by Ron Foster
After that mad dash ‘what the hell’ moment of confusion and the equivalent of 67 rounds of something lead moving scary fast downrange from Farley’s shotgun the yelling once again commenced.
“We are going to kill you! Etc,.” was yelled out as inaccurate return fire whistled and cracked in back of him, evidently aimed in the general direction of where he had been..
Farley himself was off scrambling through the bushes like a flash and getting himself in the clear. He put his head down and commenced beating feet just as fast as he could go off in the opposite direction away from the shooters. The path he was taking was one that he had never been towards before. Just a bit of a game trail really and pretty tangled in parts. Farley didn’t care, he had miraculously escaped unscathed and he guessed since he didn’t hear any further hollers, he didn’t hit anybody with his fusillade of buckshot but who knows? Didn’t matter now, he was free and they could have the damn traps. As soon as he thought that loss, he regretted the other six traps that were arranged and spaced a few hundred yards or so apart down the same line that day.
“Those traps were gone also now, history, never to be replaced or ever recovered most likely. This loss he regretted sorely but who were them sons of bitches back there and why were they laying in wait for him?” He considered as he slowed and sat down right next to a tree to blend in and watch for any pursuers.
After not seeing anybody after about twenty minutes, he carefully made his way further from that disaster and tried to figure out how big of a circle he needed to make in order to avoid them and try to find his way home.
“Oh shit! Lost again, where the hell am I at anyway? Farley thought very confused because his mad dash to escape and safety had led him far away from his normal stomping grounds. This part of the woods was far from any of his normal routes back to the resort.
“Well, I know eventually if I keep going in this direction that I’ll hit the highway and if I hit the highway I will know roughly where I am at. Now hopefully I will be able to get back home maybe by tonight or possibly tomorrow if them son of a bitches don’t have any more tricks for me to encounter. It’s got to be them assholes from in back of that hunting lodge. Haven’t seen anybody else out here ever have a problem with me coming and going let alone be mad enough at me to be laying in wait for me come around. Wasn’t but six of them yahoos that I saw in the first approach to that house before we did the stupid chase me through the woods the first go round. Those bastards were laying in wait to kill me! Why in the hell would they try to ambush me at a place that is evidently far from their lodge and me doing no more than trying to trap some food in the woods?” Farley questioned.
“Yeah, I snuck up on their house, that’s insane that they have gone to this much trouble and going on a vendetta to get me! I must have got somebody with one of those shotgun shell booby traps. That’s what you get for trying to hunt me you suckers! Guess they want a little revenge now that some got hurt or killed, they escalated it, I didn’t. They could have broke off the chase once they felt they made their point and we could have tried to avoid each other, but no-ooo, they have now turned our little encounter into something else. Well no matter, as long as they stay away from the resort they can chase me all over hell in this direction all they want if they want to play fox and hound. I ain`t going to worry about it. Let me lead them astray a bit more I guess and if they end up pressuring me too much they might get a dose of their own medicine and the hunter will become the hunted! I bet Miss Feng and Becky will have a lot to bitch about tonight because I am not coming home this evening I guess. How far off is that damn highway anyway? Farley thought trying to scan the sky or the distant woods for a landmark and seeing nothing, he began to trudge off in the general direction he thought it might be with lots of looks back to reassure himself that no one followed.
“Survival is a privilege which entails obligations. I am forever asking myself what I can do for those who have not survived.”
Simon Wiesenthal
6
EVASION AND ESCAPE
No sounds of pursuit or any other signs were apparent and Farley tried to relax and gauge the unknown woods he found himself in for any possibilities of nuts and berries or other sustenance or wild food that he might need to rely on someday. That’s pretty neat; Farley thought walking a ridgeline and seeing a small steady water trickle come out of the ridgeline. Ah, a natural spring! Good to know it was here if he ever comes back this way. Farley threw caution to the wind and had himself a long sip of the clear flowing water mostly because he was a country boy used to the land in this state and pretty good at knowing how to identify potable water sources. Cold clear water seeping through rocks was something Farley could tell you was generally safe and he had no worries in refreshing himself from the free flowing spring.
Standing on the ridge he saw what looked what was a break in the tree line about a mile away and that is what he was seeking so he started along that way towards it.
“Damn today sure ain`t good for me. Probably lost permanently six or seven traps, got idiots in the woods after me, I am half-assed lost and I got no way to warn my people back home. I think we are only about six or seven miles from the house or the entrance to the resort. If those men are also wanderers and gatherers their travels might take them in that direction sometime soon.” Farley thought worriedly.
