by A J Newman
What she didn’t know is that her family rolled past her in the night while she was helping Ann prepare to survive. She heard the vehicles go by their camp and was happy that the Army didn’t see them. Being captured didn’t fit into her plans.
She wormed her way across the bridge as she went around stalled vehicles and wondered if anyone would eventually clear the cars from the highways or would they rust in place. She traveled several miles south of Muscle Shoals and used country roads to avoid Tuscumbia on her way to Highway 72 East.
The countryside was peaceful, and she didn’t encounter any major issues on her way to Cherokee. She went through Cherokee and saw a woman sitting on her front porch with a shotgun in her lap. Jo waved at the women and asked directions to the FEMA camp. The woman pointed down Highway 72 West.
Jo only drove two miles before she saw Humvees and large Army trucks up ahead. She parked her truck behind an abandoned barn and walked closer to the activity. The camp was on the northwest side of the intersection of the Natchez Trace Parkway and Highway 72.
She went north along the Parkway and found a clump of trees to hide in, so she could watch the camp. The camp was a mile long along the Natchez Trace Parkway and about the same depth along Highway 72. There were several rows of fences around the camp and numerous guard towers. The main gate was on the Parkway and appeared to be busy. Jo watched the camp for several hours and noticed that convoys of trucks, Humvees, and other vehicles were leaving, but none was arriving.
Max and Jo took a well-deserved break as she fed him a piece of meat from last night’s MRE. He ate it but then left to find his own meal. Joe opened an MRE, took a big swig of water as she saw a truck with a crane drive up to the guard tower on the far left. The crew with the truck proceeded to lower the twin .50 Cal machine guns down to a flatbed truck. The crane repeated the action three more times, and it dawned on Jo that the Army was preparing to abandon the camp.
It was only a short time later that she saw soldiers bringing a large crowd of people to the gate in front of her and sending them out to the street. She observed them with her binoculars to see if any of her family was in the crowd. They weren’t.
She saw soldiers staging thousands of people in a line that went past the back of several large trucks. The soldiers passed out water bottles and boxes of MREs to the people as they passed by the trucks. The Army was releasing the prisoners and closing the camp was the only thing that made sense.
Jo and Max walked up to the gate and looked for her family in the throngs of people as they walked out of the camp. Joe had brought one of Will’s shirts and had Max stand vigil for that aroma to no avail. Over a thousand passed her, and there was no sign of any of her family
Jo started asking, “Has anyone seen Bob Karr or Jane Carter. How about Maddie O’Berg or Will Karr?”
She asked for hours until finally, she heard,” I met them a couple of days ago. They left in convoy last night. They were headed to Nashville according to one of the guards.”
“Thanks so much,” Jo said as she cursed under her breath.
Now it dawned on Jo that her trip was for naught; however, she didn’t know if the person who told her that her family was headed to Nashville was correct. She also thought that the individual could have pulled a cruel joke on her, so she stayed at the gate checking every face in the crowd as they passed by in front of her.
She was very thankful that there were short breaks in the flow of people every time one of the large tents emptied of people. She was able to rest her eyes and eat on a couple of occasions.
Most of the people appeared to be dazed and were surprised by the camp’s closing. Jo talked with several groups as they stopped to decide which direction to travel. Most thought heading south gave them the best chance of survival. Many people asked her, and she pointed south. She felt bad, but she didn’t want thousands of people walking toward the Horseshoe.
The last group left the camp at 9:00 the next morning and her family wasn’t in the crowd. Jo wasn’t sure what had happened to them, but she hoped they were in that previous convoy and headed back to the Horseshoe. Since she had nothing to go on besides the info about the convoy, she decided to head back home.
Again, she headed south and cut across country on dirt side roads to avoid the cities and the newly released prisoners. She crossed the river on Highway 101 and headed north to find Ann and her children. The drive up to the Highway 43 Intersection was a repeat of the other day. Dodge stalled vehicles and shoot over the heads of a few groups to scare them away.
