The Pulse Effex Series: Box Set

by L. R. Burkard

  When Richard told Tex they also needed to find barbed wire and dig a trench around the cabin, I knew one thing for sure. They expected more attacks.

  Chapter 5

  SARAH

  Tex’s new motto is: STOP THE YAHOOS. I only knew Yahoo as a search engine on the internet—our long lost internet!—so I had to ask what he meant. Turns out, he means the marauders. But he stared at me when I asked, and said, “Haven’t you ever read Gulliver’s Travels?”

  “No.”

  “Everybody used to have to read Gulliver’s Travels—it was part of a well-rounded education.”

  “Not in my school.”

  Tex snorted. “No wonder there’s so many yahoos out there—our education system raised them up, didn’t it? Why don’t they teach kids the classics anymore?” He didn’t expect an answer, so I didn’t give one. Besides, I had no idea why they’d stopped teaching Gulliver’s Travels. Maybe if Tex has a copy, I’ll read it.

  Anyway, Richard and Tex are gone for hours every day in order to STOP THE YAHOOS—they’re rigging new traps, digging pits, and putting up fencing. They take weapons, a two-way radio, and, just as important as anything else—Kool. He’d smell and hear anyone coming long before the men would. Angel and I get to keep Kane, my wolf-dog buddy, which is a big comfort.

  Kane and I have been on peaceful terms since the first time I fed him but we enjoy far more than mutual toleration. I love him! He’s a protective guard dog and a good companion. One time he growled at the grass and barked at me, warning me away. It turned out to be a big old corn snake, according to Angel who killed the thing by slamming a shovel on its head. (Angel is a small woman and still surprises me with her muscle—and her pluck.) Tex skinned it and we actually ate snake meat! But I hadn’t seen or heard it when it was right next to me, and if it had been poisonous, I might have gotten bit without Kane’s warning.

  Another time he scared away a coyote—Angel was sorry about that though, because she’d rather shoot the things than scare them off. “Any meat is meat,” she said, shaking her head after I told her what happened.

  It reminded me how, back at the library right after the pulse, the rumor circulated that we’d been eating dog-meat. Even now, so long after the fact my stomach turns at the thought. But we’d been starving then. I guess if we got desperate enough coyote meat would be as good as any. But Richard and I are blessed by getting to eat lots of food that most people don’t have and wouldn’t be able to prepare without modern conveniences if they did. Tex and Angel are geniuses when it comes to that.

  Cooking, for instance. Angel has the top of our wood-stove for indoor cooking, a sun-oven, and a compact rocket stove—which, in case you don’t have one, is pretty cool. Tex calls it “a marvel of efficiency” because it only needs the smallest fodder for fuel, like kindling and rolled newspaper, but burns hot.

  They lived “off grid” for quite some time before the pulse and it really paid off. Losing power didn’t ruin their lives the way it did the rest of us. Were it not for the danger of other people and foreign soldiers, Tex and Angel would get along just fine. Back when I first arrived, I noticed right off they were well supplied. But soon I realized they had more supplies than I could see—hidden storage. The storage room holds mostly non-food items; but now and then Angel appeared with packaged goods like cookies and granola bars, or instant oatmeal and jelly—things unopened, as if she’d just gone shopping.

  Once, when she appeared with a 25-pound sack of flour, my jaw about dropped.

  “Where did that come from?” I knew it wasn’t from the small pantry off the kitchen, and I hadn’t seen any totes labeled “flour” in the storage room. This is when I first learned they had an additional, hidden area with food.

  She just smiled. “Oh—we have a few things on hand.”

  I have to confess that I went searching for this secret place once, looking for a loose floorboard or that sort of thing. But I’m stumped. I wish they’d trust me enough to show it to me but it doesn’t bother me too much. It’s like when you know your parents have Christmas presents hiding somewhere. It would be fun to find them but you don’t have to. Angel and Tex were storing food. I didn’t have to know where.

