Wyatt stood up facing the man, his reply flat and forced. "Nope,"
"Whoa there, this one's got some fire. Turn your pockets inside out, and you keep them ice blue peepers on the food you're cooking. You can get 'em off me. You don't want to make me nervous now, do you," the horseman asked. His voice was deep and caustic now, entirely lacking the friendly tone from earlier.
Wyatt emptied his pockets and went back to the fire, turning the squirrels on their spits.
"Well then, let's just have a cozy little dinner party here, and I'll be on my way," the man said.
The camp was silent for the next half an hour as the man sat with his back to a tree, his pistol leveled at them. He never seemed to blink, watching them like a hawk. He was unnervingly calm. One of the pine logs in the fire popped loudly, startling Jack, but the horseman didn't bat an eye.
Wyatt removed the squirrels from the wooden spits and served them on a plate with a large helping of dog food and wild greens, and held it out to the man.
The horseman stepped forward a couple of paces, then stopped abruptly. He flicked his gun to the side, motioning Wyatt away with his gun.
"Set that plate down on the ground and back away. You weren't planning on tossing that pot of boiling water on me, were you?"
He looked over, and sure enough, Wyatt had a white knuckled grip on the pot, the muscles on his forearm tensed up as if ready to throw it. Wyatt eased his hand off the pot's handle and set the plate on the ground, backing away slowly.
The man chuckled and picked up the plate. His eyes never left Wyatt as he scarfed the food down, eating in silence with his gun leveled in their direction.
The food finished, he tossed the plate to the ground and gestured with the gun.
"Now, you two step over there and lay face down on the ground, hands on the back of your head. We'll take a look and see what else you've got around here."
Jack lay with his face down onto the ground next to Wyatt.
The man rummaged through the cart, tossing things out into two piles. The remaining cans of dog food went into one pile, and their clothes, spare bike tires, and other odds and ends into the other.
"Hot damn. They're even my brand. You guys are just too much, I'm glad I met you," the horseman said, pulling a carton of cigarettes out of the cart. He stuck a cigarette between his teeth, lighting it with his free hand.
Wyatt muttered a curse as the carton of cigarettes went into the pile. Their snare wires and other food went along as well.
"Dog food and squirrels huh? How far we've fallen, 'eh boys? Well, beggars can't be choosers, or so they say," he said. "You just keep flat on the ground until you don't hear hooves on the road no more. I've got a keen eye, and if I see you move, I'll come right back over here and put a bullet in each of you. That won't do any of us any good, 'cause I don't like to waste bullets, and you don't want me to waste your sorry asses. So do us both a favor and just stay down."
The man stuffed the stolen goods into a burlap sack put them in a saddlebag. He untethered his horse and climbed into the saddle, trotting off down the road without a word.
He was quickly out of sight, and after a few minutes more, out of earshot as well.
Wyatt sat up and reached into his shirt pocket, producing a cigarette. He shook the pack, looking inside, a frown on his face. "Well, I always did want to quit. I've got three left."
"Where's your air gun? How did you know he was going to rob us?"
Wyatt shook his head, taking a deep drag off his cigarette. He stared at it longingly, blowing out a cloud of smoke.
"I don't know, I just had a feeling. I heard you talking to somebody so I hid it in under a fallen tree before I came back into camp. We can get go back and get it in the morning. There's no way he'll find it in the dark, even if he did come back."
"What do you mean you just had a feeling? I just, well, he seemed like a normal person to me, up until you came back to the camp with the squirrels," Jack said.
Wyatt scratched his chin, looking at the ground. "He was too careful. Nothing you did escaped his attention. He watched us like a hawk. Somebody with eyes like that, well, he has a predator's eyes. He gave me the willies"
A few meager bites of dog food were all that was left of their dinner. He never thought he'd be sorry to see the end of the dog food, but there it was. They would have to rely on Wyatt's air gun to provide meat, and live off of what plants they could forage along the way.
Jack shook his head in disbelief. This was the country his children would inherit, if he ever made it back to them. It was a shameful day when people were robbed at gunpoint over a few cans of dog food in America.
Chapter 26
Amy looked out through the sliding glass patio door to the back yard where the boys were hard at work, laughing and talking together. It was a change from their usual sibling rivalry, and it had only taken the apocalypse to bring them closer together.
Danny hauled a bucket up out of a large square pit in the ground using a rope and pulley. He dumped the bucket of dirt into a wheelbarrow, and lowered the empty bucket down into the pit. A mop of brown hair was all that she could see of Kenny, popping up every once in a while like a gopher as he dug.
She was proud of them both, working together as a team, and putting every ounce of effort into the job. None of them had been prepared for this kind of life, but they were doing the best they could. Every day presented a new challenge, some workaround to fill a need they previously took for granted, as the boys would readily attest to.
