by AJ Newman
I got out from under the truck and saw Kat scratching MMax’s ears. I watched her from a distance. She was good with MMax, and he liked her. That wasn’t supposed to happen until I handed him to her and let him know I trusted her. I guess they’d bonded while I was with the FEMA group. I walked into camp and ate my lunch.
Kat saw me walk up. “What’s that smell?”
“The truck was leaking gas. I fixed it,” I said.
She asked, “Will we have enough gas to get to your home?”
“Don’t know.”
“You’re awful quiet this morning. Do you want to talk about Ann? I know sometimes it helps to talk about what’s bothering you,” Kat said.
I swallowed and looked down at my food. “No, I don’t need any help or a warm puppy to help me get in touch with my feelings. Ann died trying to make sure we got home safely. It’s not our fault, and we will kill the jerks that killed her. It’s time to move on and get to my parent’s place. Let’s pack up and go.”
Kat stood up and saluted. “Yes, sir.”
“You don’t salute sergeants.”
She saluted again. “Yes, sir,” and then gave me the finger before she ran away to pack up her things.
I saw Kat dig into her bag. She brought out a red object that I instantly recognized, and MMax started wagging his tail and begging Kat for it. She said, “Stay,” and started spooning something into the red Kong. It was peanut butter.
She held it out and said, “Good boy.”
MMax went to her and gently took the Kong in his mouth. He started chewing on the Kong as he rolled around on the ground in ecstasy.
I said, “I’m glad you found a Kong for MMax, but he’s trained to do something good before being rewarded with the Kong.”
“MMax is always a good dog,” she said.
MMax stopped and looked at me with his goofy upside down grin as if to say, “I’m always a good boy.”
I rubbed his belly and decided not to spoil the moment for MMax. I would train Kat while we drove down to Walter Hill.
The gas gauge needle was barely above an eighth of a tank when we pulled back onto the road. “Kat, keep an eye out for a car or truck that we can steal some gas from. We need a garden hose to siphon the gas. Otherwise, I’ll have to knock a hole in the bottom and drain the gas into a pan. That could be disastrous.”
Kat said, “Stop at the next farmhouse, and we’ll liberate a hose.”
A few minutes later, I pulled into the driveway of a home that had an old tractor and a minivan in the driveway. I stepped out of the truck, there was a blast, and a bullet whizzed past my head. A man hid behind a tree with a rifle aimed at me.
“Get your asses offen my property before I fill you with lead!”
I said, “We just need ...”
Another blast and buckshot careened past me too darn close for comfort. “Git, now!”
I climbed back in the truck and hauled ass out of there. Kat clung to me. She said, “Well, so much for southern hospitality.”
“There’s no telling how many thugs tried to rob him. We need an abandoned house next time.”
I knew I didn’t want to go through Gallatin, so I began working my way around the southeast side of the city, cutting through suburbs and industrial parks. I saw the sign for Highway 109 and turned south at the intersection when the truck sputtered and died.
There was an old Chevy truck on the side of the road, and we coasted to a stop behind it. I looked in the bed, and there were one empty gas can and a couple of empty anti-freeze one-gallon jugs. I planned to fill these and use them to fill our truck. “Kat get all the empty cans or bottles you can find. Hand me one of those water bottles.”
I cut the bottom off the water bottle and made a funnel. I had to pinch the spout down a bit to fit in the old Ford’s gas tank, but it would work. “Now, I’m going to poke a hole in the tank and drain some gas out into this pan and use it to fill the gas can and these old anti-freeze jugs.”
I smelled the inside of the anti-freeze jugs, and my heart sank. They had been used to store gas. I crawled under the truck and rapped on the tank only to hear the sickening sound of an empty tank. “Damn, Kat, the tank is empty. I’m going to have to walk on down the road to a house or an abandoned vehicle for more gas. I’ll be back soon.”
