Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie

by R Kralik

  We held our meeting and decided that, while Pop and Mick head out before dawn tomorrow to try for the diesel tanker, Nana and Carisa will be packing up the muffins and filling the thermoses for our first lootin' trip.

  They'll also pack four backpacks with stuff like instant oatmeal, dry soup mix, Kool-Aid mix, chocolate bars, coffee, bottled water, matches, and a few other things, in case any of us need to abandon ship and run for the hills. The backpacks will hold a little ammo for each gun we're taking. They'll all be filled the same, so we can just grab one and go.

  Mick's afraid to leave the property without a man left behind to guard it, so Pop and Nana will be staying behind with Carisa, Amber, and Caleb.

  Pop says he won't outfit us with new weapons yet because we need to practice with them before we can count on ourselves and each other to use them properly.

  We'll take Mr. Colt and Mr. Winchester along with my Glock 17 and a cute little Walther P22 we keep hidden in the garage. Mick wants to pull his AR-15 out of the gun safe, but he hasn't decided whether he'll take it or not.

  We're also taking a couple of heavy flashlights in case we need to use 'em in dark places, or to bonk someone over the head. It's cold as the dickens outside, so we'll be wearing our big coats, hats, scarves, and gloves along with our most comfortable pairs of heavy duty boots.

  We're hitting the pharmacies first, and then heading to anyplace that might have food. We will take... hold that thought. I hear yelling out front... something about a guy...

  11:55 PM...

  We have a guest.

  Jason interrupted my typing earlier by screaming "There's a guy out here on the porch!" Mick and I grabbed the kids, practically threw them into Carisa's room, and told them to lock the door. Mick grabbed Mr. Winchester and we and headed for the front door.

  It was a pitiful sight. On the porch near the door was a young man lying on his side in a fetal position and shivering up a storm. He was soaked to the skin.

  Mick and Jason brought him into the living room and laid him on the pallet the kids made. We wouldn't have discovered him 'til morning if Jason hadn't been up with his insomnia when he heard a noise out front. I wanted to smack him in the head for opening the door without telling Mick, but he'd let Tig and Opie out for a potty run a few minutes prior and thought they were ready to come back inside.

  The "guy" has been severely beaten. His face is bruised and covered in dried blood underneath his swollen nose and down the sides of his mouth. His lips are split on top and bottom. Both eyes are bruised and his left eye is puffed up so much that it's almost completely shut. He's peeking out at us with a big, brown right eye that looks distant and confused. He's barely coherent and seems to be suffering from hypothermia along with his injuries.

  He's wearing a thin button up shirt that's torn almost to shreds. His jeans are so filthy that I can't tell if they're blue, or black. He's wearing a black Converse sneaker and sock on one foot, and a filthy, shredded sock on the other.

  He has nicks, cuts, scrapes, and bruises all over his body. Mick and I undressed him completely to look for bite marks. We found none, but he's covered in bruises.

  We washed him up and put some antibiotic ointment on his cuts and some deodorant in his pits before we put him in a pair of Jason's sweatpants and a thick, long–sleeved shirt.

  He's a long, tall glass of water and the sweatpants are too short for him. We moved him onto the couch, then covered him with a big fleece blanket which was already there since Carisa was asleep on the couch before the ruckus. He kept on saying "hep me, hep me God."

  We stood back for a look at him. Marisa added a quilted throw on top, put his old clothes in a plastic bag, and set them out on the porch.

  We headed to the kitchen for a mini-meeting to decide what to do about him.

  Marisa knows him. He "was" a cousin by marriage to her ex-husband, and his name is Jeremy Caldwell. His side of the family split off from her ex's side, so he isn't a cousin by marriage anymore.

  Marisa says he's a really nice kid and swears that she's not gonna let him die or send him back out into the cold, even if she has to cut her food portions in half to feed him. She has a hard time seeing anything suffer, man or beast, and she can get very dramatic about it. She thinks he's twenty, or twenty-one, years old by now. I have no idea in the world how, or why, he ended up on our front porch.

