Against the Grain

by Ian Daniels

  “They got hit on the road a few miles out and I heard the shots,” I tried to quickly explain and defend myself, trying to sound as noncommittal as possible.

  “And just naturally you went toward the sound of gunfire,” Breanne incriminated me.

  Ignoring that little comment, I continued on.

  “After the smoke cleared, I recognized Derek.”

  “We were headed back here trying to make it out to my parent’s farm. We just couldn’t make it on our own anymore and figured Mom and Dad’s would be the next best place for us,” Derek took over. “It’s been a long trip, especially with the kids, but really we didn’t have any big problems like this until now. Is it this lawless all over out here?”

  “It’s been better and worse, but it seems to be getting worse again lately. The people who survived until now are running out of what they had and are getting desperate,” Nick explained.

  I was only half paying attention as I watched Megan’s face tighten at the mention of another family traveling in an attempt to find their parents at “home.” I had not had enough time, or more accurately I hadn’t made enough time, to really talk with her about it. Maybe I inwardly hoped that Breanne had talked with her about it so I wouldn’t have to.

  “Nick, we don’t have any forty four left do we?” I asked him trying to change the subject slightly.

  “Did we ever have any to begin with?” he asked back.

  I knew we never did have any, but I was still trying to get the right people involved and established in their roles and was using every opportunity I could to do it.

  “Sorry man, looks like you have an empty relic on your hip,” I turned my attention back to Derek. He had fired his last four rounds at the attackers on the highway, hitting at least one of them and distracting another enough for me to get a better position to do my part.

  “Well shit… I mean… sorry,” Derek spit, looking down trodden but immediately apologizing.

  The big cowboy had a big heart and knew his place as a guest.

  “Don’t worry man, I’ve got you covered,” I said and made eye contact with David. I had given him the dead fat guy’s 1911 to keep stashed for me here at their house and he immediately nodded his understanding.

  “Well let’s get these kids something to eat. It might be a little crowded inside so if no one minds gathering in the backyard, I think we can scrounge something up and then we can see about some dinner for everyone,” the ever hospitable Sue offered.

  “We don’t want to be a burden; we have some stuff we can eat…” Karen attempted to say, but Sue wouldn’t hear of it. The group slowly started to dissipate until it was just Breanne and myself left standing in the driveway.

  “I think we need to talk about you’re tendency of going towards the direction of a small scale war,” She lit into me.

  “I was close by and saw what was going down. Just took a couple of lucky shots from a safe distance is all.”

  ”Uh huh.”

  She didn’t believe a word I had said.

  It really wasn’t that far from the truth. During the height of the commotion I had safely hung back on the ridge and taken the easy shots on the group going after Derek and his family. I wasn’t one for war stories or bragging, and I usually tried to spare any gory details to everyone at the Ranch, even Breanne. While it may have been good for the others to hear how things were in the world and to harden them up a little, I also didn’t want to come off as being excited about killing other people, even if this latest group, like all the others, were scum and had died like it.

  I really couldn’t imagine being on the other end of this latest clash. Hearing the small report of the shot through my suppressor, then seeing the arm ripped off of your dirty buddy standing next to you, it must have been truly terrifying. Apparently what my 308 Saiga lost in velocity with its slightly shorter barrel, it made up for in pure bullet size. Hiding behind the thin skin of their SUV was not going to save the other two bandits from the big bullets traveling at over 2,200 feet per second, and my volume of fire from the mag fed semi auto was more than enough to make all the hits. Come to find out, I could also use it closer in to finish things off as well.

  “Look” Breanne continued, “I don’t know exactly what you do out there, and I get downplaying it to everybody, but I’m not dumb. You might be doing good things like with Megan and now with this family, and I know it sounds cliché, but when you put yourself in danger, it puts us all in danger.”

  At this point I was starting to get confused if she thought that I of all people didn’t know the risk of bringing other’s back here. She had a full head of steam now and since I wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this, I decided to just keep my mouth shut and let her say her piece.

  “This whole place is barely making it as it is and we wouldn’t be doing even that if it wasn’t for you. Its bad enough you don’t stay here, but when you’re gone, we’re that much more depleted. If you don’t come back at all one of these times, we are going to be in a world of shit.”

  Breanne paused for a second to glance over my shoulder. Everyone else was now around the back of the house and busy with other stuff, so I took advantage of her pause to say my piece.

  “Bre, you guys are doing okay here. I’ve seen what other people have done and compared to them, this place is heaven. And you of all people should know why I come and go. That’s how it works. I keep you supplied with information and stuff we need, and I keep the threats as far away from here as I can. You know how I get being all closed in and trapped, I’m doing the best I can for you… for everybody, but cut me some slack here.”

  “I know you are,” she hung her head slightly. “And I know you get all claustrophobic and don’t like being around people all the time, but that’s not the point,” she reached out and put a hand on my arm, but I still wasn’t completely calmed back down and listening to her, so I continued rattling on.

