by Kate Morris
Some of the buildings in town were heavily damaged, but Doc’s practice survived just fine. They have only gone to town twice for actual clinic days and mostly to offer medical care from being injured by the tornado or people who were cut by metal debris afterward during the clean-up process. For now, the farm has to be their first priority, which pisses Cory off because he wants to track those jackass highwaymen. However, he understands the importance of making the emergency repairs to the barns, especially the roof on the cattle barn so that it doesn’t rain in and ruin their hay stored there. The tarps that they’ve covered the holes with are only a temporary fix, and they all know it. With each passing day, they make further progress on completing the repairs, and that means that the day will soon come when they are back on the prowl. It is a day he much anticipates.
He and Simon are in the truck and driving toward Clarksville where they will try to find more roofing materials, nails, any kind of lumber, and anything else they can use, including items from that hospital he went to with John and Sam a while back. They’ve already been there a few times scavenging and have had success. Today is the last time he’ll be able to forage with Simon before they leave. They need more barn roof materials so that the rest of the men can continue the work while they are gone.
“Did you hear that K-Dog called in this morning about another attack?” Cory asks his friend.
“No, I must’ve been out in the cabin packing,” Simon answers, not taking his eyes off the road where he is looking out his window. “Where was it this time?”
“Farther out, east of Nashville,” he explains. “Guess they hit a group of Amish people traveling north from Florida to Pennsylvania to find their families.”
“Amish? Are you messing with me?”
Cory laughs once, recognizing how ridiculous it sounds. Then he sobers when he realizes how low people must be sinking to victimize the weak. He knows that Amish don’t fight back, don’t believe in violence or even defending themselves, that violence of any kind goes against their religion. “No, not messing, bro. They killed everyone but the six who got away.”
Simon exhales a hard blow of air and says, “That’s insane. What are they going to do with the survivors? Do they know yet?”
“Another group of people who were going north anyway is taking the survivors with them.”
“How’d K-Dog find out about it?” Simon asks.
Cory shrugs and says, “I don’t know. I think he had a friend in the area or something.” They pass one of the signs alongside the road that they built and pounded into the ground on stakes. “Hey, that’s a good sign. Literally.”
“You need to get some new material,” Simon criticizes. “But it is fortunate that nobody has knocked it over, that they haven’t knocked it over.”
“No shit,” Cory remarks. “I can’t wait to find these fuckwits and obliterate them. They need to go. Soon.”
“I agree. We’re going to Clarksville,” Simon points out what they both already know. “You guys weren’t able to check out Fort Campbell when you went with your brother and John and my sister.”
“I was a little busy getting shot,” Cory reminds him.
Simon snorts and says, “Pussy. Anyway, do you want to run by it really quick? It’s not like the others will have the time to do it when we’re gone. Heck, we barely have the farm put back together. And we hardly have time for clinic days, let alone looking for jerks.”
“Yeah, no kidding. We’re far from done with repair work,” Cory says, weighing out the suggestion. “Sure. Yeah, let’s run up there and take a look. If those assholes are camped there, at least we’ll know where to find them.”
Simon lifts the radio from the console, “I’ll call it in.”
Kelly responds and warns them to be careful, use caution, and not engage if they find them. His brother does not sound pleased with their idea, but he doesn’t tell them not to, either. Cory knows that Kelly wants the highwaymen dead as much as he does. And John does the most. His brother still can’t walk without the use of the walker, crutches, and on bad days even the wheelchair.
“And bring me back a number three from Mickey-Dees,” Kelly then teases about fast food.
“Got it,” Simon returns without missing a beat.
Cory grabs the radio and says quickly, “Sure you don’t want a cappuccino with an extra dollop of gay?”
Simon yanks back the radio with a disapproving frown at their goofing.
“Nah, but Doctor Death said he’ll take one,” Kelly returns. “Be careful. Out.”
“Over and out, big guy,” Simon says.
“What an ass,” Cory remarks. “Now I’m craving fast food.”
“That stuff was disgusting sludge,” Simon jokes.
Cory laughs again, “Hey, we weren’t all senator’s kids. Didn’t you ever eat garbage food and hang out with your friends cruising your ride on a Friday night?”
“Cruising?” Simon asks as if confused. “You mean for girls?”
This time Cory laughs loudly. “No. Well, that’s always an added bonus, but no. I meant cruising in your ride.”
“My ride? I didn’t have a ride. I was only fifteen, remember? My ride was usually a limo going to some stupid event with our dad or my mom’s car taking me to Science Club. My mother never would’ve permitted me to have a hotrod when I was old enough to drive anyway. She was a nurse. She saw a lot of teen crashes coming through the ER when she worked down there.”
“Too bad we weren’t friends in high school,” Cory says.
“What the heck makes you think you’d have been my friend?” he asks.
“How the hell else would I have passed Chemistry?”
This time Simon laughs. “True.”
“Then you could’ve hung out and worked on my car with me and my old man,” Cory suggests.
