by Mark Goodwin
When they reached the porch, Cami plopped down in the swing. “Me, too. And thanks for the prayers. We were in a couple of situations where I knew it was God who got us through them. Have you had any trouble around here?”
Danny set Nick’s pack against the porch rail. “Yeah, Alisa was kidnapped.”
Cami had begun unlacing her boots, but she stopped. “Oh no! Are you okay?”
Alisa leaned Cami’s pack next to Nick’s. “Yeah. My hero came to get me.”
Danny blushed. “JC actually organized the rescue.”
Nick sat next to Cami on the swing and removed his boots as well. “Were you able to neutralize the threat or are they still out there?”
Danny leaned against the rail and gave a brief synopsis of the ordeal.
Nick pointed to his pack. “In that top pouch, I’ve got a pair of Crocs. Can you get those for me?”
“Sure. Cami, do you have Crocs in your pack?” Danny unzipped the pack and retrieved the rubber shoes.
Cami leaned back. “Yes, please!”
Alisa pulled Cami’s Crocs from her pack and handed them to her. “We had to fight our way here, also. We lost the car in the first shootout, then almost lost Steven in the second.”
Cami’s eyes lit up as she put the rubber shoes on her bare feet. “Wow!”
Alisa gave them the condensed version of the trip from Savannah to Nana’s.
“I’m sure you guys have your own stories to tell. It’s been more than a month since the lights went out,” Danny said.
Cami looked over at Nick and took his hand. “Yeah, but I think we need a good night’s sleep before we’ll be ready to relive it.”
“You guys can have our bed, and we’ll crash on the floor in our sleeping bags tonight.” Alisa took Danny’s hand.
Cami shook her head. “As long as the RV is still in one piece, we can sleep there.”
Danny lowered his brow. “But the bedroom in the RV is full of supplies. You’d have to move all of that.”
Cami waved her hand. “Nope. We can sleep on the pullout couch. We’ll relocate the supplies tomorrow. It will be easier. All of our clean clothes, hygiene items, everything is there. Besides, it will give me a sense of normalcy to be around my own stuff.” She looked at Nick. “We haven’t had much normalcy lately.”
Nana walked out on the porch with a plate of leftover biscuits from breakfast. “Y’all eat these to get something in your stomach. Lunch will be ready in about twenty minutes. I’ve got a pot of coffee going for you, too.”
“Thanks, Nana.” Cami took a biscuit and passed the plate to Nick.
The two of them quickly scarfed down the last crumbs from the plate.
Alisa took the empty plate. “I’ll take that in for you. Do you want me to find you something else to eat right now?”
“I think that will tide us over till lunch. But if the coffee is ready, I’d love a cup.” Nick smiled.
Alisa nodded and took the plate inside.
“How long has it been since you ate?” Danny asked.
“We ate this morning, but not much,” Cami said. “When we left DC, we had two weeks of food. By scavenging for greens and cattails, we stretched it out to three weeks. This past week, we’ve been living on whatever we can kill and scavenge.”
Nick ran his fingers through his beard. “The deer are already getting thin. In fact, all the wild game are becoming scarce. We saved one pouch of the dehydrated Mexican chicken with rice. The raccoons seemed to like it so we’ve been using it for bait.”
Danny felt terrible, knowing that his sister had been living off of raccoon, but he figured it was much better than starving.
Alisa came outside with two piping hot cups of coffee. “Here you go. Enjoy.”
“Thanks.” Cami took a long deep smell of the aroma. “We had two boxes of single-serve instant coffee in our bags. We shared a cup every day for the first two weeks, and I’ve been dreaming of this moment ever since.”
Nana prepared a huge lunch which was enjoyed by all. Once the guests had left, everyone pitched in to help boil water so Nick and Cami could each take a long, hot bath. Afterwards, Danny, Alisa, and Rusty walked Cami and Nick down to the RV.
Danny carried Nick’s backpack. “JC will be standing watch over the cattle tonight, so he’ll be keeping an eye on your RV also.”