  We heated some chicken noodle soup over the fire and tried to get him to drink the broth. He took a few sips, and one bite of the noodles, before he shut his mouth and shook his head against anymore. I gave him one of my heavy duty pain pills, praying he isn't allergic to it. He finally took a few more sips and is now sleeping soundly. The shivering has stopped.

  Marisa's sleeping on the pallets tonight, so she can keep an eye on Jeremy. Mick made her put the Walther P22 under her pillow.

  Mick's sitting in the recliner, going in and out of sleep, while trying to help Marisa keep an eye on Jeremy.

  Caleb, Amber, and Carisa are sacked out in Carisa's bed under two blankets and a thick comforter.

  I'm going back to bed and try to figure out where we'll put Jeremy. It's a fact that Mick will not allow a twenty-year-old, unrelated, good looking kid of the male variety sleeping in the same house as our beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter.

  I hope the crack of dawn sleeps in a little tomorrow, 'cause when it appears, Pop will be in here to call us out of bed for the looting run. I told Carisa to keep her bedroom door locked and I'll do the same. I'm nervous and excited, but I'm also scared.

  Thursday, January 9

  We didn't need Pop to wake us up this morning. The whole house was rudely awakened when a blood curdling scream came out of Jeremy about 4:30 this morning. I ran to the living room and saw Mick standing, swaying, and half asleep beside the recliner. His hair was sticking out all over the place and he had Mr. Winchester in his hand. Marisa was sitting on the floor beside the couch with her hand on Jeremy's shoulder, trying to comfort him.

  Jason was banging into the walls, half asleep, as he came down the hallway. Carisa was still in her room, behind the locked door with the kids.

  Opie and Tig were doing pee pee dances and Pop was banging on the back door for us to let him in, which we finally did. He was ticked off about how long it took. He looked at us and Jeremy, listened to a short explanation from Mick, and without a word went tromping back to the motorhome where his warm bed was waiting.

  Jeremy turned his head toward me and said, clear as can be, "sorry, I had a bad dream." I guess it's true what they say about young people bouncing back fast. Oh Lord, thank goodness he's coherent, but I'm having a hard time forgiving him for waking us with a screaming alarm clock.

  Jeremy's in a lot of pain, but he is absolutely starving. He ate two muffins and an apple along with a tall glass of milk before I could get the water pot off the fire in order to make coffee. Caleb and Amber were having fun "feeding him." Carisa looks like she couldn't care less one way or the other. She grabbed an ink pen and a Word Find book, and plopped herself into Mick's recliner.

  As we were having coffee, Jeremy started looking paler that he already was. He half crawled, half stumbled out the door to call Ralph all over my big ol' heirloom rose bushes. I found the mess, and almost called Ralph myself, when I stepped out for a cigarette. He ate too fast. I knew it was bound to happen when I saw him scarfing that stuff down.

  I gave him another pain pill and water to wash it down. I told him that I wanted to hear what happened, but I had to get ready to go out lootin'. He looked at me like I was crazy and sank himself back down into the blankets, moaning, and holding his stomach.

  I thought Nana would look after him while we were out, but Pop said Nana was staying in the motorhome and that he would watch Jeremy.

  Mick was itchy about leaving him here, but I told him that Pop would sit in that recliner with one of the meanest-looking weapons he has and guard him like an escaped felon. Guarding him was easy, he slept for six hours after taking that pain
pill. Pop probably got a little shut-eye himself, but he'll never admit it.

  Mick and Pop went back to town for the diesel tanker and it was gone, so they came straight back and helped me load up the Jeep with the backpacks, weapons, a crow bar, and a bolt cutter in case we needed to pry open a door or cut a lock.

  Mick drove the S10 and Jason drove the Jeep. Marisa rode with Jason and I rode with Mick so there would be a "man" in each vehicle (snort). We ate our muffins on the way to town.

  When he climbed into the S10 this morning, Mick found a nice shiny Benelli M4 12 gauge shotgun leaning against the steering wheel.

