Bittersweet Homecoming; Surviving the Black--Book 3 of a Post-Apocalyptical Series

by Zack Finley

  Five or six loud and boisterous men sat or stood around a roaring fire. Their tone and loud laughter suggested they were the moonshine customers. Each man carried either an AK47 or an AR15-style automatic weapon. The muzzles of their rifles danced around, making me want to hit the dirt as they swung around erratically. I expected them to shoot one another at any moment. The poor muzzle discipline did not concern them.

  These good-ole-boys behaved like they lived at the top of the local food chain. A hodgepodge of campers, trailers, and RVs parked haphazardly around the central area, strategically close to the hand-powered water pump. No pong of pigs here, just the unpleasant stink of human waste. Three small pickups sat at the edge of the track pointed toward the road. The cleaner windshields suggested more recent use than the other vehicles parked in the campground.

  We didn't spot any guards. Either they didn't need them, or the yahoos at the fire fulfilled that function.

  The camps here and at the lake looked well established, not something built in the past few days. That sense of permanence confirmed that Andy's group was not here. Ben and I withdrew, pulling back to the place we stashed the ninjas.

  We touched base with the rest of our team. Tom was still interrogating the prisoners on board the Cumberland. Craig woke up and wanted out of the stretcher. The rest of the Cumberland group hauled the captured materials on board. Mike and Razor stashed the stolen pickup and just started on their way back. No surprises.

  By mutual consent, Ben and I returned to the paved section of Storm Creek Road, leading toward Helena. This road showed our roadmap. We didn't intend to enter Helena, but curiosity sent us this way to check for signs of Andy's group. Our tires made only the faintest crunch on the paved road over the Storm Creek dam.

  A small cluster of travel trailers parked near the dam in the parking lot for the boat ramp. A thermal scan showed a hot bed of coals in a firepit. Two small boats rested part in and out of the water. Several boat trailers looked abandoned near the water's edge. More five-gallon buckets and some camp chairs completed the camp decor. We rode by unobserved.

  Gates blocked the next two turnoffs. Those roads led toward the lake and looked abandoned. The signs proclaimed them the property of the forest service.

  After about two miles, we came around a bend to see two home sites, on opposite sides of the road both burned to the ground. The fires happened days or weeks before. Long enough, the ashes felt as cold as the surroundings. The fires spread a short distance into the surrounding woodland but then died out. The home sites were two distinct fires, too far apart to be casualties of the same mishap. Someone torched them, but not recently.

  Within the next half mile, we spotted three similar residues. Not wishing to enter Helena quite yet, we turned around, deciding to complete the circuit north of our base.

  A check in from Razor yielded a mild surprise. Razor and Mike continued making the river circuit. After stashing the pickup, they followed a series of farm tracks. The original road paralleling the Mississippi River they started on ended at a large field. They guessed the current farm track would lead to another road or at least a farmhouse.

  To their surprise, they emerged from the fields onto Big Spring Road, which they didn't realize until they spotted a hand-lettered road sign.

  Big Spring Road and Storm Creek Road appeared to be the two primary thoroughfares for the area.

  Ben apprised them of the four-way intersection we drove through to reach Storm Creek Road. Razor confirmed they would finish their loop by taking the other side of the intersection, toward the river.

  Ben and I turned around and rode back on Storm Creek Road, creeping past the boat ramp and day-use area. When the pavement ended, we walked our bikes at the edge of the road to avoid attracting attention from the group still partying at the campground. Once past them, we mounted up and continued our reconnaissance, still riding single file on the now gravel road.

  The road followed a ridge hundreds of feet above the river level. The trees were bigger, and during daylight, the river views, if we could see past the trees, should be startling. Evergreen trees now joined the hardwoods. The road lacked the ruts and major potholes of the other gravel roads driven tonight.

  The road leveled off on a ridge several hundred feet above the river. After passing a designated lookout point about a mile north of the campground, we began encountering the familiar abandoned vehicles. We now wove in and out between abandoned cars and trucks. Not a squeeze for our ninjas but difficult going for a car. Most pointed north away from Helena. As we came to expect, personal possessions jammed their interiors. I guessed all sat for at least a month based on their coating of streaky dust.

  Ben and I passed more gated roads, again with their locked gates still untouched. The road remained in excellent shape for a gravel road.

  When we reached the first ungated turnoff, we consulted our compass and the framework of our old map. I wanted to return to where we first got on Big Spring Road if only to check on other potential threats to our base. This new road led east. While it was in worse condition than Storm Creek Road, it was better than most of the roads we encountered today. If it continued east to the St. Francis River, it would cross Big Spring Road.

  Turning east, the road descended. Within a half mile, we returned to near river level, once again surrounded by thick young hardwoods. No more evergreens.

  We narrowly avoided crashing into an old truck wedged across the road on a blind corner. Someone jammed the truck into place using a tractor, based on the chewed-up roadbed on the other side. We hauled our ninjas through the woods to pass, silently cursing the whole way, every time a branch slapped me across the face.

