Against the Grain

by Ian Daniels

  “Now I’ve gone out there many times to look for Takanin’s house, I even took your Aunt Tiffany out there once or twice to help me look,” I added with a hint of a smile up at Derek, “but I still haven’t found it. So now I’m going to go out there one more time to see if I can find his old house.”

  “And we’re going to go look too?” Leslie asked wide eyed.

  “Well I’m going to go ask your Grandparents if they know where Takanin’s house is. If they do, then you can take your Daddy and me to go see it.”

  It was a simple story that left out the death of an entire Indian tribe at the hands of the White Man, but it seemed to appease the kids and renew their sense of adventure. And after hearing it, they went back to playing in the corner of the yard. “Everyone here that’s going to be here?” I stood up and changed gears, wording it carefully to not specifically call out the absence of Paul.

  “Yeah I think so,” Nick knowingly responded.

  “Okay, what we’re going to do this morning is get the planning set for a combined escort and convoy out to the Trapper Lake area and back,” I began in an easy tone, and setting up a serious outline. “We are looking at three trucks and eight people total. That’s the four Meehan’s, me, and three others from here. Drew, Jake did you guys get a chance to talk it over?”

  “Yep, we’re in,” Andrew nodded his head.

  “Cary, Julie, you two good with this?” I didn’t want to second guess the guys or anything, but I thought it better that everyone was very clear.

  “I guess so,” Julie said after exchanging a look between herself and Cary. “We don’t really like it, but we understand it.”

  “Alright,” I breathed, that was good enough for me. I wasn’t going to try to downplay the danger of what we would be doing, but at this point, it was up to those four to work it out amongst themselves because I had more to worry about than their relationships.

  “You know we are willing to go too if you need the help,” Cary offered.

  “I know, and I appreciate it, but we just can’t deplete this place that much.”

  “Well that’s only seven by my count, who else did you have in mind then?” Julie asked me.

  “I could really use Bre as a Second.”

  “Second what?” Breanne asked cautiously from the picnic table.

  Besides being a competent shooter, Breanne had a good head and could manage situations. That leadership alone was worth it. She also had a longer established relationship with Jake and Andrew. And since we had women and children along on this little venture, I figured they might feel more comfortable talking to another woman, who in turn could then talk to me if there was a problem. Also it might just help to insulate me from all the little stuff that I was sure was going to drive me crazy.

  Nick and I had talked about it before going off to bed the night before and he had reluctantly agreed that she was the right one for the job. One of them at least needed to stay back with the kids, even with the grandparents help. As Nick had a good handle on the defense of the area, and he was learning the vital parts in keeping things running around the Ranch, he was needed here more.

  Also, Nick had confided in me a while back about the chilly patch their marriage had been on before everything had collapsed and they were still dealing with that to some degree. Neither he nor I really knew if having a few days apart was a good thing or not for them, but he didn’t think it could hurt, and I needed the help.

  “I’m not big on hierarchy and all that crap, but if I have to lead this thing, then I need someone else to back me up and run the other half of things. I’ll be directing things in the lead rig, you’ll be doing the same in the rear. If we get separated or have to split up, you’re in charge.”

  I was phrasing it purposefully in a more telling, than asking, type of way. My intent was not to be controlling, but if it was time to put the leader hat on, I was game.

  “What do you need me to do?” She asked, looking to Nick for confirmation.

  “You and I will get to that in a little while, right now I want to talk to everyone about the overall responsibilities.”

  “Drivers, that’s Karen, Derek and Andrew, your job is to drive, period,” I paused to let that point sink in.

  “That’s it?” Andrew asked.

  “That’s it,” I repeated.

  “If you’re not driving, then we’re not going anywhere,” This brought a round of laughs and I continued on.

  “Let me put it this way, what is the one best weapon we will have?”

  “You,” Jake tried to answer.

  “Dude if it’s me versus a speeding eight thousand pound truck, bet on the truck. If we get into trouble, you drivers are what gets us out of it. We gun only if we can’t run. It might not sound as cool as shootin’ stuff, but you guys have the most important job and are responsible for all of us. Any shooting is to protect you, so you can get us out of trouble.”

  “Bre, Jake and I will be the primary shooters. Jake, do you get car sick or anything?”

  “Nope,” he replied.

  “Good, ‘cause we’re going to test you on that.”

  “Huh?” came his dumbfounded response.

  “Let’s everybody head over to the trucks and I’ll show you,” I told the group.

  David, Nick, Sue and Megan all stayed back at the house to watch and entertain all the kids while the rest walked over to where the trucks were parked. Breanne hung back a few steps to talk with me as we went to join them.

  “Am I really the best one for this?”

  “You know everyone here as well or better than I do. You know the areas we’re going, and you can process multiple targets as well as anybody… and I can trust you. You are exactly who I need on this.”

  She flashed a quick, bright smile and replied, “I’ll do what I can.”

  That smile took me back and for an instant, I saw the attractive young woman I used to know before all the stress and hardships… back before this world. Before kids and marriage, back when she was just an innocent in the human race. It was the smile of an active and fun loving woman, without all the strife of our current times.

