Betty’s convincing tone achieved the desired response. “Yes Mam. I’ll show you and start getting the men moved.”
Betty followed Corporal Willard. Billie leaned toward Nash. “I’ll take the first van. You take the second. As soon as yours is in line behind mine, get the third one in position.”
Nash ran toward the second van, thankful for the headlamps lighting the way. He dodged around sick men and women scattered helter-skelter on the pavement by their vehicles.
Nearing the van, he saw the driver of the van was outside the door, curled in a fetal position, moaning in misery. As Nash stepped over the woman, he smelled the stench of her vomit and shit. Stepping onto the running board at the bottom of the steps, he heard footsteps pounding toward him. Billie dashed by, calling out, “First van’s a dud.”
Climbing into the van, Nash heard a voice call out. “Hey you, I don’t give a damn if you all are sick. When are you fucks going to feed us?”
Nash didn’t recognize the voice. A metal door prevented him from seeing into the locked rear compartment. Taking the driver seat, he called back, “You’ll be fed in a little while. Keep it quiet back there.”
Nash, shifted to drive, pressed the fuel pedal, and the engine immediately died. It took him a long moment to find the brake release. Cranking again, he pulled out of line and drove west, looking for a clear space to turn the bus around. The van Billie went to, pulled out behind him.
He drove over a quarter mile before finding a space of roadway free of vehicles. Long seconds spent jockeying the van back and forth to turn it around made him feel the press of time. He gunned the engine to regain the convoy, pulling to a stop fifty feet beyond the last vehicle in line in order to give Billie room to park behind him.
During the entire time, the passengers onboard cursed him so profusely that in the babel, he was unable to distinguish a single familiar voice, even though he knew many of them well.
He left the engine running and went to the metal door separating the cab from the passenger section. There was a small window for viewing, but it was too dark to see into the compartment. Rapping the metal with his knuckles, he called out, “Who’s in there? Annette. Annette Snow. Are you in there?”
He heard a muffled reply, “Yes. Nash, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Are the children with you? Is Jess okay?”
“Jess is with us. What’s going on? Can you get us out of here?”
“You’ll all be free very soon.” He left his vehicle and ran to Billie’s van, meeting him as he stepped from the running board. He slowed to wave Billie toward the growing mass of people near Sergeant Moses. “My boy is inside the vanI drove. Let’s find Betty and get away from here.”
Matching his quick walk, Billie fell in step with him and said, “The first van was for troops, all of them puking and shitting, God, what a stink.” Pointing to activity at that van, he said, “They’re unloading now. My vanload of prisoners smelled okay. I guess they didn’t have a chicken dinner.”
Nash said, “I didn’t notice any odor in my bus, but the metal security door may have sealed it in.”
As they neared the blazing bonfire close to Sergeant Moses’ truck, Corporal Willard strode from the mass of sick soldiers surrounding it, and confronted them.
“What the hell’s going on, Little Billie? I thought you were going to park the vans to block the freeway?”
Nash didn’t wait for Billie to reply. “Calm you jets, soldier. Plans change.” Then Nash shouted for Betty. “Nurse Smith, I need a word with you.”
“I’m coming,” Betty shouted back.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Corporal Willard, said, “You’re Smith and she’s—.”
Nash drew his pistol and pointed it at the corporal. “Don’t make me kill you. Put your hands on top of your head and shut your fucking mouth.”
Betty joined them and heard his words to the corporal. Speaking to Nash, she said, “That bastard was bragging about being with the killing crew on the bridge last night.”
Nash said to her, “Jess is safe; he’s in the lead bus with Annette Snow.”
Betty’s relief was evident. “I knew God would give him back to us. You know what needs doing. Let’s get it done.”
Nash replied, “In a minute.” Then speaking to Billie, “Billie, I want you to get in your truck and pick us up here to drive us back to the vans. We’ll drive them and follow you to camp.”
Billie broke away and ran toward the truck parked near the bonfire. Nash, his pistol still trained on Corporal Willard, said to Betty, “We’ll wait until the truck is moving.”
Betty unslung her rifle and switched it from safe.
Billie gained the truck. The instant he turned on his headlights, Nash raised his arm and shot Corporal Willard in his face. Willard’s head snapped backward following his brains. He died on his way to the ground.
Betty aimed her rifle toward the soldiers near the bonfire and said, “I’ll take the large group, you’ve got the outliers.”
Betty began firing her M-4 into the mass of men and women, rounds leaving the barrel as fast as she could pull the trigger. Not pausing to see the effect her action was dealing, Nash holstered the pistol, unslung his rifle and began shooting at the soldiers coming from the van. Picking targets, seeing a body drop with each shot, his rate of fire was only slightly slower than hers.
They both emptied and changed their magazines before Billie drove past them. Nash heard the squeal of his brakes, but continued firing. The targets coming from the van were down. Now he was shooting sick men and women who, spurred by the slaughter, attempted to stand and flee.
Billie blasted a long honk with the truck’s horn and shouted, “That’s enough! Get in the truck.”
Nash fired twice more at targets who were down but still moving. He clicked on an empty chamber and shouted to be heard above the noise of Betty empting her third magazine. “It’s done. Let’s get Jess.”
Saying Jess’s name brought her from her killing stance. Following Nash, she vaulted into the bed of Billie’s truck. They both rolled toward the tailgate as Billie gunned the engine and peeled rubber almost all the way to the prison vans. They rolled the other way when he applied the brakes.
