by Steven Bird
“Wiser words have never been spoken, sir,” replied Ed, giving deep thought to what Henry had said.
“If I were wise, I would be in that cabin in the woods today, instead of hiding down here in a hole in the middle of it all,” Henry said with a chuckle. “It’s easy to be wise after the fact. The truly wise ones among us take the steps they need to take before it needs to be done.”
Chapter Twenty-One: Steps of Desperation
Stepping out onto the trail, Jason dropped to his knees and laid Evan flat on his back. Jason lay down next to him, looking up at the sky and trying to catch his breath. With his eyes closed, he could hear his own heart pounding in his chest. “Damn, Evan. You’re heavy. How long do you think we’ve been going since our last break?”
Hearing no reply, he opened his eyes. Squinting from the sun shining directly into his eyes through the trees above, he looked over at Evan. “Ev... You okay, man?” he asked, shaking him. Jason sat up in panic at the realization that Evan was no longer conscious. “Evan... Evan... Wake up!” he shouted, but still no answer. He checked Evan’s pulse and felt his forehead. “You’re on fire, man. Damn it!” he said, looking around frantically. “Hang in there, buddy. We’re on a four-wheeler trail. We’ll make good time from here. We’ll be there in no time. Just hang in there. Don’t make me carry you all this way for nothing!”
Struggling back to his feet, Jason threw his rifle into the bushes, emptied his cargo pockets of the loaded magazines, and said, “Home stretch, man!” as he grabbed Evan by the arm, pulling him onto his back once again. “Come on!” he said as he started to jog with Evan. The absence of the extra weight of the rifle and ammunition was noticeable at his level of fatigue. Focus Jason. Focus, he chanted to himself keeping his steps in rhythm. Almost there... A few miles... Little miles... Short miles... Almost there... Almost home... Gonna make it... Hooah!... Goin’ all the way... In no time... Almost there... Hooah!... Little run... Short run... Get it done... Not so fun... Gettin’ home... Anyway... There today... All the way... Hooah!... Oh, yeah. Gettin’ there...
In an instant, Jason’s face slid to an abrupt stop on the dirt as he tripped violently on a root spanning the width of the trail. Holding on tight to Evan, he was unable to catch his fall. “Son of a...!” he yelled with rage-filled emotion. Crawling out from underneath Evan, he felt his face to find his lower lip was lacerated and bleeding heavily, and his lower front teeth felt loose to the touch. “Damn it!” he again yelled, in an attempt to vent his frustrations. “Sorry, man. Sorry. Here we go,” he said as he heaved Evan onto his shoulders once again, continuing his jog for home. Goin home... Almost there... Even though... The stupid ground... Tripped me... Gonna cut... That stupid root... With a saw... When I come back... Screw you... Dumb ass trail... Hooah!
~~~~
As the ATV trail wound down a steep hill, Jason slowed his pace to avoid another fall. His legs were cramping and shaking as if he was on the final mile of a marathon. Through the thick trees below, Jason could see light as if the trail was opening into a clearing. Keeping his steady pace down the hill, his quadriceps were burning in a way he had never felt before. He felt he would lose control of his legs at any moment, as all valid and usable inputs from them had left his body long ago. He was now operating solely on pain and devotion to his friend.
As he reached the bottom, he nearly fell from the simple change in the slope of the terrain. Pressing on, he found himself in a pasture filled with grazing sheep on the other side of a barbed wire fence. His extreme exhaustion clouded his mind. He now knew where he was. They were on the outer edges of the Homefront. He dropped to his knees, laying Evan gently on the ground next to him. Evan was soaked with sweat and shaking. His skin was hot and clammy to the touch. Jason patted Evan on the shoulder and said, “Almost home, buddy.”
