After The Virus (Book 2): Homesteading

by Archer, Simon

  If anything, the past few months had the place looking even more decrepit, although the goats had done a decent job keeping it from getting overgrown. Chickens roosted on the roof of the house and strutted around the yard.

  “This might be a decent spot to stage from,” I said, looking around. There were more goats than I remembered, but there were several farms nearby that they could have come from. “It’s even more remote than our place, and there’s food.”

  Jackie nodded silently and looked around, then made her way over to one of the sheds. The goats watched her for a moment, then started drifting nonchalantly after her.

  I stayed where I was. This was her gig, at least for now. My eyes roamed over the yard. Jim’s old Camaro still rested on blocks beside the shed where he kept his tools. The engine was in a hoist inside that shed, and the wheels were piled in a corner. I’d helped him pull the engine while he yelled at his kids for being underfoot.

  It was kind of depressing, remembering how things had been before.

  “Henry!” Jackie called. “Over here!”

  I jogged over to where she waved around the corner of the shed, and the goats scattered. This one had been where Marybeth had the still. Jim did the odd jobs while she made the moonshine. It was a hell of a little operation they had, and contrary to what some folks thought, the Boutwells never got involved in the local meth scene, although I did suspect they had a small field of pot somewhere nearby.

  Behind the shed were the remains of a couple of chickens. There wasn’t much left, which indicated a larger predator, although weasels or foxes could have been the culprit, too. However, in a patch of dirt was a clear paw print from a larger canine.

  “This is him,” Jackie said firmly. “It’s got to be.”

  “So,” I wondered. “Do coyotes den down like other critters, or do they just roam?”

  “About now, they should be in dens,” she replied. “We might even be seeing pups soon.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That might explain why they’re out roaming.”

  “Yeah,” she straightened and huffed. “I kind of feel bad about this. They’re just doing what they do, and we’re in the way of that.”

  “We need to survive, too,” I said. “I’d honestly be happy if we could get them to leave our farm alone, but what are the chances they’ll do that?”

  She shrugged, and we started walking back towards the house.

  “Maybe,” she said. “There’s got to be a reason they keep trying to panty-raid us, and once we figure that out, we can do something about it.”

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “Panty raid?” I asked.

  Jackie laughed and shrugged.

  “It’s the best way to describe it,” she answered. “Although, since we’ve killed a couple of them, now, a peaceful resolution might be impossible.”

  “Any chance we’re giving them too much credit?”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied. “The leader is really cagey. I’ve read up on coyotes since I first saw him, and his behavior is something else. It’s really like he’s dialed to eleven--”

  Jackie paused and looked at me with her brow furrowed.

  “Did you notice if the one you killed in the pig pen was a male or female?” she asked.

  I thought for a moment, then said, “Male. Angie commented on it when we disposed of the body.”

  She gave a slow nod. “The one I killed was male, too.”

  “I don’t remember the one that got away,” I said. “So we’ve seen maybe four coyotes, including the coywolf. Did you count how many dogs?”

  Jackie pursed her lip as her brow furrowed in thought again. We paused and brushed leaves from some outdoor chairs that the Boutwells had left arranged around a large steel drum. This had been for grilling and burning trash, as I remembered.

  “Seven,” she said at last. “I think.”

  “Right,” I mused as I unslung all my gear and settled down into the chair. It was comfortable, although a faint smell of mildew drifted up.

  Jackie took a seat as well after doing the same. Her nose wrinkled at the smell.

  “All of this makes me feel sad,” she gestured around at the abandoned house and the sheds.

  The goats continued to eye us from a safe distance, closer to her than to me. More and more of them began gathering.

  “I think we’re about to get mobbed,” I said dryly.

  She looked thoughtfully over at the goats. They all seemed to be pretty well-fed and content. A couple of them might even be pregnant. They’d likely get wilder as time went by and adapt to a mostly human-less world. Chickens wandered closer, probably curious to see if we had any food. The animals seemed a little skittish, but if the coywolf and his pack did patrol through here, I couldn’t really blame them.

  “Maybe,” Jackie said. “Maybe not.” She leaned back in the chair and stretched her long legs out. “Do you ever wish you could take care of all these places?”

  “Sometimes, yeah,” I replied. “It’s just not really feasible, though. There’s so few of us that we have to triage and do what we can for who, or whatever we can.”

  “I know,” she looked over at me with a wan smile. “It’s just a little part of me that thinks we can do more, despite knowing that we can’t.”

  “That doesn’t mean we’re giving up, though,” I told her. “We’re just a bit understaffed right now.”

  Jackie laughed and shook her head. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  I grunted and dragged my pack closer, then started going through the pockets for lunch. As it turned out, Jackie had packed MREs for us. I picked one at random while she took my cue and went rooting around for one of her own. For a little while, we ate and drank in silence as the goats inched in closer, curious about the food, but still wary of us.

  Jackie gave them the stink-eye, and they oddly kept their distance.

  “You never cease to amaze me,” I commented as I finished setting up the heater for my MRE and leaned it against the drum to wait.

