2nd Earth 2: Emplacement

by Edward Vought

  We get an early start and are carrying plenty of gas for any eventuality. We are taking enough vehicles to carry more than the twenty people we are looking for, just in case. Plus we have a truck in case we find something worth bringing back. So far we always have. The road to the southwest is in pretty good shape and we are making better time than we anticipated when we get about three quarters of the way and find a fairly good sized city. We take a quick look around and can see no signs of life. The stores are still well stocked and it seems odd to me that someone would stay where they might starve rather than walk to the next town or city. Of course they may not even know that this city is here or may be too afraid to attempt walking that far. We should know in about another hour.

  We get to the city where the new people said they are and we start going to where we were directed. The directions are excellent, maybe too excellent. We stop about a quarter mile from where they are supposed to meet us and I jump out with the fifty and head toward the rendezvous point. We have our walkie-talkies so we can stay in touch. They are waiting for me to find a place where I can see them hopefully without being seen. It only takes a few minutes for me to find them and a place where I can have high ground and see quite a distance around them. All I see is exactly what they said we would find. There are some pretty run down looking people, mostly kids looking hopefully toward the direction we should be coming. I take a look around and feel secure to call the others in.

  The people who are waiting get pretty excited when they hear the vehicles approaching. An attractive lady, who is dressed in fatigues, tells them they should hide until they know for sure that we are what we say we are. This lady is definitely not a survivor. She gets everyone but herself hidden then stands there waiting to see if we are friends or enemies. I have to hand it to this lady; she is taking care of those people. I see the vehicles round the corner and I tell Tim in the front vehicle that the lady is standing on the steps of the fourth building on the right. She sees the vans first and I can see her stiffen slightly, like she is afraid, but she stands her ground waiting. The vehicles pull up in front of the building and I can see the people inside sneaking peeks to see what we look like. As soon as they stop, Olivia and Sara jump out and run over to meet the lady on the steps. She relaxes perceptibly and turns to call the others out for everyone to meet.

  One of the men is limping badly when they come out to meet everyone. I am thinking about heading down when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. It’s a group of motorcycle riders, about six or eight blocks away, heading in this direction. I call Tim and have him ask the people if they are expecting company. The lady, who appears to be in charge, says she was hoping to get away before those people came back. I am thinking about shooting them, but as far as I know they have not done anything threatening at least to us. I tell Tim that if these guys are not part of this group we may want to get loaded and get out of here. The other option is to get the women and children clear of this area and have a welcoming committee to see what their intentions are. We decide on the first option.

  The people here have very little to take with them, so they jump into the vans and they high tail it out of there. I watch the guys on the motorcycles for a few more minutes, and then meet Billy who is driving the big truck behind the others, who are putting distance between themselves and this place. I call Tim to let him know that Billy and I are going to hang back to make sure they are not followed. Besides there are a couple of places we would like to check out before we leave this city. We go to the bank and find that this bank kept a lot of silver money on hand as well as a large amount of the paper kind. We have been gathering the silver and gold coins when we find them, just in case money is ever worth anything again. We just finish putting the money in the cab of the truck when the six motorcycles come around the corner and pull up near the truck.

  Billy and I are standing outside the truck with military issue Thompson .45 caliber machine guns in our hands. We have them pointed at the ground, but I think our visitors get the idea that we know how to use them. The one in the front asks us where we came from. I smile and tell him we came south for the winter, it gets pretty cold up north. He smiles and says that he knows what we mean. I ask him if there are any other people around here. I point to the store a few doors up the street and say that it looks like someone cleaned the place out. He says if there is anyone else they wouldn’t know, because they are new to the area as well. He goes on to say that they are just passing through on their way south. They’re tired of the cold as well.

  I can see that they have not taken their eyes off the guns we are holding. The one who is obviously in charge asks us where we found those. I make a gesture like I am looking at it and tell them we found them up in Fort Bragg, in Kentucky. They all look confused and ask where Kentucky is. I tell them about three days drive north east of here. I only know where it was because of the road signs in the area. They seem to buy that. Billy must think that they are trying to decide if the six of them can take us. I can only assume, because that’s what I am thinking. As if to prove to them that they can’t, Billy picks out a truck sitting in the road about twenty-five yards away and shoots about ten rounds on full auto. That gets their attention. The leader says they are definitely going to have to look for another military base on their travels. They start their bikes and ride off heading back the way they came. Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of them.

  We catch up with the others in the large city we came through on the way here. This is the first time any of them have seen me. The lady in charge comes over and introduces herself, her name is Betty Samuels. Sara introduces me to her as Zeus. She picks up on the name immediately.

  “So you are the Greek God that is always ready to rain down retribution on all who would oppose him. Did you meet our motorcycle riding friends in town?”

