Beyond the New Horizon (Book 2): Desperate Times

by Conaway, Christine

  “Well, at least we know there are at least two.”

  “Stupid chickens. I thought they crowed in the morning, not when it’s almost night.”

  “They crow whenever they want, and it’s usually when you don’t want them to. We can go see where they are, but we 'll have to wait until after dark to catch them when they roost.” He got to his feet. “We need to find a safe piece of ground to make camp and figure out what we’re going to do with the chickens once we catch them.”

  From her belly pack, Gina pulled out a Leatherman tool and swung them between her finger and thumb. “These will work, and there’s wire over there.”

  “They’ll work,” Sam agreed. “What else do you carry in that thing?”

  As she put the Leatherman away for safe keeping, “What are you needing?”

  “Nothing right now. I was just wondering if that’s standard gear for you girls or what?”

  “We pretty much carry most of the same stuff in case we need it, and the others aren’t around. Journey and I have saws too.”

  “Saws? Like the cutting wood kind?”

  “Yup. It’s called a wire saw. Lucy has a Gerber folding saw, but the length of the blade limits what you can cut with it.”

  They decided to make camp beside the fruit trees, for the availability of wood and they could string up the shelter halves for cover. Gina showed Sam how to use the wire saw and left him to build a fire and make dinner, while she went and pulled the chicken wire out of the dirt.

  She laid it out and flattened it as best she could by walking on it. When it was as good as she could make it, she cut a strip off the long side. She folded it fours, with an equal number of holes in each section. She unwound a single piece of the wire from the fencing and laced up the unfinished edge. She set it on the flattened wire and cut a piece the same size as the bottom opening and then cut another the same size. Once her cage was finished, she realized they could only put three or four chickens in it, and she had no idea how she would carry the thing.

  While they waited for the water to boil, they walked through the trees looking for the chickens.

  “We got lucky there,” Sam pointed to the crotch of an apple tree. On the first branch out, about five feet of the ground, sat the rooster. The next branch above that roosted the only kind of chicken that Gina could identify. A Rhode Island Red hen perched watching them.

  “Can we catch them now?”

  “Nope, lets see where that other rooster got to. As soon as it gets dark, I’ll nab those two. We’ll have to get them at the same time, or one will fly off, and in the dark, we’ll never find it. Now, let’s have a look at the rest of these trees.”

  By the time they finished their search, they had found two roosters and three hens. One Rooster and one hen were of the Ameraucana breed, and the others were Rhode Islands.

  “Can you fit five chickens in your cage?”

  “I don’t know. Those are a lot bigger than I thought they would be.”

  “No matter, we’ll make them fit. It won’t hurt until we get home.”

  “Home? Home is in Spokane, the camp is back there.”

  They sat and ate in silence. Gina tried not think of her home. “I always thought that if the shit hit the fan, I would be at my house, fully prepared with ammunition, food, and water. I never really believed it would ever actually happen. You know? I liked a Facebook post one of my friends put up and started receiving emails and websites for Preppers. And the dehydrated food seemed to fit the camping lifestyle. It was light and packed with calories, and easy to fix. It was convenient for us.

  “We never invested in any of that food, but you saw it. We could have lived a long time with what we had put up in the cellar. I guess I should exclude myself from the ‘we’ part of it. I never did any of it, it was all Mary and Lucas.”

  The night never had the chance to sneak up on them, one minute it was dusk and the next night had fallen. The moon peeked out from behind heavy clouds, but it gave them enough light to see by.

  Sam stood, “Follow me and don’t say anything. I’m going to grab the first two, and hopefully, it won’t spook the others.”

  They waited for their eyes to adjust from looking at the firelight, then Gina followed Sam to the tree. They could just make out the shape of the chickens against the darker wood.

  Gina didn’t see Sam move, but the chickens both let out squawks of protest when he grabbed them. He came away from the tree with one in each hand.

  “Oh Jesus, grab one of them.”

  Their wings were flapping, and they were squawking. Gina didn’t know quite where to grab it, so she threw her arms around the closest one. Its wings beat her in the face, and she felt claws rip into her hand. Gina pulled the chicken off of her when it began clawing its way up her chest. She shoved it through the opening in the cage and held it with one hand until she got the lid closed.

  Sam had taken his chicken toward the fire so he could see what he was doing. Gina carried the cage with her chicken in it. In the light of the fire, she saw the sharp points on the chicken’s legs and realized that was what had scratched her.

  “Look at her toenails. Dang, no wonder she scratched me. You never said they had toenails.”

  Sam laughed, “That’s because she is a rooster and those are spurs. I guess you should have grabbed the other one.” Sam had tucked his chicken’s head under her wing, and she sat with her head hidden as calm as could be.

  Gina’s chicken glared at her through the wire with beady little eyes, “Will he fight with the other rooster then? I mean both being men and full of testosterone?”

  Sam laughed at Gina’s analogy. “Probably, but there’s nothing we can do about it. If we had a hood of some kind, they wouldn’t.”

  “A hood? Just something to put over their heads so they can’t see each other?”

  Gina was already digging through her saddle bag when he said yes. She pulled out a rolled pair of black socks. “Will these work?”

