by David Craig
Beacon recounted an encounter he'd had with wolves last winter as he pulled packets of pemmican and venison jerky from an inner pocket of his wolves' skin coat and shared it.
Displaying the honesty Beacon had always admired in him, Pete put aside his prepper persona and admitted he'd been wrong, "This is turning out to be more than a Shit Hits The Fan event and we're almost out of food." Beacon resisted the urge to say 'I told you so' and let Pete continue. "Any chance the boys and I could come with you when you go back up into the mountains?"
"I'll be glad to take you back with me, Pete, but I've got very little say in whether or not either of the groups I'm affiliated with will take you and your boys in."
"The Settlement is a group of unprepared survivors who hung on by the skin of their teeth. If they believe me about your skill with plants they might take you in, but they've learned a lot about gardening in the last couple years. You'd be joining a late 1800's society if they let you in."
"The other group, The Rich Guys Survival Club, is a privately held closed corporation that won't sell shares to any newcomer, but they might let you farm in their valley under their protection as a sort of tenant farmer. It'd be just one step up from serfdom but you'd be free to leave whenever you wanted."
"A third possibility would be for you to tag along with the group I'm with and split off on your own once we're were out of the city. Civilization will start clawing its way back in a few years, but staying alive until then might be problematical."
Aside from his guns and a supply of ammo, Pete and his sons had an encyclopedic knowledge of gardening, an inordinately large collection of gardening tools and a five gallon plastic bucket full to the brim with properly preserved non-hybrid seeds which would breed true season after season. They'd been harvesting and planting seeds from Ann's pre-apocalypse garden for food since the Blowup.
"After Ann was murdered we didn't dare plant, tend or harvest our own backyard except on moonless nights for fear of snipers. We shot birds with the pellet gun and trapped mice, rats and gophers out there for meat. Still we've eaten almost all our stored food and were planning to make a run for it when you showed up."
"There's no future for us here," Pete continued, "We can't grow enough to sustain ourselves in this small plot and expanding the garden into a farm big enough to feed the three of us would be suicide. We'd draw looters from miles around. We'll tag along with you at least until we get out of town. If nothing else we can help you avoid the gangs."
"Gangs?"
"Crips and Latin Kings mostly, they used to fight over drug territories downtown in the big city, but when things fell apart they were about the only groups with organization and leadership in place. They took over supermarkets and food warehouses, broke into gun stores and pretty much took over the city fighting off all comers. Then they moved into the satellite cities around the beltway. Lately they've been spreading out into the suburbs looking for food."
"How do you know all this?"
"There was a local gang of teenage toughs that used to trade with us, that's what the milk box was for; their scouts ran into scouts from the big city gangs from time to time. But both gangs had to keep expanding their areas of operations as found food ran out. Awhile back our local hooligans were talkin' tough about defending their turf from those larger gangs. We haven't seen nor heard from them since."
Beacon returned to his group and suggested they spend the night with Pete, Charley and Sam. The invitation was accepted and the tired horses were corralled inside Pete's garage that night while the tired teenagers slept anywhere they could find a place to lie down.
Pete had been a rodeo clown in his younger days and knew a thing or two about hitching up a team and driving a wagon so he accompanied Beacon in the morning while his boys stayed behind to pack and guard their gear.
They reached the warehouse midmorning. The front door was unlocked which may have helped deter looters by giving the impression that the building had already been looted. Which it had. Once.
Inside they found a skeleton on the floor dressed in MultiCam, a shoulder holster still strapped around its upper torso, but the gun was gone. "My dad says he negotiated for months to get us the best possible deals," one of the Marauders said looking down at the bootless bones, "maybe if he'd just settled for less of a deal sooner…"
The brand new plows, horse tack and other equipment were still sitting in their original boxes in the six wagons all crated up and ready for transport. It was obvious they'd intended to haul the wagons on trucks to some point where they would have met up with someone with horses, but by the looks of it everything had come to a screeching halt before the wagons got loaded onto the flatbed trailers.
Only one crate of each type of crate had been pried open. "I guess they were only looking for fast food," Beacon joked as he re-closed a crate of plows.
The same Marauder chuckled and replied, "Dad said they were supposed to take some horses to a road near the valley and meet some trucks but no one showed up.
Opening a pedestrian door between two huge garage type doors at the rear Beacon saw two flatbed eighteen wheelers backed up to the loading dock. No way to get the wagons out that side of the building. Examining the big trucks he found holes had been punched in their diesel fuel tanks and the contents drained long ago. Even if their fuel tanks hadn't been tapped the tractor trailers would be unable to drive through the maze of stalled vehicles on the roads on their eighteen flat tires.
