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

by Zack Finley

  I leaned against the wall next to Craig. He wore wearing a clean pair of pants. I could see the lump of a bandage underneath. But this was progress, especially if we were going to hit the road today. Despite the progress, his leg stretched out on the bench.

  "Did you get your shower?" I asked.

  "I sure did," Craig answered. "Tom replaced the dressings. He wants to leave the stitches in for two more days at least. Did you know it was February 8?"

  I counted on my fingers and said, "Yes, and no. My watch says so, but it feels like we left the Valley more than a month ago. How does the leg feel? We'll probably be switching to cars and trucks today, should we make sure you can stretch out?"

  "I'm not going to be laying face down on top of the wheelhouses for a few more days, but I can bend my leg. I've got some ace bandages to use if I need to walk around very much," Craig said.

  "We may put you inside with the kids, but we'll play that by ear," I said, dropping the topic for now.

  "Allie to Jeremy, we aren't getting past this bridge," Allie radioed.

  "I'll let everyone know. Come on in, we'll need to move the boats so we can unload. We'll wait for you to handle that," I radioed.

  "Well get your stuff together, looks like we start the trek home from here," I said to Craig, pushing myself off the wall. "I'd better tell Grady the good news."

  "I don't think he's going to be surprised," Craig said, waving toward where Grady and his bunch were reviewing the map.

  Grady wasn't surprised. We agreed to send out two ninja groups, each with a trailer carrying gas, a battery, and jumper cables. We'd double up riders, so they'd have two extra drivers for the salvaged vehicles. Then rinse and repeat. The rest of us would empty the boats of all our food and other stuff and prepare to leave. At least it wasn't raining or snowing.

  While we waited for Allie to return, I sent a recon team out on the dive boat. I wanted them to check the nearby facilities for salvage. Containers for storing water or gasoline were high on my salvage list. I hoped the place had a forklift or cherry picker; this would make it easier to take the barrels of gas with us. We had about two hundred gallons of gas on board the Jersey Girl, potentially enough to get everyone back to Huntsville without needing a refill. But only if we could bring it with us. Some would fill the vehicles we found, but I didn't want to leave any behind.

  If the silos held soybeans, that might add some variety to our diet, and more protein. They weren't a quick meal, taking as long as dried corn to cook.

  I sat with Grady, and we discussed our preparations. Pots boiled on all the stoves, and the last of the laundry was drying. People split things into must-bring and bring-if-room piles. Weapons, ammo, the clothes we were wearing, minimal bedding, tarps, water, pre-cooked corn, two large pots, a few utensils and tools, rocket stoves, and other foods and fuel were in the must-bring category. Grady hoped to bring the rest of the corn and a bit more bedding, too.

  I was looking at the cables and ropes for clearing roads. I feared we would miss our winches, but we found two come-alongs on the Cumberland. With the jacks and snatch blocks we brought from our abandoned trucks, we had nearly the same capability, especially with the increased manpower.

  I worried more about ways to feed and water everyone. We could make rocket stoves if we could find some bricks. I made a mental note to bring the rope axes, we might need to gather more wood for less efficient fires.

  I hoped to find a school bus nearby. A school bus and two pickups would be a perfect way to carry everyone and all our gear. Those not driving would have room to sleep. We could then keep five ninjas running and still maintain radio contact with everyone. I mentioned this to Grady, and he wondered where we'd get the diesel for a bus.

  "Both the Jersey Girl and the Cumberland still have a lot of diesel on board. A bus should make it to Huntsville on one tank, so we might not need a refill, but why risk it? The Mecklin County school buses had 60-gallon tanks. If we fill it up and take 10 gallons of diesel with us; we should make Huntsville easily," I said.

  "Sounds positive," Grady said. "With that kind of rig, we can drive night and day if needed."

  "Joel will have to rig up charging stations for the ninjas, but we probably want to do that anyway. We probably won't get on the road until late afternoon," I said, adding up all the things we needed to do to get ready.

  "We will leave when we are ready, no need to rush it. How long did it take to get from Huntsville to Hickman?"

  "About four days," I said. "We stopped three times to rest during the days but drove every night and one full day to get there. It then took one night to fix up the boat. We left Hickman the morning of February 2.

  "One hundred miles a day is a lot in the current environment," Grady says. "If we can do half that I'll be thrilled. Can you put a bus on the ferry at Danville?"

  "I'm pretty sure. It doesn't really weigh much more than two full-sized pickups. We just need to find one," I said.

  Our crew numbered 27 adults and seven kids. We could sleep in the truck cabs and the bus, so we wouldn't have to waste time putting up shelters. I had my mind set on a school bus, I just hoped we didn't have to settle for a less desirable option.

  The complexity of moving this many people across an unfamiliar landscape was mind-boggling. Just dealing with food and water on a journey of this type was tough enough. When you considered security, the potential problems were too numerous to address. My respect for Andy and his crew rose with each passing moment.

