“Still, Sissy, that’s a hard thing to say about your parents.”
“It’s a hard world. I’ve been telling you that. I’ve been telling the girls that. No one believes me. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
Tommy thought about this. The hardness of the world. The things this world may require. He wasn’t sure he was ready for it either. He didn’t mind a good fight every once in a while but that should only be a small part of your day. The rest should be about hunting, fishing, and hanging out with your buddies. He wasn’t ready for such a cold, serious world.
“I’m going to go check on my grandbabies,” Randi said. “Them being in the loft scares me.”
“You do that,” Tommy said. “I’m going to get a drink of water. I’m feeling dehydrated from all that walking today.”
“And digging a grave.”
“Yeah, that too.”
They went in opposite directions, Tommy to the spring and Randi back to the barn. She climbed the ladder into the loft, aware that it wasn’t as easy for her as it always had been before. While she didn’t like to admit she was getting older, it was apparently sneaking up on her. When she finally reached the top, she clicked on her headlamp and directed it away from the children, watching them in the reflected, ambient light.
Her three grandchildren lay there in a scattering of hay, a thick blue blanket pulled up over them. They slept so deeply, so innocently, despite the events of the day. Before the terror attacks, before society began to crumble, the sight of her grandchildren in such a state could make her heart overflow to bursting. In this world such feelings were tempered by the practicality of survival and what it required.
The burning of their home had impacted the quality of their survival. She had known this was going to be a hard winter with no fuel, no electricity, and no law. Still, she thought her family could make it. They had the essentials of survival. They had a woodstove for heat, food put away from a large garden, they had some livestock and access to game. They were armed and hopefully had enough ammunition to defend their home, and were in a remote area that was not likely to be traveled by folks on their way somewhere. That seemed like enough to assure a decent outcome.
All of it had been taken from them in the blink of an eye. They had to rebuild their lives and they didn’t have a lot of time to do it. Cold weather would be upon them before they knew it. She knew she would have to push her family. They couldn’t do it without her. None of them had that edge that was required. Thinking of the work that was required, work that would have to start immediately, made her think about the mission that she and Tommy intended to take tomorrow.
What if she got herself killed? How would they go on?
She suspected that if she got killed, her family wouldn’t make it. She was the flux that held this group together. She was the cold, hard planner that could help them focus and not get bogged down in fear and emotion. She was the driver that would push them through pain and suffering. She was willing to push them until they hated her, and that’s why she could keep them alive.
It became clear to her. She couldn’t get herself killed. It was as simple as that.
She climbed back down the ladder and found Tommy in his damp, rusty folding chair outside the sliding door. “We can’t do this now.”
“What?” he asked.
“Kill the Crosses.”
“It’s still a couple of hours until dawn,” he pointed out. “We don’t have to do it now.”
“We can’t do it at dawn, either,” she said. “I need the kids to be safe. I need the grandchildren in good hands. I need to know that they’ll be okay if we get killed. I can’t risk my life and worry they won’t be safe.”
Tommy pursed his lips and looked at Randi with the utmost sincerity. “I can’t live in peace knowing the Cross family is getting away with this.”
“They won’t get away with it,” Randi promised. “We’ll come back and we’ll butcher them like hogs.”
Chapter 13
Jim
When Jim was younger, he’d been a night owl. He preferred the world when no one else was awake. As he got older, he learned to appreciate the early morning better. It brought the same quiet, though with the renewed energy that came after a night of sleep. He’d found that staying up all night and sleeping all day put you at odds with the normal rhythm of the world.
Even in post-collapse America Jim maintained this portion of his routine when he could. He got up early and dressed, then went to the kitchen and prepared coffee. His current method to do so was the MSR Pocket Rocket and a small canister of compressed gas. Once the water was heated, he poured it through a GSI H2JO attached to the top of a Nalgene bottle.
While the coffee steeped, he checked in with the night watch, usually Buddy or Lloyd, to see if anything out of the ordinary had happened. Then he began to kit up with his EDC, or every day carry items. This part of his gear had evolved over time. When he’d been on the road coming home from Richmond, his EDC consisted of a particular collection of survival and self-defense gear that was based on ideas he obtained from books and the internet. He had a lot more practical experience now and a lot better idea of what things he would actually use over the course of a day.
He wore a neoprene ankle holster with a .22 magnum mini revolver. It was strictly a weapon of last resort. He probably wouldn’t have gone out and purchased the gun but it had been left to him by a relative who carried it in his front pocket every day. Jim had become attached to the gun and kept it in the ankle holster in case all else failed. His faithful SOG Twitch had taken a beating on the trip home. He had chipped the blade removing a screw with it. He had bent a pin prying with the knife. He’d also batoned kindling with it several times, using a small log to pound on the back of the blade until it split chunks from a larger log. The knife had done its job, and Jim had retired it from his EDC. He’d restored it with a new edge and a little oil and it lived on a shelf now, not in his pocket.
