by Steven Bird
Hearing another thud coming from one of the bedrooms, Jessie’s feeling of dread that he may have found his old friend Joe was pushed aside while he turned his attentions back to the task at hand. Proceeding toward the bedroom, his rifle pulled tightly against his shoulder, prepared to fire. Jessie noticed a gap of around two inches where the door was partially open. Shoving the door violently open with his foot, Jessie had just begun to shout an order to freeze as something came at him at a high rate of speed, startling him, causing him to fire.
Hearing the shot from inside the house, Spence ran across the backyard and entered the kitchen with his rifle in hand, shouting “Jessie! Jessie, I’m in the kitchen!”
“It’s okay. It’s okay, false alarm,” shouted Jessie from the bedroom. Walking into the kitchen, Jessie said, “I heard activity in one of the bedrooms. It turns out it was a bird trying to find a way out. Air pressure in the house must have pulled the door to a position where the bird could no longer get out of the bedroom, and it started to panic. It flew right at me when I opened the door. Man, my ears are still ringing from shooting inside that small room.”
With a chuckle, Spence asked, “Where did it go? Did you get it? That’s dinner!”
“No, I missed. It was a reflex shot, and a poorly aimed one at that. The bird flew through the doorway leading into the garage over there,” he said, pointing. “There must be a way in and out for them via the attic.”
Turning his attentions back to the living room, Jessie said, “I think I found Joe, though,” as he walked toward the dead man in the recliner. Looking the remains over, he noticed that no readily visible signs of trauma were present. Seeing a pill bottle on the floor, just out of reach of the dead man’s hand, Jessie leaned over to pick it up. Holding it up so he could see the label clearly, he said, “I guess that’s how he chose to go. On his own terms. He simply fell asleep and never woke up. Ah, Joe. I’m so sorry this happened to you, man.”
“What do you think happened to the house?” Spence asked. “Looters?”
“Yeah, I’d say so. At least Joe didn’t have to face them. Going out on his own terms was the only thing he had left to control in this world. Going out at the hands of a thug just wouldn’t have been Joe’s style.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Standing outside of Joe’s barn, Jessie looked at Spence and said, “Well, I guess now we find out if this was a wasted trip or not.”
With a nod in reply, Spence said, “The only wasted trip is a trip not taken.”
As the two men swung the two large barn doors open, exposing the inside of the barn to the sun’s rays, Jessie was pleased to see Joe’s old Cessna C-185 parked with its tail to the corner, partially draped in the canvas covering that Joe had used to keep it from being overtaken by dust. Jessie looked around and said, “Someone took his tractor and ATV, and I don’t see his pickup truck parked anywhere, but I guess they didn’t have much use for an airplane.”
“What’re the odds the average looter is a pilot?” Spence asked.
Walking over to the plane, banging on the underside of each wing, Jessie said, “Someone drained the tanks. Joe wouldn’t have left it that way. He would have had them topped off, with fuel stabilizer added to the gas. He knew the tanks would corrode by the moisture in the air if they weren’t stored full.”
Standing there scratching his chin while staring at the dust-covered plane, Jessie turned to Spence, and said, “Well, let’s get to work. She’s not gonna get herself ready to fly with us just standing here.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Go get your car and drive it around here to the barn. We’ll use it as a tug to pull her out in the sun so that we can start getting her cleaned off.”
“Sure thing!” Spence said with a spring in his step, anxious to get started on the journey.
~~~~
Over the next two days, Jessie and Spence worked feverishly during the daylight hours to get the old, neglected Cessna ready to fly. Sleeping in the barn in shifts at night to watch over their newly acquired mode of transportation, they wasted very little time on anything outside of the task at hand.
In addition to flushing the fuel system of contaminates, they charged the battery slowly over time by use of Spence’s solar-charging system fitted to his car. They aired the tires via a bicycle-style hand pump, cleaned several birds’ nests from the engine-cowl area, and inspected all control cables and pulleys to be certain they were free of foreign objects left behind by critters looking to use the aircraft fuselage for shelter.
