by John Grit
Brian slid a spare bar across the door on hooks two feet above the other bar. “This thing can take any tornado. Don’t worry. Mel knew what he was doing when he built this bunker.” His white face did not match the confidence in his words.
The wind picked up and began to scream like a thousand demons. All of the shutters on one side of the bunker began to rattle and clatter.
The smaller children cried.
Thunder shook the bunker.
Snapping trees gave them warning.
Nate’s ears popped. “Everyone get on the floor and hold on to the smaller kids.”
The bunker floor began to vibrate. This time it was not thunder. The children cried louder, until a roar from outside drowned out their cries.
It passed. The roar faded, trailing off into the distance, but the sounds of snapping trees and gusting wind lingered.
Martha, Cindy, and Carrie tried to calm the frightened children.
“Well, I guess the tarp’s gone,” Brian said. He started to remove one of the bars on the door.
“No one goes outside,” Nate said. “There are more storms coming. Hear the distant thunder?”
The wind outside still gusted above hurricane strength as thunder rumbled closer.
Nate opened a shutter and a cold blast of wind chilled everyone. Cold rain hit him in the face. He looked out into the dark. “Bring me that spotlight, Brian.”
The light’s strong beam cut through the dark and rain, revealing splintered trees cast into piles ten feet high in places. The tarpaulin was gone; the poles Kendell had cut and buried two feet into the ground like fence posts were broken off one foot above ground level.
“Come daylight,” Nate said, “you’re going to see a different world out there. Most of the trees are gone. We’re going to have plenty of firewood lying around, some of it already in small enough pieces to fit into the stove.” He turned the light off and closed the shutter.
“Damn, I hope the stuff we left by the creek is still there.” Brian exhaled forcefully. “It’s not like we can stand losing food, especially now.”
Martha turned the kerosene lamp up so she could see the children better. They were still frightened but calmer than a few minutes before. “It’s early. We need to keep the children occupied until it’s time for them to go to sleep, otherwise, they will be waking up in the middle of the night. “Carrie, will you read to them?”
She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t.”
Cindy took The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the few novels they had, off a shelf and handed it to Carrie.
Carrie opened it and began to read out loud. She spoke in a low tone at first and read slowly, unsure of herself. One by one, the children sat up and listened. When one on the far side of the room complained she could not hear, Carrie began to speak up and read faster and with more emotion.
After 15 minutes, Cindy remarked, “You’re good at that, much better than me.”
Kendell came closer so he could talk to Nate without bothering Carrie or the children. “I left that deer hanging. “It ain’t no good now. I wish I had never shot it.”
“The tornado came from the direction of the river. It might be gone now anyway,” Brian said. “It’s the cache of food I’m worried about.”
“Chances are the tornado did not go that way.” Nate laid his hand on Kendell’s shoulder. “If a bear does not get it tonight, we can use it for fish bait. We’ll make Okeechobee traps tomorrow and set them in the river.”
“There’s hooks and line in the cave.” Brian’s eyes lit up a little. “We should set trot lines in the river also.”
“Fish are better than nothing, but, pound for pound, they do not offer many calories.” While he talked, Nate listened to the sounds of another approaching storm.
“But they’ll damn sure fill your belly, and they’re fun to catch,” Brian said. “If we use traps and trot lines, cleaning and cooking them will be more work than catching them.”
Nate turned from the shutter and looked at his son. He started to tell him that fun had nothing to do with it. Instead, he resisted an urge to hold him. He still had his boy after all, and he was grateful for that. “You two try to get some sleep. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow. We’ve got a mess out there to contend with.”
~~~~
Even Nate was shocked by the damage the tornado left in its wake. He guessed it must have been one half mile wide, certainly one of the strongest tornados to ever hit Florida. He doubted even the bunker would have withstood it if not for the berming on all the walls deflecting the tremendous winds and the berm in front protecting the door. It had touched down just one hundred yards from the bunker and then passed over them, continuing on for over a mile before lifting back up into the sky. Later, they learned it came back down less than a mile farther and cut a swath through the forest for five more miles before lifting up again. He worried about the farm house, but had more immediate concerns.
Before the sun had risen above the treetops, Nate, Brian, and Kendell were working in a cold drizzle that streamed down at an angle, clearing downed trees and other debris from around the bunker.
Nate limbed the windfalls with an ax, while Brian and Kendell used a two-man saw to cut the logs into manageable pieces. They labored for three hours clearing debris from around the bunker moving splintered trees away from the door.
Carrie watched the children while Martha and Cindy helped pile logs 50 yards from the bunker. The other debris was scattered out on the ground back in the trees to prevent them from becoming a fire hazard during the dry season.
After all the children were fed and Nate, Brian, and Kendell grabbed a quick breakfast, Cindy went with the boys and Nate to check on the cache. They found the woods to be a mess. Trees were down everywhere. The sky was still overcast, with dark, menacing clouds scudding rapidly at low altitude, and the wind blowing at more than thirty-five miles per hour, sometimes gusting to fifty-five. It was a wet, cold, chaotic world they found themselves in, as they made their way down the now overflowing creek to the cache.
