Renewal 8 - War Council

by Jf Perkins

  “Yeah, that’s why I’m going to use my best skill.”

  “You mean your Kirk trick?”

  “No, I mean my incredible ability to crawl through bushes. That way, they can’t see me.”

  She smiled, angry at herself for falling for the dumb joke. “No, seriously. It scares me.”

  “You mean you actually worry about me?” Terry asked.

  “Yes, I guess I do.”

  “Sally Carter cares. No wonder you’re so pissed off,” Terry said with a smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

  Chapter 8 – 4

  When I thought Dad knew how to work us hard, it was just because I hadn’t met Sally Bean yet. We were grateful to have a new place, especially one like Sally’s farm, which could keep us fed forever if we were smart. The cost was fourteen hours of nonstop work every day, starting at four in the morning, when the half dozen milk cows began to complain, and ending when we were too tired to swing a hammer on the endless afternoon construction projects.

  Sally had showed us her entire farm on that first day. She seemed to operate on the variety principle, basically ignoring all modern farming wisdom in favor of a balanced approach. She had a small number of pigs, goats, sheep, cattle in beef and milk varieties, two horses, and a mean old gray Welsh pony whose sole purpose in life was to try to knock me down. She also had a large flock of chickens, a barn full of feral cats, and a gentle mule named Jake. Inside her clearing, she worked over fifty garden beds, each with a special purpose in her elaborate scheme, and several larger plots of single crops. She called them truck gardens. The woods surrounding her home stretched from the main road we had driven to a point two hundred yards behind her house. From there, it was open pastureland to the edge of a steep valley containing a creek. The valley was wooded across to the top of a short ridge, almost a full mile from the main road.

  In other words, she had more land than anyone could handle alone. She had more than all nine of us could manage. We spent our time focused on the clearing and the thin margins of the woods where we gathered endless firewood. The main problem with being caught in a nuclear winter was that, even at the height of summer, it was still too cold to grow anything that one would grow in Tennessee. We were effectively farming in central Canada that year.

  After a long evening talking it over, Dad decided that even with Sally’s vast basement full of canned and traditionally stored food, we needed to grow something - anything we could grow, right then. The only answer was greenhouses. Sally was not a fan of greenhouses. Her ethic of being close to nature did not generally involve creating artificial climates, but in this case, she could definitely see the point. We did an inventory. Sally had a lifetime of materials stacked up in various sheds and barns. Framing would not be a problem. Glass was a possibility. There were bound to be hundreds of empty houses with windows that could be salvaged and re-tasked to greenhouse duty, but the amount of effort involved meant that we would miss the incredibly short growing season.

  We had brought a dozen rolls of clear plastic from one of our salvage trips, and they would work well enough, but Dad was worried that they sheeting would freeze and crumble before we harvested the cool weather crops we had in mind. Back to the building supply they went, Arturo and Kirk and Dad. They came back two hours later with the station wagon grinding under a stack of ribbed polycarbonate panels lashed to the roof. They had seen several people, they reported, but no one had bothered them.

  The greenhouse frame was built from well-seasoned lumber. Most of it had been drying for decades. Dad tried to select only softwoods to avoid the problem of driving nails into something like oak. They commandeered four of Sally’s raised garden beds and used them as the base for the structure. The logic was that the soil in the beds would warm from the sun faster than the soil in the ground, and then would serve to release heat for a while after the sun went down. When the frame was complete, we laboriously screwed the poly panels on the outside of the framework, and Dad found a staple gun to line the inside of the frame with the flexible plastic rolls. By using the double layers, he explained that we would generate two climate zones more heat inside than out in the open. When the first greenhouse passed Dad’s engineering standards, we did the whole thing again with the next four garden beds. Three days of work later, we had almost 2000 square feet under clear plastic.