The outhouse project was a prime example. Who in the twenty-first century knew anything about constructing an outhouse? Not her, that was for certain. When the water stopped running after the EMP, it left them without a working toilet. The outhouse was a permanent solution to their problem. Anything would be an improvement over their current system, painter's buckets were designed for paint, and not the purpose they used it for.
Amy went back into the kitchen to finish sterilizing the dishwater. They caught rainwater when they could, and used it for washing clothes, cleaning dishes, and bathing. It helped stretch out the supply of quality drinking water. Sterilizing the water was a simple process, stir in half a teaspoon of unscented bleach, and let it sit for an hour. Then it would be safe to use. It wasn't crystal clear, but it didn't need to be.
While they had hardly made a dent in the four blue drums of tap water in the basement, and that was because she was so frugal with it. They only used it as drinking water. The boys were free to have as much water as they wanted out of the drums, but she strictly enforced the rule concerning the prepackaged 20 ounce bottles of water. The bottles were only to be used when they ventured out away from the house. The bottles were portable, making them valuable
After sterilizing the water, she used it to wash the dishes. Once clean, the dishes sat on a drying rack to drip dry. The dishes were showing their age, worn, faded, and some of the coffee cups were chipped. The set was eleven years old. Kenny was three years old when she and Jack bought them at the department store. It was their first decent set of stoneware as a couple.
Lost as she was in the moment, she remarked to herself that she should ask Jack if he wanted to look for a new set soon.
Amy shook her head, brought back to the present. Jack. He wasn't here. He wouldn't be coming home for a long, long time. If he ever made it back at all.
It was intolerable, not knowing if he alive, where he was. What had happened to him after the EMP?
She wanted to believe that he was on his way home, but could she really believe that? Jack was rational, if a little flighty and unrealistic sometimes. How would he react to the EMP? Would he decide it was logical to stay in Missouri and wait things out, or would he make a foolhardy quest to cross half the United States on his own?
She couldn't decide what she hoped for. It would be dangerous to travel, and she half hoped he wasn't trying to come home. At the same time, the kids needed him. She needed him too, but could he do it? Could he m
ake it Maryland from Missouri? Could she forgive him if he stayed in Missouri and didn't try to get home to his family?
It was impossible.
This was all impossible.
Amy bowed her head and interlaced her fingers. She had not prayed and asked for anything for herself since she was a teenager. She knew it was hypocritical, but before the EMP they were only religious on Easter and Christmas. Something compelled her to do it now.
"Please. Please help my husband get home alive. Nothing matters to me but the safety of my children and my husband. I would give up everything to have him back with us, to bring our family back together. At least keep him safe and out of harm. I hope you are listening," she said.
Amy watched the boys through the kitchen window, hard at work in the back yard. What she would do if their father never came home? She threw the dishtowel into the sink in frustration, and stormed out the patio door.
This was silly. Crying wasn't going to do her, Jack, or the boys any good. She chided herself, picking up a shovel. She needed to be around the boys right now, not alone in the house weighing a future that might never happen. Putting on her best game face she approached the boys.
"Wow guys, this is quite a big hole! How long are we planning on using this thing?" she asked.
"This one is just for Kenny, he's full of it," Danny said, smirking.
A shovelful of dirt flew out of the hole and sprinkled Danny, who laughed and kicked dirt back into the hole at Kenny.
Amy hopped into the pit and began digging alongside Kenny. There was a lot to be thankful for. She had her health, the boys were healthy, and that they were all safe. Jack was in God's hands now, and she had to trust in her faith that he would come home.
Chapter 27
Jack squeezed the hand brakes hard. The bike slowed to a stop, and the cart lurched sideways from the sudden stop. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and his stomach tightened with instinctive fear.
"Jack, what's the matter--"
"Up ahead, look," Jack said, pointing to an intersection fifty yards in front of them.
"Oh man, not another one," Wyatt said.
An old stone church stood at the four-way intersection in the center of the small town, surrounded by department stores, their doors long closed to business. A preacher stood in front of the church, a bible in hand, praying over a tall pile of bodies wrapped in white linen. A dust mask covered his mouth, he wore safety goggles on his eyes, and he had yellow rubber gloves on his hands, standing out against the black leather binding of the bible.
Two other men wearing similar protection pushed a wheelbarrow over and stacked another body onto the pile. They stood by waiting silently for the preacher to finish, and then one of the men used a can of gasoline to douse the bodies. They all backed away as one of the men tossed a match onto the pyre, flames rising high into the air.
The preacher brought his hand up to his mouth, coughing violently. He bent over at the waist making retching noises, the attack sending him to his knees.
"Turn around Jack, let's find another way around," Wyatt said.
He didn't need any other encouragement. Jack turned the bike and trailer around and pedaled fast and hard back the way they had come.
