Eric called his men together once they stopped at a convenient place off the road.
“This is decision time men. We can split up and go our separate ways or we can stay together and head down the coast. I think we should stand together. Anyone have a comment?”
One Marine spoke up,
“I think most of us want to stay together. We’re safer and a more formidable force if we’re attacked. Although it hasn’t happened yet, it could. As for me, I’m staying. All we have to do is think about Sergeant Woodall, I think alone we’ll be targets.”
Some of the other soldier spoke up, as well, and it appeared to be a consensus among them. Corporal Ramirez noted,
“None of us knows where this trip will lead us, or what we’re gonna face as we go along. I’m sticking.”
Most of the other men concurred. They were staying together, at least for the time being.
They continued down the coastline. They traveled along the roadways initially; then went to the beaches. When challenged with steep jutting cliff-sides they moved back up to the highway once again. They found very few items of interest, not fully aware of the good fortune they had. This area had been untouched by nuclear warfare. Some of the men were actually having a good time. They found fishing gear in an abandoned campground, and the fishing was great. The water was refreshing, and most of them would take advantage of the ocean each day.
They camped in a locale that had a freshwater stream coming from inland and they restocked their drinking water. They enjoyed a long needed freshwater bath to remove the saltwater residue from their clothing and skin. The lack of other human life made it feel as if they were in a different dimension. It was all so surreal. Not natural.
What they were seeing was completely outside the realm of what they all were accustomed to; people hustling about, doing their daily activities. It was hard for them to accept this world of nothing except themselves. It was a sobering experience.
None of them wanted to believe that nearly everyone was dead. Most of them believed that people were simply in hiding.
For the next two months they continued down the coast until they reached a small desolate area just north of Crescent City, California, it was here they ran out of diesel for the vehicles and so they continued their trek on foot, carrying much of the gear and weapons they had been comfortably transporting on board the trucks. Walking on the beach with soft sand beneath their feet was getting to them. They decided to go inland a little to see what they could find. They would avoid the beach for a while. Fresh water was running low again, and that was the most critical reason for them to explore inland.
They had traveled about three miles from their last stop on the beach when they came to what had been a large barn. It was burned to the foundation and a house located about a thousand yards away was also burned nearly to the ground. It appeared to have been attacked because there were spent brass shell casing scattered around what had once been the house.
“There was a firefight here.”
It was Sergeant Pelletier seeing the aftermath evidence.
There was nothing left of value, so they decided to move on. Eric wanted to put some distance between this place and his men. It was all so depressing. When the group left the small farm, they came to a dirt road that branched off to the east. They traveled it for a few miles and came across several homes. Some were burned out and some were just abandoned and looted but no one was seen anywhere.
One of the soldiers began a cadence,
“One, two, three, four, I left my wife in New Orleans with twenty-four kids and a can of beans…”
Eric yelled at him,
“Can it! We don’t want to announce to anyone out there that we’re coming.”
They continued along quietly heading further inland. They found a farm with a well and there they were able to replenish their water supply. That was the only redeeming grace for the long march and detour. The men complained about the loads they were packing and continuing in the current direction was yielding nothing but sore backs and feet.
“Halt!”
Eric yelled.
“Take a break. Everyone fallout!”
The men dropped their packs and settled down in the shade of some walnut trees. General chit-chat ensued. Most welcomed the break. Eric and some of the other men saw a couple of dogs in the distance watching them. They were probably pets at one time. A couple of the men tried to encourage the dogs to come to them by offering a biscuit, but they wouldn’t venture near, choosing to stay well out of reach. But they watched them. Some of them wagged their tails but didn’t move toward the men.
“You boys, come on over here.”
One soldier tightened his lips together and made a clicking sound but the dogs just lay there, out of reach, staring at the men.
“They sure are skittish. I wonder why?”
“Look how skinny they are.”
The group still had miles to go before they reached San Francisco, their ultimate destination. It seemed like a good plan to travel inland away from the main road in a southwesterly direction. None of them knew that bypassing Crescent City with such a wide berth probably saved their lives. Crescent City was the main camp where the slavers congregated and based their operations.
The slavers were more than eight-hundred strong now, and this contingent of men would have had them seriously outnumbered.
◆◆◆
Eventually the platoon headed back to the beach and veered to the south. They spent a couple of days fishing and stocking up on seafood along the way. What they didn’t cook and eat on the spot, they dried in the sun or smoked for later. They caught a lot of fish, gathered clams and mussels and caught crabs with makeshift traps. Several men went out and away from the beach and found an old orchard with peaches, cherries, and nectarine trees, and harvested all for their group they could reach comfortably.
They also found another barn and farmstead. It had an old-fashioned well with a bucket and pulley and they were able to restock their canteens and water containers once again. It took several trips to get it done but it was worth the effort to have plenty of water on hand. The citrus fruit was a special treat. A big bonus was fifteen chickens and many eggs they discovered in an open coop behind the small barn, not far from the abandoned house.