Trying to stand once again, Jason’s legs felt as if they were being squeezed in a vice as severe cramps ran through his calves and thighs. He shook from extreme fatigue and dehydration. He had pushed his body to the breaking point, carrying his friend for miles and miles over the rugged mountainous terrain. “Come on!” he said aloud, punching the ground. He knew there was no way he could keep up the trek any longer, no matter how close they were.
Looking up at the sheep, Jason picked up a rock and hurled it at the center of the flock, barely missing a grazing ewe. “Damn it!” he said, frustrated by the situation. He then picked up another rock, throwing it again at the center of the flock. This time his rock struck a ewe directly in the side, causing her to run, triggering an instinct in the others to follow suit.
~~~~
Sitting in a tree stand overlooking the pasture, Jake sketched a caricature of one of his former childhood video game heroes. He found himself flashing back to such things often these days. His mother, Molly, often worried that he was in search of his childhood, which was taken from him too early. She didn’t say anything to him about it, though, as reflecting back to a simpler time might not be such bad thing.
As Jake shaded in the character’s hair and contemplated the position he would hold his sword of fire, he heard the sheep baaaah off in the distance and reflexively looked up to see what was going on. Initially, looking through his binoculars, he saw them running away from the tree line alongside the fence. “Dang coyotes,” he said as he lifted his rifle, scanning the area through his rifle scope. “Don’t those stupid mongrels know I have more important stuff to do while I sit up here—besides shooting at them, that is?”
As he placed the reticle of his scope on the fence and panned slowly from left to right, he saw movement and prepared to pull the trigger. Focusing on his target, Jake said, “Wait... what the…?” He twisted the zoom dial on his scope, reducing his field of view, but bringing the image in closer for a better look. “Is that? Holy crap! That’s Jason!” Jason was on his knees, waving his hands in the air, with Jake’s father lying on the ground next to him.
Being too far away to communicate with Jason, Jake frantically called out over the radio, “They’re back! They’re back!”
“Who’s back?” Molly answered from the radio base station in the house. “What’s going on, Jake? Who’s back?”
“It’s Dad and Jason. In the south pasture. Something’s wrong. I’m getting out of the tree,” he said, laying the radio down frantically. Clipping the emergency egress rope to the harness he wore, he rappelled down the tree, landed on the ground, and took off running for the fence.
“Jake! What did you say?” asked Molly repeatedly over Jake’s now unattended radio.
~~~~
Shivering, he pulled the covers tight around himself, attempting to fend off the cold. Feeling a hand dab a wet washcloth on his forehead, Evan opened his eyes to see Molly staring down at him. Wiping a tear from her cheek, she sniffled and said, “Welcome home, baby. Now don’t you dare ever leave me again.” She broke down into an uncontrollable sob as she hugged him and held him tight. “I thought I had lost you forever. We were starting to feel like a group of widows around here.”
“Where’s Jason?” he asked softly, his throat sore and dry.
“He’s fine. He’s with Sarah and the boys.”
“How... how did I get home? I was in the woods. There were coyotes all around us and... Now I’m here. Is this just another dream?” he said as he touched her face.
“No. It’s not a dream. Jason carried you home.”
“Carried me?” Evan asked, confused.
Wiping another tear from her cheek and smiling, she laughed. “He literally carried you all the way home. He’ll probably be sore for quite some time.”
“On foot?” Evan asked, still confused by the feat she described.
“Yes, silly. He carried you here, on his back, on foot.”
“Wow,” Evan said as he reflected on the events of the recent past.
“Yeah, ‘wow’ is right,” Molly replied. “He said just buy him a beer someday when the world returns to normal, and you’ll be even.”
&nbs
p; Smiling and squeezing her hand, Evan said, “I guess that would be fair.”
“Oh,” he asked, his memories returning to him. “Did Charlie and Jimmy make it back? Did they get the girl to the church? And what about Ed and Nate? Did they make it back?”