  As soon as Sam pulled the sock down over the rooster’s head, it relaxed and sat in the bottom of the cage. He then laid the hen in beside it and tied the top closed.

  “Now, let’s see where those other three went. We’ll be lucky if they stick around, after all that.”

  They were very lucky. When they were close to the tree the others had been roosting in, Sam stopped Gina with a wave of his hand. He pointed with two fingers at his eyes and then the tree. She nodded and hoped she’d read his signal right. She saw them herself, and the gesture hadn’t been needed, but in keeping with his stealth mode, she crept closer. When she saw Sam reach for the highest chicken, Gina grabbed. She caught one by its leg, and the other fell squawking to the ground. It flapped its wings and leaped up and down around the base of the tree. She didn’t know if it was trying to escape or get back up the tree. The chicken in her hand hadn’t moved from its upside down position.

  Gina threw herself on top of the loose chicken trying not to squash it when she landed. She missed, when it came back down beside her, Gina tried again and imprisoned it with her arms. Her first chicken began to flap and squawk along with the second one. She managed to get one hand on the second chicken's leg. A chicken in each hand, she sat back on her butt.

  “Do you know how hard it is to get a hold of these stupid things. My God, you’d think I was trying to kill them, not rescue them.”

  Sam had been holding in his laughter and let loose when he saw she had them under control.

  If Gina could have hit him, she would have, but after what she had gone through to catch them, she didn’t want to take the chance of turning one or both of them loose.

  Until she got them to the cage, which Sam had left by the fire, she wouldn’t know if she had hurt the one she landed on. A chicken in each hand, Gina approached the fire. Holding them out in front of her, she saw that she had both of the hens. She couldn’t tell from their upside down position, but they both looked okay to her.

  Sam had put the second sock over
the head of the rooster he had caught. The three chickens in the cage sat crowded to one side. Sam helped her and Gina pushed her chickens one at a time into the opening. The five chickens were crowded, but, Gina thought it would prevent them from being injured if they had no room to move around in.

  “Is there any more of that wire left?”

  “There’s a lot of it left, it’s just all messed up. Look how long it took me to straighten this little bit out.”

  “I guess that can be our first task in the morning. We have nothing to build a chicken pen or house out of if we don’t.”

  Gina sat and thought about his words. She realized how easy their lives used to be. When something broke, or you needed more, you simply went to the store that carried whatever it was that you needed. To her knowledge, there were no more stores and nothing could be replaced as easily anymore. Everything they had, would have to be repaired or repurposed. She sighed, the chicken wire was just the first.

  Sam set the cage away from the fire so the chickens wouldn’t be cooked from the heat. He pulled the shelter half from his pack and spread it out over the top of them.

  “What are we supposed to use under our sleeping bags?”

  He shrugged, “I guess for tonight we’ll just have to do without. The cover will keep the chickens quiet and make them feel secure.”

  Gina had just stretched out in her bag, only her face sticking out and was feeling pretty good about their day's catch. With these and the chickens at Matts, someday they would have fresh eggs and eventually fried chicken.

  Sam had laid his bag out beside hers and was pulling off his boots when he seemed to freeze. He cocked his head to the side as if he’d heard something.

  “What now?”

  She felt rather than saw him lean close, “Do you hear that?”

  Gina pulled the blanket away from her head and sat up leaning on one elbow. “No. What is it you think you hear?”

  Sam groaned, “Get your boots back on and roll our bags up. Be ready to move if I come back running.”

  He grabbed his jacket from where he had intended to use it for his pillow and loped off.

  Gina pulled her boots on and sat on her sleeping bag. She listened, other than the chickens almost sounded like they were crooning and the horses were making noise chewing, she didn’t hear anything to alarm her. Gina sat in silence and tried to listen through the noise made by their animals. Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore. There had to be something she wasn’t hearing.

  With a sigh of resignation, she put her jacket on and walked away from their camp. She was careful where she placed her feet and only put them where she could see the patches of snow.

  When she could no longer hear the horses and chickens, she took a deep breath, held it and listened. She realized that by holding her breath she was only hearing the sound of her own heartbeat, so she slowly let it out and tuned out everything else. Head down, she concentrated on the sounds she could hear.

  Her first thought was, “Fireworks! Someone is setting off fireworks.” She listened for several more seconds, and it finally dawned on her. “Gunshots, and lots of them,” she breathed out. Gina hurried back toward camp. As soon as she got there, she dropped to their sleeping bags and began rolling Sam’s up and then hers.

  She approached the tied horses, speaking to then so they wouldn’t spook. She managed to get both of them saddled in the dark and had just finished tightening Sham’s girth when she heard the pounding of running feet.

  Sam burst from out of the dark, his head whipping around. Gina felt his panic, just by his actions.

  “I’m by the horses.”

  “Are you…”

  “They’re saddled and ready to go. All you have to do is hand me up the chickens.”

  “Turn them loose. We don’t have time to mess with them.”

  “Oh, hell no. The chickens are going.”

  “We need to go and go now. We can come back for them another time.”

  “Sam, unless those gunshots are breathing down our necks, we won’t be going anywhere quickly in the dark. Those chickens are going with us now.”