“Can’t be any more tornadoes, though, despite the stormy weather,” Brian said. “There are no thunderstorms. Right, Dad?”
“Right. No thunderstorms, no tornadoes. This is some of the weirdest weather I’ve ever seen.”
“You mean like the cold winters we’ve been having lately,” Brian said. “Weird is right.”
Kendell walked along behind the other three, carrying a military surplus backpack they gave him to carry food to the bunker. He seemed to have little to say. Nate noticed he was still weak, but getting stronger.
“If you need to stop and rest, Kendell, we will not mind. You are not going to be yourself for many weeks.”
Kendell shook his head. “I can walk just fine. I’m a lot better now. We have to get that food, if it ain’t ruined or gone already.”
“We’re sure going to need it,” Cindy said.
Kendell flinched at her words.
“We’ll get by, one way or another,” Nate said.
Cindy turned and looked at Kendell, apology on her face. “Yeah, we have enough for now. And we’re not going to turn anyone away to starve.”
Kendell looked down. “Maybe the government has set up places for kids that ain’t got no one.”
“They will sooner or later, I don’t know about now, though,” Cindy said. “For now, they have us, just like they have you. You’re not alone anymore.”
Kendell blinked and stopped walking. Cindy turned around to see if he was still back there, he ran and caught up with the others. Nate watched for foot prints in the mud. He could not hear anything with the wind slamming the trees against each other, and there was no way he could catch movement in the woods when the woods themselves conducted its wild dance. As they made their way down into the swamp, water became an ever increasing problem, forcing them off course many times to avoid wading in mud. Water moccasins slithered everywhere.
Nate came across a long stick, two-inc
hes thick, to use for snakes and picked it up. He did not waste time hitting them with it, just pushed them out of the way, so they could make their escape without getting close enough to be a danger to him or the others.
“There’s the cache,” Nate said. “Some of it’s under water. And it’s scattered all over. Look. There’s a few cans floating in the creek.” The Freeze-dried food was so light, the one-gallon cans were floating. He reached out with the stick to try to get some of them close enough to grab.
Kendell just waded in and started collecting them. “My shoes is worn out anyway,” he said. “I ain’t got no socks on, so it don’t make no difference if I get wet.”
Nate looked worried. “The water won’t kill you, but there’s snakes and gators. Some of that creek bottom is so soft, you can be head-deep and still not hit bottom. I would rather you get out of there now. We have a canoe a little farther downstream to do that with. Come on out of there.”
Kendell reluctantly did what he was told and waded to shore.
Nate took the cans and handed them to Brian, then held out his hand and pulled Kendell onto dry land. “While you guys are collecting that stuff, keep an eye out for snakes. You’ve already seen they are active in this flooded swamp.” He went after the canoe.
Kendell watched him leave. “Why did he order me around like that? He acted like he was my father or something.”
“He was just worried about you,” Brian said. “You haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until you see him ordering me around.”
“But he ain’t my father.”
Cindy listened while she worked. She smiled and said nothing.
Brian stuffed a Mason jar in his pack. “He’s taken you on as his responsibility, so he’s kind of acting like your father too.”
Kendell looked confused. As he worked, he seemed to be thinking.
It took them longer to gather up all the jars and other containers of food they could find and set them on dry land than to fill their packs. They lost more than a dozen Mason jars to breakage, but most of the food was retrievable.
“Okay,” Nate said, “spread out your hammocks on the ground and put the lighter stuff on them. When you think it is full enough, and remember, don’t make them too heavy to carry, pull the ends of the hammock together and tie it off. You will need enough loose hammock material to throw over your shoulder so you can easily carry it.”
“My pack’s already full of heavy Mason jars,” Cindy said.
“I’ll carry your hammock,” Nate said.
“I wasn’t complaining.”
“I know that. We need someone with two free hands to keep a rifle handy in case of trouble. Keep an eye on our back trail.” Nate took the lead. They headed upstream and to higher ground.
Kendell pointed. “Look. There’s my deer. No bear got it, but the tree it was hanging from blew down.” It was floating in the mud.
They stopped long enough to hang the deer in another tree. Nate held the weight while Brian tied it.
“We can still use it for fish bait,” Nate said. “The more rotten it is, the more it stinks. Stink makes good catfish bait. We’ll cut it up tomorrow, if a bear does not get it tonight.”
“I guess we’re going to be busy today making traps and trot lines,” Brian said.
Nate kept his eyes working, searching the woods for trouble. “We’ll make only two traps and one hundred feet of trot lines. I’m not sure all of the children will want fish. We do not want it to go to waste if we catch too many.”
Kendell spoke up. “You think we’ll get that many?”
“After all this rain, and it looks like it’s going to rain more, the catfish will be feeding. I would not be surprised if there were a fish on every hook when we check them the next day.”
Brian stepped closer to Kendell. “After a heavy rain, the catfish swim up in the shallows and along the banks and up into the creeks, looking for stuff the rain washed into the water, like worms and grubs and insects.”
Kendell nodded. “What about gators? Ain’t they okay to eat?”
