By the Dawn's Early Light

by David Kershner

  Several hands were raised coupled with a few nods.

  “Okay. I’ll see you in a minute,” Josh stated as he nodded in their general direction.

  Before he could continue, Tim interjected, “That’s over seventy five miles from here! How do you propose we make it there? On foot?

  “That’s specifically why I suggested that you load up your bikes and what not. You’ll need at least three days of food and water for the trip. In addition to that, the group that decides to head that way should position men and women in the front and rear that are armed and prepared for whatever you may encounter. If you leave at first light, you could conceivably be well beyond the airport ten miles away by lunchtime. The sooner you get outside the outer belt, the better.”

  He then addressed the neighborhood as a whole one more time. “I’ve given you all of the information I have. At this point I’d like to ask everyone to head home and begin preparing for the consequences of your decision. Either start packing or start defending. Pick one and get busy.”

  Josh jumped down from the front of the deuce as several people approached. Behind him he heard the driver side door shut.

  “Nice speech,” Sarkes said. “You sure you don’t want to think about politics when this is all over?” he continued with a wry smile.

  “Nah,” he replied. “I’d like to keep my soul intact.”

  The former POTUS chuckled and then headed into the house to see about using the restroom. Josh busied himself by giving those who had already made their decision the directions to Lake Hope State Park. Many stated that they would head out immediately.

  As they dispersed, Tim approached with several other men. “Hey, we heard what ya said, but I find it interesting that you never answered my question. The one I asked you before you set yourself up on high and started giving orders.”

  “I don’t have time for this. Stay or go, I don’t care,” Josh replied as he began to turn away from them.

  “Now hold on a minute,” Tim continued as he pressed the issue and grabbed him by the arm. “You told everyone what they needed to do, but you didn’t tell anyone what you were doing.”

  “I’m gonna ask you once, let it be,” he intoned calmly, but inched his hand toward his Beretta all the same. “What I am doing and why is not your concern. Just leave it at that.”

  “Screw you, buddy! I’m not gonna drop it and I’ll be damned if I trust a word you say! How about we thump you and take your truck. What do you think about that, asshole?” Tim responded as he tried to make himself look tough by cracking his knuckles.

  Here we go, he thought.

  From the shadows behind the men and the gathering storm, Josh saw a hand holding a weapon rise up and quickly come down on the back of Tim’s head. The man crumbled to the ground in front of him. His friend’s stood there staring at the huddled mass on the driveway wondering what had just happened. Before they could turn and see the assailant, a high intensity beam of light was directed at their faces.

  “Gentlemen, my name is Special Agent Edward Monahan and you people are interfering with a national security matter. I’d love nothing more than to stomp on you three idiots right now, but I’ve been hanging out with Mr. Simmons for too long.”

  Josh smirked at the remark, but the context and tone of the message had the desired effect. All bravado was sucked out of them.

  “I’ll be monitoring the comm chatter for this area. If I even hear a sniff, an inkling, that some dumbass has tried something like this, I will personally drive up here and shoot every last one of you sons a bitches! Do I make myself clear?”

  The men swallowed hard and quickly nodded.

  “Good. Now pick up this piece of shit. He’s blocking my rig.”

  The three hurriedly struggled to grab Tim. After a few clumsy seconds, they managed to get a grip on their unconscious friend and started heading up the street.

  When they finally turned and headed up the man’s driveway a few doors down, Josh began laughing.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “I went around the other side of the house. Was standing across the street in case anyone got stupid. Good thing too,” he replied as he handed him some folded dollar bills.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s for the swear jar,” Monahan stated as he turned back to him. “I think that Tim character might have actually taken a swing at you,” he concluded.

  Josh nodded his agreement, but started chuckling again.

  “What?” the Secret Serviceman wondered.

  “I’ve always wanted to do that to that guy. Where’d national security and comm chatter come from? Sounded like a movie.”

  Agent Monahan shrugged and said, “Eh, I improvised.”

  Chapter 8

  “That’s it! I quit! If I have to can one more stinking tomato, bean, or cucumber, I think I might just keel over!” Heather declared as she flopped into her father’s easy chair. “I’ve got more burns and scalding marks on my arms than I care to count!”

  “Oh, stop your whining you big baby. You only had to do the water bath. The pressure canner is where the real fun is,” Layla playfully jabbed at her sister from the kitchen as she continued to make tomato sauce.

  While Juan and his sons were busy with the cows and pigs from the train, Josh’s daughters, along with Basilia and the Tin Hatters, had been tasked with the canning and jerking of anything perishable that wasn’t already in the root cellar. While the Martinez matriarch handled the kitchen in the cabin, Katherine was handling the Tin Foil Hat Club members at Three Sisters.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Basilia called out. “Your jars will be done in a few minutes. After that, then you can rest. We need to be out of this kitchen before your father gets home. He needs to do whatever he does to make jerky with the freezer meat.”

  Heather groaned at the pronouncement. “I know. I just needed to sit down for a sec,” she groused. “I should have gone with Juan and your sons to bring the cows up from the train.”

