“Martha, keep everyone’s head’s down,” Sandra whispered.
“What are you going to do?”
“Fix things. It’s getting dark,” she told Martha, who just nodded.
“I love you Blake.”
“Hurry back,” he whispered, his body going numb for holding position under the truck for so long.
“I’ll try,” and she was gone in the deepening shadows.
They watched as Sandra fade into the darkening shadows of the late afternoon. The chickens made soft clucking sounds in the trailer above and behind Blake’s position as he tried to keep an eye on everything out there. Lisa stuck close to Blake’s position so she could watch after her ‘other’ son as she had started to think of him. She had marveled at how seamlessly her new life and family fit together, and she didn’t want anything to break it up.
“I think I see her,” Lisa pointed with her fingers to some swaying brush.
They all watched and waited.
+++++
Sandra moved through the tall grass of the north side of the highway until she could ghost her way into the tree line. She was moving low to the ground, going from shadow to shadow. Her small form barely parted the grass or pushed a branch out of the way. Her senses focused on the area where the last shot had come from and her entire body was as taught as piano wire from her concentration. She’d left the scoped rifle, instead carrying the M4 and her pistol. She kept the M4 ready as she moved as quickly and quietly as she could.
The shots had been fired from a distance, much further than any amateur had a right to try to take. The fact they were coming so close told her two things. That either the shots were meant to keep Blake and the ladies under cover as a delaying tactic… Or the shooters were good, just not as good as they thought. She hoped it was the latter and not that there was another group of folks working themselves behind their group.
Her whole body went on high alert as she slowed her pace into the area where the shooting had come from. She crawled, going from cover to cover as she checked out the area. No shots or movements alerted her and she was almost ready to move on to the next position where the shots were when she got a whiff of a coppery scent. Her heart dropped, but she kept going.
She found the hide, the ground kicked clean and clear by boots, a camo net held up by four short lengths of rope tied off to saplings. The view the shooter would have had would have been easy pickings on the group if that’d been his intention. 30/.06 casings were in the loose soil next to where an indentation the shape of a body had been pressed into the earth. All of this was disturbing enough, but what really scared her was the gut pile and the drag marks.
At first she didn’t comprehend what she was seeing and she knelt down some to get a better look and found a broken arrow shaft in the mess of the guts. She picked it up with her fingertips, noting that the hunting broad head had been removed. Un-nerved she dropped it and checked the woods all around her. She heard a twang and dropped just as an arrow hit her pack on the right side stopping without going all the way through.
Sandra hadn’t seen who had shot the arrow, but she fired two three round bursts in the direction and heard running footsteps, more than one pair and slid out of her pack and set herself behind a tree to keep the footsteps between the tree and her until she could make out that they were running away, deeper into the woods and more towards down.
Her heart was pounding in her ears, and she had to concentrate on all of her surroundings and not have a terminal case of tunnel vision. She’d never been hunted before and had a sickening idea on what if not who, the gut pile belonged to. She pulled the arrow from her pack, discarding the two tins of food that had stopped its progress and repacked everything.
“Do you need help?” Martha’s voice crackled out of the radio she wore, breaking the silence.
“No, stay put. I’ll check in every twenty minutes. Don’t let anything or anyone come close. Something isn’t right.” Sandra whispered.
“Be careful,” her words were quiet and then the radio fell silent.
“I will,” She whispered to the air, already putting her radio up.
Screams shattered the night, and she got to her feet, grabbed her rifle and headed back towards the tree line to get a good look at where the sound was coming from. For half a heart beat she feared it was her group, but the screams were male and coming from the wrong direction. She noted a tall sycamore tree to keep as a visual aid and noticed it was the same direction as some of the shots. She had a pretty good idea on what she was going to find, or not find and had to move almost three hundred yards through the woods to get there.
“Maybe I should just go back and wait… No, I have to know if it’s safe for us to move out,” she thought to herself.
Again, she could smell the hide before she found it. The scent of blood and voided bowels heavy in the air, and she felt the hairs on her arms and neck come to attention as the goose bumps covered her flesh. Blood splashed around the clearing as if they hadn’t gotten in a clean kill shot, and this time there wasn’t a pile of guts, just brass casings from whoever was the shooter here and a military style framed backpack. That sent chills down her spine and she edged into the camp noting a similar setup as the hide before this one. The ground had been scraped clean, a camo netting was placed over top…
“What were these guys doing? Who is hunting them down?”
This was the second time she was too late for answers, and she was almost afraid of skipping out on what she thought may have been a third position, but it was only a hundred yards away. Using the sycamore as a waypoint, she crawled over and found a half gutted man and his equipment. A black arrow was sticking out the side of his neck, low to the shoulder. The corpse had been stripped and a cut started at his chest and straight down to his groin. Her heart was beating hard and the darkness of the night and the fact that somebody was hunting the hunters sent chills down her spine.
