He stopped speaking when someone came in through the doorway and strode up the aisle. It was Chris. To Cody’s surprise, he had an angry look on his face.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” he said when he reached them, talking to them like they were naughty schoolchildren.
“Just talking…and eating.” Cody raised his bag of chips. “Want some?”
Chris glowered at him. “No, I don’t. You two need to come out and help with the refueling. It’s selfish to stand around and let everyone else do the work.”
Cody felt his temper rise and was tempted to tell him that he’d just offered to help five minutes ago. That if it took more than three people to pour gasoline into a few cans, they were in real trouble. He thought better of it though and, pushing themselves off the counter, the two followed Chris out of the store.
Reaching the doorway, Emma nudged Cody. “Chris has been getting kinda possessive about me lately,” she whispered. “I really don’t like it.”
Cody raised an eyebrow, but didn’t reply. Perhaps Eddy’s earlier jest had some validity to it after all. With her sultry looks and outgoing yet warm personality, Chris had obviously taken a shine to Emma. Cody couldn’t blame him. So had he.
CHAPTER 16
At the YMCA staff lounge, Sheriff Rollins sat at the table. To either side of him were his recently sworn-in deputies: Ned Granger, Henry Perter, Bert Olvan, and Mary Sadowski, that comprised the five-man Benton Survivors Group Council. The council, quickly established by Rollins and Granger, was responsible for all decision-making at the camp, and their ruling was final. Perhaps it wasn’t the finest example of democracy at work, but it did maintain law and order. Right now, that was more important.
There was a satisfied look on Rollins’s face. Despite the unpleasant task of having to bury yet more decomposing bodies, most of them children, everything had gone according to plan, and all afternoon he and his team had assisted the other thirty-two Benton survivors in moving out of town and up to the lakeside camp.
Camp Ocoee had over twenty buildings in total, and there was plenty of room for everyone. There were family cabins, several dorms, an infirmary, a large dining hall, as well as a chapel, an arts and crafts room, and some other recreational facilities. At the heart of the camp was a square lawn around which the administrative cabins were centered.
Since arriving, Rollins had made several changes to security arrangements. He’d moved the original roadblock Henry Perter had manned down to the junction of the Cookson Creek Road. It prevented anyone arriving from the north from driving past the YMCA camp and on to Wasson Lodge, located nearby. Simultaneously, he’d set up a second roadblock farther south, stopping anyone approaching from a southerly direction.
In essence, he’d expanded the amount of territory his group now controlled. The last thing they needed were unruly neighbors occupying the lodge. It was less than a mile away from their camp.
“All right, Hank,” he said to Perter, “open the map. Let’s get on with the planning.”
Tall and narrow-shouldered, with a humorous but slightly nervous disposition, Henry Perter was in his fifties and a friend of Granger’s from before. In front of him was a U.S. Forest Service map of the area. Earlier, he’d found a stack of them in the office cabin. Opening it up, he spread it out on the table and the five peered at it from all sides.
Rollins pulled out a Biro from the top pocket of his shirt and marked the two spots where he’d set up the roadblocks. “For now, we need to keep these running 24/7. From now on, let’s call them ‘checkpoints’. Sounds friendlier,” he added with a dry smile. “With more and more people leaving the cities, we have to be ready for all eventualities. I’ve already assigned which men will be on duty tonight, but from tomorrow on, we’ll need a proper roster. Mary, can I leave you in charge of that?”
Mary Sadowski nodded. A small, wiry woman in her sixties, she’d been a clerk at the Polk County Courthouse for the past thirty years. Rollins had known her a long time and knew just how efficient she was. “They’ll need proper training,” she said, making a note in the legal pad in front of her in her neat efficient writing. “Who’s going to give them that?”
Rollins smiled. “Why, you of course. Select all men and women over the age of eighteen. No exceptions.” He glanced across the table at Granger sitting opposite him. “Tomorrow morning, Ned will train the trainer.”
Granger gave Sadowski a friendly wink. “How good are you with a handgun, Mary?”
