Snow was still on the ground in places, but it had been a very mild winter, game had all but dried up and hunters had to go further out in search of meat.
Micheal decided to do a complete inventory of the things stored in the basement floors.
After selecting a team of ten people, they got on a freight elevator to the first of the three floors to be inventoried. As his assistants started listing the items, he roamed the floor, making mental notes of what was available.
The ceiling was at least sixteen feet high and had materials stacked everywhere, with the use of manual hydraulic forks they moved wooden crates and made note of
what was written on the side. There were a lot of raw materials, sheets of steel, aluminum, copper.
Many hand tools of every imagination. Crates of assault rifles and ammunition. Even crates of muzzle loading rifles and pistols.
After moving to the second floor, he spotted what he was really searching for, farm equipment, plows, disks, cultivators, planters, all looked like products from the time all farming was done with livestock. Someone long ago had seen dark ages would face mankind and filled these places with tools
for survival, even boxes labeled buckboard wagons, harnesses, saddles and horse
collars.
Michael thought about the Bunkers personnel that had been exiled to the west and made a
mental decision to share this wealth with them.
He had intended to pay them a
visit anyway, for he understood their reasons for wanting to be free and independent.
Outside the bunker communities were flourishing, but to end the bickering over space next to the wall he had assigned personnel to lay out a grid of two-acre parcels,
with lanes for roads, he wanted each family to have room to plant gardens and build homes.
Yet one industrious man Oliver had built a
blacksmith shop with a huge furnace, he was one of the Bunker people with advanced
knowledge, large strong burly man even thicker in size and muscle than
Michael. He had always loved the craft of metal working, and chose a life outside,
building and fixing tools for the new community. It had been only five months since the Bunker was attacked,
and even though food was sparce and running out, it was now spring and people had
lots of things popping up in their gardens, Michael eyed these closely for some seemed very productive compared to others. From these more successful gardeners, Micheal selected a team to start clearing and farming the West side of the facility, granting them five
sets of ploughs and ten horses to power them, with promises of crop shares and
help with the harvest, they gleefully went into action.
But that would only solve half the problem, they needed meat.