Standing back and admiring the old bird in its now clean and respectable state, Jessie looked to Spence and said, “In regards to fuel for the aircraft, considering its ability to run autogas in addition to avgas, of which we have none thanks to the people that looted this place, the twelve gallons of gas scavenged from the remaining cars in Dolores, as well as the five or so gallons of gas remaining in the Fiero, we’ve only got seventeen gallons.”
“How far will that get us?” asked Spence.
“At fifteen gallons per hour at long-range cruise power settings, we would only get as far as Farmington before we’d have to put her down somewhere and look for fuel.”
“That’s not very far,” Spence replied with a look of concern on his face.
“No. No, it’s not,” Jessie replied. “We need more, but the way I see it, we have two options: we can take the Fiero back into Cortez in an attempt to scavenge for fuel, or we can go with what we’ve got, knowing that we’ll have to put it down fairly soon and set out on foot looking for fuel.”
“Well, since we’ve got the car, we might as well look for fuel before we leave.”
“That’s what I was—ˮ
Before Jessie could finish his statement, a man’s voice shouted from the direction of the house, “Move one muscle and I’ll blow your heads off you damn looters! Now, lay your sidearms on the ground and place your hands on your heads... slowly.”
Complying with the man’s demands and with their rifles out of reach, Jessie slowly placed his Colt on the ground and began raising his hands to his head as he replied, “We’re not looters, we’re—ˮ
“Shut the hell up!” the man, appearing to be in his mid-twenties with a thin build and long brown hair, shouted as he began walking closer. “If you’re not looters, then what the hell are you doing here and what are you doing with my uncle’s airplane?”
Caught off guard by the man’s statement, Jessie turned his head and said, “Your uncle? Do you mean—ˮ before finishing his sentence, the man struck Jessie in the face with the butt of his rifle, knocking Jessie to the ground. As the man raised the rifle once again to strike Jessie, who now lay on the ground and nearly unconscious, Spence dove for the man, grabbing him by the waist in a football-style tackle, taking him to the ground.
With the young man now flat on his back, Spence wrestled with him for the rifle, an old Soviet-era Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle with the bayonet affixed to the barrel. Unable to pry the weapon from the man’s hands, Spence used his body weight to work it up to his neck and began to apply pressure, cutting off his airway.
Just as their attacker began to slip out of consciousness, Jessie came to his senses and pulled Spence off of him, shouting, “No! Stop. Don’t kill him!”
As Jessie pulled on Spence’s shoulders from behind, the nearly unconscious man released his grip on the rifle, causing Jessie and Spence to fall backward onto the ground. With the rifle now firmly in Spence’s hands, he pulled away from Jessie and placed the spike-style bayonet against the man’s throat.
“Why shouldn’t we kill him?” Spence shouted in a fit of rage. “He attacked us. He could have killed you, and might have before it was all said and done.”
“Let’s hear him out!” Jessie shouted.
Confused, but trusting Jessie’s gut instinct, Spence continued to stand guard over the man but held off on his retaliation.
As the man came to, Spence held the bayonet against his neck and sa
id, “Now, you do what we say, mister. And you had better answer any questions my friend here has, because he is the only reason you are alive right now.”
Looking at the man lying flat on his back, clearly fearful of Spence, Jessie knelt down and said, “What’s that you said about your uncle?”
Coughing from his inflamed throat caused by Spence’s violent attack, the man said, “Joseph Threadgill. He is my uncle. This is his house. That is his place. That is his airplane,” he said, pointing to the Cessna.
“How are you related to Joe?” Jessie inquired.
“He was my mother’s brother.”
“Who is your mother?” Jessie asked.
“Marcie Threadgill. She’s no longer with us. She passed away when I was younger. Uncle Joe is the only relative I have left.”
