Tempest of Tennessee (Episode 3): Tempest of Tennessee

by McDonald, Terry

  We managed to get two loads that day. On the second load, we left the gates open so the rest could roam.

  In my mind I pictured the many cattle that, hungry, thirsty, broke through weaker fences… pictured wild herds of cattle and horses for future hunts and round ups. Oh yeah, pigs, now wild boar, wild real pigs in gun sights… yeah, bringing home the bacon. I liked the thought; the thought that there might be some unbleak things to look forward to.

  Later at the ranch, in the room with Annette, One Thumb and I told her about the day.

  Annette said, “Dang, Tempest, you didn’t tell me the basketball player was a hunk.”

  “I didn’t tell you he was gay either, but keep that between us. I don’t know if he’s out with his family.”

  “How do you know—?”

  Capitalizing on Mister Carson’s technique, I interrupted and said, “Sometimes I’d hide in the gym to eat my lunch away from everybody. I saw him kiss one of the other players.”

  Puzzled toned, she asked, “And you didn’t ‘weaponize’ that discovery?”

  “Naw, I don’t do words or tattling.”

  “Oh, I see, fists and bullets are your forte, huh?”

  “Yeah, fists and bullets and teeth and nails, unlike you, Miss ‘club em to death with a rifle’.”

  Annette chuckled, “Touché. You know, for a ‘She Devil’, you’re a decent person.”

  One Thumb asked Annette, “You clubbed someone to death?” Disbelief was in her asking.

  I answered for her. “Yeah she did. Beat a man to death with a rifle, destroyed a perfectly good AR in the process.” Smiling at Annette, I said, “Don’t let that pretty face fool you, Annette’s a bad-un, kill you with feet or hands before you even think of moving.”

  Annette changed the subject. “Doctor Robbins told me that I can resume normal activity in five more days. I’m ready to get off the reservation. That teacher from the Walmart says—.”

  “Miss Mellon Head,” I supplied.

  One Thumb snickered, but Annette shot me a look. “Why do you always have to be like that? As I was saying, Miss Mellon told me some hairy tales about the gangs the men ran into up in Jackson. What do you and One Thumb—,” she threw an apologetic glance at One Thumb. “Damn it—, you and Demi think about a trip to check the Amazon Distribution Center in Lexington, maybe check the Indian enclave as well?”

  One Thumb said, “Please call me One Thumb. Demi is such a weak name. ‘One Thumb’ rings of mystique.”

  That moment cemented us to three. To Annette I said, “Does your wind-up watch give the day?”

  “Yeah,” glanced at her wrist, “May—.”

  “Just the day.”

  “Today is Wednesday.”

  “I’m with you on getting off the reservation. Let’s leave on Monday.”

  One Thumb broached another subject. Holding up her maimed hand, she flexed the nub that the maimer left. “Look how far I can move the part I have left.”

  Annette went, “Ugg, but why show us?”

  “No, no, I’m showing for a reason. I wouldn’t know how to go about it, but it seems to me that some sort of harness made right could give me an artificial thumb, something I could hook over a rifle-stock to steady it.”

  I considered that a dang good idea and feasible. “Tomorrow get with Jeffry. He’s handy with mechanical stuff. Maybe between him and Dave they can concoct a harness.”

  Annette said, “Include Doctor Robbins in that ‘Think Tank’. He may have better ideas concerning prosthetic devices.”

  ************

  The days passed, two of them spent searching for horses; a fruitless search. One Thumb and I checked farms for miles around the ranch. Where we did find horses, they died in stalls from lack of water and food. We found places that it was obvious there were horses before the chaos, but they’d managed to escape their corrals.

  Twice out of dozens, we encountered live people on farms. They weren’t aggressive, but made it clear they wanted nothing to do with us; their prerogative and we conceded it.

  Thursday and Friday gone, on Saturday, One Thumb and I went to the National Guard Armory in Henderson.

  Driving through the gate, One Thumb pointed to a large, heavy, tracked vehicle with a gun turret, sans a gun. “Is that what we’re after?”

