Amitola: The Making of a Tribe

by A. Grant Richard

  Members of their tribe stayed there when they were out scavenging or on missions, and they would help to supply him with food and other necessities. They took care of each other.

  Chapter Eight

  The rainstorm eventually died down that evening. Everyone was fed, clean and relaxed for the first time in weeks. Maia and Tye played a game of poker with the kids while Charlie and Caleb surveyed the damage. The storm knocked down a few more trees and scattered the debris from the house. None of it revealed the hidden shelter, so they let it be for now.

  There was smoke rising in the distance. It was too much to be a campfire, so they figured the lightning had set a tree or structure on fire. They weren’t too concerned about it spreading since it had rained for more than two hours straight. The trees, dead or alive, should be soaked enough that they wouldn’t ignite.

  Charlie recruited Caleb to help wash the clothes. They’d been soaking in soapy water and needed to be hand scrubbed, rinsed then hung to dry. Sadie decided she wasn’t a fan of poker, so she helped too. They each took on a chore and got to work. Charlie was in charge of hand scrubbing. Caleb was responsible for rinsing and ringing. Sadie would hang the clothes to dry inside or outside depending on their weight.

  Hand washing clothes is a laborious chore, especially when they haven’t been washed in weeks. Try as he may, Charlie couldn’t get everything out. The dirt was caked in on some parts of the clothing, and no manner of rubbing them together would remove it. At least they would smell a little better. Or so they hoped.

  One thing was sure, hand washing clothes post-apocalypse led to some pretty good farce, and Caleb and Charlie were masters at it. They joked and laughed the whole time. Six months ago none of them would’ve ever thought that hand washing clothes would be tolerable much less fun. It really all depends on the company.

  Maia, Tye, Junior, and Elex were still battling it out in poker when Sadie came in with the first batch of clothes. Maia got up to help her. She pulled the hook for the retractable clothesline out of the wall and stretched it to the other end of the shelter. She was just about to hook the line to the wall when the guys started in on her.

  “You can’t quit now. You have to give us a chance to win our money back,” Junior said, laughing.

  She hooked and pulled the line taut to hold the weight of the wet clothes. “No, I’m smart. I know to quit while I’m ahead.”

  Tye counted the copper in front of him. “You just took all of our pennies. I have thirteen left. I thought you said you didn’t know how to play poker.”

  “That’s what’s so funny. I don’t. I faked it. I don’t even know what I had in my hand.”

  Junior shuffled the cards. “You bluffed? Oh, you definitely can’t quit now.”

  “I’m not quitting. I’m hanging your underwear, so they’ll be dry when you go to put them on. Oh, wait, all I have to do is wipe them off. They’re duct tape drawers,” Maia snapped back.

  Caleb, hearing her and still in comedy mode himself, walked in with the second batch of clothes, “Underwear? Oh, I’ve got underwear. Speaking of, who are these babies for?” he asked while holding up a pair of petite and black, boy shorts panties. “Please tell me this isn’t what you’ve been wearing Elex.”

  “Excuse me!” Maia ripped back, grabbing the undies from him. “Those are for me, thank-you-very-much.

  “YOU wear those? Sorry! They just don’t look very girly.” he said, unable to contain his laughter.

  “And what is wrong with these? It’s not like it’s granny panties! Or kissy-kissy faux leather boxers.”

  “Nothing. Nothing. It’s just not what I’d imagine you’d wear—“ He held his hand up. “NOT that I imagined you wearing anything. Wait, no! Not that I imagined you naked! I mean. Nevermind. Dammit. Forget I said anything.”

  She was red in the face, and it had little to do with her Scots heritage and everything to do with the fact that her femininity, or lack thereof, had just been the topic of conversation.

  “If you must know I wear these, so I don’t have a panty line. What good does it do to squish my boobs with ace bandages, wear baggy military fatigues, hide my hair, and cover my face in dirt only to have a panty line? I might as well wear a sign.”