Jo saw the bridge up ahead that crossed the creek where Ann and her family were hiding and drove into the woods as she had previously done before. She saw their tents up ahead, didn’t see anyone around, and then checked the large tent, and it was empty. The small tent had a slight movement as she walked up to it.
She drew her pistol and said, “Ann it’s me, Jo.”
She heard, “Jo, where is our momma. She left an hour ago and hasn’t come back. Please find her.”
“Where did she go?”
“She said she was going down to the creek and would be back in a minute. Jo that was an hour ago.”
“I’ll go look for her. I want you two to load everything up and place it in the back of my truck. We’ll leave as soon as your mom, and I get back. Max, stay with the kids.”
Jo walked down the hill to the creek and didn’t see anyone, so she walked on down to the sandy bank and saw something that shook her. There was a set of footprints heading upstream mixed in with several other prints that looked like large dog paw prints. There must have been five or six of the animals following the footprints. Jo began running to find Ann before the dogs attacked.
She only ran about a hundred yards when she heard barking and growls. She slowed down and saw Ann had climbed a small tree, and she was surrounded by a pack of dogs. Owners who couldn’t feed them anymore had set the poor dogs free to become wild killers.
There were too many to scare off, and they were intent on catching their prey and dining today. Even though Jo didn’t want to bring attention to herself, she pulled her pistol and began shooting the dogs. She killed two when the others rushed her position. She kept her calm and shot two more when a large Rottweiler launched himself at Jo as she changed magazines. Jo ducked as a collision occurred a few inches from her face. Max had the Rottweiler by the throat, and they rolled down the hill.
Jo shot the last two dogs and could do nothing but watch Max and the massive brute fight to the death. Jo tried to get a clean shot at the Rottweiler, but the action was too fierce. The Rottweiler yelped then fell silent. Max limped over to Jo and rested his head on her foot.
Jo rubbed his ears and said, “Good Max. Good dog.”
Ann climbed down from the tree and was very thankful that Jo and Max had saved her from a terrible fate. Jo checked Max and found several puncture wounds from bites but nothing severe. They walked back to the truck and found everything loaded and ready to go. Joe made room for Max in back, and he jumped up and lay down in his new bed. Jo rubbed some antibiotics on his wounds, and they left the camp.
They had driven for several hours before Jo decided to make camp just before the Highway 840 and Highway 102 junction. She pulled off the road and had to use wire cutters to cut the fence to hide the truck in a stand of trees. She was careful to make sure no one saw her pull off into the trees and then walked up to the highway and stood guard while Ann pitched the tents.
Max began acting odd and wanted her to follow him back to the camp when she heard the truck’s motor roar to life. The truck came flying out of the woods about fifty yards east of her, broke through the fence and never slowed down as it headed east on Highway 840. Jo led Max down to where the camp had been and found her backpack with a note attached.
The note said: Thanks for all of you help, but I need your truck more than you do. Good Luck. Ann
“That rotten bitch stole Bob’s truck. May her sorry ass rot in hell,” Jo yelled.
&n
bsp; Max looked concerned and laid his head in Jo’s lap as she ranted and raved about never helping anyone ever again.
It was about an hour before dark, so Jo decided to go ahead and spend the night in the area; however, she walked back into the woods to a subdivision to find an empty house. She watched the neighborhood for a while and didn’t see anyone stirring around. She skipped the neighborhood for a beautiful farmhouse across a side street east of the houses.
The house was abandoned quickly and had not been searched. There was rotting food on the table and food in the dead refrigerator. She also found plenty of can goods in the pantry and home canned food on shelves in the basement. Max and Jo ate very well that night.
