“I know they are around here somewhere,” a voice from left sounded out.
“You know you saw their tracks. Maybe they came back and scouted around and left.”
“You know Marv, maybe they are hunting us.”
There was a long pause. Both men held their breaths.
“No, there’s no better hunters than us, Jerry. I’d a know, if we were being hunted.”
“Ok, well, let’s circle around and see if we can pick up their trail again. Maybe back track them to their camp.”
Their voices and footfalls faded as they moved off and both Blake and Weston stood uneasily.
“They’re going to backtrack us,” Weston muttered.
“Back to the first plan?”
“Kill them all?”
“No, grab one for questioning. Kill the other.” Blake replied.
“We have to get in front of them somehow. These guys are good.”
“That’s my take on it too. If they find our homestead…”
“Don’t worry, we’re armed for bear. From what I saw, the one guy had a crossbow and the other had a compound bow.”
“Think they are out of ammo?”
“God I hope so.”
“Why?”
“Because if they are hunting with a bow and they still have ammo, they must be good, better than me more than likely.”
“Thanks Blake. You’ve just officially scared me silly.”
“Well, let’s go Mr. Silly.”
Chapter 11 –
Kentucky
Neal and Sandra had stayed at many of Bob’s stops along the way, but when they found a remote shack in Kentucky that was better stocked than their earlier stops and a wood stove, they decided to stay. There were three of the easy to knock together pallet and tarpaper buildings and an outhouse. One of the buildings was filled with firewood, the other with various tools and five gallon buckets stacked against one wall.
“I wonder what his obsession is with the buckets?” Neal asked.
“Vermin and weather proof. Mostly.” Patty answered him.
In some of the buckets, they found books. Some of the titles raised an eyebrow on Patty, but Neal devoured the info on quiet nights. One of them was ‘Survival Poaching’ by Ragnar Benson, another was Mantrapping. There were other books in there about wild plants and trapping animals. Loads and loads of fictional works were stored in the small twelve by twelve building.
“I think this was his winter camp?”
“Looks like it. It’d have to be pretty remote for him to want to stay in one place long.”
The main house/shack had an old bunk bed frame that had been strung with nylon ropes. They were surprised at how sturdy the bed was, and how comfortable it was when they laid on it. Almost like a hammock. The pallets on the inside of the structure had been stuffed with leaves and newspaper, then covered with the rough sawn boards of other pallets. The only touch of the modern world inside there was the metal piece that the stove pipe went through the wall and out the side of the house. The rest of it could almost have come out of a Boy's Life magazine. There was even a rough table and stools made out of pallets and logs that had been turned up on the cut end.
They almost wept as they found other buckets with dried goods. Beans, rice, lentils. In one, they found spices and cookware.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Neal asked her.
“Tickle time?” She threatened.
“No, that this is someplace that we could stay awhile. And maybe get the rest of this info to somebody in authority.”
“If there is somebody in authority.”
They spent the next two weeks resting and trying their hand with the supplies. A hand drawn map in one bucket led them to the woods, where underneath an old stump which had been pushed over in a storm, or when the tree was uprooted they found a fifty gallon barrel that had metal traps in it with a setting tool. Neal recognized them as conibears. Traps that had been used in many of the books that he’d been reading at night.
Another wonder was that the stream was close by so they didn’t have to go far for water. Every location they stopped had water somewhere close by according to Bob’s maps. This one was deep, narrow and had plenty of fish swimming through it. They knew that if they were going to survive the winter that they’d need to put in some sort of meat for long term.
Using the books, Neal constructed a wooden teepee that was almost four foot across at the base and six feet tall. He nailed saplings to the four corners for stability and small pencil sized branches across those to make sort of a grill. He weaved them together when he could, but it didn’t turn out that well. Patty helped as much as she could, but she was amused by his sudden interest in learning these sort of things and watched him. What he came up with was ugly, but practical. He hung a strand of Para-cord down and through the shelf with a metal hook on one end. He told Patty that it’d be where they could hang the pot they’d found in the shack. It had been an old galvanized pot with a wire handle.
