Thinking about Marta’s mother got me to wondering about other extended family and what, if anything, to do with them. Marta’s mother, Beatrice, was a wonderful woman, but not exactly someone who would do well in this new world if things went as we feared. She was a true Southern belle, and I knew we needed to figure out the right way to approach her for our invitation.
With those thoughts on my mind, I headed for the gate. I thumbed the electric opener and I don’t know who was more shocked: me or the dirty, bearded man with a pair of pliers in his hand, standing next to the steel post holding the gate controls. He froze for a split second, his bloodshot eyes locked with mine. Then he dropped the pliers and began clawing at the waist of his oil-splattered coveralls even as the nose of my old pickup rolled closer to him. I saw a glint of metal and knew he was going for a pistol.
Had he been on the driver’s side, I’d like to think I would have had the presence of mind to bash him with my door. Sadly, he was on the passenger side, and I noticed he was drawing his pistol about the same time I remembered leaving my jacket, and the little Keltec, in the mudroom. The only weapon I had in the truck was my hog gun stashed behind the truck seat, and I knew there was no way to get that Model 742 out before this lowlife got his shots off. Almost by instinct, I turned the wheel ever-so-slightly, the front quarter panel brushing against the armed assailant at my front gate. I heard a sharp pop, and then another, but I couldn’t tell where his shots had struck, and I wasn’t feeling anything other than terror at the moment.
My little 1983 Nissan 720 was a light, small frame, short bed pickup, so I was surprised by how far the would-be intruder flew when the truck struck him. I guess light is a relative term, and the filthy man bounced once across the caliche before rolling over and taking off at a sprint towards his primer-colored Cavalier parked on the side of the road.
By the time I slammed on the brakes and hopped out of the still-running pickup, the dirty man in his torn coveralls had managed to throw himself into the driver’s seat and slam the door. While I was digging my hog gun out from behind the seat, my intruder was spinning his tires as he threw the transmission in reverse and ran a few hundred feet backwards. My hands were shaking with a palsy of adrenaline and fear as I shouldered the short-barreled rifle and tried to focus on the scope. I could only watch in shock as the Cavalier suddenly braked and spun into a perfectly-executed reverse bootlegger’s turn, spinning the car in a spray of mud and loose rocks as the sedan slid dangerously close to the ditch before taking off like a rocket down the narrow county road.
“It’s the General Lee,” was all I could think to say as I watched the rapidly retreating car disappear around a curve.
Nodding my head in acknowledgement, I lowered the shaking rifle to port arms, dropped the four-round hunting magazine and shucked out the loaded cartridge before replacing it in the magazine. This time, I left the rifle leaning against the bench seat as I slid back in and buckled my seatbelt. To my great relief, the automated gate mechanism still worked as I clicked the metal gate closed behind me.
“Yep,” Wade confirmed ten minutes later as I sat at his kitchen table sipping coffee, “that sounds like Matt Sherwood.”
“How could you tell? All I noticed was the dirty coveralls and the beard.”
“Matt works for Pete Stanslaw over at Pete’s Used Cars, and he’s a decent mechanic when he’s not running Pete’s chop shop over in Newtown. He wears those coveralls all the time, and he’s probably the best of the Sherwood boys when it comes to electrical stuff, too.”
“Why the heck would he be messing with my gate, though?”
“Figuring out how to bypass the lock, probably,” Wade observed. “He could take that panel apart, find out how to operate it by hand, and they could come back later and steal whatever they could carry off while you were at work.”
“Should I report it to the police?”
“You mean Sheriff Landshire?”
“Good point,” I conceded.
“Wouldn’t hurt to get it on record,” Wade advised. “I’d make sure and say something to Buddy, if I were you.”
I didn’t question the suggestion. Buddy Cromwell seemed like a straight shooter of a law officer, and he’d taken steps in recent years to rein in the sheriff where he could. The fallout following the acquittal of Rudy Polinsky last year still resonated in Albany County, and I wondered if the Texas Rangers were ever going to look into that sordid episode.