Evan could tell by the change in Molly’s facial expression that something was wrong. She broke eye contact and looked away for a moment. “Charlie and Jimmy did make it back. And yes, they got the girl to the church. We’ve not seen or heard from Ed and Nate. We hoped they were still with you. Jason told us what happened and how you got separated. Peggy and Judith are both wrecks now.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, attempting to look her in the eye as she evaded his gaze.
“We can talk about all of that stuff later,” she said as she stood up and adjusted the blinds.
“What stuff? Why later?”
Just then, Rachel walked into the room. “It’s good to see my patient is awake and responsive,” she said with a smile. “Like I said, if an antibiotic is strong enough for a cow, it’s strong enough for a bull-headed man,” she said jokingly as she felt his forehead. “Still a little warm, but much better than how you looked when Jason got you here.”
“So what happened with Charlie and Jimmy?” Evan asked Rachel insistently.
Rachel looked to Molly, only to have Evan restate the question. “What happened? I already asked her. She didn’t want to tell me.”
Rachel turned back to Evan and said, “Charlie is fine. Beth... Beth was killed by someone she caught stealing from her while you were gone. Daryl got them. They aren’t a threat anymore. But when Jimmy got home—”
“Oh, God. Beth was pregnant,” Evan said, interrupting her.
Molly sat down on the bed beside him, her eyes welling up with tears. “Jimmy couldn’t handle it. He was devastated. He didn’t want to go on.”
Evan closed his eyes as his thoughts raced back to every moment leading up to the supply run. How many opportunities he had to shut it down based on their security concerns, yet he pressed on with it and now their once rock-solid homesteading community had suffered devastating losses. He felt guilty for his part in taking her husband away from her when she needed him at home.
Molly squeezed his hand. “Everyone else is okay. Griff got banged up pursuing the murderer. He fell off his horse and was hurt pretty bad, but he’s up and about now. He’s not back up to his full strength, but he’s fine. Everyone else is fine.”
She then turned to the door and motioned for Griff’s wife, Judy, to come on in. Evan looked at Judy to see that she was bringing young Lilly and Sammy into the room.
Upon seeing their father awake and alert, their eyes opened wide; they ran to him, yelling, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”
They both climbed up on the bed as Molly said, “Be careful, girls. Daddy is hurting.”
“Nonsense. Come here, my angels,” Evan said as he reached out his arms, hugging both of the girls and kissing them on the head. His heart was overfilled with joy. He was on an emotional roller coaster ride—anguish and heartache over the loss of Beth and Jimmy, yet love and happiness to be reunited with his dear little girls. “Where is Jake?” he asked.
“He’s on watch. He’ll be in here as soon as he can. I’ll let him tell you the story of how he found you and Jason,” Molly said with a smile, her eyes welling up with tears of joy.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Happiness, Worry, and Regrets
Early the next morning, Evan awoke to the smell of a fresh, home-cooked breakfast. He looked around the room and thought, Yep, still here. It must be real this time, as Molly walked into the room with his breakfast on a bedside tray.
“Oh, good. I’m starving,” he said, anxious to see what she had brought. Looking at the meal, he saw one fried egg and one piece of toast from Molly’s homemade bread. “Are we having trouble getting the chickens to lay again?”
“No, silly. Rachel said to give you small meals until we see how you hold it down. If you do well with breakfast and lunch, I’ll get you a more suitable dinner. She said that due to the location and the severity of your wound, she doesn’t want you to go through the convulsions associated with vomiting, which the meds she has you on may contribute to.”
“Orders are orders, I guess,” he said, accepting Molly’s explanation.
“There’s my sandbag,” Jason said from the doorway as he entered the room.
“Sandbag?” Evan replied.
“That’s what you felt like. Just a big ol’ heavy bag of sand.”
“I don’t know how to thank you for getting me home, man. That must have been quite the hump.”
“Ah, don’t sweat it. Like I told Molly—you can just buy me a beer someday.”