In reply, the courthouse clerk reached down and pulled a Sig Sauer nine millimeter pistol from her waist holster. “See this? Been my personal weapon of choice for ten years. I’ve fired it many times.”
“How about a rifle?”
“That too. I go to the shooting range twice a month. Used to, that is,” she corrected herself.
Granger nodded approvingly. “Guard duty is mostly about staying alert. It’s our advanced warning on anything coming our way, so good communication procedures are vital. Don’t get me wrong, everyone needs to know how to fire a weapon too. The checkpoints are our first line of defense.”
“Won’t two people standing by a vehicle be vulnerable to attack?” Bert Olvan asked doubtfully. He was a big man with a large belly and a bushy beard who’d owned a small construction company prior to the pandemic. “I mean, if somebody is going to try and take this place, it’s going to be more than just one person.”
“Absolutely,” Rollins agreed. “Tomorrow, we’ll start building proper defenses. For now, a truck parked across the road will have to do. The most important thing is that the guards radio in immediately if they spot any strangers in the area. Like Ned said, communication is the key thing.”
Rollins wasn’t a military man, but he was a quick thinker. What he’d originally perceived as a weakness in the camp’s location, he now saw as one of its strengths. The camp was on a large piece of headland that jutted out into the lake, and was surrounded on three sides by water. It meant that if they were overrun by a larger force, they would be trapped. However, on further reflection, he realized two things. First, with only one roadway into the camp that came in from the west, it would be easier to defend. Secondly, if they were overrun, the lake could actually provide a means of escape by which their attackers couldn’t follow, so long as they made the correct preparations.
“It’s not just the driveway we need to defend,” he continued. “Anyone attacking the camp will most likely come through the woods where it’ll be harder to spot them.” On the map, he pointed out two narrow inlets north and south of the headland that formed a half-open pincer shape. He drew a line on the map, connecting the two inlets. “If attackers try coming through the forest, this right here provides us with the shortest line to defend. Agreed?”
Everyone at the table nodded their heads in agreement.
Ned Granger spoke up. “Problem is, John, that’s real thick forest. Without posting guards every ten yards, it’ll be easy to sneak past. Especially at night. We’ll need to run tripwire. Something that gives us a warning. Perhaps, in time, even create a clearcut. That’ll make it easier to spot intruders.”
“How about digging a trench with sharpened stakes at the bottom?” Perter suggested mischievously. “That’ll learn ‘em.”
Rollins grinned. “All in time, Hank. For now, tripwire.” He looked around the table. “Before finishing up on security, there’s one other thing we need to discuss. Not to be pessimistic, but we need to draw up emergency plans for an evacuation in case we get overrun by a larger force. Bert, how many boats we got here?”
Earlier, Rollins had requested that Olvan take a look and see what the situation was at the camp regarding boats. He knew that water sports and fishing had played a big role in the camp’s activities.
“Me and Hank went down to the boathouse and found two skiffs inside,” Olvan said. “Not enough for thirty-seven people, so we hauled in another four from private homes around the area, making six in total. They’re all sixteen-f
ooters or bigger, so that ought to do it.”
“What size motors do they have?” Mary Sadowski asked. “If we leave in a hurry, they need to be fast.”
“We got four sixty-horsepower engines. They’ll do about thirty miles an hour,” Olvan replied. “The other two are smaller. We’re going to see about getting them replaced tomorrow.”
“Excellent,” Rollins said, pleased. “Next thing. If we need to evacuate the camp, which direction do we head?” He jabbed a finger at the northernmost area of the headland. “If we place the boats in this little cove right here, we can head north to the dam…uh…where the good folk of Chattanooga will be waiting to greet us with open arms.”
A chuckle went around the table.
Northeast of the camp, across a wide strait, was a long channel of water. Rollins ran his finger along it. “Or, before reaching the dam, we could head east along the Indian Creek Inlet. Right at the end is the 302.”