  In the driver’s seat was a full box of "Benelli feed." Mick looked back toward the house and saw Pop watching from the open door. He waved, and Pop waved back. Mick climbed in the truck with new determination. His ears were red and his eyes looked a little misty but other than that, he was his same old cheery self (snort).

  Carisa and the kids went out to the motorhome to stay with Nana and play board games and listen to tales about the good old days. They had hot dogs and mac 'n cheese for lunch, and they had ours waiting when we got back from lootin'. That meal used up the last of my hotdog buns from the freezer.

  We got a lot of stuff we needed, and a couple things we didn't. I'll write more about the lootin' trip after supper. Right now, we need to unload the trucks. See ya later.

  1:15 PM...

  Jeremy was just waking up when we walked in the house. Mick sent Pop over to the motorhome so he could eat his own mac 'n cheese, and I gave Jeremy some saltine crackers and ginger ale to keep his stomach steady while we were eating the good stuff.

  The expression on his face was that of a skinny dog at a butcher shop window when he saw us gobbling down our mac 'n cheese, but he needs a bland diet for a day or two and I mean to hold him to it. We took our plates to the kitchen so we wouldn't torture him any more than we already had. He’ll us his story after we get the trucks unloaded.

  Pop kept the fire stoked while we were gone, and it felt wonderful in the living room. I have a full tummy, a warm room, and I'm tired. I want a nap and don't wanna go back out and help unload, but I know that I have to. We need to get everything under cover and out of sight.

  Jeremy told us he'd help unload. We laughed our rear ends off when he stood up, swayed, and plopped right back down on the couch. It's weird to look at that swollen up eye while trying to talk to him. I almost feel like I'm talking to a pirate, arrrgh

  4:00 PM...

  There's a big pot of pinto beans on the top of Nana's motorhome stove. There's a quart jar's worth of ham chunks that I canned last year in the pinto beans. When they get closer to being done, she'll put on a pot of rice to go with them. I think I over did it a little when I was prepping pinto beans and rice, I have about 400 lbs of each. Nana's making cornbread muffins and we'll have all that for supper along with a sliced raw onion, of course!

  Jason and Marisa are at Caleb’s house, working on the kitchen. Carisa and the kids are sitting in the living room with Mick, getting to know Jeremy better. The trucks are unloaded and loot is stacked all over the place. I should be putting it away but my back is hurting and I don't wanna make it any worse.

  I have a couple hours to spare so I thought I'd pop in here and type out Jeremy's story. I'll do the lootin' run story after supper, closer to bed time.

  Jeremy and his friends were taken from a fast food place around lunch time, two days after Christmas.

  He was taken by the National Guard. They took everyone in the place who was over the age of fourteen and under the age of thirty which included just about the entire crew of cashiers and cooks working in the kitchen. They left any customer who was there with children.

  They herded everyone into the parking lot of the mall behind the fast food joint, took their cell phones, and told them to stay put until it was time to go.

  Jeremy says there were about 75 people from all the different restaurants on the road in front of the mall. A lot of the girls were holding one another and crying. Most of the guys were either standing in groups, or pacing back and forth. There were a few couples who were standing off to the side, clinging to one another.

  The national guardsmen forced everyone, by gunpoint, into two school buses. When they were full, the buses headed out of the parking lot. Jeremy saw several more buses at the far end of the parking lot. He believes they were taking people out of the mall to fill them.

  His bus pulled in line behind other buses and followed them to the on-ramp of the interstate, heading west toward the Mississippi state line.

  A man in a National Guard uniform stood at the front of the bus and told them they were going to a training camp to be "trained to defend their country." Several young girls began wailing, and the national guardsman yelled at them to "shut their traps," and that "everyone their age was gonna get trained."

  One of the boys up front asked what would happen after they were trained. The guardsman said they would be "assigned to their duty stations." He didn't say anything about what their duties might entail. Everyone was in shock because they'd been taken at gunpoint, without any choice, in the good old U S of A.

  The remainder of the bus ride was silent except for gasps that came from passengers when the bus in front of them veered off the side of an overpass and onto the paved road underneath. Later, there were rumors that a few members of a high school football team had decided they were gonna get off that bus, and they had attacked the guardsmen in charge as well as the bus driver. Jeremy's bus kept right on going.