  The roadblock put us on high alert. Not far past the roadblock, a driveway peeled off to our right. We hugged the left side of the road to sneak by. We spotted a building on the driveway with smoke rising from the chimney but no obvious threats. We rolled silently by.

  The cluster of buildings where our road T-boned into another posed a more significant threat. No dogs barked, and everyone seemed snug inside their homes with fires in their fireplaces. We kept away from the buildings and raised no alarm. We turned right, believing we found Big Spring Road. Movement in the field on the river side of the road gave us a start until we realized the protagonist was a herd of goats. The goats clung together when they spotted us but remained silent.

  The new road led past a series of compounds. Only a few appeared abandoned, most had plumes of smoke rising from at least one building.

  The lack of a roadblock surprised us. Of course, this road was mainly slippery mud and dried mud with occasional hints of gravel and deep potholes. From all indications, rainy weather even gave four-wheel-drive vehicles trouble. Several deep ruts and impassable chewed-up areas suggested some people took their chances, and the road paid the price.

  We passed a primitive boat ramp on the St. Francis River. No signs of people nearby but it provided great river access. The higher population in this area confirmed our earlier reluctance to send the patrol boat upriver to explore this area. No need to alarm the natives. I doubted these people posed any real threat to us.

  We tamped down the desire to rush back to our base. The road was in such poor condition, we traveled at a crawl to avoid a tumble.

  Tonight's whole journey was only a few miles long, but it took more than four hours for us to return to the Cumberland. Razor and Mike pulled in only a few minutes behind us.

  We eagerly waited to hear what Tom learned from our

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 2

  More than three months ago, a solar coronal mass ejection (CME) destroyed the electrical grid around the globe. Although plenty of global analysts warned governments and power companies how to prevent such a catastrophic failure, no one spent the money needed. They just wished it away. The fried transformers and transmission lines meant the grid couldn't come back, even after the sun's ejecta passed Earth by.

  If this CME hit in the 1950s, th
e power grid would have collapsed, but with fewer consequences. In the early 1950s, Americans still remembered life before electricity. Farmers still grew food for local consumers. Mechanized farming didn't mean industrialized, yet. People canned and stored food for the winter.

  Interstates and cross-country trucking were in their infancy. Local stores never heard of "just-in-time" delivery choosing instead to stock essential supplies their communities needed to grow and prosper for much of the year.

  Incrementally over time, America's entire support structure became more and more codependent.

  When the power grid crashed in October 2018, it triggered a cascading series of failures with catastrophic consequences. Oil refineries, natural gas compressors, communications, hospitals, everything, crashed. Once supplemental generators ran out of fuel, most of America and the rest of the industrialized world went belly up. The world had only a few hours to prepare, long enough to empty the corner grocery stores.

  While there was sufficient food to feed our population, it was stuck in distribution centers, in silos, in manufacturing plants, aboard fleets of trucks, rail cars, and boats. Once the power died, we lost our ability to get food to where people needed it.

  Some refused to let government or industry shortsightedness determine the fate of their families. Before the CME, much of Mecklin County Tennessee thought my family was a bunch of crazy preppers. My family preferred to be known as survivalists. Four generations of Breckinridges stockpiled resources, worked, and planned for the unthinkable. We recruited like-minded allies to live in our remote corner of northeastern Tennessee. All of us gathered resources, learned ancient skills, and prepared to keep our families alive if the shit hit the fan. We expected to live and work in isolation until the rest of the world stabilized.

  My great-great-great-granddaddy homesteaded Breckinridge Valley on the banks of the Mecklin River long before Tennessee became a state. My forebears were farmers, ranchers, hunters, and trappers who raised families and persevered on the rocky dirt-poor Cumberland Plateau. Farmers seldom get rich, and my family was no exception, until my grandpa Gerald developed his prime money-making business, bootlegging.

  Generations of Breckinridges supplemented their farm income by making moonshine, but my grandpa transformed it into a thriving, although illegal, business. My parents Claire and Aaron turned my grandpa's grubstake into a fortune with savvy investments. Unlike many earning dot com fortunes, they invested in gathering people and gear to prepare for an uncertain future. Not Wall Street.

  My wife Irene died suddenly a year ago, from an aneurysm. My girls 13-year-old Jennifer, and 10-year-old Melissa needed me more than the Army did.

  I left my career with the Army Rangers and returned to my Breckinridge roots to care for my girls. My mom and dad gifted me the freedom to immerse myself in the long-term needs of Breckinridge Valley. Protecting our Valley became my obsession. I threw myself into it with an irrational single-mindedness of purpose. It helped me heal and come to grips with my loss.

  We modernized Valley weaponry and defenses. Many Rangers struggled to adjust to civilian life after years of war. Knowing that I reached out to hundreds of civilian Rangers, offering them a place to start over and build a new life. At the time of the CME, 20 Rangers moved to Mecklin County. Some started new businesses, some worked on the farm or in businesses around the area, and others went to school.