  “Naw,” turning the dump, I pointed to the last of the vehicles lined along the backstretch of fencing, “ours is the old one at the end with the faded paint.”

  Drawing closer to the dusty, camouflage-painted wheeled vehicle, she said, “Why this ugly thing?”

  I stopped the dump so the two hoods were close together and turned to her. Her dyed blonde hair was growing out and she had eight inches of blonde hair hanging from five inches of brown hair, weird, but I didn’t mention it, even though it was distracting,

  “This old truck is a Humvee that actually saw duty in overseas combat. It has armor plates and I know it ran this past fall because they used it to lead the School Pride Parade. It’s over twenty years old; way over, and I’m hoping the electronics in it survived the EMP.

  “Another thing is, even if we could get the other one running, this one will get better mileage. It runs on diesel and I’d bet it can outrun the tracked tank thing.”

  I opened my door, “Come on, let’s get the hoods open and see if the Humvee’s batteries will take a charge.”

  We hooked jumper cables between the two vehicles and rather than wait there, we wandered the property. Near the gymnasium-cum-food distribution warehouse, scaring the crap out of us, a rifle shot sounded and a bullet ricocheted off the asphalt close by.

  I spotted the old man using the frame of the rollup door as a shield. I shouted, “Hey, damn it…, you promised not to shoot at people anymore.”

  “You promised not to come back here.”

  “I did not. I promised that we wouldn’t take any more food from here or the town stores.”

  “Maybe I don’t want you taking the trucks either. They ain’t yours. I might trade one for some pot.”

  I should’ve figured him for a pothead. “You’ll have to take an IOU.”

  “Ya kept your word about sending someone ta pick up the brats I was minding. If you want the truck ya got cables hooked to; that one’s worth a pound.”

  I thought about the bag of pot I scored at the Walmart. “Worth two ounces if that,” I shouted back.

  “A pound.”

  “You can keep the old truck. We’re leaving. There’re plenty of trucks at other places.”

  “Okay, two ounces. When can you pay me?”

  “I tell you what you old asshole; maybe what I have is more than two ounces. You can have it all. We’re making a trip, leaving out tomorrow. It’ll be two or three days.” I pointed to a newer pickup in the works parking lot we couldn’t get to crank. “If I come and don’t see you, I’ll put it in the glove box of that truck.

  “Ya promise ya won’t cheat me.”

  “We have a deal. Now leave us alone.”

  He wasn’t done. “Do you know any doctoring? Man and his wife in town with a couple rug-rats; man broke his wrist three days back. It’s infected; swole like a balloon and hot to touch. Now he’s all feverish and puking.”

  Under my breath, to One Thumb, I said, “Here we go.”

  To the boozer, I shouted, “Give me directions and we’ll take him to a doctor when we leave.”

  He gave us directions to a home in town. Back at the trucks, One Thumb asked, “When you make a deal with someone like him, do you mean it?”

  “If your word’s no good, then you’re no good.”

  “My husband lied to me all the time. He’d lie about anything even when there was no reason to.”

  It slipped past my tongue, “Then it’s a good thing I shot him, huh?”

  One Thumb frowned, thought for a moment and then said, “No, not for lying, but for the killing, yeah. He was thick in the raiding and killing. He had some good parts to him, he was kind to me, never hit me or yell
ed at me… he did ignore me most of the time, especially when there were other men around. He liked acting tough. I don’t miss him.”

  It’s a good thing she didn’t miss him because by now he was fleshless bones. Leaving that subject, I said, “Let’s see if the Humvee will crank.”

  We almost ran out the charge, but the grinding of the starter turned into a loud backfire and a blast of black smoke when the engine caught. Climbing from the cab of the Humvee, I high-fived One Thumb.

  Unhooking the cables, I said, “We’ll let it idle for a while to build a charge. The fuel reads low. We’ll fill it and the containers I saw in the rear compartment.”

  “Does it have enough gas to run for a while? We could use the four-wheeler to pick up the man while the charge builds.”

  “Like the geezer said, I doubt the man will go to see Doc Robbins and leave his wife and kids behind.”

