The man was still screaming when the station cleared and silence filled the shack. The four of them stood there not wanting to look at one another. Mike stood up and walked over to the little stove and turned off the burner, then went back to the table and sat down, suddenly no longer hungry.
Later, Ted was on the radios listening for anything that might be out there. The military radios were all silent, but the ham had plenty of traffic on it. As Ted listened he heard people from all over the country talking, and then he caught a transmission that grabbed him. A ham in England was talking with another in Maine. According to the English ham operator, while there had been some damage in the UK associated to the solar flare—power lines down, substations burned out and many structures burned as a result of the power lines overloading and setting them on fire—there was no damage to cars, and most electronics still worked in the areas that had power. Power was out in most of the country, but there were small pockets that had it and the other areas were being restored.
The citizens of England had been told that restoring power to the entire country would take time, as the large transformers used at power plants and substations would take time to manufacture. There were even cases of transformers sitting in storage yards catching fire and burning. It had been determined that the stored units had not been properly grounded and had absorbed the load from the flare, causing the damage.
Ted listened for a few more minutes then went out to let Sarge know what he had heard. He sat on an old wire reel and relayed the information to the old man. Sarge sat there listening, taking it all in, not saying anything. Ted finished with, “What’cha think?”
Sarge sat there for a minute and then said, “I guess that proves my theory.”
“What theory is that?”
“Remember when I said that an EMP could have been set off, either as an act of terrorism or deliberately by our own government?”
Ted thought about it for a minute. “Vaguely. You think that could be it?”
“What the hell else would do all this? Sure some of it may have been from the flare, but the rest of this had to be something else.”
“Who do you think did it?”
Sarge rocked his chair back on the rear legs. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“I guess not.”
“Go tell Doc that we’re going to go drop Don off.”
When they had found a likely place on the river and lifted Don to drop him over the side, Ted said, “Kinda messed up just dropping him in the river.”
“Best we can do for him,” Sarge said. He went back to the console and turned the boat back down the river.
“Let’s go drop off the food before we start on the pump. If she really is out of food then I want to get it to her quick,” I said as Danny climbed onto the Polaris.
“Cool. Let’s go by the house and drop this off. I’ll ride with you.”
I nodded my head as he started the machine. I followed him down to his place and waited at the gate while he drove it up to the shop and parked it. Danny walked back out to the gate and climbed in and we headed down toward Miss Janice’s house. She had forty acres at the end of the street, which turned into her driveway. Her gate was closed and Danny got out and opened it. I drove through and he closed it behind me.
Pulling up in front of her house, I honked the horn as we got out. Danny went towards the house and I went around to the back of the truck to get the food out. I could see the old woman talking to him at the front door as I walked up with what we brought. She looked frail and sickly, but she was very warm and welcoming.
“Come in, come in,” she said as I came up, holding the door for the two of us.
We went in and the old woman was upset she didn’t have anything to offer us except hot water with a little lemon juice.
“Don’t worry about us; we’re here to bring you some stuff,” I said.
I set the bag of venison on her little kitchen table, then a cloth shopping bag with a couple pounds of lentils, five pounds of rice, a couple dozen tea bags, a Ziploc bag of sugar and some assorted cans of veggies and two cans of Spam. When I looked up at her, she had tears in her eyes. Her thin hands were pressed together in front of her mouth and were shaking.
“You okay?” I asked.
She stepped over and reached out and wrapped her arms around me. Patting her on the back, I tried to comfort her. “It’s okay. Mark said you might need some help, so we came down. I just wish we had known earlier.”
Through her tears she thanked us, hugging Danny as well, and told us how desperate she had been. How she couldn’t bear the thought of asking anyone for anything when no one had anything to give. She didn’t know what she was going to do and had prayed to God, then there we were, and she knew it was an answer to her prayers. I told her I didn’t know about an answer to her prayers, but it would help for a while. I told her that it was very important that she not tell anyone.
She didn’t understand why I wouldn’t want anyone to know; she had heard bad things about me from some of the people in the neighborhood, but what she had been told couldn’t be right. “You can’t be as bad as they say, here you are bringing me all this.”
I told her I appreciated the vote of confidence and let her know she was in the minority for thinking that way. Looking around her place, I saw a big fireplace in the living room. It was an older style one that had a big black iron hook on one side for suspending a pot over the fire. That answered my question about where she was going to cook.
We finally got around to asking her about the men she had seen on her property. She told us she had seen two men on the other side of the pasture. They were standing on the outside of the fence looking at her house. When I asked if they had guns, she just laughed, “Sweetheart, these old eyes can’t see that far.” She couldn’t tell how they were dressed either. When I asked if she was sure she saw people, she replied, “Unless Bigfoot is wandering around out there, they walked down the fence yonder” and pointed across the field.
