by A J Newman
“Mike, I’m riding with you. He tried to play with my…. What is this crap about mom-in-law?”
I replied, “Callie and Paul are getting married tomorrow.”
“The hell they will.”
“Joan, shut up and ride.”
Joan didn’t shut up, but she kept her voice low while she cursed and grumbled something about over her dead body. We stopped and retrieved the IEDs, so no one would think Joan had help. I made her take her bloody blouse off and hung it on a limb at the river’s edge, so maybe they would think she fell in the river or tried to swim to the Indiana side.
We were back at the truck in a little over on hour and rode up to four amazed women.
“Joan, you’re safe!”
“Mama, I thought I’d never see you again. Let’s take you home. Paul, help me get mom in the truck.”
Paul stood there with his mouth open and moved slowly towards Joan.
“What’s wrong boy? You shouldn’t have any trouble holding my hand after running yours all over my body. Baby girl, you haven’t even married this bum yet and he’s already making passes at his mother-in-law.”
“What?”
Paul replied, “Momma Joan, that was an accident and you’ll scare Callie talking like that. I know you’re just kidding about killing me.”
“Don’t call me momma. There isn’t going to be a wedding and that’s final.”
Callie replied, “Mom, we’re getting married or I’m shacking up with him like you did with Todd and Chuck.”
She didn’t reply and we drove slowly in the dark back to the hideout.”
Joan heard about the details for the wedding and said, “Oh hell no! If my daughter’s getting married, she’ll use my wedding ring.”
Joan caught Ally and me off to the side and asked, “Did we bring those boxes of birth control pills and condoms from the farm?”
Ally answered, “Yes, are you worried about Callie and Paul?”
“Yes and the rest of you. We don’t have a doctor to deliver a bunch of babies.”
Other than the ring issue, the weddings went off without a hitch. It was difficult to honeymoon in a trailer in a cavern with other people all around, but it can be done.
Joan and Paul told that story about the collision for years with it growing like a fisherman’s story that got bigger and bigger year after year. We had the weddings the next evening after we got some rest. Later we swapped stories about what happened at the farm and the events around that day. Joan still mourns for Chuck, but has learned to love Paul and dotes on him and Callie. This part of our story ends as well as can be expected and we just need to survive this winter and take one day at a time.
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Chapter 17
Early Winter
The Hideout
Three weeks had passed since we holed up at the hideout. We were fairly certain that no one was looking for us and our lookouts hadn’t seen a car on the two closest roads during that time. It was now mid-October and colder in the mornings then I remembered past fall weather to be. The good news was it was about 55 degrees in the hideout winter or summer if we kept the outside air out. It didn’t matter how cold it was this winter, we would be able to heat our campers without using too much of our store of propane.
The air was sparkling clear; the sky was electric blue and smelled like burning wood. Most people had to revert to burning wood or coal in their fireplaces and eventually this would take a toll on air quality. The only real excitement was a week ago when we saw a jet streaking across the sky.
Callie was watching the road in front of the hideout when she came running in the entrance yelling, “There’s a jet in the sky. Dad, there’s a jet! Come on.”
We all came running to the entrance and immediately saw the contrail against the clear blue sky.
“The jet is over there," Callie said as she pointed.
I was coming on guard duty, so I had my field glasses and looked at the jet.
“It’s actually three jets. One is a B52 and the others are much smaller and probably fighters. I wonder if we are at war or are they taking our president to a golf outing?”
That brought some laughs and a couple of jeers. We had forgotten politics a long time ago when we had to concentrate on surviving. Funny how staying alive and caring for your loved ones jumps ahead of jobs, possessions and politics. We started seeing more jets and a few turboprop planes as time passed. The country must have some government or at least military still functioning, but why they haven’t showed up to help us, we wondered.
It took Joan two weeks before she accepted Callie was married and another week before she would talk with Paul without threatening him. Paul handled it very well since Mike coached him on how to handle his new mother-in-law. It was a mixture of standing up to Joan and kissing her ass. The key part was when to do the correct one. Paul was a master at handling Joan and it didn’t take long until she was doting on him as much as she was doting on Callie.
Paul and Callie brought one of their bicycle generators with them from the farm, I hooked a bank of car batteries to them and we had lights inside of our cavern. We had two of the larger makeshift generators, but they were noisy and gave off smoke or fumes. We had built a wall out of two by fours and covered it with a large tarp over the opening, so we could have light at night. This wall also kept the cold winter air out. We scheduled group game sessions, showed movies and started a book club to help pass time when we weren’t on guard duty or doing our chores. We tried to make life as normal as possible considering being holed up in a big cave most of our day.