Kat picked up the two jugs. “Nope. No way, are you leaving me behind. I’m staying glued to you until we get to your home.”
I frowned. “I thought you were a bad-assed-Amazon Warrior.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can kill and have killed when it was necessary, but we’re better off staying together. MMax, you, and I make a formidable force. I watch your back; you watch my back. MMax watches both our backs.”
We walked on down the road a few blocks before we saw another vehicle that wasn’t wrecked or burned. I was pleased that it was only a year or so old. That meant that it probably died with gas in its tank. “Kat, this looks promising.”
I crawled under the car while Kat and MMax kept watch for danger. I could barely squeeze under it enough to get to the tank. I rapped my knife on it and heard a satisfying dull ring of a tank with gas. I moved the pan under the tank and placed the point of my knife against the bottom of the tank. I hit the butt end of my knife with my palm and only received a sharp pain for a reward.
“Kat, I need a big rock to use as a hammer. This metal is thicker than I thought.”
“Yes, sir.”
I chuckled but didn’t say anything. Kat came back a few minutes later with a rock that would do. I hit the end of my knife, and it made a tiny hole at first. I hit it again, and my blade pierced the tank and sank in an inch. I pulled the knife out as I slide the pan under the hole. Nothing happened but a tiny drip. What the heck was wrong? Then it hit me there wasn’t any way for air to get in the tank.
“Unscrew the gas cap.”
Kat removed the gas cap, and a steady stream of gas poured into my pan. The half-gallon pan quickly filled, and I traded Kat for another smaller pan while she poured the gasoline into the gas can. It took fifteen minutes to fill all three containers. I stuck my knife back in the hole and had Kat screw the gas cap back on. There was a small drip, so I placed a pan under the drip.
We walked back to the truck at a fast pace and soon had the truck running. I drove down to the car to finish the job. It was tedious work, but we transferred about eight gallons into the old Ford. That should be enough to get us to my family’s place, but I wanted to get more gas just in case. As I drove away, Kat yelled, “Step on it! Some men are running toward us!”
I peeled away and drove a mile before slowing up. We stopped at an industrial park and obtained a full tank for the truck from abandoned vehicles. We also filled the three containers.
Kat ran over to the side of one building and came back with ten feet of a water hose. “This should save some effort.”
I patted her on the head. “Good girl.”
“Good girl, my ass. If you treat me like a dog again, I’ll show you what a bad girl can do.”
I snickered. “Do you promise? I like bad girls.”
“You’re an ass. I meant I’ll kick your ass if you keep messing with me,” Kat said.
I couldn’t take her seriously because she was only a bit larger than my right leg. I said, “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll behave.”
☆
Chapter 11
South of Gallatin at the Cumberland River Bridge.
“Hey asshole, that’s not funny. If you’d been through what I’ve been through, you wouldn’t make that joke,” Kat said as tears welled up in her eyes.
I turned her around and drew her into my chest. “I was only joking, and you’re right. I don’t know what you went through, and that was dumb on my part. I won’t do it again.”
Kat continued to sob with her face against my chest. I was only six-foot-two, but I was a giant next to her five-foot-tall figure. I hugged her and patted her on the back, promising not to be an ass ever again. I continued t
o hold her for a few more minutes until she pulled away and said, “Thanks for holding me until I stopped crying. Jason, I teamed up with you and MMax because I feel safe with you, and I know you wouldn’t let anyone harm me. But darn it, you can be so cruel with the jokes.”
I stuttered and stammered. “Again, I’m sorry for hurting you. I guess my only real experience around women has been in the Army during wartime. We always make crude jokes and pull pranks on each other. I guess I think of you as a tough woman who can dish it out as well as take it.”
She stepped closer and hugged me. “Jason, I can be tough, but that one thing is off limits if you want to stay, my friend.”
I lifted her face and kissed her on the forehead. “I want to be your friend and will stay away from that topic.”
