Food was scarcer, yet. They had searched for groceries in each town they passed and bought what little they could. At a side of the road market, they picked up books for five cents and a bag of curtains and a box of nails for fifty cents. On the way out of Alamosa, Ray stopped at a hand lettered sign for a public phone. He went inside the office of a closed motel, paid ten dollars for ten minutes use of a pay phone, and dialed Karla’s number.
* * *
They approached the fire road entrance at dusk. A van sat a few feet from the gate. Ray continued past. He didn’t want to go through the gate with anyone watching.
“It’s going to be camping on the hardground, tonight, kiddo.”
“Can’t we go back to mom?”
“Not till tomorrow.” Ray cut off the road, dipped into a drainage ditch, and crossed scrub land. He parked well off the road behind a copse of conifers. He took the rifle and sleeping gear and set up camp away from the truck.
“Mom’s all alone in the dark.”
“I know, but it can’t be helped.”
“What if someone comes?”
“She has the flashlights and the guns. She’ll be all right.”
Brittany sat on her bedroll. “Why did she want me to go with you?”
“She wants us to get better acquainted.”
Brittany shook her head. “Nooooo.”
Ray smiled. “She thinks I’m better protection than she is.”
* * *
Ray and Brittany walked the road at dawn. The van was still at the gate. They had breakfast and tried again. A man stood outside, taking a leak.
“We’re going to have to play act, okay.”
Brittany smiled. “Like mom and you?”
“Exactly.”
Ray parked fifty feet from the van and stepped out with the rifle and Brittany. They moved to the back, keeping the truck between them and the van. He aimed the rifle at a tree a hundred yards away and fired.
“Good shot daddy!” Brittany yelled.
Ray fired a second time. Brittany again yelled her approval. He fired three more shots. A man climbed out of the van and looked over.
“Can I try?” Brittany shrieked.
Ray handed her the Beretta. “Just line up the sights and pull the trigger.” Ray kept a hand on the gun. Brittany pulled the trigger and her hand flew up.
“Try again with both hands.” He stood behind her as she squeezed the trigger.
The man stepped back into the van. A minute later it left.
Going up the trails was harder than coming down. And Ray had to fix appearances behind them. It was late in the afternoon when they reached the meadow. He parked the truck and Caitlin came down the path with the rifle. She hugged Brittany then Ray.
“I got to shoot a gun,” Brittany said.
“Long story,” Ray replied to Caitlin’s stare.”
“How would you like your own bedroom?” he asked Brittany.
“With a door?”
“Not at first, but I’ll work on it.”
“I’d still like it,” she said.
Ray began to haul up the materials. Caitlin and Brittany helped with all but the heaviest.
“Hope these are for water,” Caitlin said, toting a pair of twenty gallon plastic garbage bins. “And a corn broom. How thoughtful.”
“You know what they say about idle hands.”
“What’s the cement for?”
“I’m building you a cook top.”
“You’re serious?”
“It’ll heat the place, too.”
“Not soon enough. Water had a skim coat of ice this morning.”
“I promise. You’ll be stunned.”
“A dozen eggs. I already am.”
“A ranch outside El Norte had a sign. Brittany saw it. Five dollars.”
“I give up. Why the casserole dishes?”
“Chamber pots. One for each. Nights are getting longer and colder.”
* * *
Ray filled the water buckets from a spring a mile away and carried up ten gallons at a time. It was inconvenient, but people were attracted to water. He figured twenty gallons for drinking would carry them for close to three weeks.
He hauled rocks for the remaining daylight hours. Then, over three days, he built into the front wall a four foot wide stone and block chimneyed fire pit, complete with a metal grill and a stone hood. While the mortar cured, he extended the log wall to meet the fire pit, leaving space for the log door. That took yet another day and was built on a 2 x 6 frame then hung with barn door hinges.
With the cave finally closed in, Caitlin and Brittany joined the work crew, stacking wood in the truck as Ray felled trees and cut logs to length. They hauled three loads the first day, then toward evening tested the fireplace, cooking canned soup and cornbread and thoroughly warming their home.
Five days of cutting, and Ray returned to construction, fashioning from clear poly sheets a reverse hinged storm door that doubled as their only window. He used the remaining framing material on a divider nine feet out from the middle of the back wall. Then he built a stockade type fence-wall on both sides of the frame, creating two sleeping chambers with a rough wall between them and curtains across the front.
For a finishing touch, he connected automotive LED lights to one of the marine batteries and rigged inline switches. He connected the battery to a solar charger, running the lead through a slot in the wall.
“A friend says this can run the lights for a couple hours a day, if we find a good spot for it. Otherwise we’re in the dark.”
“Think you could find another one?” Caitlin asked.
“I’ll try, next time I’m in town.”
Chapter 57
Karla answered the phone—a collect call from Colorado.
“Sorry,” Ray said. “Change is hard to come by and credit cards don’t work.”
“I’m surprised the phone does.”
“How’s Jessie?”
“Always asking for you. She had me show her on the map where you were. The National Forest is huge.”
“Still too crowded for my liking.”
