They took turns recounting the days, and the people they met, as more drinks were poured, and the dogs grew restless. Frequently, they interrupted each other, adding little details. ‘And then Deedee threw up and we all thought she was dying’, and ‘I screamed when I saw the snake rear up and fell overboard’, and ‘Georgia thought Josh was a woman’.
They all grew quiet as Georgia recalled going upstairs that first time in the Jenkin’s house, of the empty boxes of insulin, the romance novel on the bedside table. Finally they talked of constructing the Spyder, and that last dreadful evening when the Ozark Free Army came calling.
‘And now here we all are,’ Georgia said, trying to sound cheerful as she leaned over to pick Ant up and put her on her lap.
Dave cleared his throat, a myriad of emotions crossing his burly features. ‘That’s some story,’ he said, ‘and I thought I had it tough.’
‘You did,’ Lola said, putting her arm across Dave’s shoulder and leaning into him. ‘You had to bury four of your friends, and cope with the loss of the entire township, isolated and alone.’
Dave gave a short huff, holding up Pepe, the tiny fluffy dog looking incongruous in Dave’s huge hands. ‘I had Pepe, we gave each other a reason to keep going.’
They tried to persuade Dave to come and live with them. Pointing out there was no need for him to be alone any longer, and that it seemed pointless to be living at opposite ends of the township.
And yes, it would be very nice to have a mature male around, someone with a capable mind and hands.
At first he had been unwilling to leave ‘Greely’s in the Corn’ but as they woke up Ruby and said their goodbyes, he suddenly changed his mind. They loaded his possessions onto the Spyder, feeling a united sense of pride as he ran his eyes over it, commenting, ‘how cool is that.’
He followed them back to the house on his own bike, the one that had been leaning outside. Pepe tucked into his jacket.
The next morning Georgia came downstairs, followed by the dogs, to find Dave already out in the yard, Pepe by his side as he tinkered out by the water tank. There seemed to be pipes and bolts and tools all over the place. Before Georgia could stop her, Ant put her ears back and streaked over to Pepe. Georgia gave a muffled shriek, expecting bloodshed, but Pepe stood his ground, allowing Ant to sniff him all over. His tail wagged hesitantly, and Ant did a little sideways jump. Then she gave a little yap, wiggling her bottom and the two of them started playing.
Who would have thought?
‘Go figure,’ Dave said, as he stood up wiping his brow with a kerchief. It was going to be another unbearably hot day, and Dave was already sweating heavily.
Georgia gave a little laugh. ‘Yes, I was not expecting that.’ She indicated the tools laying on the ground. ‘So, what are you up to?’
‘Putting in a hand pump, figured seeing as I was staying here, I thought I would put myself to good use. Once I get this baby in place then whenever the tank gets low you can pump up the water from the well, and…,’
‘There’s a well?’
‘Yeah, didn’t you know? I thought everyone knew about the well.’
Georgia shook her head. ‘No, I had no idea.’ But it made sense that he knew of it. Of course he did, in these small communities everyone knew what you had for breakfast before you were even up and out of bed.
‘Not surprising really. It’s been sealed over since the town water got hooked up back in the sixties. But I reckon once I get the slab off, swap over the pipes, and put in the pump you’ll have running water, and seeing as how your tank is up fairly high, you should get pretty good pressure.’
‘Really?’
He grinned at her. ‘Yes really, of course you’ll still have to come out here and pump it up, or if you are smart get Josh and Jamie to do it, and you probably should still be boiling the water. But apart from that it will be just like having it on the mains.’
‘You have no idea how much that means,’ Georgia said, ‘if you knew how many buckets of water we…,’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I have a bit of an idea. Lola was telling me all about it.’
‘She did?’ Georgia said, surprised. She couldn’t remember them saying very much to each other at all once they had come home. But then, he had been given the downstairs bedroom, right next to Lola’s. To her amazement Dave suddenly went red, his ears nearly scarlet and he became very busy with a wrench. Yes, a definite interest there!
‘By the way, Ruby’s making breakfast, and I’ve put the kettle on,’ she said, ‘come in and have something to eat.’ Then she added, probably a little wickedly, ‘Lola is up.’
