“Trade myself…oh no. Of course not. We have a group, and we’ve worked together for our survival.”
“But what did you have to do for your food? We had a group too, in the beginning, and then the others came.”
The woman’s shoulders slumped, her whole body seemed to sag, and Journey feared the woman would collapse. Journey walked forward to catch her if she did. The woman stepped away and stumbled. To Journey’s surprise, it was Joe who caught her. He helped the woman to sit and backed away when the woman, cringed at his touch. He held his hands in front of him to show he meant no harm.
“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”
The woman’s head dropped, not looking at Joe. He frowned at Journey, “Should I leave?”
Someone laughed back at camp, and the woman’s head jerked up. She tipped her head and listened. Her eyes met Journey’s, and she looked at Joe, “You have others?”
“I said we have a group of us. Women, some more men, and a few young people. Do you want to call your kids back?”
The woman’s eyes grew wide, and she stuttered, “So you can eat them?”
Journey stepped back, her mouth opened in horror, “Eat them? Oh God, of course not!” she said, her voice filled with disgust. “Why would you say that?”
“Because I can see that you aren’t starving. The only people who I have seen, survived by eating flesh. Human Flesh,” She said, her voice matter of fact as if she had expected Journey to confess to doing the same thing.
Journey stepped in front of the woman and met her eyes head on, “We don’t eat people. We had provisions before the snow and lost the last of them when the earthquake collapsed the cave we wintered in. We still have some food, and we’re willing to share with you and your kids, but you can’t go around talking about eating people. I don’t really care what you saw others doing, that isn’t our way.”
The woman shrugged accentuating her bony shoulders, the look of doubt on her face said she maybe didn’t believe Journey. Journey wasn’t sure how to convince this woman that she and her children would be safe.
She stood, “Okay. It’s obvious you don’t believe what I’m saying so, how about we’ll leave you with a bit of food and go our separate ways? Is this what you would prefer?”
The woman’s mouth slimmed to a thin line, and she sucked her lips in tight. Creases formed between her eyebrows, “Well…If you can spare some for the kids.” She started to cry, “I’m just not sure what to do,” she gulped out. “I can’t watch them starve…”
“Then come with us. What can I do to convince you that we’re only worried about your welfare?” Journey turned and looked around for Andy. “Honey, go get Sherry and Evelyn and any other of the kids who aren’t busy.”
Andy jogged off, and the woman watched him go, “That’s your man?”
Journey chuckled, “It is. My husband.”
The woman relaxed some and turned to look at Joe, who had sat down behind Journey. She stared at him for a few minutes in silence. She cocked her head, “Do I know you?”
Joe frowned, “I don’t think so,” he said drawing his words out as if he wasn’t sure.
She began to nod, “I saw a picture of you. You were with someone I do know. It was you and two other women, and I think it was taken before this all started. There were two blondes. You had your arm around one of them, but it’s the other who had the picture. Tammy!” She said pulling the name from her memory.
“Oh my god, I’m never going to get away from her. I dated her sister for a time, but they’re both gone now.”
“No! No, they’re not. I saw her when they burned the restaurant, and you have no idea what that sick woman did.”
“No, Joes right. She can’t do anything to anyone ever again.”
The woman had been building up to an almost hysterical speech when Journey’s assurances stopped her. She wiped her eyes and her nose. She turned and studied Journey with several glances at Joe. “She’s gone? What about that man she claimed was her uncle? Is he gone too?”
“Silas? That we don’t know, but Tammy is dead and buried.”
The woman looked at Journey with haunted eyes, “Do you know that it wasn’t so bad being a prisoner until she showed up? We were always hungry, but until her, we didn’t have to worry about being used for food. I could tell you…” she hung her head as if she had run out of words to tell of the horrific things she had seen.
“Prisoner? You and your kids were held as prisoners?”