“Of course,” Brian said, “if you make sure to cut all the fat off them. Gator fat is terrible. It’ll cure your hunger for gator tail fast. But if you take all the fat off and the gator isn’t too old, it’s not bad. I like it more than venison.”
Nate spoke over his shoulder. “You prefer just about anything over venison.”
“Everything but starvation, and even that’s a close call,” Brian said.
Kendell’s face changed. “You ain’t been really hungry, then, have you?”
“No, I guess not. Sorry.”
“No need for sorrys,” Kendell said. “You’ve been good to the kids and me. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Chapter 6
Dawn broke clear and cold. The wind had died down to a gentle breeze sometime in the night. Nate struck a match and lit a lamp. The dim, warm, yellowish glow was just enough to see in the small room. He picked his way across the room, careful not to step on anyone. He noticed the children were huddled together under anything Martha and Cindy could throw on top of them to keep them warm. Carrie was in the middle of a knot of the smaller children, her arms encompassing two. What firewood they had in the bunker was used up. The stove sat cold. He saw Martha and Cindy sitting on the bare floor next to each other, their backs against a wall. They both had their arms crossed and shivered through a fitful sleep.
Brian was standing watch, looking out of a loophole. Nate stood beside him. He spoke in a low voice. “We need to go to the cave and bring any winter clothes and sleeping bags we can find to the bunker.”
“Have you ever seen it so cold this early in the year?” Brian asked. “It’s only late October.”
“No. The weather has been off for years now. We’ve talked about that before.”
Brian looked at his father, worry on his face. “If it’s going to get cold this early and the winter turns out colder and longer than the last, how the hell are we going to grow any kind of crop until next spring? It’s going to be hard growing anything around here as it is.”
“Hold on. First, this is probably just a freak early cold snap, a mass of cold air from Canada that came down that will be gone in a few days. Maybe the jet stream has moved south early this year. Normally, the jet stream that crosses the United States prevents cold air from making it this far south until winter. The mixing of cold air and hot is what helped to cause the tornado. Also, I plan to be on the radio this morning, asking if any of the other groups will take the kids in. We can’t handle them all by ourselves.”
Brian still looked worried. “Aerial’s down.”
“I will be out there putting another one up as soon as there’s a little more light.”
“The solar panels blew away.”
“Yes, but the battery should still be charged.”
Brian turned and looked to see if the others were still asleep or listening. “When it does lose power, it will be the last of the radio. We won’t be able to communicate with the others.”
“We still have enough gas welding equipment, and I might be able to rig something up using a car alternator. A waterwheel in the creek would turn it fast enough with the proper sized pulleys and fan belt or sprockets and chain. ”
“I don’t remember seeing any of that lying around here or at the farm.”
“The abandoned trucks on the road, and the motorcycles we hid in the woods.”
Brian’s face lit up. “Oh. The others might not have taken all the batteries also.”
“Most of the time and labor will probably go to building a dam in the creek so there’s enough of a drop for the water to fall on the wheel and turn it fast enough. An alternator must be spun at least five hundred RPMs to work. I figure we need about two feet of drop when the water spills over the dam.”
“You’ve been thinking about this already.”
Nate rubbed his unshaven face. “I was thinking about rigging something up in the river for electricity way back before you got
shot.”
Brian smiled. “Yeah, you always did think way ahead of everyone else. It sure saved us when that bunch of convicts showed up.” His face became melancholy. “I miss Deni and Caroline.”
“Caroline promised she would come back if she could. Deni, well, she has the Army to contend with. I doubt she will be in much trouble for not reporting for duty after her leave ran out. She could not exactly just drive or fly back. They’re not going to want to let her go, though, even if her time in the Army expires. They’re short-handed.”
“So she might not ever come back.” Brian looked out the loophole, but he was looking inward.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. She will probably show up someday with her fiancée just to visit and see if we’re okay. It might be years from now, though. By then, you will be married and a father.”
Brian blew out a lung full of air. “Yeah, right. You’re just picking on me now. I know she’s too old for me anyway. Or rather, I’m too young for her. I just like her as a friend. Caroline too. They both are hard workers and a lot of help in a fight.”
“I agree to all of that.”
Brian watched the children sleep. He looked over to the corner where there were a dozen carbines and several shotguns leaned against the wall. “We better get all the guns out of reach of the kids.”
Nate blanched. “Damn. You’re right. I’ve been so busy, I didn’t think about that.” He looked at his son. “I told you many months back I would need your help. No one can think of everything.”
“I saw a gun rack in the cave.”
“I’ll go get it now. We can hang it as high as possible on a wall. It will keep the smaller children from reaching them, anyway.” He grabbed his rifle. “First, I will bring in some firewood, if I can find any that’s not soaked.”
After he left, Brian barred the door.
Nate came back from his second trip with the gun rack, but it could hold only four long guns. “I think I have an idea.” He left again, heading for the cave.
Brian heard a metallic sound, like thin sheet metal banging against something. Through a side loophole, he saw his father carrying a metal cabinet, struggling not with its weight but its bulk. It was difficult for him to hold it out away from him so he could walk without banging his legs against it. He put his carbine down, opened the door, and helped Nate get the cabinet inside. The noise they made woke everyone.