  Allie returned to move our towboats. The location she chose was immediately downstream of the parked barges. She planned to ram the front of the two towboats into the shore. The Cumberland’s winches would secure the bow to the conveyor tower on the port side and a large tree off the starboard side. In case that wasn’t enough, she planned to tie the stern of the boat off to a barge. It worked for me.

  She sent someone with a radio to each location before we moved. The Cumberland pulled away from the barge stack, made a loop and rumbled toward the bank. Allie warned everyone to secure all hot liquids and hang on before we started.

  The crunching collision with the bank jolted through both boats. I'd braced myself but nearly tumbled to the deck anyway. Once the lines winched taut, the throbbing engines stopped. As always, the sudden absence of their noise and vibration unnerved me.

  "Congratulations on another fine docking," I said to Allie. "One more ferry boat adventure to go and I hope that will conclude our maritime excursions for this trip."

  "Thanks, I never expected to handle a behemoth like this. Not even sure how I got the confidence to try," Allie said.

  "Without you, we wouldn't have attempted it," I said. "Taking the Cumberland was a major upgrade in both comfort and safety. Not very quick but it was faster than walking,"

  We both left for the galley to see how they had fared.

  The sounds of crying children greeted us. A few bruises but no blood and no serious injuries. The adults comforted the children, most were more afraid than injured. Craig had Andy's Kathleen in his arms trying to distract her. I knew how good he was with kids and left him to it. Allie picked up the other toddler, and in a few minutes the cacophony died down to a few sniffles and hiccups,

  Juanita already had the stove cranked back up and pots back on top. Our scavenging crew found plenty of soybeans but not much else. An above ground diesel tank was empty but no sign of anything it might have fueled. The crew filled some five-gallon pails with soybeans and brought them aboard for Juanita to try.

  Juanita wanted to fill all of our five-gallon pails with boiled beans or corn. Both soybeans and corn needed soak time, and she felt letting them steep while we traveled would shorten the final cooking time by a lot. She just didn't know by how much. She also had no idea how much the beans expanded when hydrated. She wanted to experiment as much as possible before we left.

  Grady and I both gave her carte blanche to grab any helper she needed.

  We sent out the first salvagers to sear
ch I-155 for suitable rides. The bridge was bumper-to-bumper vehicles stuck since the first days following the CME. Every vehicle, on both sides of the median, pointed toward Missouri.

  Mike and Joel led that salvage operation. They avoided the miles of bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks stuck on the freeway. Our best pickings would be before that pileup. Freeing up a vehicle pinned in that mess was possible, but time-consuming. No reason to deal with the tangled mess, if by driving another mile we could salvage one from the side of the road.

  Each salvage crew took four people, two radios, two ninjas, one ninja trailer with gas, a charged battery, basic tools, and jumper cables, plus weapons and ammo. My two guys brought their car break-in tools. I suspected Grady's men had their own sets.

  Kurt and Allie parked the four remaining ninjas on shore, each with a full charge. They were ready to send out or load up.

  Craig and Ben came ashore. They moved carefully, but it was good to see them looking nearly normal.

  Ben juiced up the two rocket stoves to heat even more pots of water. Kurt handled the full buckets to prevent Ben from tweaking his ribs. Juanita came out to look at the rocket stoves and seemed impressed with their heat output. Our stoves generated a lot of directed heat with very little fuel.

  Craig wrapped the M240b and extra rifles in wool blankets. A flexi-wrap on his leg and a slight limp the only external sign of his injury. Kurt stacked the ammo cans and rucks of magazines and mixed cartridges on the ground beside Craig.

  The soybean scavengers went back to fill cardboard boxes with more soybeans. They stacked the bean-filled boxes near the source, ready for loading into our new rides.

  A white pickup truck was the first salvaged vehicle to arrive, with Joel riding escort on his ninja. The truck had a crew cab, and the engine sounded fine. It was stuffed full of someone’s treasures. The rain and weather were not kind to whatever was stored in the truck bed. It was now a sodden mass.

  Joel jumped into action, fetching his wire harnesses to set up two ninja charging stations in the back. Jimmy, Grady's mechanic, began removing bulbs from courtesy lights and disconnecting brake lights. We didn't want any accidental lights or beeps to give us away. They both must have planned this out because Jimmy had all the gear set up by the time Joel started working. I noticed Joel was using the truck's trailer harness to tie into the two ninja feeds.

  Two men opened all four doors and began pulling the stored material out into stacks on the side of the road.

  They set aside anything they thought might be useful for our group, including several still-sealed gallon jugs of water. They emptied several large plastic containers and sent the empty containers to Juanita for loading with our supplies.

  Some of Grady's group found clothing and shoes in the stacks they felt was better than their own.

  While Joel worked on the wiring, the rest of us carried fuel containers to the truck.

  Craig wrapped his stack of weapons in a tarp and put them near the tailgate, with the ammo stacked beside them. He wanted them accessible, not stuffed away in a difficult location.

  By the time the second pickup arrived, Joel and Jimmy were ready to start on it. The four remaining scouts were still hunting for a school bus or something that could hold most everyone.

