That’d been a week and a half ago, now he was itching to fish and if he could find it, grandpa’s cave campsite he’d been hearing stories of for years.
+++++
His parents called him as they were leaving port in Galveston, making sure he was where he was supposed to be, and then they too were off for two weeks. He stayed with his buddy Daniel’s father for the required day after he finished mowing the lawns he committed to, then as he was slipping out to go home, David’s father had motioned for him to head to the garage.
“Your dad called,” he told Michael, whose face had started to fall.
“Yeah?”
“He said you are still grounded from the car, so to take the big pack frame he has in his closet. He figures if you are going to stay out for a week or more-“
“A week or more?” Michael interrupted, excitement in his face and eyes.
“Yeah, he figured you suffered enough and to have some fun. You just have to stay away from Beth…”
“So the chief put him up to this? My dad is bribing me?”
A pained expression tugged at Mr. Norton’s features.
“He didn’t come right out and say it, but I think so. Look, your 17 and she’s almost 16. That’s not a big age gap, but the chief can make it a big deal, you know? You don’t need that kind of trouble kid.”
Michael paused a long moment before answering, “Yeah, yeah I do.”
“Good. Anyways, have fun and try to check in every other day or so. Take your phone.”
“I will, I just wish Daniel was coming with me this time.”
“I know, he’s been wanting to, but that mission with the church… I really wish you would get more involved.”
“Maybe someday,” he told him.
“Ok, well… I can see you’re ready to head out. Be safe.”
“Yes sir,” he murmured and then gave a mock wave and hurried home, two doors down.
“Kids.”
+++++
Michael left that Friday, his pack heavy. He figured it would take him a good solid three to four hours to get to the trail and another couple of hours to set up camp, if he had enough daylight left to find his grandpa’s hideout. The expected camp had grown in his mind over the years, and he was expecting it to be something truly extravagant, the way it was lovingly described. His father had claimed to have gone there a time or two, but he never had the enthusiasm for it the way grandpa did.
He stopped often, taking sips of water to help counter the killing heat of an Alabama summer, but once he got inside the national forest’s boundaries’, the shade cooled him immensely and he had to stop again to put bug spray on every exposed surface of skin. When he reached the trail head, he stopped and pushed his bike along until things got too thick. He marked a tree off the trail with some orange marking tape and locked his bike to the trunk and kept hiking.
The topo map showed that there were gradual hills here alongside the creek that fed into the lake to his left, and he was looking for one of the stream inlets before he could…
“There it is,” Michael said, smiling.
The creek was right where it should have been, but it was hard to see. It was only about ten feet across and looked to be a few feet deep. The mouth of it going into the lake was choked with lily pads. He started following it upstream and found a crossing point where he could see the bottom. Unlike a lot of National Park's rivers and streams, this spot must have been far enough back that it wasn’t littered with the debris of humanity. The volunteers who kept the trail neat and clean had done a really good job. Michael crossed and immediately went back to the map and tried to look for a visual reference so he could walk in a straight line to where his dad had marked the map. He found a tree, half dead and burned from lightning then took his readings from his compass. It was the right direction, so he headed inland.
Finding the cave was almost like falling into it. It was far enough off of the Pinhoti trail that he’d worried he’d gone too far. He was a good twenty minute hike from it. He’d stopped to rest and took his pack off. He sat it down next to a tree and leaned back into it, wiping sweat off his brow. The evening was cooling, but the Alabama summers could still be scorchers. He took a long pull from his water bottle and a dark shape in his peripheral vision caught his attention. Slowly he lowered the bottle and turned his head, worried something had snuck up on him.
He’d almost sat down in the opening of the cave. It was only about four feet in diameter and he’d never have realized it was there if he hadn’t stopped where he did to rest. He dropped his water bottle, pushed his pack out of the way and crawled halfway into it. The opening had a gentle downward slope that was consisted of rotting vegetation that slowly turned into limestone.
“I hope this is it,” he mumbled to himself.
After a few feet in, he had to make a turn to the right and the opening widened out and the ceiling was high enough for him to stand in.
“Oh shit. Grandpa, what is this place?”
Michael’s eyes tried to take in the dark shapes in the back of the limestone cave. The curve in the tunnel prevented light from coming further inside and everything was draped in darkness. The sharp smell of dung was strong near the entrance but had dissipated back here. He walked slowly, his feet crunching on the rocky surface. He found himself at the back of what he thought was a 20x20 sized room almost six foot tall in one end; the ceiling angling up to almost nine feet. Michael’s shins bumped into something and he almost tripped but put a hand out to stop himself. He found what felt like heavy canvas that was draped over things.
“I need some light.”
He exited the cave and grabbed his pack, pushing it ahead of him and setting it down. He dug around a moment and found his flashlight underneath his ground sheet and clicked it on. The first thing he saw, is that he’d walked through an old fire ring placed near the opening. He moved his pack so the old ashes wouldn’t make a mess of the pack and eventually he worked the light from the opening towards the back wall. Right away he noticed fissures in the sides and ceiling, one such had a cable coming out of and lying across a canvass covered shape. He shined the flashlight around and found two more. One looked like a bed, and when he pulled the canvas back, he found an old army cot.