Farley didn’t think they would head that way, he had been very careful about removing any resources that might make people migrate his way. He grinned to himself that his favorite way of marking his territory was the same way that any other animal did. You walk into a house you look about you get half a chance of not shitting in the woods, you use the throne. Anybody coming in after you knows somebody has been here. So while they are wondering and pondering you occasionally go back by the same places to check for any other intruders and you find your senses start working like cats investigating cars and messages in the prior world.
You ever noticed that? You leave your house to go see a friend over in another neighborhood and pull in the driveway and the cats come down to greet you from the porch. Yea them cats like you and you’re their buddy, you probably mean food but they are curious to check out the other smells of animals and other cats that may be on the tires of your vehicle. Farley didn’t have the sense of smell that a dog or a cat has to tell what lives on the other side of the tracks but he had his own way to tell when someone had been here. That is unless Farley managed to break open a door or a window and not get his nostrils accosted with the smell of fresh death that permeated everything these days and say ‘oh hell no I ain`t going in here’ just because he couldn’t stomach the stench. We’ll leave that one for later, Farley decided. And every time he left that he left with a shudder of what he might find if he had to go back in these places of death and demise. Farley was different before this disaster, he couldn’t even go to an open viewing at a funeral without apprehensions. Dead people were something to be remembered as they were he figured and not have the lids open on the coffins for viewing.
To see the desiccated corpses of a couple that over doused on drugs or had mutually shot themselves in a house or an old person that died of natural causes or lack of food sitting around dressed up to greet him to pilfer their belongings freaked Farley out. But he hardened his eyes and resolve to do that for his charges back at home.
There was no way that Farley could ever begin to express the horrors that he had seen and experienced on the road when he came back to greet his friends or his tribe as he now referred to them, of just how shocked and scared he had become from everyday efforts of continuously going out on these missions of robbing the dead as some were wont to refer to it.
Farley kind of hushed Miss Feng one day when she was fussing about him returning with a pillowcase of canned goods and a few rolls of toilet paper about how one particularly nasty sight he had seen of a man and his wife and evidently their kids all shot in a house, a mass murder it appeared. Farley was haunted, the world was hau
nted, and his stories haunted them all.
The cities were the very worse places to be trying to live in he figured, much greater death count so more bodies to run up on everywhere. Must be hell in the cities with no one to dispose of dead , the stench and the sights that he had already seen were more than one man could bear but in Farley’s mind he did not want anyone else but himself to dwell on such scenes. But he did offer Miss Feng macabre and slightly humorous imitation of a dead person with their tongue hanging out and eyes rolled up at her so she would leave him alone. To which after hearing the story, Miss Feng refused to eat any of those canned pears the he had brought back from that particular house.
That Farley could end up being one of these desiccated corpses one day, unknown, forlorn and dismissed was a constant thought amongst the tribe when he did what they called his ‘disappearances’. Farley might not come back some day and they would have no idea what had happened to him. There was always a big chance he might never be around anymore to be fussed at or asked to stay where he was at and not do these dastardly deeds that everyone in his opinion dismissed too lightly as his penchant with thievery.
However, they ate, he ate and he also constantly reminded them they better learn the skills he offered and woods survival tips so they could feed themselves for when the day came he never came home again.
He also said many, many times, his pleas falling deaf ears, they better learn all his skills at what they called thievery because there was very little wild game about and there were barely any resources left to be found. Most people had eaten everything they had in their house before trying to eat grass or anything else they could possibly find. They warred with their neighbors; they formed groups and gangs early on to scavenge over the remnants of society that had passed on. Very few people were out on the streets except for the few skinny skeletons of humanity Farley occasionally observed and with remorse offered no help and moved on and away from them hurriedly when he encountered them.
Nobody knew that death walked, death walked every day. What do you do when you have nothing, no resources at home, no food or water? You start walking just as far and searching as long as you can. And while you’re walking you might find a weapon and think about how you’re going to take food and weapons from those that have still have them.
Farley could understand this, you have a wife, children, whatever, you do whatever it takes to feed and sustain those you care about. Before the disaster, everyone had heard stories of how many fathers and mothers had gone off on their own and left everyone behind because they were weak willed or sorry people just wanting to try to sustain themselves. Stronger minded people banded together to try to do the same but the end result was that they met their match with people desiring the same outcomes and violent ends.
The unprepared had no recourse except death and violence. These were people you used to call good church going folks or hard working men and women that would never consider such. It has been said that the whole of society is only nine meals away from anarchy. That proved true many months ago and now it was only savagery and the need to survive that drove anyone on. There were no negotiations, no parlays or gifts of human charity evident. It was only what is mine is mine and I want yours also. A person will do horrible deeds when they desire or need something badly. A person will consider the worst kind of actions as necessary, history, science, psychology, all of the above will tell you this is true be it greed for gold, need for food or want or want for water, man’s inhumanity to man will explode and the evidence of the nastiest side of human regression evolves accordingly.