Nick held Cami’s hand as they walked. “That will be great. We haven’t been able to both sleep at the same time since we left. One of us has had to stand guard while the other slept.”
Cami looked over at her little brother. “And after pushing hard to cover twenty miles a day on foot, you need more than five hours of sleep before you get up and do it all over again. But, we’re home now.”
Nick unlocked the heavy-duty latch and opened the door to the RV.
Alisa followed Cami up the stairs and set her pack near the kitchen table. “Need anything else?”
Cami hugged her. “No. You guys have been great.”
Nick immediately began pulling the cushions off the couch to pull out the bed. “Thanks for everything. Tell Nana we’ll try to make breakfast, but if we don’t. . .”
Danny put his hand in the air. “I know. We’ll see you at breakfast, lunch, or whenever. Sweet dreams.”
Cami blew Danny a kiss. “Good night.”
Danny and Alisa called for Rusty to follow them back to the house, leaving the two road-weary travelers so they could get some much needed rest.
CHAPTER 10
Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
Proverbs 27:5-6
Danny quickly put his hand back up on the table and sat up straight in his chair when Nana walked in the dining room at breakfast Monday morning.
“Daniel, you better not be feedin’ that cat from the table! I’ll put both of you out in the barn.” Nana set a bowl of brown sugar oatmeal on the table and walked back into the kitchen.
Danny grunted his disappointment at having been caught and looked over at Alisa and Steven, who were both snickering. Puddin’ was not deterred by the rebuke and continued to claw at the leg of his pants for another morsel of the country ham fat he’d been feeding her.
Dana scowled at him. “What are you giving her, Danny?”
“Ham.”
She tilted her head in disbelief. “Ham or fat?”
“Ham fat.”
“Danny, she’s getting obese. You can’t feed her all the time.”
“You said it was all fur.”
Dana huffed. “I said it was all fur when we left Savannah. Thanks to you and Nana, now it’s fur and fat.”
“We don’t have country ham very often. Nana only makes it on special occasions. Puddin’ smells it cooking and feels left out if she doesn’t get any. Besides, we only have five more hams. Once they’re gone, you won’t have to worry about me feeding it to her anymore.”
Alisa butted in. “Isn’t the special occasion supposed to be your sister coming home? It doesn’t look like there’s going to be any ham left.”
“Nana has two slices hidden in the kitchen for Nick and Cami.” Danny cut into another piece, separating the fat which he would wrap in a napkin to give to Puddin’ at a more opportune time.
“And you’ve seen this supposed secret ham?” Alisa asked.
“Nope. Don’t have to. She always does that if someone isn’t at the table.”
Dana peered at the last slice of ham on the plate in the middle of the table. “How does she keep the ham from going bad without a refrigerator?”
“Country ham dates back to before refrigeration. It’s cured in a smokehouse with plenty of salt and a little bit of sugar. Once it’s cured it just needs a cool, dry place. The store where she bought these just had them hanging on a wooden pole in the middle of the aisle. Gives the place a nice aroma.”
Dana looked out the window toward the barn. “Can you cure beef like that?”
Danny looked over at Nana wh
o had finally sat down to eat a few bites. “I’m not sure.”
Nana split open a biscuit and put some jelly on it. “You can smoke cure anything in a smokehouse if you got salt. We used to make beef sausage and cure it in the smokehouse when I was young. Didn’t nobody have no Frigidaires when we was a-growin’ up. I’ve heard of people smokin’ fish. I’d have to be mighty hungry to eat a smoked fish, but I reckon some folks like it.”
There was a knock at the back door. Danny’s heart jumped. He quickly remembered that Nick and Cami were probably stopping by, but after all he’d been through since the EMP, jumpiness was to be expected, and perhaps even healthy in small doses. Nevertheless, he pulled his shirt up over the handle of the Glock in his waist as he stood up. “I’ll see who it is.”
