The woman nodded, “That was her name, Jill? Yeah, she sent a round through his thigh. The bullet went in and out, barely a quarter-inch under his skin. He’ll milk his wound for all it’s worth. He’s like that. That’s why he wasn’t right behind Merle when they rushed the stairs, otherwise he’d have had his nose up Merle’s ass. For some reason he thinks the man walks on water. What gets me is how easy Merle convinced the club members that it was survival of the fittest and that anything goes.”
Disgusted, Nash shook his head. “Including murder and robbery? Are the other women with the gang okay with what happened here?”
“More than okay. They pushed them on.”
“Jeez. Jill was right about people turning into animals real fast.”
“Merle wanted me to stay behind because I’m a registered nurse. He called me an asset too valuable to risk. I convinced him he’d need me if something happened and one of them was injured. I wanted to be with them because I’d already made up my mind to jump ship, but I never dreamed they would do something like this.”
Nash asked, “Wouldn’t it have made more sense to leave while so many were gone? Are there a lot more of the gang members back at your cabin?”
“No, the entire gang was here. The cabin is too close to the town of Buford. I wanted to be further from a populated area. Less chance of meeting someone infected. I was waiting to see a place to jump ship, but this crap settled it.
“I came upstairs while the men were eating and drinking. I found Jill’s pistol, and when they were ready to leave I did the same thing she did. I told them I was staying and I’d shoot anyone who came up the stairs.” She paused speaking and then said, “My name is Betty. What’s yours?”
“I’m Nash… My name is Nash.”
Betty nodded, “Nash. I like it… Nash, I saw blood on your pants, a lot of it. Are you wounded?”
“Metal from the bomb.”
“Is it still in you?”
“Yes. I can feel the end of it, but I couldn’t pull it out.”
Betty smiled. “Well that’s a plus; Not that you couldn’t pull it out, but that it’s visible. Let me see it.”
Nash glanced around the room and said, “Right here?”
“No, Nash. Let’s go to the kitchen. I’ll need to wash my hands, and if I have to cut, you need to pray there’s a very sharp knife.”
Nash wanted the chunk of metal removed, but her comment about the knife made him hesitant… That and baring his rear end to a beautiful woman whom he’d only just met.
Betty noticed, and said, “The men who killed Jill and stole your supplies won’t be the only trash roaming the highways. We need to get this done and leave this abattoir of blood before another bunch of crazies stop to investigate.”
WORKING WITH CEDAR
WEST TENNESSEE AUGUST 2068
Reaching the end of a plank brought me back to the present. I got lost in that one, so bittersweet. Jill, I hardly knew you.
I moved the finished board to the pile and put a fresh one on my workbenches. Traveling memory lane is slowing me. It took over an hour to finish a board. I’m beginning to think I made a mistake asking… no, demanding to build the boxes. I keep this up and I’ll have to turn the job over to Nate Chalmers. He’s the only carpenter in our hold I’d trust to it.
Long ago, I stopped judging myself for leaving Jillto face the bastards alone. I’m simply glad Betty was there to help me. Not only removing the shrapnel from my ass, but for acting as a sounding board for the years of angst I suffered with doubts about potential actions I might have taken, actions that could have saved her. Betty always threw back at me; “You saw her intestines. There was no saving her.”
‘Get it done Betty’. I give that description of my beloved to people who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her. Then I add to it, ‘my wife, and my life.’
The sun moved higher and I’m no longer in the shade. I need to be careful. I was so lost in the past that I hadn’t realized how hot it is. Sweat is running down my face, my sides and my butt. I shout to a bunch of kids running past for one of them to fetch me cold water from the root cellar. I should get it myself, but Hannibal and his elephants couldn’t drag me in there.
I reached for my plane, but a wave of vertigo hit me. I sat, using my fresh plank for a bench, pulled my sweat-soaked shirt over my head and tossed it onto the trailer to dry.
If Betty saw me, she’d fuss, rightfully. She claims some of my skin spots are precancerous. That isn’t all she’d fuss about. I should have a bucket of water nearby. My old ticker acts up now and then, and according to her, dehydration is worse for it than overdoing.