“Deal,” Evan replied sharply. “As long as it’s not a craft beer or an import. That’s like five bucks, and with the new economy—whatever that’s going to be like—it could be fifty, for all we know. A three-dollar domestic should settle the debt just fine.”
“Good to see you didn’t lose your attitude like you lost your left testicle,” Jason said with a smirk.
Evan felt under the sheets in a panic to verify if what Jason said was true. “Good one, man. You got me. Now I may have a heart problem in addition to an infected bullet wound.”
Jason couldn’t help but snicker out loud at the success of his joke.
“So, you know about everything that happened here while we were gone, I take it.” Jason replaced their jovial mood with the cold, hard facts of their new reality.
With the smile leaving Evan’s face, he said, “Yeah. I know.”
“Other than that, Daryl is gonna take a packhorse and look for the radio gear I left behind. I gave him the map and details of its location. If he has room, he said he will look for the gear we left behind as well. He should be back later tonight; then maybe tomorrow we can talk about getting it up and running. He gave me a full debrief last night. In addition to what you already know, they’ve seen drones in the area. Several times, they have loitered overhead some of the homesteads, including yours. One time they saw a helicopter, too. I asked them if it was an Mi-24, but they weren’t sure. They just saw the silhouette in the distance. Either way, things are changing around here, and fast. The shootout at the farm seems to have forced their hand.”
“So, nothing on Ed and Nate?” Evan asked, hoping Jason had heard something from Daryl.
“No. Nothing yet.”
“Damn,” Evan said, disappointed with the answer.
“Once we get the radio links up and running, maybe we’ll be able to get some more info from Q and the militia guys. Until then, though, we can’t give up hope. I mean... we just got back ourselves. They could be working their way back here as we speak,” Jason said, trying to remain positive and hopeful.
“Yeah. They’re both tough as nails. They’ve got to be doing fine.”
“Hey, man, I hate to run,” Jason said, changing the subject. “But Sarah doesn’t want me out of her sight for more than a few minutes at a time. You were right about the shorter leash,” Jason said with a smirk. “I’ll let you get back to your breakfast. I’m sure Daryl will want to see you when he gets back from his run. We can all have a pow-wow then.”
Evan turned back to Molly as Jason left the room and said, “Can I at least get some of your amazing homemade hot sauce for my lonely little egg?”
~~~~
“Honey... honey... wake up,” Molly said gently as she nudged Evan’s shoulder.
Yawning loudly, Evan shook his head in an attempt to wake up and said, “Oh, man... that’s why I hate pain pills. They zonk me out. I hate that feeling. I hate not being myself.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing. It keeps you in bed recovering, where you belong. Otherwise, you would probably be out there working already, hurting yourself again.”
“Not this time,” he replied with a serious look on his face. “I just about cashed in all my chips this time. I need the down time.”
“Well, good. Anyway,
you’ve got visitors,” she said gesturing toward the door.
Evan was overjoyed to see Daryl and Griff, along with Jason, entering the room. “Well, look at this rag-tag bunch,” he said with a smile from ear to ear.
“Evan Baird, it sure is good to have you home and mostly in one piece,” Daryl said as he walked over to Evan’s bedside.
“It’s good to see you, too, my friend,” Evan replied, reaching out to shake his hand. “I’m sorry about what you had to go through back here without us. I’ve been haunted by all of the could haves, should haves since we left. If I had any idea things would have—”
“Evan,” Daryl said, interrupting him. “It’s not your fault. We were all in on this. We all knew there were risks involved with splitting our group up like that in the name of barter and trade. We all had things we wanted, leading us to the decision to make the supply run happen, and we all share the blame. Some of the things were tragic, yes, but we are all learning to navigate this messed up new world together. It’s no one person’s burden to bear.”
Evan faked a smile as his eyes welled up with tears, unable to reply in words.
Standing there with his arm in a sling, Griff added, “Heck, my injuries are my own damn fault for being such a lousy horseman.”