The breakdown of society's intricate technological system meant that just inflating the tires would require a working oil well to supply a working refinery to "crack" the crude oil to make the fuel for the trucks and a working generator to power a working compressor to pump air into the tires which by now were probably permanently flat on the bottom side. It would probably be decades before anyone could get even a pencil factory online.
Beacon's experience with horses was limited to riding them and once leading a packhorse on a trap line. He wanted to just hitch up the horses to the wagons and go. In his mind there was little difference between saddling a horse and throwing on a wagon harness. Gail explained it wasn't going to be that easy.
"These aren't draft horses. They aren't used to this. A horse that has never been hitched to a wagon will likely freak out just from all the clinking and clanking and weight of the wagon harness," she said, "Even if we get through that with just a bit of ear-pinning and stomping, the moment the horse takes a step forward and sees the wagon chasing behind it may take measures into its own hooves to get rid of the pursuer by kicking, bucking or running off."
Molly's Marauders were rich kids that meant that they each had their own horse which they'd ridden for years. This helped because the horses were familiar with and trusted their riders. Even so the teenagers had difficulty with all the complicated pieces of tack required to hitch a horse to a wagon. Pete, Gail and Old Bill went from horse to horse helping the kids figure out the unfamiliar harnesses.
Then Gail led the kids, each leading his or her own horse, in a circle around Old Bill to help the horses get used to wearing their new outfits.
As the horses were being introduced to their wagons Beacon was close to having a conniption fit. They'd been in "Indian country" far too long making far too much noise as far as he was concerned. When Gail informed him it would be at least another hour before they could expect the horses to behave while hitched to the wagons he posted guards outside which slowed things down even more because each guard had to be pulled in periodically for wagon training with his or her horse.
In the end Pete, Gail and Old Bill drove each wagon as the horse's owners led the hitched horses carefully out the front of the building using a smaller, but adequate, van delivery door.
Once the six wagons were in the street where an inexperienced driver's mistake was less likely to end in catastrophe other men took over the middle four wagons as Old Bill drove the lead wagon with Pete's wagon at the rear of the convoy.
The boys and gi
rls who'd given up their horses to pull the wagons climbed on the wagons and the convoy was about to move out when a shot rang out. One of the Marauders in the back of the last wagon moaned and went down across a crate.
More shots followed as a group of men ran up the street towards them yelling and firing wildly as they ran.
Beacon, Gail, Randy and Jackie were the only ones still astride horses. Beacon's rifle was still slung over his shoulder, he yelled, "Get the wagons out of here!" as he pulled his pistol and sent a fusillade of bullets down the street where the shots were coming from. He didn't expect any hits, but the blast, muzzle flash and ricocheting bullets might cause the attackers to take cover and keep their heads down.
Following Beacon's barrage Gail put the reins in her mouth pulled first one and then another of her revolvers from their shoulder holsters and unloaded them in a steady cadence to keep their enemy's heads down as Beacon, Randy and Jackie rode into a side street and dismounted. The short barreled revolvers were ineffectual at that range, but their attackers didn't know that. The three fired covering shots as Gail rode in behind the building with them.
Gail held the reins of their horses as she struggled to reload the little five shot revolvers while the other three took turns popping out and firing at different levels; standing, kneeling and prone. Marksmanship wasn't an issue; their goal was to keep the attacker's heads down while Old Bill got the wagons out of danger. It didn't hurt that the wounded man on the last wagon was firing wildly down the same street as the wagon bumped its way up towards the corner.
Old Bill wisely took the first left zigzagging down a block before turning right to parallel their original intended path. Out of sight, out of mind and out of range of their attackers the wagons made a mad dash for their planed rendezvous with Molly riding at the head of her Marauders.
Beacon had Jackie take a prone position behind the corner of the building aiming diagonally across the street at a doorway just a little ahead of the advancing gang. From their vantage point the gangsters could see only the tip of her rifle barrel until they came into her line of fire then her muzzle's flash was the last thing they saw.
Every few seconds Randy's rifle roared down the front of the building protecting his girlfriend as he leaned out for a split second to fire thus keeping attackers from slipping up on her flank.
Beacon took up a position standing directly behind the teenaged boy watching windows and rooftops directly across the street to be sure no snipers lurked there. Anyone showing their face would get it filled with lead.
The gang used tried and true tactics darting from doorway to doorway on both sides of the city street as they leapfrogged each other advancing on Beacon's position.
Their advance stopped dead when they came into Jackie's line of fire. In less than a minute two of the attackers lay dead as the last wagon disappeared from view around the corner. There was no longer any reason to hold their position. Gail reholstered her reloaded revolvers and they mounted their horses. They rode back down the street beside the brick building that had provided their cover.
