Winter Kill - War With China Has Already Begun

by Gene Skellig

  The second effect was to start the dogs barking. They were tied to a tree near three of Walker’s men who were sitting by the fire pit warming themselves and having coffee. Walker had ordered that the dogs be kept away from the road so they would not alert any approaching people with their barking. Now he regretted having them so far from the ambush site.

  With Frank blocking the only path through the brush wall, Bill couldn’t go after Casey right away. It took him a minute to get his men and dogs organized for the pursuit.

  By this time Casey had managed to roll down the other side of the brush pile and run across to the other side of the road. He leapt over the guard railing on the other side and went sliding down the gravel embankment to the stump dump below. He regretted it immediately.

  Now, rather than being able to run up the road and put some distance between him and Walker, he was faced with the prospect of being exposed in the open. He would be a long way from any cover as he picked his way through the stumps.

  Recognizing that moving forward into the stump dump was a bad idea, he paused. It may have taken him only twenty seconds or so to get his breathing under control, but to Casey it seemed much longer. He expected shots to ring out from up on the road at any moment.

  But no shots came. Only the sound of dogs barking and what sounded like a man moaning in pain. Maybe Frank had gotten tangled and hurt in the branches, Casey thought. Good, that’ll buy me some time. But the dogs! That’s a bigger problem.

  Casey knew the dogs would be given his scent from the grab & go pack that Walker had taken. The dogs would lead Walker right to him. He had to get moving in a way that would confuse them. He got an idea, and started to move.

  Walker’s men extricated Frank from his predicament. Frank’s face was beet red from the blood rushing to his head and from the embarrassment of letting Boss Callaghan get away. The pain in his leg was the least of his worries. In these dangerous times, Frank knew, life was cheap. Bill Walker could quite easily throw Frank out of his gang.

  Bill did not say a thing to Frank. He just gave short, concise instructions to the other men. He had them give the dogs the scent from Boss Callaghan’s back-pack, and set the dogs after Casey with he and two men on their heels, the third man was left to help Frank.

  All of this only took a few minutes, but it was enough time for Casey to make his way along the bottom of the hillside below the road until he was adjacent to the spot where he had first been intercepted by Walker. After climbing up to peer over the railing he quietly stepped over and out onto the road. His plan was to get his scent trail mixed in with his original path. That might confuse the dogs long enough for Casey to get away.

  After reaching the ambush site, Casey skulked along the path beside the brush pile. He felt his pulse racing and his breathing seemed to be very loud. His senses were heightened by his fear as he made his way slowly along the path. He could smell wood smoke in the air from a fire not far away. That meant that he was down-wind. Good! he thought to himself.

  A commotion on the road told him that Walker and his men were just across the wood pile from him. Casey could hear the excited barking of the dogs not far off.

  When Casey reached the gap where he had first made his escape he saw that it had been trampled down quite a bit. And there was blood. Frank had been hurt after all.

  Casey froze. He could hear Frank cussing, somewhere down the path to his left, presumably near the source of the smoke. Then he heard Bill talking to his men on the road to his right. The dogs sounded like they were far off now, probably down in the stump dump following Casey’s scent.

  “Not that way, go left, to the Highway!” shouted Bill.

  “But the dogs picked something up, going to the right!” shouted someone else, a bit more distant.

  “OK, you two follow that down there, I’ll give you top cover from here on the road,” called out Bill.

  Casey understood what they were doing, and saw an opportunity. Bill would follow the road bending back to the right, so his line of sight would be cut off by the wall of brush. Casey stealthily picked his way over the blood-smeared logs and through the gap in the brush and came out on the other side. He couldn’t see anybody to the right. Casey figured that Bill would be at the ambush site soon, and the dogs would then follow the scent back up the foot-path.

  Casey quietly stepped along the road to the left, keeping to the side and trying to be silent. Once he put the first fifty meters behind him he broke into a fast jog and then a steady running pace. He had only a few minutes head start.

  Bill didn’t hear anything back on the road. His attention was fixed on the dogs now trying to climb the slippery side of the embankment back up to the road.

  “What are they doing? They can’t climb that! Make them go around!” Bill shouted.

  The dogs were really excited because they could smell Casey’s trail very well now. Casey had been sweating profusely when he climbed up the steepest part of the bank, grabbing on to slippery roots and branches. He had hoped that the dogs wouldn’t be able to climb the nearly vertical hillside and that their handlers would lose time getting them to go another way. The two men leading the dogs had to put the leads back on the two Shepherd - Rottweiler crosses, Zeus and Adolph. They had to fight with the dogs to get them to move further along the cut.

  The dogs were confused and they resisted as they were being pulled away from the scent trail. Eventually the men got Zeus and Adolph to a place where they could climb back up to the road. Once on top, the dogs ran straight at Bill.

  Bill was momentarily afraid for his life as the two lathering dogs rushed right at him. He backed away towards the guard-rail at the side of the road only to watch as the dogs suddenly stopped in the middle of the road and started circling and sniffing at the ground. Bill realized that the dogs had stopped exactly where he and Frank had first captured Boss Callaghan. Then he was pissed.