  This was no handout. Those who came promised to help me modernize the Valley defenses and prepare. My dad did something similar when he returned from the Vietnam War. My grandpa and then my parents preferred to invest in people, not corporations.

  I hoped to gather more Rangers to the area, but the CME came before I was ready. My family may be preppers, but I never believed the shit would really hit the fan.

  Andy, the man we came all this way to rescue, was family. His dad, Roger, served in Vietnam with my dad. Roger and his wife Carmine settled in Breckinridge Valley before I was born. Their sons Andy and Jules were like brothers to me. Andy had three kids, including an infant, when the CME hit.

  Jules, an astrophysicist in Berkeley, gave Breckinridge Valley a two-day warning about the CME. This allowed us to buy a lot of last-minute gear and gather most of our family and allies before the rest of the world learned of the impending crash.

  Instead of coming to Breckinridge Valley when he got the warning, Andy and his allies retreated to their prepared bug out location in the remote mountains of Arizona.

  Since the CME struck, Roger and Carmine fretted about Jules, Andy, and their grandchildren, according to my mom. They remained stoic despite their private hell throwing themselves into their jobs. The couple never shared their angst. Whenever the topic surfaced, Roger spoke confidently about Andy's great survival skills, and the two-day head start Jules gave us all over the rest of the country.

  The radio contact that initiated this rescue was too short to convey much information. We learned Andy, and a group of people, including wounded and children, needed a rescue from Helena, Arkansas. Nothing about what went wrong. Andy would never call for a rescue if he had any other option. His journey from Arizona to Helena would have reinforced the dangers of travel in a post-apocalyptic America. He knew we risked our lives coming to his aid. He called, so we came.

  Now, where was he?

  Waiting for Tom to finish his interrogation, the rest of us compared notes and updated our primitive area map. Razor and Mike filled in the southern part of the map. They stopped short of venturing into Helena. Our recon gave us a solid picture of the area even if it brought us no closer to finding Andy.

  The most disturbing thing Mike reported was a camp on a small lake at the end of Horner Neck Road. It was south of the road linking Storm Creek Camp with the moonshine operation. Someone shot up and partially burned a cluster of three travel trailers parked there. Our scouts didn't search for bodies, but the smell of decomposition hung heavy over the area.

  "The fires weren't recent," Mike said. "Just from the look and other evidence, at least a month ago. I doubt it had anything to do with Andy's group."

  "Someone took the tow vehicles," Razor added. "Don't know if it was the survivors or the attackers. My bet is on the attackers. They were trigger happy. They either had a lot of ammo or no trigger discipline. Or both."

  This might sound like the drunks at the Storm Creek camp, but they didn't have a monopoly on death and destruction.

  With everyone back on the Cumberland, Craig demanded we release him from the stretcher.

  I squatted beside him. "No one is going to do anything unless Tom agrees, so you might as well rest. You lost a lot of blood, but unless you rip your stitches open doing something dumb, you will heal with no restrictions in a few days. No matter what, you won't be walking around for several days, so chill. At least in the galley, you can hear everything that is going on. Once Tom lets you up, you'll be stuck in a bunk."

  "Okay, but I need to pee," Craig said. "Then I'll settle down."

  I helped him do the necessary, while the rest of the team carefully avoided looking our way.

  Allie relieved Kurt on the deck while the rest of us waited for Tom. We swapped out batteries from the charger and brewed up some instant coffee they found in our captives' trailer. Ben dragged our ninjas on the deck to charge them. The rest of the guys settled in to rest.

  I went out on the deck, too wound up to sleep. The need to find Andy was driving me. Even though I wanted to interrupt Tom, to cut his interviews short, I realized that was a shortsighted choice. Tom knew we returned and he wouldn't still be interrogating them unless he felt they had valuable intel he could pull from them. He was our most sympathetic interrogator, building rapport, and coaxing information from the subject was his forte.

  Razor was our scariest interrogator, but Tom got the better intel but only if we had the time. Tom sometimes used Razor to frighten a subject into cooperating with him. Or else. Razor scared subjects into answering. I sometimes wondered how far he would go. Razor ne
ver crossed the line as far as I knew. Though we would all cross any line to save one of our team.

  "Any problems getting here?" I asked Allie.

  "No, we didn't see a soul. The Cumberland handles sluggishly with the Jersey Girl alongside, but you get used to it. Craig woke up when we pulled up at the point and has been fractious ever since," Allie said.

  "Fractious is an apt descriptor," I said. "Craig is going to want his rifle. If someone attacks the boat, he will help you defend it. We need to put him somewhere he won't bust his stitches trying."

  "I'll talk with Tom after he's done briefing us on his findings," Allie said. "I confess having Craig able to help me defend this rig will ease my mind."

  "How is Kurt working out?" I asked.

  "He's great. Eager to learn and to help. Tom gave him a rifle and had him shoot a few rounds after you left. I trust him. I wondered if he'd run away the first chance he got, but he seems committed to the team," Allie said. "He is still physically weak, he doesn't want anyone to notice, but he gets winded easily. That forces him to work slower than he wants since he stops to catch his breath a lot."