  Of course, Dad wasn’t done yet. He used a set of rusty eye hooks and steel reinforcing rod to rope both greenhouses to the ground. He was anticipating months of wind. Then, with some more rummaging, he found a bunch of the same kind of water barrels that Mr. Carroll had given us. Dad painted them black, filled them with water, and attached a maze of old PVC pipe to the fittings on the barrels. In a bizarre moment, he asked Kirk to suck water through the pipes until the whole system was charged with water. Kirk looked like his head would implode before the water finally trickled through. The final touch was to paint the PVC black to match the barrels. Dad seemed proud of his homemade heat exchanger and expected it to make a real difference when the weather turned cold.

  The daytime highs were creeping up into the fifties in late July. Thanks to the raised beds and dark colors in Sally’s domain, the clearing was nearly free of winter snow by then, while out in the larger territory, the north slopes and heavy wooded areas still held masses of snow. Dad could be seen several times every day, watching the sky anxiously. We were approaching the time when, the year before, the weather had changed rapidly, freezing the great state of Tennessee solid for ten eternal months. Would it be just as bad again? We had no way to know, and no one to tell us.

  Once the major upgrades were complete, Dad went into what he called mad chipmunk mode. He and Arturo went out every day in search of anything that could be helpful. The empty spaces in Sally’s numerous outbuildings rapidly filled with supplies and random junk. I’m not sure they had anything specific in mind. Maybe it was just a way to deal with the unknown.

  While they were out on salvages trips with Kirk; Mom, Lucy, Tommy, Jimmy, Sally and I were left with the daily farm chores. Sally had taken a special interest in Lucy, teaching her the skills of farming in much more detail than the rest of us. We were taught the tasks and put to work. Lucy was learning the how’s and why’s of everything around us. Being raised in the pre-Breakdown world, it was easy to dismiss the youngest in our group, but they were good workers, given the right tasks. Sally explained how to do the work in enthusiastic demonstrations, and the boys picked it up quickly. They spent the days competing for the best of whatever they were doing.

  Our hay wagon was unloaded and parked in the hay barn, which was more barn than hay. Sally wanted to collect hay from her pastures, but Dad was more inclined to recover the hay from George’s farm, since it was already baled and would rot if it wasn’t used that year, or the next. The only problem was the proximity of George’s farm to Eugene Curfman’s camp. So, the argument continued until Mom put her foot down one day over lunch.

  “David. You’ve got two choices. Either start bringing George’s hay, or start cutting Sally’s. One way or another, we have to fill that hay barn and there may only be days left to do it. If a single one of these animals dies because of a lack of hay, your winter is going to be a heck of a lot colder. You get me?”

  “Yes, yes. I get you, Beth.” Dad said with irritation. “Arturo and I will go take a look right now... To see if it’s safe.”

  “Good. Go. Now.”

  “Yes, dear. Already gone.” Dad rolled his eyes at Arturo and they slunk out the door.

  The sound of the struggling station wagon had faded into the distance for less than ten minutes when Bear began barking. It wasn’t his conversational bark. It was a warning. He yanked the front door open with his uncanny dexterity and sprinted away fast enough that it seemed to pull the air in the room behind the huge Mastiff. Sally collected her shotgun, never more than five paces away, and checked to make sure that both barrels were loaded. She snapped the breach shut and headed out the front door behind h
er canine friend. Kirk was right behind her with his automatic and his ever-present modified cane knife. The rest of us were slower. Lucy collected the young boys and headed for the barn. Mom and I grabbed our weapons and trotted out to catch up with Sally.

  By the time we arrived the crisis was over. Sally was waving at the man who walked slowly up the road, and Bear was prancing next to the stranger who wasn’t a stranger at all.

  “Why, Joe Miller! I was beginning to wonder if you forgot how pretty I am, “Sally called waving in a girlish way.

  “Hey, Sally. Sorry, I’ve been under the weather,” Joe called back. That’s when it became clear that he was still quite ill. His voice was wet and hoarse, and sure enough, his call turned into a hacking cough.

  “Hold on, Joe. I’ll be right back.” Sally ran to the house.

  Joe looked at us and said, “I’m guessing that you’re the folks from up at Sam’s place.”

