Jens was tired of living without electricity. With electricity he could at least charge his cellphone. He had no hope that the internet would still be working, but at least with his cellphone he could play the few games he had installed and read a couple of e-books he had downloaded. He even had some music on there he could listen to.

His neighborhood was dominated by apartment buildings and little shops but not too far away was a nice, upper-class neighborhood. Plenty of those houses had solar panels on their roofs so odds were good that they would at least still have power. Walking there only took an hour and as he wandered through the neighborhood, he tried each door. Surprisingly, some of them were unlocked. Jens had a small map he’d drawn up of the area and marked each unlocked house as he passed by. He wouldn’t need all of them to live in, but having places he could raid for easy resources like food or clothing or whatever else he might need sounded like a good thing know. Sure, he could also break into the other houses but he was still a bit uncomfortable with the idea of making a habit of doing that.

With each house that he found unlocked, he checked to see if they had solar panels on their roof. Of those, he found a few that still had power. He wasn’t sure why some had power and some didn’t but he wasn’t bothered with trying to figure that out right now. He picked a house that wasn’t very big, since he didn’t need that much space, but was nicely furnished, had a decent theater room in the basement, and a water pump in the back that he was pretty sure was connected to a well. That would mean he would always have water.

Jens marked it on his map and then returned to his apartment. He packed his clothes and the few other belongings he thought he’d need into a suitcase and then made the easiest move in his life. The new house was already fully furnished so he didn’t need to bring any of his own furniture or dishes or anything. He did bring his own bedding since he didn’t like the idea of using someone else’s pillow, blankets, and sheets. In the basement he also found a large supply of non-perishable foods, emergency supplies, evacuation plans, and a small library of books on living self sufficiently and off the land. Whoever had lived here before was one of those prepper people.

It took a while for Jens to be able to fall asleep that night. Worries about the previous owner suddenly returning filled his mind. On the one hand he’d be relieved if anyone else was around, but on the other hand he didn’t know how a prepper would respond to finding a stranger in their home. Weren’t they supposed to be a bit unhinged or paranoid? Or was that just the stereotype? Jens hadn’t found any guns in the house but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Hidden safes or something were where he’d hide them if he had the kind of money that people in this neighborhood had.

With not a lot else to do, Jens spent the next few days inventorying the supplies available to him in his new house. There was easily a years worth of food stored up here, as well as a number of sacks of seeds for growing his own crops. Among the library of survival books was a plan to use the nearby park as a farm. It had a stream on one side that could be used for irrigation and it wasn’t that far away from the house. All he had to do was tear up the grass and get planting. It wasn’t too late in the growing season, either, according to the plans.

Jens had never grown so much as a house plant, let alone an entire farm, but he had to admit he’d need food in the long term and even though he had a year’s supply of food right now, he’d starve pretty quickly once that ran out if he didn’t get a move on with preparing for the future. Could he really be alone for that long, though? Would no one return? Would he actually live the rest of his life like this?

Dark thoughts began to ill his mind as the terror of living alone for the rest of his life, living off the land, and having no one to help him if he got sick or injured. Maybe he’d be better off if he just ended it all now. What was the point of living now, anyway? No friends, no family, and nothing to look forward to.

He shook off those thoughts a moment later. There was no guarantee he was actually alone, he reminded himself. There might be others out there, just too far away to easily contact right now. He could look for a radio or something and try broadcasting his location in the hopes of finding others. At the very least he could try his hand at farming and see how it goes. Maybe the quiet life would suit him once he got used to it. The physical labor would, at least, distract him from his worries.

With those thoughts in mind, acting as a sort of defense against the anxiety and depression, he got to work on the park. The shed in the back had a turf cutter, a tiller, and several other tools to help with converting the park into a farm. There was also a good amount of fuel, though clearly not enough for the entire job. Eventually he’d need to rely primarily on hand tools, but for now the gas motors would help. A siphon was also in the shed with a helpful picture of how to get fuel from cars.

Jens walked the sod cutter over to the park. It had a cutting blade on the back that would scoop under the roots and cut the sod into long strips. It was a simple enough tool, and he got to work. Three steps in and the machine jerked to a stop as a crunching sound announced the first of what would turn out to be the first of dozens and dozens of sprinklers.

“Great,” he grunted, stopping the machine and getting down on his hands and knees to inspect the sprinkler.

The PVC pipe was cracked but not broken away entirely. He didn’t know what to do with it for now so he moved the sod cutter to the other side of the sprinkler and resumed cutting the grass away. Now that he knew to look out for them, Jens avoided most of the other sprinklers.

“I’ll need to pull them all out,” he told himself as he worked on the sod. He wasn’t looking forward to that but they’d just get in the way. If he could actually use them to water the field it would be great but there was no power here.

After a couple passes with the sod cutter, he went back and began hauling the cut sod away from the field, stacking them up along the perimeter. He had no grand plan of making a wall but he didn’t know where else to put all the grass and he didn’t want to be carrying it any further than was needed. Slowly, the park began to lose it’s grassy turf and the soil beneath was exposed.

It took Jens the better part of two days to cut all the sod and another day to stack it all, building up a waist high wall of sod several feet thick all the way around the field. He left a few gaps here and there for entrances.

“I think,” he huffed as he placed the final piece of sod, “I’m going to take a few days off before tackling the sprinklers.”