The woman didn’t look up, but nodded her head. As if she’d just heard Journey correctly, she looked up. With a frown, she said, “Do I look that old? I have looked at myself in months. Those aren’t my kids. When they set fire to the building, we managed to escape. We just grabbed what we could carry.” She looked around, “There were nine of us, and we all grabbed food. We thought we had found a safe place…Now there’s only the three of us.”
“Hey, Andy said that you needed to see us?”
The woman shrank back at hearing Abby’s voice. Journey held her hand up to stop Abby and Sherry, who was followed by Lucas, Olivia, and Matt. Evelyn had trailed along behind them.
As each person came forward the woman’s eyes grew round, “How many of you are there? Are you all family?”
Journey and Joe laughed, but Journey replied, “Not the way you think. Some of us are related, and it seems that we’ve adopted those that aren’t. So, in a roundabout way, we are family.”
“Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself and the two children, and maybe you’d like to call them?”
“I have food cooking back at camp,” Evelyn said as she walked up. “Oh, my…hello there. Andy didn’t say we had company.” Evelyn leaned over at the waist and peered at the woman, “I know you. You’re Peter White Cloud’s granddaughter. Oh, you poor thing.” She moved forward even when the woman shrank back from her touch and wrapped the woman in her arms. As if a friendly touch was more than she could handle, the woman collapsed in Evelyn’s arms and sobbed.
Joe jumped back when something hit him on his forehead. He clamped his hand over it and yelled in pain. “Dang it, Journey, look. Did someone just shoot me?” He removed his hand and Journey prepared to rush to his aid, laughed and shook her head. He did have an egg-sized bump forming as she watched.
Another missile flew and hit Joe in the shoulder. He turned his back in the direction the projectiles came from, “Stop that!”
The woman lifted her head and let Evelyn dry her eyes with the front of her shirt, “Michael…friend. Bring Erica and come here.”
The two children stepped out from behind a large boulder. The tallest of the two had a slingshot already loaded in his hands and had pulled the leather pocket back prepared to shoot someone else. He waved it between Joe and Journey, his eyes daring either one to move.
“Friend! Put it away,” she watched him with a pinched face and squinted eyes, “I told you these are friends,” she said, her voice threatening, but the look of caring she cast his way almost make a mockery of her tone.
The boy shook his head, no. The only reason Journey could tell that he was a boy was by his name. He had long curly brown ringlets hanging out from under his stocking cap and was wearing a girl's pink hooded jacket. His jacket, like the woman’s, had patches sewn on it, the sleeves were too short, and the zipper was coming undone from the bottom.
The little girl, Erica was probably the best dressed among the three of them. Her brown, almost kinky hair hung down, covering her face. When Journey looked at Erica, the little girl surprised her with a grin, showing off her missing front teeth. She put her tongue in the gap self-consciously. She had on a man’s wool-lined Levi jacket that hung to her knees, and the cuffs had been turned up and lay like donuts around her wrists. The little girl pushed the hair away from her eyes with one hand and used the other to wipe her nose. Under scrutiny from Evelyn and Journey, she moved to stand behind the woman, peeking around her.
Journey ignored the boy, and by h
er actions, the others did too. As soon as he found his attention replaced by the girl and woman, he dropped his arms and relaxed his hold on the leather pocket. When it hung loose, he took the pebble from the leather and placed it in his pocket. He moved to stand beside the woman, his eyes slits, daring any one of them to come close.
Journey stared, starting with the woman and worked her way to the other two faces, the woman seemed to be American Indian, and by the name, Evelyn had given her Journey felt that was right. The little girl was of African American heritage, and the boy could have been Hispanic or Caucasian, she couldn’t tell.
“These are your children?” Journey asked, careful not to show her dismay. The children looked to be anywhere from six to ten, and Evelyn had called the woman someone’s granddaughter, so Journey didn’t think she was old enough to be their mother, but she had been wrong before.
The woman smiled for the first time, “Not my children by birth, but I’ve been caring for them for some time, so in a roundabout way I guess they are.”
