“What is this place?” I asked.
“This is my retreat. I built it myself, although Dad helped from time to time as did one of my brothers. Now, with them gone, you and I are the only ones who know it’s here.”
I thought of the massive trail in the snow we left behind. “What if we were followed?”
Al shrugged. “Hopefully the snow will melt in time to hide our trail.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
“We’re on National Forest land about fifteen miles from any road.”
“Is this place legal?” I asked.
“No, it’s not,” Al grinned. “Although now that doesn’t matter.”
Al lifted a floorboard and began pulling gun cases and ammo cans out of the hole. Then he laid the guns out on the table by the wood stove. I would have rather we started a fire in the stove first, but Al was occupied with the rifles.
There were two AR-15s, two bolt actions, and a big-ass gun I didn’t recognize. Al grabbed the big gun and held it up for me to see.
“This is a surplus BAR bought by my grandfather in 1953 and given to me before he passed. It’s 30-06 caliber, and shoots really good.”
Al pulled a riflescope from another case and clipped it onto the BAR.
“It looks like it weighs a ton,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s heavy, but with this scope, it will hit a man-sized target more often than not at nearly a mile.”
“Then it’s a sniper rifle?”
“Not really,” Al smiled. “But, with this I can chase away Tolliver and his men while we are out of their rifle range.”
Unless one of them has a 30-06, or a fifty caliber Barrett like I’d seen once on the Internet, I thought. But I didn’t say anything.
Al got a fire going in the stove and I took Sackett and climbed the hill behind the cabin. I found a place where I was out of the wind, hidden, and could watch our back trail. As I watched, I thought.
Sackett snuggled up next to me and gave me a look that said, Dumb-ass, there’s a bed in that cabin. What are we doing here?
I wondered if the death of Al’s family and getting shot had affected his brain. I didn’t believe he was thinking straight. For example, if Tolliver’s men had come upon us while we were trekking across the snow, we’d be dead now. A bow and arrow and a rifle with three bullets wouldn’t have kept us alive.
Maybe that was why Al was so eager to get to this place and his guns? But would guns be enough? Couldn’t Tolliver and/or his men just surround us and starve us out? I wondered if Al had a food supply in the cabin? And if he did, was there enough?
I returned to the cabin just before dark. The cabin was maybe twenty by twenty feet, big for a log cabin. It had one big room lit by four kerosene lanterns. There was no electricity or running water, or bathroom for that matter, but it was nice in a way I’d never experienced before.
Our house was always full of frilly fru fru, decorative shit that served no purpose except to frighten the eyes. I admit I wouldn’t have minded a piece here and there, but not everywhere. But the cabin was fru fru free. It was a man cave to end all man caves. I loved it.
The furniture was simple, obviously home-made and well worn. Just comfortable stuff, not like the damn plastic covered sofa at home that we weren’t hardly allowed to sit on. Damned if I knew why it was covered with plastic. It came from Goodwill and already had a few stains when we got it.
The cabin floor was made from rough-sawn, light brown boards, polished in places by foot traffic and still fuzzy from the saw in others.
I studied the cabin in the lantern light, trying to memorize where everything was so I wouldn’t stumble in the dark if I had to take a leak in the night.
Al was cleaning his guns at the table. There was a pot of something cooking on the stove.
“Help yourself,” Al gestured at the pot.
I nodded and scrounged a couple of bowls and a spoon. I filled both bowls and gave one to Sackett and sat down at the table with mine.
“It’s freeze-dried stew. Pretty good stuff,” Al said. I already had some.
And it was good, just not good enough to erase that niggle-naggle of worry that had been with me since we left the rock overhang.
After the dishes were clean and the guns prepped and set aside, Al and I talked a while.
“Shouldn’t we have a lookout?” I asked.
“During the day, yes, but not tonight.”
I listened to the wind slapping against the logs. It was loud and we were amongst the trees. It would be a bad wind in the open. And cold. Cold enough to freeze piss in mid-stream, I thought. Nobody in their right mind would be out in that.