Jo woke up early the next morning and tried to open a gun safe in the basement but gave up after twisting the combination knob numerous times. Max wanted to go outside, and she saw him sniffing around a pole barn in the back yard. She pushed the sliding door open and immediately became sick to her stomach. The owners of the house were holding each other in death as they had held each other for over fifty years. The 1959 Corvette had run out of gas as it supplied the fumes to give the couple the peace they sought in each other’s arms. They decided to choose the death they wanted rather than face the apocalypse.
Jo left them alone other than placing a tarp over their rotting bodies. What interested her most was a 1968 short bed 4x4 sitting next to the Corvette. The truck had been restored and was in pristine condition. Jo fired it up and took it out of the pole barn and out into the fresh air. She went back into the house and brought out all of the can goods and most of the home canned goods. She filled several Mason jars with water and took them to the truck.
On a whim, she held her breath, dug the man’s wallet out of his back pocket, and searched it for the combination. Sure enough, it was written on the back of his wife’s photo.
The safe opened, and there was a treasure of guns and ammunition. She also saw several cigar boxes and opened one to find it full of silver coins. All six of the boxes contained gold or silver coins. Jo decided to leave them.
There was only one AR and a couple of Berettas. The rest were cowboy six shooters and lever action Winchesters in several calibers and a couple of shotguns. The real find was 1,000 rounds of .223 and 2,000 rounds of 9mm along with several thousand rounds of several different calibers. Jo took one of the 12 Gauge pumps to the barn, found a saw, cut the barrel down, and cut off the stock. She loaded it with buckshot and made a sling so she could wear it across her shoulder.
Jo took them all to the truck and placed the guns in the cab and ammo under a tarp with the food and water. She searched the house one more time and changed her mind about the silver and gold. The people were dead, and the gold and silver might be needed to help her family one day. She stuffed the boxes under the truck’s seat and knew it was time to hit the road.
Jo continued what had become her regular routine of ducking around wrecks and stalled cars between bouts of scaring assholes away from her truck. She’d only been on the road for half an hour when she saw Bob’s old truck crashed into the back of a semi-trailer. The cab was full of holes, and the glass was broken. Jo carefully searched the area and found the four bodies on the side of the road. The kids had been shot in the head, and Ann was naked and lay on the hood of a car.
The truck had been stripped of everything usable, and there was no sign of the people who had valued the kid’s lives so little. Jo got back in the truck and was much more careful as she passed people on the road.
She took the backroads around Lebanon again and arrived at the bridge over the river to Hartsville again. She dreaded trying to dodge the roadblocks and the corrupt police force one more time. She inched her way up the bridge and didn’t see any barrier. She drove toward town before taking a side road and went north to go around the town. She didn’t see anyone for several miles until she crossed Highway 25 and there was a steady stream of people heading toward Dixon Springs.
She went north, caught a side road, and headed east until she was above the city. She took Young Branch Road down to the town and had to shoot several times to run thugs away from her truck. She crossed Highway 25 and saw a crowd of people gathered by the Post Office and had a dreadful feeling. She hoped no one recognized her as she pulled closer.
That thought flew out of her head as a woman yelled, “That’s the bitch that killed Dave and Fred. Get her.”
Jo stopped the truck, leveled the shotgun at the crowd, and pumped six shots of buckshot into them. She pitched the shotgun into the bed, jumped into the truck and sped off toward the Horseshoe knocking people out of the way, as the engine roared. Several bullets struck the back of the truck, but none hit Jo or Max.
Jo stopped in front of the gate, saw Jack, and yelled, “Let me in before those bastards kill me.”
She drove the truck past the gate and said, “Jack, I couldn’t find my family, but I think they might be in Nashville.”
“Jo, they arrived here just a while ago. They are all okay and thinking about sending out a search party to find you.”
“Oh thank God they are okay. I’m going back home to my family. And they are all okay?”
“Yes. Will got a bump on the head, but Maddie is taking good care of him. Jane, Maddie, and Will are at Bob’s.”
“Don’t radio Bob or anyone. I want to surprise them.”
Jo drove the short trip down to Bob’s place and parked the bright red truck in front of the house. Before she could get out of the house, Bob and Bill came out to see who was visiting.
