Joe turned and faced him, “Don’t let Sierra hear you say that. She’s heard enough from us about her snowblower with wings. She gets a little testy when it comes to her ultralight, but as long as we can find gasoline for it, we can use it. When the gas dries up, she’s done.”
“Regular gasoline? We should be able to find some somewhere. I don’t think any petroleum products will be viable after a year or two or at least without adding additives to it before it goes bad.”
“True and we don’t have enough gas right now to take it anywhere. We knew when she left this morning it would be the last flight for a while.”
When Jesse came back with a tiny blonde girl on his arm, Sam stood and stared. She had an old fashioned leather cap on her head and sunglasses perched above her eyebrows. Sierra looked like a flyer, right down to the Amelia Earhart scarf around her neck. She wore a one-piece jumpsuit in a dark tan color, and Jesse had a leather jacket slung over his shoulder, that Sam assumed belonged to her.
“Hey Sierra, what’d you see today? Anything we should be worried about?”
She smiled at Joe, shook her head and then gave a wary glance to Sam, Willy, and Gina. She marched right up to Sam and held her hand out intent on shaking his. Sam looked down at her and feared he would crush her tiny hand in his if he weren't careful.
“I’m Sierra, and you are?”
“Sam and this is Willy.”
“Hey, Mr. Carver,” Sierra said and flashed Willy a huge grin as she hugged him in lieu of a hand shake.
Gina stood back and watched the show that Sierra was putting on. Gina had met women like her before and knew it was a ruse to cover up her feelings of inadequacy due to her small size. It seemed to Gina that every tiny woman she had ever met and acted bold and brazen to make up for their diminutive stature. She also knew that women of her own stature had always seemed to slink into the background to deflect from their larger proportions. When it was time for Sierra to be introduced to Gina, Gina stood up, looked down at the smaller woman and held out her hand.
The tiny blonde wasn’t any bigger or taller than Abby and Gina felt like an amazon standing in front of her and dropped back into her chair. Gina shook Sierra’s hand and was surprised by the strength in her grip and the way she met Gina’s eyes head on. She was surprised to see sympathy and understanding as if she’d read Gina’s thoughts.
“I sure am pleased to find there is at least one other woman who survived the apocalypse. I was beginning to think they’d all turned into slaves or worse yet, whores.”
Gina’s eyes popped open, and she grinned at Sierra, “Looking like I do, one occupation wasn’t an option, and the other is out of the question.”
“Looks like you found yourself a pack of trouble somewhere along the line, but no worries, you’ll heal up just fine, and you’ll make a great ally.”
“Well, luckily there are more of us at camp.” Gina switched her gaze to Sam, “Speaking of camp, we’ve been gone a long time. They’ll probably be getting worried when we don’t show up when they expect us to.”
Sam nodded, “We do need to get on back,” he looked at Joe, “What are your plans?” He saw the suspicious look Joe flashed at him and held his hands up as a sign that he may have crossed the invisible line. “I don’t mean to sound like I’m prying, but you said you were going with us and if you don’t I’m sure your father is going to ask me when we see him.”
“And I don’t mean to act so suspiciously, but we’ve had our share of troubles too. We’ve all learned that you can’t blindly trust anyone and we didn’t come by that easily. When we finally made it to Butte, it was something out of a horror story.” Joe closed his eyes, and his expressions said he was trying not to relive the experience. He opened them, sighed and continued, “Let’s just say there was a dozen of us when we left Butte and we’re what remains. We lost Sierra’s folks and Kenny’s girlfriend when we were caught in an ambush. Jesse had already reconciled himself to the fact that Sierra was gone too, until just the other side of Missoula when we heard the familiar buzz in the sky. She used to come and buzz the farm when we were working the fields, so I recognized it for what it was. We still can’t figure out what took her so long to get here.” As he talked, Joe’s voice had changed to light and teasing, and it was clear he cared for Sierra like family. He reached over and pulled her away from Jesse’s protective arm and pulled her close.