  Jeremy was at the end of a week of boot camp style training, at gunpoint, before he saw his opportunity to escape. Oh yeah, he had a gun, but he didn't have ammunition. He spent many hours with that weapon, learning to break it down and put it back together. A couple of times he caught himself mimicking the motions in his sleep.

  The trainees were fed a lot of bland food like plain oatmeal, cream of wheat, clean sandwiches and beans with rice but there was plenty of it, so he didn't complain. "Clean sandwiches" are what we call the ones missing mayo, mustard or ketchup.

  He could see the entrance to the base from his second story barracks room.

  One night, while staring at a line of buses that pulled in bringing new "recruits" for training, he began to form a plan. He waited and watched for two days before putting his plan into action.

  Sure enough, on the third night, the line of buses pulled through the gates. After the buses had been emptied and the recruits had been herded into the main building, he saw the bus drivers head to a burn barrel near the front of the line to warm their hands, smoke, and "shoot the breeze" with one another.

  An extremely large, incredibly fat, bus driver cut off from the group and Jeremy heard him bellow towards the others that he was goin' to the "head."

  Jeremy knew exactly which bus that driver had come from because he’d watched him try to get his blubbery bulk out the bus door after the recruits had disembarked. It was the second bus from the rear, and it was parked in the dark shadow of a building. That area was cut off from most of the streetlights. Everything was going according to plan.

  In the semi-dark room, moving in extra-stealthy mode, (he didn't want to wake his roomie) he threw on his civilian clothes and shoes, grabbed his lightweight denim jacket, and went out the door and down the stairs to the side entrance of the barracks.

  He sent a thank you up to Jesus that he only had to descend one flight of stairs. He cracked the door open, winced when it made a little sucking sound, and carefully stuck his head out for a look.

  Seeing no one close or patrolling other than the drivers at their barrel 40 yards away, he duck-walked behind the hedge row on the side of the building. He banged his knee on a water spigot and went into "still as a statue" mode. He saw one of the drivers glance his way, but the man must have convinced himself that it was nothing because he quickly turned his attention back to the group.

  Jeremy started off again and kept going until he came to a stop across fro
m the second bus from the rear. It was about 10 feet away. It took him a good two minutes to muster up his courage. His heart was about to jump out of his chest as he crawled on his belly out of the hedges and up the steps of the bus. He stayed on his belly and made his way to the rear. He climbed onto the last seat, laid on his side with his knees pulled up to his chest, and waited.

  He said his brain kept trying to say "that was too easy, fella," but he pushed the thought back so he wouldn't jinx himself.

  He knew that the drivers usually checked the buses over before they pulled out, but he'd seen the driver of this bus before. He was counting on the fact that he’d never seen the man haul his large rear end down the aisle to check each seat.

  He felt himself dozing off until the bus shook when a massive, wheezing, hulk came up the stairs and stood near the driver’s seat looking back into the shadowy interior. The hulk flipped on a flashlight and shined the light across the tops of the seats and down the center aisle, then he flipped it off and turned toward the front. Sure enough, the big fat slob was too lazy to physically check each row and he practically fell into the driver’s seat while letting out a groan.

  The whole bus shook like a belly dancer when that man hit that seat. Jeremy was almost dislodged from his sideways perch at the rear of the bus. The driver groaned again, then sighed and started the engine. He put the bus in gear and followed the line of buses out the main gate.

  They drove for several hours. Jeremy had no idea how long they drove, or which direction they went, but it was well past dawn and the hairs on his neck were standing at full attention.

  He felt the vehicle slow down, make a couple of turns, and come to a full stop. The driver hauled himself out of the seat with a great amount of effort. He went down the stairs and out the door.

  Jeremy could hear voices but he couldn't make out what they were saying. He turned his body and took the risk of sticking his head out past the seat near the bottom window of the rear door. Before peeking out the window, he noticed that the entire door had been welded shut. That meant there was only one way out, and it was straight up the center aisle and out the front door.