In a few more days Eric held a sit-down meeting with his soldiers and Marines.
“Men, we need to move a bit farther down the beach. Our ultimate destination, for the time being, is still San Francisco. So far, as you all know it’s been dismal in terms of finding anyone alive. Every house and store we come to has been pillaged and looted. I suggest we move out in the morning. We’re all stocked up with fresh water, thanks to Corporal Lyndon and his boys, so I see no reason why we should delay much longer. Any comments?”
No one spoke. They were all getting anxious to move out. The next morning, the group marched down the beach. The cliffs off to the east were quite high; around a hundred feet above the beach. They decided it would be a good idea to follow the beach below the cliffs where they could find defensive positions among the rocks and driftwood.
Just to be sure, Eric and a few men climbed over one of the cliffs to determine what they could see from there. A few hundred feet east was a highway that ran north and south, next to that, more cliffs, and some of those areas appeared to be nearly impassable.
Chapter 7
The Beach
They decided that traveling the beach was a better alternative than moving along the roadway. They climbed back down to the beach, rested and headed south again. They camped at nightfall. Eric experienced a sense of danger, and they extinguished the campfire. Later that night, they heard the sound of motorcycles traveling on the highway going north above them and louder than the surf. There were a lot of them up there.
That meant there were others alive, and plenty of them! The motorcycles took about five minutes to pass. Eric guessed there were maybe a couple hundred or so. A lot of questions flooded hi
s mind. Who were they? Where were they headed? Were they friendly or bad guys? Regardless of who they were, the numbers were way too great to approach without knowing for sure. Discretion was the watchword in this case. Nobody really wanted a firefight. If they had to defend themselves, that was different, but nobody wanted to instigate a skirmish.
As they sat around in a group eating dried fish, the men were mellow, if not maudlin.
“You know, Sarge, I find it hard to believe we aren’t seeing anyone. What’s up with that? We heard some people passing by up there on the road, but we still don’t know if they’re friendly or not.”
Eric thought about it carefully before he spoke.
“I think people are in hiding. I’m not sure what they’re hiding from, but I think they’re afraid of something. Maybe they think the Russians and Chinese have landed. It could be something else, but I don’t know what it could be. I think sooner or later we’re going to find out, and we may have a fight on our hands with whatever or whomever they are hiding from. People don’t necessarily hide unless there is a perceived threat. We don’t know for sure what that threat is, but I suspect all those motorcycles we heard going by could be part of it. There were way too many of them. They didn’t seem to be afraid of anything.”
“What do ya mean?”
“Everybody else seems to be hiding out somewhere but those people seemed to be traveling without fear of anyone or anything.”
“How so?”
“Think about it, they’re traveling out in the open, in broad daylight, and yet we don’t see anyone else. No families, no kids, no women, nothing except those people up there on motorcycles. I’m thinking something’s up with that.”
“Good point.”
“I sure wish we could get something on the radio. It’s weird nobody is answering us.”
They took the situation seriously, all of it and wondered what they might encounter in their travels. They set the watch, and the rest of the men turned in and went to sleep for the night.
Morning came, and it was time for them to continue on their journey. They walked for about two hours, and just as they were about to take a break, Eric saw a man way off in the distance moving around. He appeared to be fishing in the surf. There were others with him.
Eric took his field glasses out and stared down the beach. They were still far, but he could make out the activities they were involved in. The man was definitely fishing and appeared to be with several women and a few children, maybe some teenagers, but he couldn’t tell for sure. Everyone was busy. Some were cleaning fish, some were tending to a campfire and others were collecting driftwood. Eric gathered his troops around him.
“Well troopers,”
Eric spoke up in as quiet a voice as he could and still be heard.
“We finally found some live ones. Let’s move toward the cliff and travel single file, we don’t want to scare them off, but we do want to talk to them. I want four men to climb the cliff and cut them off if they try to get away. It’s mostly women and children by the looks of things, so I see no reason to anticipate trouble. The base of the cliff will help keep the rest of us hidden from sight. We’ll leave our things here for the time being. Corporal Gonzales, stay here and guard our gear. Let’s move out.”
◆◆◆
It was a hot day. The soldiers and Marines moved toward the small group of people quickly but stayed next to the bottom of the cliff. The sun was up at about the nine o’clock position and it promised to get even hotter as the day grew longer. The shadows were long at this time of the day. The breeze from the ocean blew onshore, which made things a bit more comfortable, it was pretty warm, nevertheless. Eric and his troopers moved toward the small gathering of people. It wasn’t long before they were spotted.