  Anyway, aside from his protection as a guard dog, Kane is just good company. He seems to prefer me over Angel, which is a mystery to me. Angel is nothing but good to the dogs. But Kane will come trotting after me instead of her. My only competition for his affection is Tex. The dogs consider Tex their true love (Kole did, too) and transform from growling, snarling menaces to meek and eager love-things where Tex is concerned. With Kole gone, the remaining two have kept up this love-sick contest for his affection. Kane rushes from my side the moment he hears Tex approaching the cabin, long before we can tell he’s coming.

  This week I am extra grateful to have Kane with me whenever I have to leave the cabin. I try to stay alert but I listen more for Kane’s low, guttural warning growl than anything else. He comes with me to the water-pump, the barn, and the garden. I’m spooked by that gang, no doubt about it. Now and then I’ll stop what I’m doing just to take a quick survey of the surrounding fields and pastures, clear to the tree line, half-expecting to see them returning. Even if they don’t, there are countless others out there to watch for.

  LATER

  While we ate supper that night, Angel put her fork down and looked earnestly at Tex. “Tex, hon, I want to check on Doris and Tim—maybe they’re okay. I need to know. I still feel badly about shooting that woman as they left.”

  Tex swallowed and cleared his throat. Troubled, he said, in his heavy voice, “I’m ahead of you, darlin’.” He sighed. “I been there and back. They’re gone, sweetheart. House was pillaged and everything taken or used.”

  Angel stared at him sadly. “Did you see any sign of Doris or Tim? You think they might have gotten away?”

  Tex looked uncomfortable. “They did not survive, sweetheart. Don’t ask me for more details.” He paused, looking at his wife with sad eyes. “I think it was that gang who got to our neighbors. I think you were right—it was Doris’s hat.”

  Angel's face sank. I thought she was about to dissolve into tears.

  Richard’s eyes flamed. “You see? We had every right to shoot! We should have shot them all! Then we wouldn’t be worrying about them coming back. They came here to kill and steal—they tried to hack down the cabin!” He shook his head. “I don’t see how you could feel bad about it. We didn’t do ENOUGH damage.”

  Tex said, “Now that I’ve thought about it, I agree with Richard. We were too passive. If we started shooting them when they were still in the field, we’d have our chickens and berries and a lot less damage to the cabin and barn.”

  I don’t think I mentioned our visible garden plots got trampled, all of the seedlings squashed. And the raspberry bushes on one side of the property were stripped, as well as some herbs and peas, leaving the area a sad mess.

  Angel was crying silently. “I wish they had made a safe room like we told them!”

  “What do you mean? What’s a safe room?” I asked.

  Tex and Angel exchanged looks. After a few seconds during which he looked like he was trying to decide how to answer, Tex said, “A safe room? That’s Plan B.”

  And that’s all they would say about it.

  The next day Angel and I went out to double-check our crops while the men went further afield to lay traps and such. If ever I’ve been thankful for Angel's foresight in planting “survival gardens,” the ones that aren’t neat and delineated but hidden in plain sight, it is now. Angel and Tex had planted squash among oak and maple trees, tomatoes among brush and weeds, blueberries alongside conifers, and strawberries mingled among marigolds. Most people would walk right by and never realize they’d passed food.

  Thanks to other such plantings we still had grape vines, beets, acorn and spaghetti squash (the butternut squash were mostly destroyed) and beans, blueberries, pumpkin, watermelon, Jerusalem artichokes, and peppers. There’s
probably more I’m forgetting to mention—but this gang would have decimated all of it if it had been in a neat garden. They’d missed the survival plantings, thank God, because they were well camouflaged.

  Before the raid, I’d been bringing in slim, dark, early zucchini each day. It was odd—one day I wouldn’t see any—then suddenly, the next day I’d spot a group of the shiny vegetables, begging to be picked. But I wasn’t complaining. Zucchini was the only plant that wasn’t calorie dense, besides fruit and tomatoes, that Angel would bother growing. She says it isn’t worth the manpower to grow green beans or cucumbers—not when we can use that space and energy to grow things we could store for winter and count on for much-needed nutritional support during the dark months. Things with calories and carbs, like potatoes and beans and winter squash.