  As if on cue, the Martinez men came through the front door. They were dirty and smelled like a stall that hadn’t been cleaned in weeks.

  When Juan and his sons began entering, Heather proclaimed, “Hey, guys, you’re back! Did you –,” she started to say before being suddenly overcome with their stench, she declared, “Good grief you guys! You’re not supposed to roll in it?!”

  “Cows are just another one of God’s creatures, Señorita. They go whenever and wherever… sometimes it’s on you.”

  “Oh, the poor little Hollywood star can’t tolerate the fragrance of nature?” her sister continued jabbing from the kitchen.

  Holding her mouth and nose under her shirt collar, Heather managed a, “Yeah, yeah,” back at her. Returning to Juan and his sons, she asked, “Are all of those things up into the fields?”

  “Si, finally,” he replied. “I think we might have to distribute them around though. Either that or Patrón will need to lose some of his wheat acreage. The paddocks are only big enough to handle what we’ve got and maybe a few extra, but not eighty head. We’ll talk about it when they get back, or in the morning. I’m actually looking for Katherine. Have you seen her? We had to borrow some of the other farmers and we owe them a side of beef in return.”

  “Our first bartered trade… a couple hours of labor for meat. Is it fair?” Heather asked.

  Juan shrugged and replied, “Señor Simmons usually negotiates these things, but I think it is. Those cows were muy luca after being on that train car. A couple of their men got stepped on and kicked at a few times.”

  “Gimme a few minutes,” she said as she went back to the kitchen. “Do you guys want something to eat?”

  “Si, that’s would be great,” he responded.

  “I’ll be out in a few minutes with the food and then we’ll go get Katherine together, she’s over at Three Sisters. I want to see her breakdown a whole cow.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? You were not feeling so well
on the mountain,” Juan offered compassionately.

  “That was my first time,” Heather said with a wink. “Katherine’s had me working on squirrels and rabbits after that. I think I’ll be okay with the mess now.”

  “There’s going to be a lot more blood and internal stuff with this, twice as much as a deer,” the old farm manager suggested.

  A chill went up Heather’s spine; her confidence was waning at the thought of double the goo.

  “I’ll make do. I need to learn this stuff. In the meantime, you guys have to go back out on to the porch! You stink!”

  * * *

  “Okay,” Katherine said as she finished tying on her apron. “A cow is a pretty big beast so two people can easily work on it at the same time. I’ll take one side and tell you what I’m doing while you handle the other. Are you sure you want to do this? You think you’re ready?” she asked as she pulled her hair back in to a high pony tail.

  Heather was dressed top to bottom like she was about to perform an operation with a machete. She was wearing a clear plastic face protector that practically went to her sternum, a black vinyl coated butcher’s apron that went from her neck to her calves, and cut resistant gloves. She nodded her agreement as the cover rattled on her head.

  Katherine, utilizing only her own apron as protection, had broken down numerous animals over the years. She had never really tried to teach anyone how to butcher anything larger than a deer, but the concept was the same. Apparently though, she now had an audience in the farm hands and a somewhat willing pupil in her older sister. Layla, she determined, was a lost cause when it came to this skillset. The pair didn’t speak about it, but she suspected it was because she had witnessed her father’s retribution in the warehouse.

  “What is all of this stuff?” Heather said as she gestured toward the assembled implements lying between the two.

  Katherine turned and started ticking off the supplies she’d thrown into the front-end loader. “Okay, so what we’ve got here is a gambrel. We’ll need that to run through their back legs in order to hang it up, that’s why I brought the tractor. Once we’ve cut most of the hide free, I’ll install that, lift it with the tractor, and then we’ll attach the skinning clamps to pull the rest of it off. Once we split her open, I’ll try and get everything into the gutbuckets. The handsaw is needed for the head, chest, and sometimes the back legs.”

  “You’re gonna cut off its head!” her sister exclaimed.

  “Seriously? How many cow heads have you ever seen in the grocery store?” she replied as she put her hands on her hips. “Oh, that’s right,” she remembered. “You were tossing your cookies in the bushes when I did that to the deer.”

  Heather already looked like she was going puke.

  “You gonna make it?” Katherine asked compassionately.

  Heather nodded again and rattled her plastic visor.

  “Okay, as I was saying, the handsaw is needed for several things. Mostly it’s for the head and chest, but sometimes I need it for the legs. Occasionally, I can just break their back leg, but not every time. It comes in handy.”

  “So what’s the chainsaw for?”

  “That’s my gas powered meat saw,” she answered enthusiastically. When Heather looked as if she might turn another shade of green at the prospect, Katherine clarified. “Butchers have a band saw to process the carcass into sides and quarters, but we’ve never had one. I use this to cut through the spine and split it into halves.”

  “I hope you don’t have regular bar oil in that thing,” an older man stated.

  “Oh, no sir,” she immediately answered. “That would taint the meat something fierce. I’ve always added rice bran oil instead. It gives the chain the lubrication that it needs, but it’s natural, not a petroleum based product at all.”

