Percy's Mission

by Jerry D. Young

  “We had that silver you gave us,” Jim said. “That saved our behinds a couple of times. People saw that date before 1965 and snapped ‘em up. We managed to eat and fuel all the way back on those two rolls. Had to push a few times for a few miles at a time, between stops where we could get gas. Part of what took us so long. Didn’t want to leave the Jeep, since it would run.”

  Bob grinned up at them. “And I tell you, every time we pushed, it was up hill.”

  “‘Cept that time when the dang thing almost got away from us when we topped that little rise.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, we finally made it back.”

  “What happened to the Jeep?” Percy asked.

  “Oh,” Jim said. “That.” Again the brothers exchanged a look.

  “Yeah. Somebody tried to stop us. Fired right into the Jeep from an overpass. No warning or nothing. We floored it and made the guys jumping out from the edges of the overpass scramble to keep from getting run over.” Bob shrugged the sweater he was wearing down. “Dude clipped me with a twenty-two round before we got out of range.”

  They saw the pink pucker on Bob’s shoulder. “Jim was weaving and all,” Bob continued, “but they either had somebody really good or really lucky.”

  “If they were good, they’d been shooting something besides a twenty-two and you’d probably be dead. I say it was our good luck and their bad.”

  “Can’t argue with that, Twin. Anyway, here we be. With one hole in me and a few rips in the Jeep top.”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “I see you got some new hands, by the look of things.” He was eyeing the two sisters that had come into the kitchen moments before. He looked up at Percy’s face. “We still got a job, Boss?”

  “Of course you do,” Percy replied. “But not for a few days. I want one of the doctors to look you over and decide when you can go back to work and how much you can do at the moment.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Bob said. “I can’t seem to ever get rested. A couple days with no responsibilities would be good.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The sky was clear and there was no fallout when Calvin and Nan suited up again two days later and headed to town. It was slow going through the thick layers of ash. It was drifted five feet deep in places. The rains had made it a heavy mess. But the U500 with front bucket easily cut a path. Though the ash was drifted in places, other stretches of the road had been blown clear before the rains wetted the ash down.

  They were fearful of what they would find in town. The fear was justified, though there were many survivors. There were also many houses showing no signs of life. Their first stop was at the police station.

  Chief Connolly was there with both the town’s officers. “So you two are okay?” he asked.

  They’d checked with the survey meter and the radiation at the station had faded to about the same level as at their home. Calvin and Nan had taken off their respirators when they entered the building. Calvin nodded. “We wanted to report we found the Andersons the other day. They must have been on the way out to our place. Both of them were dead.”

  Bill Connolly sighed. “I’ll add them to the list. We’ve been meaning to do a census of the town and outlying areas, but just haven’t had time.”

  Just then Nan noticed the slight wince the Chief made when he sat down at his desk and pulled over a notebook. “Chief, are you okay?”

  “He got shot,” said one of the officers. Neither Calvin nor Nan knew him, though they’d seen him from time to time. “I’m Officer Tom Perkins,” he said, reaching out to shake both Calvin’s and Nan’s hands.

  Stanley Smith, the other officer, said, “A small group tried to loot the store. We stopped them, but the Chief took a round in the thigh.”

  “Oh, my!” exclaimed Nan. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Bill said. “It was just a scratch on the thigh. Betty Lou fixed it right up.” His eyes took on a distant look. We need to get out there and see if they’re okay.”

  Tom said, “We’ve only been out and about for a couple of days. Haven’t had time to do much. Only rig we’ve found so far that will run is Jackson Clements old Ford.” Tom sighed. “He didn’t make it.”

  “Yeah,” added Stanley. “He knew he wasn’t going to make it and brought the car down and left a note for us to use it. We went to check on him when we found it. He was dead.”

  “And we need to do something with his body. And the others I know are out there,” said the Chief. “I just don’t know what.”

  Calvin and Nan looked at each other. “We might be able to help with that,” Nan said.

  “Yes,” Calvin added. “With our equipment we can dig graves and haul bodies if we need to. Clear the ash where needed. But we have a pretty limited supply of fuel.”

  Nan looked at Calvin questioningly, but didn’t contradict him on their fuel situation. It had occurred to Calvin that not everyone needed to know everything about them. Tom was eyeing their gun belts and holsters.

  “That would sure help,” Bill said. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do. Only a couple of the town council made it. The mayor didn’t. We’ve talked to state emergency management and they told us were on our own for a while.”

  Tom started to edge around toward the side of Nan and Calvin. “You know, Chief. We’re basically in charge. We ought to think about commandeering their equipment if it works.”

  “Hold your horses, there, Tom,” the Chief said. “And come back around here. What’s the matter with you? They just said they’d help out.”

  Tom stopped flanking the two, but didn’t move back. Calvin edged Nan slightly behind him and his right hand drifted to the gun belt, near the holster, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Tom.

