Resurrecting Home

by A. American

  I stepped up beside Thad. “That’s my house. I own it. I’m sorry you lost your place, but you can’t stay here.”

  One of the younger men stepped around the old man. “Why not? We need a place and this isn’t being used. If it’s yours, why aren’t you living there?”

  “Doesn’t matter why. I said no. I’m sorry for your hardship, but you folks need to be on your way,” I replied.

  “That’s fine, then. We’ll just take one of the other empty houses here,” the old man said.

  “That’s not going to happen either. This is our neighborhood—you just be on your way,” Thad said.

  “You can’t make us leave. Who do you think you are to tell us to leave? How about you leave,” one of the younger men spat back.

  “Look, there are plenty of abandoned places around. Lots of folks are gone. Just keep looking and you’ll find one. There’s no reason to make a big deal out of this. We’re already here and there aren’t enough resources around here as it is. There’s no water source you can use and we’re already hunting what game there is and it isn’t much,” Danny said, using a reasonable tone.

  “Where you gettin’ water?” the old man asked.

  “Doesn’t matter, just keep going a little farther toward Altoona and you’ll find plenty of places. In Umatilla there’s a bunch of empty houses and two big lakes for water.”

  The old man waved an arm toward the truck, where I noticed a group of young children, huddled together. “We need a place for these young ’uns. They need a safe place, that’s all we’re looking for.”

  Danny nodded. “I can appreciate that, but the next town is just another couple of miles up the road.”

  “I don’t much take to being told what to do,” the old man said as he rubbed his beard.

  “We’re not telling you what to do, just what you can’t do here,” I said.

  The young man pointed at me. “You’re a smart-ass.”

  Danny whispered to me, “Chill out . . . they’ll go.”

  “One way or another,” I shot back.

  “How many people you got here?” the old man asked.

  “Enough,” Thad replied.

  Pointing at my truck, he asked, “You got any fuel to trade?”

  “That’s one thing we really don’t have,” I said.

  “Yeah, gettin’ pretty scarce now.” The old man dug at his beard again and looked around. “I reckon we can go on down the road.” He smiled. “There’s plenty of places no one owns.”

  The young man looked at him. “You going to let them run us off? We got as much right to be here as they do”—he paused and looked at us—“and there’s more of us than there is of them.”

  “Now, now, Billy, this ain’t the time for that.”

  Before I could say anything, Thad said, “And there won’t be a time for it. It ain’t worth it.”

  The old man looked back at him. “You reckon?”

  “No, I know,” Thad replied.

  “Billy, I think we’ll go on down the road and find us a place with better neighbors.”

  “Good luck to you,” Thad said as they began to load up in the truck.

  The young man with the attitude sat on the open bed giving us the stink eye until they pulled out onto the road and disappeared from view.

  “Damn, I thought it was about to go to shit,” Tyler said, letting out a long breath.

  “I have a feeling this ain’t over,” Jeff said.

  “Who the hell was supposed to be on duty down here? We can’t let this kind of crap happen. We were lucky this time,” I said.

  “And there can’t be a second time,” Danny added.

  “We really need to keep our eyes open. With the fire and the camp being released, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of this.”

  “Everyone needs to be armed at all times now too,” Thad said.

  “How are we going to do all this? We need to go to the Forestry place and see if there’s anything there, we have these gabions to finish filling so we have some sort of ballistic protection, and we have to keep watch here,” Danny said, shaking his head.

  “We’ve got eight more people down the road, just remember that. Everyone’s just going to have to pitch in more. We’ll get Jess, Fred, and the girls to work on filling the gabbions. Tyler and Jeff can take the first watch while we go see if we can get into the building. Just modify the board to show who’s where, doing what,” I said.

  When we got back to the house, Mel was on the couch with Little Bit, who was still upset. To our relief they both had weapons on them. I reminded them to keep them close at all times now.

