by John Grit
“Naw. I used to live in town. Ran a welding shop on Third and Fifth. Lost all of my family to the plague. Wife and three kids.” He did not flinch. “They say the Lord never puts more on our shoulders than we can bear. We’ll see. We’ll see. My shoulders and my back ain’t broke yet.”
Mrs. MacKay added, “Your spirit is going strong too.”
There was silence between them for half a minute.
“What was town like when you left?” Nate asked.
“Well,” Mr. Gilmore said, “I left as soon as I buried the last of my kids. My oldest. Chet Junior. There wasn’t anything left. Everything edible had been taken long since, and the smell of rotting dead people was enough to run you out of town alone. No, there was not a reason in the world for me to stay there. About eighty percent of the east side was already burned to the ground, and many more homes and buildings were still burning when I left. My old pickup collected a dozen bullet holes on the way out of town. I remember that almost as well as I remember the smell.”
“Had the military organized anything in town? I mean had there been any relief or law enforcement?”
Chet shook his head. “Nothing I know of. I doubt there’s many left in town now anyway. Those that are, probably are scavenging and looking for trouble.”
Nate nodded. “Yeah, just getting there would be dangerous.”
A teenage boy ran up to them. “Mr. Williams, we found some of your stuff. At least we found something with your name on it.”
“Lead us to it,” Chet said.
Nate nodded to Mrs. MacKay and the others and followed Chet and the boy to a truck. They got in, and the boy drove half a mile, the engine sputtering and coughing, and stopped next to several piles of cardboard boxes. The boy got out and pointed. “Those boxes have postage labels with your name and address on them, mostly tomato paste in Mason jars. Some of the other boxes have no labels but contain Mason jars of tomato paste also.”
Nate examined three piles of boxes. “Yeah, this is our stuff. We had a good crop of tomatoes and a lot more on the vine, but the raiders got to them.” He set a large box of Mason jars aside. “You can have that. We had more tomato sauce than we can use.”
Chet and the boy looked at each other, surprise on their face. “Thanks,” Chet said.
“We have plenty of tomato paste anyway, thanks to you being honest about things.” Nate looked down the road. “We canned a lot of pickles and peppers too.”
“There’s some of that right over there.” The boy pointed to a truck fifty yards away.
“I would like to get our clothes back, especially for a little girl. I don’t have much for her, after the raiders took everything.” Nate didn’t want to push it, but he spoke again. “We’re still missing some hand tools for farming too.”
“We haven’t found much of that kind of stuff yet,” the boy said. We’re still looking, though, and I’ll tell everyone to keep an eye out.”
“Thanks.” Nate grabbed a box off the clay road. “Can I load it on this truck?”
“Yeah. We’ll help you.” The boy picked up a box just as Nate slid his against the back of the cab.
Chet grabbed a box. “After we get this stuff in your barn, I would like to talk with you about a mutual defense system. “We need to scrounge up enough two-way radios to communicate long distance. That way when there’s trouble, we can call for help.”
Nate set another box in the truck bed. “I might have a radio—if the thieves didn’t find it. A battery for it too, and a solar panel array to charge it.” He headed for the pile of boxes with the other two following. “I haven’t had time to check if they found all the stuff we hid in the woods.” He grabbed a box and headed for the truck. “I just remembered that we’re missing a lot of mechanics’ tools also and welding equipment.”
“I doubt we’ll find everything,” Chet said.
“I know. It’s just that there are a few projects I have on my mind, and I will need those tools to get them done. If it works, I can build something for Mrs. MacKay’s farm too. At least you’ll have enough power to charge batteries for a ham radio and a few lights. Maybe you guys can find a steam engine to pump water with for irrigation too. Gas has about run out and is going bad fast, diesel won’t last forever either. We’ve got to start working together and planning ahead to avert a coming famine.”
Chet and the boy smiled at each other.
“Sounds like you’ve been thinking,” Chet said. “We just might pull through this if we all work together.”