  Mom looked at him suspiciously. “No. We were at the Carroll’s place until recently. Until we were run out.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Joe said, nodding and swallowing rapidly. “I had a visit from a fellow named Eugene this morning. Said he was looking for a family from up at George’s farm. He didn’t know whose farm it was, but from the description, couldn’t be anyone else.”

  “You said Sam,” Mom said.

  “Just testing. I figure if you know where you were, then you had an invite.”

  Mom eyes filled with tears up as she remembered. “They were good to us. We lived on their back forty until the weather turned cold. Then we spent the winter in the barn. George and Martha were with us. They couldn’t stay warm in the house.”

  “Were?”

  “They died around the end of January. Martha passed away and George followed her a few days later.”

  “Thought about giving up a few times myself...” Joe said quietly.

  “Maybe the worst is over,” Mom said, nurturing instincts kicking in.

  “Maybe. Anyway, those boys are looking for you something terrible. Said they’d be back and start burning places until someone gave you up.”

  “Oh, my goodness. Maybe we should go. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  “ ’Scuze my French, but those boys are assholes. Maybe you should fight.” He looked around. “From the description he gave, you got a couple more around here, right? Is somebody pointing a gun at me?” Joe asked.

  “I should say yes, but no. They’re not here. They’re up at the Carroll’s trying to decide if it’s safe to get the hay.”

  “It ain’t.”

  “We have to get some hay somewhere, Mr. Miller.”

  “Well, ma’am. I think we may be able to figure that out, but it won’t matter as long as those boys are roaming around causing trouble.” Joe broke into a fit of coughing.

  The storm door slammed as Sally stepped off the porch, carrying a brown paper bag. She walked back out to the driveway and handed the bag to Joe. “Here, Joe. Make this into tea and drink it two or three times a day. It’ll help.”

  “Thank you, Sally. I’ve been feeling mighty rough,” Joe replied.

  “I’m sorry about that Joe. If I’d known I would have brought you some sooner.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. I got a few critters left over at my place. Had to eat more than I wanted. How about we work out a deal? You take my animals in, take care of them, and I’ll give to you all my hay to go with ‘em. Tell your men when they get back.” Joe was breathing hard, with a wet wheeze accompanying each exhalation.

  “Joe, you need your animals,” Sally said, dismissing his idea.

  “Can’t take care of ‘em right now. Besides, I’m afraid I won’t be around too much longer. Better they come over here than to have ‘em starve to death when I’m not there to feed ‘em.”

  “Oh, Joe, you silly old bastard. You’ll be fine. Try the tea.”

  “I will. I ain’t gave up yet, just saying... That’s all.” Joe turned to Mom. “Tell your men. It’s best that way.”

  “I’ll tell them, Joe. Thank you,” Mom said with a smile.

  Joe tipped his hat in an old fashioned way and said, “My pleasure. Ladies... Young fellers...” And with that, he turned and walked back down the long driveway, one slow step at a time.

  We stood for long minutes, watching him go. I noticed that Sally had red eyes, and Mom was even worse.

  “Joe’s not going to make it, is he?” Mom asked.

  “That’s up to Joe,” Sally replied. “I give it about fifty-fifty.”

  Chapter 8 – 5

  John Hall waved a complex series of hand signals into the deep twilight. His men moved out in several directions through the cover of undergrowth and darkness, leaving Terry clueless about what was going on. He had missed years of hand signal practice by growing up in Manchester, and relied on John to tell him what to do in plain English.

  “Ok, Terry. Jeffry’s group are our snipers. They are setting up to cover as much of the target as possible. If you get into trouble, run out in the open and they will clean it up for you. Seth’s group is going in close and quiet to take out as many men as possible before we light the place up. Nick’s group is in charge of demolition. Once the bad guys are neutralized, they get to play with the good toys. Once the demo goes off, everyone goes to cleanup mode. If anyone gets away, odds are we’ll have to fight again tomorrow.”

  “Ok. Stupid question, but what are we doing?” Terry asked.