Danny walked out the door to the back porch and then unlocked the exterior door of the enclosed porch area. “JC, hey, come on in.”
JC wiped his feet. “Nick and Cami are on their way. I don’t mean to butt in on breakfast, but Nick said he was going to fill everyone in on what they saw on the way here and thought I should probably hear it also.”
Danny patted him on the back. “You’re always welcome. Come on in.”
“Get in here and get ya somethin’ to eat,” Nana said.
“A cup of coffee would be fine, Miss Jennie.” JC took a seat at the large dining room table.
“You have to eat. You ain’t sick, are ya?” Nana brought a plate with a slice of ham on it and set it in front of JC.
JC took a biscuit and cut the ham to make a sandwich out of it. He looked over at Danny. “Did they tell you anything yesterday?”
Danny shook his head. “Nick said it was a rough trip but was too tired to get into any specifics.”
JC nodded as he finished chewing, then said, “It will be good to get some intel on what’s happening in the rest of the world. We’ll be able to plan better what we need to do around here.”
“Did you get your place wired up with booby traps?” Danny asked.
“Just some simple trip alarms. Nothing dangerous. The last thing I need is for Rusty to come over there and start sniffing around and get himself blown up. Or worse, have Annie trip one and get hurt. I’d never forgive myself.” JC looked under the table. “The cat is pawing my leg.”
Dana’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Danny taught her to beg. Isn’t that a cool trick?”
“She just wants the fat from your ham,” Danny explained.
JC looked at the piece of fat on the edge of his plate as he took another bite of his biscuit, as if to tell Danny he was welcome to it but not to expect him to participate in the delinquency of the overfed pet.
Nana reached across the table and took the fat. “Better save that for Rusty. He’ll be mad as the devil if he smells ham meat and don’t get a taste of it.”
Nick and Cami walked in the back.
“Hey!” Cami said to everyone as she walked in.
“How did you sleep?” Alisa asked.
“Oh my goodness! I could have slept all day, but our tummies were growling.” Cami went to the kitchen and poured coffee for her and Nick.
“There’s plenty to eat. I’ve got ham for both of you in the kitchen, and I’ll make y’all some eggs.” Nana left her unfinished plate to go prepare plates for the newcomers.
Cami set the coffee cups on the table and took a seat. “Nana, thank you for this beautiful breakfast.”
“Ain’t no trouble. I got all these other ones in here to feed.” Nana’s voice came from the kitchen. “Y’all go on and eat your oatmeal ‘fore it gets cold.”
Nick spooned some onto his plate. “I take it you guys already said grace?”
“Yeah, we did,” Steven said.
Nick took a bite then looked over at JC. “Danny said you coordinated the rescue mission. I guess you have some training.”
“NYPD, retired. Plus a few years in the military.”
“That was a heavy operation for a beat cop.”
JC was the type who held his cards close to his chest. “Yeah, well, I just did what needed to be done.”
Danny tried to read between the lines. He could tell there was more to JC than he was letting on, but he was obviously done talking about himself.
“Whatever your training is, it’s going to come in handy. It’s a real mess out there.” Nick didn’t seem convinced that he knew all there was to know about JC’s experience either.
Alisa blurted out, “Danny had another dream.”
Nick and Cami both stopped chewing and looked around the table at the others as if they hoped someone would tell them it was only a joke. No one spoke.
Cami placed her biscuit back on her plate. “What about?”
Danny explained the details of the vision, trying to rush through his dissertation while Nick and Cami ate. He did not relish the memories. Each time he had to repeat it his pulse quickened, and he felt unsettled.
Once he’d been through the particulars of the dream, he said, “Alisa and Steven both think it’s about a war. Do you think we’ll be attacked by whoever did this to us?”
Nick sipped his coffee. “Your dream could very well be about war, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about Russia or China.”
Dana asked, “Is that who you think did it?”