“So what are you going to do now?”
“Wrap it with canvas or your tarp, then catch some fish, trap some animals and start smoking the meat.”
She almost giggled at that, but soon was as caught up with the food storage as he was. They checked and reset the traps daily if they had any luck. They’d use the offal of the carcasses as fishing bait during the time they weren’t trapping and they tried different methods for smoking. The best thing they found was to get a bed of embers going, or to make a campfire elsewhere and get a big bed of them ready and shovel them in the teepee. Then take wood chips that had been soaked in water and put those across the top. Once in a while they’d have to add more wood or more embers, but with some trial and error they finally made a sort of smoked fish fillet jerky and found that although they stink when alive, ground hogs or whatever the Kentucky native cousin was could be edible after it was skinned and washed.
Rabbits were a cause for celebration and after a while, after scaring up some turkeys, they decided that going without any sort of fowl was unacceptable. For the first time since they had left Ann Arbor, they got their guns out. They’d felt the noise worth the risk and they hadn’t seen nor heard of anybody in a long time.
“You know, for a quiet computer nerd, you’re becoming quite the Boy Scout.” Patty teased.
“I wasn’t just a computer nerd, you know.”
“Oh?”
“I minored in chemistry.”
“So you’re chemistry, computer nerd?”
“Yeah.”
“So you could make stuff and blow things up then? Turning into Timothy McVeigh, are you?”
“Who? Oh him. No, you just have to understand how a chemical reaction is going to…”
She droned him out and focused. She saw flapping and saw the Turkeys starting to fly out of their roosts and onto the ground. The buckshot in the shotgun wasn’t ideal, she thought, but it would do. She nudged him in the ribs, shutting him up and pointed. He smiled and they crept closer. They were too far off to make the shot, and neither of them had ever hunted turkey before. It didn’t take them long to get to where they had flown down, but they were all gone.
“Must have been too loud.”
“Maybe at dark, they’ll come back here again. If we don’t talk and set up in place ahead of time…”
“Want to go fishing?” Patty asked.
“Let’s go check the traps first, but yeah, fishing sounds good.”
“Ok, I have to get more wood for the smoking anyways. That old hickory tree by the creek has some branches that fell off and are dried out.”
“Ok, you do that, and I’ll fish.”
“Hey!”
“I’ll keep the shotgun with me, maybe we’ll see them at the water like we did the other day.”
“Anything’s possible,” she told him.
He smiled as he thought about it. Anything was possible and other than convenience being a thing of the past, he was as happy right this moment as he
had been staying at home alone playing his video games before the world went dark. They left the roosting tree and checked on the traps. Nothing this morning, so they moved a couple around, baiting one of them with some offal from a previous trap.
The afternoon wore on and Neal was lazily throwing his line into the water with a grub he found from a rotted out log. It was getting shredded by the little fish of the river. He was waiting for the larger darker shape that darted out of the deeper part of the water. He saw it was a bigger fish, and it was what he was trying to catch, but the little fish were maddening. They were everywhere. He was about ready to pull the line in when he felt more than saw Patty move beside him, pulling his shotgun up to her shoulder. With her trigger finger she motioned for him to be quiet and he followed the barrel of the gun to the tall grass across the creek.
A fat deer was approaching through the tall grass of the opposite bank. It lowered its head for a drink when the shotgun went off, startling Neal. The deer thrashed, and Patty almost leapt half the width of the creek before making a large splash. In a few short heartbeats, she’d crossed the remaining part of the creek and had slit the deer’s throat. She almost got kicked as its lifeblood quickly escaped.
“Why hunger for Kentucky Fried Chicken when you can have fillet mignon? Come help me drag this over and we’ll figure out how to gut it.”
“Hey, I…” He struggled to hold onto the cane pole that was bent in half. “I think I got something.”