He grunted something about getting it all connected up first and Georgia went back indoors.
Having running water was going to make their lives so much easier, but that wasn’t what had kept her awake most of the night. They now had eight mouths to feed, actually twelve she mentally corrected herself, counting the dogs as well. It was early September, and by November it was going to start getting cold in earnest.
They had, she calculated, at best two months to gather enough food and firewood to last them right through to spring at the very least. She brought the subject up over breakfast and soon ideas were flying back and forth.
‘Well, there’s a whole lot of corn out there,’ Dave said, ‘and it’s just about time to be harvesting it.’
‘Which reminds me,’ Georgia said, ‘didn’t you mention something about the silo’s being filled with corn. That Harry talked about it.’
‘Nope, the silos are empty, it’s all been sold. He was delirious by that stage, but there’s more than enough still growing.’
‘Okay, so we need to harvest as much as we can, keep some as it is, dry some to make flour, and keep some back for replanting next year.’
Dave suddenly looked grave, slowly shaking his head. ‘No point in saving any for planting,’ he said, ‘it is GM corn.’
‘What does that mean?’ Lola asked.
‘Genetically engineered, modified,’ Dave said.
Georgia put down her coffee cup. ‘Meaning?’
‘In a nutshell, aside from the fact that we were all made to sign technology license agreements when we purchased the seeds, GM seeds are hybrids. Chances are they can only be grown one time. We have to buy new seeds every year.’
Georgia felt herself growing still. ‘You mean, that some bastard corporation designed corn that couldn’t be planted out from saved seeds. That doesn’t seem credible. I mean, if the corporations collapse, or…,’ she took a deep breath. Never mind corporations collapsing, something far greater had happened. She regrouped her thoughts. ‘So what you are saying is that right across the United States, hardly anyone will be able to grow crops because the seeds were mutated! Why would anyone sign up for that?’
Dave shrugged his shoulders. ‘You can’t fight big business, believe me, we didn’t have a choice, and they pretty much held us over a barrel.’
‘I’m sorry, that was a bit rude of me,’ Georgia said, ‘I wasn’t meaning you in particular I was…,’
Dave waved her apology away. ‘No it’s fine, I understand where you are coming from, and you’re just feeling the same frustration we all felt.’
‘The way I see it,’ Ruby said, sitting down, looking none the worse for her previous days drinking, ‘we will just have to grow potatoes.’
They all stared at her, and then Georgia said, ‘you know that’s not such a bad idea. Everyone around here had vegetable gardens, I bet if we dug around we would find more than enough to put down a decent size patch.’
‘And don’t forget the chickens I saw over at Auntie Darlene’s,’ Lola exclaimed.
‘Oh that’s a great idea,’ Rebecca said, ‘we could get eggs.’
The thought of eggs brought a momentary silence to the table. Georgia tried to imagine what it would be like to have eggs as part of their diet once more.
‘Deedee and I could hunt,’ Jamie said, ‘get more rabbits for canning.’
‘There’s that, Dave agreed, ‘but remember, worst case scenario, we could survive on the corn if we had to. Just won’t be able to do that next year.’
‘The dogs can’t survive on that,’ Deedee said, ‘they need meat.’
Dave nodded. ‘Corn is worst case scenario, but we can do better, seeing as you guys know how to can, we could go out and bag ourselves a couple of deer. That should get us through the winter.’
‘And we should can more fruit,’ Josh said, ‘that fig tree was pretty full.’
‘And make jelly,’ Deedee added.
‘We’ll need a hell of a lot of jars!’ Georgia said, ‘besides which, we need sugar for the jelly. She looked over at Dave. ‘Was anyone growing sugar beet down here?’
It couldn’t be that hard to extract sugar from them, probably very similar to processing sugar cane back home.
‘I don’t know about sugar beet, I think the Schneiders went for a crop of sunflowers instead this year, and I don’t know how much sugar you need,’ Dave said, pausing for a moment, ‘but I’m pretty sure I saw a couple of sacks of sugar over at ‘Greely’s’. Or was that flour?’ He massaged his beard as he considered this, then said, ‘no, it was sugar. There’s still a heap of food over there. Part of the reason I moved in there.’