The boy set a box in the truck and turned to the others as they came up behind him, each with a box in their hands. “I just hope we really have cleaned the two-legged animals out of this county for good, so we can get to work.”
“There will be more,” Nate said, “but probably in smaller groups now.”
Someone down the road yelled at them. “Hey. I think we found some more of the big farmer’s stuff.”
Nate felt a need to rush. With so much work to do before dark, and Brian waiting in the woods, not knowing if Nate was safe, he wanted to get back to the farm and Brian as soon as possible. Without a word, Nate took off on a run toward the man down the road. Chet and the boy followed, but could not keep up.
Nate stopped when he reached the man, not showing any affects from the short run.
The boy ran up to Nate, huffing.
Chet slowed to a jog halfway to them. He had to catch his breath before speaking. “You must be…younger…than you look.”
Nate looked the items over, not brothering to look up before speaking. “Been working hard on my farm all my life. The last months have either gotten me into better shape, or taken years off my life. I don’t know which.”
“Yeah, I would guess that’s true.” Chet looked the items over. “Any of this stuff yours?”
“That gas welder and those tools.” Nate pointed. The regulator on the torch had been damaged, but Nate hoped he could repair it. “Those store-bought canned goods aren’t mine.”
The man who had yelled for them to come over started putting the canned goods in a nearby pickup.
Nate spoke again. “That ammo reloading stuff is mine.”
“Okay.” Chet hesitated and scratched his whiskered chin. He had not shaved in days. “How are you as far as ammo goes? We’re running low.”
“Might be able to spare some,” Nate answered. “I need to get this stuff to my farm before dark and get back to my son. He’s worried, I’m sure.”
“Yeah, okay.” Chet looked at the boy. “We’ll get more men on this.”
The boy took off down the road to gather up a larger work crew.
Chet pressed again. “We really could use some ammo.”
Nate stopped looking over a box of gun powder and primers and stood. “We need to work out code names for each other so anyone listening in will not know who or where we are when we’re on the radio. Maybe call Mrs. MacKay’s place “Big Pine” and Red Oak Farm “Big Oak,” and my place “Little Hickory.”
Chet nodded. “Okay.”
“If my radio is still there and working, I’ll call you in a few days. We’ll work out our plans then. Sometime before, I will see about how much ammo I can spare. We’re going to be busy though, so it might be four or five days.”
“Sounds good.”
The boy drove up in a two-ton flatbed truck with a dozen men riding on the back. They piled off, and everyone went to work loading Nate’s property.
Just as they finished, Austin and his daughter drove up in the other truck with Nate’s property loaded in the back. “We found some clothes that are probably yours. Some of it was kids’ stuff. We threw it on with the rest.” He looked out of the right side window past his daughter. “You guys ready to head for the farm?”
Nate climbed on the flatbed truck. He wanted to get back to Brian.
“Let’s go.” Chet got behind the wheel of the other truck and waited for Austin to get turned around and head for Nate’s driveway.
~~~~<
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Still hiding in the woods and watching the farm, Brian heard the trucks coming. He kept his carbine ready, gripping it with sweaty hands. When he saw his father riding in the back of the rear truck, he started to breathe again.
They stopped in front of Nate’s barn and began to unload, carrying boxes inside.
Nate signaled for Brian to come to him, then grabbed a box and carried it in the barn.
Minutes later, Brian walked up to Nate, his face a question mark.
“Everything’s okay,” Nate told him. “Help us get our stuff in the barn so they can be on their way.”
“No trouble at all?” Brian asked, as he slung the carbine on his left shoulder.
Nate grabbed a box of canned tomato sauce out of the pickup and handed it to Brian. “No. We’re already starting to form a mutual defense agreement. I think we can trust them.”
They both picked up speed and tried to outwork the others, carrying more boxes into the barn than anyone else. With so many hands at work, it did not take long to unload the trucks.
“If we find anything else we think is yours, we’ll put it in the barn before we go,” Chet promised.