“You think he was acting on the sheriff’s orders?”
Wade took a moment to stir his coffee and look back to the family room, where his two boys were busy working on a massive, thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.
Mark was the spitting image of his father at twelve, starting to fill out and sprout in height, while ten-year-old Isaac took after his mother’s side with his straw blonde hair and more slender build. Mark would likely play football in junior high, while Isaac was shaping up to be a decent baseball player on his Little League team. Normally they would both be outside, but with the rains returning and all their chores caught up, they were simply filling time in an acceptable manner. Seeing them idle reminded me of something else I wanted to mention on this trip, but I would save it for now.
“Don’t know for sure, Bryan. Sure, the sheriff sometimes uses George and his sons for his dirty work, but they get into their own mischief often enough.”
“Just seemed kind of chancy, especially with that camera I’ve got set up over the front gate,” I commented, and that news caused Wade to break out into a real grin.
“You got a security camera over the gate?” Wade exclaimed in shock. “Since when? Does it record?”
“Yeah, it records to a disc, then overwrites every seventy-two hours. That’s how I know who’s at the gate when somebody buzzes the house. But why is that…”
“Bryan, I’ve pulled up to that gate maybe a hundred times and never noticed a camera.”
“Yeah, well, it’s up under the eaves of the little weather shelter I put up,” I explained, then I understood. I wasn’t trying to hide it, not exactly, but the fixture was pretty small and out of the way. “I’ll check the feed and see if Matt noticed it. If he didn’t, that means if he comes back…”
“You’ll likely see him coming, if you’re home.”
I scoffed, lifting my cellphone and gesturing.
“I have this set with an alarm, so even if I’m not home, my security system will alert me.”
“Yep, worked like a charm this morning,” Wade responded in kind, giving me a crooked grin, and I stifled a laugh.
“It would have, if I’d bothered to turn it on,” I granted with a seated bow, conceding the point. Looking back toward the living room, I lowered my voice.
“You guys started canning your garden yet?”
Wade caught my look and shook his head. “Got a few things coming in, but I didn’t want to go swimming in that mud soup to go get a few heads of lettuce.” Pausing, Wade glanced toward the living room as well, his brow furrowed. “But I take it something had you distracted enough to ignore your own security this morning.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, keeping my voice low. “Amalgamated Grocery just went out of business,” I started, then paused. “That’s one of the big grocery wholesalers up in New England. I got word from one of the HAMs up in that neck of the woods. They supply to probably half of the grocery stores in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, with maybe a quarter of the upstate New York market.”
“And that’s bad because…”
“Because it sounded like the federal government just rolled in and took over the whole business. Sent in Homeland agents to seize the warehouses and shipping yard. Of course, that’s just based on one person’s view, looking out the window. I only got the report third-hand, passed on down the road, if you know what I mean.”
That was one of the limitations of the HAM network, of course. These operators weren’t reporters, so all they could do was pass on what they observed ‘out the window’ and
offer up what amounted to little more than rumors. These rumors were then passed on from one person to the next. An updated version of the children’s game of Telephone, for all practical purposes.
“And you found it odd for something like that to go down over the weekend? And with no mention of it in the news?”
That was Wade. Once again proving my point that Country Doesn’t Mean Dumb.
“Did strike me as peculiar. Makes me wonder if the feds are looking to shore up the distribution of foodstuffs in that area, or if it was a practice run for what they plan later. Thing is, I’m getting more things coming into harvest than I can properly handle, and I want to get as much harvested and put away before someone with a badge, or a clip-on Department of Agriculture ID, comes out to survey my property.”
“You think that’s likely?”
“Not really, but then, there’s a lot of stuff going on I didn’t expect two weeks ago. More likely, it’ll be someone from the state, but the end results would be the same. If someone shows up with a truckload of soldiers and says they are going to requisition your livestock and harvest your fields, does it matter what uniform they’re wearing?”