Betty and I built this community, mostly Betty. She was the inspiration and the backbone in the months after the fiasco up in Jackson.
Damn, I wish I didn’t bring my ticker to mind. Thinking about it made it skip a beat just now. It’s a weird, scary thing. My heart pauses and then thuds hard on the next beat. Seems to happen more often of late, but I reckon it has reason today.
I see Jimmy Swain’s boy coming with a tin pail, Biff or Buff, dang if I can ever get it straight.
“Set it on the tailgate.”
He set the small pail on the tailgate. From his back pocket pulled a serving ladle bent to form a dipper.
Eying the plate on the tailgate, he said, “Miss Baker said for me to bring her your plate, but you ain’t ate hardly nothing.”
I muttered, “Ain’t ate hardly nothing,” and then said, “And you need to pay more attention in class.”
He took up the plate. “Maybe so, but Miss Baker’s gonna be pissed as all get out you let her food go to waste. I better dump this somewhere.”
“You do that, Biff. Thanks for bring the water. You might want to use some to wash your tongue off. I’m betting you wouldn’t curse like that around your dad.”
“Sorry Mister Vaughn… Er, my name’s Brent. You always get it wrong.”
I started to say something, but a sharp pain hit my left side just below my ribcage.
Brent saw me grimace, and asked, “Are you alright, Mister Vaughn?”
It took a long moment for the pain to pass. “I’m okay. Do me a favor. Find Nate Chalmers and ask him to come see me.”
“Mister Nate went out with the posse this morning.”
Once he said it, I remembered him leaving. “That’s right, he did. Don’t forget to dump the food before you give the plate to Penny. I sure as heck don’t need her fussing at me.”
“No Sir, you sure don’t. I’ll empty it in with the pot-bellies.”
Rising from the plank to drink water, another wave of vertigo threatened to throw me off my feet. I let it pass, glanced up at the sun and decided to move the pail of water and my sweaty self out of the heat. Before rounding the end of the barn, I looked back at my workstation, felt the sun burning down on my head, and knew I wasn’t going to finish the boxes.
It was twenty degrees cooler inside. I sat on a hay bale, set the water bucket beside me, used the ladle and drank deep, felt the cool sweet well-water flow all the way to my stomach. There’s an area near our hold with the name, ‘Sweetlips’. I’ve always wondered if it was because of how pure the water is in the ground below this part of Tennessee.
Thinking about this part of Tennessee sent me to when Betty and I met Little Billie. Now that I know I’m not going to finish the boxes, I see no harm in going there.
West Tennessee
May 2025
Betty and I followed Little Billie to the rear door of his home. As we approached, he called out, “Maria, safety your rifle. They don’t need to die.”
He opened the door, stepped aside and motioned for us to enter. I stopped and asked, “Are we safe?”
Little Billie chortled and said, “We knew both of you were behind the house. Maria is a sharpshooter. If we wanted you dead … Bam, bam, two shots and you’d be dead. Yeah, you’re safe. Go on in.”
Passing through the rear door after Betty, entering their kitchen I saw
a homely, raven-haired Hispanic woman whom I judged about thirty years old. Maria stood several feet from the entrance with her back against the counter beside the range. In her hands, she held a military style rifle I wasn’t familiar with. Seeing the distrustful face she wore, I was glad she had the barrel pointed to the floor.
Maria spoke without a trace of accent. “Why are you sneaking around where you’re not wanted?”
I stopped beside Betty and felt Little Billie brush by me. “Calm down, beauty, they lost their boy in the ambush last night. All they want is some information. We can give them that and a meal to see them gone.”
“Don’t beauty me, next thing I know you’ll be planning how to help them. Their problem is their problem and they can keep it. We’ve already made our plans.”
Little Billie pointed to the square dining table taking up a quarter of the space in the small kitchen. “Have a seat.”
We went to the table and sat in the straight-back wooden chairs.
Little Billie sat on the side opposite me. Pulling a pack of Marlboros from the pocket of his flannel shirt, he tapped it, removed a cigarette, lit it with a metal lighter and then offered the pack.
