The man sighed. “Things are tight,” he said. “We’re working together, though. We’ve kind of pooled our resources. We’re cooking as a group to make the best use of what we have. Everyone on this street gets along pretty well and we’re trying to take care of each other.”
“That’s good,” Jim said. “I’m glad you folks are getting by okay. Not many folks are out there trying to take care of each other. It’s kind of an ugly world right now.”
The man nodded. “We’re worried about winter,” the man admitted. “Some of us have fireplaces and we’re starting to lay in wood, but I dread it. Except for the older folks, most of us have never had to heat with wood before. I worry about someone catching their house on fire. Some of these old chimneys might not be safe. In this tight neighborhood, it could jump from house to house.”
Jim knew that it would be very difficult for folks not used to heating their homes with wood. It was important what type of wood you used. The wood also needed to be dried and cured. It was important that your chimney was in good condition and that you kept the fire a reasonable size for the type of fireplace you were using. Wood stoves and fireplace inserts were more efficient and offered more control over the fire. If it got too hot, you could shut off a damper on the stove or in the chimney and choke the fire back. With a fireplace, there were fewer options.
Jim started to tell the man that he was getting ahead of himself if he was already concerned about winter. Chances were that most of them in that neighborhood wouldn’t make it that far if the electricity stayed off. If government projections were accurate, there would probably be fewer of them to feed by winter also, but he held back. He wanted to keep this positive and he had other things to do.
“I would encourage you to add a gate or something at both ends of your street,” Jim said. “It would be good if you could limit traffic into the neighborhood to just those folks that belong here. I’m not sure if you’ll get any response if you call the cops right now.”
The man snorted sarcastically. “The cops,” he spat.
“What about them?”
“They’ve set up a base of operations over at the shopping center,” the man said. “They’ve basically taken over the store.” He was obviously bitter over that.
“Really? They’ve taken over?” Jim asked. “I saw the barricade but I wasn’t sure what was going on.”
“Oh yeah, they definitely took over,” the man said, his resentment building. “There was still food left. The fresh stuff was gone but there was still canned food and other things that could be used. Things that people might need like blankets and first aid supplies.”
“What exactly did they do?” Jim asked. “They just moved in one day?”
“Basically,” the man said. “They were out there to provide security while folks were shopping but things were getting hairy. There were no lights and they were having to ring up purchases by hand. People were having to pay with cash. There were fights breaking out and not enough cops to keep a lid on it. The cops on duty finally just decided that the doors had to be shut and locked. They said it was for everyone’s safety, then word got out that they all started moving their families in. Now there’s like this whole fortified compound of cops in the middle of town and they’re not sharing the food. Folks have asked to get in and been turned away.”
“I doubt that there’s all that much food left,” Jim said. “I don’t know that it would be very helpful if they did decide to open things back up.”
“It’s the point of it,” the man said. “They’re cops. They shouldn’t be doing things like that.”
“I’m not taking up for them, but they’re also people,” Jim said. “People with families. They’re looking out for their families the same way that you’re looking out for yours. I have a hard time blaming them for that.”
“So you’re okay with it?” the man asked, his voice rising.
Jim shook his head. “No, I’m not okay with it. I’m just not surprised by it, is all. Like I said, they’re people and people do desperate things. It’s in our nature. As long as they stay on their side of the fence, we’ll get along. If they try to cross my fence and steal from me, then I’ll have a problem with them too.”
“That’s kind of a selfish attitude,” the man said. “What do you recommend for the rest of us?”
“It’s a selfish world now,” Jim said with a shrug. “My best suggestion would be for you all to find a similar place if you could. Find a building that you can secure and that is strong enough to fend off attack. Something you can heat this winter.”
“Well, a lot of us here in town have talked about storming the shopping center,” the man said. “We could just take it back for the people of the town.”
“That would be a wasted effort and a lot of you would die,” Jim said. “And even if you succeeded, I think you’d have little to show for it. Like I said, there’s probably not that much left in there at all. You’d probably be better off moving everyone into one of the abandoned factories.”
The man considered this. “What if the cops do run out of food?” the man said. “If that happens, won’t they come looking to take our food?”
“There are already people out here looking to take your food,” Jim warned. “If it’s not the cops, it will be someone else. I assure you of that. Remember, that’s why David and his parents are dead. They had something that someone else wanted. That’s why I am suggesting you get a gate up, or even better, find a more secure location.”
The man nodded. “That’s a good idea. I’ll talk to the others.”
“I need to be going. Good luck to you,” Jim said, turning back to the vehicle.
He slid into the passenger seat and turned to Lloyd. “Those people don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on out there in the world.”
“What are you going to do now?” Lloyd asked. “What are we going to do about finding a place for Gary?”
Jim sighed. “I’m going to talk to any other neighbors I can find and see how they feel about it.”
Lloyd started the car and accelerated out of the neighborhood. “What do you think they’ll say about some stranger moving in like that?”