Journey laughed when she heard her own logic thrown back at her. The woman’s smile changed the whole dynamic of her face. Her brown eyes sparkled with humor, and she showed well cared for white teeth. The smile put a dimple on either side of her mouth, and Journey saw that with food to fill in the angles, the young woman would be beautiful. She couldn’t help but hear Joe suck in his breath in astonishment. He obviously was struck by her beauty too and when Journey spoke to him, he didn’t hear.
“Joe!” He looked at Journey and flushed. She almost laughed at his confusion. “I said, let’s head back to camp. I think our guests could use something to eat.”
“My name is Journey, and that’s my husband Andy, and I guess you already know Evelyn and that guy tripping over his feet is Joe McGrubber.”
She nodded, “I know. I went to school with his younger brother Jesse and people used to tease us because we had the same name.” She didn’t see the effect her words were having with Joe, but when Journey looked at him, his face had lost the red and whitened at hearing her talk about Jesse.
“My full name is Jessica, but everyone except my Grandad called me Jesse.”
“Andy, why don’t you and I go on ahead and let the others know that we have company. Joe, can you help Evelyn with their stuff?” Journey pointed at the backpack now laying on its back, forgotten for the moment.
Andy looked at Journey as she hurried away, he shrugged and chased after her. “Hey, wait up.” As soon as he got close enough to speak without being heard by anyone but her, “You want to tell me what that was all about?”
“Didn’t you hear her? I can’t imagine how Charlie is going to feel having someone named Jesse around when his son is not. And then there’s the possibility that she could mention Jesse to Charlie.”
“And your point is? Honey, Charlie will be fine. Give him some credit. We have no control over who we meet on the road. For all we know the additions could make a difference for everyone.”
Journey looked at him from the corner of her eye, “You mean like three more mouths to feed? I’m worried it might be unsettling for him is all.”
“We’ll tell him and see what he has to say. Okay?”
“Okay. I guess, but we need…” In truth Journey had no idea what they needed. She knew they had to help this woman and children, that was why she became a nurse, to help people. But she didn’t know how they could help them when they didn’t have enough resources to help themselves.
The food they had taken from the dead men would be a benefit to them, but only for a short while. With more mouths to feed, that short while, became explicitly shorter. Every adult in their group had taken to cutting themselves back in what they ate to give the young people the extra nutrition. She knew that she and Gina had both taken a smaller portion at meal-time and had seen the others doing it as well. Journey wondered if this was how it was going to go, would they slowly lose weight and wither away?
They had the cows, but no bull, they did have the goats and of both sexes as well as the horses, but they couldn’t survive on meat alone. It was the same problem they were dealing with before. They needed to find a source of carbohydrates to survive.
Journey walked right into the back of Andy when he stopped unexpectedly. He put his hand out to catch her, “Are you daydreaming, or what?”
“Not really…well, I guess I was, but my thoughts would be anything but dreams. I’m worried. When I look at Lucas, Abby, and the others, I can’t help but worry. We have the bit of food we just got, but what happens when it’s gone? Now we have three more mouths to feed, and two of them are children. I watch you and Willy and all of us adults, and I see we have all put ourselves on shorter rations to give the kids extra, but what happens when it’s gone?”
“We’ll have to find more or grow some of our own. We’ll figure out something.”
Journey frowned at Andy’s logic, “Find some? Where?” She stopped walking, “If our country had been hit by a pandemic or something like that, and wiped out ninety percent of the population in a short time, then yes. Then I think we could find food, but this wasn’t that, and I’m sure that we have lost a great many people, but not before the stores were overrun and everything was already taken. We have no seeds to plant, they’re back there somewhere buried under tons of rock, and we haven’t seen any wildlife to hunt, and on top of that, we wouldn’t last long enough to wait for the plants to produce anything.”
