the owl, the critter had flown to the other car and was diving down to the shooter.
What I see next is almost too terrifying to put into words.
The owl has landed on the face of the shooter and is tearing his eyes out.
The man is running around grabbing at the owl to no avail.
The owl takes off and is headed back this way.
The shooter is on his knees holding his face where his eyes once were.
Not to let a man suffer no matter how much he wanted to kill us another round is ready so I fire.
This one slams into his chest and sends him back about 10 feet.
All is quiet to the west.

We turn the truck around and head back to the car, there seems to be no one else there that has any fight left in them.
I wonder why.

As we pull up to what is left of the shooter he looks familiar.
He looks like the guy we all saw on the news a few years ago that killed a bunch of folks in cold blood.
In the car is a woman, it appears he had held hostage, she was tied up and gagged.
Now I dont feel so bad about killing the devil.
What gets me is how he got out of prison.
We load the woman up, she is too shook up to say anything and head off to the east and into the mountains.

The owl lands back at my feet and hoots.

Worth

[Worth1]

After driving into the night and camping out at the foot of the mountains for the night.
The woman that was a hostage has settled down enough, 'with a little help from some bourbon we have stashed, to tell us who she is.

Her name is Jennifer and is from Connecticut.
She was on her way back from a teachers convention in Seattle when all hell broke loose.
At the airport when it closed down there was this prisoner and a guard sitting in at the gait.
When they announced the closure of the place the prisoner snatched up the guards gun shot him, grabbed Jennifer and ran off.
Just that easy.
It seemed everyone was too concerned about themselves to even care or hardly notice.

Carolyn says the tomato plant will be Okay and the loss of a limb will have no ill effect on the plant as a whole.
The Girl seems to be doing fine also.
That dog wont hardly leave her site.
Carolyn says the plant needs some fertilizer and has sent one of the guys up to some caves in the cliffs in search of bat guano for this propose.
He is coming back now with some.
She says the plant will start looking better in a day or two and not to use too much, ' just a pinch will do.

The cat has taken up with Carolyn much of the time and it seems as they have been buddies for years.

The tomato plant is about 9 inches tall at this time and has put on a bloom.
Carolyn, "to our horror" pinched off the bloom and said that it was way too little to have fruit at this time.
It would stunt the plants growth she says.

Amazingly about an hour after the time the bloom was pinched the girl got up and started moving around.

The owl is eating a mouse it caught up in the hills and has Brought back a few rabbits for us to cook on the fire.
It also brought back a mouse for the cat to eat and the dog went out and found himself a prairie dog to eat.

We will all have something in our bellies tonight for once besides those MRE's we have been eating.

[jennifer28]

LOL now I'm in the story as a victim? This really IS fiction
interesting.

[Worth1]

The Owl.

[Zana]

Now that's a beauty. Wow! I have always loved owls...and have collected figurines of them over the years in many media. I just love watching them.

Zana

[Worth1]

The cat.

[Zana]

Love those eyes~gorgeous!

Zana