  Darn. That was the atmosphere right about now. They never considered what she had to do to survive out there.

  She leaned against the one bare wall in the shelter, hands crossed over her chest, her head held high. “You know, there was a time when I could be girly. I’d do my nails, and I’d wear cute matching bras and panties. You can’t do that out here. So I shake it off, put on my boy shorts panties, and get to work. Because that’s how we survive. So make fun if you want,” she said throwing the panties at Caleb. “I’ll get over it.”

  Tye looked at Caleb like he’d just sat on his lap dog. But he didn’t have to. He felt bad enough as it was.

  Charlie peeked his head in the door, “What’d I miss?”

  Caleb left the basket with Sadie and walked back out. He didn’t realize joking about underwear was such a big deal. That’s what happens to people though. They typically only consider what they go through to survive and thrive. They fail to think about what others go through. He needed to clear his head.

  Tye understood what was going on. He dropped his cards and went over to help the girls. He couldn’t help but think back on the situation Maia had been in with her husband. Up until a couple of years ago, Lance had been a career military man. He was gone more than he was home leaving her to be the one to take care of the kids and house. She took on all of the significant roles herself. She had to.

  He recalled Lance telling him about her dad and brothers being in the military too. He sighed out loud thinking to himself about how she has never really known what it was like to have a man around full time to take care of her; completely take care of her. She was raised to be a soldier and walked into a marriage that required her to continue to be one. And here she is now, end of the world, soldiering on and taking care of seventeen kids by herself. It wasn’t right.

  “Maia…” he said, attempting to reach out.

  “Ty,” she replied in a soft, calm tone. “I shouldn’t have done that. You don’t have to try to make me feel better, really. My mind is still on other things, and somehow I relate everything back to that.”

  She shook her head and continued, “I chose the military life just like Lance did. I knew what it meant. I might break down sometimes, but I’m not broken. I swear. I just get tired sometimes and when I’m tired I get cranky.” She clipped the t-shirt to the clothesline. “I’ll get some sleep, and I’ll be good to go. Okay?”

  “I was just going to thank you for your service. And thank you for taking in all of these kids who aren’t even yours. That’s all.”

  She peered into his eyes. They always felt so safe. She was beside herself. The tears came again. “Oh my gosh. What is wrong with me? You two come around, and I turn into a basket case. I’ve never cried so much in my life.”

  He grabbed her and pulled her closer to him. “You can cry all you want. That’s what girls do,” he teased her while holding her tight.

  She didn’t know whether to punch him or laugh with him. She just knew it felt right; like she was finally free to experience her pain and mourn through it. Now, there was someone there to pick up the pieces if she temporarily fell apart.

  She buried her face in his chest and let go. “I just feel like I did it all for nothing. All those years, I thought that when he retired we’d finally get to be together. And after the flood, I knew it was going to get bad, but I just remember being so relieved that he was with us and not overseas but then he goes and leaves us to help some other family, and he gets killed for it. I begged him not to go. I begged him,” she was sobbing and holding on to him as though her life depended on it, “They shot him right in front of my babies. He’s gone. Oh my God, he’s really gone.”

  He consoled her and allowed her time to grieve, but he had to know how his fr
iend died, “What happened? He was always so attentive. We could never get the drop on him.”

  She sat down on the sofa and wiped her tears. Tye grabbed a blanket and sat snugly beside her. He covered her with it and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her into his shoulder. He wanted her to know he'd take care of her.

  “It was the day that the Speaker of the House came over the radio. Did y’all hear that?”

  “Yeah, when they declared the whole country in a state of emergency? That’s when the shit really hit the fan." He shook his head in disgust. "They had to know what would happen when they announced all that stuff. Bunch of idiots.”

  “Yeah, that’s when we started seeing people go postal. We were spending the night at this church, and there was this other family there with a bunch of little kids, so the volunteers gave them enough food for all of them,” she hung her head.

  She went on to tell him how two young boys, around age thirteen, were sitting across from the family and they walked over and demanded the food. The dad actually started handing it over to them, but the mother was begging them to just go and leave them alone.