  Like a kid, she asked, “Can I drive the Humvee when we go?”

  Giving her a grin, “Sure, and welcome to it. You’ll be the one dealing with the rug-rats all the way back to the ranch.”

  “It’ll be fun driving something like that. I don’t mind children.”

  I gave her the simple of it. “I do. Children grate on my last nerve.”

  “You seem to get along with Vikas’s children.”

  “Have you ever noticed how quiet and polite they are? What’s not to get along with, with those two?”

  At the address the boozer gave, I drove the four-wheeler onto the lawn and up to the porch. One Thumb stopped beside me. I shouted to the house, “We’re here to take the man with a broken wrist to see a doctor. If you don’t respond, we’re leaving.”

  Only seconds passed. A woman barely older than me came out onto the porch. I climbed from the four-wheeler, waved to One Thumb to stay in her truck and went to the porch steps.

  “How do you know my husband’s wrist is broken?”

  “The boozer that shoots at people told us.”

  “Where’s the doctor you’re talking about?”

  “On over near Finger.”

  “We’ll have to go with him. We’re not staying here by ourselves.”

  My thought was if the man was as bad off as the boozer said he was, they were already practically alone, but I said, “We figured as much. You all can ride in the military truck. Can your husband walk?”

  “He’s delirious with fever.”

  To her I said, “I hope he’s not fat.”

  I waved for One Thumb and we followed her into the house. The man lying on the couch wasn’t fat. He looked like someone who should still be in high school. His skin was pale, and his wife was correct, along with incoherent words, slobber ran from his mouth. The infected hand and forearm were grotesquely swollen and black.

  The wife said, “He was hot, but now his skin is cold.”

  I said, “He’s gone into shock. We need to hurry. You’re bigger than we are. You’ll have his head and we’ll take the other end. One Thumb; go open the side door on the Humvee.”

  She left the house. I asked the woman, “Where are your children?”

  “They’re babies, twins. They’re in a playpen playing with toys in a bedroom.”

  “They sure are quiet.”

  “Give it a while and you’ll know there’re here.”

  “Do you have a small mattress we can lay him on in the truck?”

  “We have a folding guest bed we can take the mattress from.”

  “Let’s get it.”

  At a run, we moved the mattress, then the pre-toddler kids and their playpen to the Humvee. Carrying ‘Lamar’, the name she spoke to her husband, going down the three steps from the porch, she dropped her end of him and we heard his head thunk wood. In his condition, I doubt he felt it.

  I led us back to the ranch. At the building where we’d installed the doc’s equipment and supplies and set up his clinic, the Humvee’s horn brought plenty of grownups including the doc from the ranch house.

  To the doc I said, “Pointing to the Humvee, I said, “We have a man with a broken wrist, probably gangrene.”

  Doc Robbins slid open the side door of the Humvee, gazed inside at Lamar and turned. “Let’s get this man inside.”

  Vikas, Dave and Jeffry moved to get him. As the woman got out, Jules, with a smile, asked me, “How many?”

  “Two adults and their set of twins. I doubt they’ll leave to go back to where we got em.”

  He smiled again, “Naturally. It’s becoming a given; you leave the property and on your return the population grows. At least now, we have adequate housing… yeah, but not the infrastructure. A lot of our labor for the next month or so will go to putting in septic fields and running electrical and water to the various units.”

  “Well, in my defense, I keep running into—.”

  Jules interrupted me; seems a habit I keep running into during conversations. “I’m not faulting you, quite the opposite. Not only is there strength in numbers, but the numbers also yield a bonus in diversity of talents. One of the women from the Ranger group is a master butcher. Tomorrow, she’ll turn two of the cattle you brought into cuts of meat.

  “Carson, the man with the cattle, he’s a real rancher… lord knows I’m not. You brought us a Doctor and nurse. We have workers to plant gardens and fields. Our security is improved with men and women to hold arms and we have the weapons to arm them.”

  “Tempest, I’ve given up on calling this my ranch, but I do keep claim to my home.”