Wade gave a hiss of concern over my words.
“Fields are still too wet to get at the corn, Bryan, even if it was ready.”
I held up my hands, making a pushing motion. “I’m just wanting to get done what we can. Without Mike or Nikki coming to help, I’m limited. I’ll take what help I can get, if they’ll work cheap.”
Wade gave me that crooked grin of his again as he read my intentions.
“You wanting to hire a couple of halfway-trained monkeys to work in your canning operation this summer? They helped Dorothy last year, but you know how hard it is to keep them on task. If you’re willing to put up with them, you can have them. I’d suggest calling Nancy and seeing if she would be interested, though. With her and Lisa, that would give you four extra sets of hands, and I know Nancy knows how to run a canner.”
I can’t say the idea of enlisting Nancy hadn’t crossed my mind, but it sounded better coming from Wade. I thought about what all she’d shared with me the day before, and I couldn’t help saying, “She is an impressive woman. Of course, if that Nolan character ever happens to show up, I’m going to kill him on the spot.”
“Get in line,” Wade growled under his breath. “If her father hadn’t been dying of liver cancer when that all went down, he’d have gutted that little bastard on the courthouse steps. Malcolm Prentiss wouldn’t stand for anybody messing with his little girls.”
“Sorry I never met the man, but I’ve heard Dorothy talk about her daddy and he sounded like hell on wheels,” I commented, and Wade laughed.
“Mr. Prentiss sure put the fear of God in me when I started dating Dorothy,” Wade admitted without shame, “and Nancy was the baby, so I’m sure he spoiled her rotten. Losing her dad shortly after what happened came near to breaking Nancy, but she has her daddy’s toughness in her. She never let on to her daddy what that slick city boy bastard did to her. Anyway, I doubt we’ll see that little prick, but if he ever shows up, just shoot and shovel. I’ll alibi you until the cows come home.”
Wade and I continued discussing the state of affairs, and he disclosed that he was booked up with construction work for the next two weeks. He’d proven capable of doing any sized job over the years, but Wade had a sterling reputation for handling interior remodeling jobs that made the locals line up for his services. Without naming any names, he let me know that two of the upcoming projects involved customers who wanted to improve the security in their homes.
“All this upheaval has people nervous, and watching the news doesn’t help. I think everybody can sense when the reporters are lying to us, and the worry about the unknown has a lot of folks fearing the worst. And now is a little late to start preparing, what with all the limits on purchases.”
“Just going to drive the black market,” I agreed, “and it won’t be long before we start seeing grocery trucks needing armed escorts, or the drivers will be risking hijackings. Which just makes me want to get my pasta sauce in jars now, rather than later.”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” Wade conceded. “When you get finished at your place, just move over here and keep going.”
I said I might just do that, and then finished my coffee and made to take my leave.
“What do I owe you for the eggs and the milk, Bryan?”
“I’ll take two young men eager to work,” I shot back, and Wade agreed it was a deal, as long as I returned the favor as agreed.
Best bargain I made all day, I decided as I headed back home. I already had plans to make use of those extra hands in the green house. I had some sprouts and starts already in trays, but what I lacked were those extra hands, and the attached bodies, to get them planted somewhere they could grow. Honestly, at this point, the greenhouse was still just a long, low building with tables and stacks of what amounted to nutrient-rich, potting soil. Having Nikki, Rachel, and even eight-year-old Hunter on site would give us a start, but I could already see that getting the farm up to real production was going to require numbers. And the more people we brought in, the more food we would need to produce to sustain them. I wondered if there was a spreadsheet for balancing the figures for an optimal outcome. ‘A Survival Lifeboat algorithm’, I imagined it might be called, but I knew no such program existed.
Yes, you could calculate the calories, carbs, and fats necessary to keep a person alive, and how much they would need to produce to achieve that total, but too many other factors also came into play. How many did you need to adequately guard your property versus working in the fields, and how long could you sustain the effort? No spreadsheet could measure someone’s will to survive, or what you might be willing to do, to insure that survival.