Beginning to believe the young man’s story, Jessie asked, “Forgive me for asking, but how did your mother die?”
With a confused look on his face, puzzled by Jessie’s line of questioning, the young man replied, “She died in a car wreck, but what business is it of yours?”
“It isn’t any of my business. I just needed to verify your story. My name is Jessie. I was a good friend of your uncle Joe. I came here to check on him myself, and, well, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but he’s no longer with us.”
After a momentary pause, the young man said, “That’s what I was afraid I would find. I knew he wasn’t doing well before it all started, so, well, it was easy to do the math. I had to know, though. I had to see for myself.”
Reaching out with his hand to help him up, Jessie said, “He’s good, Spence. Let him up.”
As Spence pulled the bayonet away from his throat, Jessie helped the young man to his feet and said, “Forgive us, but what’s your name?”
“I’m Mike. Mike Threadgill.”
“You took your mother’s name?” Jessie asked.
“My father wasn’t worth a damn, so yeah, I took her name.”
Changing the subject, Jessie said, “Joe’s remains are inside the house. Would you like to see him?”
“Yes. Yes, I would,” Mike replied. “But before we go in, how did he die?”
“From the looks of things, he overdosed on pain medication. He probably just couldn’t take it anymore without medical assistance and went to sleep one day with no intention of ever waking up. He’s in his recliner. He looks like he died in peace. Looters have cleaned out the house since then, but he appears not to have been disturbed.”
Looking down at the ground, taking it all in, Mike said, “At least he’s not suffering anymore. And like I said, I didn’t expect him to have made it, but I had to make the trip—just because. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t at least try to get to my only living relative. The only one I knew, anyway.”
“Where are you coming from?” Jessie asked.
“California originally, just outside of Sacramento in a town called Placerville.”
“I know Placerville,” replied Jessie. “When I was younger, my father had an old flat-fender Jeep that he had modified pretty heavily for off-road use. He took us on a family trip there once to do the Rubicon trail. It was an incredible experience.”
“Yep, that’s the place,” Mike replied.
“Just before it all started to fall apart, I decided to get myself back into school and learn a skill that could be useful no matter what turn the economy took, so I moved to Ogden and enrolled in the Ogden-Weber Technical College there to learn HVAC. A good friend of mine had gone there and recommended it. Plus, I figured they couldn’t outsource that line of work.”
“Smart move,” Jessie replied.
“A day late and a dollar short, though. By the time classes started, that’s when the financial crisis began, followed shortly thereafter by the attacks. By the time I had gotten started, it was all over. I figured being in Ogden, I was half-way between California and Colorado, so I might as well try and find my uncle.”
“You’ve come a long way,” Spence said, entering the conversation with a new tone.
“It’s been my mission in life since it all went down. What else did I have to do other than just hide out somewhere and wait to die or join one of the camps?”
“Camps?” Jessie asked.
“The government camps,” Mike replied. “They lure you in with the promise of food, shelter, and protection. You’re nothing but fenced-in cattle in those places, though. That’s no life. With the available supplies beginning to dry up, some of the camps are starting break down on the inside. They’re just not a good place to be. At least not for me, anyway.”
“Me, either,” replied Jessie.
Holding up Mike’s rifle, Spence said, “Did you make it all the way here with nothing but this old relic?”
“I started with an AR-15. I got into a tight situation just outside a little town called Price, just northwest of Moab. I had a steel-cased Russian-made .223 cartridge jam in the chamber. I hadn’t cleaned it for quite some time and I guess that non-forgiving steel case was just a little oversized and got all jammed up in the crud-filled chamber. Slamming it on the ground butt first while pulling as hard as I could on the charging handle wouldn’t budge it and I didn’t have a cleaning rod handy to knock it loose from the bore side, so I just tossed it and made a run for it. I picked the Mosin-Nagant up a few days later when yet another scumbag tried to rob me. It didn’t work out so well for him.”