  “That son of a bitch! – He’s lead the dogs in a circle! Now they don’t know which way to go!”

  The dogs were excitedly circling one way and then the other. Bill realized that they could smell where Casey had come from as well as where he and Frank had lead Casey towards the campfire. He was certain that Casey would not head back towards town; Casey would head towards the campfire because that would throw the dogs off.

  “This way!” he yelled, and got the pursuit moving again.

  As the dogs started scrambling over the brush pile for the second time, Bill smiled in admiration. He understood what Casey had done and expected to see the dogs confused once again when they found two different scent paths to follow. This time, however, Bill anticipated that the correct path would be to the left, up the road towards the highway. He was at least ten minutes behind Casey now, maybe a bit more if Casey had been running hard.

  And Casey had been. He had run at a full tilt, or as fast as a 49-year old, heavy-set man scared out of his mind could run. He was at the short path from the end of Hillier’s Road up to the embankment of the Island Highway when he heard the dogs again. Now he had a difficult choice to make.

  Casey considered his options: Go down to the overpass, the faster route to the HOTH; go up the exposed hillside and cross the highway; or cut along the low side to the east.

  But what to do? The dogs are going to be on me shortly! Casey thought quickly as he caught his breath for a few long seconds. He knew that he was up against some very tough guys who would also be good with their rifles. All the dogs have to do is to delay me, and I’m done for! he thought bleakly.

  Dogs! That decided it for him. With his mind racing ahead of him, Casey headed off to his left. He moved east along the low side of the Island Highway. He had just fought through a mess of plastic bags and other garbage and worked his way into the culvert under the divided highway when the dogs arrived. The dogs didn’t even look down the road towards the overpass. They simply followed the fresh scent leading directly to their prey. They soon closed the distance and reached the entrance to the culve
rt, barking up a storm.

  Casey figured he was about half-way through when he twisted his neck to look back. He could hear the dogs but couldn’t see them. Beyond the circle of light at the end of the culvert, he saw wet snow falling into the darkness of the grey forest.

  He was exasperated. I’ll never make it through in time, he thought as he shuffled along. Suddenly he felt a surprising nothingness on his right and almost fell over into the void. He had been alternately bumping up against the left and right sides of the culvert as he made his way along, but now there was nothing on his right side. He stopped to figure it out.

  Recognizing what he had stumbled upon, Casey felt a wave of relief. It’s a junction! He moved his body into the smaller sized feeder-culvert that had joined the larger one he had been crawling along. It was just two feet in diameter and came slicing down into the main culvert at a steep angle.

  He struggled a few meters into the much smaller space. Once he was sure he was all the way in, Casey wormed his way over until he was on his back in the smaller culvert. He couldn’t see anything as he looked down over his shoes. He imagined that he could see the occasional flicker of light coming off the water at the bottom of the larger conduit, but he was not sure if it was real or imagined in the inky blackness.

  As he felt the sides of his new prison with his feet he reassured himself that he was all the way in and would not be visible from the end of the larger pipe. Craning his neck back to look upwards, he saw an intake grate which presumably intersected the ditch between the two sides of the divided highway. He was wet, and weak. But he was alive and just maybe invisible to the dogs. The question is, would they come into the culvert and find him?

  As the dogs started sniffing into the large drain, their handlers and Walker came around the corner and saw that the dogs appeared to have found Casey’s route. Bill ordered one of his men to climb up the embankment to get to the other end. Big Joe didn’t waste any time. Bill and the other man pushed the dogs back so that they could look inside. They saw a perfect circle about sixty meters through the darkness, like the gun-barrel view in the opening credits of a James Bond movie.

  Once their eyes adjusted to the darkness they saw light playing off water flowing through the bottom of the large tube of metal. Even with the culvert clearly empty, Bill tried to get the dogs to enter, but they refused. Possibly out of instinct or perhaps due to some bad experience entering a bear's den or a fox warren, something about this space scared the dogs. They stubbornly refused to enter. Bill tried to push Zeus in, but he spread out his front paws and resisted strenuously. Bill then tried to get Adolph to go in, and smacked him on the rump when he refused. Both animals now became despondent Walker took another good look through the culvert and saw Big Joe step into his view of the other side of the highway.

  “Stay there, we’re coming over,” hollered Bill.

  “OOOO - KAAAY!” replied Big Joe.

  “What’s wrong with the dogs?” asked Joe when the other men joined him on the high side a few minutes later.

  “They got freaked out at the culvert,” replied Bill.

  “What do you mean, ‘freaked out’?”

  “Even when we pushed, they wouldn’t go in,” said Bill.

  Good thinking, Joe sighed under his breath while rolling his eyes. “Bill, you never push a dog into something he’s afraid of. Now these guys are ruined for days.”

  The men decided they’d lost Casey. They certainly wouldn’t go looking on the Callaghan side of the highway, so they headed back to the Lodge. After several skirmishes with the Callaghans and other well-armed groups in the region, William Walker had learned not to stray from his own turf, centered on the property he had confiscated.