Nick shook his head. “No, we think it was North Korea, although they could have been working in concert with one of the others. At any rate, Cami and I stuck around long enough to find out what was going on. That’s part of what took us so long to get here. Two days after the attack, the entire Ohio-class submarine fleet launched a coordinated attack against the rest of the world to level the playing field.”
Steven listened attentively. “Nuclear?”
“EMP. High altitude detonation of Trident II missiles from every sub in the fleet. We turned off everybody’s lights. The joint chiefs deliberated, and some wanted to respond by nuking all of our enemies, but in the end, they decided a like-kind response was the best course of action.”
Alisa leaned in as she listened. “We wiped out the entire world’s power grid? How many missiles did that take?”
“We have fourteen Ohio-class subs, each with twenty-four Trident II missiles, but considering each missile has up to eight 475-kiloton warheads, we certainly didn’t have to launch them all. Thirty or forty would probably generate an EMP that would cover every major land mass on earth with massive overlap sectors. I suspect we lit off double that for good measure.” Nick continued eating his oatmeal.
Steven asked, “How will we ever get the power back if we shut down every country that produces transformers and electronic components?”
Nick tried not to laugh as he sipped his coffee. “Good question. But, considering that China and Germany are the primary producers of those goods, the president and the joint chiefs both estimated that an invasion from those countries was a larger concern than not having them around to build transformers.”
Dana wrinkled her nose. “Germany? They’re a staunch ally of America.”
“Sure they are, as long as you’re well-armed and alert to your surroundings. History hasn’t been kind to anyone that’s been overly trusting of the Germans.” Nick sopped his plate with a biscuit.
JC asked, “If you don’t think the dream is about an invasion, what do you think it pertains to?”
“Resource wars. People are killing each other over a can of soup in the cities. Soon, there won’t be any cans of soup left in the cities, and they’ll figure out where the food is. Large bands are already forming to go on raiding missions in the populated areas. They’re hitting warehouses, scavenging grocery and restaurant supply trucks that are stranded on the highways, and doing whatever they can to survive. By the time all of those resources are used up, you’ll have very well-organized groups of marauders. And, in this type of environment, the worst of the worst will be the ones that survive. The next logical step in the equation will be for the bands to begin looting farms.
“Of course,
many of them will try to institute various forms of neo-feudal systems. The raiders will act as the lords, killing off anyone they see as a threat and forcing the rest to live as serfs, in slave-like conditions. The serfs will do all the work and produce all of the goods, while the lords take what they want and leave just enough for them to survive.
“Anyone who wants to move up in the organization so they can eat better will have to be a warrior and prove their loyalty to the lords. Eventually, the lords will get greedy and begin to fight over other territories.”
Dana tilted her head to one side. “How do you know it will turn out like that? Most people are nice and would rather help their fellow human beings.”
Nick shrugged. “It’s already happening. We ran across five families that were fleeing Greenville two days ago. They were all from an upscale neighborhood. There were only two men in the group when we saw them. Before they fled, they had set up a block watch and were attempting to maintain civility when a raiding party from the next subdivision over killed all the people on block watch one night and began going house to house, taking goods, killing anyone that resisted and taking captives.”
“You mean like sex slaves?” Steven winced in horror.
“No, like slaves for labor. Pre-teen girls and boys.” Nick lowered his head. “Sex slaves would be a waste of resources in the present economy. Women are prostituting themselves for a single meal. You’d have to feed a slave three times a day just to keep them alive. And when I say girls are prostituting themselves, I’m not talking about loose women and junkies who were like that anyway; we’re talking young professional women and young mothers who are trying to feed their children.”
Danny looked down at the floor. He felt sick at his stomach. Even with the dreams, he’d never imagined such unfathomable suffering could be happening right here in America. “The group you ran into, where were they going?”
“The survivors from those five families were headed to Nantahala National Forest to try to get by, living off the land.” Nick took a deep breath. He was visually shaken up by the anguish of the refugees he’d encountered. “None of them looked like they were trained nor equipped for what they were trying to do. The chance of any of them making it for more than three months in the woods is next to zero.”