But, since the lights went out, many, if not most, of the people I ran across weren’t in their right mind. Some seemed to have no mind at all, just animal instincts. It was why I preferred to stay in the woods by myself. I just didn’t know what to expect from people anymore.
But Al was King’s son, and in those few short weeks, King had been more of a father to me than any father I’d ever known. I would stick with Al and try to keep him out of trouble. I owed it to King.
Good food and a warm bed can do a lot to make one forget danger. I didn’t think that was a good thing, but, after I changed the dressing on Al’s wound, I slept the sleep of the dead. I dreamed about the dead man whose clothes I was wearing. He kept trying to warn me about something but I couldn’t hear him. Then I awoke.
I went from dead asleep to wide awake and moving in an instant. I had my bow in my hands with arrow drawn before I even knew what I was doing. Had I heard something in my sleep or was it just the bad dream? I glanced at Sackett in the weak light from the single burning lantern on the table. He was by my side, a big black blob, growling ever so slightly. Something was out there.
I listened intently. What had I heard that woke me? Al was still asleep in the top bunk. He said Sackett and I needed the bottom bunk because Sackett couldn’t climb a ladder.
Then I heard the scream. It was a woman, just outside. She screamed as loud as I had ever heard and more scarily than in any horror movie I’d ever watched. I started toward the door. If it was a woman in trouble, I had to help.
“Stop, Trevor. Don’t open the door.”
“But…”
“That a cougar, a mountain lion, not a woman.”
“But it doesn’t sound like the cougars in the movies, it sounds like a woman…”
“Yeah, it does. They don’t seem to get it right in the movies.” Al hopped down from his bunk and turned up the lantern on the table.
I lowered my bow. “Are you sure it’s not a woman?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Folks don’t think there are any mountain lions left around here, but there are, especially deep in the forest. You know that. Dad said you killed one.”
I nodded.
“What did it taste like? I’ve never eaten mountain lion.”
I thought for a minute. “Kinda like greasy shit. I didn’t like it.”
“So, you’ve tasted shit?”
“No, but I can imagine.”
“Okay, let’s let that lion alone then. They don’t usually attack people anyway. But you should be extra careful, they have been known to attack children, more their size I think.”
“Yeah, and I’m a kid,” I said.
Al grinned.
“I’m worried about Tolliver,” I said.
“They won’t find us here.”
“But we left a trail.”
“It’s gone now, Trevor. It’s been snowing all night long. We’ve had another six inches of snow and there’ll be more by morning. By now the wind has blown snow into the deeper marks we left and leveled it out in most places.”
“Is that why we left when we did?”
“Yeah. I knew there was a risk of the storm returning, but it had to be done. I need to deal with Tolliver and his men on my terms, not theirs. Now, let’s get some sleep.”
I lay awake in the bunk wondering what Al’s way to deal wi
th Tolliver was going to be. Sackett snored.
Chapter 16
A week later we had a warm spell and the snow almost melted away. I went hunting every day. Then my current bow broke in the cold and I had to make another one. I wished I had my other two bows from winter camp, but they had been too much to carry.
This time I was determined to make a bow that held up. I chose a straight hickory tree about four inches in diameter growing in the shade in the forest. I’d noticed that trees grown in the shade had tighter annual rings and that’s what I wanted in my bow.
Al watched while I worked on the bow in the evenings, but he had nothing to say. I think his mind was on Tolliver and his men because he kept cleaning and oiling the BAR.
One evening when the bow was almost finished, it came to me. Why didn’t I glue something on the back of the bow to keep it from breaking when it was bent? It was worth a try.
When the bow was ready, I dug out a spare pair of jeans I had appropriated from the dead man’s trailer and cut two strips from a leg about the same width as the bow limbs. Then I glued them to the back of the limbs using some waterproof glue that Al had in the cabin.
Once the glue was dry, I scraped the back smooth and wrapped some deerskin around the handle and sewed it tightly in place.
