Against the Grain

by Ian Daniels

  Even though I was skeptical that we would actually run into anyone else, we went slow and stayed cautious. As we got near to the end of the road with its barricade and the unknown beyond, I stopped in the tree line and whispered a quick run down of what I wanted to do.

  “Alright, there is a right way to do this, a wrong way, and the way we are going to do it,” I began. “I want you to follow me up until we get a good view of whatever is down at the end of the road. If there is anyone there, I’ll treat it like I did at Paul’s. If not, you’re going to stay up high and cover the area while I go in close and check it out. Use the radio to let me know of anything that I don’t or can’t see. I want you to watch for anything moving behind me or on the road. Make sure you have a good shot at anything that I don’t have a shot at. You got all that?”

  “So this is what you do when you’re not with us?” Breanne asked what I felt was somehow an untimely question.

  “More or less, but this time I have help. Let’s get moving. You look where I’m not looking, including behind us. Go smooth, go slow and go quiet. Walk when I walk, stop when I stop, and drop if I drop. If we get separated then we’ll meet back at this spot, or worst case, at Paul’s driveway,” I coached.

  I pretty much knew that there was no way anyone could retrain everything I had just said, but with a nod of her head in understanding, we were off. My blood pressure and heart rate were higher now then they had been all day. Maybe it was just the possibility of finding more hostile people out here, but I knew deep down that it was because my every move was being watched, dissected, and emulated. I found myself yet again in a position I did not want to be in, where I was responsible for another person out with me.

  The sun was high overhead now and the tiniest beads of sweat were beginning to pop on my forehead as I painfully slowed my pace to crest a small rise in the terrain. Just below us, a faded red pickup truck was parked. I carefully raised the scope of my gun to my eye to get a better close up view of the cab and the area all it. Everything looked quiet, so I waved Breanne up to get her into a good position.

  Once she was set, I backed down and stalked around the small hill to come at the truck from a different side. I was completely switched on at this point, concentrating like I was out here on my own and forgetting Breanne’s over-watch. I snapped out of it after taking far too much time. She was capable enough to at least alert me of any problems, and I needed to trust that fact. I resisted the urge to radio her and see if everything was still clear and continued on.

  The truck was parked off to the side of the road. In the short bed intermingled with random trash, I found a few old sleeping bags, some dirty blankets, and a couple of cheap backpacks. I quickly emptied the packs, finding just a few cans of food and some half empty ammo boxes, which I took the time to stash into my own small pack.

  Looking into the cab of the truck I could see various long dead cell phones and a boom box for their music. A couple of liquor bottles were filled with either murky water or a home brewed something, I wasn’t going to find out which it was. There was enough gear and food here for these guys to have camped out, but not very comfortably. It seemed that they were living a pretty rough existence and just scraping by if this was all they had. They must have been traveling from place to place like locusts, unable to sustain themselves, and moving on once they used up all the good stuff that they killed their way into acquiring.

  I looked up to the spot where Breanne was watching from and couldn’t catch sight of her hiding in the bushes. Debating on whether to return from the direction I knew was clear or continuing on around to see if there was anything else out here, I consciously slowed myself down... again. I was feeling hurried and really was not sure why.

  I did another quick scan of the area up and down the road and listened for a prolonged moment. Nothing was to be seen or heard. Maybe I was just getting that feeling of knowing that someone was watching me from Breanne, but I decided to move on out of the area. Going around the side of the hill I came back up to Breanne’s spot.

  “Well, what do you think?” She asked me.

  “I’d say it’s probably what it looks like. Enough gear for four guys, nothing really out of the ordinary that makes me think they were much more than some traveling looters.”

  I watched as she got up from the ground and gathered her pack. A minor but painful looking scratch on her lower neck that extended down towards her shoulder caught my attention and she winced slightly when the backpack’s strap landed close to the affected area.

  “You want me to take a look at that?” I nodded at her collar line.

  “It's okay, not a big deal. I just caught a branch when I wasn’t paying attention back when the shooting started.”

  “Big deal or not I bet it stings like a bitch and you don’t want it getting infected.” I had seen much worse, but I had also been the recipient of more scrapes, burns and bruises then I could count and knew how well the good ones could hurt. Also with our lack of good medicines these days, the last thing anyone wanted to do was try to treat an infection.

  As I retrieved the little bit of a first aid kid I had with me, Breanne unzipped her light fleece jacket to reveal a nice raw and red patch of skin and small dried trickle of blood that had leaked down her arm.

  “Better lose the shirt too,” I said trying to sound nonchalant.

  “I can just… okay, sure,” she hesitated, then gingerly pulled her hurt arm from the sleeve and lifted the tee shirt over her head.

  There usually wasn’t much vanity between us, or at least there was always the appropriate amount, but it wasn’t like we hadn’t been swimming at the beach before; we just usually were with the rest of the family and not alone… together.