“I think if I tell them that I have a heavily armed friend with his own supplies who wants to move in and help us defend the valley, they’ll see that as an asset for the community. Especially if things get uglier.”
“Uglier?” Lloyd asked. “You don’t think they’re ugly enough already?”
“Oh, I think they’re plenty ugly already,” Jim said. “But I still think there are levels of ugliness that we’ve not seen yet.”
“You are just a ray of fucking sunshine,” Lloyd mumbled under his breath. “You should be writing greeting cards or something.”
*
For the next two hours, Jim and Lloyd visited the families that remained in Jim’s end of the valley. This was done with extreme caution. Lloyd pulled up to each gate and honked the horn, while Jim stood in front of the vehicle with his arms raised and a white pillowcase in his hands as a flag of surrender. Jim was well aware that many of his neighbors were older and couldn’t see well. He hoped that he didn’t get shot by an overzealous, nearsighted farmer.
They visited the Wimmers first. The Wimmer clan was one of the largest families in the valley. The old man had been a local politician back in the day. He had a half-dozen kids who all had more kids and now those kids had kids too. Altogether, it seemed like there were hundreds of them, but it was probably closer to fifty scattered out over several houses, all located within sight of each other on the same farm. After he waved his white flag, someone very cautiously came and met Jim at the gate. He and Lloyd were invited back up to the house. You couldn’t visit the Wimmers without being invited to the parlor.
They exchanged stories with the family and Jim was not surprised to learn of their run-in with Charlie Rakes. The Wimmer family was pleased to learn that Mr. Rakes had been sent to meet his maker, although some expressed a little disa
ppointment that they had no role in his demise.
The Wimmers were an old-time farming family who had lived in the valley for nearly a century and a half. As was their heritage, they all had tremendous gardens and canned much of what they ate. Their big farmhouse, which the patriarch and matriarch called home, still had a wood-fired cook stove in the kitchen. They had an electric stove as well, but had installed it without removing the old one. They just couldn’t put all their trust in some newfangled electrical gadget.
When the electricity had failed a few weeks ago, Mrs. Wimmer had simply said, “See, I told you that would happen,” and set about building a fire in the old cook stove.
Mr. Wimmer had rolled his eyes skyward, recalling that Mrs. Wimmer had indeed told him that such a thing might happen, but also knowing that it had roughly been around the time of World War II. However, as a kind and loving husband, he did not point out to her that her prediction on the relative undependability of electric ranges had taken around seventy years to manifest itself.
They also had hundreds of head of cattle, that being how most generations of the family had made their living. They had also supplemented their income with tobacco when it had been profitable to do so. The Wimmers assumed that if they could keep their cattle safe, they might be able to trade butchered beef for some of the other things they were unable to produce on their property. They specifically mentioned diesel fuel and ammunition. Jim had plenty of the latter. He let them know that he might be interested in trading for some beef down the road and told them he’d get back with them shortly.
When Jim broached the topic of his friend Gary moving into Henry’s empty house, the Wimmers offered no opposition. Jim explained that he thought it was in the best interest of all living in the valley for them to collectively agree to gate off their road. Although it was a through road and connected to other roads on each end of the valley, there were other ways around. It was not a road that people had to travel unless they lived back in there. Jim’s plan was to install two locked gates, one just past the house that Gary would be moving into and the other at the intersection near the Akart Farm. Jim hoped it didn’t prove necessary to man those gates with armed guards. He hoped that a gate with an appropriately menacing sign may serve to deter any potential bad actors from coming into their neighborhood.
“I think some new folks in the neighborhood would be real nice,” Mrs. Wimmer said. “All of these empty houses just depress me.” She was around 87 years old and was practically the matriarch of the valley. At least half of the folks that lived back there were related to her or her husband. She’d spent her entire life there, even attending school in the valley and going to church there. Of those two structures, only the church still stood.
“My friend Gary is a good man,” Jim assured her. “He’ll take good care of his end of things and he’ll help keep us all safer.”
“That’s just fine,” Mrs. Wimmer said. “And don’t leave without taking some mulberry jelly with you. We’ve been making it all week.”
“We tried to talk Mom out of making her jelly this year, what with all that was going on in the world,” her son said. “She told us that was nonsense. She’d learned to make it on a wood cook stove when she was a little girl and she wasn’t going to let a power outage stop her.”
“Modern conveniences have made all my children weak in the body and mind,” Mrs. Wimmer complained. “We never should have taken the electricity when they brought it through the valley. It was Mr. Wimmer’s idea. He was determined to have a radio in the house.”
Her son rolled his eyes and Jim smiled at them both. “Thanks for the jelly, Mrs. Wimmer. You just let us know if you need anything.”
She waved her hand at Jim. “We’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Wimmers are like poison ivy. Can’t hardly kill us if you try.”
Next, they went to the Bird Farm, home to a family of gun-loving goat farmers. They weren’t particularly violent people, but from the largest Bird to the smallest Bird they loved to shoot and gunshots rang from their farm daily. As a shooting enthusiast himself, Jim had spent many afternoons up there shooting on the Birds’ homemade range.