He pulled the canvass off the tall blocky one and found it to be an old chest, except this one had a flat top and not rounded like folks think of pirate treasure chests. The last one ended up being an old camp chair, much newer than the cot or chest. He pushed the canvas out of the way and then opened the chest.
Something long and narrow was wrapped in oilcloth and he pulled it out and set it on the chair. Three bulky black metal boxes were hidden underneath that and along the edges were framed pictures, the glass old and dusty. For a moment, Michael looked up and around. He noticed rusty finish nails banged into cracks in the limestone and hung a picture there and wiped the dust off the glass. He wet his thumb and used that until he could see the faces in the pictures clearly.
It was his grandpa and his platoon. They were sitting on a hill and by the look of the guns, it was either in Korea or Vietnam, but Michael wasn’t an expert. He looked down and took out three or four more pictures and hung them up, his heart racing with excitement. Then he found an old leather bound book that he thought was part of the metal boxes he blew the dust off of it and looked inside.
His grandfather’s scrawl was familiar and he smiled and set that on the oilcloth wrapped package and moved one of the metal boxes out. It was heavier than it looked, but not terrible. He pulled all three with the cables out and found an old handset to talk into. It was a radio of some sort. A hand crank and several green ammo cans with the old Winchester emblem completed his findings. He thought he knew what was in the cans, and he was pretty sure he knew what was in the oilcloth.
Memories. This cave had been his grandfather’s special place as a kid, and when he returned from war, half his adulthood gone, he’d been adrift for a while. This was his sanctuary. Wanting to conserve the batter
ies, Michael took the oilcloth package to the opening of the cave to find his grandfather’s M2 carbine, the next in the evolution of the M1. It was a select fire .30 caliber carbine that had been tested over time. It had four of the boxy magazines, one of them especially short, the others longer than his hand. With a gulp, he wrapped them back up and returned them to the cave, putting them back in the chest.
The boxes and hand crank intrigued him as much as finding his grandfathers gun, but he was even more curious about the leather bound journal. There were so many things that Michael had wanted to ask his grandfather, but death had taken him just after the New Year. He’d been sick for a while, and it was almost a relief when he died in his sleep free of pain. Now, maybe he could find out.
“And I came here to fish,” he mumbled to himself.
He took the journal outside where he could read in the daylight, happy and proud at his findings and more than a little excited about the gun. His father had to have known. Other than lipping off to the deputy, he’d been a good responsible kid, his parents trusted him generally. That reminded him about checking in, he pulled out his cell phone to make the call when a flash of light almost blinded him. He struggled to stay standing but he sat down, covering his eyes. Whatever it was, it was bright but far off. Almost as bad as looking directly into the sun.
A weird whistling sound had him look up as his eyes were clearing and what he saw terrified him. A passenger jet, miles and miles away was falling out of the sky. He was sure of that fact because the wings were tipping up and down side to side but the jet was losing altitude. He knew Atlanta was in that direction and when he lost sight of the jet in the tree line, the sound of the crash was a soft thump that he could feel. Other smaller soft thumps made him flinch over and over. Forgetting the cave, the journal or anything else, he jogged for almost ten minutes until he found the stream and headed to the lake, where he could see further.
Trailers of smoke arose from the distance and the silence he’d taken for granted was deafening all of a sudden. One plane had crashed for sure and if he believed and felt what his senses told him, many many more had as well over the minutes that followed. He knew something was off, something was really wrong. Every fire and rescue unit in the world should have had their horns blaring, even way out here in the national forest he would have heard that. Silence.
He pulled out his cell phone and wiped the sweat off his brow and hit the button. Nothing, the smart phone didn’t turn on. He held the power button down, positive he’d kept it fully charged. Still nothing. He pulled the back off the phone, pulled the battery and reset it. The phone remained dead.
“Maybe I was wrong,” Michael told himself.
With doubts and only rising columns of smoke as evidence he convinced himself that he was just dehydrated. Maybe the jet was coming into the Mobile airport and they had a new pilot. Surly the jet wasn’t crashing. He would have heard emergency response. Things were normal, he was just nerved up from his findings. Sure, his phone was dead, but maybe he’d bonked it in his hike up, or climbing into the cave somehow.
“And I have to do some fishing,” he smiled. “I have to get some dinner anyways, then I can hike out tomorrow and let Daniel’s dad know I’m all right.”
He was already mentally planning his trip out, but first, he needed his supplies. The fish were already hitting the surface of the lake, picking bugs off. A big bass jumped and that cinched it for him. Fishing first, phone call last.
Chapter 3 –
The Homestead, Kentucky
Martha had checked off the map each and every farm she knew of in the area that might have what they wanted. Sandra and her squad left shortly after David had made the Radio call. To say Gerard sounded happy with the news of hot women and a mountain of supplies would have been an understatement. David’s voice had a new strength in it, one the homestead could hear but Gerard missed that. They would talk to him about it later, but their convoy was now moving. Slowly, but moving.
