by T J Reeder
A long Lonely Road: Timberline
Book Two
By TJ Reeder
Edited By Sheri Dixon
Copyright 6 -5-2012
I have a request I’d like to make to all who read this part of my ongoing story. I’m not an overly sensitive type person. In fact I’m pretty crude and usually say just what I mean and I respect those who do the same.
So, on the subject of reviews both good and bad. If you are looking for perfection then buy a Clancy or Patterson or any other big name, pay the 25 bucks and be happy. If you are an English professor or a journalist or even just a well-schooled person and the improper use of commas, periods, or lack thereof and bouncing from first person to third or no person don’t cream your Twinkie, you may want to pass on this tale.
If you are such a person, and by chance you decide to go ahead and read this tale then remember you were forewarned. Thus the need for a nasty scathing review really isn’t needed. If you hate it so much simply request a refund. Let others decide for themselves. They too, can ask for a refund if they feel abused by it.
But if you are the type of person who insists on believing the entire world waits with bated breath for your wondrous opinion of how much smarter you are compared to the poor writer you are disparaging, then rave on- it is your right.
Oh! And if you need chapters to read then don’t bother, but if you enjoy a tale as told by the campfire and a jug of “Who Shot John” passing around then pull up a stump and kick back because you’re in for a ride.
If you are a person who has ever in real life fired a rifle, killed an animal for its meat, gutted it, skinned it out, built a campfire to cook it, rode a horse in the wilds of the high country, boiled coffee over the fire, slept out in a blizzard; or if you’re a person who always wanted to do these things, then please read on and I hope you enjoy it.
This is the story of a man in his later years who finds himself a very long way from home and hearth when the SHTF. It’s a tale of the drive to get home come hell or high water. I’m writing it about the way I myself would get home after an event. I can only hope I would do as well in real life. I have the will, drive and know-how but maybe the ol’ body is low on fuel. Time will tell.
And no, I didn’t finish school; in fact I’d say I have about a 6th grade education, but I have a PHD in life.
The Long Lonely Road
Book Two
Timberline
By
TJ Reeder
Copyright June 2012
Sandy and I awoke to our first full day in Timberline, Idaho- our new home for the next several months or until the weather broke in our favor.
We had agreed to help the folks who call this little burg home. Help with simple things like staying alive and surviving, but also how to think, how to plan and how to think outside the box. Because the box is open and that bitch Pandora ain’t going back in for a long, long time.
Surviving is simple. Do anything and everything you can think of to keep you alive and be willing to kill any and every son of a bitch who has any thoughts of interfering with your survival.
While I took care of the stock, Sandy put together a fast breakfast; cooked on the kitchen stove using propane. Cooking indoors…what a novel idea. After that, we cleaned up and walked to the town meeting hall where we would start the ball rolling today.
Let me clear up one point. I realize I made the town sound like a cluster of a few houses. It’s not. In fact it’s a very nice little town with a small school, a fairly large grocery store, three gas stations and lots more. It’s typical of small towns most any place. Population is or was about 500 or so, but rather compact which was a good thing for our purposes.
Jim and the rest of the board were there and ready to get started, so we got right into it. I told them I had spent some time thinking about the many issues that we were going to have to deal with. My list called for all persons with military experience to get together with us ASAP to form a security group and a plan for training all citizens in protecting the town. I wanted a team out gathering all the barbed wire and T-posts they could find. The local feed store being the first place to look. But if it comes down to it, we can and will strip it off the roadside fences and pull the T- posts. We need to get some trucks running for the foraging team to use. The list just keeps growing but we will get it done. There is no alternative.
Jim had called for a town meeting after we had a chance to meet and the folks started to arrive for that. We moved it outside so everybody could see and be a part of it. Soon the street was full of folks, and Jim told them what the plan of action was and what was needed to keep the town alive.
Soon there was teams of men heading off to get started. The main team was to get some trucks going. This was being handled by the local mechanics and the school bus maintenance people. I refrained from asking why none of this had been done, or at least started back when the event happened. Shock, I’d say- or fear. The town had three school busses that were parked in a metal building and being diesel, seemed to have made it thru the event.
We would remove most of the seats and make them into rolling cargo vans for transporting stuff we salvaged. Some seats would be left in for the work crews who would do the salvaging.
With the three busses and a couple of pickups to act as scout trucks I figure we would be in good shape while salvaging anything we could use- which hopefully would be a lot.