“Thanks.” Nate shook his hand. “I’ll try to get the radio up five days from now.” At least we can see how our communication is going to work out. “The first contact won’t be much, as I doubt I’ll have any news for you. We’ll talk about the ammo situation on the second contact. I won’t have much time until then.”
“Yeah, you have your work cut out for you.” Chet rubbed his sore back. “I take it you’ll not be moving back in your farm house then.”
“No.” Nate looked him in the eye. “And we will not be revealing our retreat’s location either. The next time we meet, it will either be here or someplace else, but not our retreat. The whole idea is to keep it secret to anyone outside our group, even to friends.”
Chet smiled. “I understand.”
Everyone said their goodbyes. Renee made Brian uncomfortable when she offered her hand. He took it, not looking directly at her.
“I’m glad we’re going to be friends,” she said.
“Uh, yeah. It’s better than killing each other.” Brian looked down.
She laughed. “Yes, isn’t it?”
Chapter 4
Nate woke just after sunrise. He grimaced as he sat up. His sleeping bag gave little comfort between him and the hard concrete floor of the bunker, and he longed for a real bed. The fact Mel had to carry every eighty-pound sack of dry concrete to the site on his back and then mix it with creek water by hand and pour it himself, meant the floor turned out none too smooth. There were rocks poking out of its surface, ready to dig into anyone’s back while they slept. Nate felt he would be more comfortable sleeping outside on the much softer dirt. Every muscle ached when he did not move and screamed when he did.
Brian and Nate had come in with the last load four hours after dark, dead tired. Days of carrying heavy packs down to the river and then loading it all on the raft, taking many trips upriver with a load, pushing against the river’s powerful flow, and then the return downstream for another load, had worn them out. They still had not gotten it all up the creek and to Mel’s bunker. They had at least one more day of hard labor ahead of them. Then they had to pack most of it to Mel’s cave, as the bunker was not large enough to hold all of it. That job would not take so long because the cave was not far away.
He saw Brian fast asleep on the floor and hated to wake him. Maybe I can set up the radio while he sleeps a little more. I’m supposed to contact Mrs. MacKay’s group today.
Cindy stood watch, looking out of a loophole, witnessing the birth of a new day, as the sun turned the woods around them from black to dark grey. The wind had picked up as soon as the sun began to rise. During the height of a gust, wind howled through the loopholes. Because of the wind, there was no possibility of fog, and the sky remained clear. However, Cindy sensed something coming, the wind foretold it. Soon the wind strengthened and the temperature dropped. The treetops swayed and the wind moaned through their branches, sounding as if the forest outside was haunted. She turned and seeing Nate had awakened, she nodded. She spoke low enough not to bother those still asleep. “You two should rest today. Mom and I can haul what’s left of the supplies from the river.”
Nate put his boots on and stood. He shrugged his shoulders. “I have to set the radio up today. Let’s hope the solar panels have charged the battery enough by now.”
Brian and he had carried the solar power equipment up from the river two days before and set it up on the bunker’s roof. Only the battery was heavy, but the panels were so large, they were difficult to get between the trees and through all of the brush without damaging them, generating considerable cussing from both father and son.
“We’re going to get some weather,” Cindy said. “No clouds yet, but something’s up.”
Nate finished tying his boots and walked to a loophole to look outside. “We’re in the last part of hurricane season, but that can’t be it. The first sign we would see is clouds scudding across the sky. No, this is something different. If it was December, I would say a strong cold front had already passed and it was about to get cold. But it’s too early for that.” He put on his load-bearing harness. “I’ll circle around and look for sign of anyone being in the area, then come back and set up the radio.”
“I’ll start breakfast when you get back.” Cindy lifted the steel bar from the door.
After Nate walked out, his rifle in hand, she put the bar back in place and quickly returned to her position at the loophole to cover Nate while he crossed the small clearing and entered the woods.