Handing the rifle back to Mike, Spence said, “No hard feelings?”
Taking the rifle with his left hand, Mike pushed his long brown hair back with his right hand, and said, “No, man. We’re good.”
With a look of interest on his face, Jessie asked, “Oh, yeah, how did you make it out here? I know you didn’t walk all this way.”
“Different modes of travel along the way. I’ve got an old S-10 Blazer parked out in front of the house by that little car of yours.”
“How much fuel do you have?” asked Jessie, scratching his chin with thoughts swirling around in his head. “I’ve got a proposition for you...”
~~~~
Early the next morning, as the three men stood around the grave they had prepared for Joe, and after Jessie and Mike both said their final farewells, Mike looked at Jessie and Spence and said, “I thought about the offer you guys made me last night. I’ve decided to take you up on it. I want to go with you guys. Consider the fuel in my tank and in my jerry cans to be community property for the trip.”
“Like I said last night, It’s a fool’s journey,” Jessie replied, “but, it’s your uncle’s airplane. If you want to go, I’m sure he would have been more than happy to see his only nephew getting some use out of it.”
“Great,” Mike said, cracking a smile for the first time since they had met. “I’ve really got no place else to go, anyway. This was as far as my plans took me.”
“There’s a lot of that going around these days,” Jessie replied.
Chapter Thirty-Three
With thirty-three gallons of fuel in the tanks, and after a successful test run-up of the aircraft’s engine and one final test of the flight controls, Jessie looked over to Mike sitting in the co-pilot seat, and then back to Spence in the back seat, and said, “Well, guys. If you’re gonna change your minds, it’s now or never.”
With the three of them looking at each other with uncertain grins, Spence said in his best, albeit poor, Scottish accent, “Give’r all she’s got, Cap’n.”
“All right then, here we go!” Jessie said as he released the brakes and brought the big Continental IO-520 engine above idle, initiating their taxi.
“Are you sure we’ve got enough room to get this thing off the ground with us and our gear in this small little level area?”
“Probably,” Jessie replied. “The 185 is a hell of a bird. It’s been used all over Alaska for decades for this very reason—taking off from unimproved strips, that is. We can probably start our takeoff run backed up against the fence behind the barn and head st
raight for the house. The trees on each side of the house are the highest obstacles, so aiming for the house gives us the best obstacle avoidance.”
“Why aim for the house at all?” Spence asked, skeptical of Jessie’s plan.
“With such a short takeoff roll, we need a headwind. The winds are blowing out of the west pretty hard. Trying to take off the other way might look clearer, but that tailwind will cause us to eat up too much real estate before we get airborne. It’s not about how fast you’re actually going, it’s about how fast the air is moving over the wings.”
“Hmmm,” Spence replied. “Okay, then.”
Taxiing toward the fence, getting as close to it as he could while still allowing room to swing the tail all the way around, Jessie locked up the left main wheel brake, and with full tail-wheel-steering deflection, gunned the engine to initiate looping the tail around to put their backs to the fence. Once they were lined up and facing the house, Jessie asked, “Are you boys ready?”
“Nope, but go for it,” Spence replied.
“Yeah, let’s get it over with,” added Mike.
“Alright, then,” replied Jessie as he held both brakes firmly while slowly pushing the throttle all the way to the stops. With three hundred horses swinging the propeller at 2800 RPM, the tail began to lift off the ground as the engine fought against the brakes of the forward-mounted main wheels of the old tail-dragger. Releasing the brakes all at once, the aircraft lunged forward, accelerating as he headed straight for the one-story brick home.
Focusing on the house ahead, as soon as he felt the old bird wanting to fly, Jessie snapped the yoke back and pitched up for a maximum-angle climb as both Mike and Spence clutched their seats firmly, bracing for impact as the Cessna barely cleared the house below.
“Wooooo hooo!” shouted Spence. “Hot damn, that was close! How the hell did Joe get this thing back there?”
