“Is there danger from such the small spot?” Vikas asked.
“Not as long as no one remained in close contact with it. The danger would come if the wind picks it up and someone inhales it. Trapped in one’s lung, it would probably lead to cancer.”
My mouth said it. “Vikas, how about that; you’ve made a breathtaking discovery.”
Vikas didn’t get the play on words. “It would seem so. What is to be done?”
Jeffry said, “The particle is probably lying on top of the ground. We’ll need to remove it. Use a shovel to put it in a container and then use our backhoe and bury it deep.”
Jeffry reached for the Geiger counter Vikas held. “Do you mind?” He examined it and said, “Quality instrument. How’d you come by it?”
“It was requested by Tempest when she came to Amazon where I worked. I have two more, but of different makers.”
Jeffry handed back the device, glanced at the radioactive spot and said, “It would be good to have several more of those detectors. That particle may represent an isolated event, but it would be nice to have enough detectors to allow the children to do an occasional sweep of our immediate surroundings.”
I told him, “I’m going to Lexington tomorrow. I’ll check conditions at the Amazon distribution center; score more if I can.”
“Be careful doing that. The center is a valuable commodity and someone may have staked a claim, but yeah, do check.” He glanced at the sky, “Before it gets any later, I’m going to find some help and rid our area of that particle.”
Vikas said, “I will help. We will need masks.”
************
Morning clouds, a heavy overcast, broke the clear-sky period we’d had for several days. Stepping outside to greet the day, Annette said, “If it weren’t for the fact that I’m stir-crazy, I’d vote for a postponement, but, naw, let’s do it.”
“Rain might be a good thing,” I said, “might keep the crazies inside.”
One Thumb said, “Count me as ‘a go’.”
It was a go and we went. Annette took the driver’s seat of the Humvee. One Thumb took the rear compartment, her duty to observe our rear and sides as we traveled. I rode shotgun beside Annette, literally with a twelve-gauge across my lap.
It was twenty-three miles from the ranch to Lexington. Highway 22-A is a swamp avoiding, ridge following road of hills and curves that ‘As the crow flies’ takes us there. Five miles along 22-A, it crosses Highway 100 a few miles east of Henderson.
We saw no sign of humans or obviously inhabited homes until we hit the junction. The 100 at that point was only two lanes. We stopped short of the stop sign because in the middle of the intersection was an airplane. It wasn’t a big airplane, the cockpit looked like a two-seater, but the wings did span the roadway and a bit beyond. The single engine plane, painted light blue had no business logo, only letters and numbers painted on the tail fin.
Seated on the pavement below the cockpit was a dejected faced young couple, the woman with a baby in her arms. They rose as we approached the intersection. They both had holstered side arms. They man drew his, but held it barrel-down.
From forty feet away, I leaned my head out of the window of the Humvee and shouted, “Engine trouble or fuel?”
The man shouted back, “Mechanical trouble.”
“How long have you been down?”
“We landed here just after dawn.”
To Annette and One Thumb, I said. “I’m going closer to talk. I’ll wave for you if they seem cool.”
I called to let him know I was coming and left the vehicle. They were an unremarkable duo, in their mid-twenties; both were short, brown haired and carried a few extra pounds that made them pudgy. Closer, I saw the baby, close to being a toddler, was going to carry on with their genetics.
Closer still, I asked, “What sort of mechanical trouble are you having?”
“A section of lower skin on the far wing’s coming loose. It vibrated so badly we thought we’d lose the wing before we could set it down.”
“I bet that was scary.” Then I nodded toward his hand and said, “How about holstering the pistol. If we wanted to harm you, you’d already be harmed.”
Placing the pistol back in its holster, the man said, “I guess that’s true.”
“Thanks. Let me guess, you are stuck here without a clue as to what to do. Where were—, wait, let me call my friends over.”
I shouted to Annette in the Humvee, “Bring it over.”
The man said, “I’m Randal, Randal Haines.” He nodded to the woman, “That’s my wife Donna.”