+++++
With the summer heat, they butchered the deer as best as they could and cut the meat into thin strips. They at first laid them flat across the shelf, but when they ran out of room, they tied bigger chunks to pieces of Para-cord and hung them from the top of the teepee. Neal got two or three loads of hickory, as there was enough meat there for them to smoke for days and days and days. They discussed sleeping in shifts to just keep the smoke fire going for it. Neal was heading back to the deeper part of the woods, the shotgun over his shoulder when he heard the snap of one of his traps near the river, and then a man’s scream. It was almost the loudest thing next to the gunshot that he’d heard in a long while.
Against his better instincts, he started walking towards the trap. He heard someone moving swiftly behind him and he spun, pulling the shotgun into a ready position and then stopped short. Patty had her pistol in her hand, her AK slung over her shoulder. He nodded to her and she matched his pace and they moved silently towards the trap and the cursing of a man. He was dressed in camouflage, a military print pattern. He’d stepped somehow into one of the conibears 220 sets and it’d snapped around his shin.
“Hey, you ok?” Neal called out lamely.
The stranger looked up in shock and fumbled for his gun. Both Patty and Neal already had theirs out and the sight of them stopped the stranger cold.
“Don’t shoot me. I stepped into this trap. It hurts.”
“I bet it does. What are you doing out here?” Patty asked.
“Hunting.” He said, looking at his bolt action rifle.
“Push that out of the way, by the stock, and I’ll get the trap off your leg.” Neal said, surprising himself.
The stranger complied and Neal handed his shotgun to Patty. She holstered her pistol and held the shotgun on the stranger as he pulled the setting tool out of his daypack and went to work on the springs.
“Don’t move until I get both sets of springs undone and the safeties on.”
“That really hurts.” The strangers lips were pinched together hard, almost bloodless.
“It’ll be better soon. Just hold on,” Neal pulled the handles of the tool together and put one spring on the safety clip.
The other kept slipping making the stranger cry out in pain. Finally, he got it back enough to get the safety engaged and pulled it off the stranger’s leg. He pulled his camo pant leg up and looked at the angry purple marks on his shin and calf and he tried to stand before falling. Neal stepped back, not wanting to get close or touch the stranger and waited. He made his way up to one knee then stood, wobbly. He put his hand out in thanks but Neal shook his head and took the shotgun from Patty, stepping back.
The stranger took Neal’s cold expressionless face as that of somebody who had done hard things, made hard decisions. His refusal to shake hands told him that he’d been fooled before and he was a suspicious type. The final thing he noted was that he re-armed himself and gave himself room to shoot. That was wise. The stranger was a dangerous man, but he saw in Neal, everything he admired as well. A smile touched the strangers face.
“Hey, thanks. I don’t mean no harm. As soon as I can walk, I’ll get out of your hair.” He wobbled and fell on his butt again, his injured leg not supporting his weight.
“Think we should help him?” Neal asked Patty.
“I don’t know.”
“You out here alone?”
“Mostly, I have family a couple miles away. That’s where I came from. The hunting ranch.”
Neal and Patty looked at each other, eyebrows raised.
“Hunting ranch?”
“Yeah, I do guided hog hunts. Thought I’d get some venison today instead of pork chops…” He winced and rubbed his shin.
“You think you’re going to be able to walk?”
“Honestly? No. Hobble, maybe in a couple of hours.”
Neal handed his shotgun back to Patty, who gave him a fierce look, and he slinged the strangers gun over his shoulder before helping the stranger up. He fought his warring emotions off and helped the stranger to his feet.
“Let’s get you something to drink and we’ll set up a camp out here for you until you’re better.”
“Neal…” Patty warned.
“Just don’t try to follow us back to our place when you can move.”
“I don’t know how long that’s going to take. The leg is swelling.”
“Soak it in the cold stream,” Patty said, “I’ll leave Neal here with you for now and at least re-fill your canteen.”