  Gina climbed up on Mack, and glared at Sam, even though he couldn’t see her look. “Hand them up here please.”

  She could hear Sam grumbling under his breath, but could not make out his words, and that was fine with her. She didn’t want their first argument to be over some dumb chickens.

  She could feel his animosity coming off him in waves, but after putting so much into building the cage and catching them, she wasn’t going to leave them behind for someone else to steal. She considered them her chickens now, and Sam would just have to deal with it.

  Once she had the cage in her lap, she threaded one of the latigos through the wire at the corner and tied it to her saddle horn. The body of the cage she rested across her thigh. It wouldn’t be comfortable for any of them, but it would work.

  She followed Sam as they left Jakes ranch behind. They hadn’t salvaged anything but the chickens, nor had they found out what happened to Jake’s wife Sharon, but Gina thought the chickens would be invaluable at some time in the future. She hoped by the time they got back to the McMillan place, they would still have enough time to catch the chickens they’d left enclosed in the barn.

  Gina had scattered some of the horse cob on the floor and Sam had left a pan of water for them.

  As they rode the sounds of gunfire grew distant, and she wondered if they had overreacted.

  “No, we didn’t. I don’t know who that was nor what they were shooting at. I would rather go now than wake up tomorrow morning surrounded by people we don’t know.”

  “How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”

  “It’s what I would have thought myself, had I been in your shoes.”

  “Who do you think that was?”

  “Nobody good for sure. Those were automatic weapons and whoever they were exchanging bullets with didn’t stand a chance.”

  Chapter Nine

  John showed up panting, and sweat ran down his face in rivulets. He placed his hands on his knees and gasped for breath, “The boys said you found someone.”

  “Jesus John, you didn’t have to try and kill yourself getting over here. Sit down before you have a heart attack.”

  John collapsed right where he stood. He had an assortment of rope and towing straps in a coil over his shoulder. Andy pulled them away from him and began sorting.

  “No ladder?” Ben asked when he came up the bank from the river.

  “The boys are bringing it,” John panted. It’s an extension ladder, but it was all we had.”

  Ben looked back at the house literally perched on the hillside. “That should work. We only need to get up about twelve feet. So far I know there are two adults, one injured and two kids.”

  “Sounds like it might be the Barbers.” John lifted his head and peered across the river, “Jesus! Someone survived that?”

  “They did, but it seems every time someone over there moves the whole house shakes, or what’s left of it. I fear getting them out may be more complicated than just putting the ladder up for them.”

  “First, we need across that river. Here’s what I think we need to do.” Ben waited to see what effect his words would have on the others. It was clear to him that someone would have to get wet. He was volunteering for the position. “As soon as the boys get here with the ladder, I’m going to tie some of the lighter rope on it and fasten the tow straps around myself and cross upstream.”

  Both John and Andy seemed to follow his thinking with nods. “I figure that by the time I actually make it across, I should end up somewhere about here.”

  “So you want me to man the end of the strap in case you have trouble. I can walk the edge and keep you from washing downstream and pull you back if it’s too much?”

  “Something like that. Hopefully, I make it the first time. I’ll pull the ladder over with the ropes I tie on it. You might want to have the boys build a fire because t
here is no doubt it will be cold.”

  The boys ran up with the ladder supported over their heads by their extended arms. Andy tied some shorter line around the rungs securing the two ladder sections, ensuring Ben didn’t lose half of the ladder during his crossing.

  With a tow strap secured around his chest, Ben stepped into the running water and looked up in surprise, “You’re not going to believe this, but the water is warm.”

  “Probably because there’s a lava flow somewhere under it. For God sake, check your footing before you put all of your weight on it.”

  John hollered something, but Ben couldn’t hear over his own fear rushing through his brain. For a brief instant, he wondered if he would get to the other side alive or would Andy be pulling in his body. He hadn’t thought the water would be so deep that he couldn’t have walked across. Now, Ben could see where he hadn’t given it enough thought. He wasn’t about to tell them that swimming had never been his strong suit.

  Ben gave Andy a thumbs up and waded in. He felt the current pulling him downstream and realized he wouldn’t hold his own against it if it caught hold of him. He needed to hurry, but the strap around his chest was hindering his movement, “Andy, give me some room to move. Let some of the line go.”

  He felt when Andy did and realized the tension on the line had actually helped him to keep his balance. He stepped into a soft spot and sank to his waist in the warm water. Floundering, Ben threw himself forward and windmilling his arms and kicking, began to swim. He fended himself off outcroppings of rock, swearing when he felt the sharp edges gouging his hands, and everywhere else he bumped. Ben opened his mouth to scream when he hit something that took his breath away and his mouth filled with water. He could feel the burning as the water entered his nasal cavity. He retched and then blew loudly through his nose trying to clear it.

  Just when he thought his endeavors may be fruitless and he would have to yell at Andy to haul him back, his foot banged against the bottom.

  Ben scrambled forward and collapsed on the rocky bank. He lay and vomited up the water he had ingested and blew his nose out on the ground. He felt Andy tug on the strap and raised one hand to show he was okay.