  “You know me well enough to know that I don’t do anything without a purpose. I’m not out looking for this shit, it just finds me.” That wasn’t always true, but at this point I was trying to smooth things over, so whatever would make her feel better…

  “Yeah right,” she said sarcastically.

  “Hey, you want to pull the curtain back a little? Yes if I see some rapists attacking someone, I’m going to nail the bastards. If there is a family pinned down by some assholes looking to rob and murder them, I’ll do my part. But I don’t get into anything I don’t know I can get out of. Whatever I do after that, I have a reason for too. If I didn’t know what these people could bring to the table, I would have just walked away afterwards.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she tried to say.

  “I’m not playing the good guy hero here. If there is a good enough reason, I will walk up behind someone, stick a gun in their ear, and execute them on the spot,” I watched as the features of her face hardened. “Not exactly the noble gestures you thought I was out doing? This is not some utopia we are living in. The rules have changed,” I reminded her.

  I was probably being a little too harsh, but for some reason I was pissed at her being pissed at me.

  “I know that,” she said defensively.

  “Look, it is basically every lawless man for themselves out here right now. I do what I do because I hope that a little more humanity like what you guys have here can take over. I’m not playing a martyr, it just turns out that I’m good at some of this, and God forgive me, but I am willing to be good at it if that’s what it takes.”

  This wasn’t what I wanted to happen; Breanne was starting to see me in a new light. The aloof cloud of mystery and mystique had started to clear away to show not a bold stoic figure that they were willing to follow, but a darker, less righteous one. I was still preserving a little of the act by not letting her in on the fact that it wasn’t me that was this good at this shooting and killing thing, so far everyone else had just been that bad. I was smart enough, but I was lucky too. One day so
meone would get the drop on me or they wouldn’t freeze up, or they’d move better and faster, and that’d be it. It was statistics and I was against the odds already.

  At this point, we were both tired of the fight and the unveiling of a little too much truth, maybe on both sides, so I was willing to drop it if she was.

  “So what’s your master plan here then?” Breanne asked.

  She didn’t drop things easily either, but fortunately I had an answer for this one.

  “Dinner.”

  “What?”

  “After dinner I’ll lay out what I have in mind and see what you guys think.”

  “Well, I’d offer to make up a bed for you, but we seem to be running short on rooms right now. Are you taking off again tonight?”

  “Jeeze Bre…lets just get dinner over with first,” I sighed.

  This was shaping up to be a long night.

  Chapter 11

  Later that evening I joined everyone in the living and dining room for a big community dinner of venison stew and fresh baked bread. At least one member from each of the collected households from the Ranch families was there, and with me and Megan, and now Derek and his family, it was a packed house. I tried to sit off in a corner apart from the main throng of people to gather my thoughts, but that lasted all of three minutes.

  “Mind if I join you?” At least this interruption was a welcome one. I gestured with my hand for her to have a seat in what I hoped was a welcoming manner. I wasn’t feeling all that friendly right now, and realized I should be trying to get into a better mood. It would help when I presented my plans to everyone after dinner.

  I suddenly found myself without anything to really say, but Megan didn’t seem to mind. We sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the others' conversations until finally she spoke up.

  “So is it weird that we somehow know all these people? You, me, Derek, Breanne… and if it wasn’t for the world basically ending, we probably wouldn’t have ever seen any of the others ever again.”

  “You know what, it is kind of weird,” I laughed. The circumstances that brought this whole group together might have been terrible, but we wouldn’t all have rekindled the friendships we now had if it wasn’t for the rest of the world going to crap. “I always have enjoyed the little ironies in life.”

  “And how are you doing?” Megan asked me after another brief moment of silence. “I mean, you seem to go nonstop without a break, and I kind of caught a tone when you guys got here today. I guess I get it, but you do kind of seem to take a lot of crap for what I think you’re trying to do.”

  “Yeah, I seem to,” I replied. There really wasn’t much more to say than that. I had been through it with Breanne earlier and I really didn’t want to rehash it again now. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought them here,” I confided in her, referring to Derek’s family in the next room, “but hopefully I can at least give a good explanation of why I did it in a little bit.”

  “It’s not just that. There are some people here that worry about you too you know,” Megan tried to lock her eyes onto mine, but the attempt made me feel somehow uncomfortable. Her naive innocence made it hard to take her too seriously. While I appreciated the sentiment, she was too new around here to really have that good of a feel for everyone just yet. I wasn’t trying for an appreciation award, but I was pretty sure where I stood with most of the members of this family. I knew that a few of them would be just as happy if I stopped coming around altogether.

  “Well, we’ll see what happens. If I can get this right, I can take a back seat and be less of a problem for everyone,” I said almost to myself. “So how are you doing here? Given any thought to the future?” I changed the subject slightly.

  “Everyone is really nice here and I love helping out with the kids, but I haven’t really thought much about what to do next. Future plans don’t really seem to be something to put much credence into lately,” she smiled sadly.