  “Well, we at least ought to disarm them. We don’t need a bunch of guns around at a time like this. Look what’s already happened.”

  “That’s enough, Tom!” There was a distinct note of anger in Bill’s voice. “We’re not a bunch of jack booted thugs out to rule the town. We have a job to do. That’s to protect and serve this community. I aim to use every resource I can, but we’re not going to usurp the Constitution. Not on my watch.”

  “Come on, Tom,” Stanley said. “We talked about this. It’s going to take a community effort to get through this. Trying to strong arm people is not going to help.”

  “Well look at what happened to the Chief! He could have been killed. That was some of our upright citizens that did that to him. If I ever find out who shot at us, I’ll…”

  “You’ll arrest them and they’ll be tried,” Bill said firmly. “We are officers of the law. Not a judge, nor jury, nor executioners. Some things are different now, yes. I don’t want to hear any more about it. If someone is making trouble, we’ll do something about it. But the Stubblefield’s are already trying to help. I aim to let them.”

  The Chief looked over at Calvin and Nan. “Thank you for your offer. We’ll see about supplying some fuel for you to use. When can you start?”

  “With the radiation levels where they are, I don’t think we should be out of shelter more than four hours or so. It takes us close to half an hour each way, so that gives us three hours a day to get things accomplished. We can bring the equipment in tomorrow and get started.

  “I think it’s best if you and the townspeople get together and decide what the priorities are. We’ll provide the equipment and a little manpower, but it is up to you guys to provide the plan.”

  “Okay,” Bill said. Tom seemed to be settling down.

  “We just want to help where we can, without getting radiation sickness or shot or anything,” Nan said.

  “Nobody is going to get shot that doesn’t deserve it,” the Chief said. He looked a bit surprised when the other four suddenly laughed. It dawned on him then, what he’d said. “You know what I meant,” he said with a chuckle. “Now,” he continued, looking at Nan and Calvin, “Is there anything we can do to help you at the moment?”

  Calvin shook his head. “
No. I want to get back. We just wanted to see how things were going and if we could be of help. We’ll be in tomorrow morning with the equipment and we can get started.”

  Bill stood up, with another wince, and shook Calvin’s hand. “Okay. Sounds like a plan. We’ll get with the others and come up with more of a plan for tomorrow.”

  For the next several days Calvin and Nan did some very unpleasant work. Those that had survived in and around town had begun to make themselves known. New council members and a mayor had been elected and they had wanted individual graves dug. Calvin was able to talk them out of it, with support from the Chief.

  Calvin dug a wide trench and the bodies were laid in it side by side. Someone was marking down the exact location and markers would be set, sometime. It took several days, working only three hours a day, to get the work completed. But it was finally done, except for those that would die from radiation exposure. There were several that were very sick and would not get better.

  It was a heart wrenching time and Calvin and Nan went home every day with tears in their eyes. Though there were no tears for the occupants of another trench grave that Calvin had to dig just after the last local had been buried.

  The small grocery store had become the local meeting place. Calvin had used the Unimog to clear the parking lot of ash. The town council was allocating what resources were left, and people were trading and bartering for things in the parking lot, too.

  Nan and Calvin were in town again, working with the city council and the Chief, planning a scavenging trip using the Unimog, one of the Stubblefield Jeeps, and a couple of old farm trucks that still ran, when a carload of outsiders roared into town. They stopped at the store and clambered out of the VW van, guns waving.

  Other than the near riot at the store a few weeks earlier, there had not been any real trouble in the town. But Nan and Calvin, and the police force weren’t the only citizens going around armed. Before they could think about it, Calvin, Nan, and the others returned fire when the group opened fire on the crowd as they moved into the store. It was a short battle.

  One man from town took a round in the arm. The Chief got the first aid kit out of the old Ford that was their new squad car. Tom and Stanley checked over the marauders and found two of them alive. One man and one woman, both severely wounded.

  “What do we do, Chief?” asked Stanley.

  “About all we can do is bandage them up with what we’ve got and get old Broderick the vet to take a look at them. County says they’re going to send over a doc to check everyone out, but that’s going to take a while yet. I’ll call it in and see what the county wants us to do with them in the meantime.”

  He looked over at the Ralph Clemens, the local that had been shot. “Ralph, too, I guess.”

  “What about right now?” Tom asked, as Sally, the woman that had bandaged Ralph, began to work on the two injured marauders. “We can’t take them in to the county jail at the moment. At least we haven’t taken out the old cells at city hall yet. Put them there, even injured?”

  “Yep,” replied the Chief.

  “Just one, though,” Sally said. “The woman just died.”