A twisting, winding road, Route 302 ran west to east, following the contour of Lake Ocoee’s southern shoreline before it turned sharply south and headed down to the Georgia state line.
Granger looked doubtful. “That’s the long way round to get to the 302, John. I say we take the boats down to the south headland.” He trailed a finger to where the lake narrowed into the shape of a twisted tail. The area was marked as Baker Creek Inlet. “We can reach the 302 here too, only quicker. We could even set up an emergency camp there, hide a few pickups and jeeps in the forest. It’s not like we’re short on vehicles.”
“That’s a better idea,” Rollins said, studying the map carefully. He looked around the table. “Are we all good with that?” Everyone nodded their heads in agreement. “All right, south it is. Let’s just hope this is a plan we never need to execute.”
“For sure,” Henry Perter said. “Still, in life you got to have a Plan B. You never know what’s coming up next. If we didn’t know that last week, we sure as hell know it now.”
“All right, next on the agenda is food and water,” Rollins said, staring down at his checklist. “After that, we need to discuss what we can do about power. We’ve got a diesel generator that’ll do us for now, but we can’t rely on it forever. Eventually, fuel is going run out.”
Perter frowned. “That’s going to be tough. Perhaps we can scavenge solar panels somewhere around here.”
“Hank, we got a ton of rivers here. I think a water turbine is better,” Olvan cut in. “Or maybe our Chattanooga friends can get the dam working and we can trade them something for running a line over here.”
“How about squirrel pelts?” Perter suggested. “You think they’ll go for that?”
Rollins chuckled. “All right, let’s talk about water and food. That’s more important right now. Mary, where do we stand on that?”
“Everything is under lock and key at the dining hall,” Mary replied. I’ve made a full inventory of—”
Rollins’s radio, which sat on the table in front of him, crackled to life. “Bravo Base, this is Cookson Papa North. Do you read me? Over.”
Rather than using individual’s call signs, Rollins had named the two checkpoints Cookson Papa North and Cookson Papa South, making their identification immediate. He picked up the radio. “Copy that, Papa North. This is Bravo One, over.”
“Sheriff, a convoy of seven vehicles has just arrived here. They’re demanding access to Wasson Lodge. You better get down here right away.”
Rollins eyes widened. Seven vehicles? That spelled trouble. Around the table, all four of his deputies had already stood and picked up their rifles resting against the wall in a neat line. As well as retrieving his own weapon, Granger grabbed Rollins’s too.
“Hang tight, Papa North. We’ll get down there right away.”
As he exited the room, Rollins barked out orders over his radio for a response team to head down to the Cookson Road junction, thankful that he’d had the sense to reconfigure the checkpoints when he first arrived at the camp. Otherwise, at this very moment, a group of seven vehicles would be rolling past them to occupy Wasson Lodge.
If his team didn’t get down there soon, the newly-arrived group might just do that anyway.
CHAPTER 17
After gassing up, the convoy pulled out of the Exxon station. Walter’s white Tundra remained in the lead, though this time, Cody slotted in behind him while another member of Chris’s group took up the rear. Almost immediately, the southbound exit for Route 411 came up on their right. It would take them to Ocoee town, where they would come off the highway and head up to the lake.
“What did Chris want with you back there?” Eddy asked curiously after Cody made the turn onto the 411. “He looked pissed coming out of the store.”
Cody hesitated a moment before speaking. “He told us that me and Emma weren’t pulling our weight.”
Eddy let out a low chuckle. “Maybe he was making sure you two weren’t pulling your clothes off in there. He’s got a thing for her.”
“Yeah, I’m picking up on that.” Cody shrugged. “None of my business though.”
Eddy gave him a look. “I’d keep it that way too, if I was you.”
There wasn’t much to the town of Ocoee. This was a pleasant rural area with a low population even before the disaster, a mixture of farmland and thick forest to either side of the highway. They passed a small gas station, an agricultural feed store, a few smaller stores, then the post office. Around them, the streets were deserted. Cody didn’t glimpse a single soul behind the curtains of any of the dwellings. vPox had taken out the town, like every other one in the country.
