by M. C. Allen
“Hey Barbara, do you know about bull nettle? You know those stinging weeds out in the fields where you tried to grow a garden?” Please take the bait … or at least play along. I hoped she was as smart as she seemed. She was a solid lady who, like me, had lost a lot of weight in a short time. Her skin literally hung off of her. Her medium-length brown hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense bun. That made sense if she spent all day hovering over the food for the entire camp. She had the beginnings of a large patch of wrinkles around her eyes. She may be twenty-five or forty-five. Stress does that to a person.
“What about them?” she replied innocently.
“Well, if you’re careful, you can take their seed pods off when they’re ready and dry them in a bag in the sun. The seeds that come out can be roasted near the fire. The roots are the best part though. You carefully cut off the stem with all the stinging nettles, dig up the root, peel it, and either roast it or boil it like a potato. It’s not bad. We have used it to supplement our food for a while now. The center is tough like a pineapple, but the rest is good.”
“You mean those weeds over there?” She pointed to three that I could see from the picnic area.
“Yes, but only one is ready for you to harvest the seeds yet. I’ll show you tomorrow how to do that.” If they let us stay tomorrow. “We also passed a section of cattails down the creek in an area that was mostly mud. You can harvest that for food as well.”
William wasted no time interrupting my conversation. “Next thing you know, we’ll be eating bark and chasing crickets! We have enough food, and help will be here soon. The Army has mountains of meals prepackaged and ready to go. It’s only a matter of time before everything will be back in order, and you will have to answer for those men you murdered!”
Barbara had finally had enough of his crap. “You have been saying the same thing for the last two months! Help is not coming! Do you hear the sound of airplanes? It’s quiet enough that cars moving down the road could be heard from miles away. Do you hear anything except the sound of your stupid mouth!?” She was standing up and yelling. I sat with my kids and watched the giants of the camp have it out.
Joseph stayed out of it completely. I could understand his position. He was mainly responsible for his child, Jordan. If push came to shove, he might jump ship and join us. I would feel bad if his entire team just left the rest of the camp undefended and threw in with us. William clearly was not thinking of the long game; he was only interested in his own comfort.
I caught Joseph’s eye and motioned him over as I stood up. My little family followed my lead, and we moved back to where we were camping for the evening. When we got there, I sighed and waited a second. To their credit, my children started to set up camp immediately and let me discuss things with Joseph. Jordan was still back at the tables. Hopefully, he was gathering intelligence for his dad.
“Joseph, if they decide against us, we will be leaving tomorrow. You can keep two of the rifles since you helped me with taking down Devin and Burt. The rifle that Raymond was carrying belongs to Kofi for him to decide what he wants to do with it. He may just give it to you, or keep the optic off of it. I’m making up these rules as we go, but that seems fair. You take a life, you get the spoils.” I waited for him to reply. Joseph liked to take his time before making a decision, and I respected that about him. He had survived this long around those idiots.
“I can agree to that. It’s only fair for him. That does still increase our weapons by two. We still need to check them out. Can we do that in the morning? If they decide wrong, we can sort it out. I really hope they see reason.”
“Will you come with us if they can’t? I know I’m putting you on the spot here, so sleep on it. Keep this to yourself though. If they make a move on us in the middle of the night, then someone will pay dearly.”
Joseph nodded and turned back to the picnic tables.
“In case we need to leave in the morning, Regina, how much water do we have right now?”
She thought for a second before replying. “We drank a lot of it already during dinner. I guess there is about two quarts’ worth. I would have had more, but we got interrupted.”
She was upset with her lack of production, but we needed to keep her safe. We could use the filter to speed up the process, but I didn’t want to use it just yet. The filtration device could process about a gallon an hour and relied on gravity to do the work. The water bottle was another source of clean water, but we were saving it for when it got really bad.
“That’s okay. If we get an early start tomorrow, we can get a lot more done before the camp wakes up and tries to drive us out with pitchforks. Since I have the last watch, I’ll get it going before waking you all up.” I didn’t mind. I was going to be awake anyway, and probably bored at that point.
“One final note: the challenge for tonight is ‘switch’ and the password is ‘general.’ The emergency word is ‘completion.’”
I let the kids get that information in their heads. We didn’t write it down; we memorized a new set of codes each night. I adopted the idea from a spy craft I had read about. I had a book called The Way Things work: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology. It was a first edition, hardback book that I had stuffed in my pack, sealed in a plastic bag. We used the first nouns that appeared on subsequent pages. If there were repetitions, we went to the next line. The emergency word was used if one of us went out to pee, got caught, and held hostage to get back into the camp. Instead of answering the challenge of “switch” with the correct password “general,” the hostage would substitute the word “completion”. That was to give the guard an alert that they were under duress. If possible, the captive would fall to the ground while the guard opened fire. We had been careful, so that hadn’t happened yet.