“I had the dickens of a time getting the engine to run, and I had to fabricate a way to carry more than the five gallons of gasoline I usually carry in between being invisible and hiding. When I finally got to my parents, of course, they were already gone, and the house had been trashed. Coming here was my last hope.”
“We’ve all got some stories and whether they get told or not is your business. Our business is finding somewhere safe for our group of people, and your father included unless he changes his mind now that you’re back.”
Joe shook his head, “I already told you that we are going with you. We can’t stay here. We have no water, and we’re down to the last of our stores. If Dad hadn’t left some canned food behind we would have been in sorry shape by now. What do you think we were gathering up the oats and corn for?”
Sam chuckled, “I had no idea unless you were going to feed those hay burners we saw tied up out back. How can you be out of water? Your Dad had one of the best wells in the area.”
“I don’t know what happened, you can’t get past the smell of it to drink it, and it’s warm.”
“It sounds like the aquifer was compromised and tainted by sulfur from the lava flow.”
Joe snapped his fingers, “Thanks, Gina, that’s it. It smells like matches right after you strike one. I just couldn’t place the smell. Anyway, we didn’t drink it or give it to the horses.” He looked at Sam, “Now, do you want us to go now or what? I’d sure feel better if we were anywhere but here.”
“We can’t take Roy and this other guy with us. They wouldn’t fit with our bunch and John would have my neck for bringing them.”
“Okay, I’ll take care of it,” He turned to Kenny who was watching Jesse and Sierra talking. “Kenny, you want to go up and get Roy. Tell him we need to talk.”
Kenny jumped up, “Nothing I’d like better than to deliver this piece of news.” He headed up the hill at a jog.
Sam and Joe talked about the best way to handle Roy and Sam said it was best to be up front with the man. Just simply tell him that they were going to leave and join up with some friends and that Roy and Arlus needed to be on their way.
They waited, and when Kenny didn’t come back within a few minutes, Joe began to get edgy. He kept glancing in the direction that Kenny had gone.
“He should be back here by now. Our blind sits just up at the top of the slope in some brush.”
Right then, Sam saw Kenny coming over the rise at a jog. He pointed him out to Joe. Red-faced and out of breath Kenny pounded over the dirt lot to where Sam and Joe stood waiting.
Hands on his knees, Kenny bent over gasping, “He’s gone. All their stuff is gone too, but it wasn’t too long ago because this was still burning on the ground where someone had tried to put it out.” He held up the butt end of a hand-rolled cigarette.
“Well, that solves one of our problems. I sure wasn’t looking forward to telling him to leave.”
Sam stared up the hill, “Maybe not. Willy, you want to come with me?” Willy nodded. Sam looked at Gina, “You stay here!” They had removed their rifles while eating and left them leaned against the porch railing. Both men grabbed theirs and ran up the hill.
“What was that all about?”
“Our horses,” Gina laughed, “I’ll bet this is one time Sam is going to thank me.”
She saw the puzzled looks on Kenny and Joe’s face and thought they deserved an explanation. “Sam was going to tie the horses by the creek, but the smell of dead fish was so strong I shamed him into tethering them back in the shelter of the trees. Had they been at the creek, Roy would have g
one right by them if he left by the road. Now, with any luck at all, Roy didn’t find them, and we’ll still have transportation.”
An hour later, Sam and Willy came back over the top of the hill leading the three horses. Sam waved when he saw them watching him.
“How much do you guys need to pack up?” When Gina heard a thump on the wood of the porch, she and Joe turned and found Calvin and Betty standing there and for some reason neither seemed to want to look at Joe. Calvin looked somewhere off over Joe’s shoulder. “What’s up Calvin? We’re not quite ready to go yet.”
The couple stood, Calvin looking up at the hill and Betty seemed to be studying the boards of the porch. Joe frowned, with a glance at Gina he walked to the porch. “Does one of you want to tell me what’s up? It looks like you guys are all ready to go and the rest of us haven’t packed yet.”