Approaching Steve’s Pawn Shop, Walter slowed down, then turned onto Sloan’s Gap Road, a winding country lane that, according to the map, would take them all the way to Wasson Lodge.
Back in Knoxville, Chris had described the lodge as an idyllic location. Built right on Lake Ocoee’s shoreline, there were catfish and bass in the lake, trout in the nearby streams, wild boar and deer in the forest. Personally, Cody wouldn’t have chosen to live somewhere with such a connection to his family, but everybody was wired differently. Perhaps it was a way of remembering them. Perhaps Chris planned on setting up a shrine for them. Who knew?
After passing through several miles of open farmland, they turned a long bend in the road and drove into deep forest where the hot June sun disappeared from view. Five minutes later, they reached the junction of Cookson Creek Road and turned right, following a sign for YMCA Camp Ocoee.
Walter slowed down, then came to a stop. Cody pulled up behind him.
“What’s going on?” Eddy asked.
“Beats me.” Cody poked his head out the window, but couldn’t lean out far enough to see up ahead.
Walter’s voice came over the radio. “Knox One to group. We got a situation. There’s a pickup truck parked across the road with two armed men standing behind it. They’re preventing me from going any farther. I’m going to get out and see what gives. I’ll keep the channel open so you can all hear me.”
“Wait up, Walt!” Chris’s voice cut in. “I’m coming with you. Everyone else remain in your vehicles and stay alert.”
There was the sound of a car door slamming. Before long, Chris strode past Cody, then disappeared from view as he walked along the side of Walter’s trailer.
Next thing, Cody heard Chris’s voice over Walter’s open channel. “All right, Walt. You see anyone else around other than these two guys?”
There was a short sigh, then, “Nope. That’s it, as far as I can make out.”
“Okay, let’s get over there. With twelve of us and only two of them, I don’t see them delaying us long.”
“I’m not so sure,” Walter replied. “My guess is they’re part of a larger group that’s taken over the YMCA camp, maybe the lodge too.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Chris said, his voice tense.
There was the sound of boots walking on the asphalt surface. Raising the volume on the radio so he could continue to listen, Cody opene
d his door and stepped out onto the road, then took a few paces out so he got a view of the road up ahead.
Fifty yards past Walter’s truck, a red pickup was parked across the road. Behind it, two men stood, one on each side, both with semi-automatic rifles raised to their shoulders. When Walter and Chris got to within twenty feet, one of them lifted their hand.
“That’s far enough,” he said, his voice coming over clearly on Walter’s radio.
“Let me do the talking,” Chris murmured to Walter. “Okay mister, what gives here? Me and my people need to pass through. We’re heading up to the lake.”
“I’m sorry,” a respectful but firm voice responded. “This road is off limits to strangers.”
Chris placed his hands on his hips. “Says who, exactly?”
“Say the survivors of Benton, a town fifteen miles north of here. We’ve taken over the YMCA camp. No offense to you people, but we’re not allowing strangers onto our property. There’s plenty of other land around, like pretty much the whole country. I suggest you drive back to the highway and find someplace else to go.”
Chris clearly wasn’t ready to give up that easily, however. “How about Wasson Lodge?” he asked. “Have you taken that over too?”
“Nope. But we don’t want any strangers there. It’s too close to our camp.”
Even from a distance of fifty yards, Cody could see Chris thrust his jaw out. “See, I got eleven armed people with me. You sure you’re in a position to stop us?”
The edge to his voice had grown hard. Chris was someone who obviously didn’t like to back down. Cody didn’t appreciate his tone one bit, and doubted Walter did either. These were locals who had claimed the land first. They weren’t keen on a large group of strangers moving onto their patch, and who could blame them?
“Mister, our group is bigger than yours,” the guard growled, clearly irritated by Chris’s demeanor. “In fact, here come some of them now. I’ve nothing more to say to you. You can talk to Sheriff Rollins.”
No Direction Home (Book 1): No Direction Home Page 9