I believe that we should be ready for everything, and the kids liked to read the book. There were nice graphics explaining how to rebuild a technological base if we had the right tools. One day, if these kids didn’t end up dead, they might help to rebuild this screwed up place. For the time, we read the book and hoped to live to see another sunrise.
“I’m going to get some rest. If you need anything, just give me a kick.”
I curled up with my lightweight blanket. It was almost relaxing compared to other places we had spent the night. The last thing I thought about before falling asleep was that we would need thicker blankets or a roof over our heads long before the winter arrived.
A boot nudging my leg woke me up around two in the morning. The form in front of me passed on the only working watch we had, and then lay down where I had just been. No words were exchanged. No news is good news, I guess. I spent the time watching different parts of the area near the pool of water. It was so dark I almost got out my thermal scope, but I decided to save the batteries. If I heard movement, I would pull it out and take a look, but otherwise I stayed still. I only moved my head and let my peripheral vision note any movement. It was a trick I learned in the Army. Your periphery detects motion better than directly in front of your eyes. I didn’t see or hear anything for most of my watch.
Around daybreak, when the eastern sky just began to glow with a faint yellow light, I spotted a deer down by the edge of the water. I sat motionless and watched it. If there were anything out there, that deer would be an early warning system. If it hung around much longer though, it would be a welcome addition to the soup/stew pot. I called the choice cuts in my head. A nice filet or tenderloin seared to perfection over hot coals with a strip of bacon wrapped around each individual piece. Now if only a feral hog would join our little menagerie, it would be a party! I’d observed some tracks the day before.
I don’t fantasize about sex anymore. Food is my weakness. The thought of a plate of ribs almost made my mouth water. Okay, stop that. Think of something else. Anything else. The thought of food was distracting. I could almost see why someone would go cannibal. The problem with the whole concept was the lack of trust that goes along with eating each other. You fall and
break a leg, and even though it’s not a bad break, into the pot you go! Not a sustainable option in my book.
Maybe I need to take up meditation. That would make these guard shifts go by so much faster. I should patent a medicine that when you take it, your memories are wiped away for the last few hours. I could sell a lot of that with the way our lives had been. These are the thoughts that ran through my mind as the sun made its slow trek above the horizon.
CHAPTER
SIX
When it was light enough, I started making drinking water. The process is simple: scoop up some relatively clean water, put it on the fire, have it boil for a while, let it cool, and pour most of it into a container. There is going to be some sediment involved, and you can pour it through a coffee filter if you are picky about how crunchy your water is. As long as we were not dying of an intestinal parasite or having explosive diarrhea, we were fine with a little extra “organic material” when we hydrated.
By the time anyone came over from the camp, I had already filled my large carry bladder and several quart-sized bottles. The woman who came to the small sandy beach was elderly and fragile looking. She nodded at me but didn’t say anything. I took it as a good sign and introduced myself.
“Hello there, I’m David. How are you this morning?”
She finished filling her bucket and looked over at me. She set the bucket down and regarded me closely. “I know who you are already. I’m Doris Long. When are you going to leave? Nobody wants you here. The kids are welcome to stay, but we don’t want killers here.”
Her voice sounded like a pack- to a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker before the cigarettes ran out. She waited for me to respond. I guess she was hoping I would break out into a screaming rage and prove her point. Instead, I stayed calm with my reply.
“Well, that’s too bad. The kids will be disappointed that they are not welcome here. I guess only Regina is totally innocent, but I can’t separate her from her brother.” There you go Doris, come back with something smart now.
“You turned those children into killers? What kind of animal are you?” She was tuned up and ready to scream. Her voice woke up my kids and probably most of the camp. I bet that William would sleep through this. He was going to miss the show.
Kofi got up and walked down the embankment to where we faced each other. I was hoping she would slap me. I normally don’t hit a lady, but I think the only way you could classify her as a lady at this point was through genetic testing. She was using profanity at me that was impressive, even by my standards.
“Lady,” Kofi interrupted her tirade, “I had already killed someone before I got with Mr. Metcalf. He has been careful to not just teach us how to protect ourselves, but he tries to help other people too. We would have all died without him. You may think you know him, but what you saw yesterday was him trying to keep your dumb asses alive!”
“Language, Kofi. Remember to keep your cool. Not everyone gets how bad things have gotten. Mrs. Long, I personally have witnessed things that I never thought would happen, not just in our country, but in our state. When the lights went out, I was a classroom science teacher, and Kofi was one of my students. I tried to save as many as I could, but I could not get them to listen. I knew it was going to be bad when I saw the planes falling out of the sky all around our school. It created a firestorm that swept across most of our city. I walked through that trying to get home and escape what I felt was coming. Wake up, Doris, this is it! There is no more government. Nobody is going to drive up here and start handing out food. You are lucky to have a source of fresh water, even if you need to boil it first. We almost died from dehydration just getting here. On the road, we were shot at more times than I can count until we just had to ditch the truck and go afoot.”