Some of the ladies came up with the idea of making the school cafeteria into the main community kitchen to cut down on waste. And it would get people together three times a day to eat and discuss things that needed doing. I loved the idea and told them to get on it right away and to pass the word that people needed to please bring food from home to the school.
The former military people had gathered and I met with them. There were only ten of them, but all had served in the combat arm of their branch of service. Six were younger men with combat time in the Mid-East. The other four were older gents but all were able bodied. One of the older men had been a Gunnery Sergeant in the Marines with three tours in ‘Nam. I made him the head of the security team and in charge of coming up with a training schedule for the men as a whole and any women who wanted to learn and serve as security. The vets would be the training staff. All in all, I was surprised and the town was lucky to have this many actual combat vets but then it’s usually the country boys who can’t wait to join up.
The overall plan was that every person excepting children under ten years old would learn to shoot something- even a .22.
And when I say “even a .22” I’m not putting the little round down because it’s a damn good little killer at the proper time and with hits in the proper place.
With work crews out and about and Gunny’s troops on over-watch, the town was buzzing. My plan was that at first light we would take two of the busses and two older pickups and head for the interstate.
The rest of the day went by at warp speed with the evening meal planned for the school ‘Mess Hall’, as it was being called. The relief guard section would eat first and head out to the guard posts and the off- coming guard could then eat and get some sleep.
Gunny was planning a four-on-eight-off tour of duty, but we were a bit thin at the moment. In time it would jell out.
After dinner, Sandy and I sat in with the committee members and talked about the day and the coming days and our plans. The main plan was to return life to as good as we could make it. With kids in school, people working to grow food and in general making life something we could all look forward to. Of course Sandy and I would be moving on, but we would have left behind a better place then we found. I hoped.
Morning found us In the Mess Hall having coffee and hot cakes and eggs; what could be better? Well, steak and eggs mayb
e. But that was for later when we could butcher a few head for the reefers here in the school kitchen and the grocery store. We have a lot to do!
After the drivers got the busses ready, and the work crew along with the security details were loaded into the two trucks, we took off. Sandy and I rode with Jim in the lead truck while the second truck pulled rear guard with 3 shooters. And of course the work crews were all armed.
We hit the interstate right at the 20 mile mark and decided to head toward the closest town, figuring if they were salvaging we would see it right away. We passed many cars and pickups before we found the first 18 wheeler which the driver pulled part way off the road when it lost power.
After checking the cab, we looked at the doors- locked and sealed; now it was feast or famine time. We all just stood there almost scared to touch the lock, but at last one of the work crew stuck a wrecking bar in the lock and snapped it.
When the doors were opened there was a loud yell from all of us! The first thing we saw was toilet paper! How sweet it is!
Right then and there I realized what we really needed was a tractor running so we could simply pull the trailers without the labor of unloading. We talked it over, and one of the bus drivers said he knew where one was and it was in a metal building. So he and the second scout truck headed back to town while we started unloading the trailer… just in case.
It was really simple, back the bus up to the trailer with the back emergency door open and just start loading and with the man power we had, it went very fast.
The first bus was loaded and the second one half loaded before we finished the paper goods and got into the rest of the cargo, which was mostly dry goods of one sort or another. By the time we finished the trailer all three busses were full, so we headed back home. We met up with the other men coming back with an older Kenworth and the owner wearing a big smile!
His place was five miles from town and he had missed all the action because he and his family were laying low until they knew what was what. We sent the busses on with the other scout truck and led the tractor back to the highway. We continued on, and within a couple of miles we hit another truck still untouched.
We followed procedures now of checking the area before we opened the doors. And this one was the gold mine. It was full of canned foods, and the Man upstairs must love us because it was institutional sized cans of damn near everything just in the back row.
We shut it, and went to work getting the dead tractor out from under the trailer and thank god we had a real trucker there to handle it.
We had the dead rig moved and the good one hooked and ready to roll in quick time and were rolling. We had two trailers of goods before lunch!
After dropping the trailer and having lunch, we hit the road back to the highway. Our next find was beyond our dreams- a tanker truck with a full load of diesel. This too was sent back to town with escort while the rest of us headed on.
I for one was totally surprised at the fact nobody else was doing this and it’s been weeks since the event. It makes no sense on several levels.
We found a bobtail truck that was loaded with furniture which we didn’t need and almost left it be, but one of the guys crawled over the top and said he was looking at boxed sets of bunk beds.
He thought they might be handy for setting up bunk rooms for future singles coming in. That’s what I like- folks that start thinking outside the box. So we offloaded the stuff we didn’t want, and took what we did, then reloaded the van and shut the doors and ran some wire thru the latch.