  Katherine picked up a piece of firewood she intended to use as a chock and asked, “Okay, which one did you guys pick?” to the assembled makeshift farmhands.

  “Any of ‘em’s fine,” their spokesmen answered. The man pointed a craggy gnarled finger and said, “They all look healthy and about the same size. Hell, they were headed to slaughter anyway so they ought to be good.”

  “You wanna ‘knock’ it?” she asked in return. “Or do you want me to do it?”

  “Junior,” he called out as he turned to others. “You got your .22 pistol on ya?”

  “Yes, sir,” his son answered.

  “Go on out there and put down that one over there,” his father instructed as he pointed off toward a straggler. “Remember, two inches above the eyes and a little off center.”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy replied.

  The stillness of the night afforded the crack of the weapon to travel unobstructed. Katherine didn’t seem overly concerned with the unchecked noise pollution given the extreme remoteness of the farm, but the thought did occur to her.

  “Alright, Heather. Grab the other chock and let’s get to work.”

  * * *

  Shortly after 10:00 that night, the last of the military workhorse deuce and half trucks passed through the gate to the secluded property. The group had originally departed with just the three vehicles, but arrived home with eight. The only one that wasn’t towing a trailer of some kind when it returned was being driven by Josh. The girls suspected something was afoot when he all too casually put the truck in the now emptied metal barn. The structure was the furthest from the cabin and Three Sisters as possible. As usual though, their father wasn’t talking.

  The first of the returning convoy had appeared hours earlier and by all accounts, had navigated the route unmolested. Captain Rayna and Lieutenant Stokes immediately had the men start staging the gear and equipment. The scout team had confirmed Josh’s suspicions that the park was empty and the officers were as equally pleased to hear that the state of the cabins had been maintained throughout the winter. Come morning, the combat engineers would begin preparing for the influx of refugees from the larger cities and towns.

  In their report, the advanced team had produced several ODNR generated maps of the park. There were a total of sixty-five cabins. Forty of which contained a wood burning fireplace. The lodge itself could house fifty residents easily. If those structures ever filled up, there were almost two hundred additional campsites scattered throughout the east side of the area. The laundry would need to be relocated with the possibility of a second to be constructed from scratch. There were negatives noted though. The terrain was extremely rugged and the sizeable water obstacle essentially split the park in half with a nearly equal amount of cabins on each side. This would make responding to a situation problematic.

  The recommendation from Team Two was that all travelers be placed on one side until it was full. They also suggested that they forego the laundry and concentrate solely on the showers and latrines.

  However, the strategic importance of the park’s location could not be underscored enough. From the southern entrance of the park, the Moonville Tunnel and its buried cache of billions stood a scant five ‘klicks’ southeast. If they utilized the overgrown and barely perceptible hiking trail that following the old rail line, the soldiers could knock almost two kilometers off of the distance.

  Once Josh and the President were back however, the pair had relayed the happenings in the neighborhood.

  “Are there any other areas where we can relocate people?” Hoplite asked as the discussed their collective synopsis. “Are there any other parks nearby?”

  Their host went to his hutch and retrieved a map of the Hocking Hills region. He, along with Lt. Stokes and Capt. Rayna began reviewing the paper once it was spread on the table.

  “The first thing I see is one huge headache,” Carlos said. “How many residents are in the towns of Chillicothe and Athens? We could possibly become the center of this Shinola sandwich.”

  “Twenty thousand in each, give or take. Athens is a college town and effectively doubles in size when the university is in session though,” Josh explained.

  “What abo
ut these, Fox Lake and Lake Snowden? They are between us and Athens,” Hoplite stated.

  “I don’t think so,” he replied. “Those are wildlife areas only, no facilities. There aren’t any structures on those lakes. If we head there we’d need to build everything from the ground up.”

  “Okay, what’s this off to the east? Strouds Run State Park? Can we use that?” Stokes asked.

  “Maybe,” Josh said. “But again, no cabins. There are campsites, latrines, and a couple shelter houses though. I haven’t been there in years, but it might work in a pinch.”

  “That doesn’t leave us many options. Who’s to say we need to offer this stuff anyway?” the Lt. offered to the group. “I’m just playing ‘devil’s advocate’ here. I mean, we aren’t the National Guard. We are a combat engineering platoon with orders to observe and defend a stash of gold so the British don’t get it.”

  Josh sat back in his chair and contemplated the comments. The man wasn’t wrong. Why were they wasting all of this energy and expending what limited resources they did have on people that didn’t have the forethought to plan ahead and think for themselves. Were they just providing this so that the transition from the technological present to the steam engine past would be less traumatic?

  “The best answer I can think of right now, Lieutenant, is the Sermon on the Mount. Do unto others as you would have them done unto you, but your point is well taken nonetheless. However, I am also a strong believer in teaching a man to fish. We aren’t going to be doing this for them. We are going to have them do this for themselves. Maybe we give them a push and a head start, but they will learn a new set of skills.”

  He paused to let the rebuttal sink then offered a compromise.