She’d endured live fire while overseas, had fought in more fights than the American public would have believed and although she was a mechanic by trade, she was a soldier first and foremost. That being said, she was un-nerved and wanted Blake up here to get his take on things. She was fairly certain that there was one shooter for these last two hides, but she wasn’t for sure. She pulled her radio out.
“Martha, Sandra here.”
“Sandra, I read you.”
“Get my husband please.”
“Is it safe? We heard the screams…”
“It’s all right. He can come out now, I think.”
She heard some rustling on the other end of the radio before the sounds cut off. When it clicked back on, her husband’s voice made her smile slightly.
“Hey babe. Is everything fine up there?”
“The shooters are dead, but there’s someone else out here.”
“Should we move to cover?”
“Just… Stay out of bow range.”
“Bow range?”
“Can you ask Lisa and Martha to sit tight on the ladies and come up here with me? There’s something I have to show you.”
“Sure, they heard you and nodded. What is it?”
“I’d rather not say out loud. See the sycamore tree about 2 o’clock from our position?”
“Yeah.”
“Meet me under the tree, and Blake?”
“Yes?”
“Be careful. I’m kind of… unsettled up here.”
+++++
Blake met her under the tree and one look at her pale skin tone and hurried to her, to check her for wounds. She slapped his hands away and pointed. He followed her gaze and outstretched finger and almost missed the hide, it was blended in so well and he took off on an easy gait that was the trademark of the former hermit. She wanted to yell to him to move from cover to cover, but he was already there before she could speak aloud. He took in the gory scene and then looked all around him.
“They had to have worked fast. How far away were you?”
“I can
show you. Maybe two to three minutes.”
“What was it like over there?”
“Somebody shot this at me. Hit my pack.” She held up the black arrow.
“Somebody…” he looked at the arrow in his hand, one of the broad head blades half snapped and then to the arrow sticking out of the corpse’s body. “Somebody is hunting people.”
“That’s what I thought. The first site has more sign and I think there are tracks.”
“Let’s scavenge what we can from here, and then we’ll head to that one. Is there more?”
“Yes, but I think this guy was using two spots.”
“Makes sense. Kept us pinned down.”
“I’m worried it may have been a delaying tactic. I’d like to show you this next spot and head back to the homestead as fast as we can.”
“Let me get a look at all of this first, before it gets all the way dark and we can go.”
Chapter 7 –
Traveling From Ann Arbor Michigan
Neal and Patty had been fleeing by foot for days now. They travelled at the night time and avoided contact with everyone. Fleeing the large city hadn’t been easy, and they were almost caught as they crossed the road a mile away from the apartment. They’d hid out on a wooded area surrounding the tracks until the group had passed but they quietly slipped out the other way. One thing Neal had commented on repeatedly is that walking was so much slower than riding his bike.
It had taken them two days of travel to reach the area where Bob usually stepped out. Neal had tried calling for him quietly, but he never came out. After hours of searching, they found a tar paper shack made out of saplings, old pallets and a crude outhouse. The smell coming out of both structures was horrid, but they felt like they’d had to at least look in the shack. Neal held his breath and poked his head inside the open doorway to look within the twelve foot by twelve foot structure.
Bob’s corpse was laid out on an old army cot, his arm hanging off the edge. Something had gnawed at his fingertips, exposing the flesh underneath the skin, but despite that, Bob looked at peace. In one hand he held an envelope. Neal hesitated a moment too long getting in there, and Patty snuck by and looked.
“Is this your friend Bob?” She asked him, trying not to breathe through her nose.
“Yeah,” he said softly.
“Look, here’s an envelope. It’s got your name on it, but its spelled wrong.”
“I never told him I spelled my name differently. It’s probably for me.”
She pulled it out of his fingers without touching the body and handed it to Neal. They both backed out of the shack and he opened the heavy envelope. It contained a well worn map that had been marked and laminated with clear contact paper. Inside the map were two folded pieces of notebook paper. The first one was addressed to him.
“Neal, my heart has been bugging me and I’m writing this to tell you that my 20 years in seclusion is probably coming to an end. I joked with you once that I was never homeless, and I have many homes. Humble structures, but I have them all over the country. My fall and winter homes are marked on the map. Reason I’m writing this, is I see in you a kindred spirit. Someone who doesn’t like to live life with the noise and stress that other’s have lived.
I don’t like people, I doubt you like them either. So I’m leaving all my worldly possessions to you, my last living friend. If you run across any of the old hobo crew and they question you, show them this note.
PS, I’m leaving you a list. It has what I can think of at each shelter. If you take your bike, you should be able to reach any of them within a day’s travel, I know I could. My bones are getting too old to jump trains anymore.
-Bob”
Neal read the note, and handed it to Patty. He looked over the list. It had about twenty locations marked by a number. Opening the map, he found it was an old map showing the railroads, many of the lines now unused. Highlighter marks under the lamination showed the routes Bob had traveled and a black sharpie was used to mark off the number that correlated with the list.
