Fifty Falling Stars

by Wesley Higginbotham

  “It’s all in the planning, Mr. Johnson. Like I said, I’ve been the sheriff for a long time. For the most part, it’s a pretty quiet job. We have our drunks, car wrecks, and the occasional meth bust; but no real major crime or catastrophes.

  “The responsibilities of sheriff never really hit me until Katrina. I saw the cluster fu…” He coughed. “Excuse me ladies. Sometimes I get carried away. I mean, when I saw the mess that the feds made out of that place and how the local government sat there with their thumbs up their butts, I realized that if something happened to Celina, it would be on my head.”

  “But what would go wrong here?” George asked. “It’s not like you’re in an earthquake zone or on the coast.”

  “Well, after 9/11, some folks from the Tennessee Valley Authority came in and did a risk assessment for possible targets. One of the things they identified was the dam to the east of town. They thought it might be a target for terrorists. I didn’t think it would be, so I didn’t take their recommendation too seriously, until Katrina. What if we got some bad flooding or a tornado? Anyway, I started organizing with the local churches and some of the farmers. We began making plans for emergency fuel and food in case we had to fend for ourselves for a while. The sheriff’s department ordered as many extra weapons as we could, but our budget was pretty small. Since I was getting my retirement from the military, owned my house, and was getting paid for being sheriff, I had more than enough money to live on. I began paying for some stuff myself, and man, did the wife give me hell for that.” He shook his head with a smile. “I bought all of the reloading supplies that we’re using now. We’ve got enough twelve gauge, two twenty-three, and forty caliber rounds to wage a small war.”

  “But why do all of this?” Pam said. “There’s no way you could have known something like this was going to happen.”

  “I didn’t, but I also didn’t believe in doing a half-assed job of it either, once I set my mind on it. You see, I’m a little bit obsessive compulsive, at least that’s what my wife and kids call it. I even went so far as to get one of my old Army buddies to come out and visit for a couple of weeks. He did a tour being the disaster and recovery planner at Ft. Benning before he retired. He came out. We did a little hunting, a little fishing, and came up with a pretty good plan for the area.”

  “So, where would you like us to fit in?” Will asked.

  “Have either of you got any experience with urban combat?”

  Joey shook his head, but Will nodded. He looked uncomfortable. “Sore topic, son?” The sheriff asked. Will shook his head. “Good. I really need someone to help train my folks on urban combat engagements. You see, I drove tanks for a living. Back then, we were pretty focused on open terrain, fighting off the commies. Things have changed. I ain’t got any tanks. We’ve got a pretty good barrier set around town, but our biggest weakness is if it gets breached. I’ve set up some fallback positions, but I’d really like to get someone who has seen street-to-street and door-to-door tactics. Do you think you could help me out, Mr. Baker?” Will nodded.

  “Good.” The sheriff said. “Now, for the rest of you. Mrs. Baker, you’ll obviously be headed the hospital. I could use a man with supply experience, Mr. Williamson.” He said nodding toward Joey. “The rest of you can check in with Mr. Crawley. He’s my head deputy. He’ll arrange a place for you to stay. I think we still have some bunks left or there may be some room at one of the churches. They’ve opened their doors to provide shelter for newcomers like yourselves. Crawley will also explain the two-week trial period and the food chips.”

  George interrupted him. “What do you mean two-week trial period?”

  “Just that, son. You’ll be closely supervised for your first two weeks here. You see, this whole mess has effectively sent us back to the frontier days. Like Captain Smith said when he established Jamestown, ‘he that will not work shall not eat.’ If your group doesn’t pull its weight, you may be asked to leave. I don’t think that’ll be a problem. You seem like good folks. If what you said in your interviews was true, then you’ll be just fine.”

  “What about the food chips?” Betty asked.

  “We ration food. It’s served twice a day at the churches. Since money’s no good anymore, we use food chips. Your supervisor will distribute the next day’s chips at the end of the day. You take the chips to the churches and hand them in for a ration of food. Crawley will explain the details of the system to you. After all, he did come up with it, and it’s been working pretty good. You can even use the chips like money at the market, if you need to. Just don’t try to cheat the system. We had to exile several newcomers because they tried to store up food by making counterfeit chips.”