  After searching the area closer in, the salvagers expanded their search along the interstate intending to stop before reaching Dyersburg.

  Concerned with the delay, we sent a second group on ninjas to scout north along TN-181. Even if they didn't find a bus, we planned to leave that way.

  Within an hour the salvagers radioed they were returning from Dyersburg without finding anything appropriate. Allie had a plan for that. She sent them to scope out the small town of Lenox. It was on the TN-182 exit off the freeway, about 7 miles from our location.

  With our two pickups, we could now mount a substantial response force if any of our scouts got into trouble. A steady stream of workers filled the trucks' gas tanks and then filled all the available gas containers. The operation emptied two fuel barrels.

  That allowed us to place the two empty barrels in the bed of truck number two. Joel was set up to fill them both. The only thing left to determine was diesel or gasoline? Diesel from the Cumberland or with gasoline from the two barrels left on the Jersey Girl’s deck.

  One of the last things on our list was relocating our radio rebroadcast unit from the Cumberland into one of the vehicles. The shorter antenna would reduce the transmit radius, but we didn't know how far. We wouldn't move it until all our scouts returned to the nest.

  "We have a church bus," Mike radioed. "It's the size of a school bus but white instead of yellow. We are going to give it a try, but we may need Joel's magic hands."

  Joel and a fully armed crew took off to intercept Mike's team. Even if Mike got the bus started, having enough people to discourage unwanted attention wouldn’t hurt.

  I told Jimmy to begin transferring the diesel from the Jersey Girl tanks into one of the empty fuel barrels. I had full confidence Joel would get the bus started. I forgot many Tennessee churches had their own fleet of buses.

  I discussed acquiring a third pickup with Grady. We had plenty of gas to fill it now. We could always abandon it if gas became an issue. Unlike buses, there were a lot of pickups abandoned on the highways to choose from.

  "Let's do it," Grady said.

  We sent a team with the first pickup to acquire a new ride on the interstate.

  "Returning to base with a ride for the kiddies," Mike radioed. "We'll pick up Joel on the way."

  The scouts who went north had yet to report. They took Allie's cell phone with the picture of the map showing the route she planned for us to take to avoid all the little towns. She was especially concerned about the Obion River and the extensive wild area all along it.

  The main alternative was to cross the river on the interstate, exit at Lenox, and then proceed in an easterly direction. The alternate route would pin us south of the Obion River and had more towns to pass through. But it was shorter.

  With Mike verifying the route through Lenox was clear, Allie recalled the northern scouts, choosing the Lenox route instead.

  The church bus and the new pickup truck arrived at the boats within minutes of each other. The truck had a camper shell, one of the features the salvagers looked for. We planned to store most of the raw corn and soybeans in it.

  Fuel, water, ammo, and the rest of the food would be dispersed. We didn’t want the loss of one truck to cripple us.

  Emptying the new truck took longer than anticipated due to the array of worthwhile salvage inside. The treasure trove of canned goods, water, and camping gear, which included tarps, a large camp stove with fuel, lanterns, and nested aluminum pans, topped the list.

  Joanne took charge of the bedding and a collection of rugged clothing, tee shirts, long johns, and thick socks. Juanita claimed the bulk sized toilet paper package for the bus, although she designated a single roll to each pickup. She did the same for the package of handy-wipes after Tom took about half for his medic bag.

  The eager reaction to the salvage in the truck and camper shell worried me at first that people would want to keep everything. This subsided as the pile of rejected material grew. Grady's group had substantial experience with this type of operation during their prior journey. I should have had faith.

  The group stacked boxes and containers of dried soybeans and corn deep with the camper shell. Closer to the tailgate, they placed the steaming containers of steeping corn and beans. At Juanita's direction, her helpers stored the fully prepared blocks of cooked corn, and the salvaged canned food closest to the tailgate.

  Camping supplies were stored near the tailgates with the chainsaw and other tools buried much farther back. Craig shifted his guns and ammo to this truck, protected from the weather.

  Joel charged the church bus's battery using an extension cord from the Cumberland. He filled the bus diesel tank from the Jersey Girl. We transferred nearly a full barrel o
f gasoline to fill the new pickup's dual gas tanks. This emptied the last barrel on the Jersey Girl. I hated to leave the two empty barrels behind. I was not the only one. Eager volunteers put the empties in one of the trucks. Joel assigned one of the new people to fill one with diesel. We left the last one empty.

  All the extra clothing and bedding went into the bus. Juanita and Lois took charge of this, making comfortable nests for the children. The benches were a bit short for adults to sleep on but would work if you were tired.

  After the last scout returned, Joel moved our radio rebroadcast unit into the bus. We planned to test it on the road to see how far it worked in this new configuration. Kurt kept busy topping off the charge for the returning ninjas. Jimmy light and soundproofed the church bus and new pickup, while the rest of us finished loading up.

  In less time than I expected, we were ready to go. Allie marked our preliminary route and briefed the scouts. Joel returned to the boats to shut off the generators just as the scouts took off.