  All he said was good news to me. “”Heck, you paid for the house. Oh—, I meant to ask, did you ever get a chance to check the National Guard for ammo and weapons?”

  “Checked, and nope, nadda, not a round there except for a few boxes of blanks; I think used when giving a ceremonial salute at a military funeral. We did score ten carbines. Paperwork I read shows a few years ago the post in Henderson was designated as an NG Post, not an armory.”

  I had an approximate number concerning the weapons available and knew, considering the times and non-available spare parts, rather than having enough, they should have a stockpile of weapons and ammo.

  To Jules I said, “Annette, One Thumb and I are going up to Lexington tomorrow to check conditions not only there, but on the road along the way. We’ll make scoring ammo and weapons a priority.”

  Another smile from him made me feel weird. He said, “As long as getting them doesn’t involve a major skirmish with a bunch of hooligans. Oh, and you may want to use caution using the description of her injury when referring to that young woman. I’m sure—.

  “One Thumb; Naw man, that’s her handle. She chose it. As far as hooligans, I don’t look for em, but I’m not backing off from em.”

  Shaking his head, he didn’t smile. “That way of thinking can get you killed.”

  “Death can find even a hermit. I doubt I’ll live to be old, but between now and the time I die, I’ll live my way. My friend Billy said that over fifty-thousand American soldiers died in the Vietnam War. That sounds like a big number, but he said, that if you researched the millions of men who cycled through the conflict over a long number of years and pretended there wasn’t a war, just as many would have died from other causes in the same amount of time.”

  Jules didn’t pursue the subject. “If I remember correctly, Vikas and his family were in Lexington. You may want to ask him if he has friends for you to check on.” He glanced toward Doctor Robbins’s clinic. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go see if the doc needs any help.”

  I shrugged, “Okay, you’re excused. You might want to take the doc a hacksaw. I’m sure his hand will have to come off. Dude might want to grab the handle ‘Lefty” before someone else lays claim to it… It’ll be a one-hand grab.”

  His grimace showed I’d broken his smiling. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re purposefully obnoxious or if you don’t realize you are.”

  Before turning to rescue Annette and One Thumb who were the center of attention of a group of women, I gave him one of
my smiles. “Yep, I’m a mystery.”

  We three spent the rest of the day outfitting our Humvee with supplies. At dinner, we found out that Lamar lost his arm up to his elbow. That was a dang shame. Being handicapped in a chaotic world is exactly what it is—, a handicap.

  I did ask Vikas and Preeja, but they had no one in Lexington for us to check on. Vikas had a concern that he wanted to discuss.

  “Yesterday I continued my check of the air and the ground with the Geiger counter. All is good still, however the background radiation has crept higher, but slow, not in jumps.

  “According to the instructions of the machine, we remain in the safe zone. There is a problem. I have not yet told anyone. Please come, I will show you.”

  He gathered the device and I followed him from the ranch house to a point near the clinic. There, he said, “Wait here. Please observe.” He switched turned the machine on and it began to emit a slow, steady series of beeps.

  “These sounds are normal, but watch.” He advanced a few feet, bending as he did with his arm extended. The rate of beeps increased, and then, within a foot of an empty water bottle, the beeping converted to a continuous, ominous sounding whine.

  The change startled me. “What the heck!”

  Vikas backed away from the spot. “I know not. It took only moments to locate the exact spot of disturbance. To mark it, it is under the water bottle.”

  I saw Jeffry on the porch of the ranch house and shouted his name across the hundred yards or so. He heard, looked our way and I waved him over.

  After Vikas repeated his performance, I asked, “What do you think is up with this?”

  “A damn highly radioactive particle is what it is.” He asked Vikas, “Did you see anything suspicious where you placed the bottle?”

  “No, nothing, but please, in fear I looked not long.”

  Jeffry grimaced. “Don’t blame you for that.” He moved to the bottle, lifted it, observed the dirt under it for a moment, then put the bottle back and rejoined us where we stood ten feet away.

  “Here’s what I think. Under the bottle is a minute particle of plutonium or cesium… could be any other radioactive isotope. It’s most likely fallout from one of the bombs.”