by David Wilson
After getting Mat headed in for some sleep I sat motionless for several minutes letting my eyes and ears adjust to the sights and sounds of the early morning. It was still very dark, but with the slight grayness that comes right before the raising sun. I dug around in my vest until I found the Walker Hunter Ears I had grabbed from Bass Pro. I thumbed on my small light attached to my vest and found the on control for the small earpieces. Gently pushing them into my ears I was pleasantly surprised, I could actually hear Mat and Beth talking over by the stoves. Playing with the volume I finally got them turned down so I could concentrate on the sounds of the woods coming awake. These are really good at pinpointing what direction sounds are coming from. After a few minutes I raised my M4 and did a scan of the area. The night vision adapter worked really well and I was glad we had them. Hopefully the idiots that launched or set off the EMP would not do it again. I had seen several scenarios that one EMP would be set off and 12 to 24 hours later, they would set off another in an attempt to catch those devices the first EMP missed. Now isn’t that a pleasant thought. But than again, that’s what I would have done if I had set off the first one, I thought. Well, hopefully it won’t happen again, I would really hate to lose the advance equipment we had now.
The night slowly turned into day without any manmade sounds interfering with the new dawn. The temperature dropped a couple of degrees right as the darkness was turning into the pre-dawn gray making it feel colder than it was. Taking one more scan of the area, I unscrewed my night vision off of my top rail and shoved it away in my pouch on my chest rig and replaced the ACOG on the M4. While it was not cold enough for frost yet it sure felt close and it wouldn’t be too long, probably within a couple of weeks before we did have frost in the mountains we were heading for. Pulling a cleaning rag out of my pouch I wiped the gathered moisture off of my M4 and made a mental note to have everyone clean their weapons before we took off this morning. Might as well get them used to doing this everyday. After a few days it will be routine and I won’t have to force them to make the time. I had gotten onto Mat a couple of days ago when I saw him hose down his bolt carrier group with a can of WD-40. A little oil goes a long way with an M4/AR-15 type system. It’s ok to use a little more in a piston driven system, but on these direct impingement systems you are just asking for trouble. The excess oil collects the carbon like a magnet collects iron fillings.
I checked my watch again and saw it was 0530, still about an hour before the sun was fully up. We needed to be moving as soon as it was light enough to see the towpath. My radio came to life as Don called, “Talon have you seen the sky line back to the East?” Looking over my shoulder eastward, my view was blocked by the trees, I keyed my radio and let Don know I was heading his way. Passing by the vehicle shed I ducked in and saw that all four of the others were already up and fixing breakfast. Walking up to the group, “Make sure everyone cleans all of their weapons as soon as you finish breakfast. Go light on the CLP but wipe them down and be sure and run a bore snake down each of them,” I said and waited for an acknowledgement from each. None of them looked overjoyed but they all at least nodded. “While you're at it, make sure each of you drink at least one of the Gatorades. Enjoy them while they last, it could be a while before we have anything other than water,” I added, as I headed out of the shed to meet with Don down by the canal.
Looking south towards the river I could see it was going to be a clear day but that thought was cut off as more and more of the eastern skyline opened up to my view as I approached the river. I had imagined Don had observed the smoke coming from the fires and wanted me to see it, but I was not prepared for the image I was seeing. Everything to our east and northeast were rolling clouds of black dense smoke that reflected the red glow of fires. My God, I thought, there hasn’t been a fire like that since World War II. There was no doubt that the city was caught up in the next best thing to a firestorm. I had seen old footage of “Operation Gomorrah” during World War II and the cloud formations I had seen on the footage and these clouds looked exactly like the ones from the WWII footage. In reality I doubted it really was a fire tornado but it did appear it was close and regardless if it was or not the fires were ripping the built up area of DC apart. I knew that most people anywhere near the fire were dead, most would die from carbon monoxide poisoning as the fires would suck up all of the oxygen. Don’s voice snapped me back to the moment. “What do you think?” he ask. “I think we need to get the hell out of here, and fast. There is going to be a massive wave of people fleeing west from that and I don’t want us to get caught up in it,” I said. “But what is it, I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Don gesturing towards the mass of swirling black and purple clouds to the East. “It’s close to being a firestorm, the only real firestorms that I know of were the cities of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo the Allies created from massive bombings in WWII. I doubt that this is a full-blown firestorm, but it is close and could burn for days and will until it runs out of fuel. For a real firestorm to take place it would require almost calm conditions and plenty of fuel. Concrete buildings do not burn hot enough to produce the heat required for a real firestorm. But like I said it will push all the survivors in front of it. That wave of people will have nothing and will be like locust. We need to get everyone packed and get moving before the panic sets in. People will naturally head for water and we are traveling along the biggest source of water around here. So let's get them packed up and moving.” I explained as I turned and headed back to the shed.