It had been replaced with a Microtech LUDT. The knife was an automatic, commonly referred to as a switchblade, and Jim had owned it for several years. He never carried it because of Virginia’s prohibitive knife laws. Now he didn’t figure it was an issue. The Gerber LMF fixed-blade knife that he carried home was still in his bug out bag; his EDC fixed-blade was an ESEE 4. He had a scout-carry Kydex sheath that kept it out of the way of his pistol.
For his primary sidearm, he still carried his Beretta 92. There were newer guns and there may have been better guns, but this was his gun. He knew it inside out. He could fire it without thinking. His muscle memory was built around this gun and when he shot with it, he hit because it was a part of him. He had hundreds of hours on it.
Aside from those items, in his pockets or on his belt he carried two butane lighters, a Sawyer mini filter, a trauma kit with tourniquet and Israeli bandage, and his radio. Beyond that, he had a pack he carried daily with more gear, a load-bearing vest with ammo and tactical gear, and his M4.
Ellen came into the room as he was tucking away the last of his carry gear and preparing to pour his coffee. “Ariel’s right. I’ve never seen you so happy.”
Jim turned around in surprise and saw Ellen standing in the door to the kitchen. He looked for sarcasm, a hint that it was a joke, however, there was no such indication. “You’re joking, right?”
She shook her head, a smile tinged with sadness on her lips. “Ariel brought it up the other day when we were picking berries. I hadn’t thought much about it but she’s right. I’ve never seen you so focused.”
“I can’t even believe you said that,” Jim said, staring at her. He shook the Nalgene bottle with his coffee, unscrewed the lid and removed the H2JO. He poured it into his favorite mug. He didn’t have enough coffee to last forever, so he’d enjoy it while he could. Today it was LavAzza Crema Gusto. He’d bought a case off the internet when the price was right.
“It wasn’t an accusation, Jim, only an observation.” She came into the kitchen and sat down at the ta
ble.
“How could it not be an accusation?” he asked. “People are dying around us. Friends have lost family. We’ve lost neighbors. Why would I want all this bad stuff to happen?”
“I’m not talking about any of those things,” she said. “I’m talking about what I see when you get up in the morning. I’m talking about your state of mind as you prepare for the day.”
“It’s not like I dreaded going to work every day,” he said. “I never minded my job.”
“You never loved it, either. You never got up in the morning and put this much attention into your preparation. I’m not saying this makes you a bad person or anything. I’m just saying that you seem to enjoy trying to stay on top of this particular situation we’re in. You enjoy trying to solve the problems of the day. Whatever is going on out there seems to be matched to your skillset. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I prepared for times like this because I love this family, not because I wanted something bad to happen,” Jim said. “I did it because I didn’t want you guys to suffer. I didn’t want to see my children go hungry or die of simple infections that an antibiotic would have cured.”
“That doesn’t make you a bad person,” Ellen said.
“I know it doesn’t, but I feel like it does when you say you’ve never seen me this happy,” he countered.
“I’m sorry you feel that way. I wasn’t trying to fight with you. I wasn’t trying to make you be defensive.”
“I’m not being defensive,” he snapped, a fake smile stretched tight across his face.
Ellen smiled sweetly at him and dropped it. “Can you heat me some water for tea?”
He shrugged, sighed, and did as she asked. She watched his actions without comment.
“It’s hard not to feel a sense of satisfaction when your actions—your forethought—pay off,” he admitted. “But I feel guilty if I think about it too much. You pointing it out made me feel guilty.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellen said.
“I’m sorry too,” he said. “I wish it could go back to the way it was. I wish I’d come home from that shitty trip to Richmond like all the times before and we’d got to go on a final camping trip of the summer. I wish a lot of things. I wish that the world would leave me the hell alone too.”
She laughed. “You’ve always wanted that.”
“I used to have that,” he said. “I used to come down the driveway to our little farm and shut the gate behind me in the afternoons. I shut the world out and only dealt with it when I wanted to. An ideal weekend for me was when I didn’t have to go anywhere or deal with anyone.”
“I remember,” Ellen said.
Her water started boiling. Jim carefully removed the pot and poured the water into her teacup, dropping an English Breakfast Tea teabag in.
“I’m not sure you can ever have that again,” Ellen said flatly.
“I still want that,” he said. “I still want to be left alone.”
“If you ignore the world now, it will come after you. It will show up on your doorstep. People are depending on you to not let that happen.”
“I don’t want people depending on me for that,” Jim said, raising his voice. “I didn’t want to be responsible for the people I walked home with and I don’t want to be responsible for anyone outside of this house now. The decisions are too critical. If you fuck up, someone can die. I don’t want that on me.”
Ellen held the string of her teabag and traced it around the cup. “Not always your choice. Sometimes we don’t get to make up the rules.”
Chapter 14
Jim
Jim wasn’t in the best mood when he started tinkering with the water system he hadn’t finished the day before. Though his conversation with Ellen didn’t leave him angry, it continued to buzz around in his head like bees around a hive. It complicated his decision-making. Now, with any issue, he would have to question if his head was in the right place. He hated second-guessing himself. He knew that this hadn’t been her intention; she’d simply been making a comment. Still, he couldn’t stop analyzing.