This wasn't the first town that had some kind of serious illness going around. Jack and Wyatt made it a point to avoid contact with other people. They had come so far and were so close to their goal. Now in Galapagos Ohio, they were less than a week away from Morgantown. He didn't know what disease the people in that town had, but it would spell the end of one or both of them, and their journey if they got sick.
With no dog food left and unable to barter in towns, they were on a steady diet of squirrel and wild edibles. Jack knew just how lucky he was to have run into Wyatt. If he hadn't, he would have starved to death by now. Before the EMP, he personally knew of three or four wild plants that were edible, nowhere near enough to sustain him. The same went for obtaining meat. Jack's use of snares had been a dismal failure until Wyatt showed him how it was really done.
Wyatt was a virtual cornucopia of edibles, and knew wild animal behavior from first hand experience. Jack thought he knew it all when he left home. He'd read plenty of articles on how to build animal traps. He knew three or four fancy setups that used stones to drop a weight on an animal or choke one to death, but since he had no real world experience, the knowledge was useless. His traps took almost an hour to setup up if he was lucky. Wyatt showed him how to set up a simple squirrel trap - a pole leaning against a tree with a snare loop. It took five minutes to set up and actually worked. It was humbling.
He'd been wondering a lot lately how much of the 'prepping' knowledge came from people with real world experience, or if they were simply talking out of their rear ends. Wyatt was the opposite of those Internet know it alls. He was happy to share his knowledge because he cared about others, not because he wanted to look smarter than someone else.
It was ironic, now that he thought about it. Jack was an educated man who'd spent four years in college with his nose buried in books. He didn't know if Wyatt had even finished high school, and he wouldn't insult him by asking. But here he was, with Jack supplying the physical labor, powering the bike, and it was Wyatt's extensive knowledge, wisdom, and skills that kept them both alive and fed. The hillbilly trucker from the Appalachian Mountains was the brain of this operation, and the egghead computer guy with a college degree was the brawn.
He reflected that this reversal of roles never would have happened in the city. People in positions of power would let others starve in camps before they stepped down to let someone more knowledgeable like Wyatt lead the way. It was a shame, really. There was a whole countryside full of wild foods available if you knew what you were doing. Jack and Wyatt hadn't even tapped into a quarter of it.
This wasn't the easiest season to survive in, yet Wyatt kept them both fed. According to Wyatt, when the acorns ripened and dropped in the fall, they could process them into food. All you had to do was leach them in water and grind the acorns into flour. A few large trees would produce enough mast to keep a person going all winter long.
It wasn't a dilemma for Jack. He wasn't the same man as he was before the EMP. He always thought he knew best, yet now, he'd follow Wyatt to hell in a hand basket, no questions asked.
Jack glanced down at his ring swinging on its chain, his thoughts on his family. He didn't toss and turn at night like he did the first weeks after the EMP. There was no point spending sleepless nights raging at the unfairness of what had happened. Before the event, he tried to control everything, obsessed with all of the things that could go wrong in the world, worry about each and every of them. It was if he thought he could control or stop fate.
He was calmer now, trusting in what the higher power had in store for him, for better or worse. Whatever happened, there was meaning behind it, even if he didn't understand it. He trusted himself too now. That he was the right thing, and doing everything he could. He trusted in Amy to keep the boys safe, and he had to trust in Wyatt. Whatever fate awaited all of them, he would face it.
What he was missing before the event was hope. He had it now, and had learned to rely on it, resting all of his fears and doubt upon it. You do what you can, and you have to let the rest go.
Wyatt had given him hope when he had none, desperate to get home, nearly at the end of his life. And then Wyatt showed him how to have hope, not by telling him, but by showing him, by providing an example of how to face life's difficulties and keep going with your head up.
Jack pedaled on, and kept going long after he normally would have stopped for the day. Sure, they had lost time now and would need to backtrack, but he was able to hold his frustration in check. He would do whatever was within his power to get them home, even if it meant backtracking all the way to Missouri and starting the journey home over again.
Chapter 28
Amy tied off the plastic garbage bag of food waste, and grabbed the paper grocery bag contai
ning trash for the burn barrel. They separated all of their trash into what could be burned, and what would be buried. Mice and rats were a virtual plague, thousands of them scurrying about looking for food. There seemed to be more rodents than people, and she worried about them spreading diseases. They didn't leave any food out in the house, and disposed of the trash daily, making sure there was nothing to attract the rodents near the house.
Hefting the two bags, she slid open the glass sliding door to the back patio, and headed toward the back yard.
The last light of the sun clung to the horizon, a red and purple smudge reflecting off of the low hanging clouds. In another few minutes it would be dark enough for her to safely light the burn barrel and conceal the cloud of smoke it produced. Looters and worse were an ever-present danger, drawing attention to the home was something to avoid.
EMP Aftermath Series (Book 1): The Journey Home Page 16