Walking into the shed, all four of the kids, guess I really shouldn’t call them kids but that was the way I saw them at this point, were cleaning their weapons. Without stopping I said, “Get it packed up, we need to be moving 5 minutes ago. Fires have completely engulfed DC and it's going to be driving all the survivors our way. We need to move and move as fast and as far as we can.” There were a few seconds of stunned silence, and then everyone began moving at once and began packing their gear. I went over to my gear and rolled my snivel gear up and stuffed it back into its compression sacks. Un-hooking my hammock I stuffed it and the strappings back into their bags. I next went over and grabbed my Solo stove, dumping the ashes out and quickly put it away inside the water pot and stored them in their bag. Dropping all of the bags into my ruck I secured the ruck straps and carried it over to my trailer and secured the ruck in the trailer. After double-checking that all of my gear was accounted for and secured I pushed my bike outside the shed and leaned it against the side of the shed. Ben and Jeff followed me out and said that Mat and Beth were almost finished packing up. Don was already packed and was again down by the footbridge watching the clouds. We all stood there watching Don watching the sky until Mat and Beth finally got packed and came out to join the rest of the group. I nodded at the group and began pushing my bike towards where Don was.
Once we were all together at the footbridge, I could see the fear in their eyes as they kept glancing at the swirling clouds to our east. “I know it looks bad and it is, the fires create a thermal updraft that pulls all of the hot air up which creates a low pressure event that pulls in the cold air. It's like a siphon and it just keeps feeding itself as long as there is fuel. Everyone give me a quick radio check and lets get on the road. I would really like to get across the river today. Hopefully the ferry is still running west of here, if not we will have to continue up to one of the bridges.” After a quick radio check, Don and I led off followed by Mat and Beth, with Ben and Jeff bringing up the rear. The canal towpath for the most part is just a narrow strip of land with the river on the South side of the path and the canal on the North side. We walked our bikes across the footbridge and down the switch back to the canal path. The path itself is a well maintained bike path covered with crushed rock but should be fairly easy pedaling. I keyed my mic, “Lets gather up for a couple minutes and go over a few things.” Once everyone had gather close by I began going over how we would react to a couple different threats. “We need to keep about 50 or 60 feet between
each of us. Sing out if you see or hear anything I need to know about. It should be about 25 miles to the Great Falls Ferry, we will take a break every 30 minutes or so. If the lead rider spots a group of people ahead, they should radio it in and turn back to the main group. We will all stop and form a perimeter if the terrain offers us some cover and decide how to deal with the situation. If we run up on a group camping next to the trail, blow by them and let us know they are there. Do not point your weapons at anyone; this is the fastest way to start a firefight in the world. Be at the ready and if anyone points a weapon at you do not hesitate to open fire, do not wait until they fire at you. That's just a good way to get killed real quick. Remember be polite, be firm, and have a plan to kill everyone you meet. Ok lets get moving. Any questions?”
The towpath was well maintained and the bikes made easy work of lightly graveled surface. Much as I feared the noise of our passing over the gravel was loud but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. Everyone was quiet and I caught more than one of the kids glancing over their shoulders to look at the dark mass of clouds to our east. As much as I hated it my mind kept going back to my family. Was Houston experiencing the same problems with fire? More than likely every big city in the effected areas was experiencing problems with fire and mobs of desperate people. Hell, I didn’t even know for sure that Houston had been affected by the EMP. I made a mental note to break out the emergency radio tonight and see if we could pick up any news on the shortwave bands. Although the chances of any downtown Houston fires reaching the Woodlands was almost impossible, mobs could be going neighborhood to neighborhood raiding the high income areas just because they could. After about 30 minutes I began looking for a good place to stop and refill all of our water dirty water bags from the river and to refill all of our containers with the clean water. Catching Don’s attention we stopped by a small clearing that gently led down to the water on the river side of the trail. After gathering everyone and having them pull all of their water bladders and canteens I had Jeff and Ben provide overwatch while the rest of us pulled out our clean water bags and refill everything. This didn’t take long as we had hung up the bags last night and as always the gravity filters worked like a charm. Once we got across the river I would have to have everyone break out their mechanical filters and learn how to us them. I had made sure all of them had the same type to reduce the need for different types of replacement filters. Before the gravity filters came out I had used the Katadyn Hiker Pro for years, they could be a little awkward to use at first, but after you figured out how to use them they were reliable and lasted forever. Of course they were a pain in the ass with having to backwash them and you had to be careful not to allow the feeder tube to come in contact with the filter end. It only takes a couple of drops of unfiltered water to end your trip, forever. Pick up the wrong bacteria (cholera), or amoeba (dysentery), or protozoa (giardia), by drinking contaminated water or absorbing through a scratch or cut and you will be down for the count without the proper medical treatment. The last thing we needed was for someone in our party to pick up a parasite. With that in mind I needed to make sure everyone added a few drops of bleach to their water bladders. Better safe than sorry.