  “You and I are on prisoner detail. We’re going to sneak in, and try to grab someone for Bill to question,” John replied.

  “Figures. And here I thought we were just going to watch the show.”

  John snorted with laughter and looked through his binoculars.

  The security here was completely lax. The first clue was the fact that they were within a hundred yards of the farmhouse and completely under cover in the trees. The second fact was that they had been here for over an hour and had only spotted two patrols. If there was a static watch post, John had not spotted it during his slow circuit around the Jenkins farm. And third was the fact that the Jenkins family had stuffed the majority of their men into a single large bunkhouse. The noise of men drinking and playing cards could be heard easily from their location. The bunkhouse was lit up with electric light from a heavy diesel generator running in a shed, three hundred feet behind the main house.

  As John watched through the binoculars, he saw Seth rise up like a giant cobra and take out the first man on patrol. Single man patrols were stupid, as the big man just proved. John trusted Seth to take out the man on the far side. He turned to Terry and said, “Ok, let’s move in. Just do what I do.”

  Terry was expecting something elaborate and difficult, but apparently that was unnecessary. John simply walked out into the open with his rifle in a ready position, and took cautious steps across the grass. Terry was wondering if he perhaps a bit overconfident. By the time they reached the front door, he changed his mind. John knew exactly what he was doing.

  The ostentatious white front door was unlocked, losing the Jenkinses a few more points on the security scoreboard. Terry and John were bathed in light, standing on the front porch in plain view when John turned the knob and stepped right in. Terry was feeling all kinds of insane. It felt like a good way to get shot. John slung his assault rifle and switched to an automatic pistol, identical to the one Terry carried. Terry, having no idea what he was doing, simply copied his leader and closed the door behind him. They advanced down the main hallway, ignoring the grandiose staircase for the moment. Terry thought he could hear noise from upstairs, but he followed John down the hallway, attempting to be silent on the hardwood floor. The kitchen was bustling with activity. Terry had a crawling notion that they would encounter someone at any moment, but they passed several large rooms with no one in sight.

  When they reached the kitchen, John paused and listened carefully for a few moments. He holstered his gun and ducked his head into the room for a quick look
. He pointed at Terry and motioned for him to put his gun away. Then, John stepped into the brightly lit kitchen, holding his finger to his lips. The entire kitchen staff fell silent. The entire kitchen staff consisted of tiny brown skinned Hispanics. And, the entire kitchen staff had no interest in fighting.

  John spoke quietly, “Is your boss here?”

  A few heads shook in response.

  “Anyone downstairs?”

  Heads shaking back and forth.

  “People upstairs?”

  Nods.

  “Ok, thanks. You’ll all want to leave now. Go to the square and ask for Jack Baer. He’ll help you.”

  Without a word, the staff filed out past John and Terry, back down the hall, and out into the night. The door hung wide open after they departed. Terry was astounded.

  John spoke in his ear. “They didn’t want to be here. This is the Jenkins house.”

  Terry nodded. John pulled his weapon again. They retraced their steps down the hall and mounted the staircase, walking up the curving steps against the wall. At the top landing, they faced an absurdly long hallway with doors on each side. Most of the doors were closed. John pointed at Terry’s holster, reminding him that a gun would be a good idea. Terry drew his weapons and waited as John approached the first door.

  Jessica Jenkins had a loud reputation in town. She was known for literally beating men into submission. John should not have been surprised when he opened her bedroom door. He saw her expression of shock in the vanity mirror facing the door, and then she saw his shock when she came out of her seat with a knife in her hand. In an instant, John made the assessment. He had no idea how many people were in this hallway, but he knew that a premature gunshot would result in a hundred men pouring into the house, trapping him on the upper floor, and likely taking their time to kill him.

  Her knife flashed in a high arc, much faster than John expected. He blocked it with the top of his handgun and levered the blade to the outside. He punched her with his other hand, but only caught the edge of her jaw. She reversed the knife the instant John slid it off the back of his gun. The tip of the blade scored a line across his ribs, and his body flashed backwards in instinctive response.