Buddy came by as Jim was pitching plumbing parts around and cursing to himself. Buddy was still limping from the worst of the coyote bites on his calf but was doing significantly better. “Building an outhouse before you needed it was good thinking,” he said. “You took your time and did it right.”
Jim straightened from the box of fittings, sighing loudly. “Thanks, Buddy. Glad you like it.”
“So, what you up to, besides cussing at a cardboard box?”
“I’ve got a lot on my mind, I guess,” Jim admitted.
“That would be natural for a man with a family. I don’t have a family so life is a little easier for me.”
“You’re welcome to claim Lloyd as family.”
Buddy laughed. “I do kind of feel like I’ve adopted him.”
“Then maybe you can straighten him out some. Musicians are famously weak of character and have delicate dispositions. They’re prone to moodiness and emotional outbursts.”
“I came along too late in life to fix him,” Buddy said. “He’s a lost cause. Entertaining, though.”
Jim was still flipping through fittings, looking for something that would adapt half-inch threaded to PEX. He hadn’t found it yet. “I’m trying to figure out if I should do something about the road into the valley.”
Buddy flipped over a plastic five-gallon bucket and used it as a stool, easing himself down. “What are you thinking about doing?”
“That damn gate didn’t do a thing. Some guys cut the lock and drove through yesterday to take some cattle off Rockdell Farms. They didn’t bother us but they could have. They could have been anyone. If Pete hadn’t been on watch and spotted them, we might have never even known they were driving through the valley.”
Buddy nodded. “That’s concerning, for sure. It’s hard to block off an area where people are used to coming and going.”
“I don’t want people coming and going,” Jim said. “We need to make it more difficult for people to reach us. I’m not so concerned about foot traffic because I know it’s nearly impossible to block that out. Vehicles concern me more.”
“I ain’t arguing with you,” Buddy said. “You’re preaching to the choir. Let’s do it.”
Jim shook his head. “I’ve brought up blocking the road before with some of the other families in the valley and the older people start raising hell the minute I bring it up.”
“Us older people can be difficult,” Buddy said.
“Sorry,” Jim said. “I’m talking about Mrs. Wimmer and some of her family. Some days they seem like they get it. Other times they don’t. One of them asked me the other day if I’d seen the UPS truck because they were expecting a package from Amazon. Then Mrs. Wimmer told me that we couldn’t block the road permanently because she had people in Florida who came up for Thanksgiving.”
Buddy chuckled. “Change is hard on people. Life altering change like the one people are going through now sometimes does funny things to the mind. People deal with it differently. Sometimes they get a little crazy. Happened to me when my daughter died.”
Jim didn’t know all the details though Buddy had been opening up to Lloyd a little bit about what he’d been up to when Lloyd picked him up on the road. Buddy’s daughter had overdosed on drugs the day before the terror attacks. What Buddy was referring to as going a little crazy, according to Lloyd, meant going to the home of his daughter’s drug dealer and burning him alive. Jim didn’t judge him. He was a parent and he understood. It had been justice.
“I’m not sure what to do,” Jim said.
Buddy shrugged. “I don’t know you real well, but I’m learning a little about you. I guess what I’m having trouble understanding is why you give a shit what other people think about your plan. I hear you’re more the type to ask forgiveness later than to ask permission first.”
Jim laughed. “That’s true. It’s one thing being a hard-ass with people you work with. It’s another being t
hat way with people you have to live beside. If you piss someone off, grudges can last for generations.”
“Seems like there’s only two paths to choose from. One path, you spend all your damn time trying to keep everyone happy. That’s proved to be a waste of time in my experience. The other path, you spend your time trying to keep everyone safe. From what I see, you have a pretty good intuition for what that requires.”
“So, if I’m planning to blow up the road, I should just do it and worry about the consequences later?”
Buddy shrugged, tilted his head. “If your intuition tells you that blowing up the road is how you keep us safe, then I’d go with that and not worry about old ladies and their Amazon packages.”
“You ever blown up a road?”
Buddy laughed again. “As a matter of fact I have.”
Jim raised an eyebrow at him.
“Vietnam War.”
Chapter 15
Randi
Everyone was up early, sleeping conditions being what they were. Fighting exhaustion, Randi took it upon herself to prepare breakfast after the sky began to lighten. The family had what was referred to as a dairy, a food storage structure similar to a root cellar, a cinderblock room built into the hillside. Much of the structure was below the freeze line, allowing it stay above freezing for most of the winter. It was where people in the country stored canning, bushels of potatoes and apples, and hung braided bundles of onions.
Using her flashlight, Randi chose some jars of homemade applesauce, cubed beef, several potatoes, and some onions. Tommy raided the henhouse and collected a dozen eggs in a rusty Folgers can. In the barn loft, Randi went through some old boxes of stuff she’d brought home when she left her husband. She found a scratched skillet with a loose handle.
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