  Tears escaping and anger rising, she said, “We saw one of the boys pull out a gun and that’s when Lance got up. I kept telling him not to go. I had the worst feeling about it, but he went anyway. He tried talking to them and then he held his hand out like he was asking for the gun. The boy shot him; just like that,” she said.

  Tye kept shaking his head in disbelief. Maia just looked down, pulling at strings on the blanket that was covering her, and kept talking.

  “When Lance dropped to the ground the boy shot him again. Some people got up to help, and they shot them too, including one of the boys with us. When they left, I ran to him.” She kept her head down. She couldn’t look at Tye. She knew she’d start crying again if she did.

  “There was blood everywhere. I tried to stop it but there was so much I didn’t know what to do. I kept telling him we loved him; that I loved him and please don’t leave us. I begged God to save him. I begged him. He didn’t. He died right in front of us.” Visualizing her husband’s lifeless body in her arms, she couldn’t fight the flood of tears anymore.

  Tye held her tighter while she relived the pain. “What about the other boy? Did he make it?”

  “No, he died the next day. We were trying to get him to a doctor. His stomach and his side were just black, and he could hardly move. We were pushing him on one of those flatbed carts from Home Depot, both him and Lance.” She threw her hands up. “My boys had to drag their dead father around on a cart. Oh, my God, I need to get to them.”

  “We’re going to get you home, I promise.” He kissed the top of her head.

  She took a moment to weep then continued, “When Reed died we buried them both because it was slowing us down so much. I promised Lance I’d get us somewhere safe. I had to do it.”

  “You’ve been through a lot. Your whole life you’ve taken on all of these responsibilities and look what you’ve done now. I always knew you had fight in you. You have no idea how strong you are.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t say that. I hate when people say that. You don’t know how messed up I am, but I do. Somehow, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other not knowing if I’m about to hit a wall or fall off a cliff. I just know that if I don’t keep pushing through, I’ll never come out of it. So, I keep going. There’s no point in sulking over what you can’t change anyway,” she buried her head in the nape of his neck. He could feel the warmth of her tears on his skin.

  He moved his lips closer to her ears so he could speak softly, “That’s exactly why you’re so strong. Most grown men would cave with what you’ve been through. They'd just stop. You didn’t. You did what you had to do. I’m proud of you.”

  They were both crying now, and with pain in his own heart, he tightened his embrace and kept saying it was going to be okay. He didn’t know when or how but he promised her that everything was going to be okay. They were going to make it. Those words weren’t just for her. They both needed to hear them.

  “Tell me about Maia,” Caleb said, wringing out a piece of the laundry.

  Charlie dumped the dirty water. “You messed up back there or something?”

  “I didn’t mean to. I’m really trying here.”

  “What are you trying to do exactly?”

  Caleb dipped Tye’s cargo pants into the clean water to rinse them. “We keep talking about the end of the world, but this isn’t it. We’re still here. At some point, we have to start rebuilding. What we’re calling the apocalypse, 150 years ago people called daily life.” He dropped the pants into the water. “We’re wimps if we can’t survive. How are we any better than our ancestors who got us here if we can’t make it through this?”

  He stopped for a minute to think. He watched Charlie refill the barrel with clean water. “It might sound strange, but when I saw her, I felt like I knew her and I think she was just as comfortable around me. Maybe because we both trust Tye or maybe we just clicked, I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

  Charlie poured some washing powder into the barrel and stirred it around. “I know what you mean. That story we told you earlier, about how I met them…sometimes certain people draw you to them. You feel attached to them in some way. You can’t just ‘move on.' That’s what happened to me. Call it fate, familiar spirits, tribal instincts, soulmates or whatever you like. There are some people in this world we are compelled to walk through life with. That’s why I stopped. That’s why I intervened. That’s why you stopped. That’s why you intervened.”