  “Whoever was supposed to be on duty down there right now and isn’t, just allowed a truckload of people to drive right in here. We can’t have this happen again. I know we just started this whole work schedule thing, but it’s imperative that you know where you’re supposed to be and be there without anyone telling you. We’ve got to work together here, all of us.”

  Aric was sitting at the bar in the kitchen. “Sorry, Morgan. Me and Fred were supposed to be down there. It’s my fault. Tyler had come down here to get me because we hadn’t shown up, then you guys came in and started talking about the fire. It won’t happen again.”

  “No one’s perfect, and we’re all going to screw up. Let’s just take a lesson from this. Don’t let it happen again.”

  I sat on the couch beside Little Bit and ran my hand through her hair. “You all right, kiddo?”

  She’d stopped crying but stayed tight to Mel, nodding to my question.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie, no one’s going to hurt you.”

  “When will you be back?” she asked.

  “An hour or two—we won’t be gone long. Tyler and Jeff are at the end of the road, they’re keeping an eye on things.” I gave Mel a quick kiss on the forehead. “We’ll be back.”

  It was a short drive to the Pittman Center, but it gave us a prime view of the looming disaster. As I slowed to turn into the compound, Danny pointed up the road. “Would you look at that,” he said with a low whistle.

  Up the road, we could see what looked like at least fifty people walking south.

  “The next few days are going to be damn difficult,” I said. “This fire is adding a whole new element to the shit storm that is our situation.”

  “You can say that again,” Thad agreed.

  We got out and unloaded the tools, feeling even more pressure to get inside, and quickly.

  I grabbed a hammer and stepped up to the wall. “You guys are going to think I’m nuts, but . . .” I tapped the block wall a couple feet from the door.

  “That sounds solid, probably poured,” Danny said.

  Stepping back and taking up a swinging stance, I replied, “Only one way to find out,” and swung the hammer with as much force as I could muster. The hammer struck with a dull thud. We all leaned in to inspect the damage.

  “Well, you knocked the paint off,” Thad said, chuckling.

  “Hardy-har-har,” I replied.

  “Step back, let me show you how to swing this jack,” Thad said as he gripped the handle.

  Thad brought the hammer in hard, slamming it into the block. This time some small pieces fell from the impact. Thad stepped back and smiled. “Now, that’s how you swing a hammer.”

  “Okay, but the block is soft. When you get to the concrete it’s going to be a different story,” Danny said.

  Thad and I took up positions on either side and took turns striking the wall one after another. The cinder block gave way quickly. However, Danny was right about the concrete. It wasn’t nearly as forgiving.

  “This is going to take some time,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead.

  “Sure is, but I think we can do it,” Thad said.

  Danny took the hammer from my hand. “Let me take a swing at it.”

  We stepped back and Danny went to work. After he took a few swings, a round-robin of sorts commenced, with each of us taking a turn working on it.
We were concentrating on one block, trying to get it knocked all the way down. It took nearly an hour, but we finally broke through. It wasn’t a big hole, but it was large enough to shine a light through and see if this was simply an exercise in frustration. Kneeling down I pulled my flashlight out and clicked it on, shining it at the hole.

  “Anything in there?” Thad asked.

  I stood up and handed him the flashlight. “Take a look for yourself.”

  Thad knelt down. “Damn! Look at all that stuff.”

  “What’s in there?” Danny asked.

  “Pumps, hoses, drip torches, Pulaskis, brush axes. I see some gas cans—maybe there’s fuel,” Thad replied.

  “You see the chainsaws?” I asked.

  Thad’s head bobbed around the hole. “Yeah, there’s a lot in here.” He stood up and handed me the light back. “We need to get in there. This could be the key to stopping this fire.”

  “You know how long it’s going to take to make a hole big enough to get through there?” Danny asked, clearly exasperated from all of our efforts.

  I fished around in the pocket of my vest that held my small survival kit. “Maybe we don’t have to,” I said.

  “Prepper Morgan strikes again,” Thad said. “What do you have in mind?”