She stood up on her toes and kissed me on the lips. Until that moment, I had thought of her as a child because of her small size. I held her tight and returned the kiss. Then suddenly, we both pushed away. She said, “Awkward. I’m sorry for sending the wrong message.”
I said, “Not a problem, but we’re friends, and I want to keep it that way.”
I walked away, cursing myself for my earlier joke that perhaps the thugs guarding the bridge would let us cross if she was nice to them. You know what I actually said, but now I can’t even say it since I understand her pain so much more now. Let’s forget what a dumbass I was back then. I promise I’m a better man now. Well, I’m trying to be better.
“Okay, Kat, starting over. What do you recommend we do to get across the bridge?”
Kat smiled her pixie like smile. “Let’s list our options. We could snipe them from here. We could ram our way through their roadblock, or maybe we just swim across the river at another place and avoid the bastards.”
I replied, “One is too noisy and would bring in their friends. The second will just destroy our old truck and get us killed. How well can you swim at night?”
Now, you know how I ended up swimming across the Cumberland River while towing a shrimp woman and a dog in a kid’s wading pool. MMax can swim, but I didn’t want him to try to swim the width of the river on his first real swim. I made both of them wear a life jacket and tied several more life jackets to the wading pool. Did I fail to mention that the lady who brought up swimming across the river can’t swim a lick and is terrified of water deeper than a water glass full?
We placed our guns, clothes, and food in garbage bags to keep them dry as we waited for midnight to come. At about 1:30 am, I stripped off my clothes and stood there in my underwear. Kat made a soft whistling noise and said, “Come over here, sweetie, and I’ll stick a dollar in your shorts.”
I gave her the finger even though she couldn’t see my hand. I walked closer to MMax, picked him up, and placed him in the wading pool. I reached out, lifted Kat, and gently placed her beside MMax. “Please stay as still as possible and try to keep MMax calm. It will take a while for me to tow the homemade raft over to the other side. Don’t worry. I’m a good swimmer.”
To say that things didn’t go well is an understatement. Since the grid was down the river was much broader at Gallatin. The Old Hickory Locks and Dam were closed when the shit hit the fan, so now the water had to spill over the dam to continue downstream. This made the river wider. Spring rains also caused the current to flow faster. Looking back, I was foolish for trying this stunt. Things went relatively okay for the first half of the crossing even though I knew the current was washing us further downstream than planned.
I tried to keep us from going too far downstream but gave up as I tired. I concentrated on getting us to the other shore, somewhere. The flickering lights from the fires in the barrels on the bridge were long gone when I knew we were in deep crap. We must have been several miles downriver not to see the fires. We finally got close to the bank, but there wasn’t a bank to land on. There were either dangerous stickups or rocky cliffs. Just when I thought I saw a place to land, a big assed log hit the wading pool and overturned it. MMax leaped into the water, and I dove to get Kat because the undercurrent took her and her lifejacket to the bottom.
After diving twice, I felt her leg hit my back and grabbed it. I wrapped my arm around her chest and rolled onto my side as I swam with one arm to the shore. Thank God, my feet hit the rocky shore, and I pulled Kat’s lifeless body up on a big flat rock. I turned her on her side and let the water drain from her lungs. Then I turned her over and checked for a heartbeat. I felt a pulse, and suddenly, she spat water from her lungs and gasped for air.
Kat continued to alternate between gasping and spitting out water for a few minutes. She trembled in my arms as I tried to keep her warm. “Kat, can you talk? I need to get you to a warm place so you can recover.”
She said, “Sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry for … suggesting we swim across.”
I kissed her on the forehead, picked her up in my arms, and started walking inland. I knew this was a populated area, and we should find a house quickly. Something brushed against my leg. It was MMax, and he had the end of a garbage bag with our guns and a few supplies. I hid the bag in the rocks and then felt guilty since I hadn’t thought about him while trying to save Kat. “Good boy.”
I patted him on the head and said, “Come on, MMax. MMax, find him.”