  With her good arm crossed over her chest, the loose tee shirt hung down and kept from completely exposing her upper body. We both knew there was no reason to hide, but there was also no reason to be blatant about things either.

  The small puncture had cut into the flesh of her shoulder and had bled a little, but the red rash like scrape I knew was what would be causing the most discomfort. I delicately lifted and moved her bra strap to hang off her shoulder to be able to clean the entire area with a small disinfectant soaked pad. Her neck flushed and the barely audible, sharp intake of air at the touch of my finger to her skin brought a quick flicker of a smile to my face. Even with all the tension of the day’s events, and probable impending death every day after, we were still only human.

  “Is it always this quiet out here?” Breanne asked, breaking the rhythm of my own heartbeat that was drumming away in my ears.

  “Yeah, kind of I guess,” I refocused. “This is your first time away in a while and the world has gotten a lot quieter these days… I feel it too. It does get spooky sometimes, but you get used to it.”

  “It just seems so lonely.”

  I probably thought so too, once, a long time ago. I could barely remember back that far now, back to when normal reactions and feelings were… normal. This was my new normal now.

  “That should do it,” I announced, putting the cap on the little tube of antiseptic ointment after setting her bra strap carefully back into place. “I only had a few big Band-Aids with me, too big for what you needed but it should be a little extra padding anyway.”

  “Thank you,” she said, sounding nearly timid.

  “No problem… You want my nuts?”

  “What?” she gasped.

  “Peanuts, cashews, some almonds…” I shook the plastic bag of trail mix out in front of me.

  “Oh I thought you…”

  “I know what you thought,” I smiled at her. When there was an opening, I liked to embrace any opportunity of breaking tension while also creating a slightly more awkward situation at the same time. It amused me.

  “And what about what I said on the radio? Breanne said a short time later after sipping from the water bottle we were sharing.

  “Uh…” I stammered, completely lost in what she was referri
ng to.

  “What I said on the radio, I mean.…” she tried again, babbling slightly as she led me into a question that sounded like telling her how I had no idea what she was talking about was not going to be a good answer.

  I could have just blown it off with a generic in-definitive answer, but she had been through a lot today and I wanted to hear what she had to say. “To be honest with you my radio was cutting out and I didn’t quite catch everything you said,” I lied.

  Maybe she didn’t press the button on her radio hard enough, but I sure hadn’t heard anything over my own.

  “Oh okay, well never mind then,” she dismissed, her emotional walls obviously going up.

  “No really, what was it? Your brother? Shooting those guys?” I tried one after the other.

  “Just something that was easier to say when you weren’t right in front of me I guess,” she shied away.

  “Well if you want to talk...” I offered, and then changed gears slightly, “And I do want to thank you for coming out here with me, it was a big help having you… having someone here.”

  “No problem, I kind of enjoyed it. Sometimes it’s nice to get way from everything else,” she responded, and then began walking back in the direction of the houses, effectively ending the discussion.

  I switched my gun to hold it in my left hand and used my right to pull my radio out of its pouch, as if physically looking at it was going to give me a clue of what it was that she was talking about. That’s when I realized the damn thing was still turned off.

  The walk back was quiet, and I had to put the confusing conversation out of my mind. I was pretty well convinced that there was no one else out here, yet I was still keyed up and on guard. After a while I began to relax and Breanne and I started talking about the day’s events and what changes might be needed.

  Breanne had done well, but it was obvious that even she needed more than the little bit of instruction that I had given on firearms. It was time for them all to graduate from elementary school and make the leap all the way to the Junior High of Fighting with Firearms.

  Chapter 9

  Everyone was still buzzing around when we got back to the main house. Breanne immediately went to check on her kids and I stopped long enough to make sure no one had been hurt. Megan stood leaning against the picnic table next to me as I explained what I could to David, and simultaneously tried to calm Sue down over the whole situation.

  They were freaked out and it was hard to blame them. I offered what I could and in the meantime Nick and Andrew returned and had just as many questions as everyone else. Apparently Paul was back “staying to watch over his house,” which was fine by me.

  After telling a sanitized version of the events all over again, I recommended that the guys grab some fuel cans and head back to the abandoned truck to see what they could salvage… after some more shovel work.

  I stayed long enough to help bury the three that had made it close to the house in one mass grave; it was early afternoon before we were ready to head out again. I was actually anxious to get back to my place for another re-supply of my own gear, but now I also wanted to pick out a few other guns to bring back to the Ranch. While I really did figure on this being an isolated incident, it was clear that we needed to ramp up everyone’s ability to counter this type of threat.

  My plan had been to send Nick, Jake and Andrew out, but after a little unbecoming pleading from the younger guys, I decided to join them. Before we left, I sat down again with David and drew up some target stands for him to build with the scrap wood and other materials he had around the house. I was planning a very extensive training curriculum now that their eyes were a bit more open and their willingness to learn had been ramped up a few notches.