Life was so much easier when the only thing I had to debate was 5.56mm versus 7.62x51mm, and whether 7.62x39 offered a viable alternative.
Forcing my brain back into more useful observations, I slipped the old Nissan into first gear and eased off the clutch, rolling forward as I listened to the engine. The diesel wasn’t exactly overpowering, but I knew if treated right, this engine could last me another two hundred thousand miles. I wondered if I should spend the money on something newer, but I’d learned the hard way that newer doesn’t mean more reliable.
Focused on the road and the ditches, I felt like a commando trapped behind enemy lines, waiting for the ambush to trigger. Not surprisingly, I didn’t enjoy the feeling one little bit. This time I didn’t see anybody lurking around the gate, but I vowed to myself that was the last time I would get caught off-guard in such a manner.
That ‘normalcy bias’ Mike and I had talked about nearly resulted in a fatal encounter this morning. Just because things looked the same on the surface, I needed to remind myself that the world had changed. This might be a slow-motion slide, but make no mistake, the fall was coming.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sobered by another near miss, since I counted the Tractor Supply trip as my first lesson in what not to do, I spent the rest of the day splitting time between the garden and my home office. The rain continued off and on all day, but I still managed to fill a five-gallon bucket of tomatoes and a gallon bucket of okra. Cut your okra early, my dad always said, and get it before the stalks got too thick.
In the office, I parked my behind in front of the monitors while watching the cable news as the stories recycled throughout the day. Word out of the Disaster Zones continued to accumulate at a trickle, but I noticed how much time was spent memorializing dead sitcom actors and sports figures while minimizing talk about the horrific overall death toll. The focus seemed so skewed I had to imagine the newsreaders were still acting under orders.
Nothing new out of the camps, except a few carefully choreographed reunion stories where missing loved ones used the computer kiosks set up in each location to match up with family sheltering elsewhere. These little nuggets received lavish media coverage, but I wonde
red at the slick production values for what the FEMA spokesperson presented as simply bringing families together. I had to admit, though, the good news may have helped settle some nerves and brighten the day of hopeful parents and children who saw the broadcasts.
This same spokesperson hinted the system was being expanded to allow internet access to the survivor lists, so people in unaffected areas could search for their family members. Since the internet was still out in every area I knew of, the idea was either a pipe dream or something for further on down the road. I also noted the only names on the lists would be those confirmed alive, so still no registry of the dead. Personally, I doubted such a record would ever become available to the public. Not with the population of Hawaii alone at over one million souls, and still not a peep from the islands.
Also, I noted when some statement was finally made of the situation beyond our shores, as the Department of Defense spokesperson announced the immediate recall of all personnel deployed overseas. Bases in Germany and the Middle East were specifically named, but nowhere else. I heard Qatar mentioned, and I knew Wade’s mother would be pleased to hear her youngest son would soon be returning to the States, if not home.
Japan, though, was temporarily home to nearly one hundred thousand American soldiers, sailors, and Marines and their dependents, and it was not listed in the announcement. I also remembered Mike telling me there were still between twenty-three and twenty-eight thousand American troops stationed in South Korea, but nothing was mentioned about them in the report either. I wondered how much, if any, of the Pacific fleet survived the quakes and the multiple tsunamis. I recalled something about ships in deep water being better able to weather the big waves, but I didn’t know if that was a fact or simply my own wishful thinking.
I also noticed nothing was said about China all weekend. No word about recovery efforts, or video footage of the devastated shoreline. The news blackout extended to cover all of the Pacific, and no one gave a peep about any of the pre-Fall big stories from the region, namely Japanese automakers cutting production or the continuing radicalization of young jihadists by Indonesian mullahs. All of these issues seemed to have been eclipsed by the passage of time, but I still found the news blackout a chilling confirmation that the meteor strike had made all these storylines moot.
Tertiary Effects Series | Book 1 | Rockfall Page 16