This bow was stronger than any of my other bows. The next day I set up a target and tested the bow. It shot well, but half of my arrows weren’t stiff enough. Al said they had too little spine.
I chose six arrows that worked well and went hunting. I was craving venison. I was tired of rabbits, mice caught in deadfalls, and freeze-dried meal combinations that no sane person would ever cook. Al said they’d been on sale.
Early the next morning, I was about to loose an arrow at a tasty looking doe, when I heard voices. I relaxed the bow. Shit, all I wanted was to be away from people. The forest was turning into a damn shopping mall or something.
I hunkered down and listened. Sackett was back at the cabin still asleep on the bed. The voices were coming from near the stream from which we hauled water to the cabin. I was a mile from the cabin so I wasn’t worried about them finding the cabin yet.
I moved closer, being careful to keep quiet and stay out of sight. I could hear three voices, and one of those was a woman. Did Tolliver have a woman with him?
“I’m hungry,” one of the men said. He was loud. I couldn’t make out the reply.
I slipped away and went back to the cabin.
When I opened the door, Al was cooking more freeze-dried crap for breakfast.
“We have visitors,” I said.
Al’s head popped up. “Here?”
I nodded.
“How many?”
“Three I think. One’s a woman.”
“Where?”
I told him.
Al picked up his big rifle and slammed a magazine into the well. “You stay here with Sackett. I’ll go check them out.”
“You aren’t gonna shoot them, are you?”
“Not if I don’t have to.”
So I waited. But Al never said to wait inside. I took Sackett and my stuff and found a hidden spot where I could watch the cabin. In an hour I heard voices. Then I saw Al leading two men and a woman to the cabin. None of the newcomers were carrying rifles, although one or more of them may have had concealed pistols.
I waited until they were all inside the cabin and then waited some more, just in case. When I opened the cabin door, Al had a second pot of freeze-dried stuff on the stove and the newcomers were gobbling the first batch like they hadn’t eaten in days. From the look of them, that was about right.
Both men were King’s age or older. The woman was young, maybe twenty, maybe not quite. I never was any good at telling women’s ages.
The noise bothered me. They weren’t loud and they weren’t talking, but I’d been mostly by myself for so long it seemed strange to hear the little noises that come from a room full of people. Before the lights went out, I never noticed. My sisters made noise all day long. I just tuned them out. But this got to me. It disturbed my equilibrium or some shit like that.
I sat down on my bunk, and Sackett jumped up beside me. None of the newcomers seemed to notice. They were too busy eating. I’d probably do the same if I were in their shoes.
I studied the men. I’d never seen either one before, nor had I seen the woman. Their clothes were filthy and torn, and one of the men was missing a shoe. He had rags tied around his foot.
And they stunk. They all smelled worse than skunks.
That’s what bathing regular will do for you. I’d got in the habit lately of bathing in the creek every morning, and washing my clothes when I could. It relaxed me to be clean and to wear clean clothes. I even bathed Sackett as often as he let me.
Before the lights went out, I hated to take a bath. I guess my new bath habit was why I noticed how bad they smelled. Al didn’t seem to notice, but then I bathed more often than he did.
I didn’t even ask. I grabbed a couple of buckets and went to fetch water.
And they did bathe. Al heated water on the stove and all of us left the cabin while the girl bathed. When she called us back inside her face was clean and she was dressed in some of Al’s extra clothes. She looked nice. Then it was the men’s turn to clean up. Even Al cleaned up. I think because of the girl. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, poor horny bastard.
That evening I heard their story.
“Why are you folks out here in the woods?” Al asked.
The man without a shoe said, “We ran out of food and thought we could come into the national forest and hunt.”
“Had you hunted before?” Al asked.
“No, none of us were hunters. I was always against guns myself.”
“Are you now?” I asked.
“No, I see a need now, for hunting and defense. People seem to have just gone crazy.”
You can say that again, I muttered under my breath.
“Did you have any luck hunting?” Al asked.