Nate had been gone five minutes when Martha woke. She carefully moved away from Synthia, who was sleeping on her right side, Tommy her left. After covering them with a blanket to ward off the growing chill, she stood next to her daughter and looked out of the loophole. “It’s almost chilly.” She had her arms crossed for warmth. “The humidity has dropped also.”
“You should be sleeping,” Cindy said. “You just got off security duty two hours ago.”
Martha did not respond. She looked out at the thrashing woods and swaying trees and shivered. “Listen to that wind. Makes the woods come alive with motion and sound.” She turned her attention to her daughter and touched Cindy’s face with the palm of her left hand. “We’ve been through it lately, haven’t we? I miss your father.”
Cindy’s eyes filled.
“But we’ll make it. We’ve got good friends in Nate and Brian.”
Cindy put the rifle down and held her mother. “Nate says it seems like we can trust the others.” She sighed wearily. “It’s about time. I was starting to think all of the decent people died in the plague.”
“I can’t say most people are saints, but most are not as bad as the kind we’ve had to deal with lately. To be honest, I think the worst is over as far as killing is concerned.”
A sound from deep in the woods, upwind and carried by a gust, prompted Cindy to let go of her mother and snatch up the carbine. Another gunshot, just recognizable as such, came to their ears, dull and weak, but it was definitely a second gunshot.
They stood, listening in silence.
Cindy looked up at her mother. “Nate is out there.”
“It seemed to come from down in the river valley, far away.” Martha shivered. “Where did he say he was going?”
“Just to look around and see if anyone had been in the area. He shouldn’t be far, and he was not going all the way to the river.” Cindy searched the wind-tossed woods. “There might be more of those raiders around though. The soldiers could not have killed them all.”
A noise from behind caused them to turn.
Brian had awakened and was stuffing his right foot into a worn-out boot. “I guess you were going to wake me sometime next week.” He jumped up from the floor and headed for his rifle. “After you were tired of standing there talking about him being out there alone, that is.”
&nb
sp; “Your father would want you to stay here,” Martha said. “Those gunshots were nowhere near where he is.”
Cindy spoke up. “Nate’s coming in.”
Brian ran to the door and lifted the steel bar off its hooks with one hand; his rifle was in the other.
Nate stepped in and saw the look on everyone’s face. “Well, I guess you heard the gunshots.”
“Two of them,” Martha said.
Nate waited until Brian put the bar back across the door. “I heard three.”
Brian looked up at his father. “Someone may have found our cache. They could be loading it back on the raft to take downriver right now.”
“I doubt the shooting was in celebration of their find,” Nate said.
Brian rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. The gunshots tell us someone is down by the river, though.”
“Could be a hunter.” Nate took his load-bearing harness off. “Could be someone just got murdered. Either way, I’m setting the radio up and contacting Chet…if I can.”
“Then what?” Brian still had his rifle in his hands.
“Eat breakfast.” Nate looked around the room for a place to set up the radio.
“Well, I think we should get the rest of our stuff up here before it gets stolen again.” Brian waited for his father to answer, but Nate was already gathering tools for the job at hand. “I guess you don’t care what I think.”
Nate moved items from a shelf to make room for the ham radio. He put pliers and screwdrivers on the shelf for later use. “Come on. Help me get the antenna up.”
Cindy barred the door once they were outside.
Nate walked as he spoke over his shoulder. “I have cared about what you are thinking and feeling since the day you were born. And lately, you have been thinking more like a man than would be normal for your age, so I always listen to you. I’m in a hurry to get this radio transmitting so we can contact them like I promised. Then we’ll eat something and get down to the river as fast as we can.”
Nate let Brian throw the rock, as he was a good baseball pitcher. They tied the antenna wire to it for throwing weight, and Brian managed to put the rock between limbs high up in a pine tree. Nate let the rock slide down a few feet and then tied the wire around the tree’s trunk, up as high as he could reach to keep it above everyone’s head, before stretching it to the nearest bunker loophole fifty feet away.