“I wasn’t sure how you would take this, but now that you’ve found your family or at least know where your father is, Betty and I are going to be moving on to Spokane. We’d like to find our families too.”
“That is the one place that not even Mark has been able to rouse anyone on his ham radio or the short wave. Are you sure you want to go there? The road between here and there is going to be a mess. Just the section from the ranch to Mullan was in sorry condition. Of course with all of the other changes, it might be passable or not.”
Betty looked at Gina with sadness on her face; her chin quivered until Calvin reached out and touched her arm. She seemed to gather herself together and gave Gina a weak smile and shook her head, “We have to…you understand? We can’t go anywhere without knowing.”
Gina nodded because if she were in their place, she would want to know too. She couldn’t begin to imagine the grief that other people were going through not knowing if their loved ones were dead or alive. For just an instant she wondered again who the lucky ones were.
“I don’t feel good about you going unarmed, but we don’t have any extra guns or ammo to send with you. If what Sierra saw holds any truth, there are a couple of gangs in the area, and one of them is in CouerD’Alene. You’ll never make it through there.”
Gina looked at Joe and Sam. She knew Joe was right about not having the guns, but they did, and she wondered if Sam was going to step up or not. While she didn’t know them, they seemed like nice people, and at least they cared to find out if their families were alive and that counted for something.
Sierra stepped up and spoke before anyone else. “I saw a small group with a couple of tractors pulling wagons of some kind, and another wagon with horses headed cross country, just this side of the Saint Joes River Valley, and another larger crowd at the west end of the road, that looked like motorcycles or four wheelers. If you can get past them, you could stay on the south side of the old lake bed and possibly miss the larger group.”
“What do you mean the lake bed?” Sam looked at Gina with a worried expression. When he frowned, she was sure that he thought the small group was theirs, but they hadn’t known about the other group, and she could see the war of emotions on his face. He had the dilemma of telling Joe exactly where they were going rather than just taking him there.
Sierra looked startled by Sam’s question, “It’s gone. The lake drained, and it’s now a puddle compared to what it was a few months ago. In case you haven’t noticed, some of the creeks that used to run into the lake now drain it. I know you guys can’t know of the changes, but flying over it that first day, was mind numbing and frightening. As soon as I landed, I cried for hours. I made up my mind right then that I was coming here. You have can’t imagine how happy I was to see them that day because I had no idea what I was going to do if they weren’t here.” Sierra began to cry, and Jesse pulled her close.
“I don’t know how much you guys have seen, but it’s pretty awful out there. People are killing people for whatever they have,” Jesse shook his head sadly, “Never thought I’d see the day when a man could kill another just for a backpack without knowing first what was in it. But I did,” Jesse wiped at his own eyes, “there was nothing but a few clothes and a brown teddy bear that must have belonged to someone he loved, because he had the strength to crawl to where the guy threw it. He died clenching it in his hands.”
“And you let him walk away?” Sam saw the look on Jesse’s face and nodded, “Naw, didn’t think you would. Now though, it sounds like we might have a bigger problem than before.”
“I’ve been over that road from one end to the other, and where John is, the road is nothing but gravel, but the other end, the west end was paved at one time and maybe where it turns into gravel is where the others don’t go past the pavement.”
Sam looked at Willy, “What has me worried is Silas. What if he uses the road to get from point A to point B? John and Charlie have no idea that Silas is out there nor does he know what kind of a human being he is.”
“Sam, Silas also doesn’t know that John is related to you either. There’s no way that he could know who they all are. None of them were with us when we rescued Lucy, so I would think unless there was a confrontation without speaking first, they should be okay.”
Sam paled, “We left Steve alive. He would recognize Lucy in a heartbeat. If somehow Silas found him and he’s still talking, John could be looking at big trouble and not know it until it was too late. We need to get back to the ranch and make tracks.”