Betty declined for us. “We don’t smoke. Thank you though.”
Little Billie closed the pack and returned it to his pocket. “A pack of real smokes are worth as much as a fifth of pre-plague whiskey and getting about as hard to come by. The boys have hit every abandoned home and business in a twenty mile radius of here… well, not in the direction of Jackson. Three well-organized gangs control the city. Colonel Haskins found out the hard way you don’t try to rout an entrenched force inside their own urban turf.”
I repeated the name, “Colonel Haskins?”
“Yeah, Colonel Jeffery Haskins. He’s the OIC of the ambush party at the overpass… the sorry bastard.”
Betty spoke. “You said you and his men have scavenged from every place around here. Judging how you and your bunch don’t mind murdering people, I doubt you all worried about them being abandoned.”
Little Billie shrugged, dismissively, “You’re right, but I’m finished with the lot. I’ve come to see life in a different way, choosing a new path. I only went out one time with a raiding party. That was enough. I told the Colonel I needed time off to get my head straight. The patrol hit an occupied house we found tucked up deep in the woods. The men who went in killed all the members of the family except for a girl. She was fifteen or sixteen.
“I was outside security. When I went inside, the men were drawing straws on who’d be the first to rape her. I complained to Sargent House. He told me to take my sanctimonious ass outside and wait for them to be through.”
Maria, busy at the counter mixing powdered eggs from a gallon can, said, “Why don’t you tell him all our business. Tell him even though House knows I’m your woman, he wanted to bed me. Sargent House thinks I ran away fourdays ago. That’s why he checks on Billie… afraid he’ll take off to find me.”
Little Billie spoke to Maria, “You’re the one telling them our business,” then addressing Nash and Betty, “I asked for a few days off duty; told them my bowels were acting up and I needed to stay close to a bath room.
“This is the house Maria and I moved into when we bound six-months ago. That’s what Colonel Haskins’ rule is. Enlisted men can’t marry because women being in short supply, it’s only right that the officers and Colonel Haskins’ cronies get any woman they want, even if they’re bound. Haskins allows Sargent House the same privilege because House keeps him supplied with young girls. Haskins likes them very young.
“Maria made like she’d run off, and because I asked for time off so soon after, Sargent House suspects something. That’s why he sends someone to check on me every day, some days two or three times. Lucky for us he only checks during the day. Maria, Torrie and I are heading out tonight before that system changes.”
Betty glanced to Maria and asked, “Torrie is Maria’s daughter?”
Little Billie shook his head. “Naw, she’s mine. Her mother, Margret, died a year ago. For a while after the plague hit, I was able to find Margret’s thyroid medication in pharmacies. That dried up; too much competition for the medicine. I tried replacing her thyroid medication with dried pig gland, but her throat swelled up huge. She gained weight and lost her ability to concentrate. In the end, she stopped eating and she wasted away. For over a year, she just faded and she left us.
“Victoria is all I have left of her. She turned eleven last week. Maria’s her mother now. Torrie loves her.
“My Torrie is beautiful. The only reason Colonel Haskins hasn’t tried to claim her is Sargent House probably let it be known I’d kill any man who hurt her.”
Betty dug at Billie. “It’s good to know you love your daughter. We love Jess no less. Jess is our boy. He’s just a baby. I’m asking you, a mother to a father, how can we get him away from the bastards who took him?”
Maria came to the table and placed the cast iron frying pan onto the oak surface with a loud thud. Proximity amplified the odor of eggs scrambled with peppers and onion, already strong in the small room. Angry voiced, she said, “I know Billie’s planning to help you. That’s the way he is; always messing with other people’s business.” She kicked the leg of Billie’s chair. “You have a plan already, don’t you? You always have a plan … We have a plan, remember. Your plans do seem to have a habit of changing with a crosswind.”
Billie reached to grab her, “Aw, baby, you know you wouldn’t want me to...,” but she spun away, “I’ll be back with plates and tableware. Billie can enlighten us all with exactly how to steal a baby away from hundreds of armed men.”