“I’ll bet the barn looks pretty good about now.”
“Ever come across a solar battery charger?”
“Not one that will handle more than flashlight batteries. You want to do lights or anything more, you need an array or a windmill.”
“A little out of my budget. I was thinking about automotive LEDs and deep cycle batteries. Can’t afford to use the truck as a charger.”
“You’re not that smart. Who’s helping you?”
“I researched it with Jessie.”
“You might want several of those chargers, if you can find them. If the mail were moving, I’d send them.”
“What about Fed Ex or UPS?”
“Karla laughed. “I think they’re still doing Amazon deliveries—for people with debit cards and money in the bank.”
“That leaves me out.”
“You have an email address? Jessie said she’d like to write.”
“I think I said I don’t have electricity.”
“Do you have a computer?”
“A dead iPad.”
“Okay. You’ve got the truck. Step one: find a power inverter, 12 volts to 120, and plug it in. Step two: drive to a hotspot—library, rest area, coffee shop, motel. If you get desperate, consult a local. Step three: ask anyone older than six to set you up an e-mail account.”
“I actually have a webmail address.” He gave it to her.
“Then option B. Find an open library, a motel business office, a kid who wants to make five bucks watching you check your mail.”
“I’m on my way home, now. But I’ll remember that, next time. How are things there?”
“Getting worse. Crop theft has gone big time. Armed mobs have descended on fields like locusts—hundreds dead. Farmers have been hijacked on the way to elevators. Roving crews have mur
dered families and combined their fields. People are scared. If that wasn’t enough,” Karla snorted, “The Feds have put a direct tax on agricultural production. They want thirty percent, in kind.”
“I take it few plan to pay.”
“Not voluntarily.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I rent my field. My tenant doesn’t think I can protect him if he hauls to the co-op. The neighborhood group won’t help.”
“So the corn will rot in the field?”
“Sooner or later someone will steal it. Then it will be fallow next year, along with half the state.”
“Are you going to get through winter?”
“I’ll be fine till spring. Could use a man handy with a rifle, though, what with all the gun play.”
“How’s Jessie doing besides missing me?”
“She’s decided she’s sad. Her school’s not reopening. Most are being converted to family shelters for the winter. They say there’ll be some instruction for the resident children. Those staying put have been offered help with home school.”
“Heard anything from back east?” Ray asked.
“Worse than here. People have left the camps and gone home. No way to describe the looting. No way to feed them all for long, either. Some say by winter, it will be one of the sorriest epochs in history.”
“Why didn’t you run?”
“Why didn’t you stay?”
“We view risk differently. What would I have gained killing all your neighbors?”
“You saw that as a likely outcome?”
“Not sure on likely, but it would have been necessary.”
“How safe is it there?” Karla asked.
“We’ve had to relocate once.”
“We?”
“Caitlin and Brittany.”
“You like the mother daughter bit?”
“It has its moments.” Ray went quiet, collected his thoughts. “What happened . . . It would have been for nothing if I left them to starve.”
“Their lives offset four dead?”
“No more than four dead brings justice to the nineteen they killed. It just gives me a why.”
“What’s she like?”
“I asked you along first.”
“Does she know that?”
Ray laughed. “She’d do anything for her daughter.”
They spoke a few more minutes. Karla sensed Ray had found a measure of safety in his move. She did not tell him the worsening nature of her life. Five poachers had come onto her land within sight of the house. She fired at them from the front steps, figuring she was safer if she kept them at a distance.
The men fired back before they ran. Not marksman by any means, but a bullet pierced the living room wall where Jessie hid on the floor behind the couch. Jessie now played in the cellar, the windows cemented over. She wore ill-fitting body armor when Karla could persuade her. Karla wore hers, too, though she recognized the limitations. She cut multiple gun ports in the attic and heavily reinforced the walls. She stored food and water there, just in case, and connected a link to the security cameras.
A larger group had made off with a truckload of corn and scared her with more accurate return fire. She did manage to disable two of their vehicles and later burn them. She hoped the wreckage served as a warning, but she had real doubts she’d see spring without help.
Karla also hadn’t told him the smoldering battles on the border with Mexico had escalated after a narco cartel took over the government there. The US didn’t have troops to spare for a drawn out ground fight and had resorted to destroying whole cities to drive the population away from the border. The strategy was called structured asymmetric warfare, and rumors persisted of chemical and biological weapons.
Chapter 58
Karla bolted from the mattress on the cellar floor. First light, and the video display showed a convoy led by a flatbed truck with a combine slowing on the road. She told Jessie to stay put and ran to the attic. The vehicles stopped past a marker she’d placed indicating three hundred yards from the house. Men swung from the beds of the pickups. They cut her fence and the neighbor’s to the south. She didn’t count the men and harbored no illusions she could scare them away with a few shots.
Three men with rifles separated from the trucks and moved toward her house. Two broke off and jogged to the equipment shed while the last man crouched at the edge of the corn. After a minute, he fired three random shots into the house. Then he shouted: “Stay inside and you won’t be harmed.”