  Stanley went to get a stretcher from the ambulance shed for the man. Sally stood up to talk to the Chief. Of the five ambulance attendants in the town, Sally was the only one that had made it through the war. Two had been gone on vacation when things started, and the other two had each tried to shelter in place for their families. Neither had been successful.

  Sally had become hardened to illness, injury, and death since the war, being the only one with anything other than advanced first-aid training in town that was ambulatory. There were three nurses, all employed by the county hospital. All three were down with injuries or radiation sickness. And Betty Lou hadn’t been back to town since that first day.

  “You all right?” Calvin asked Nan, seeing her watching the injured man being placed on the stretcher in preparation of being carried to the city hall jail.

  Nan leaned against him and Calvin put his arm around her shoulder. “Yeah. I guess so. It’s just that something like this seems so pointless. All we have to do is help one another. We’ll make it. There is no real need for things like this to happen.”

  “I know,” replied Calvin. “But you know as well as I do that there are people in this world that would rather take and not give in return.”

  “Yes,” Nan said with a sigh, “I do. I just don’t like it much. Let’s go on back home. The plans are made for the trip tomorrow. Nothing more we can do here.”

  Nan was driving one of the Jeeps and Calvin the U500 the next morning when they returned to town. It was a bright, sunny day, and warm. The Chief and the Mayor met with them for a few minutes before the convoy of vehicles left town.

  Besides Calvin and Nan, Stanley Smith was going along as official city representative. Two farmers, with older bob trucks that still ran, were coming along. Four people would ride the backs of the trucks, with an additional man in the cab of each truck. That gave them a total of twenty people.

  Everyone was armed. Calvin had an M1A and his Glock 21. His load bearing vest and belt carried six spare twenty-round magazines for the M1A and four thirteen-rounders for the Glock, along with two one-quart canteens, first-aid kit, a utility pouch with a few odds and ends, and an M-6 bayonet for the M1A that was more for field use than its intended purpose.

  Nan was similarly equipped, except she carried a Steyr AUG and a Glock field knife. The others were armed with a mix of weapons, mostly hunting rifles and the occasional revolver.

  The police armory for the town was limited. Stanley was in uniform and carried his normal load out, including a Glock 17 9mm with high capacity magazines. About the only other options he had was a Remington 870 12-gauge pump shotgun or one of two M1 Carbines the town had acquired in the 1950’s. He left the 870 for Tom in town and was carrying a carbine with a fifteen round magazine in it and four thirty-rounders in his pockets.

  Calvin led the way, clearing the ash where needed, with the Unimog. They found their first vehicle about five miles out of town. It was locked and abandoned. Stanley used a key gun to get it unlocked. There was nothing in it of real use. “We found a few people just outside of town,” Stanley said. “One or more of them were probably in this when the EMP hit.” They siphoned the gasoline from the car’s fuel tank and transferred it to a fifty-five-gallon drum in one of the farm trucks. Stanley took down the pertinent information and they moved on.

  It went much the same until that afternoon. Nan and Calvin wore their load bearing equipment over their Tyvek coveralls. The others, except for Stanley, had some type of overall or coverall and jacket to protect themselves from the ash. Everyone had respirators or dust masks, as well.

  When they found bodies, and they found many, in vehicles and afoot; Stanley recorded what information he could find. A few of the passenger vehicles had some supplies that were useable, and they were loaded onto the trucks. Not a one of the vehicles would start. They emptied any fuel that remained from each one.

  The only major find was the delivery semi for the grocery store. It had been on its way to town with a full load for the store. They tried to start it, too, but to no avail. Everything was transferred to the smaller trucks. It was late afternoon and they decided to head back to town.

  When they returned, they found the roadblock at the edge of town. The Chief and Tom had not been idle during the day. The town council had decided they did not want a repeat of the previous day and authorized the roadblocks on each road into town. They would be manned by armed local citizens until they were sure the threat was over. Each one would have a radio available so those manning the roadblocks could call the police force for assistance, if needed.

  Calvin and Nan made a couple more trips with the townspeople, but became worried when they saw some signs that there was at least one group out there that was raiding for supplies. They had found one family massacred. A man, woman, and two children. The house had been ransacked
. Anything and everything that might be of use to a roving band was taken. Everything else was trashed. It looked like the gang had stayed in the house for at least a couple of days.

  After the find, Calvin and Nan stayed at home for a while. Partly to conserve their stock of fuel, but also for security reasons. The Chief and his officers had suspicions that someone in town was involved with the gang. If the gang got word from someone in town that the Stubblefield’s were doing well in the aftermath, it would only be a matter of time before the gang descended on them. Calvin arranged with the Chief to have two way radio communications between their home and the police station, in case their home was attacked.

  Calvin and Nan were careful to always go outside, either together, or with one covering the other from a good vantage point. They were working diligently in the greenhouses. The ash had pretty much destroyed the garden. The attack and the volcanic activity had them worried about the weather.