The people took off running like a group of birds startled into flight. The soldiers and Marines closed the distance between them, and then they saw the men up above looking down on them. It was useless to do anything at this point but wait for the men coming toward them to get closer. The group had no place to go. There was no escape because of the cliffs towering ominously above the beach and the armed men up there looking down at them. There was a path, but it was steep and could only be negotiated single file. A bottleneck. They were trapped. The frightened people cowered together as Eric and the soldiers moved toward them. Eric yelled above the noise of the surf.
“We mean you no harm, relax. We are United States military. We are making our way down the coast to San Francisco. You’re the first living people we’ve encountered in over two months. Where is everyone? Do any of you know what all has happened since the war began?”
A man came forward. He was somewhat ragged in appearance with a full beard. He appeared to be reasonably calmer than the rest of his group. He began to speak in a soft voice. Eric interrupted him by telling him he had to speak up. He couldn’t hear him over the surf. The man, named Charles, raised his voice.
“We’re a few of those who have managed to escape the slavers. They have been scouring the area from just north of Crescent City all the way down to San Francisco. Nobody goes into San Francisco because of the radiation. They make hostages out of everyone they find. They use the women for a while and then sell them up north to anyone who has the right price. The teenagers are also sold, but the babies are most often eaten.”
Eric stopped him,
“Eaten?”
“Yes, there is a shortage of food and they have a lot of mouths to feed so now and then they eat kids.”
They couldn’t believe what they were hearing as Charles continued.
“Most of the men who are strong enough to work are sold as slaves. We’ve been coming to the beach once every couple of weeks together for food to take back to our camp. We haven’t had much food since the war began.”
“Do you mean they are eating children?”
The shock in the statement was evident,
“Literally?”
“Yes, they butcher them, cook them barbecue style and eat them. That’s why we ran when we saw you coming. We don’t have much in the way of defenses. We have a few weapons back at our camp, but not nearly enough to hold off or make a stand against those slavers. We look for more weapons all the time to protect ourselves; firearms are very hard to come by these days. The slavers have most of the weapons. They collected them early on, at the beginning of the war.”
“What made you come down here in broad daylight?”
“They don’t get up this early. We come down and catch enough fish to take back to our hideaway well before they get up.
“The slavers are armed, and we don’t have much in the way of arms or bullets…”
“Well, we’re well armed,”
Eric blurted it out,
Charles continued ignoring the interruption, but was stopped when Eric continued,
“And we have more than enough weapons and ammo. Take us to your camp and we’ll see what we can do about getting you better armed, we can make you stronger to protect yourselves from the slavers. Just lead the way.”
Charles approached Eric and asked him to step off to the side away from his troopers. He was obviously concerned when he began to talk.
“You’re obviously in charge of these men, and at our camp we are mostly women and children. I want your assurance these men will behave themselves…”
“How so…”
Eric seemed to be taken aback by the comment.
“Young men, young women, you know, the birds and the bees…”
Eric thought about it, the man had a point.
“I will make sure they remain gentlemen, what about the women, will they do the same and behave themselves? After all, these boys haven’t seen a woman in quite a while, and you know how that goes.”
“The women will behave, but we both have to stay on our toes, agreed?”
Charles held out a hand and Eric shook it. It was an agreement. In the back of his mind Eric wasn’t so sure the men would do what he said, but he wou
ld caution them away from the women later.
◆◆◆
Eric sent for their gear farther up the beach and they all headed to gather everything up. Many of the young soldiers were busily talking to the women. Lots of laughter was being heard and everyone seemed happy after the long boring trip from Washington State. None of them had seen a woman for months. It was a welcome change.
“Even the ugly ones are pretty...”
one of the young Lance corporals commented.
They climbed the cliff, crossed the highway and continued east for an hour until they reached a small stream that flowed to the south. There they turned due north through a rock outcropping at the base of a large group of rolling and stone-covered cascading hills. Yellow grass grew as far as the eye could see, and the hills were interspersed with small clumps of trees scattered in patterns suggesting they were planned and planted that way. The small creek flowed through the rocks and fell from a high embankment, coloring the rocks with green algae. There was a rainbow that hovered there like a hologram from the perpetual cascading water. Eric tasted the water and told Charles it was delicious. Charles patted his canteen as he brushed on by him.
“That’s the source of our fresh water. It flows from the mountains farther north. It’s pure as far as we can tell. Just to be safe, we boil and filter it for drinking and cooking, even though that won’t do much good if it’s full of fecal matter and microscopic worms. We haven’t noticed any side effects so far. The last thing we need is someone getting sick.”
They continued the climb and soon came upon a natural tunnel formed by the upheavals of the earth in a time long gone. They came upon an opening to a natural tunnel which was tucked behind a rock, virtually undetectable to a passerby. You had to walk right up to it and then go behind a narrow split in the rock to see or enter the tunnel. The other side of the tunnel opened out into a broad meadow filled with green grass, trees, wildflowers, more rocks, and boulders. Beyond that was the camp for the stragglers, it was where they made their home.
Avalon- The Construction Page 7