‘And you left it there?’ Lola asked wide eyed.
Dave looked a little sheepish. ‘Well I have to admit, with the shock of meeting you guys, and having a little bit to drink, I didn’t even think about it.’
‘You okay Georgia?’ Lola asked, ‘you’ve gone awful quiet all of a sudden.’
Georgia shook her head, ‘I’m fine, I’m just trying to get my head around sacks of sugar.’
By mid-afternoon they had it all sorted. They planned all the things that needed to be done around the house from fencing the back yard, to making relatively portable vegetable boxes that could be kept inside during the winter months. The small side room that led down to the basement would be transformed into a hen house and the nearest shed would be used to store the firewood. They would need a lot of that, both for cooking and heating the house. The gas would not last forever.
But before they set any of those plans in motion they would systematically go from house to house, pretty much as Georgia had done up in the Ozarks. The difference now being that they had the luxury of the Spyder as they collected up food and jars, and anything else they might need.
‘What if they come back,’ Jamie asked suddenly.
‘What if who comes back?’ Georgia asked, only half listening as she read back through the list she had been writing, checking to see what still needed to be added.
‘Auntie Darlene and all the others.’
She looked up from the notepad, slowly tapping the pen against the table top. She had not thought of that possibility. In fact, judging from the others expressions, none of them had.
‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘then we will share the food and hopefully, there will be enough.’
‘Coffee anyone?’ Lola asked, pushing her chair back as she stood up.
‘Excellent idea,’ Dave said.
‘I’ll have another cup of tea, if you don’t mind dear,’ Ruby said, holding her cup out to Lola.
There was a sudden burst of activity in the kitchen as they nearly all stood up at the same time. Rebecca and Jamie reached up into the cupboards for cups and saucers, and Deedee fetched the powdered milk and the small jar with the last of their sugar from the pantry. Georgia measured out the coffee as Lola put the kettle on to boil. Josh set out the teapot, and Dave searched in the drawer for teaspoons.
‘Holy Moses,’ Lola said, ‘we are smoking hot, running like a well-oiled machine.
Georgia nodded. ‘We most certainly are, we are a great team.’
As they began to sit back at the table Georgia looked round at her family. ‘There is something I want to say she began,’ and then fell silent. A wave of emotion suddenly threatening her with tears, as they all looked at her expectantly.
‘Go on,’ Lola said.
‘Just not sure how to start,’ Georgia sniffed.
‘Start at the beginning,’ Deedee said, ‘that’s what you always tell me.’
‘Okay,’ Georgia said, looking at Dave. ‘We talked yesterday about our trip, down here. About the things that happened, but I want to add something to that.’ She took a deep breath, glancing round the table.
‘Something I want to say to all of you. On the 11th of July, Rebecca, Jamie, Deedee, the Bostons and I fled our home and ran for our lives. I’ll be honest, I was terrified, I felt so unbelievably alone and unsure of myself and I had no idea what to do or where to go. I was so scared of making bad judgement calls and taking the wrong decisions.’
‘I didn’t realize you were scared, I…,’ Rebecca began, but Lola hushed her.
‘Let Georgia speak.’
‘Yes I was,’ Georgia continued, ‘you see, I had always had other people to lean on, and suddenly everyone was relying on me. Expecting me to know how to handle the situation, yet somehow we managed. The thing is, we managed because we were all there for each other, watching each other’s backs, developing our own set of skills. None of us could have survived this long without each other.’
‘I know I wouldn’t have,’ Lola said,
Josh made a funny noise in his throat, ‘and I definitely wouldn’t have.’
Rebecca glared at Lola, ‘I thought you said to shush.’
‘All of you be quiet,’ Jamie said suddenly, ‘let Georgia finish.’
Georgia couldn’t help grinning at Rebecca’s indignant expression. ‘As I said, none of us could have survived without the others. Jamie and Deedee with their hunting, and Lola with her skinning and fishing, and Rebecca spurring us into action when they were going to hang Josh.’