  Her looks were definitely not a factor in me wanting her to go along, but it’s not like I was blind either. We had been family friends way before the family part ever came along. Later on, once I met him, Nick and I had become good buddies as well. In the days of partying in our early twenties, there had been the natural jokes and innuendos, but all in harmless fun. I remember feeling strangely grown up the first time I identified feeling proud of the wife and mother that she had become, instead of seeing her as, well, not as that.

  “I know you will. Honestly I don’t know what to expect on this thing. This might just be a walk in the park, and it might be Fallujah or Mad Max. We’re just going to have to adjust to whatever we find out there.”

  “You think it could really be that bad?”

  “You’ve seen for yourself the violence that is out there these days, and now so have they,” I accentuating my point by sticking my finger in one of the bullet holes in Derek’s suburban as we walked past it.

  We had caught up to the rest of the group, so I moved on with the improvised briefing. “Drivers, if we are stopped, then you are checking the map, listening on the radios, or watching for danger areas to tell us about. Got it?”

  “What type of danger areas?” Karen asked.

  “Bottle necks, barricades, tunnels, bridges, steep sides of the road - up or down; buildings, people, other cars on the road… that type of thing.”

  “And we’re supposed to relay that to you?”

  “Relay it to your vehicle, yes. Jake will be sitting backwards so he needs to know what is coming at him, or behind him, or whatever. Karen, you get a little slack on this one since it’s just you and the kids, but anything I tell the drivers, you still need to be aware of. I know I’m throwing a lot at everybody right now but we’ll be keeping it simple so everyone can keep up and stay on the same page.”


  “This seems like a lot of hard core stuff. I mean Derek and I drove across three states without a problem…” But Karen stopped short when she saw me again absentmindedly sticking my fingers in the bullet holes of their suburban.

  “Jake, you’re our tail gunner in the back of the Dodge with the S12. I really wanted Drew in there too backing you up on an AK, but we just don’t have the people for it. Your job is to protect the convoy. No one overtakes us. You report any news up to the front, but you have to be proactive in protecting the rest of us. Got it?”

  “I think so, it’s too bad we don’t have hummvees huh?” He attempted to sound like he knew what he was talking about.

  “You ever been in a hummvee? They are loud, cramped, pieces of crap that you can’t see a thing out of. This is the luxury way to roll,” I answered him, attempting to tone down his excitement to a realistic level.

  Jake sounded confident, but I think he and I both knew just how much he didn’t know. I picked him because he was a good guy and had some good trigger time on the S12. I guess it wasn’t his fault that his job at Staples never gave him the opportunity to provide armed rear security on a traveling convoy.

  “Bre, you’re in the passenger seat of the Dodge with Derek driving. You three need to get familiar and comfortable in these spots. Jake, you’re going to want to find the best way to sit back there. If we need to bolt down a chair or tie a strap in to help you out, you tell us what you need and we’ll make it happen. We are going to have some bags and stuff back there too and we’ll be taking the door to the canopy off, plus you’re going to need to figure something out for the dust. Bre, Derek and I haven’t talked about the route yet, but you can bet on dirt roads.”

  “Drew, it’s you and me in the Yota… Oh and we need to pull the top off too,” I added.

  The first few years the Toyota 4Runner came out, they had a removable top that left the rear passenger seats and bed open to the air, while the front driver and passenger seats were still covered by a metal roof.

  “Sure, but why?”

  “Visibility and mobility,” I answered. “Again, if we had more people, I’d have a main gunner standing up against the roll bar, as it is, I can climb up there in an emergency. Not having someone there in the lead vehicle is damn near over the line of recklessly dangerous, but there’s nothing we can do about it”.

  “What about taking one less truck, or how about having Cary and Julie drive?” Andrew asked.

  “The problem with taking only two trucks total is space for everyone and gear in only one on the way back,” I answered him.

  “It’d just be us four,” he said motioning to the small group of us.

  Un-swayed, I continued on. “Yes, but it would be even more of a problem if one of the trucks breaks down. We have to have the redundancy of two rigs to leave any margin for error. As far as two more drivers from here, we can’t leave this place that short handed… short term or long term.”

  That introduced a new, somber dose of reality to the situation.

  “Let’s talk sectors,” I began again, undaunted by their silence and pulling out my pen and pad of paper. “Everybody get to where you can see this.” I began to draw three boxes in a row with lines extending out from them.

  “This is what a three vehicle convoy’s security sectors should look like…” I tore out the page and passed it around. “Now compare it to what we do have.” I passed a new sketch to them. “What do you see?”

  “We have no one covering the left side at all,” Breanne answered.

  “And…?” I prompted.

  “No overlapping fields of fire,” Derek supplied, showing that his early days in the military weren’t completely forgotten.

  “Right on both counts. How do we fix it?”

  “We need more people,” Andrew insightfully pointed out after a few long seconds had passed.