Nash and Billie had left the buses running after moving them. Jumping from the truck, Nash said to Betty, “I’ll take the far van, you take this one. Nash sprinted to the farther van. He released the hand brake and shifted into drive to follow Billie racing for the underpass. In his rear view, he saw Betty fall in behind them.
After they passed under the bridges, a bright flash lit the landscape. Nash felt the van rock from the blast wave of the explosion.
Billie braked and stopped. Illuminated by their headlights Nash saw Maria and Torrie run from where Maria had touched off the charges that brought down the bridge. They scrambled into Billie’s truck and he took off. Nash and Betty gunned their engines to keep up with him.
At high speed, Billie led them several miles from the scene of the carnage. Eventually he slowed and stopped.
Ignoring the shouts from the prisoners in the rear compartment, Nash exited his van, He saw Billie running toward him, calling as he approached, “Let’s see if anyone’s following us.”
Nash sprinted with him to the rear of their small convoy. Betty, standing beside her vehicle, joined them. They cleared the rear of that van and Billie stopped. They all peered back the way they’d come. After a long, tense moment, Billie said, “I don’t see any lights. It’s too dark not to have headlights on.”
Betty said, “I’m going to see Jess.”
“Just a minute,” Billie said. “What you two did back there was cold blooded murder.”
Maria joined them as he spoke. “I heard the gunfire and thought they’d found you out. What happened?”
Billie shouted his angry answer. “I’ll tell you what happened. Those people were sick, helpless, most of them not able to stand on their feet. These two opened fire and killed everyone one of them.”
In a calm voice, Betty spoke in chopped sentences. “I hope we killed them all… They were rabid animals; A gang of murderers, robbers,and rapists that needed putting down… It was a righteous killing… As for them being helpless, we damn sure weren’t going to wait until they were able to shoot back. Think what you want, they made their bed… That’s what we do to sick-minded humans. We cull the herd. Fuck em. Just be glad you were on our side of the killing. Come on Nash, we need to find our boy.”
WORKING WITH CEDAR AUGUST, 2068
Dang, I must have dozed off, but the dreaming was as vivid as wide-awake reminiscing. Yeah, we got Jess, and without even a bit of trouble we made it the fifty-miles or so down here to Sweetlips. We came into the Henderson area on Highway 100, and turned onto Talley Store Road. Four miles along it brought us a barricade marking one of the entry points to the community.
The barricade, imposing, made with scrap metal and timbers with metal-plates attached to it, had what was basically the norm for crude blockades; a vehicle that could be rolled away to allow passage, in this instance an old Ford van.
There were ten well-armed citizens of Sweetlips guarding the barricade, a mix of men and women. Billie, in his pickup truck was leading our small convoy. He stopped well away from the barricade and waited for Betty and me to join him before climbing from the truck.
A male voice called to us, “State your business.”
Billie gestured for me to respond.
“We heard you folks are accepting people into your community. There are twenty-seven of us, mostly women and children.
“You heard right. Send one person over. Let me warn you; the man you send will not be harmed. There’s no need to point any weapons toward us. If you do, we’ll open fire and kill the lot of you.”
Billie said, “I’ll go over. Do like he said and don’t get me killed.”
Billie went to the barricade. A hand reached around the end of the van to give him a sheet of paper. The man behind the barricade shouted, “Read our rules and regulations. If you still want to get in, everyone with you has to swear an oath to abide by them.”
Billie returned and handed the paper to me, saying, “Read it to us.”
The paper was short and to the point.
1. Food is our number one priority. Every member of the community above the age of ten will help with planting, harvesting and preserving of our crops.
2. New Comers will live in community shelters until such time they build up enough credit to purchase property.
3. This is a peaceful community. Our laws are posted at the Sweetlips Community Center. Punishment for violations is banishment or death, depending on the law broken. There are no shades of grey.
4. Every citizen capable of bearing arms is expected to so in defense of this community.
5. Be you of good character and a hard worker you have a place to call home. If you still want to enter, you will need to swear that you have read our rules and will abide by them.
Thirty-eight years ago, we made the pledge and drove into Sweetlips. I have so many memories; Thirty-eight years of joy and sadness, hardships and triumphs. Years, during which the material remnants of our society rusted and rotted, presenting challenges to overcome. We persevered.
My mind is torn between thinking about those times, mainly because my time here with Betty and Jess rests so easy in my heart, but the two horrible years immediately following the Ebola outbreak lies heavy on top of my thoughts.
The meal, what little I ate, along with the cool of the barn, and my nap have restored my energy. The cedar planks call to me. I’ll give it another go. The boxes won’t build themselves.
Walking from the barn into the bright sunlight suffusing my homestead, remembrance of leaving the mansion, the abattoir of blood, seeks to intrude, but I shove it away. I have a task of love to complete. There will be plenty of time for mental travel after the boxes are stacked.
The End for Now
I hope you enjoyed this first chapter of ‘Working With Cedar’. The final chapter is written and in editing. It is available for pre-release from Amazon.
Working With Cedar: Conclusion
This is the second and final chapter of 'Working with Cedar'
Adult language, Adult situations, Extreme Violence
While building boxes from cedar planks, Nash Vaughn takes the reader back into the past.
What was life in America like during the rampaging Ebola epidemic? How did Nash and Betty survive in the period of anarchy inherent with the fall of civil control?
You will want to know what happened to Nash, Betty, Little Billie, Maria, and the survivors of the bridge attack.
This chapter will take you to Sweetlips Tennessee where they carve a place to live and mostly thrive.
ASIN: B019EN8AVO http://www.amazon.com/dp/B019EN8AVO
Working With Cedar: A Post Apocalyptic Tale Page 14