  “What about food we already have?” Will asked.

  “Well, you can keep it, trade it, or donate it to the communal pot in exchange for extra chips.”

  “Where would we trade food?” Pam asked.

  “We have a market every Saturday outside the courthouse. It’s really more of a switch-and-swap setup than a traditional market, but you can meet people there that need something or have something to trade for work or another item.” A knock at the door interrupted the sheriff. A short, black man stood at the doorway. He looked to have been portly once but had shed a good deal of weight. The skin under his chin that once made multiples, now hung loose and empty. His blue jacket with the TVA logo over the left breast pocket hung too loose on him. He held a three-ring binder overflowing with papers.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have another important meeting to get to with Mr. Porter here.” The sheriff said as he turned to go. “But one last thing, and Crawley will fill you in on this, everyone, no matter their job, is expected to train in town defense every other weekend. I know you folks will have more questions, but Crawley will answer them. It was good to meet you.”

  “You too, Sheriff.” Will said.

  After they had spent close to an hour getting work assignments, a brief on the food chip system, and schedules for town defense training from Deputy Crawley and several of his underlings, the family picked up their equipment and found their way to their new quarters at the First Baptist Church.

  Will looked around the old Sunday school room in the annex of the church. Hanging curtains divided it into four sections, each containing four cots. Deputy Crawley had been nice enough to accommodate them all together, giving them two of the four bays in the room. A metal barrel in the hallway provided drinking water for their new home. Their guide explained that they would need to work out the schedule with Brother Bob, the head of this church, to gather water from the water treatment building and refill the barrel. Two portable outhouses sat twenty yards from the rear entrance of the church annex, each one labeled as solid and liquid waste.

  “Why are they separating the waste?” Joey asked their guide.

  “The sheriff has the former high school chemistry teacher and a chemical engineer that we let in a while back making fertilizer out of it. Apparently it’s not good to just use crap as a fertilizer until it breaks down and compost or something. But they’re treating the urine somehow and say it’s good to go right now. You’ll see a crew of guys come by and collect all of the waste every other day.

  “Well folks, I gotta get back to guard duty. I’ll come by in the morning to show you everything else you need to know. I know you guys have to be tired from your trip and quarantine. Why don’t you get settled in and rest up a bit. See you in the morning.” He gave them each two food chips before leaving.

  The family unpacked their belongings. George looked over and saw Will smiling. “Why so happy, bro?”

  “It would seem that the sheriff has thought of just about everything. He’s arranged for housing, started farming, and recycling waste for fertilizer. Plus, he’s got a lot of weapons and the defenses seem pretty good. Don’t you see, George? We’ve found our group. This is probably about as safe as we can get.”

  Joey frowned. “Yeah, I agree with all of that.”

  “Then why
the frown?” Jenny asked.

  “It’s just that this place is making preparations for a long time. Kinda makes me wonder if the sheriff knows something that we don’t about how permanent all of this will be. I don’t think you do things like set up a place to process piss into fertilizer if you plan on everything going back to normal soon.”

  Chapter 21

  The weather had held and Kirk’s new group had made good time over the last three days, travelling a little over fifty miles. The land had been flat and easy to traverse. Nothing interesting had happened until yesterday, when they encountered another group. Kirk had been in the lead and spotted the strangers as his group cut across a field. A group of twenty or so strangers had been travelling west on an old county road. Kirk stopped his group and had them lie low in the overgrown weeds. He watched the strangers pass by through the scope on his rifle. They never noticed Kirk and his group hiding in the field some five hundred yards away. The strangers were a sad group. Only three of them carried weapons, and they didn’t seem to have very many supplies. They looked ragged and hungry. Kirk wished them well as they passed down the road, but he felt in his gut that most of them would probably die soon.

