This chapter solved a lot of problems for me and I came up with it by accident but I am very glad I invented the Page family home. Throughout the story our hero harps on about his to-do list. We all have them and it seems like they never get any shorter especially when you live an active life in an old home. As I have said before my home is over 100 years old and it constantly needs TLC. Unfortunately I'm broke most of the time so it constantly needs a lot of TLC. And if your life is anything like mine, something gets added to the to-do list and you lack some tool or supply so you go to get it but family members want to tag along or you invite them and you both go.
I know I am a gorilla shopper, I know what i want, I go in and get it, then I leave. Rarely do I look around. But if someone is with me, normally my wife, that quick trip turns into all day, or at least a few hours. Next thing you know it's too late to work on the project you had planned on working on and so it gets pushed back and then something else gets added to the list and it ever grows.
That's what I had originally intended this chapter to be about because I didn't have any other ideas at the time. Basically I was going to use the chapter to bitch. But I needed to move it forward and I needed to have them encounter someone who did not want to meet them.
The warehouse they visited I just thought would be poetic justice that they couldn't get in to the thing. A funny thing here about the hardware store. In downtown Little Rock on Main Street across form each other are two hardware stores that have been there for years and cater to the old home crowd that live in downtown. Great stores both, The store in the story is an amalgam of both of them. But one of them, Fuller & Sons Hardware about the time I was writing this chapter made a commercial for the web about zombies. It was fantastic. Here it is below for at least as long as they will let me have it posted. I love this spot.
After the frustration of that they run into Grandpa at his house. It had to happen sooner or later. They had been in house after house and not encountered anyone? I didn't want to make Grandpa a big character in the story simply because the way I pictured him I would have to kill him off quickly for health issues. That's why later I used his kid Uncle Andy and grand kid Shaun. Shaun actually shows up in a short story called Cafe Life I wrote some time ago. I saw him as a good character to use because in that story he was a thug punk kid in this he has become a reliable, responsible young man.
Shaun has actually been in several short stories I haven't published and in each he matures. I've said too much about him already, his story is yet to come.
The Page Family Home. Like I said earlier their home solved a lot of problems for me and yes I was listening to Led Zeppelin when I came up with their name. Arkansas is a gun rich state, hunting and just plain shooting and collecting guns are a big thing here. So to have these two run around without any guns just seemed stupid. And they were going to need guns.
I imagined the Page family to be Doomsday Preppers, hunters, survivalist (guess that the same as a prepper) Their lives would be tied to that and competitions surrounding those skills. This meant in my mind that somewhere there was a safe full of guns. I don't know much about the Prepper community but from the marathon about them I watched one weekend on tv I knew that they had on average a bugout bag, a hidden supply of things they would need on the road and possibly a hidden shelter with all the real goodies in it. I almost gave that location to our hero's but decided that I couldn't be that nice to them. The struggle must go on. And yes I know it was a mean thing to do to give them the safe then not give them the combination but I had to have something to write about later.
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