The Humvee stopped close by and Annette joined us. One Thumb followed close behind. To them I said, “Girls, this is Randal and Donna Haines. Their plane’s coming apart and they’re stuck here.”
One Thumb said, “Better to be stuck here than dead here. Where were you all going?”
The woman proved she wasn’t a mute. “We were going to Enid Oklahoma. My father and mother have a farm there.”
“Where are you coming from?” I asked.
“We lived in a burb north of Savannah, Georgia, between there and Hilton head.”
While we spoke, Annette was moving around, examining the plane. “This is a home built. Nice job too. I’d love to fly it.”
Astounded, I said, “You know how to fly a plane?”
“Yeah, I fly. My father owned a small Cessna. I qualified for solo when I was sixteen.”
“Well you won’t be flying this one. Randal said the skin’s coming loose from the wing.”
Randal said, “The plane wasn’t mine. After my father died… the EMP knocked out his pace maker but it didn’t kill him right then, but two weeks ago, his ticker finally realized it was gone. We left home in an old car. On a farm near Birmingham, Alabama, we stumbled on this plane inside a hanger. I figured the plane would get us there faster and safer.
Donna took over. “One of the survivors in our area, I guess you’d call him a prepper, he told us that the radiation level from the nuclear attack on Florida to the south, and from Atlanta and Charleston South Carolina was building past the safe level. He was packing to leave. We thought it a good idea to emulate him.”
Whoa boy, time to make Jules happy. “And now you’re stuck in Tennessee.”
One thumb can claim credit for bringing in these newbies. She said, “Tempest, we’re only a few minutes out from the ranch. We can drop them off and still keep to our plan.”
To the Haines I said, “Grab your stuff and let’s get you all off the road. Count yourselves lucky we found you and not some kooks.”
Donna said, “All we have are baby essentials. We figured we could pick up whatever else we needed after we arrived in Oklahoma.”
I sized up the plane and then pointing to the parking lot of and abandoned restaurant, asked Randal, “Do you think we can push the plane off the road?”
“Yeah, it’s easy to move around. As a matter of fact, it’s so light, without tie downs a high wind will probably destroy it.”
“Were you planning on repairing it?” I asked.
“No, I wouldn’t trust it to be airworthy.”
“Let’s get it out of the intersection.”
At the ranch, we found that the men were out involved with projects. Preeja and Maggie took the Haines family in hand and we hit the road again.
Barely a minute out, Annette said, “I want a plane… an old four-seater; one built before computers existed. I bet we can find one. Enthusiasts love to restore and fly em.”
From the back compartment, One Thumb said, “Oh that would be grand. You could teach me to fly.”
With a laugh, Annette asked, “How about you, Tempest, would you like to fly?”
Would I like to fly…? “Heck yeah, wings to fly above it all.”
In the driver’s seat beside me, smiling her beautiful smile, Annette nodded, “We’ll keep an eye for one every time we’re on the road. Watch for a building big enough to hanger it, or for a runway; out in the co
untry the runway could be unpaved.”
Oh boy did I have a secret to spring on her when the time was ripe. I knew where an airplane was… a Cessna three-fifty. Billy and I were at a rich man’s farm repairing a broken section of plastic fencing. The dude was so proud of it that he had to show it off. The name stuck because he repeated it so often in the twenty minutes or so inside the hanger built special for it. Beside the hanger, he had a long, graveled runway.
The plane was a small one, but he said it could carry a pilot and three passengers and a few hundred pounds of cargo. Anyway, he claimed it was in perfect condition with a reconditioned engine. Depending on whether the family at the farm made it through the disaster, Annette might be flying sooner than she could imagine.
Past the junction were the plane landed, we encountered only a couple of cars and one pickup truck. The people in the cars, weapons showing, were traveling in the opposite direction. The occupants in them didn’t wave.