Crap, I couldn’t say, ‘MMax find us a warm, cozy home,’ so I hoped he would catch the scent of a man and take us to his house. As it turned out, we were only a hundred yards from a vast subdivision near the river and couldn’t miss finding a house.
MMax sat and pointed in the direction we were already heading. I said, “Go,” and MMax led the way to a modern cabin high on a hill overlooking the river. Carrying Kat up at least fifty steps to a huge deck wore my butt out. She was light as a feather, but even feathers get heavy after a while. The swim had sapped my strength, but I couldn’t fail Kat. My legs burned, but the top of the steps was soon in sight.
The house had large windows and two sets of patio doors facing the deck and river below. I laid Kat down on a padded bench and tried both doorknobs without success. There was a small window on each end of the deck, so to keep the damage down, I chose the one on the left side. I turned the butt of my knife to the window, only to hear the awful racking sound of a 12 Gauge pump shotgun and a lady’s voice.
“Put the knife and your pistol down and slowly turn around. My husband has another shotgun aimed at you, so don’t try anything.”
I dropped my knife and said, “MMax, watch ‘em.”
MMax growled as he took his on guard stance. The woman turned toward MMax, and I lunged the five feet to her, knocking her down on the deck. I rolled over the top of her and landed on my feet with the shotgun in my hands. As I hoped, there wasn’t any husband or shotgun.
I said, “Lady, are you okay?”
She was mad at herself for letting me turn the tables on her. “Damn, I should have stood back further. If you’re going to rob us, get it over with.”
I said, “Look, my friend and I had to swim from an overturned raft, and she swallowed a lot of water. I just need to get her warm and watch her closely. She might get pneumonia, so I also have to go out and find some antibiotics.”
“Why were you crossing the Cumberland at night?”
I said, “The short story is I just returned from the war over in Europe when the crap hit the fan and had to go find my sister up in Clarksville and get her home safe. We were trying to avoid the thugs who had the bridge blocked.”
The woman laughed, which made me furious. “That’s the truth. I don’t care if you don’t believe it.”
The lady said, “It’s probably not funny, but those are good people manning that roadblock and are trying to keep gangs and criminals from coming across the river to raid us. My husband was on duty tonight and would have let you cross.”
“Oh, my God, it never dawned on me that they could be good people.”
She said, “Your lady friend has been coughing ever since I saw
you on the deck. She’s not bringing up much, so her lungs aren’t retaining a significant amount of water. I’ll check her out when we get her in the house. Let’s move your sister to the spare bedroom and make her comfortable. I’m not a nurse, but I’ve been reading survival manuals and first aid books since the lights went out.”
I replied, “She’s not my sister. She joined our group a while back. She’s a good person who has seen bad times. My sister and her friends went on to our parent’s home when we were separated by a gang up in Kentucky.”
Kat woke up for a second. “Jason, where are you? Please help me.”
I ran over to her and picked her up to carry her into the home. The lady said, “I’m Gwen, and I assume you’re Jason. What’s the girl’s name?”
“She’s Kat with a K. She’s actually twenty-one or maybe twenty-two, and I think a part-time Country and Western singer.”
Gwen said, “Take her to the last room on the right. I’ll be back.”
Gwen returned with several bottles of Amoxicillin and a stethoscope. She got Kat to take two of the pills. She then said, “Hold her up while I remove her shirt. A gentleman would close his eyes. Of course, if you two are a couple, you can undress her.”
“My eyes are closed, and we aren’t a couple.”
Gwen used the stethoscope to check for Kat’s breathing and to make a guess as to how much fluid remained in her lungs. “Your girlfriend is in much better shape than I could have hoped for. Now, if she can get past the next few days without a fever, she’ll recover quickly.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. I like her a lot but barely know her. She saved my dog’s life, and we’ve saved each other’s lives a few times since. Just like soldiers in a battle, you get close to people you fight side by side with,” I said.