Andy tried to console her, “We’re smart and resourceful people, and I think we do have the seeds. Between the lot of us, I’m sure we’ll think of something.”
“As smart as I am, I feel pretty helpless right now. I feel like the cards are stacked against us and for the first time, I wonder who the lucky ones were.”
“The lucky ones are the ones still standing right here and now.”
Journey jumped, she hadn’t heard or seen Charlie come up behind her. She turned to find him, watching her, his eyes full of concern and now she had to tell him about their new guest. She sighed because she didn’t know how to break it to him, “The woman we found is named Jesse or Jessica and she knew your son,” she spit out in one breath.
Charlie stared at her, with pursed lips and a frown, “I know. I saw her and recognized her from some photos one of the boys had taken at the parade, and I know Jesse thought an awful lot of that girl until they became teenagers. Then she turned to horses, and he took up football.” He chuckled, “Damnedest thing you ever saw. Here Pete and I were trying to figure out how to keep them from doing something stupid that could wreck their lives, and it was as simple as leaving nature take its course. She found she liked horses better than she liked him and he would rather run up and down a field, packing a ball and getting knocked down and run over by guys bigger than him.”
“But…you’re not upset? They have the same name?” This conversation wasn’t going in the direction that Journey thought it would take. She had expected Charlie to…Journey wasn’t sure what she expected, but he didn’t seem to be bothered about the reminder of Jesse every day going forward.
Charlie’s eyes sparkled as he watched Journey’s confusion, “It’s okay. She can’t help what her name is, and yes, it will be hard to hear his name being called out on a daily basis, but I can live with it. What I can’t live with is you thinking the lucky ones are the people we’ve lost.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“Hello, the camp!”
“No need to holler,” Andy told Sam from behind him.
Sam and Gina both turned and saw no one. “Andy?”
He stepped from behind a boulder, “Didn’t want to get my head blown off. We expected you guys a couple of days ago.” He eyed the bags tied on the backs of the two horses. “I see you guys got lucky?”
“Not as lucky as we could have been, but we did find a few things. I didn’t expect to run into you this soon. We thought you were going to stay put and let Ben recoup.”
“Yeah, well you could say we had
a little trouble find us. Willy isn’t sure, but it seems like an old friend of yours has survived and brought us some trouble.”
“An old friend of mine?”
“Silas, or so Willy thinks. We managed to do some damage on our own, but one of them got away. So, Willy thought it best to be on our way.”
Sam’s face tightened with anger, “I was hoping we’d seen the last of him.” He looked at Gina, “don’t gloat, but it seems you were right. We should have taken it to him when we had the chance.”
Andy frowned, “Taken it to him?”
“When we were in St. Regis, we had a little run-in with some friends of his…it’s a long story, but I’m getting damn sick of this guy. Until we do away with him, we’re going to be looking over our shoulder, but since we lost everything in the cave, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. The best we can do is to outrun him.”
“That’s where you would be wrong my friend. From the looks of things, we may have gained the upper hand as well as a good portion of his ammunition supplies.”
Sam’s face relaxed, “Everyone is alright, or you wouldn’t look so happy, and I can’t help but notice you’re carrying a new weapon.”
Andy held it out for Sam and Gina to see. “We got more than one and enough bullets to start our own army.”
Sam looked closer, “National Guard?”
Andy nodded, “these, and some extra thirty round magazines and a half dozen Colt 45’s to boot, and enough ammunition to last for a long time.
“It’s good to see you guys thought to post a guard then,” Gina finally put in.
“In front and behind us. We didn’t want to be surprised if he managed to regroup if he had the manpower, but I expect we might have wiped some of his arsenal out with our score,” Andy told them.
“But, if they raided a National Guard Armory, they would have found more than a half-dozen rifles and pistols. When I got out of the service, I did my share of the one weekend a month tours, and we had enough arms for the hundred guys and ladies in our unit.”
Beyond the New Horizon: The Last Sun, Page 23