  The next day, Kirk chose a spot by a creek to camp. He sat his pack next to an old oak tree. Down the hill from him, a creek about forty feet wide meandered through the small section of forest. He pulled out his road atlas and examined it. He traced the route they had followed. After studying the map for a little while, Kirk decided that they were along the northern part of the creek that fed into the lake just to the west of what the map called Walnut Point State Park. He looked around at their surroundings as the last of the group made their way up to him and started to unload their packs. He liked what he saw. The creek was big enough that it should hold some fish. Edible vegetation grew all around. Squirrels ran along the treetops, playing and jumping from limb to limb. He even saw a fresh pile of rabbit shit a few feet away and deer tracks down by the creek bank.

  “This looks like a good spot to set up camp. What do you think, Scott?” Kirk asked.

  “As good as any we’ve come across.” The old man agreed.

  “Jimmy, would you and Lucy gather some firewood for tonight, please?” Kirk said. The two teenagers grumbled a bit but were soon off hunting for suitable wood. “Scott and Clay, I want to show you guys something.” He motioned the two men over. He pointed out the animal signs that he had seen. “Scott, you’re the leader of this little group, right?” The family looked to Kirk more and more as they got to know him a little better and he taught them more about how to fend for themselves, but he thought it wise to placate Scott every now and again to head off any resentment that might be build up.

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, I was just thinking that we might want to stay here for a couple of days. Our meat is getting pretty thin. I think we could replenish a good bit of it here. Plus, I don’t think a couple days of rest would hurt anyone. What do you think?” Kirk asked.

  “But won’t that slow us down?” Clay asked. “I mean the sooner we get where we’re going the better, right?”

  “Festina lente, my friend.” Kirk said.

  “What?” Clay asked.

  “It’s Latin for ‘hurry slowly.’ It was a favorite saying of the Roman legions, and Augustus, I believe. It sounds funny but makes a good bit of sense when you think about it. The premise being that you’ll make better time in the end by taking the time to move deliberately and being well prepared. I think that if we take a couple of days to build up our supplies, we can move quicker for about the next week, if we’re lucky. We won’t have to worry about finding food as much and can travel until it’s almost full dark, rather than stopping a few hours beforehand to find a good spot.”

  Scott frowned as he thought over the option. “It sounds like a good idea to me.”

  “Good.” Kirk said as the group began making preparations for the camp.

  Minutes later, Jimmy and Lucy brought back several good limbs for the fire. Kirk gave Scott the hatchet and his combat knife to begin breaking down the branches into firewood. He walked over to his pack and pulled out about thirty feet of five-fifty cord and his emergency fishing kit. He looked over to where Lucy, Jimmy, and Sherry were talking with Leesha. “Any of you guys ever make a trot line before?” The group shook their heads.

  “What’s a trot line?” Lucy asked.

  “Come on over here, and I’ll show you.” Kirk said as he cut a two and a half foot piece from the end of the cord. He pulled out the seven inner cords. “Can you hand me that rock there, Jimmy?” Jimmy handed him the softball-sized rock. Kirk tied one end of the long piece of cord around the rock, looping so that it met at ninety degree angles around the rock. He did it again, offset at a forty-five degree angle to the first loop so that the rock couldn’t come out of the rope. He took out seven hooks from his emergency fishing kit and tied them onto the seven smaller pieces of inner cord. Once Kirk had the hooks secured to the seven strings, he tied the seven stings to the cord that he had fastened around the rock. He left about three feet between each string and explained. “The idea here is that we’ll bait the hooks and throw the rock as close as we can to the other side of the creek. We’ll tie off this end to something on the bank here. The hooks will hang down in the water. If we’re lucky, some fish will swim by and take the bait. When we pull the line back in, they’ll be there for us, ready to clean and eat.”

  “So the trot line fishes for us?” Sherry asked.

  “That’s the idea.” Kirk said. “We can take care of other business and come back and check this every couple of hours.”

  “What are we going to use for bait?” Leesha asked.

  Kirk rummaged around in one of his pockets and produced a small bundle. He unwrapped it, and Leesha gagged. “What is that and why does it smell so bad?”