Farley didn’t go to the bait store anymore, he gave that up long time ago when he heard the beggars were becoming a problem outside the store that was attempting to become a makeshift trading post. He thought that the churches as well organized as they were would afford some kind of more compassion and a restart of civilization but as this disaster progressed and supplies got lower he heard of people being ostracized, shunned, belittled and left to their own devices so that those that controlled the scarce goods could profit or that there simply was nothing to share.
Death be upon those that withhold food based on religious politics or control. Farley growled thinking that he should have shot that preacher that was acting holier than thou pointing towards a woman and her child saying they were out of the congregation and that they could get no succor from them anymore because of some church infraction. He didn’t know why or what caused this confrontation he had observed, it was just wrong to him. And no matter how bad or wrong what they had done to turn them away in such an angry and vengeful manner vexed his soul and he refused to even speak to the man when he bumped into the man the next day. He had nothing to give them except a couple cans of gas for a beat up car, they didn’t need ammunition for non—existent guns; He had a pack of Lifesavers he gave the woman from his pocket so he could do a bit more for her, she smiled, he didn’t. He couldn’t but think how awful the name on the pack was in this circumstance and rode home with a heavy heart.
Farley wanted to kill, kill everything that offered injustice or hurt, his anger was overtaking him. He was angry at himself, he was angry at those that loved him for no reason and he was angry that the God he understood would tolerate such. But Farley went out and he did what he could and he said to Miss Feng and Becky that soon, very soon, them boys have to go out with him also on what they called his looting trips or he had no other decision than to leave everyone to fend for themselves. He couldn’t do it alone much longer.
Becky thought Farley must have just been on one of his drunken rages or something and couldn’t be in his right mind wanting to force the kids to help him steal. The problem which she couldn’t see was that his own survivability was dependent on moving and scavenging as a group. He tried telling her some silly cowboy stories about young Indian boys stealing their first horse from another tribe or something.
He explained also how only three percent of America during the Revolutionary War fought the British or was ready to prepare for such an event in modern history, but most folks said no and hid in their homes doing nothing for themselves or their neighbors. Maybe that’s a good thing, Farley thought, I’ll be gone a day or two if nobody catches up with me, and then they would see it for themselves. But that hurt his heart to think about. As gruff as he was, he thought he had made it easy on them and maybe he was over protective, but every night over the fire he reminded them, what if I don’t come back? What do you do? How do you fare?
They were still living the easy life in his opinion, very shielded in their thoughts and actions and that was his fault. To say Farley was too kind hearted was a misnomer. He tried the military way, he tried the mean father way and he tried I’m the wagon master of this tribe way, but as long as Farley provided, everyone thought they could improve on it and him which caused him great consternation.
“Ah, the highway at last! Hell Yeah! OK, the only thing better than the highway would be if there was a nice house that looked reasonably safe that somebody didn’t drink all the booze up in before they died. That’s the thing; most people drink all the booze before they run out of food. The booze will be gone before the food is gone, always. And those holier than thou a-holes don’t consider this need but that’s what is happening.
People that drink tend to always try to sometimes drink their problems away by forgetting them for awhile. People that don’t want to face adversity on their own tend to always enjoy the same respite be it from religion, faith or some other kind of community relief .
“Oh shit! What the hell is that coming my way? Farley thought observing a column of people heading in his direction.
The column stopped and he guessed the women and children headed towards the woods as they studied each other at a distance of about four hundred yards. Two of the men in the column went to the right and left sides of the road and into the kneeling rifle position aiming roughly at Farley with what he assumed was some kind of rifles.
Farley went ‘o
h shit! What do I do now?’ and decided to raise his hand and closed his fist in a column halt motion indicating to any observer he was a forward scout for a patrol.
“How ya’ll doing?” Farley hollered but the distance made hearing difficult. The lead traveler hollered something back unintelligible but motioned for Farley to come forward.
For lack of something better to do, Farley looked over his shoulder and decided to move closer in order to holler at the man in better hearing distance. Farley eyed both sides of the road, watching with every step as he moved in the column’s direction for some cover and when he got within about a hundred yards or so asked would the guy please tell the two yahoos aiming at him to quit.
He was attempting to be nonchalant about it and his first instinct was when he first saw them was to consider hauling ass back into the woods but for some reason, here comes Farley. The man motioned for the two riflemen to lower their weapons which gave Farley a big sigh of relief but this deal wasn’t done yet.
“Good day for a hike! What ya’ll doing out and about today?” Farley yelled out still eyeing the side of the road and a small ditch that he could hopefully dive into.
“We are just passing through, don’t need no trouble. The name’s Banks.” The man said.