  “You know we should probably talk about the food situation too,” David sprang on me when I thought we were through talking.

  “What do you mean?” I asked genuinely curious.

  “How’s the hunting going?” he asked, slightly avoiding a simple answer.

  “Right now it's not. I haven’t seen a deer to take in a month. Hell, I haven’t seen fresh sign of any in weeks... turkeys either. I hear the coyotes at night, but I think they’re eating all the rabbits and little stuff because my snares and traps are all empty. Why, what’s going on?” I pressed.

  “We’re just getting a little light on everything is all and I know Sue is beginning to worry about it. The gardens are doing fine and the chickens are laying, but we need to start getting some meat put up or this winter could get… interesting.”

  “What about the cows and sheep that the Janes’ have at their place? Don’t we have a stake in those?” I asked of the neighbors down the road.

  “Well yes, but they only have so many and there are a lot of mouths to feed between all the families. I tried to talk to them last time I was over there about breeding the animals to get a sustainable system going, but I got the impression that they were worried about needing to eat everything that they had just to make it through the year. Plus the extra work for harvesting the hay fields, if the diesel runs out in their plow, thrasher and bailer…”

  “Shit,” I sighed, rubbing my eyes. “Okay I’ll have to think about this. In the meantime see what you can do to ease their minds. We’ve got the bodies for the work, but they can’t panic and eat all the livestock first. Just do what you can.”

  “I’ll try, but do you have any more bulk stuff like the buckets of rice and beans and other stuff you brought out here last year?”

  “I might have maybe a few pounds of each left, not enough to spread around in any meaningful amount.” My tired mind was working hard now just to do the simple math. “I know it’s not something we have a lot of, but give me some time to think this through. I’m always hunting one way or another and this fall we should see some ducks and geese migrating, but you’ve got to work on getting all the neighbors on board. Everybody has got to start looking at longer term solutions. We should probably think about letting some of the chicken eggs hatch to get the flocks refreshed and up to size too.”

  With this new issue now brewing in my brain, I was trying to remember just what it was I came back here for this morning in the first place.

  Waving to get my attention, Nick signaled that they were ready to hike back out to the barricade. I picked up my pack that I had retrieved from where I dropped it when all the fun had began and gave Megan what I hoped was a reassuring and apologetic shoulder shrug. I was tempted to invite her along just to give us a chance to talk, and then send her back home with the guys as I was not planning on returning, but thought better of it in the end. It would just have to wait.

  I did ask David to give Clint a quick run down of our recent events over the CB that evening, just to keep him in the loop. I wanted to do it myself, or better yet, go see him in person but again, more pressing issues were standing in the way.

  On the way back out to the barricaded road, I cursed the noise made by the rest of the group more than a few times. Even though we were walking down the road itself this time and not really trying to be quiet, their talking and laughing was going to alert anyone else out here within a mile of us and it would surely scare any game away at the same time. There was a time when a walk with my friends down an old country road would have been fun and I would have joined in with the joking and laughing, but I was having a harder and harder time being able to even remember back that far.

  The raider’s truck was still thankfully where I had left it and we made quick work of draining the remaining gas from the tank. If it was any nicer of a rig I probably would have just driven it back, having found the keys in the pocket of one of the guys that had attacked the house. As it was, what would we do with another truck that we couldn’t use any spare parts from on any of the other vehicles around the Ranch? Even the tires were not worth salvaging.

  By the time we were done pushing the little red pickup to contribute in barricading access to our road, the sun was beginning to set and I was almost enj
oying the other guy’s company. I actually was starting to wish they had have packed some stuff to sleep out here overnight with me, but they were all needed back at home with the rest of their families.

  I stayed that night on the same bluff that Breanne had set up her over-watch on. I dug in and even lit a small cooking fire, although I was careful not to let it smoke or get too big this close to the main road. It turned out to be a nice evening and I even started to relax after reading a few pages of a paperback book I kept in the bottom of my backpack.

  I spent the next day out in the woods hunting for whatever game I could find and ended up coming back to my own makeshift home late that afternoon. The previous day’s events had me considering that while I had taught members of the families at the Ranch how to shoot, they had no clue what it meant to fight.

  They needed to learn those skills, but they also needed the hardware to base those skills around. It was going to be one heavy pack I would be carrying back to the Ranch the next day.

  “Just ease that trigger back until it breaks. Don’t think about your finger moving, concentrate on the sights and your target.”

  I was again coaching a few members of the group through yet another boring dry fire exercise before everyone else was able to finish up with their day’s chores and join us at the shooting range. After a long day of laboring away just to survive, then repeating it all again the next day, I knew the type of mood everyone would be in. No one was going to be in an engaged mindset of wanting classroom time, but I had an ace up my sleeve to energize them. Actually I had a really heavy pack stuffed full of guns and ammo.