She paused for a long moment, taking a sip of her coffee. ‘Then we discovered Ruby could cook and can, and as for Josh, I couldn’t have managed to get the Spyder together without him. Even the dogs did their part. From that first night, when Millie woke us up with her growls, and later when Badger nearly died trying to protect Lola. Ant also did her part. She kept us laughing when we felt there was nothing left to smile about.’
‘And somehow through it all we kept our heads, and well now we are here, a family of friends. And this morning Dave gave us running water.’ Georgia shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed at her emotional outburst. ‘Well, that’s it really, I just wanted to say how great you all are.’
‘Well on that note, Dave said, holding up his cup, I reckon we should have a toast.’
‘What should we toast to?’ Deedee asked.
‘To being survivors,’ Lola said.
‘Yes,’ Georgia said, ‘to being survivors of the sun,’ and as one they echoed, ‘survivors of the sun,’ as they clinked cups and drank deeply.
Epilogue
The two cloaked riders cantered through the night; the horse’s hooves kicking up great puffs of snow that were caught by the howling wind and tossed skywards. A lazy wind that cut through to the bone, and brought tears to the eyes which froze immediately. The men’s faces and beards testimony to the distance they had ridden.
The white expanse before them gleamed strangely in the light of the blood moon. As they rounded the top of the Bluffs nearing their destination, the horses began to get restless, tossing their heads, and snorting. Nevertheless the men pressed their mounts onwards, whispering encouragement to them as they picked their way amongst trees, black against the ethereal colors of the sky. In parts the track narrowed and they were forced to stoop beneath low hanging branches heavy with hoar frost.
Somewhere behind them a coyote howled. It’s yip-howl, answered almost immediately by another. As they reached the flats and the wide open spaces once more, a third coyote materialized from the shadows and crouched ahead of them, head lowered, shoulders hunched, lip curled up in a snarl. The horses shied to an abrupt halt, side stepping and eyes rolling, as vapor bellowed from their nostrils.
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Nathan instinctively dropped his hand, stroking his mare’s withers, feeling the ripples of fear running through her skin as he reassured her. The coyote was joined by two more, and then yet another. The pack of them now yipping and snarling, unafraid and standing their ground.
Suddenly a shot rang out behind him, echoing madly across the frozen fields, startling birds out of the trees above them. The coyotes fled into the shadows as his horse reared up, nearly unseating him. He cursed, grasping his reins, and steadying his horse. ‘Not funny Bro,’ he said, as beside him, his brother-in-law slid the rifle back into his saddle scabbard.
‘It did the trick,’ he guffawed, ‘sent them scampering, tails between their legs.’
The shotgun blast still ringing in his ears, Nathan could not help but feel a sudden flash of annoyance at Brent’s gung-ho manner. But as always, he let the anger go. The man had also lost his wife and daughter to this nightmare. Instead he merely grunted, ‘that it did,’ adding after a momentary pause, ‘and now the whole of Bethel knows we are here.’ Then he wheeled his mare round, and urged her into a canter.
After the bitter months of searching and following false trails this was his last bastion of hope. The remote possibility that his own wife and children had somehow reached the house in Bethel was all that kept him going. Losing his sister Maggie, and his niece Deedee, was bad enough. He was not sure he could handle any more loss.
They arrived at the house an hour or so before dawn, approaching the familiar structure at a slow trot, then dismounting and leading the horses across the frozen yard towards the sheds and the back door.
They knew immediately that they would not be celebrating this night. For in the pale moonlight they could see that the back door hung open, heavy icicles clinging to the door frame, glistening whitely against the darkness of the interior. Nathan felt his heart compress, actual pain stabbing through him as he realized that his prayers had not been answered. Rebecca, Jamie and Georgia would not be here.
‘What do you want to do?’ Brent asked.
‘We’ll stay here, the horses need to rest.’ He said the words, but his mouth felt wooden and it was as though someone else had spoken. Then acute disappointment searing through him, he fetched the lantern that swung from his saddle bag and crouched down to light it.
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