  “Yup… and I really don’t have a good answer for this. The best thing I’ve come up with is that I play the main gunner in the lead rig, and Breanne sits behind Derek in the Dodge to cover the left side, but that leaves no navigation or driving help, and overloads the drivers on comms.”

  Silence returned.

  “We need more people,” Andrew repeated again.

  “And where do we get them from?" I asked, slightly frustrated with his imitation of a parrot.

  “What about the Fossels or Janes?” Jake asked, bringing up the two sets of neighbors down the road.

  “I did think of them, but they have even less people than we do and probably couldn’t and wouldn’t spare any. Plus, I don’t know them and can’t trust them to keep a cool head or act quickly in a bad situation.”

  “Megan?” Andrew proposed.

  “She has even less experience and is just getting settled in here,” Breanne answered for me. “Also, she’s a big help with the kids and if I’m going, I’d feel better if she were here to help Nick and my parents. How about Clint or Danielle? Wouldn’t they go if you asked?”

  I of course had thought of my old friends, and I was again wishing things were different with them, but I did not want to talk about it, especially in front of the group.

  “Yeah… but no,” I paused, then answered.

  “Who?” Andrew asked.

  “Nobody.”

  “Hey, you’re showing us that we are screwed without more people and you seem to be sitting on some but won’t bring them in, what’s the deal?” He finally took some initiative by asking.

  “Trust me man, it’s not going to happen. It’s not even worth wasting our time talking about it,” I tried shutting the subject down one more time.

  “I know there’s some bad history but…” Breanne pushed.

  “They are as short handed as anybody,” I cut her off, pleading with my eyes to move on.

  “But you know some people that could help us out?” Andrew backed up his big sister.

  “No, I don’t. I don’t know them anymore and they wouldn’t help me out with something like this. We’ll just have to figure something else out.”

  “Well who are they anyway?” Derek interjected.

  This was not going to get dropped until they had some sort of answer to satisfy them all. I’d have to thank Bre later for bringing it up.

  “They’re just what’s left of a family that I used to know, that’s all. They used to do the type of stuff with me that I now do on my own.”

  “Why, what happened?” Karen entered the fray.

  Terrific… if they wanted the story then, they could get some of it, but I didn’t want them to question going out with me so I had to be careful in how I phrased it.

  “One dead son and husband, one wounded father, a mother that couldn’t take the grief, and a whole lot of blame.”

  “Oh,” someone stated flatly.

  Clint’s son was my childhood best friend. He had met his wife Danielle while serving in the Army together and they got married at an old Grange Hall not far from here. We were all great friends, but she blamed me for what had happened, even though she was there too. Clint got shot and he had eventually healed up, and while he never had a bad thing to say to me, Danielle never did her healing.

  “Well then why not Julie and Cary?” Jake finally came to my rescue. “You know they can drive.”

  Cary had spent as much time as Andrew in his 4Runner, and Julie’s dad had been into the local drag racing scene back when there was such a thing. I had seen her drive a slingshot dragster better than all the other entries more than a few times.

  “You know we’re willing to go if you need the help,” Julie again reassured me.

  “I know and I appreciate it, but you guys are doing some important stuff around here and we just can’t deplete this place that much.” Actually I needed them both to go, but I couldn’t be the one to ask it. I had already asked way too much… I sure wouldn’t complain if they simply insisted on going though.

  “Screw it,” Cary finally said, “we’re going.”

  “Guys I�
�m already on the shit list for taking who I am away from here. I can’t take two more.”

  “Its statistics at this point,” Julie lectured me. “If having us with you improves the chances of everyone coming back, then we are more valuable going than we are staying here. Besides, last night you said you would need up to six people and this would only make five.”

  Cary was nodding her agreement and Breanne and Karen both looked happy at the prospect.

  “You guys work it out then…” I started sketching some notes on my pad and trying not to openly smile. “If we do this then here’s what it looks like. Drew, you’re in the back with Jake,” this news brought on a fist pump and high five between the two best friends, “Cary you’re driving with me, and Julie has the Dodge. Derek, you take the front seat in the 4Runner and I’ll take the top spot.”

  “This is your rodeo Hoss; I’ll go up top so you can run things down below,” Derek drawled.

  I pulled him over to the side quickly in an illusion of a private conversation.

  “The guy that is up there is target number one for anybody looking to shoot us up. You’ve got a family, I don’t.”

  “You think all these people fighting to go follow you into a hail of bullets ain’t your family?” he asked plainly. “I’ll be just fine; you know I can handle it… Sir.”

  He was a hard headed, pain in my ass and I knew he could do the job better than anybody.

  “Damn it,” I muttered smiling, “I don’t need you to start giving me a rash of shit too… Fine, but if you’re up there, then you’re wearing plates.”

  I had just one hard armor “bullet resistant” plate carrier that could withstand a heck of a lot of abuse… and I never wore it. I never even wore my “bullet proof vest” anymore as even the soft armor was too cumbersome when I was out moving around in the woods. It paid its way a while ago when I was trying to get out of the city, but now I had little use of it. I had to go back to my place anyway for supplies, so what was an extra twenty pounds to lug back here again anyway?