  I tell her that as a matter of fact Billy and I did meet them and they told us to wish them all the best of luck, and they hope you have a great Christmas holiday. She asks if we are talking about the same people. The ones she is talking about have been trying to find them for the past several weeks. Last week they caught George, who is the man with the limp, and tried to make him tell where the women were hiding. Kyle has a gun and ammunition that he found in one of the homes. He went out and fired a couple of shots to get them to let George go. We have been expecting them, but we were hoping that you would come to rescue us before they did. Kyle is almost out of ammunition for the gun.

  Sara and Olivia are supervising the loading of the big truck with food supplies from the supermarket we saw on the way up. Betty says if they had known there was this much food this close they would have tried to walk here. I see a sign in a store window that tells me I should be able to get Kyle some ammunition for his gun. He was carrying cases of canned goods, but stops to come across the street to the gun shop with Tim and me. Betty comes with us as does Sara. Betty walks in and takes a 9mm out of the display case and reaches under the counter bringing out several boxes of ammunition for it. Kyle has one of the bullets in his hand trying to match it with the ones on the shelf behind the counter. There are rows of shelves containing guns and ammunition throughout the store.

  Tim stops next to a stack of boxes of ammunition and tells Kyle he may want to get the hand truck over by the door and take this entire stack. Gary comes over and asks how much room we want to leave open for guns and ammo. Don comes in and heads directly to the bow and arrow section. He has his arms full in short order heading for the truck to stow away his treasures. We spend almost a half hour picking out what we feel are the best guns in the place and as much ammunition as we can load along with the food. It is dark before we get home, but seeing the lights shining in the houses, and the welcoming committee, makes the new members of our family feel comfortable for the first time in a long time. The hot meal doesn’t hurt either.

  The newcomers are absorbed into the households at least for the time being. George, Kyle and Thomas, the men of the g
roup, are invited to join the single men in the large dormitory they built in the loft of the big barn. Two of the boys are about the same age as Teddy so he asks if they can bunk in with him for a while. The other boys find friends in another house. Kathy who is ten and Karen who is eight both find friends in the new group. They along with their mother are invited to stay with us. There is no shortage of invitations for the others as well. For most of them tonight is the first time they were able to take a bath and sleep in a warm bed, without having to worry who might find you. The two young girls wake up crying during the night, so Dayna goes and takes them to their mom, who is just sleeping in the next room. They spend the rest of the night with her. It takes a while to get used to being comfortable.

  7

  In the morning at breakfast we finally hear the story about how Betty came to be here. She tells us between bites of French toast and bacon.

  “I’m a doctor. I was working in a hospital not far from where you found us. One night, about a month ago, I was on duty for twenty-four hours. That is not uncommon when you work at a large hospital, but that day and night I was so busy I couldn’t even catnap between cases. When I left it was only a short time before sunup, but I could barely find my car the fog was so heavy. I have never seen fog that heavy before and hope to never again. I sat in my car trying to decide whether or not I should try to find my way home, or go back inside to catch a little sleep in the doctor’s lounge, and wait for the sun to burn off the fog. Anyway while I was trying to decide the fog got so heavy I didn’t think I could even find my way back into the hospital, so I locked the doors and fell asleep right there.”

  Sara and Gary come in about then. Sara is getting a plate of food and says, “That damn fog will get you every time.” She is looking for a chair, of which there are no empty ones this morning, so she comes over and starts to sit down. I get up and tell her all she had to do was ask and I would have gotten up. She laughs, and tells me that she knows how much I like it when she sits on my lap. Dayna and everybody else laugh. She tells me she will get up, and let me sit in her chair, and then she can sit on my lap. The young ladies of the family roll their eyes and say “Mommy”. They say that whenever one of the moms says something like that. They only do it to make me blush, one of these days it’s not going to work. Betty can finally continue with her story.

  “When I woke up the fog was almost all gone, but nothing looked the same as it did when I parked my car there. For one thing it was a ramp garage and now I was parked in a lot, and all the other cars were at least thirty years old. I got out of the car and went back to the hospital, or at least what was where the hospital had been. It was still a hospital, but was less than half the size it was and was much older and run down. There was no one there, so I went back out to try to find my apartment, but my car was no longer there. I went looking for something familiar until I found the group of people you have met. I have been trying to figure out what happened since then.”

  We explain about how those of us who came here under similar conditions all got here. We also explain how we all came together to be here and about how we are trying to form a community where we can all be safe and prosper. She says she can’t wait to see everything we have done and be able to help us as well. Tim comes in when we are getting ready to go out and tells the young men in the house that he has a job for them to start earning their keep. They say they are willing to do anything we ask, as long as we show them how to do it. Tim says that Teddy, Don, Dan, and Andrew will show them what they need to know. Teddy already knows what Tim wants. He asks me if he can take his knife with them. The twins want to know if they can go hunting with Teddy today, and Melissa has to tell them for about the fiftieth time that they are too young to go hunting.