We had everything we needed to survive until spring and then we planned to take back my farm. We would also get rid of Alan and kill Todd. My secret backup plan was to haul ass down to Alabama and join the Golds. I was afraid that too many of us would die fighting the occupying force. I often wondered why I hadn’t heard from Davi as she promised.
***
Everything was going along very well, boring, but well until two things happened. The first event was a person stumbled into our camp half dead and dropped several bombshells of news on us.
Roger was watching the road behind the hideout. It was over a half mile away and never had any traffic. He had set his traps and had a compound bow ready in case a deer wandered by. He would only use his AR15 if he felt the hideout would be overrun if he didn’t stop the attackers. Both approaches to the hideout were lined with IEDs, tripwires and pongee traps. No one could get in without being maimed, blown to pieces or find themselves hanging from a tree upside down. They had actually caught two deer in the snares. The IEDs were triggered by remote controls if there was an attack on the hideout.
Roger thought he saw movement down the road at the bend and brought his field glasses up to his eyes. Nothing at first, but then he saw something crawling on the ground. He watched for a minute and then decided to get help. He carefully walked back to the end of the hideout, found the line that went down the airshaft and pulled it to ring the bell on the other end. I heard the bell ring, grabbed my gear and proceeded cautiously to Roger’s location.
“Zack, I saw a man crawling along the road down by the bend.”
“Is he trying to sneak up on us?”
“I don’t think so; he might be wounded.”
I knew we had to check this threat out, but I also knew we couldn’t bring anyone into our hideout.
“Let’s go down and get close enough to see if he’s a threat and more importantly, are there any more people out there trying to find us?”
We took off down the hill travelling towards the bend, but staying a hundred yards away from the direct line to it. We arrived at a point far enough from the hideout to start working over towards where the man was last seen. We stayed low, crawled to within a hundred feet of the bend and saw a body lying face down on the road. We watched for half an hour and felt safe approaching the body. I walked over to the body while Roger kept guard and nudged it with my foot. A hand w
hipped out and tried to drag me down while another came up with a knife aimed at my gut. The person was too slow, I knocked the knife out of his hand and rolled him over and pointed my SUB 2000 in his face.
“Davi, what the heck are you doing here? You almost killed me.”
She smiled, took my hand and passed out.
“Roger, take my rifle. I’ll carry her to the hideout.”
I picked her up and carried her as carefully as possible. She was lighter than I remembered and her face was gaunt and filthy. I noticed dried blood and a bullet hole in her jacket at the top of her shoulder and another on her thigh. I picked up my pace because I was afraid she was dying.
I entered the cavern and yelled for help, “Ally, Joan, I need help. Davi has been shot!”
I took her into our camper and placed her on our bed. Ally and Joan took over.
“Get out of here; we have to take her clothes off to find her wounds.”
Lynn brought our medical bag, several wound kits and the blood clotting powder to the camper. They worked on her for several hours and only gave us brief updates. There were two bullet wounds, several broken ribs and she had been severely beaten and had small burned spots on her legs. She may have even been tortured. The wounds weren’t life threatening nor were the rest of her injuries, but she was suffering from loss of blood, severe malnutrition and dehydration. She was exhausted and would probably sleep for days. Joan started an IV to get some liquids and glucose into her until we could get her to eat. Ally was placing small chips of ice in her mouth to speed up the rehydration.
“Where did ya’ll find her?”
“She was lying in the road dying from her wounds. She tried to knife me when I turned her over. Lucky for me she was exhausted, or I’d be dead.”
“I wonder what she is doing back up north.”
I thought for a minute and said, “Bring me her clothes, let’s look for clues.”
Ally came back and said, “There are several strange issues with her clothes. They are men’s clothes and even the underwear is too big for her. She had to tie them to keep them from falling off.”
“She wasn’t wearing a sports bra and Under Armor underwear?”
Ally answered, “No, and how would you know”?
“Long story, but I know and no we didn’t.”
“No, just these ratty worn out jeans, t-shirt and flannel shirt. Oh, she had boots and no socks. I can’t wait to hear the long story.”
I looked at the clothes, went over the description of her injuries and said, “She escaped from captivity and didn’t tell her captors what they wanted to know. I forgot; she also killed her captors as she left. Probably slit their throats, or broke their necks by hand.”
Mike replied, “I get the captured, but where did you get the rest?”
“The rest was the easy part. I was stalled by the fact that no man on earth could have ever captured her and lived to tell about it. That is one bad ass woman. Remember I went on several missions with her and I’ve never seen someone so efficient at killing.”