Danny told her to take care of herself and that if she needed anything to drop by his house. He then asked if she had a gun. “Hang on,” she said, and walked out of the room. She returned with a 1903 Springfield, it looked kind of comical. Before us stood this little old woman, not more five foot two, her frail hands wrapped around the stock of a big old rifle held up at her waist. It was something out of an episode of Beverly Hillbillies: Granny goin’ out possum huntin’.
Danny was shaking his head. “You know how to use that thing?”
The old woman smiled, opened the bolt and closed it with a slap. “You betcha.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You be careful with that artillery. We’re going to go and take a look at the fence.”
We finally got out of her house, after several rounds of thank you’s and good bye’s. We went to the Suburban first to get our rifles, then headed out across the field. We were both laughing about the ‘03, how big it looked in her hands, and what we thought would happen if she pulled the trigger. Once we got to the fence, Danny went right and I went left. We were going to walk the length of it to see if we saw anything. I was almost to the north end of the fence line when Danny called out, “Over here!”
Walking back down the fence, I saw what he was looking at: on the other side of the fence were several sets of footprints. The prints went off into the bush on the other side of the fence. “I’m gonna hop over and see where they go,” Danny said.
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “We need to be careful, though.”
The tracks went down a little trail that intersected with a larger one where there were tracks from an ATV. It looked like there were two people that came in on it. Worse was that it looked like they had been there more than once. The trail went off into the Ocala National Forest; they could have come from anywhere. We t
alked about the possibilities for a minute, then about how long since they had been there. The tracks were not fresh; it looked as though it had been several days at least.
Danny had the idea to sweep the trail. If anyone came again the tracks would be clear, and if they came in and saw the trail swept, then they would know someone knew they had been there. We cut some scrub oaks and took a few minutes to wipe out the tracks for about twenty feet of the trail. We’d done everything we could for the moment and headed back to the truck to go and get the pump installed at Danny’s.
The pump installation didn’t take long, but if it weren’t for the huge pile of PVC parts Danny had it wouldn’t have been possible. Danny liked yard sales and always looked for those boxes or buckets full of miscellaneous parts that seem to be at every yard sale. He has piles of assorted stuff, PVC parts is just part of that inventory. Initially we were just going to connect a hose bib to the discharge side so he could fill a drum every few days, but I had another idea.
Using the wires that were already there, I spliced them into the cord of the pump. I went to his panel and moved those wires to a single pole breaker in his panel on the same phase as the inverter. Wired like this, the pressure switch for the pump would control this pump as well. When the pressure dropped, the pump would kick on and pressurize the tank, then cut off. It would function just like the in well pump. Bobbie was positively thrilled when she realized she could use the toilets again.
Chapter Sixteen
As Thad ran back down the trail towards the fence, he heard automatic weapons fire, then nothing save himself crashing through the brush. His mind was racing, his heart was pounding and he was scared shitless. He gripped the old side-by-side in his right hand, and all he could think was, Let me just get there, let me just get there.
He let out a cry as black smoke started to rise into the sky. As he got closer to the fence, he caught glimpses of the flames through the trees. He didn’t know it, but he had started to cry. Reaching the fence, he could now see the nightmarish scene in full. Flames leapt from the roof of the house, and thick black smoke was pouring out the kitchen door. Thad put a palm on a fence post and vaulted the fence. Without thinking about his own safety, he ran towards the house. Smoke poured from the open front door.
He stopped there for a second looking at his worst nightmare unfolding before him. He took a quick look up the road just as a white mail Jeep turned off the road. Thad put his forearm over his mouth and ran through the front door, but it was futile. The smoke was so thick it burned his eyes. They teared up immediately to the point he couldn’t see. He dropped to the floor and tried to crawl in, but the thick smoke was now less than a foot from the floor. He crawled out the front door coughing and gagging. Once outside, he fell on the ground still gagging.
Finally getting a breath, he stood up, screaming for Anita and Tony, but there was no reply. Kneeling down, he stuck his arm in the front door and groped around beside it. He felt a pack and pulled it out: his. Sticking his arm back in, he felt for the others, and his heart sank when he found them and pulled them out. He sat there holding little Tony’s pack, crushing it against his chest and wailing. He was crying so hard he was convulsing. Reaching out, he pulled Anita’s pack over and cradled it in his arms. Looking into the hellfire behind the door, he again screamed for Anita, and again, there was no reply.
Thad got to his feet and remembered the SKS in the wall. Reaching around the corner, he grabbed the hook and yanked the panel off, then knelt down and felt for the rifle. Finding it and the other stuff he put in there, he took it all out. He chambered a round in the SKS. The fire was growing in intensity and he had to back away from the house. He carried the three packs over to the truck and dropped them in the bed. Lowering the tailgate, he sat down. All he could do was wait for the flames to die down.