  Removing a small signal mirror and duct tape wrapped around a pencil stub, I went out under the trees and found a stick. Using the tape I secured the mirror to the stick and knelt down with the flashlight again. Poking the stick through the hole, I shined the light onto it and moved the mirror around until I found what I was looking for.

  “If we can find a piece of wire we may be able to catch the doorknob. It’s the handle type. Maybe we can hook it and open it.”

  “Anything is worth a try right now,” Danny said. “Let me see if I can find some wire.”

  “I’ll work on making this hole a little bigger, give you more room to work,” Thad said as he hefted the sledge again.

  Danny and I went out behind the building to see what we could find, splitting up in different directions.

  Along the perimeter of the property, a large pine tree had fallen and taken some of the fence down with it. I climbed up on the massive trunk—it was a huge long-leaf pine and was as big around as a fifty-five-gallon drum. As I straddled it, something caught my eye—tension wire from the top of the downed fence. There was a section about five or six feet long lying tangled in the tree.

  “Hey, Danny, go get that hacksaw!” I shouted.

  He trotted off toward the truck and came running back with the saw. “What do you got?”

  I’d freed most of the wire and held the loose end up. “I think this will work.”

  “Woo boy! Now that’s what I’m talking about. Hold it while I cut it.”

  With the wire in hand, we returned to Thad, who’d made considerable progress on the hole. It was now about the size of a five-gallon bucket. We fashioned a loop in the end of the wire and fed it through the hole. Danny knelt down and tried to hold the mirror while I worked the wire, but it just wasn’t happening.

  “Dammit! I don’t think I can get it,” I said, standing up.

  Danny took the wire. “Let me try something.” He put the wire through the hole and stuck his right arm though, then his head. “Hand me your light,” he said, sticking his left hand in the air.

  I handed him the light. Pulling his head out, he stuck the light in his mouth then poked his head back in. We could hear the wire scraping the door, then the floor, then the door again. I looked over at Thad and muttered, “I don’t think we’re going to get it.” Thad nodded his head, agreeing.

  The scraping stopped, then Danny’s muffled shout, “Foo et.”

  “What?” Thad asked.

  “Foo et, foo et!”

  “I think he’s saying pull it,” I said. The only problem was the knob on our side was gone. Thinking quickly, Thad pulled out his knife and stuck it between the frame and door and pried the door open. Danny wriggled out of the hole and let out a loud breath.

  Thad stepped in as light poured into the small storage room. “Look at all this,” he said. “We’ve struck a gold mine.”

  “We sure have. Now let’s hope it’s the type of gold mine that can stop a fire,” I said.

  “What are we going to take?” Danny asked.

  Thad and I looked at one another and replied in unison, “All of it.” We busted out laughing.

  We went to work on bringing everything out. It was an impressive amount of gear: two-inch gas-powered pumps, miles of hose and nozzles, drip torches, bunker gear, four full five-gallon DOT gas cans, three blue DOT cans full of mixed fuel for the drip torches, and probably my favorite part of our haul, flare guns.

  By the time we got everything loaded it was coming on to dark, so we hustled to get back. I realized that while we worked, the people we saw on the road may have walked past, which made me nervous. I didn’t want our group to encounter more characters like the ones we had met earlier this afternoon.

  As we got closer to the house, we could see a large group farther south of our development. I exhaled a breath of relief that they had walked by, and hoped that would be the last large group for a while—though, obviously, with the fire looming, that possibility seemed dim.

  Rolling up to the barricade, I stopped. “’Sup, ladies?” I asked with a smile.

  “Whatever, Haywood,” Jeff replied.

  Thad leaned over. “That group give you guys any trouble?”

  Tyler shook his head. “Nah, one of them came up and talked to us for a minute asking about water. Other than that, though, they didn’t ask for anything. Said they’re running from the fire and told us we should get moving too.”