  “What?” she asked, mimicking my actions with her own meal.

  “How you handle critters?” I replied, settling back to wait for my chili and macaroni to heat up. “I think I’ve only seen one other person in my entire life that had a way with animals like you.”

  “Really?” she looked at me and smiled. “You know where flattery will get you, Mister Forrest.”

  I grinned back and waggled my eyebrows.

  “While I like that idea,” I said and sighed dramatically. “This probably isn’t the time or place.”

  “I know,” she laughed. “But there’s always later.”

  “I’ll take that rain check,” I said, grinning. “Anyway, what do you think of staking out here and seeing if we can ambush the coywolf, or at least try to track him and his pack to their dens?”

  “I like the idea of tracking them better,” she said with a shrug. “It’s not the easiest thing, but if they’ve got cubs or pregnant females…” Her voice trailed off.

  Damn, that girl really knew how to tug on my heartstrings to get what she wanted. I really couldn’t object to her plan either. If we tracked where the coywolf’s pack was living, we could, potentially, make sure they wouldn’t bother us again. I didn’t really expect Jackie’s plan to work, but stranger things had happened.

  I checked my food, then and motioned for her to do the same. Both meals were done, and we tucked in with gusto. Likely we’d have the supplemental items for our evening meal, especially if we were hunkered down and waiting for the coywolf and his pack to show.

  “That’s the one thing I hate about hunting,” Jackie said between mouthfuls as if reading my mind. “It’s all about getting into position and waiting.”

  “Reminds me of my time in the service,” I said. “Did you know the motto of the U.S. military was ‘hurry up and wait’?”

  She laughed and looked sidelong at me.

  “I think you told me that one at some point,” she said archly. �
�You know, isn’t memory one of the first things to go?”

  “Are you saying I’m old?” I growled playfully.

  Jackie giggled and shook her head.

  “You’re young enough where it counts,” she said lightly and waggled her eyebrows.

  I snorted and shook my head, then started packing up the remains of my MRE. There was more than enough for a second meal, or a snack, later on.

  “Want to check around here a bit more before we settle in to wait?” I asked. “There are about six more hours until it starts to get dark.”

  “We probably should,” Jackie replied. She started reluctantly packing up the extras from her meal.

  “There’s no rush if you’re still hungry,” I told her. “I’m just old and don’t eat much.”

  It was her turn to snort.

  “I’m just trying to make sure I don’t eat just because I have the food,” she said and continued putting everything away. “Or because I’m bored.”

  “So I’m boring now?” I asked with a smirk.

  She punched me in the shoulder.

  “You’re never boring,” she said firmly. “Well, almost never.”

  “When am I boring?” I demanded.

  “Well, you really are crap when it comes to explaining things about your projects,” she replied, raising her gaze to mine as she searched my face.

  I figured she was trying to determine if I was really irritated or not, and since I wasn’t, well, there wasn’t much for her to find.

  “You’re interested?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

  “I am,” she said, nodding vigorously. “I’d love to learn more about fixing things and stuff. I know a little bit about it from my dad and my uncle, but you seem to be able to do everything.”

  Jackie paused for a moment, then continued before I could get a word in. “I want to help.”

  I reached up and scratched my head, studying the young woman thoughtfully. “How’s your math?”

  “Not bad,” she answered, head cocked cutely to one side as she regarded me. “Why?”

  “Are you interested in the purely practical side, or do you want to delve into the world of design and practical application of theory?” I asked. “Mechanics, or engineering, basically.”

  “Oh,” she chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “Do you think I could learn engineering?”

  “A lot depends, I guess, on how much you really want it. You’ve been teaching me, Angie, and occasionally Tommy, about the animal husbandry and agriculture stuff that you know,” I replied. “I should see about sharing what I know, and we need to get Estelle to work with the rest of us on improving our first aid and medical skills.”

  “True.” Jackie nodded her head slowly. “We’ve got a bunch of shared skills and talents, and you and Estelle are the most experienced in our little family.”

  Family. There was that word. It was the best description for what we were, including the kids and the doctor, despite her relative standoffishness.

  “I’m nowhere near the survivalist Bruce is,” I said than kept going as the thought struck me. “Thing is, although he won’t talk about it, I’m pretty sure that old man never served. He knows his shit, and he’s respectful of me, puts up with Angie despite their bad start, but he doesn’t really have the stories or the…” I paused, searching for the right word. “Reflexes, I guess.”

  “So he’s lied to us?” She asked.

  I gave Jackie a sharp look at the tone of her voice.

  “No,” I said firmly. “He never claimed to be ex-military. He might be, though, and I’m pretty sure he was trained by someone who knows all of the military survival protocols, as well as one hell of a prepper. He’s a pretty scary dude when you get down to it.”

  “At least he’s on our side, then,” Jackie opined.

  “That’s for damn sure,” I said with a broad grin.

  Suddenly, both our heads snapped up as a distant gunshot rang out, followed by two more in quick succession. We exchanged looks and bounced to our feet, scooping up our packs and wriggling into them as we hurried off.