It took us almost 30 minutes to get everyone topped off with water and to refill the dirty water bags. If we could we needed to make sure and do this each night so we wouldn’t lose the time we could be traveling each day. As everyone worked I had talked to them and warned them of all the problems we would be facing concerning water and how important it was to be extra careful when it came to filtering and treating their water. Most of Americas have no idea how fortunate they are (or were), to have the infrastructure of water and electricity. The number of people that would die from water borne illness was too great to imagine right now. Four-fifths of all illnesses in developing countries are caused by water-borne diseases, with diarrhea being the leading cause of death among children. But they would either learn or die, most would die. I know that sounds cold but the truth is the truth. Within the next few days we would begin to see cholera outbreaks and that would hit the young and the old the hardest. For the past several decades there have been less than ten reported cases of cholera inside the United States per year and most of these were picked up while traveling outside the States. After the Haiti outbreak in 2010, worldwide cholera cases jumped 85%. Most large-scale outbreaks are most often caused by fecal contamination of water supplies or food. If treated most often its nothing but mild diarrhea, but left untreated it can cause profuse diarrhea and vomiting, followed by circulatory collapse and shock. If left untreated death tolls of 25% to 50% are not unheard of, mostly from dehydration. That’s not to mention salmonella, hepatitis, or cryptosporidium. All of these are much easier to prevent than to treat after the fact. But most people have no idea how to treat water and will end up drinking contaminated water. Symptoms can begin to show within hours but most typically begin to show in two to three days. Of course this will lead to panic and make anyone with “safe” water a target. I’m sure more than one person will be killed over a bottle of water or someone’s Life Straw. These idiots won’t know enough about surviving to save themselves with just a few drops of bleach but will kill to take what they perceive is “clean” water. Hell most won’t even know that they can just boil water (well most water) and make it safe to drink. But that would mean they knew enough on how to build a fire. Don’t get me started on the grasshoppers and the ants.
Ben and Jeff took the lead as they were pulling the heavier gear and I was hoping we wouldn’t have to stop again for at least one hour. If we could average even five miles per hour we should make it to the Great Falls Ferry location by noon. I hadn’t said anything to the others but I had my doubts about if it was still running. It might be if the operator was also a good mechanic and as long as the ferry engine didn’t have much in the way of electronics. While I’m not an expert on ferryboats, I do know a couple of things about engines having spent my junior and senior years attending technical school for automobile mechanics. I’m pretty sure the ferryboat at the Great Falls Ferry was actually a tow cable boat if I remember correctly. And if that was true, then more than likely if was powered by a diesel engine and was several if not twenty years old. The EMP might or might not of fried the electrical system. But if the ferry was not running we would either have to borrow a boat to get across or have to go up to the bridge on Highway 15 to cross over. I really didn’t want to do that as that would take us back into several built up areas that I would just as soon avoid.
We were making good time and the level ground made for easy pedaling. Everyone voted to push on after the one-hour mark and I agreed but insisted that we stop after two hours so everyone could stretch out and get some water. Everyone was in high sprits with the distance we had covered and I was really happy that we were not running into any people on the trail. Hopefully our luck would hold out but we couldn’t plan on that and I really needed everyone to stay alert and not be lulled into a false sense of security. We would at some point run into people. If we could get across the river and though the small towns on the way to Don’s cabin before the towns began to shut down any outsiders from passing though, if, if, if. I hated to held hostage to chance. It would not take long for people to realize help was not coming from the State or National level and they could not afford to feed everyone passing though, nor could they take in the people fleeing the big cities because that also would deplete their meager resources. Although I would think most people would be heading south instead of west or north because of the cold weather. Once winter truly hits anyone caught on the open road would be in trouble.
I walked around our small group and briefly spoke with each member, one to make sure they were drinking some water and two to remind them to stay alert. As I approached Beth and Mat, I could tell they were having a heated conversation. As I got closer, Beth stood and said something to Mat and stomped off towards her bike. “Trouble in paradise?” I asked Mat as I squatted down beside h
im. Mat frowned at me, “Yeah, she’s mad at me. We were talking and she was complaining about how we, especially you were so fast to shoot first and never give people a chance to explain why they were doing something. She is saying that she might leave our group when we get to the next town and was trying to get me to agree to leave with her. I tried to explain to her that things are different now and just ask her what else could we have done, both at the river or at that town. She said we should have just talked to both and worked out our differences instead of us, really she means you, just shooting them. And of course she blames all of us for her having to shoot that man back there. She is just having problems dealing with it all.” “How do you feel about it?” I ask. Mat glanced at me, “I know you didn’t have a choice, those guys would have killed Grandpa in a heartbeat if you hadn’t shot them and probably all of us, well except Beth. Also we didn’t start that fight back there at that town. So I think she is just having a hard time dealing with it all.” I nodded, “When we stop for the night I will talk to her. Just give her some space to work though all of it, she’s a smart girl and will come around.” Patting him on the shoulder I stood and headed back over towards the bikes. Passing Ben I said, “Ben I want you to switch places with Mat for the next leg, is that ok with you?” Before Ben could answer, Beth jumped in, “Ben can change with me, I would like to take point for a while.” I looked from Ben to Beth. “Ok,” I said, “just stay alert and stop and call out if you see anyone.” Beth nodded and hurried over to her bike. “Lets get this show on the road, we should be able to make the ferry crossing within the next hour or so,” I said as I walked over to my own bike. Mounting our bikes, we took off with Beth and Jeff in the lead, followed by Don and myself and picking up the rear was Ben and Mat. I knew that Mat wasn’t happy with Beth being alone with Jeff but they were all big boys and girls and needed to work these things out among themselves.