  Why no corn? Angel says it’s too visible to marauders.

  Chapter 6

  SARAH

  So it’s been two weeks since the marauders were here. We figure they’ve moved on. Tex has studied past famines and disasters from all over the world, and he said, “Marauders will swarm like locusts to an area until its resources are depleted, and then move on to greener pastures.”

  “You mean easier targets,” Richard said, his voice heavy.

  Tex nodded. “Yup.”

  We were at the table after dinner while Angel made out the following day’s chore chart. We’d accomplished much since the attack. The house now had a lean-to in back, inside the fenced-in area. The three chickens and Daisy the mule share it with the dogs, who seem perfectly happy with their new companions. The front window with the faulty metal shade has been bricked over—except for a slit of glass to the side; Tex left it there so we can see out, hopefully on the sly. And last, the totes—those that hadn’t vanished to the mystery storage area—have been returned to the storage room. We stacked them differently, leaving space so one corner of the room now holds my sleeping bag and a plastic bin of my belongings; another corner holds Richard’s.

  Speaking of few belongings—I desperately need clothing. I’ve got rips in my jeans and I’m ashamed to say what my underwear looked like before Angel gave me two pairs of panties in her size. She’s smaller than me but I’m skinny, so they’ll do.

  On a grim note, Richard and Tex stripped the dead that were left from the gang, searching their clothing for anything usable like pocket knives, and cigarette lighters. But it was a dismal business. The look on their faces when they came back to the house made me glad I hadn’t had to help. They looked haunted.

  But we gained one pistol—no bullets—and one sledgehammer, in addition to the other few belongings. Only one of the dead was a woman and, though I may have a pair of jeans from her, I hate the thought of it. At the very least they have to be cleaned, and we haven’t had a chance to wash clothing since before the attack. I won’t wear them until we do. (And then I’ll have to forget that it came from someone who died attacking us like in some horror movie!)

  Problem is, washing laundry takes a lot of water and a lot of energy to heat the water. Maybe now that we’re beginning to feel safe, we can trek down to the stream and do a cold-water wash. But it’s not the kind of thing you want to be in the middle of while you’re watching for marauders!

  “We need to find barbed wire,” Richard said, not for the first time. “Build a perimeter they can’t pass.” He told Tex about the Steadmans’ house and how Mr. Steadman had planted homemade mines around his home. They were far enough not to damage the house and spread out so that an unsuspecting person wouldn’t get to the house in one piece.

  “Well, that’s just nasty, ain’t it?” Tex said, leaning back in his chair. He rifled a hand through his hair.

  “It’s effective.” Richard also sat back, stretching his neck to the side and rubbing it with one hand. “They were two old people getting by just fine because of their nasty mines.”

  “Did this Mr. Steadman happen to teach you how he made them?” Tex asked.

  Richard shook his head ruefully. “There wasn’t time.”

  “How did you avoid the mines?” Angel asked. I pitched into our story with the Steadmans. I’d told Angel about them in the past so she only needed a few more details to get the whole picture, but I explained that Mr. Steadman had carefully steered us around the explosives.

  “I’ll do some research,” Tex said. “See what we might be able to devise—but I’d put warning signs around. I don’t want to blow anyone to pieces.”

  “Research how?” I asked. For me, research meant getting online. Without that possibility I had no clue how to find out anything.

  Tex smirked at me. “Ever hear of such a thing as an encyclopedia?”

  Angel smiled gently. “We’ve got a survival library—I’m sure there’s something in there that will guide us.”

  “Whatever we build has to be kept far from the house,” Tex said. “I can’t chance having the dogs getting hurt.”

  “It’ll mean they can’t run free,” said Angel, with a worried frown.

  “But it’ll make us safer,” said Richard. “And that means they’re safer, too.” He opened his hands expansively. “Look, we’ll put our explosives—mines, whatever they are—outside a certain perimeter. Closer to the house, we dig a trench--."