  They tell her they are older now than they were the last time they asked. Melissa tells them they are correct, they are three days older than they were the last time. They remind her that Zeus and Gramma and Grampa Horton won’t let anything bad happen to them. Zeus even stops eating French toast that happened to get dropped on the floor when he hears his name mentioned. The new children have never seen a dog before, but he is so friendly they have adopted each other as family already. Teddy comes back displaying his k-bar proudly. When he doesn’t need it for hunting he keeps it locked in a gun cabinet in the living room, so that little hands don’t get hurt on it. The other young men are impressed to say the least. Teddy takes them outside after making sure they have coats, gloves and hats. It’s not like New York in December, but it isn’t warm either.

  The guys remember it’s Sunday, so they don’t get to go hunting today, but are definitely going tomorrow. We spend the day showing our new family members around all the groups. They feel bad that they weren’t here to help with the planting and harvesting, but promise to do their share of the work from now on. We assure them that we can ask no more than that of anyone. Betty and Doc McEvoy hit it off right from the start. We are all glad that we now have a doctor that knows about more up to date medicine. Doc is great, but even he is happy to have someone like Betty join us. She gets put to work the very first day with us. One of the women in Barbs group has a beautiful baby girl about three o’clock in the afternoon. Betty jokes about it saying that even the babies are more cooperative here, back home they always seemed to come during the night.

  The days are going by as usual, but we are all excited about the headway we are making with the new houses. We now have three of them here and approximately where they will be placed when we get to that point. Jenna and James are doing a great job of teaching our people how to put in a basement and they are more than happy to learn. We hope to have the first house set on the foundation by mid January. The weather doesn’t allow us to work every day, and since we are not really in any great hurry, it doesn’t matter. We have made a couple of trips to the farther away cities to get more supplies. The one that we stopped at on the way home from picking up Betty’s group showed signs that someone else was getting supplies there, so we didn’t take anywhere near as much as we would have otherwise.

  We checked a bunch of the houses around the city and more than made up for what we didn’t take from the store. We did some exploring and found another supply of the large conduit that we are trying to use for an underground tunnel. We expect to have the first two houses connected by a tunnel in just a couple of days. Again Jenna and James have done a great job cutting a hole large enough for the doorway in the basements of the first two homes. They built a very nice frame out of block and we were able to make a door that blends right into the wall with some of the lumber we found. We have tried our sawmill and that works pretty well if we say so ourselves. The wheat mill is working fantastic. Jenna suggested we make a couple of minor changes so we did. We had originally made the paddle wheel paddles out of wood, knowing that they would not last forever, but we were hoping to get a year or so out of them.

  Jenna had a pretty good idea where we could find some large sheets of fiberglass that we were able to cut and replace the wooden slats with that. We even went to an auto parts place and got some of the fiberglass bonding material to seal the joints. The wheel is now much lighter and turns easier than it did before. Teddy has two admirers in his new friends Jerry and Steve. They have had the opportunity to go hunting with Andrew, Don, and Dan. They have all been practicing with the bow and arrows that we found and they are not doing badly at all. The first time they went hunting Teddy got a very large buck with a single shot. It was probably more luck than skill because the arrow severed the spinal column and the deer dropped where he was standing. Jerry and Steve have each gotten a deer since then, and Don dropped another large steer. That one was more in self defense than hunting. He and Olivia were out walking in the woods when the bull decided he didn’t like them trespassing on his turf.

  Luckily he was carrying a .45 automatic with him. Most of us have carried a handgun since we started living here. This time it probably saved Olivia and him from some very serious injuries. When J
erry and Steve got their deer, they asked Teddy to see if they might be able to have one of the k-bar knives. I was expecting that from the first time they saw Teddy’s, so I asked their moms if it would be okay. Steve’s mom is living in the house with Tim and Charity, but Steve stays at our house most of the time. Jerry’s mom Becky, and two sisters are living with us. It is working out well because they are all the same ages as Teddy, Kathy and Karen. Becky and Tara were happy that their sons have found such a good friend and are being able to contribute to the whole group as hunters at such a young age.

  We remind them that in the old west, many young men were working like men when they were twelve years old. The fact that they have no idea what we are talking about reminds us that we may have been a little lax in the children’s lessons, and in making sure the new people learn to read and write as well. Anyway the young men are now the proud owners of a k-bar knife that they are only allowed to carry when they are hunting. They do however; have pocket knives that they can keep all the time, as long as they treat it with respect. The first tunnel is complete except for covering it over and planting the grass over it. If you aren’t looking for a tunnel opening, you cannot find it. The door was made with a counter balance, to allow even a smaller person to open and close the doors from either side. Our team on this project took it a step farther than any of us imagined. Where they put one of the large concrete connectors, they dug a good sized root cellar for want of a better description, to store supplies in just in case someone has to stay hidden for a period of time.