Thad sat there as the fire consumed the house, its progress marked by small pops, windows falling out, the roof falling in and then the walls collapsing. Thad sat and watched, feeling completely and utterly impotent. He pushed away the thought that his wife and little boy were in the house by telling himself he didn’t know. He pushed that thought to a deep part of his brain. He sat in the bed of the truck and cried throughout the night.
The fire burned itself out in the early morning. The thoughts of Anita and Tony were clawing to get out, but he succeeded in pushing them back in the hole in his chest. He tried to look around in the ruins of the house, but it was still hot and too dark. It would be several more hours before the sun came up, several more hours to keep those thoughts shut up.
When Thad opened his eyes, the sky was just starting to lighten. It was overcast and the layer of clouds looked like slate. He knew he needed to go into the house, but he didn’t want to. He stood there for a moment surveying the scene before him. Rubbing his chin, he stepped up to where the door once was and looked again.
Inside the angular blackness was what one would expect to find after a house burned: the springs from the living room furniture and the beds. There was a pile of pots and pans, the cabinets having turned to vapor around them. In the center of the black was the bowl from the toilet, the tank lying in shards around it.
His eyes settled on a form in front of the springs of the sofa. A rather large charred lump with soft curves was covered with ash and charcoal. He wasn’t consciously observing it, but his eyes were fixed on it. It was the lines of pink and white that brought him around; in all the black there were cracks of pink and white under the char. Thad slowly walked through the ash and debris, stopping just short of the form. Stepping around it and turning his head, the form slowly took on a recognizable shape.
In an almost detached manner he made out a head, then an arm. Under the arm was another head, though smaller. Though he was looking at the charred remains of his family, that wasn’t what he saw. He saw Anita lying on the floor holding Tony. That was how he would always remember them, not this: this wasn’t them. Turning away from them, he went out to the barn, which hadn’t burned, and found a shovel. Going out to where he had buried the old man, Thad started to dig.
The digging lasted into the midday. Thad dug without stopping. When the first grave was complete, he stepped out and shoved the spade into the ground to start the second. With the spade buried in the ground and his foot still on it, he paused, looking into the hole. Pulling the blade out of the ground, he stepped back into the hole and started to cut the side out, enlarging it. Widening the hole didn’t take long. With the digging complete, he stepped back out of the now larger hole and walked over to the old pump and took a long drink.
Walking back out to the front of the house Thad reached into the bed and took out the two smaller packs. Setting them on the tailgate, he opened them and pulled out some items out of each. From Tony’s pack he took the Transformer. He held it and looked at it. After a moment, he opened his pack and stuck the toy inside. In Anita’s pack he found her hairbrush. It was an old heirloom she’d had for as long as Thad had known her. The silver was tarnished and the bristles worn, but she treasured it, and now he would. Holding it to his face, he breathed deeply, taking her scent in with his eyes closed. Letting out the breath, he stuffed the brush into his pack as well.
He took the two ponchos from their packs and went back into the scorched remains of the house. Unrolling the ponchos on a fairly flat spot, he steeled his nerves for what came next. He was standing there flexing his fingers, tense, anxious and nervous for what came next. Looking down at his hands, it suddenly struck him that he could not do this barehanded. The thought of having their… of having them on his hands was too much. Thad went back out to the truck and pulled the old work gloves from his pack and returned to them. With the gloves on, he knelt to the task at hand. It was gruesome, grisly work. For the first time since the sun had risen, the tears returned to his eyes. Getting them both out and wrapped, Thad went back to the barn and returned with a wheelbarrow. They wer
e so small he was able to move them both at the same time.
He gently placed them in the grave still wrapped up. Looking at the two bundles, it didn’t feel right. As gently as he could, Thad unwrapped them, leaving one poncho underneath them both. He placed Tony’s little form back into his mother’s arms, then covered them both with the second poncho. He stood and looked down at them, the tears running down his nose, small round spots shining on the poncho where the tears landed. Thad reached up and pulled the watch cap from his head and ran his hand through the stubble on his head. He looked at the cap, then back at the poncho. Leaning down, he lifted the poncho and placed the cap between the two of them. That little act made a difference to him. He suddenly felt better. He had them to keep with him and now they had him, for eternity.
Thad filled the grave slowly. He worked steadily and the grave was full too soon. He decided against a maker. If he marked the grave, then others would be able to find it, and he would prefer that no one ever know where they lay.
Realizing there was nothing more he could do, Thad looked down at the fresh dirt. The mound barely rose above the surrounding grade.
He said, “I love you, and I always will. I will see you again, and until that time I will carry you in my heart.”
With that he went back out to the front of the house and began putting his gear together. He was going to go get the Scout and all the stuff he had in the cache. He knew what he needed to do and where to start. How wasn’t important; getting it done was. He’d move the Scout closer to where he would need it. With what he had in mind, the old pickup would be useless shortly.
Surviving Home Page 15