Crossing the street in an effort to rejoin Old Bill and Pete and the wagons would have needlessly exposed them to enemy fire and concentrated their enemy's attention on the fleeing wagons. By going back a block before turning left to parallel Old Bill's route of retreat maintained both cover and concealment while breaking contact with the enemy.
Once everyone was back at Pete's place they assessed their situation. The shod horse's hooves left light gray horseshoe shaped marks on the pavement wherever they went. They had to assume the gangsters would follow them back to Pete's place.
Beacon sent Pete in to retrieve his sons and their gear. With three large sleeping bag topped knapsacks full of freeze dried food on their backs Pete and family exited his house for the last time with his sons carrying the large plastic bucket of non-hybrid seeds between them suspended on a pole. Leaning by the doorway was a collection of shovels, hoes, rakes and other long handled gardening implements Beacon couldn't identify.
The wounded man was tied atop two of the larger crates. While that was being done, Pete's sons grabbed hatchets and axes, bags and boxes of gardening tools from a pile by the front door. The wounded teenager would not be comfortable for this ride, but he was young and strong, besides, it couldn't be helped.
Once Pete's family belongings were wedged under the seats and into every nook and cranny of every wagon the wagon train was prepared to move out. Beacon turned to Pete and said, "The gang will be here soon, do you want to set fire to the stuff that's left inside the place?"
"What? No! Your books are in there! And so are my technical manuals and our photo albums and…" he trailed off.
When his voice resumed it was in a stronger tone, "Look, there's nothing left in there that would be of any use to a looter. Chances are they may toss the place, but they won't take much if anything because even though it might be invaluable to me, it would be worthless to them. Someday I hope to be able to move back in." They left the gate and the front door closed but unlocked.
Unslinging his rifle as they moved out, Beacon noticed Pete's was still slung over his shoulder. Beacon sighed; the guy had a lot to learn about surviving in the post-apocalyptic world. Combined with a lot of hunting and foraging for wild edibles Pete's freeze dried food could sustain him and his sons until the first crop came in if there were no setbacks, but Beacon hoped he would hook up with one of the nation states clinging to the mountainsides.
Beacon gave the horses pulling the wagons a short breather in front of an abandoned auto parts store. He went in just long enough to relieve its shelves of all their axle grease for future use on the wagon's wheels. Then they continued their race to the hills.
Beacon was taking advantage of people's natural albeit subconscious desire to stay within their comfort zone. The gangsters would have little trouble following the trail left by the horses off road or on, but the further the city boys got from the familiarity of their home turf the less sure of themselves they'd be. As city boulevards turned to suburban streets and then country lanes he hoped virtually all of their city slicker pursuers would remember urgent business back in the city.
Just to be sure Beacon, Gail, Randy and Jackie set up an ambush just outside of their camp that night at a place where the road curved around a hill after climbing up a long straight incline. Their fields of fire covered the incline while the hill hid and protected them.
As the other's circled the wagons, hobbled the horses, arranged security and set up a cold camp the four friends lay in ambush between the town and the camp. Beacon made sure the sergeant of the guard knew their location.
He and Randy took the first two hour shift while the women cold camped a few yards behind them with the horses. By pairing himself with Randy he made sure the young man would be staring at their back trail and not Jackie's eyes. Of course it never occurred to him that the same logic applied to him with regard to Gail.
At dawn the wagons decamped but Beacon watched their back trail a few more minutes to be sure they weren't being followed.
Molly's Marauders were experienced horse riders, but they'd never driven a horse drawn wagon before. To add to the difficulty their horses had never been hitched to a wagon before. Despite advice and encouragement from Pete, Gail and Old Bill; getting a pair horses to allow themselves to be hitched together was still a daunting task.
Getting a pair of hitched together horses to go the same direction, at the same time at the same speed was a challenge for the teenagers.
Pete took the lead wagon since he knew the area near the city better than anyone else. Beacon stayed up at the front of the column because he didn't trust Pete's ability to spot trouble brewing. Gail drove the third wagon with Old Bill's wagon pulling up the rear.
They were on a paved road skirting a hillside flanked by thick brush and trees on both sides when the ambush occurred. As amateur ambushes go it wasn't badly planned, but is was poorly executed.
Beaco
n spotted movement on the uphill side of the road. Pulling his pistol he rode to investigate. That wasn't part of the ambusher's plan. While the man he'd spotted agonized over what to do Beacon spotted another of the ambushers near the first. As the first ambusher raised his gun Beacon shot him.