We called it a day and headed home. It was a very good day so far. After getting back and unloading the bunk beds into an empty classroom, we checked out the results of the other loads.
And it was a haul! The food alone when combined with meat the hunters would bring in would carry the whole town for at least a couple of months with careful planning.
After going to bed I laid awake with something eating at me, but finally did sleep. And with the dawn I knew what it was. As soon as we cared for the stock we headed for the mess hall where I found Jim and William.
After filling our plates and grabbing cups of coffee, we joined them and I explained to Jim what was eating on me. First, we had no idea where the raiders were hiding out and I was willing to bet they were watching us right then. Also, I felt we should send a patrol unit to scout the entire highway until we found signs of others doing the same thing we were.
We needed to locate any others who were trying to build something from this mess, and forge some kind of agreement if possible. If we didn’t, sooner or later we were for sure gonna have a clash. And the country couldn’t stand losing decent people in a confusing situation that could be avoided.
It was decided we would send out two trucks with six people in each. Loaded for bear, but willing to talk peace and cooperation. We would leave as soon as we got loaded.
I saw Gunny Jones, waved him over and explained what we were doing. He agreed with the idea immediately and asked who I was planning to take. I was going, as was Sandy. He could pick the other ten and with that Sandy and I headed to the transport area to find our wheels.
Between the mechanics in the town and the ability to scrounge parts they had several pickups running and two were crew cabs so we could ride in style and still have bed space if we found any goodies.
We rolled out by 0900 and made very good time to the interstate. We headed in the direction we had gone already and rolled past the bobtailed furniture truck.
We passed two more 18 wheelers but didn’t stop. We made about twenty five miles before we came upon a truck that had been opened. The openers had just tossed stuff out in the roadway and destroyed more than they took. They left good food stuff for the animals and took junk food.
There was still good food in the truck in cans but we left it for now. We could pick it up on the way back. The next sign of the others wasn’t the best of signs. We found a beer truck and it was empty. Just what we needed, wasteful drunks!
After driving another ten miles we saw smoke ahead and slowed down our approach. With an overpass coming up we pulled over, and Gunny sent a spotter team up to look the area over.
They were soon back to report what looked like a ranch house with barns and outbuildings about a half mile off the roadway. They saw people moving around but couldn’t tell much more. Two of the scouts went in on foot to see what was what. One returned to report that the people at the ranch were the raiders and he and his partner counted at least fifty.
Knowing Gunny had way more experience than myself, I asked him to do a recon and come up with a plan if it was at all feasible to take these bastards out once and for all. In the meantime, I sent one truck back to get more shooters to come in a bus. I figured between the twelve of us here, and twenty to twenty five more we could take these clowns if we could surprise them with an ambush.
About two hours passed before the Gunny returned alone having left the two scouts as lookouts. His report was good and bad. The good was that while they outnumbered us they were also having a big party, and it looked like the beer truck cargo was disappearing pretty fast. The bad news was the fact that they had prisoners. All female and all looked much the worse for wear. Now we really had to get this done, there was no walking away from it.
Gunny figured the best approach was to simply let them drink themselves into a stupor and hit them at first light. I said it worked for me so we eased back to a better place to hide the vehicles and wait for the shooters coming from town.
It was another two hours before the bus showed up with the truck that went to get them. There were twenty five shooters in the bus, giving us thirty seven total. The reason it took so long was because Jim’s brother Bob had the presence of mind to round up all the men with the kind of weapons we would need most; semi- autos and rifles with scopes being the main thing, plus plenty of ammo. Ammo was one thing we were short on but now wasn’t the time to be stingy with it.
Gunny laid out the place on a sheet of tabl
et paper and showed all the main information as to where they were and where we would be.
His idea was to have the two scouts who were still watching start leading groups of our people into good fighting spots and getting them all settled for the wait. We would start moving into place about 0300 and be ready when it was light enough to see to shoot.
Gunny was going to set fire to the old barn that housed several of the raiders right after sunup. This would get the whole bunch out- hopefully in one place.
We would be as close as 100 yards, but some men with scoped rifles would be on the high points all around the area where they would have a better chance to use their rifles to the best advantage.
At 0300 the move into place started with the scouts taking about ten men at a time into their places. By 0430 we were all in place and the wait began.
Morning came as it always does, and for some it would be their last sunrise; but bad men needed stopping and good men were needed to do the stopping as it had always been.