  “It’s the organs from the quail we killed last night. I hoped we’d make it to the stream today, so I held on to them to use as bait. They’ve been hot in my pocket all day. That’s why they smell a little less than fresh. It’s actually a good thing.” Kirk said.

  “A good thing for what?” Sherry asked. “Making sure we don’t get too close to you?”

  Kirk laughed. “For one of the most prevalent fish in North America, the catfish. They love smelly crap. Usually, the smellier the better. It’s perfect for the trot line. While you can trot line for just about any fish, I’ve found that catfish is usually the best.” Kirk cut up the quail innards and baited the hooks. He asked Jimmy to bring him a stick and a rock. Kirk grabbed the rock tied to the cord and threw it into the creek. He took the stick and rock that Jimmy brought him and used the rock to pound the stick into the creek bank. He tied the free end of the trot line around the stick. “There. We’ll let that sit until dark and check it. If we have anything, we’ll take it off and bait the hooks again and let it sit out all night. In the meantime, you ladies feel like doing a little fishing?”

  “I thought we just did.” Leesha said as Clay walked over to join the group.

  “No, I’m talking about real fishing.” Kirk said. “Let’s go get you some poles.”

  Kirk led the group down the creek bank for a little piece until they came to some saplings about six feet tall. He selected three of them and pulled out his multi-tool. He pulled out the knife, bent the saplings over and cut them at the base, where they bent the most. The little trees broke open as the knife released the stress of bending them. Kirk ran the knife around the other side and severed the samplings. He then ran his knife along the trucks of the trunks to remove any little limbs. When he finished, he had three straight poles. “For this I usually like to use green wood if I can find any. It’s a little more limber and gives more with the fish.” He led the group back to where they had set out the trot line and retrieved the remainder of his fishing kit. He cut three lengths of fishing line from the kit, fastened them to the small ends of the poles, and secured his three remaining hooks to the other ends of th
e lines. He took out three small pieces of lead and attached them to the line about four inches above the hooks. “You got any experience fishing, Clay?”

  “Yeah, I used to go with my dad a long time ago.”

  “So, you can show the ladies how to bait a hook and take the fish off the line?”

  “Yeah.” Clay chuckled.

  “Good. Now all we need is some bait and some bobbers.” Kirk used a couple pieces of the inner five-fifty cord to secure dry pieces of wood to the fishing lines for makeshift bobbers. He showed Clay and the ladies where they were most likely to find some worms in and under the semi-rotten dead leaves from last fall. He dug with his hands until he caught six of them. “My favorite bait for something like this is grasshoppers.” He said as he kicked around in a section of tall grass, scattering several of them. He and Jimmy caught five of them, which they put in a small plastic bag with the worms. Kirk led the group over to the creek bank, baited a grasshopper on the hook and handed it to Clay. “Here you go, big guy. You’re in charge of catching dinner.” Clay smiled at him and began teaching the women how to cast out their line.

  Kirk looked at Jimmy. “You ready to do a little hunting and set some snares?”

  “Yeah!” Jimmy said.

  “Clay,” Kirk called back, “do you mind if I borrow your pellet gun again?”

  “No problem. It’s tied up in my pack.”

  Scott looked up from cutting the firewood. He saw how excited Jimmy was around Kirk and how he soaked up everything Kirk taught him. Scott still didn’t trust Kirk. He wanted to, but he just couldn’t get past the way the man leered at Lucy. He hadn’t done anything but look at her, but it bothered Scott; however, he had to give the man credit for the profound change that had come over Jimmy. With Kirk around, Jimmy had regained some of the youthful exuberance that Scott feared had been snuffed out of him when Jan had been killed. He may not trust they guy, but he had to admit that things were better with him as a part of the group. Hell, he’d even noticed Sherry warming up to Kirk, even though she was as suspicious of his motives toward Lucy as the rest of them. Maybe Sherry was just trying to distract the man away from Lucy and alleviate any threat that was there, but Scott knew his daughter. He felt she was developing a liking for the guy.