“He mentioned a bike,” Patty said, smiling.
“He did. Let’s go look.”
Behind the outhouse, they found not only one of the bikes, but two. The first was an old Schwinn and the second was a beat up mountain bike of no name. Both of them were coated in a light layer of rust and the chains barely turned. Neal knelt down and then took off his pack and got out the cooking spray that Patty had packed. He sprayed the chains down and soon they were turning smoothly. Surprisingly, both bikes had decent pressure in the tires.
“What do you think?” Neal asked her.
“I don’t know. We’re still too close to Ann Arbor for my liking.”
“Me too. I think all large cities are going to be death traps for a while.”
“Do you want to camp here?” Patty asked, noticing the rising sun.
“Uh, not exactly here. Let’s go down the tracks a bit.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say,” she wrinkled her nose.
“I didn’t see a shovel,” Neal noted and then went on, “sorry Bob.”
They were both pushing the bikes and their packs along the trail back towards the rail line when Neal stopped and pointed.
“Hey look,” he rubbed his finger across two brass tacks.
“Ohhh, hey, they’re on the other side too.”
“What do you think they are for?” He asked Patty.
“Markers?”
“You’re probably right. Ready to find someplace to camp?”
“Sounds good to me,”
+++++
They traveled the rail ways, avoiding people. They stopped outside of Toledo the first night, literally chancing across the marker. Again it was two push pins on the rail side and two pins pointing towards the shelter. It was another tarpaper shack, but this one was in better shape than the final resting place of Bob. It had seen much less use, and still had some provisions stocked up in it. Since they had fled without a lot of food, they had been living on short rations. Finding two five gallon buckets in the corner almost had them smiling. The buckets were still sealed tight, but Neal pried one lid off and found a treasure trove.
Matches, fishing line with hooks, can opener, plastic bags, a tarp, utensils and some rope. The other bucket almost made them weak in the knees when they opened it. They pulled out cheap dollar bags of rice, beans, lentils and underneath that were half a dozen cans of beef stew. Patty took one look at Neal, who almost never showed emotion and saw a small smile touching the corner of his mouth and threw him a can. Soon, the both of them were eating directly out of the opened cans. The rich food hit their stomachs and they immediately began to feel drowsy.
“We have to do something about water,” Neal told her, holding up an almost empty plastic pop bottle.
“Yeah. There’s some fishing line, so we should be able to find water close by.”
They fell asleep heavily, each of them sitting up across from each other. It had been the first good rest since they had left Ann Arbor. When they woke up, it was still light outside, but night was falling fast. They stretched and went looking around, listening for anything.
“I wonder if he has an outhouse here.” Patty said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail.
“If not, I need to find a tree to kill,” Neal told her deadpan.
“You’re so gross.”
“I was kidding,” he told her, trying to make light of the situation.
“Oh hey, there’s two little buildings back here.”
There was another crude outhouse, but it became obvious that this one was in better shape, or had less use. Neal let Patty go first and approached the second structure. It was another pallet and tarpaper construction, but it lacked any sort of doorway or windows. He walked in and found an old galvanized pail and an old fishing rod. The fiberglass was spider cracked and the old spinning reel was pitted with rust. Skeptically, Neal picked it up and shook it fully expecting it to snap on him. To his surprise it didn
’t. The door of the outhouse opened and Patty joined him.
“Your turn,” she said, bumping him with her shoulder.
“Just a sec,” he mumbled, looking around.
“What?”
“This little building. What was it for?”
“I don’t know. A shed?”
They looked around but nothing else stuck out to them. Neal used the outhouse, pleasantly surprised there were 3 rolls of toilet paper that were relatively free from rodent damage and water. When he was done, he looked around finding Patty back at the first shack playing with a coffee can.
“What are you doing?”
“Starting a small fire.”
“How come? And why the can?”
“It’s a hobo heater,” she said then looked up at him and snorted out a laugh. “That wasn’t deliberate; it’s probably what Bob used to cook with.
“Really?”
“Yeah, they’re easy and cheap to make. Take a big metal coffee can or something and cut a hole in the side to fit a soup can. Cut both sides off the soup can and shove that in the hole. Then put dry sticks inside the can. Put your skillet or pot over top of the little stove and voila.”
“That looks too easy.”
“It is. I had a commercial version of this with my camping gear, but I didn’t have room to pack it. It takes about a half a dozen pencil sized sticks to boil water.”
“Does that mean…?”
“Coffee,” Patty smiled, starting to dig through her pack.
Neal wandered off to gather fuel, his thoughts spinning faster than he could articulate. He knew they couldn’t stay in this location forever, but they were tired and had gone without rest. They also had no particular place to go, so as long as they were safe they might as well be somewhere. He realized that staying up in the northern climates was a no win situation for him, not with the cities seemingly in chaos. Their hope lay south. They had to find someplace where they could over winter and start over.
The World Hungers: A Post-Apocalyptic Story (The World Burns Book 3) Page 6