  The lights came on in Caleb's eyes. “I get that. That’s exactly how it was. And the thing is, I’m committed. I couldn’t walk away now even if I wanted to. We made a promise to help her, but—” he paused while wringing water out of the pants.

  “But you had no idea there were seventeen other kids and three babies on the way that came along with her?”

  “Exactly. I’m not from here. I don’t know where we can go or where we can stay that’s safe. I don’t know how I’m gonna find food for that many people. I was stretching it with just her and her boys.” He tossed the pants into the basket and searched the water for stragglers, “Don’t get me wrong. Tye’s the man, and he can get a lot of shit done, but I’m more of the brain. We’ll figure it out. I just don’t know enough about her situation to begin putting together a plan to keep us all alive, and I don’t think I’ve earned her trust enough to ask her. And after what just happened in there—”

  “She brought you here didn’t she?” Charlie reminded him.

  “Did she?” Caleb asked, “Or was I just the guy with Tye, the one she really invited?”

  Charlie laughed under his breath, “Son, you want me to tell you about Maia? First, she doesn’t need you, and she isn’t looking for a boyfriend. She’s done fine by herself with these kids, and she could continue to do so. You’re here, Tye’s here, because she wants you here. I think you know that.”

  He elaborated, “She might look fragile sometimes, but she’s just refueling. The thing is she doesn’t want to do this by herself but just like there is a lack of women nowadays there’s also a lack of real, decent men. Most of the good ones have already found their place amongst a new tribe. The ones that are left either try to demean her, take from her, rape her, or like little pups, they’d beg her to let them be her pet.” He put his index finger to his ear and made a circling motion. “All the media hype and rumors about most of the women being gone got ‘em all couyon.”

  “Coo…what?” he asked.

  “Couyon. It means stupid, crazy, you know; an idiot.”

  “Ahh.” Caleb was starting to get the picture. The two men took a seat on a makeshift bench.

  Charlie continued, “A while back we came across a guy that her husband served with overseas. They knew each other, and so they chatted it up a bit. I thought for a second that he might be the one to help her out. Then he found out she was alone and started trying t
o convince her, actually, I should probably say begging her, to be with him. Said he’d do anything she wanted. It was good riddance. How is a fool that's so weak he can’t be alone gonna take care of a woman and all those kids? He can’t, and she knew it.”

  Charlie slapped Caleb on the knee, “Now tell me how you met Maia.”

  He looked down at his feet. “We heard her scream. There was a guy attacking her. She was fighting back, but we could tell she was worn out. Tye recognized her. He trained her back in the day. We charged in and got the guy off her and Tye pulled her away. I don’t think she recognized him at first because she kicked him in the nuts and took off.”

  The old man grinned. “Yep, that’s my girl.”

  Caleb covered his lip with his thumb and grinned. “Yeah, Tye didn’t think it was funny. Anyway, that’s when we saw there were two guys. She’d already taken one out. We tied them up then we had to chase her down. She pulled guns on us. She was bleeding everywhere. We had to talk her down so we could help her, but I knew she wouldn’t shoot. I could see it in her eyes.”

  Charlie smirked. “I figured it was something like that. See that proves it right there. The two of you are here because you refused to back down. That woman can be so bullheaded,” he said thumping his forehead. “If a man isn’t strong enough to protect her from herself then he sure as heck can’t protect her from this world. You two did that for her today. Then you fought for her and even after she put a gun in your face you weren’t intimidated. That’s why this will work.”

  Charlie stood up and placed his hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “And earlier I said she didn’t need you. I was wrong. What I meant to say is she can survive without you. But she wants to do more than survive. She wants to live again. For that, she does need the two of you.” He walked over to the basket of laundry. “I’ve been with her and those boys since a few weeks after the flood, and I’ve never seen her with her guard down until tonight. I don’t know how, but you two did that. I’ve never even seen her cry. And those boys she’s got need men to look up to. Now, talk to her about your concerns. I think you’ll find she’s already taken care of most of it. She’s smart. She just lacks the manpower to make it happen.”