Without Law 10
Page 27
My smile grew wider as we came up to the familiar edge of the woods by our home, but as we approached, I heard Winchester growl.
“Who’s there?” Rolly called out with a harsh tone, and I just knew the old man had a rifle pointed at the woods right then.
“Don’t shoot!” I chuckled. “It’s us!”
“Tav?” the old man asked in surprise, and Winchester’s growl subsided, and he came barrelling through the tree line.
The black headed dog barked happily and ran around us all. Bailey bent down and let him lick her face while she cooed at him and told him how much she’d missed him and what a good boy he was. The other girls joined in, except for Tara, who strode confidently through the trees ahead of the group.
I followed the platinum blonde and came face to face with Rolly and Betty.
“Oh, my goodness,” the old woman said, and she wrapped her arms around my neck. “We were so worried about you all!”
“I know,” I said as I hugged her back. “We were gone longer than we intended.”
The woman pulled away and began to pull the girls in one by one as I walked over to Rolly and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Good to see you, oldtimer,” I said with a grin.
“It’s good to see you,” he said sincerely, and he placed his hand on mine. “Nice to have you home.”
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked, and I peered around to see a few boxes stacked outside. “What are the boxes for?”
“Oh,” Betty said, and she looked down. “Well, maybe we better have a seat and talk.”
“Alright,” I said, but my eyes narrowed. Had something happened while we were away?
We followed Betty to the fire pit and took a seat around it.
“What’s going on?” I asked, and I leaned out to make eye contact with the older gal.
“Well,” she said sheepishly. “We’ve decided to go back to the farms.”
“I see,” I said with a frown.
“Is it because we were gone so long?” Bailey asked with a panicked voice, her hand still on Winchester’s head. “Because we didn’t mean to be, we got caught up with something, but we have a surprise back at the jeep.”
“No, no,” Betty said with a wave of her hand. “It’s not that, though we were worried.”
“Wait, did you say jeep?” Rolly asked.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We have fuel for the farm equipment so we can plant more easily.”
“Wow,” Betty said with wide eyes. “That would be wonderful.”
“How did you get fuel?” Rolly asked. “I figured it was all gone by now.”
For the next twenty minutes, we recounted the details of the last week and a half or so that we had been away from campus.
“You all have had quite the week,” Rolly chuckled when we were done.
“We did,” I laughed. “But I’m still wondering why you all are leaving?”
“Oh,” Betty said. “It’s nothing to do with anyone, we just want to get started on planting. We’re still a team, and we’ll still come back here for winter, as long as that’s alright.”
“Of course,” I said. “But you don’t have to move back to the farms, you can stay, and we can all take turns going over to check on the plants.”
“I appreciate that,” Betty said. “But we miss our farms. The Millers are going to go to Briar’s home with him.”
“Right,” I sighed. “We still need to take care of the Millers’ home.”
“We need to do that while it’s still somewhat wet out,” Rolly pointed out. “We can’t have an out-of-control fire around here.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“It’s great that we’ll have fuel for planting and harvest, though,” Betty said. “I didn’t expect that. We’ll be able to plant much more, then. But will the fuel last until fall?”
“No,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Will it go bad?” Betty asked with a frown.
“It shouldn’t,” I said with a shake of my head. “But we’ll have to get more for harvest. If my calculations are correct, we’ll only have enough for planting.”
“Oh,” the old woman said, and her eyebrows pinched together. “How will we get more? Did you set up a trade with this Brogy fellow?”
“Brody,” I clarified. “And that’s where it gets tricky.”
“What does he want?” Rolly asked seriously. The old man knew there was something wrong by the way I spoke.
“He wants one of our tractors,” I said.
“Well, but then how would we plant and harvest?” Betty asked. “I mean, we have a couple, but there’s no guarantee Rolly will be able to get all of them to stay working.”
“Right,” I agreed. “He’s also a bit angry because I refused to stay with him.”
“He wanted you to stay at the fort?” Rolly asked.
“Yes.” I nodded. “But not just me, all of us.”
“Oh,” Betty said.
I thought about Brody’s treatment of the civilians under his care, and I knew I wouldn’t let anyone go with him, not if I could help it.
But we still needed to figure out how we would establish the trade, and whether Brody had become too powerful since we’d secured the refinery for him. I feared the latter might be the case, and if it was, then we had a hard mission ahead of us.
“I think it’s time for a group meeting,” I said grimly.
End of book 10
End Notes
Thank you for reading Without Law 10. I’ll start working on book 11 as soon as this book has 100 reviews. So please leave a nice review here.
Amazon doesn’t update readers when an author comes out with a new book unless you follow that author on the store. Make sure you click this link and then click on the follow button. Then Amazon will update you a few weeks after my next book comes out.
If you want to get notified of my books the day that they come out, make sure you follow my Facebook author page and join my Facebook fan group. If you don’t follow me on Amazon or join my Facebook page, you’ll never get alerted that the next Without Law is out.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Eric Vall