“Hey man,” Garrett said, “like you said, trust is a two way street. For all we know you could be some deranged serial killer trying to lure us up to your shack where you’re going to soak our livers in moonshine before you eat them.”
Samantha stared across the table at Garrett and said, “You moron, everybody knows that human liver taste better in a light garlic cream sauce.” Garrett shrugged sheepishly as she continued, “Mr. Andy . . .”
“Just call me Andy,” Andy said.
“Andy it is then. Andy, I’ve never built a campfire in my life. I’ve never caught a fish, come to think of it I’ve never even roasted a marshmallow. But I’ve shot about a million people, killed hundreds of thousands of zombies—half of them with chainsaws and baseball bats. I’ve driven tanks and flown jet aircraft, shoot; I’ve even golfed right next to Tiger Woods—and beat him. Of course all of that has been on a computer. On those same computers I’ve also hacked into everything from schools, power companies, and traffic cameras to the U.S. military and NASA. If anyone can get the information for you, it’s me. Provided I have all the materials to build the uplink. If you’re willing to take a chance on us, we’re willing to take a chance on you. Just remember something though; we may look different on the outside than most people you run into, but Garrett and I are still people. We have feelings, we have fears, but we also have a sense of honor and integrity, so that little speech about how you were worried that your cabin was going to get messed up if you let the computer nerds stay there, well, it’s kind of an insult.
“You have my apologies then,” Andy said.
“When do you need an answer?” Samantha asked.
“An hour ago,” Michelle said.
Samantha looked at Garrett, and he shrugged again. Then she closed her laptop and gazed up at Andy saying, “Got any food at the cabin?”
Michelle and Andy stopped back at the medical clinic on the way out. Doc wasn’t there, but they told Sally about the kids and their plans to try and get some information. She thought it was a good idea and wished them luck on her way out the door. Following behind Sally, carrying a clip board each, were Francis and Marty, apparently drafted onto the medical teams. Samantha and Garrett met up with them at Andy’s truck about fifteen minutes later. Andy was talking to Walter on the radio, letting him know about the slight change of plans and also asking him about the possibility of a chain or cable across Ravenwood Campground Road. Michelle heard Walter say that he’d look into it, but that he thought he might be able to make it happen. Something about a spool of three-eighths in his basement, if Michelle understood the hollow sounding voice coming out of the speaker. Walter also said that if he hadn’t heard from us by tomorrow evening, he would drive out to the cabin and check on the kids, weather and other priorities permitting. Andy thanked him, and a few minutes later the big white truck with four passengers headed out of the campground.
The drive up to Andy’s cabin was uneventful. They saw several cars pulled off the side of the road, but no occupants were visible. The first signs of life were a small herd of deer that crossed the gravel road in front of Andy’s truck at one point. Several of them stood for a few moments at the edge of the road, looking at the pickup before trotting off unafraid. Samantha made all kinds of “ooohs” and “aaahhs” when she saw them, apparently she’d never seen a wild deer so close before. Michelle watched as Garrett pulled out a little “flip” video camera and filmed them walking along the edge of the woods. He seemed as wide eyed as she was. Amazing what you miss when you spend all of your time with your nose in front of a computer screen, Michelle thought.
It was almost 1:00 PM by the time they made it to the cabin. Eric’s truck was parked between the cabin and the new storage building that Andy had built. Garrett and Samantha saw Andy’s lake as they were driving in and asked if they could go down and check it out. Andy told them that it would take him fifteen to twenty minutes to get the cabin ready and the stove lit and “Just don’t fall in and kill yourself.” As they walked down to the lake, Andy motioned for Michelle to follow him inside.
Once inside he said, “Would you mind taking the keys to Eric’s truck . . . go out there and make sure there’s nothing the kids can get into trouble with. Guns, knives, rocket propelled grenades . . . that sort of thing. I’m sure he put his duty pistol in my safe, but would you mind checking his truck anyway? I’m gonna gather up all the loose guns from inside the cabin here and put them away. Well, I’ll probably leave them with a shotgun just in case.”