Doris was silent. She looked up at my kids and shook her head. “But Mr. Pogozelski told me that things were going to get back to normal in a few more weeks.” Her voice was quieter now.
“Alex, do you want to fill in the blanks for Doris?” I asked without looking up to her. “I think she needs to know.”
“I’ll do it. Doris, I want to warn you that if you talk to me like you just did to Mr. Metcalf, I will gut you and watch you bleed out.” She deadpanned that one. That was the right tone.
“Try to keep her blood inside of her, Alex. She’s been misled by several people here in camp, and she’s scared.” I could care less if Alexsandra used Doris for target practice at this point. Some people were just too stupid to live.
Joseph and Angel arrived at about that time, carrying the three rifles as well as the assorted bags and gear from the three raiders. I made a mental note to check and make sure wild animals had not been digging up the bodies. I couldn’t kill and eat a hog if I thought it had been consuming humans. Of course, if I did it and didn’t know, would that be as bad?
But first, we needed to check the rifles and sort the booty. Angel had taken the personal items and placed them in the packs. The bloody clothes and boots had been taken to be cleaned. From the packs, we found some water bottles and several canned items. Yum! Fruit cocktail in heavy syrup was my favorite. I guess even a cannibal needs a little fruit in their diet. The rest of the items were mundane. Some lighters were useful. The spare set of socks were serviceable, though smelly. But the biggest score for me was a small package of laundry detergent. Oh happy day! I knew I smelled pretty ripe, and cleaning up only did so much if your clothes were filthy and coated in your own body oils. How did these maggots score laundry detergent?
Even if they ran us out of camp in the next few minutes, I was taking the laundry detergent and the extra lighters. They could keep the rifles, as long as I got to wash my nasty clothes!
“David, you need to check out these rifles.” Angel handed the one to me that essentially belonged to Kofi. At first, I checked the chamber to make sure it was unloaded, but when I went to switch the safety to fire, I noticed something different. Turning the weapon to look at the serial number and the manufacturer information, what I saw was familiar, but wrong. These cannibals were carrying a fully automatic weapon?
“Angel, are all of them the same?”
“They’re almost identical. The serial numbers are even close to each other.”
“Did they have any extra ammunition in their bags?” I asked.
He dumped out another pack that was filled with fully loaded magazines. When we jumped them, Devin and Burt only had three magazines on them. There was one in the weapon and one in each of their back pockets.
“They didn’t have any web gear for carrying the extra magazines, did they?” I looked at Joseph when I asked.
“Nope, and number three, or Raymond as we now know, had all of the extras with him.”
I thought for a second. “What if this was not a snatch and grab but an ambush? Fire off an entire magazine from each weapon into the camp, peel back to a hundred yards, and repeat the process. When the camp responds and comes at them, Raymond sits back with his optic and picks each one of you off. By the time you get organized, Burt and Devin would be back to their bags and their spare magazines.”
That took a little planning, and where the heck did they get fully automatic M4s? The standard M4 had a three-round-burst option, but these were upgraded M4A1 models with the full automatic option. I only used that option when things got too hairy, but it showed that these guys had access to some upgraded hardware.
“These weapons look really new. Very little wear on the bolt, and the action is still pretty tight. They are going to need to be cleaned and oiled properly to keep them running in full automatic.” I was stunned.
“You know weapons, but where would you get something like this? Most police forces have the semi-automatic version. Could they have hit an armory like the National Guard?” Joseph was thinking out loud, but I shook my head after a few seconds.
“Guard armories really don’t have weapons there. They are stored on bases. You need a serious cutting torch to get in without a key. Think about it. How can a
bunch of freaking cannibals overrun a military base where they are going to have armed military police?” These weapons were a problem. They looked too new. One of them looked as though the packing oil had never been cleaned from the trigger or bolt carrier.
“Joseph, Angel, the offer still stands. If you want to come with us and leave this place, you can. Either way, I will let Kofi keep this one with the scope on it. I’ll teach him how to use it. Until then, he can pack it as an extra weapon. How many magazines will you let me take out of the bunch?”
Joseph thought about it. “I need to replenish my own stock of ammunition from these, but I won’t have enough to keep the other two as well. Can you only take five magazines with you?”
I could have claimed half of the stash, but I didn’t want hard feelings.
“Do you remember what I told you yesterday? We have a stockpile of ammunition back where we stashed the truck. We only need someone to help us transport it. Do you have anyone in mind, or should we start packing up to leave?”
Joseph looked shocked at this. “I thought you were just trying to get in our good graces. I never considered that was real.” Joseph looked at Angel sheepishly.
“Is there any way we can do this?” Angel asked me.
“There is a road that runs to this campground. Where does it end up, and can we use it?”
“The last time we tried to use that road, we got about five miles south and ran into a roadblock set up by some guys wanting us to pay a toll,” Angel said.
“Okay, first thing we need to do is solve the mystery of the well-armed cannibals just up the creek.” This was getting complicated, and we still didn’t know if the camp would let us stay.