“Oh, boy,” Simon remarks with humor. “I don’t think I would’ve been much help.”
“You managed to get you and Derek out of the city. Did you use the hotwiring skills I taught you?”
Simon shakes his head beside him and looks distraught at having to recall that night.
“Too bad we need to get such big stuff, or we could’ve taken my new bike,” Cory says, changing the subject since he knows Simon blames himself for people being killed and Derek getting hurt, although it is ridiculous and not at all Simon’s fault.
Simon laughs, “As if I’d ever get on that thing with you.”
“Ha! Your sister told me the other day that she wants to learn how to drive it herself.”
“Over my dead body,” Simon says with certainty. “She’s certainly never riding on a motorcycle. Isn’t the world dangerous enough now?”
“I told her the same damn thing,” Cory adds as he watches closely through the front windshield. They are approaching a cluster of wrecked cars on the road. Simon raises his rifle to his shoulder.
“This wasn’t here last week when we came through,” Simon tells him.
“No, it wasn’t,” Cory replies. “It looks like a trap. Be ready.”
Cory drives slowly toward the carnage in the road, glad to note that there aren’t dead bodies like the other scenes they’ve come across where an attack had taken place.
“Definitely, feels like a trap or a diversion,” Simon quietly utters.
Cory stops going forward and presses his foot on the brake to wait and see if there is going to be trouble. Simon is silent beside him scanning out his window. After a few moments, Simon indicates with two fingers that they should continue. Cory does so with great caution. He even has to drive down into the thick grass alongside the road to get past the vehicles. Nothing happens. Nobody runs out of the forest around them shooting and yelling.
“Phew,” Cory says as he speeds away toward Clarksville. “Glad we didn’t get ambushed. I hate killing people before breakfast.”
Simon lowers his rifle again and says, “No, you don’t.”
Cory smiles and shakes his head. “Nah, I don’t.”
“What’d my sister pack? I saw her loading food into a bag for us.”
“Great,” Cory says with sarcasm, although he feels sentimental about his girlfriend- not that she’d allow him to call her that- packing their bag of food for them. “She probably packed us a bunch of vegan shit. Tofu sandwiches and carrot sticks.”
“I like carrot sticks,” Simon remarks.
“Ever get called carrot stick in school? You know, with your hair being red and all.”
“Sometimes,” Simon admits. “And other stuff. Insults. The usual.”
“Kids are dicks,” Cory adds to which his friend nods.
“How would you know?” Simon asks in a serious tone. “It’s not like you would’ve been teased. Football player, good-looking, muscular, cool car. Yeah, must’ve been terrible.”
“All kids get picked on at one time or another,” he tells his friend. “I just had a badass older brother who taught me how to defend myself.”
“I had a senator for a dad, so he would’ve just put a security detail on me.”
Cory laughs as Simon reaches for the bag between his feet on the floor. He pulls out a paper sack and rifles through it.
“I’m glad the kids on the farm aren’t like that,” Cory says, thinking fondly of the little ones back home.
“Except for maybe Arianna.
“Hell, yeah. That little stinker’s a pain in the ass sometimes. Not mine, of course. She loves me. But she’s a pain to her brothers and Huntley. She even harasses Luke sometimes.”
“I think it’s a girl thing. They have a lot of dominance issues. Must be in their DNA.”
He takes the biscuit sandwich from his friend. Two, buttery biscuits with homemade sausage and egg in between. Life could be a lot worse than this. Sometimes he thinks about Paige being out there on her own for so long and the awful things she’s told him they ate to survive like edible grasses and herbs, squirrels, rabbits, any canned food they could find. Her group had a much harder time than he did when he was gone on his own for a while. At least he already knew how to hunt and take care of himself. She told him about finding a can of Spam meat product once that they made into a gruel they concocted from mixing a little bit of oatmeal, flour, and water with it. It made him want to hurl. It also made him feel even more protective of her. Thinking about her out there again makes him feel the same way; protective, on guard, uneasy. He’s never letting her out of his sight.
“I think you might be right, Professor,” Cory agrees with his friend. “Your sister’s a bossy pants. So is Hannie. Man, she’s got Kelly wrapped so tight it ain’t right.”
Simon chuckles. “Yes, she sure does.”
Cory shakes his head and says, “He doesn’t seem to mind, though. Actually, it kinda suits him.”
“I can’t see you being like that someday when you get hitched,” Simon remarks.
“Doubt I’ll ever get married,” Cory says what he’s thinking. He doubts it because he wants Paige, which is so complicated he doesn’t know how to work it out without hurting Simon and backing her into a corner. She apparently doesn’t want a commitment with him of any kind, just the sex.
“With all the women always chasing after you, I’m not sure you’ll have a choice in the matter.”
“Neither will the men in Dave’s compound,” he says, finishing the last of his sandwich and washing it down with a glass jar full of water.
“What do you mean?” Simon asks.