“What about me?” Sierra stepped up in front of Sam, “I’m not leaving the ultralight. If I can find some more gasoline, I can find somewhere closer to where you’re going, providing you’re going to tell me.”
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s find somewhere to stash it for now, and I promise you we’ll find some gas and come back for it. It could be our salvation somewhere down the road for surveillance.”
Sierra thought for a moment and then nodded, “Okay. We can remove the wings and tail as long as we’re careful. We can put it in the trees on the north side of the wheat field.” She put her hands on her hips and looked from face to face, “I want it to be clear that this is only temporary. I went through too much to get here to forget about it, and like Sam said, it will be good for surveillance.”
“Fair enough. How long will that take you?”
“Not long. I have the tools already and if Jesse and Kenny can give me a hand less than an hour.”
Willy, Sam, and Gina watched them set off at a jog to where the ultralight had been parked in the grain-field. They weren’t sure what they could do to speed the process up, but all three felt the need to get back to the ranch.
“We can’t do much to help with that, but how about we see if Joe has any more of those burlap sacks and each load one up? Even if they’re not full, it will be more than we have now, in fact, if we don’t fill them full, we can drape them across our knees or tie them on behind our saddles.”
“Good plan,” Sam told Gina and went to ask for sacks.
Thirty minutes later the three of them had filled the bags just over halfway full of wheat and tied them closed with twine. The plan was to either mill it or plant it when they found their permanent place to stay. At the ranch, the bags would be loaded on the wagons for transport.
Thirty minutes after they put them on behind their saddles, the three returned, and Sierra was smiling, so they assumed all had gone well with the ultralight.
“Now, how are you guys for horses?” Sam asked. He was anxious to get moving, and his tone of voice reflected the urgency.
Sam stared at Calvin and Betty, and for some reason, they didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. They had spent some time whispering to each other and Sam couldn’t help but wonder what Calvin had up his sleeve. Had he been in Calvin’s place, he would have joined the larger group and waited to go to Spokane or at least followed Sierra’s advice about going around the lake. She’d been over the area and had some idea what Calvin and Betty would be facing.
“We have enough as long as Sierra can ride with someone,” Joe looked at Calvin who had put his backp
ack on and was busy helping Betty adjust hers. “Calvin, I assume you two are going to take your mountain bikes?”
Calvin looked up and frowned, “I had intended on it. We rode them in here.” His demeanor since he’d announced they were going to Spokane had turned from friendly to borderline rudeness as if no one had made a big enough fuss about them going on alone.
Joe held his hands up when it became clear that Calvin was disgruntled about something, “Whoa, wait. I was curious how you were going is all. Those bikes are yours to do with as you see fit.”
Calvin relaxed and had the grace to look embarrassed, “Sorry. I guess I should have known you didn’t mean anything. I hope the roads are good enough shape to be able to ride at least part of the way, the rest we’ll push them. At least we’ll be able to travel at a decent pace if we have to move.”
“Calvin, maybe you need to come by the ranch on your way out. I can’t in good conscience let you guys go unarmed. We have a couple of extra guns we can give you. There is not a lot of ammunition for them, but at least you can hunt or protect yourselves if you have to. If I were you guys, I would travel at night and stop in a safe place by early morning.”
“Well, that’s one problem solved, then you aren’t me. How are we supposed to ride in the dark? We need to see where we’re going. I know you think we shouldn’t go, but we are, so please don’t try to talk us out of it. As for the guns, thank you but no thanks. If we aren’t armed, I think we’ll have less trouble if we do run into other people. Unless I could talk you into going and providing protection for us?”
Sam shook his head, “We have enough troubles of our own right now. The safest thing for the two of you would be to go with us and maybe, later on, make your way from there.”
Calvin seemed to like his idea of an armed escort, “No! Seriously, a couple of you could go with us. It wouldn’t take but a few days and then you come back. What would that cost you but a little time? We need protection.”
Beyond the New Horizon (Book 3): Living on the Edge Page 21