Michelle nodded and caught the keys that Andy tossed to her as she headed out toward the truck. A quick search found nothing more dangerous than a Swiss army knife in the glove box. She left that there. There was also a box that had about a dozen pairs of the zip cuffs that Sam Ironfeather had left for them, the rest being still in the bag in her Tahoe. She took six pairs and left the others behind the seat. Walking back inside the cabin, Michelle glanced towards the lake and noticed that Garrett and Samantha were headed back this way. Garrett was using the little video camera to film Samantha flapping her arms and pretending to fly as she skipped along. Michelle watched the pair of them for a few more seconds before turning to enter the cabin just as Andy was locking the big Liberty safe. The cabin door was still hanging open as Samantha stepped up onto the porch and said, “Can we come in?”
Andy spent the next half hour giving them the grand tour. Everything from how to start the generator to where the food was kept. He had even waited to light the stove in order to show them how it was done. Michelle was pleased to note that that they seemed like they were paying attention at least. They definitely paid attention when he showed them the old Winchester model 12 shotgun.
Andy turned to Michelle and said, “Would you mind takin’ these two youngsters outside and given’ them a few lessons?”
Michelle nodded and motioned for Garrett and Samantha to follow. After about ten minutes of basic safety instructions, the training culminated with each of them demonstrating how to load, aim, fire, and reload. Garrett was rubbing his shoulder after three rounds.
“A little different than in a video game, ain’t it?” Andy said, smiling as he came out of the cabin.
“Now I’m going to leave you with one full box of shells, and the partial box leftover from your brief schooling, OK?” Andy said, adding, “Don’t use em’ if you don’t need to. If we’re not back by tonight, just come in the cabin, shut the door, and drop the bear bar,” he indicated the four foot long, two inch diameter section of metal pipe that could swivel from its anchor point on the right side of the door frame and drop into three heavy duty brackets spaced along the door and opposite side of the frame.
Samantha nodded her understanding.
“Now, about food . . .” Andy said as he grabbed a step ladder and removed two fishing rods that were laying across some of the large, exposed oak beams that made up part of the ceiling. Stepping back down, he asked them if they had ever fished. Samantha hadn’t, but Garrett said he did when he was a kid. Another ten minute lesson on fishing followed. Michelle was starting to wonder if it was even going to be worth their time trying to leave today. Besides, she was sure that Andy had more than enough food in the freezer to last until they got back without them having to resort to fishing. Her questioning look was noticed by Andy, who only gave a quick wink at Michelle before saying, “Of course, if you prefer your fish already cleaned and gutted, you can just use what’s in the icebox there. Either of you twenty-one? . . . Well I guess it don’t really matter. If you’re old enough to hack into NASA, you’re old enough to have a few beers. Just don’t drink em’ all.”
Andy turned toward the door and said, “OK, now that all the little stuff is out of the way, follow me out to the shed and let me show you where I keep my surplus computer crap.”
The four of them walked out of the cabin and down to Andy’s new storage building. Andy opened the side door and held it open as they all went in. Michelle looked around, nose catching the faint scen
t that told of recently poured cement. She saw the little backhoe was parked inside, as was his farm tractor and snow machine. Three of the walls were covered with pegboard, and almost every square inch of it had various tools, knickknacks and odds and ends suspended from a wide variety of peg hooks. Just in front of the closed garage door was an empty area on the floor, probably where Andy kept the Gator that Eric had. The right side of the shop, orienting from the garage door entrance was lined with a long workbench. Underneath it, Andy had built cabinets and shelving units—all neatly labeled with their alleged contents. He walked over to the bench and pulled a large box off one of the shelves labeled “miscellaneous computer parts.” Two more identical boxes soon followed. Samantha had started going through the first box before the second hit the floor. Michelle leaned against the workbench and watched impatiently, anxious to get on the road.
Samantha was assembling the various gizmos, whatnots and widgets into different piles, accompanied by words like “Definitely this . . . no . . . I doubt it . . . no . . . no . . . maybe . . .”
Andy stopped her for a moment to point out two small parabolic satellite dish antennas hanging from the back pegboard. Both of them had coils of cable already attached to some sort of centerpiece on the dish.