Gerard told him to expect a Deuce and a half and several old pickup trucks because the modern equipment didn’t work, or they had a breakdown and didn’t have the parts to make the repairs. This was good news as far as Sandra was concerned. She had been worried that they were coming in with APC’s. It was still doable, but the armor would have nulled the effect of their surprise.
“Before we start preparing for this, I’d like you all to encourage my husband to sit down and rest. He won’t listen to me,” Sandra said to the group to the land north west of the barn.
“It isn’t my place, he’d whip my- Ouch maw…” one of the boys they had rescued hollered up before her mom cuffed him in the ear.
Everyone smiled.
“At least sit,” Martha said and with a grimace, sat down.
The mound of dirt was all that remained of the grave Neal had been placed in. They wanted to have Weston placed as well, but had yet to recover him. The plan was actually pretty simple. 55 gallon barrels would be filled with a mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil almost half full. A scrap of wood would be placed on top of that, not so much as a cap, but as a float. Then heavy debris such as hold chains and even rocks would be placed.
Many of the roads traveled in Kentucky were carved right out of the hills. The plan was to bury the barrel on an angle into the hillside and time the charges to blow as the convoy came through. The barrels surrounded by dirt with a loosely capped lid painted to match wherever it was would essentially become a super sized shaped charge. The charge enough should be enough, but the old lengths of chain would turn it into something gruesome. Blake had no qualms about the homestead fighting dirty this way, and he prayed that they could find a solution that would keep them all safe.
There was only one snag in their plan; Patty had mentioned that the cannibal leader had a daughter. None of them ever saw her, and if she was innocent, she would need to be saved. If she wasn’t… Well, nobody wanted to put her down like a rabid dog, and nobody wanted to leave her for the rogue unit to have. It was something to be pondered later as they got more intelligence. Using Blake’s directions, Sandra drove halfway and hiked the remainder of the way with two of her squad. Karen and Corinne. Neither of them were worried about what was coming. It was mostly a wait and watch duty and as horribly as the cannibal leader was supposed to have been hurt, they weren’t worried he’d get the drop on him.
They were to maintain radio silence and keep meticulous notes. With the two of them, one would rest, the other would watch. For a while, it was both of them watching until Karen’s eyes got heavy from the boring duty. Hour by hour, they traded off and waited for Sandra to pick them up.
Several of the men went out with Duncan and they selected the points of ambush. It was where the road cut between a hillside and a sharp drop. The work was hard, but they eventually dug enough rock and soil loose to bury a drum before moving on. The angle would have to be perfect so they left the holes as they were to finish filling in when the rest of the group found everything needed.
On one abandoned farm, they found almost everything they needed including an upright fuel storage tank. Four of the barrels contained feed rations for the non-existent cattle and one contained green pellets.
“Hey, do you guys want some rabbit stew?” Curt yelled. David and Bobby hurried out back to find several white and black marked rabbits hopping through one barn. They were munching on bales of hay that had been left on the floor several were drinking out of a puddle of water that had accumulated in a corner, where a broken board let in the weather.
“Rabbit… Hey, find us some cages,” David yelled excitedly.
“Why?”
“Don’t dump out that last barrel. Its rabbit pellets,” David told Bobby.
“Ok, ok. Curt, what do you think?”
“Won’t take us long to catch them. Look,” he held his hand down and several of the adults hopped over and sniffed his hand.
“Why are they here? They should be in cages…” David mumbled and looked around
.
“Check this out guys,” one of the men they had rescued from the slavers, said loudly from two stalls that looked like they had housed horses at one point.
“What’ve you got?”
“Looks like they ran out of food and burrowed out,” he told them.
“This was a colony setup,” David said softly, opening the door and stepping over a short buffer of chicken wire that probably kept the rabbits escaping when somebody entered their pen.
“So why did they stick around if they got loose?” Curt asked.
“They look pretty tame and… Look, babies.”
There were six men that had driven to check the farms out and they had taken one of the trailers. Unfortunately it wasn’t the one with the big cage on it, so they caught and loaded every rabbit and baby they could find into the bed of the pickup truck. David grabbed all the food and water dishes he could find and they dropped those in too. With one full barrel and now three empty ones, those were loaded onto the trailer with ten bags of white crystal pellets. Lastly, a toolkit that Blake had left in the truck was used to unbolt the upright fuel tank from its legs and that was loaded and strapped down. If it’d been full, the six of them wouldn’t have been able to lift it. As it was, they were able to move it enough to not crush their hands until it was in place.
“I hate to be the party pooper,” Curt said looking around, “but what are we going to keep the rabbits in once we get back to the homestead?”
The sweaty men looked at each other and started laughing. They stayed away from the house but checked a couple of the outbuildings by the barns and found an old tumbled down chicken coop. They took the metal feeder and waterers and went inside. Two large rolls of goat fencing lay to one side of the door with more t posts than they had ever seen in one place. They hoped that Blake had a pounder for it somewhere, because none of them could find one. They loaded that mess between the barrels and the fuel tank before strapping it down.
Tears Of The World: A Post-Apocalyptic Story (The World Burns Book 4) Page 2