The pickup, an older model Toyota, lifted, riding on big wheels came from our rear, raced up on us and swerved and passed us in a blind curve. The idiot teenage boy behind the wheel, horn blaring, flipped us a middle finger as he sped past.
Approaching the Amazon distribution center, we saw a number of vehicles in the parking lot near the entrance to the building, old trucks, cars, a few motorcycles and four-wheelers and a couple of farm tractors. There were four heavily armed men standing near the entrance door.
On my suggestion, Annette drove past the entrance. A mile further on I had her pull behind an abandoned service station that offered concealment from the road.
“What do you think’s going on back there?” I asked.
One Thumb supplied, “It looks as though it’s a trading post or something like that.”
Annette agreed. “Yeah, I think so too, but I wonder who’s running it. None of those outside looked Indian.”
That was what I wondered as well. “What do ya’ll say, do we check it out?”
Annette nodded, “We came all this way. Let’s be careful.”
One Thumb said in a not scared voice, “Ooh, a scary adventure. Let’s do it.”
To her I said, “Let’s hope there’s nothing scary about it. Scary isn’t safe.” Then I said. “Here’s the way. Annette, stop close inside the entrance gates and I’ll walk over to see what’s up. You two use the Humvee as a shield, but make sure the guys at the gate see your AR’s.”
One Thumb asked, “Why do you always get to be the one who goes first?”
Annette tossed a smile at my disgruntled face and answered for me. “Get used to it, she’s the boss, we’re her sidekicks.”
She started the engine and drove from behind the station. As she did, One Thumb said, “I tried to think of an acronym for us, but all I came up with a The OATs.”
Annette voiced my opinion as well… “Oh yeah, that’s a name to garner respect… Better watch out, here come ‘The OATs’.”
That caught me by surprise, caused my laugh to come as much from my nose as my mouth, caused snot to shoot onto the windshield in front of me.
Before exploding with laughter, Annette said, “Christ, Tempest, snot on the windshield. You’re such a gross pig.”
As always, One Thumb proved herself a good sport. To Annette she said, “The way you said it was funny as hell.” From behind me, she tossed a roll of paper towels to land on my lap. “Your snot’s running down the glass.”
Back at the Amazon center, keeping an eye on the men standing at the entrance while stepping from the Humvee, we definitely had their attention but none of them shifted to an aggressive stance.
I waited until Annette and One Thumb were in position.
Before leaving, I said, “Don’t point weapons at them, but make sure they know you have em. If I raise my right hand in the air, that means open fire, but do your best not to shoot me.”
Closer to the men, I saw that they looked like regular people, farmer stock, nothing military or survivalist about them. One of the men was short, wide, but not fat. He had a big round head with ears that stuck out from his short haircut. He stepped from the group of four and greeted me.
“Have ya been here before, missy?”
“No, we saw you all out here and thought we’d see what’s going on.”
He smiled with a mouth wide to match his head. “What’s going on is the Amazon Trading Post run by what remains of the good people of Lexington. Business is our game. We don’t want trouble.”
I smiled in return. “We don’t want trouble either, and we’re definitely here to trade.”
“What ya looking for, sweetie?”
I didn’t take offense with him; he was a product of our heritage. “We want some radiation detectors.”
“We may have some or we may not. This is a huge warehouse and we have to hunt for stuff. What do the detectors detect?”
I guess he missed that part. “They detect radiation.” Then I thought, better not make him want them for himself. “Some of us from finger are going on a trip and we want to avoid where bombs went off.”
He gave me a confused expression. “Seems to me you could just look at a place and tell if it was bombed.”
“Seems like that to me too, but my daddy sure wants some.”
The man turned to the other men who were close enough to hear our conversation. “Have you fellas seen any radiation detectors?”
They gave us a chorus of ‘naw and no’s’.
“There ya go honey, there might not be any.”
“How much would you want for if you had em?”
He thought a moment and said, “How many are ya wanting?”
“Ten, maybe.”
He thought again before speaking, “What ya got for trading?”
“What do you all need?”