“Here,” he dipped it into the stream and then pulled a glass bottle out of a breast pocket and dropped a capsule inside of it. “Purification tablets.”
“Neal, don’t give him his gun back until I come back with some stuff. I have to check on… You know.”
Neal nodded, “Thanks Patty, I’ll see you soon.”
She headed off into the woods, anger stamped into her features. Neal couldn’t help it, she had helped him out in the beginning and he felt like he needed to pay that debt off and help someone else out. Part of his coming out of his shell. The stranger held out his hand again.
“Neal huh? I’m Ken Robertson. Kenny to friends and family.”
Chapter 12 -
Outside the Homestead, Kentucky
“Here they come,” Weston whispered across the trail from Blake.
Two sets of footsteps preceded their legs coming into view from the trail. Both waited, drawing a bead on the targets, having come up with a plan before they’d set up the ambush. They knew the cannies were going to circle around by their overheard conversation, and quickly followed their own trail back to a small valley and took position halfway up one side of the heavily forested area. The plan was for Weston to take the first man out, regardless if it was Marv or Jerry. They didn’t know who was who and frankly didn’t care. What they needed were answers, and it seemed that these two had decided to hunt them no matter what.
Mentally, they both counted, one, two… The shots came from behind them, and Weston flopped on the ground, hit hard. A wet gasp escaped his lips and Blake looked at him in shock as two more shots rang out. One hit him low in the thigh, the other punching high on his right side. He fell sideways, the pain blossoming, huge, consuming his mind. He hit the ground hard and watched as a red pool formed underneath him on the rich loamy forest ground. He was too weak, couldn’t move his head, but he could hear footsteps approaching, excited voices talking but their words were muted. Three pair of boots came into his vision and he almost vomited when he was pi
cked up and thrown over somebody’s shoulder.
Everything went hazy at the edges and he struggled for breath. The stranger walked with a limping gait and the motion made him black out entirely as shock overtook him.
+++++
Neal awoke with a start. It was the same nightmare again. He moved around, trying to find Patty. The nightmare was a rehashed reality, the absolute horror of the situation overloading his brain. He heard a soft snoring in the utter darkness and inched closer until his hand found hers in the darkness. He’d gone against his better instincts and helped Ken, sat with him for a day and then walked him halfway out of their area before giving him his gun back. It wasn’t 24 hours later that Neal and Patty had awoken in the middle of the night with Ken and several men with guns pointing at them.
They took everything. All the stored food, the books, the tools and supplies. Then, they cuffed Patty and Neal and made them walk out to where an old Ford Truck waited an hour’s walk from the stream. It wasn’t until they were all loaded up that they realized that there was seven men all told, many of whom kept shooting glances at Patty and making crude remarks or obscene gestures. The noise and shock of it all almost made Neal withdraw deep into his head. As it was, he was running on autopilot just to survive. Once they got to the hunting lodge, they were ushered past two small buildings to an old smoke house that had been converted into a holding cell. Heavy timber and sheet metal lined the interior and only the hooks hanging on the wall. Only the old dried bloodstains hint at what this area now was used for.
That was the reality, in his dreams, the men take Patty from him and do horrible, unspeakable things to her. She always begs and shrieks for Neal to do something. He always responds the same way in the dream that repeats over and over and over and over in his mind, waking him up, sweating in guilt and fear.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t feel the same way about things.”
It was the worst thing he’d ever told someone, especially now that he wasn’t sure he had meant it. His repetition of it in his dreams and the horrors that woke him up, told him one thing. It was a guilt dream, and he did in fact feel the same way she did. It just took him longer to realize it. All sense of night and day had stopped for them in the absolute darkness and if they went much longer without food, they would be too weak to fight back when the time came. Neal didn’t like that idea because he suddenly had a lot of fight in him.
The World Hungers: A Post-Apocalyptic Story (The World Burns Book 3) Page 9