The two men at the shed shot at the locks. Karla took a breath and rested the Nosler M48 in a gun port. She aimed at the man in the corn and pulled the trigger. He fell over backward, his arms spread wide. Karla shifted to the east wall and shot the two other men.
Men from the trucks opened fire on the house. Karla returned to the south wall. She fired five shots in quick succession, hitting three men. Then they found her.
Bullets pounded the wall in front of her. She rolled to the next port, sighted on a man hunkered at the rear of a truck and shot him. Return fire rained into the house. Karla switched to a third port and saw corn shifting two hundred yards out. She grabbed the Ruger Mini-14 and fired ten rounds into the field, leading the wave. Bullets peppered the reinforcing plates in front of her like hail on a metal roof. One zipped through the port, grazing her forehead. Karla fell back, stunned as blood ran down the side of her face.
“Mommy!”
Jessie sat next to the pull-down steps.
“Get down!” Karla shouted.
On the monitor, two men emerged from the corn near the barn. Karla handed Jessie the Mini-14.
“Poke this through the hole and pull the trigger. Stay on the floor. Don’t look.”
“How am I supposed to shoot if I don’t look?”
“Just do it.”
Karla shifted to the sidewall. The men crossed the driveway. She hit one in the chest. The second dove behind a tree. Jessie fired three times. Karla hit the tree twice.
“How many?”
“Count to five, then three more.”
Karla moved again and scored hits on the combine and the cab that pulled it. Smoke puffed from the exhausts and the flatbed moved away. She switched positions with Jessie and fired at the rear truck. The man behind the tree sprinted toward the corn crib. Karla ran to the end wall. Caught him moving between buildings and knocked him down.
A dump truck followed the combine. Karla shot at the closer pickups. Another dump truck began to move, then a third. Men ran after them, abandoning the remaining vehicles. She hit the second truck’s back window.
“It won’t shoot,” Jessie said.
Karla took the rifle and swapped in a new magazine. She aimed at the last truck and let off ten rounds. One tire went flat. The truck leaked fuel.
A bullet struck the gun port. Karla studied the monitor. A man, a hundred fifty yards out behind a fence post. She used the Nosler and splintered the wood. The man retreated along the fence line, holding his arm. Karla fired at him twice more. He fell. Then the shooting stopped.
Karla had not previously considered Jessie’s help. Now she saw it was essential. She had to defend herself, too, possibly alone. Karla took time as they watched the monitors to explain the guns. She padded Jessie’s shoulder and had her shoot at a pickup with the Nosler.
They saw no action for two hours. And no one arrived to help, either. Karla waited for late afternoon to venture out, then dragged the bodies of four men to the road. She set fire to the truck. Dead bodies and a growing line of charred wreckage had to be some sort of deterrent.
Karla woke the next morning and decided the corn had to go. It drew the trouble. If her tenant wouldn’t harvest the crop, she would or she’d destroy it. She didn’t own a combine. Plowing it under started to look like the more viable option.
She called Nelson Redman, her tenant farmer. “We had men in the corn again.”
“They get
much?”
“Some got dead, others hurt.”
“How are you?”
“Tired of this, Nelson. The corn’s got to go.”
“How am I supposed to get it out of there?”
“If you can’t haul it. At least combine it. I’ve got a bin. Use it.”
“That’ll just make it easier to steal.”
“Eventually. Right now, people are stealing what they can see. I’ll disc right behind you. Field will just look empty.”
“Moisture’s too high. I’ll get over in a few days.”
“Two groups shot at us, Nelson. It’s got to be today, or I’ll plow it under.”
“Can’t today.”
“I’ll supply the diesel and pay five hundred cash for the day’s work. If they steal the corn, at least you’ll have something.”
Nelson arrived three hours later. Karla and Jessie sat guard with rifles as the stalks disappeared and the old corn crib filled. She began disking as soon as Nelson left.
Chapter 59
Wind whipped the snow, already three inches deep, as Ray felt his way down the trail in the grey light of morning. Without forecasts, the only way to know the weather was to open the door. He had expected snow in the mountains, just not so early. He did his business and returned to the shelter. Caitlin and Brittany stood in the doorway.
“It doesn’t snow in Iowa this time of year,” Caitlin said.
“At least you’ve got heat and light, here.”
They shut the door and turned on the lights. “We’ll see how long the battery runs. Won’t be getting any solar help.”
He hefted a log into the fireplace and adjusted the flue. All three sat close by in camp chairs, soaking in the warmth.
“Hope this melts in a hurry,” Ray said. “Still a lot to do before real winter sets in.”
Caitlin stared at their wood pile. “That’s part of it,” Ray said.
The snow lasted through afternoon and deposited six inches. It didn’t melt for four days.
* * *
Ray spent another week cutting and hauling wood, stacking it by the truck, parked and screened from view a quarter mile away. The finishing touches to the front wall came next. He spread concrete over the outside surface of the logs and filled voids. That was done to stop drafts and to resist bullets, but it also gave the structure a much stronger appearance and helped it blend into the grey rock where it was constructed.
Times What They Are Page 23