While Jim knew that the Birds wouldn’t shoot at him if they recognized him, they might just see two strangers in a loud old car and decide that they should drive them off with a little gunfire. Rather than take a chance on that, Jim left them a short note explaining the situation with Henry’s farm. He asked them to stop by one day and see him just so they could exchange information. He also left them a radio channel that they could use to reach him if they wanted to. He honked the horn, then left the note in their mailbox.
Next was the Weatherman Farm, although it was more commonly known as the Weatherman Zoo. While many farmers in the region had cattle, goats, or sheep, along with a few dogs and cats, that was not sufficient for the Weathermans. They had a little over thirty acres and raised llamas, emus, ostriches, alpacas, and over a dozen varieties of goats, from the dwarf to the fainting. They had miniature horses and miniature cows and pot-bellied pigs. They had a donkey named Petunia that wore a hat with holes cut out for her ears. They also had chickens, ducks, quail, and geese. There were hutches with rabbits. Peacocks roamed the property making strange noises that scared anyone who heard them, except for Mrs. Weatherman, who was the ringmaster of the whole circus.
The farm was overseen by Mrs. Weatherman, her three daughters, and a very tired Thomas Weatherman. Thomas was Jim’s age but had been able to retire early, something Jim had only been able to dream of. Thomas had told Jim his story one day when Jim helped him wrangle a loose emu from the road. According to Thomas, after watching his wife buy tons of Beanie Babies off eBay, he said these simple words: “I think that’s going to be big. A feller ought to get in on that.”
When Thomas sold his few cattle off that year, he used the money to buy eBay stock at around thirty-five dollars a share. After the dot-com explosion and numerous stock splits, Thomas had nearly a million dollars. It was the only financial investment he’d ever made in his life, other than in his home and farm. When the market got squirrely in the late nineties, Thomas cashed out with no regrets and never bought another stock. He renovated his house, built some new buildings on the farm, and took early retirement from his job as a federal mine inspector. Now, he pretty much spent his days helping his wife with her menagerie.
The Weathermans were pleased to see Jim. Like Jim, they were not born into the valley but had moved there at some point. With no relatives there and no close friends among their neighbors, they were fairly isolated socially. This was not a big deal in regular times, when they had the phone, the internet, and the ability to drive and see friends. Without that ability, though, a rural family’s social circle could instantly drop from being global to simply extending from one end of the house to the other. When the power went off, the Weathermans initially treated the event like the occasional snow and ice events experienced in this part of the country. Then when gunshots and the lingering smell of home fires began reaching their homestead, life changed for the family.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jim said, “but I was almost surprised to find you guys still alive.”
Thomas Weatherman had met the two at the gate and they stood there talking. Thomas wore a Glock on his hip and Jim was pleased to know that there were more people in the valley comfortable with carrying, and hopefully using, firearms.
“We weren’t too worried at first,” Thomas said. “Then when I caught sight of that strange family going in and out of Henry’s place, I got worried.”
Thomas and his family lived a little distance off the road, but were Henry’s closest neighbors. There were fewer families at this end of the valley.
“What did you do?” Jim asked. “How did you stay off that scumbag’s radar?”
“We circled the wagons, as the saying goes,” Thomas said. “We moved all the livestock to the barn or to back pastures that can’t be seen from the road. No one goes out by themselves a
nd everyone carries a gun.”
“That’s sound practice,” Jim said. “I still wonder why Charlie Rakes didn’t wander up here, since you guys were the closest to Henry.”
Thomas laughed. “Years ago, when I was single, I lived in a rough hollow over in Buchanan County. There was a lot of stealing went on over there. I asked my neighbor what I should do to keep from having someone break in on me. He told me to shoot up a box of shells the day I moved in and to keep shooting often so that everyone knew I was armed. “
“Did that work?” Lloyd asked.
“Damn right it did,” Thomas said. “We took that same approach here.”
“How?”
“The fires didn’t worry me at first,” Thomas said. “I thought it was campfires since the power was out. Then, about the same time as the shooting started happening, I started seeing faces I didn’t recognize wandering up and down the road. We moved the animals, like I said, and then I told my family that I expected each of them to fire off a few rounds every day as a deterrent. They came and got me when they did it so I could make sure they were practicing good gun safety. Now I know they’re safe with their guns so they don’t have to come get me anymore, but I still want each of them firing rounds every day. I think guns send a message that people like that Rakes character understand loud and clear.”
“Must have worked,” Jim said.
“What happened to him?” Thomas asked. “Did he move off or did someone move him?”
“He killed Henry, his wife, and their son. He also kidnapped my mother and was going to kill her and my son. When I got home, I killed the bastard and fed him to the coyotes. Then I ran his whole family off.”
“I appreciate that,” Thomas said. “He deserved no better.”
Jim went on to explain why he was there and Thomas was excited to hear that he was getting a new neighbor, especially when he found out that they had a large family. His children were tired of just seeing each other.
Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series Page 20