  “That’s good. See why we’re doing this now, why we have to keep someone here at all times?” I asked. Jeff and Tyler nodded. “As for the fire, let’s see what we can do about that too.”

  “What’d you get?” Jeff asked.

  Thad stuck his big head in my face again, jutting a thumb over his shoulder. “Take a look for yourself.”

  Jeff and Tyler checked out the rear of the truck. “Look at all that stuff!” Tyler exclaimed.

  “Yeah, we got a little bit,” Danny replied, grinning.

  Pointing to the gabions, I asked, “How’d the girls do?”

  “They got one of them filled, it was rough though. They were pretty beat by the time they finished, but they wanted to complete one of them,” Tyler said.

  “Well, we’ll have to get back to them tomorrow,” I replied and waved out the window as we drove off.

  * * *

  Back at Danny’s we decided to leave the gear in the truck, as we were all starving. The stew from hours ago was calling my name.

  Jess, Fred, and Aric got up from the table they were sitting at. “Here, you guys sit and eat,” Aric said.

  The three of us sat down and Mel brought bowls over to us. It was hard to tell exactly what was in the stew, but it was good. Hell, anything would be good at that moment. Blowing on a hot spoonful, I said, “Hey, good job on getting that basket filled.”

  “Oh my God, Dad, that was so hard,” Taylor said.

  “I bet.” I smiled, taking a bite.

  “You have no idea, Dad. My hands have blisters,” Lee Ann said, looking at her palms.

  I laughed. “More than you know, kiddo. When you guys were really little I did more than my fair share of ditch digging.” I held out one of my hands. “Don’t worry, those blisters will turn into calluses soon enough.”

  “Eew, I don’t want calluses!” Lee Ann shouted.

  “Yeah, that’s rough work. I think it would be better to do it in the morning or late afternoon. The middle of the day is brutal,” Aric said.

  Danny looked up and smiled. “Well, it’s only going to get worse.”

  “Speaking of getting worse, it’s getting hard to breathe out here!” Brandy said.

  “Yeah, there’s so much smoke in the air,” Lee Ann added.

  “What were y
ou guys able to find?” Mel asked. I detailed what we had brought back, and though impressed, I could see doubt in her eyes. “Is that even going to help?”

  I laughed. “Let me just put it this way: even before things went south they’d have had a hell of time putting this one out.”

  “Well, shit! What are we going to do?” Mel asked. You could tell that she was stressed simply from the fact that she cursed.

  “Well, that’s what we need to figure out.”

  “I don’t know crap about firefighting, anyone else?” Aric asked.

  “A little, theory mostly, but Mike, one of Sarge’s guys, said he fought wildfires for a couple of summers after high school,” I said.

  “I figured we could set the trailer up with those tanks and use the pumps we found. Essentially, use it as a fire truck,” Danny said.

  “Those striker pumps will help, but they’ll be about as effective as pissing into Hell trying to fight the blaze. They’ll be used for hot spots or if ash sets other smaller fires around here.”

  “Then what the heck are we going to do? We’re going to have to leave again,” Bobbie said, panic in her voice.

  Lee Ann moaned. “Aww, I don’t want to leave again.”

  Taylor looked at me with wide eyes. “Dad, are we really going to have to go? Is there anything we can do?”

  “The only thing I can think of is to set another fire,” I said between bites.

  Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. “What? Are you nuts?” Aric asked.

  “It’s called a back burn. We’ll wait until it gets closer and then light a fire in front of it. If all goes as planned, that fire will burn toward the other one and use up all the fuel. When the two meet, the blaze should stop moving in that direction.”

  “What’s to keep it from moving this way?” Mel asked.

  “Well, what I’m thinking is to start the fire at 485, the road to Alexander Springs. The road will be a barricade this way, and the fire we’ll light will be small so it’s not likely to jump the road. On the east hopefully the run will be a barricade there, and it’ll just burn down into a pocket with no way out.”

  Danny was nodding. “That’s a good idea. With the trailer we can use it for any place it does jump.”