Billy shook his head. “Not hundreds, only a hundred or so. Here’s what I figure. Colonel Haskins will send the new captives south with the next resupply convoy to San Antonio. That’ll be tomorrow. Besides the drivers and guards, the convoy never travels with an escort of less than a sixty men.”
Maria set plates and eating utensils on the table and said, “You can serve yourselves,” as she sat in a chair adjacent to Little Billie, and then said, “I am so relieved Billie has more sense than to take on hundreds; a hundred is oh so much better.”
Nash spoke. “Is there any way we could trick them? I don’t know, maybe…”
Betty interrupted him, “That’s a great idea. What if we were wearing uniforms and stopped the convoy part way and told whoever’s in charge that Colonel Haskins sent us to retrieve a baby sent by mistake?”
Little Billie said, “The uniforms might work. Sergeant Moses knows me. He always heads the convoy. The problem is he’s a stickler for protocol. He’d want an official order signed by Colonel Haskins. Another thing is he would radio back to camp for confirmation.”
Maria prodded Billie. “Tell them your plan, Billie. You know it’s itching what little brain you have.”
Little Billie slapped the table with one of his huge hands, causing it to rise an inch from the floor. “Tell me you don’t want us to help these two rescue their baby boy. Tell me no… say the word and I’ll send them packing.”
Maria, unfazed by his angry outburst, said, “No, we’re going to try, otherwise I’ll never hear the last of it… unless you’re thinking of a plan that includes leaving me and Torrie behind. Then you’ll never hear the last of it.”
Attempting to defuse the exchange, Nash, speaking to Little Billie, asked, “What is your plan?”
Little Billie shrugged and said, “It’s not fully fleshed out, but there’s a place on Interstate 40, maybe eighty miles west of Jackson where a tractor-trailer carrying some sort of flammable liquid exploded beneath an overpass. This was after the plague and all Colonel Haskins did was order the freeway dozed clear. The remainder of the bridge crossing the interstate is in bad shape… wouldn’t take much of a charge to bring the rest of it down.”
Billie stopped speaking. Nash waited for him to continue, but the pause grew awkward. He spoke to fill the void. “Okay, there’s a damaged bri
dge that could be brought down; Then what?”
Little Billie shrugged. “It’s something to work with, is all.”
Maria coughed to stifle a giggle and said to Nash, “You’ll have to fill in the blanks.”
Nash nodded and said, “Fair enough. Let’s see if we can work it.”
Betty asked, “Do you have explosives to bring the bridge down?”
“The unit has a stock of C4. I’m friends with the quartermaster, but I’d have to steal it. If I can, ten pounds should do the trick.”
“Can you get twenty pounds?” Nash asked.
“Sure, if I can get it at all, but ten pounds…”
“Let’s err on the side of absolutely. How about the uniforms Betty mentioned?”
Little Billie nodded, “Yeah, no problem.”
Nash gobbled the last spoonful from his plate and stood. “Okay, here’s what we have so far. A bridge we can down. Access to explosives and uniforms. What can we do with these bits?”
He began walking back and forth in the space between the table and counter, deep in thought.
Betty said, “We’d better think of more pieces to the puzzle or he won’t stop pacing.”
Nash stopped his nervous movement to ask, “How many vehicles make up the convoy? What type?
Little Billie answered, “Prison vans Haskins confiscated from a jail. The number in the convoy varies depending on how many women and children we capture in a given month. I’d count on at least two or three. Then add four or five MRAPs he liberated from an abandoned National Guard base and a few transports for the troops and supplies.”
Nash mused, “Between fifteen to twenty vehicles, give or take. I imagine they tuck the prison vans in the middle of the convoy. Damn… the MRAPs represent a lot of armor.” He resumed pacing.
A minute passed. Little Billie started to say something, but Nash raised a hand to shush him. “I’m thinking.”
A slight expression of anger crossed Little Billie’s face, but he honored Nash’s request for silence.
A moment later, Nash paused again. “Is there any particular gang or group that poses a challenge to Colonel Haskins’ authority?”
Working With Cedar: A Post Apocalyptic Tale Page 10