“Doc’s going over there soon,” Cory explains, figuring that Simon has missed this conversation because he’s always gone in the woods picking herbs or in the greenhouse or just about anywhere that he doesn’t have to be around the house when Sam is over for a visit, which has been a while, too long in Cory’s opinion. “He wants the men who are sleeping with the women from the sex camp to either marry them or knock it off. You know Doc. He ain’t gonna be down with any of that premarital sex hook-up stuff.”
“That’s going to be difficult to enforce,” Simon says between bites. He normally eats slower than Cory. “They’re all adults. I don’t think Herb can force them into marriage.”
Cory shoots him a dubious expression. “This is Doc we’re talkin’ about here.”
“True,” Simon concurs with a grin. “But maybe some of them don’t even want to get married.”
Cory tries not flinch, thinking of Paige, “Then I guess in his opinion, they shouldn’t be doing it at all.”
“Also, probably true.”
They roll through Clarksville and north toward Fort Campbell. Once they get within a few miles, Cory stashes the truck on a deserted road that looks to have been an access driveway to a farmer’s field. Since the fields have long since been forgotten, gone to seed and overgrown many times over, he feels it is safe to make the judgment call and leave the truck at the end of the road just at the edge of a forest. This is a good place to begin the trek to the base anyway with the cover of dense trees and overgrown forestland.
They exit the truck, grab their packs, lock it up and take the keys. The CNG vehicles on the farm are proving invaluable for their survival. It is better than traveling by horseback. Plus, it saves the horses for their uncertain future travel needs. Others would, no doubt, feel the same way about their truck and take it without hesitation. Cory recently worked with Derek installing kill switches to the positive circuit of the fuel pumps of both vehicles to prevent them from being hotwired. Unless the person wanting to steal it knows about the hidden switch under the passenger seats, then they’ll be hotwiring something that isn’t going to start. They’d gone back a few days after the tornado and recovered the four-wheeler they’d left behind at the cabin, too. They got lucky it was still there, probably only because the assholes who shot him, likely the highwaymen, either hadn’t seen it or were too busy running away from John’s deadly shooting rampage. Either way, Cory was relieved to get it back. It helps them a lot, especially on quick runs to their neighbors’ houses or even over to the condo unit to meet up with Paul or K-Dog.
They jog through the woods and make it to Fort Campbell unimpeded and unnoticed, other than by the herd of deer they spot in a low-lying meadow. At the same time, they drop to the ground and belly crawl to the crest of a short incline to spy through their binoculars on the old Army base. It was the home of the 101st Airborne, and he’s pretty sure Kelly came through here, John, as well.
It is clear that they aren’t going to see much from this position since they are so far out, so Cory suggests cutting the chain-link fencing and getting a closer look inside the actual base. Within a few minutes, they’ve cut through and are creeping toward a tall building that probably housed troops or offices at one time. There are long rows of what appear to be townhouses, apartments or small homes to their west. He wants to get a higher position and check the place out. He gets Simon’s attention and signals they should go up, to which his friend agrees. They slink around the corner of the brick building and through a side door that is unlocked. The building appears to be abandoned and not currently inhabited. Cory indicates they should climb, and they find the nearest stairwell and do so. The building is four stories, and he and Simon exit onto a roof that has clearly not been maintained for quite some time. They walk the perimeter instead of the center in case some of the areas that look weak give out and cause them to fall through. They both take a knee near the edge and pull out their binoculars again.
It doesn’t take them long to notice movement near another building similar to theirs. Cory watches closely as two children run down the middle of the road. Others come out behind another building and scare them. The children scream and then laugh. They are actually playing. Simon taps his shoulder and points to their south. There are young people working in a garden. Some are also kids.
“Lot of kids,” Cory comments quietly.
“Yes, strange,” Simon replies as he continues to watch the area. “Actually, I don’t see any adults at all. What the heck?”
“There’s one,” Cory
says. “Over there near the door to the building. He’s got a gun, too.”
“I don’t know, Cor,” Simon says with doubt. “I think that’s a teenager.”
Upon closer inspection, he’s pretty sure his friend is right. It does not seem to be an adult, after all. They wait for a while watching this camp but don’t ever discover adults. Two people on ATV’s come through a back gate, dismount and are greeted by some of the children, of which he’s counted six so far. They hand them two dead squirrels and what appears to be a string of fish. Cory can tell that the newcomers are also young people, maybe twenty or so.
“Where are all the adults?” Simon asks rhetorically. “This is strange if it’s just a bunch of young kids living here.”
“Some of them aren’t kids,” Cory says. “But they aren’t exactly very old, either. I doubt if they’re the parents of these kids. They don’t seem old enough. Think this is it, this is the whole picture? Think they’re surviving on their own, a bunch of orphans and teenagers or something?”
“Not sure,” Simon allows. “We should report it back to the farm, though. They definitely aren’t our highwaymen.”
“No, not them. Let’s call it in when we leave later. For now, we should get to work,” Cory says, getting a nod from Simon.