He didn’t need to think. “Fresh vegetables, fresh beef, pork, and eggs. We need sweeteners, sugar or honey.”
“How much beef would you want for ten of em?”
Again, he turned to the men gathered near us. “What do ya fellas think for ten detectors?”
One of em, a skinny dude had a prompt answer, “If we have em, they ought to be worth a cow, fresh butchered and delivered that day.”
In dickering mode and willing to lie, I snorted and said, “Have any of ya’ll ever seen a Geiger counter? Man, they’re worth less then cheap transistor radios.”
“How much beef will you offer?” Big Head asked.
“A hindquarter and a shoulder roast.”
To Big Head, the skinny guy said, “If she’ll throw in a slab of ribs, I say do it. I doubt we get anyone else wanting detectors.”
“Is this a done deal?” I asked. “If it is, we’ll be back day after tomorrow with the meat.”
Big head looked to the men for confirmation, responding to their nods, he stuck out his hand. “We’ll shake on it; done deal.”
I shook hands and then asked, “What happened to all the Indian people who worked here.”
“There was a bunch of them foreigners tried to hold the place, but them not having anything but knives and homemade spears and such put em at a disadvantage. Floyd Johnson and his boys wiped em out. Went to kill the rest of em where they stayed in company trailers but most of the brown-skins had already left.”
I felt an electric shock of anger. I know it showed in my voice. “Where are Floyd Johnson and his boys? Are any of em here?”
Skinny guy said, “Whoo-boy, you sound like them Indians was friends of yours.”
Pissed and wanting an answer, I said, “It’s none of your business who I’m friends with. Where are they?”
Big Head laughed. “Go into town to the jail. If you want revenge on Floyd and them for killing the brown-skins, you can find their cells and kick their bones. Sheriff Knowles had em in lockup for the killings. The plague got em.”
“None of you had anything to do with the killing?”
“Honey, none of us here harbored ill to them. Floyd was a fucked up mother—.” Over his c
ussing, Big Head stammered before finishing the sentence. “Floyd was scum. The way I figure it, everybody’s got a right to keep their life.”
I could tell that Big Head was sincere. None of the other men voiced disagreement. I let it go.
“I’m glad to hear that. We’ll be back, day after tomorrow.”
Skinny guy said, “Girl, I saw your hand go to your pistol. Were you going to shoot us about the Indians?”
I told em the truth. “I’d of killed every one of you.”
His face registered shock. “Whoo-boy, you’re a bad-un. What’s your name, girl.”
“Let me tell you all something. Business is business. I’m part of a large group that would like to do a lot of business with you all, but calling me girl, honey, sweetie, yeah, that’ll sour me. As far as being a bad-un, — I’m the most dangerous person you’ve ever met inside or outside of your worst nightmare. You can call me Tempest’. Tempest of Tennessee.”
Big Head shook his big head. “Let’s dampen our tempers here. All we’re doing is business. Honest business, yes, we’re doing fair trade for fair trade. Hon—, I mean Tempest, we shook on it, and if you have the beef and if we have the detectors, we’ll do the deal.”
I nodded. “That’s fair enough.”
Back at the Humvee, Annette asked, “How’d it go?”
“They’ll take part of a cow for ten detectors. We deliver the fresh meat day after tomorrow.”
One Thumb said, “For a minute there I thought there was going to be trouble. I saw your hand go to your pistol.”
Walking back to em, I’d already thought about the situation. “Yeah, I need to cool my jets. Damn I sure get murdering mad real fast.”
Annette asked, “What happened?”
I told them.
One Thumb said, “And if any of them were mixed up in the killing you were going to gun em down right then and there?”
“Yep, right then and there. You’re in cahoots with a maniac.”
She shook her head. “No, you took that wrong. I’m a fan of you. You don’t take shit from no one and you’re willing to right a wrong. You’re not a maniac, you’re heroic!”
Tempest of Tennessee (Episode 3): Tempest of Tennessee Page 14