  “I know what you mean,” I said hoping it somehow sounded reassuring.

  What she had just conveyed did in fact accomplish one thing, it had cemented the plans that I had recently been forming and were now swirling around inside my head. I had seen the trend coming back around for a while now; with things in the world not recovering, not getting back to normal on any sort of a pace that we could really see, hope was starting to fade again. I wasn’t going to offer hope, but I could offer the opportunity to shore up our ability to outlast the crisis. With these new faces at the Ranch came some new issues along with some of the same old ones, but they also brought options of new solutions to explore.

  “Listen, it’s not like we can really go get coffee or see a movie or anything, but would you want to do something together sometime? Kind of get our minds off all this doom and gloom?” I was sounding a lot bolder than I was feeling, but asking Megan out on a pseudo-date seemed like it may help to settle her nerves a bit.

  “I’d like that,” she smiled a little brighter this time.

  It was pretty spur of the moment and I hadn’t been planning on saying anything, but my confidence was up just enough now with that little victory, I felt like I might have some momentum to work off of in the next battle royale I was about to start. Taking a deep breath, I got up and stuck my head into the dinning room. “When y’all are ready, I have something I’d like to run by you,” I announced to the room.

  A few minutes later I took one more quick mental picture for a head count to make sure everyone was accounted for, and except for the kids who were either playing in the other room or had already drifted off to sleep, everyone was here and staring at me. I knew I should start off with some niceties or some great introduction, but I didn’t have one prepared, so I just jumped right in.

  “As you know I’ve been riding with Derek, Karen and their kids for the last two days, and I’m planning to stick with them for the rest of their trip to Derek’s family home out west of here… if they’ll have me,” I paused, looking sideways at Derek.

  “Of course man, thank you,” he replied.

  “Could we talk in the other room for a minute?” Breanne broke in, but I waved her off.

  “I know this is not the best way to have this conversation, but there are a lot of parts to it so I’m going to lay the whole thing out here in front of everybody first, then we can dissect each piece,” I quickly continued on.

  “I want to see that they get where they’re going safely and I think I can help make that happen. I have a little experience with this type of thing, but I’ll say right now that I could use some help.”

  “Of course we’ll do what we can,” David offered, but he sounded unsure of what they really had that could help.

  “Thank you, but let me tell you the type of help I need first before you volunteer anything,” I told the whole group.

  “One rig traveling alone with a couple adults and two kids is really a recipe for disaster, as we’ve already seen. Just recently everyone living here has been introduced to the type of people that are out scavenging through this area, and Derek and Karen have a very real idea of the hazards on the roads, so what I’d like to do is take two trucks from here with a small group to help get them out to their family’s home.”

  And the noise started.

  “Hold on, hold on,” I held up my hands and cocked an eye towards the few people who I knew were not an active part of my fan club, “let me lay this all out first, then you can kick me out for good.”

  “I’ve been able to check out the areas in a good twenty mile circle from here, but we really don’t have any idea of what is happening any farther out than that. That’s information I’d like to have, but it’s also probably something I can do on my own if it comes down to it. I do know that we are not the only ones like us around, and if there is trade or other opportunities available, they are worth knowing about.”

  I paused and surveyed the room again before continuing on.

  “Look, I can’t forecast what is happening in the world, but I thi
nk we all are getting the idea that overall recovery to the way things used to be is not happening as fast as we may have hoped. What we see here and now is our world, and our lives, for the foreseeable future, so we need to do what we can to make the best of it. That being said, if we get out to Derek’s parents and do not find what they are looking for,” I adjusted my speech delicately to help the next part go over better than my earlier idea had, “I’d like to give some thought to them taking up in one of the empty houses down the road.”

  There were a few more murmurs and a surprised look between Derek and Karen. Paul’s voice caught my attention above all the others.

  “More mouths to feed?” He said it as if they would be a non contributing burden.

  “If they have made it this long then they are self sufficient enough to pay their own way. An addition of the right skills and mindset around here could compound drastically,” I pressed on in answer to his rude and ignorant protest.

  “I know this whole family and will vouch for them myself. If I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t have brought them here in the first place,” I gestured to Derek and Karen and at the same time snuck a quick look to try and judge Breanne’s face.

  I also had known Derek’s mother and father pretty well. She is, or was, a heck of a quilter and an outstanding cook, and he was a retired Air Marshall. They had lived out in an old farm house for a lot of years and if they could be convinced to come back here too, they would definitely have some skills that would benefit this group as a whole.

  “So the pros look like the development of information and relationships, and possibly another good family around here, and cons are the use of resources… both goods and people,” I continued. “There is a lot of gas in the trucks that left as is, will go bad before we will ever be able to use it. The gas is one thing, but the people are the real important aspect here. Doing this would leave this place a little short handed for a few days, but I think there is a lot to gain in that gamble. I think we have an opportunity to get some information and to help some good people out, and we need to strike while it’s hot.”