Chapter 24: Growing Up
Affected by the injuries of the two police officers, Old John was noticeably down for a while after returning from the hospital visits.
Later, Mike—who had been unconscious—finally woke up, and the policewoman Sharon also made a full recovery and was discharged. With his worries lifted, and with his little granddaughter at home being so adorable, Old John finally pulled himself together again.
He resumed work on his underground shelter.
Old John’s gas station was located in a very remote area. It sat east of the Iramore Mountains—a massive range running north to south. Moist air from the western Pacific was blocked by the high peaks as it passed through, leaving the western side warm, humid, and lush with vegetation, while the eastern side remained arid year-round, nothing but bare rock and desert as far as the eye could see.
Being far from populated areas and inconvenient to travel to meant that people’s needs were compressed to a minimum. Aside from food and clothing, there was almost nowhere to spend money. Even with an extra mouth to feed—Everly—the cost of living didn’t increase by much.
As for income, the gas station and small convenience store barely turned a profit; the real bulk came from Old John’s pension. As a retired police detective, he received a little over 2,000 U.S. dollars each month, totaling about 24,000 dollars a year. In that era, even a middle-class family earned only around 30,000 dollars annually, so Old John’s income was actually quite substantial.
Earning more and spending less, his savings gradually grew comfortable again.
Americans weren’t known for having a habit of saving—once they had money, they wanted to spend it.
Each month, Old John set aside 500 dollars from his pension to buy a trust for Everly. All the rest went into supplies for the shelter: stockpiles of food and medicine, cold-weather clothing, some melee weapons, air-filtration equipment, backup generators, sewage recycling systems… He stubbornly believed that the end of the world would come sooner or later, and that a fully equipped underground shelter was the best gift he could give a child.