The other man spoke. “At first we did okay, rabbits and such. I had an old shotgun in the house that I bought years ago. I had a full box of shells for it too.”
“Where’s the shotgun now?” Al asked.
“Gone. I tossed it when we ran out of shells.”
“How long since you folks ate last?” Al asked.
“More than a week.” The man without the shoe turned to the other man. “Is that about right Charlie?”
“Yeah, I’d say that’s about right.”
I heard a noise behind me and saw the girl was in my bed. Sackett climbed in with her and soon both were snoring. Shit, I was gonna have to sleep on the floor tonight.
It’s amazing to me how long it takes to get used to sleeping on the ground when it only takes one night to be used to sleeping in a bed. Oh well. I got up and staked a place out close to the stove to sleep.
I lay there and listened to the conversation at the table. The man without a shoe was Jerry Zale. He was a school teacher before the lights went out. The girl was his granddaughter. The other man, Charlie, was a neighbor and good friend of theirs. The girl was called Zee. I guessed it was a nickname. I fell asleep before I heard her real name.
I rose before anyone else and slipped outside with my bow and arrow. I still had a hankering for fresh venison.
Sackett, the scamp, was sound asleep in the bunk with Zee. I could see her arm draped over him, her diamond bracelet shiny in the pale light. I reckoned if I got a deer, Sackett would have to eat freeze-dried mush or some shit cause I wasn’t gonna share any venison with him.
And I got a deer, a big old buck. One shot and he dropped where he stood. I gutted the deer. It took me an hour and a half to get it back to the cabin.
When I opened the door, everyone was still asleep, even Sackett, although he did open his eyes and snort a bit when I walked in.
Everything was going well until the girl woke up, took a look at me, and screamed.
“What?” I sai
d.
Al rose from the floor where he had been sleeping. “Trevor, you have blood all over you.”
“Yeah, so what? I shot a deer.”
Mr. Z was comforting Zee now. “It’s okay, Zee.” Pretty soon the girl calmed down, but she wouldn’t look at me.
I went back outside and got Al to help me hang the deer for skinning and butchering. I had the deer almost skinned when Mr. Z came outside.
“I want to apologize for my granddaughter. Her mother was murdered after the EMP, and she saw the body.”
I kept right on skinning the deer and didn’t say a word. Pretty soon Mr. Z went back inside.
The girl was a wimp, no more, no less. I’d seen the raped and murdered bodies of my mom and sisters and I wasn’t afraid of the sight of blood. I thought about the girl and the men for a bit. They didn’t speak like me. Their speech was more refined, if that can be said of anyone in Arkansas.
Maybe the way I grew up had toughened me up some? I’d sure grown up on the wrong side of the tracks. Nobody had ever given me much of anything, not even Mom or Dad. Maybe they knew I needed to grow up tough. I wasn’t sure, but I thanked them anyway, just like I’d thanked the deer for giving us life as I took his.
I decided I’d cook outdoors rather than inside the crowded cabin. I built a fire and spread it so it thawed the ground. Then I dug a hole into the softened earth. I cut a couple of deer roasts, seasoned them up with salt, pepper, sage, hot sauce, and some drizzled honey. Then I wrapped them in tinfoil and put them in the bottom of the pit. I covered them with dirt.
While I was doing that, Zee came outside. I figured she had to pee, but she hung around and watched what I was doing. At least this time she didn’t scream. Maybe that was because I’d washed as much of the deer blood off of me as I could.
“What are you doing?” She asked.
“Cooking venison roast for supper.”
“By burying it in a hole? Come on. You’re, fibbing.”
I said nothing. I was used to my sisters calling me a liar, even though I seldom lied. Soon enough, Zee went off to pee.
I built a nice fire on top of the buried deer roasts. About four or five hours from now, the deer meat would be cooked to perfection, tender, juicy and delicious. King had taught me how to cook like this. It was my favorite way of cooking venison, and this time there were spices available. My mouth watered.
EMP (Book 3): 12 Years Old and Alone Page 13