Joan took the first watch at Davi’s bedside and I took the first watch outside the entrance. I had just settled down and was gazing at the stars when Ally sat down beside me.
“Darling, you don’t have to worry about Davi. Nothing happened between us.”
“I know; I believe you. I am curious as to how you know what underwear she wears, so maybe I am a bit jealous.”
I filled her in on Davi’s and my missions including the barbeque for the biker gang, the thug relieving himself on her head and her dad and her finding Geena and me with our pants down. She was laughing by the end of the story.
“She saved my life on several occasions and I owe her and her father a debt I can’t ever repay, but I’ll always be there for them if they need me. Davi will never come between us, I promise.”
Ally wasn’t a very jealous woman and she was a big help to Davi during her recovery.
***
The second event was when Joan was manning the radio and heard a transmission from the federal government. She alerted us, but the transmission was over.
Joan told us, “The announcer said President Hardy would speak to the nation at 7:00 pm every Thursday evening to update the citizens on the progress the country was making. The announcer went on to say she was in a safe, but undisclosed location until further notice.”
I replied, “Who the hell is President Hardy? There couldn’t have been an election or the chain of succession would have the VP, Speaker of the House and then God knows whom. Callie, do we have any books on the government?”
“Yes, I think I can find one that not only has the succession laws, but should have the current office holder as of the shit hit the fan.”
Her mom spoke up, “When the lights went out sounds better.”
“Okay.”
Time stood still until 7:00 that evening. While we were waiting, Callie found the books with everything we needed and had shocked all of us with the fact that there was only one female named Hardy and she was a senator from Texas. She was a conservative war veteran who was awarded several medals for bravery and had two purple hearts.
“Damn, the whole government must have been nuked. The succession list goes all the way through the cabinet members. I don’t see Senators on the list. They must all be dead.”
“I remember her campaigning and thought that she was a good woman and leader, but she’s a first term senator. This is scary.”
We were sitting by the radio when the announcer introduced the President.
“I want to introduce the President of the USA, Laura Hardy, our President and Commander and Chief of our Armed Forces. Madam President.”
“My fellow Americans, I know many of you have literally been in the dark for many months and wonder why your government hasn’t been helping you recover from this dastardly attack on our homeland. The answer is that the nuclear attack and EMP blasts knocked out all of our communications, destroyed 21 major US cities and destroyed Washington, DC. Yes, our capital is gone and our complete governing body was killed in a few seconds. The truth is our past government leaders dropped their guard and failed to protect us from our known enemies. It took months to form a government and during that time, our military and the country of Israel retaliated and neutralized the ones responsible for the cowardly attack that brought us to our knees. We are guarding our country and are fighting a land war on the southwest border with Mexico to wipe out the drug cartels who are trying to take over our surviving cities in that area. I will be addressing you every week with updates on our progress. I have asked the director of the Department of Homeland Security to set up broadcasts every evening to pass on survival information and to give warning on locations within our borders that are not safe. I’m sorry to say, but we are also fighting drug gangs, criminals and local despots who have enslaved people and set up their local kingdoms on our own soil. The bad news is that 70 percent of our people perished during the first 90 days and we have so little resources to assist you who are in rural or small towns across the country. We have no supplies, men or medicine to help you, but we can pass on survival tips and training. I will speak again next week at 7:00 pm. God bless America.”
We were all in shock. Our country was so devastated that our government couldn’t help us. They were barely able to help the large population centers. We went to bed that night fighting hopelessness. The next morning over breakfast, we decided we weren’t hopeless.
Ally started the meal with the Lord’s Prayer and then asked me to give grace.
“I struggled last night with how hopeless our situation is. This morning I realize I am thankful for the friends around this table, for my wife, daughter and her husband and my new daughter Susie. I am thankful we have food to eat, shelter and a belief that things will get better. Thank you Lord for this food and the daily miracles that you perform that go unnoticed. Amen.”
Davi woke up at the end of my prayer and said, “I was coming to tell you abou
t the massacre in Alabama and Prescott captured me,” and passed out.
I should have asked God for a mild winter.
The End
If you like my novel, please post a review on Amazon.
Book III, Frozen Apocalypse, in this series will be published by late summer 2016.
Thanks A J Newman
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Also from A J Newman
Murder Mystery Thrillers
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In the next novel in the series, they solve “Who killed the Girls?” Was it the high ranking politician or was it his son? Who is behind the attacks on their families? Why don’t they want these crimes solved?
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00HT84V6U
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