  “Son, a trench is only good if you can ensure that they’ll only come at us from one direction.”

  “That’s the idea,” Richard said. “It’s a military strategy. You force the enemy to come at you on your terms, on your ground, where you can control the fight. If we can get our hands on barbed wire, and put a perimeter of mine fields around the house—.”

  “Oh, Richard,” said Angel. “I don’t want to live that way! We love our property. If we surround us with a mine field to keep people out, we are also making our own prison. We’ll be stuck inside that perimeter.”

  “It beats being stuck in just the cabin,” he returned, his eyes somber. “And if they come back, right now our only recourse is to retreat inside like last time. And what if the next bunch doesn’t buy the chemical weapon story?”

  Everyone fell silent thinking about it. I liked the idea of having a safety zone.

  “Don’t forget we’ll keep a safe passage out,” my brother continued. “A narrow passage. You’ll be able to access the woods and whatever else you want.”

  “But an enemy can find that,” Tex interjected. “And once they break through —and it could be anywhere in the line—they’ll have an entry point, and those mines become meaningless. Except they’ll pose a danger in the future for some unsuspecting people.”

  “They won’t find it!” Richard insisted. “And we’ll keep a diagram of where we plant every mine.” He was being really patient, for Richard.

  He paused, searching Tex’s face. “Look, you’ve done so much to prepare for something like this. You’ve already set the wheels in motion but you didn’t turn them all the way. Setting mines out there and getting barbed wire and trenches—that’s turning the wheels all the way. That’s doing everything in our power. Otherwise,” and he shook his head. “We’re just sitting ducks, waiting for the worst and hoping when it comes they’ll play nice. We can’t be that easy.”

  “I appreciate your ideas,” Tex said. “But here’s a few things you need to remember. One: I don’t have barbed wire. Two, we may not have the materials to build more than a few explosive traps. And three, digging trenches takes a lot of work—and time. But that is the one thing you’ve mentioned that we can do with stuff we’ve got. If there’s time. We should start immediately.” His eyes turned to me.

  “I’ll help!”

  Richard said, “But we need the mines, too. A trench will only work as you said, if we can keep them from coming at us from behind.”

  “How does a trench help?” I asked. My idea of a trench was a place to collect water like a moat. But I didn’t think that was Richard’s idea.

  “It’s a line of defense,” Richard explained. “A place to fight from where we can hold them back.
”

  “What if there’s too many to hold back?” asked Angel. “We could get overrun.”

  “If there’s too many, we double back to the cabin. That’s why you want the trench close.” He sniffed. “Ideally, I’d like to have a minefield and barbed wire for them to cross before they get that close but if we don’t have it, we don’t have it.”

  Tex eyed my brother with a gleam of admiration. “Did you do time in the military?” he asked.

  Richard shook his head. “No. I read a lot.”

  “Too bad you didn’t read where to get barbed wire and land mines.”

  “Too bad you didn’t.” For a second I wondered if Tex and Richard were about to have an argument but both men took the criticism jovially, almost smiling.

  “I’ll find the encyclopedias and a few other books,” Angel offered, rising from her seat.

  “Can I help?” I asked. And then I realized that the library must have been part of the secret storage area because Angel hesitated, looking at me.

  “No thanks,” she said. “But you can start supper.”

  So I did. I dug out some salt pork we keep in a barrel and started beans and rice. It was a common, boring meal. Thank God for common, boring meals!

  The next day all of us except Tex got started on digging a trench. Tex was holed up in the barn with an assortment of supplies like fertilizer and stump remover in order to make an explosive. Looking back, I think if we’d had time to complete the plans, everything might have been so different. So different!

  But just as dusk was falling the dogs started barking and we had no choice but to seal up the cabin again—just in case. Angel and I brought the chickens in, clucking and squawking. They were already in their nesting boxes so we carted them in, boxes and all! But Daisy was stubborn and was put in the lean-to. We tied her up to a post, hoping Tex would have time to coax her into the house.