Bill saw his wife and yelled, “Jo, you’re back. We were scared that you had been captured.”
“I went to the camp, and they were all gone. We can swap stories later, kiss me, and take me to my kids.”
“Jo, my black truck has turned red and gotten twenty years younger. Did you have trouble?”
“I’ll fill you in later, but the short story is I saved the lives of a woman and her two kids, and she repaid me by stealing your truck.”
“Don’t worry about the truck. Come on in the house. Missy and Jake are in the house. Maddie and Will are in the trailer. Will is still recuperating from a bump on his head.”
“Mama, Mama, you’re back. I was so worried about you,” said Missy as she wrapped her arms around her mother.
Jake ran up and knocked both of them to the floor as he piled into the group hug. Jane came from the kitchen and waved at Jo as she wallowed on the floor with Missy and Jake.
“Jo thanks for coming to rescue us, but thanks to the Major we were set free and brought back home. It’s a long story, and we’ll compare notes after the town meeting tonight. Why don’t you get cleaned up before supper and we’ll all go to the town meeting this evening.”
“I think I’d rather stay home with my family.”
“Bill spoke up and said, “This is a critical meeting. We were almost wiped out by Walkers this morning and have to set some folks straight on their duties and responsibilities. They almost got us all killed.”
“Okay, but first I need to go out to see Will.”
“He’s out in the trailer. Knock first,” Missy said.”
Jo said, “What,” and then proceeded quickly out to the trailer with Jane following.
“Jo, hold on. Those two love each other and please don’t be heavy handed with them.”
“How close have they gotten?”
“Jo, to keep the family together we all had to tell the guards that we were married. They’ve been sleeping on a single bunk bed for several days half-naked. You can hear every move someone makes when everyone is only three feet apart from the next bunk. The Lord only knows what went on below those covers and Jo; I hope they did find love. Hell Bob and I did several times.”
“Mom, that’s TMI about you and Bob having sex. My question is can Maddie be pregnant.”
“I don’t think so, but that’s not the worst that could happen to a couple madly in love during an apocalypse.”
She didn’t kno
ck and slowly opened the door to see Will and Maddie on the couch. Will was lying down with his head on Maddie’s lap. He was asleep, and Maddie was caressing his hair as she read a magazine.
Jo whispered, “Maddie, don’t wake him up.”
Maddie was surprised and replied, “Momma Jo, we missed you so much and were worried sick about you.
Joe hugged Maddie, and then pulled a chair up beside her as she said, “How is our young man doing?”
“He’s okay, but it scared me to death. A guard hit him because he was protecting me from another guard. He is my hero.”
“Maddie, I hate to pry into your business, but what is your and Will’s relationship? Do you love him?”
“Will is my boyfriend, and I love him. He told me he loved me days ago, but it took me a bit longer to know exactly how I felt about him. I can’t imagine life without him now.”
“Have y’all taken precaution?”
Maddie almost choked and replied, “We didn’t do anything that would get me pregnant.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
“Mamma Jo, I love your son, and that’s all you need to know. What we do in bed is our business.”
“I’m sorry. You are right. I can’t treat Will like a child anymore. I’m sorry.”
Maddie hugged Jo and said, “You’ve had Will for 17 years and did a good job raising him. He’s a man now, and I will take care of him from now on. I love him.”
“You love him, but are you ready to live with him the rest of your life?”
“Yes.”
“Then we will have a wedding as soon as possible. My grandkids will be born to a married mom and dad.”
Will opened his eyes and said, “I heard every word, and yes I want to marry Maddie. That is if you two let me have a say in the matter.”
Jo kissed Will on the forehead and then pinched him as she said, “I know you’ve been sleeping with this hussy at the FEMA camp and you have to make an honest woman out of her. Besides, I’ve been planning a wedding since you two met. Now put some damn clothes on and no practicing until after the wedding.”