  “We’ll get him next time,” muttered Bill.

  Casey heard none of this. He stayed holed up, terrified and shivering until dark. When he finally crawled out three hours later he was exhausted and extremely weak. He knew he was severely hypothermic because his teeth had stopped chattering and he no longer felt much of anything. Casey knew from his survival training that he had maybe one or two hours left before he would become unconscious and then die of exposure.

  With his fingers whitened from lack of circulation, he weakly reached out to grasp hold of some roots as he crawled his way up the embankment. He felt some strength returning to his limbs when he disappeared into the forest above the highway, determined not to give in to the beckoning abyss.

  2

  DEPRESSION

  06 September: 8 Months Before NEW

  She was tired when she got home, but tonight she was more than tired. As she opened the door to her family’s home in Aurora, Colorado, 37 year old Agatha Jasmine was carrying a heavy load. With a large bag of groceries in each arm, she stumbled on the shoes and boots strewn around by her three sons.

  “Ron, I’m home! Come help me with the groceries.”

  “Hi Honey.” When Ron saw the look on her face, he knew something was terribly wrong. “What happened?”

  “I’m sorry. This is the worst day of my life!”

  “Sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water, and you can start at the beginning.” Ron took the groceries from her.

  “Thanks.” She sat down, and took a deep breath. “OK. Here it is. I was let go from the jewelry store. I don’t have a job; we have no source of income!” The tears started to flow. “And that’s not the worst of it. When I was at the Hi-Lo at the mall, the debit machine rejected both of our bank cards, so I had to use some of the rent money to buy groceries.”

  Ron knew intuitively that all the strength and perseverance that Agatha had shown these last few months was missing. The family had relied on Agatha’s income. Now even that was gone. He knew that she must be devastated.

  “Oh, honey. Don’t fret. Everything’s going to be OK.” Ron Jasmine felt like a liar. They were in debt up to their eyeballs, with no source of income. They were already two months behind on the rent and David had warned them that once they were three months behind he would have to evict them.

  “Jerry said he was so sorry, but he couldn’t even pay my final paycheck. They’re broke and the bank seized all their assets. They’ve lost everything. They’re moving back to C-Springs to live with Julie’s family.” Agatha was on the verge of breaking down. “What are we going to do, Ron?”

  After holding Agatha in his arms for a while, angry and powerless to do anything about their plight, Ron began to smile as he suddenly knew what must be done.

  “OK, my love, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to watch a movie with the boys. After that, we’ll have a family meeting.”

  “What movie?” Agatha questioned.

  Five days later, the Jasmines headed west in their Dodge Caravan. They felt excited about the adventure to come, even if they looked like a 21st century version of the “Joad” family in “The Grapes of Wrath.”

  The minivan pulled a small utility trailer filled with camping gear, a few spare tires, some jerry cans of gasoline, the family’s bicycles and Ron’s tools. On the roof-rack was a heap of suitcases and boxes strapped down and covered with a tarp. Inside the minivan were plastic containers and coolers containing as much food as the rest of their rent money could buy and the available space would allow.

  David would not be receiving any more rent from the Jasmines, but he could take what he wanted of their furniture and possessions. Agatha and Ron had sold what they could in a garage sale and left the rest for David to cover their debt.

  After watching “The Grapes of Wrath” and hearing their mother’s quiet weeping that evening, the boys understood how much trouble the family was in. They were to be homeless, and Mom and Dad had decided they would pack up everything they owned and head out west looking for a better life.

  During the family meeting, Ron had done most of the talking. Agatha had figured out his plans during the movie, and sat quietly as she listened to him lay it all out. Agatha was proud of her man as he spoke with an even voice which the
boys respectfully listened to. They were scared, Agatha could sense, but they were mature enough to understand what was going on.

  For his part, Ron was excited. He knew that there was no hope for the family to survive the global depression by just sitting around in Aurora waiting for something to save them. The past four months of fruitless job-hunting and the occasional day or two of labor he could get had shown him that so many decent men these days couldn’t even provide the essentials for their families.

  That nuclear attack in Israel last year had been a sign of things to come, Ron believed. The world was going to get very dangerous and Colorado was probably the worst place to be.

  Being homeless in Colorado in winter with no food or money would be suicidal. Not only would it be impossible to find work, but the NORAD complex would certainly be attacked if there was a war. On the Oregon coast, Ron reasoned, no matter how bad things get, there should be some place to camp out and not be at risk of being killed by the weather. He figured that with his skills as a mechanic and handyman he should be able to find a way to support his family. And the boys could also work.

  As they made their way along the northern route, taking Highway 30 through Salt Lake City and then on to Portland, they saw a few other families that looked as much like the Beverly Hillbillies as they did. They came together as a family to face the crisis, and started to feel an excitement at the prospects for adventure on the West Coast.

  As Ron drove, Agatha read the Oregon section in the AAA atlas which provided a general description of each town along with its history, economy and climate. By the time the family reached Portland, they had decided to explore some of the smaller coastal towns along Highway 101.