  Those shots had been too close to be from the homestead and from a different direction too. By the time the echo started to die off, we were on our way in the direction I thought they’d sounded, our own weapons at the ready.

  Whether this was someone in trouble or making trouble, we had to know, and we definitely needed to avoid being caught unawares.

  6

  Determining direction and distance of gunfire is definitely hit or miss, especially without any additional cues or in forested or urban terrain. The shots had been close enough to hear, but not close enough to make it an easy task to home in on their location.

  I picked what I thought was the most likely way and headed that way with Jackie on my heels. We kept to some sort of cover as best we could as we scouted out from the farmstead to about a half a mile, pausing every so often to scan our surroundings and listen for further shots.

  Nothing.

  “This is creepy,” Jackie whispered in my ear.

  “I agree,” I said, then lifted my own rifle and flipped open the scope to sweep my gaze slowly across the nearby field of view. We were further from the roads and the farms, now, fairly deep in the forest.

  She stayed still for a few long minutes as I checked and double-checked, then straightened up from my crouched position.

  “I think we’re clear,” I said quietly. “Either I guessed wrong on the direction, or whoever it was already took off.”

  “Could you tell what kind of gun that was?” Jackie asked.

  “Rifle,” I guessed. “.223 or larger. Around here, that could be a hunting rifle or an AR-15. I suspect they got what they were shooting at after three shots.”

  “Especially since we haven’t heard any more,” she filled in.

  “Still,” I paused and pulled out my compass to check our direction. We were deep enough into the backwoods that getting lost was a slim possibility, even for me. “I think we may need to do a lot more scouting of the immediate area. Whatever else this might mean, we’ve definitely got at least one more survivor within a half-day’s walk of the farm.”

  Jackie nodded and shifted her shotgun around in its sling before we resumed walking.

  “Do you think there’s a chance it’s another person like… you know?” she asked after a few minutes.

  “Do you want the honest answer or the comfortable one?” I countered.

  “Honest,” she replied. “We’re all in this together, and I don’t need coddling.”

  “Honestly, then,” I said. “I don’t know. Part of why I’ve been reluctant to go searching for other people, put up signs, or whatever. Especially after finding his manifesto and the other crazy shit in his house.”

  “But then we’ve met some good people,” Jackie said. “I just don’t like the idea of not helping others.”

  “I know,” I said with a sigh. “Even Bruce is making an effort.”

  She laughed at that, and we walked on in relative quiet for a while more. Eventually, the Boutwell place came into view through the trees, looking just like it had when we left it about a half-hour earlier.

  Well, mostly. Somehow, two of the goats had gotten up onto the roof of the house and bleated loudly at us as we approached.

  “What the hell?” I wondered aloud.

  Jackie laughed. “Goats, man,” she drawled. “Freakin’ goats.”

  I couldn’t help but start laughing, too. It was just so ludicrous. We ended up back in the chairs by the steel drum, our packs at our feet. After a few minutes, though, I started to feel antsy.

  “I think I’m going to walk around a bit,” I told her. Right about now, I wished we’d brought one of the dogs.

  She studied me for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

  I was pretty certain she suspected something was up, and she was right. The gunshots set off a level of caution in me that I hadn’t felt in months. I’d seen the mess in Hunter’s house and l
istened to the short-wave channels that he had written down. One of them was silent mostly. though for a while, a voice came on that said nothing but random words that could have been a code.

  The other channel, though, was crackly religious music interspersed with a recorded invitation to visit the New Hope Outreach in Birmingham, Alabama, just off of I-65. Morning and evening, though, the channel went live with the smooth chatter of a televangelist, Reverend Raymond Price.

  It was pretty typical fare, for the most part, speaking of how the Reverend had been chosen by God to stay behind and shepherd the survivors into the coming golden age, blah, blah, blah.

  Of course, we had no idea how many people worked for Price, or if he would even bother sending any of them to investigate the sudden silence from the deceased Hunter Blake.

  I gazed intently at the trees beyond the Boutwell’s clearing, then dropped my gaze to the ground while I walked. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but if I kept looking, I knew I’d find it.

  When I finally did, I almost didn’t think anything of it, but there were distinct four-wheeler tracks cutting through Marybeth’s garden. I paused and scratched my head for a minute while I thought about it. The Boutwells had a four-wheeler, a little Honda that the kids and Jim occasionally rode.

  They’d kept it in one of the sheds, but all the sheds had been empty when I’d checked before. I almost facepalmed. We definitely had a neighbor, and hopefully, they wouldn’t be hostile.

  I shot Jackie a wry look as I marched back up to the fire barrel.

  “I figured out what I missed,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “What’s that?” she looked up at me. The goats had surrounded her and were vying for any attention she bestowed on them.

  “I’m pretty sure someone took the Honda four-wheeler the Boutwells had,” I replied. “There are tracks through the old garden, and it’s missing from the shed. I completely missed this when I came through before.”

  “Any sign they’ve been back?” she asked, focusing her gaze on me.