“Where did you get these, and why do they have DOD style LNB’s mounted on them? These are military issue, aren’t they?” Samantha asked.
“I’m retired Air Force . . . computer specialist . . . let’s leave it at that for now,” he said, adding, “I think you’ll have better luck working with those then with the dish I used for my civilian Internet access.”
Garret disappeared while Andy and Samantha spent the next half hour talking in geek about possibilities for building their uplink. Michelle wandered away and occupied herself by triple checking all of the supplies for the hopefully short trip to Fort Hammer. After satisfying herself that it was as good as it was going to get, she went back into the garage to pry Andy away from Samantha so they could get moving. Andy and Samantha were talking about “time division multiple access, signal latency and block upconverters” . . . it wouldn’t have surprised Michelle to hear the words “warp drive” come out of either of their mouths, and it wouldn’t have mattered, because the unease Michelle had felt earlier this morning was coming back. Maybe even kicking up a notch or two, and Michelle could feel herself chomping at the bit. She was just about to grab Andy by the ear when Garrett burst in and said, “Samantha, this old dude has a kick ass gaming system. Shoot, he’s got at least as many games as you did.”
Andy started to reply but Michelle cut him off. “Andy, we have to go, OK?”
He nodded, asking Samantha if she had any questions on where things were located. She didn’t.
“All right, we’re gonna be heading out. If everything goes right we’ll be back sometime after dark. If not, then we’ll be back as soon as we can. Walter may stop up to check on you if he has time. Remember what I told you about the limitations of the solar power, so use the little generator anytime you need power. And don’t forget to lock the bear bar over the door at night. And don’t throw too much wood in the stove at once. And remember . . .”
Michelle grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out the door. She could hear Garrett and Samantha laughing all the way to the truck.
RRRRRrrrrrrrr . . . . . . RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRggggggggggggggggg . . . The sound of the chainsaw reverberated through the early morning stillness, it’s pitch varying inversely to the diameter of log the husky man was driving it into. Augustus “Gus” Jansen shifted his feet to the left, ducking under another small limb to get closer to the next section of trunk. He was working on an aspen that varied from about six inches thick at the top end, all the way down to almost eighteen inches near the base. It was one of, well . . . several hundred he guessed, that were pushed down and piled up at the edge of the campground.
“Comfort team, huh . . . you feel very comfortable yet, Gus?” The question was huffed out by a balding man in his mid-fifties who was dressed in Carhartts and chomping on the stub of a very smelly cheap cigar.
Gus chuckled and replied, “Let me tell you what Travis, I’ve been stuck in an office sharing a seat with my ass for the last twenty-three years, so any chance to get outside and work with my hands again is something that I’ll not let pass me by.”
Travis shook his head and watched as the wood chips spewed out of the next cut in the aspen. With another sigh, he sent a puff of acrid blue stink rising upwards before resuming his duty of gathering the cut sections and moving them out toward the road, where the third part of their “comfort team” would load them into a wheelbarrow and move them up to the spot designated for the central supply. They’d already been working throughout the morning, and after another half hour they’d switch out with the afternoon crew. On his fourth trip up from the woodpile in the last ten minutes, Travis noticed the large white pickup truck that belonged to the jarhead old man with the shotgun. The truck was moving slowly past the campground office and heading toward the exit. Travis could see several vague silhouettes inside the truck, but the distance made their identity unclear. Probably the cops, he thought. Lazy bastards . . . if they wanted to prove how tough they were, they should come down here and move all this firewood. That thought still lingered as he took another puff off of his “three for ninety-nine cents” convenience store special cigar. Swiveling his gaze to the left, he saw that Glenda was almost back with a wheelbarrow. Glenda, together with her husband Leonard, made up the rest of the morning shift comfort team. They took turns ferrying the wheelbarrow back and forth from the edge of the dirt road where Travis was stacking it, up to the campground where it was being piled near the top of Blue Heron loop.
“What do you think Travis, maybe two or three more trips until our shift is over?” Glenda asked cheerfully.
People who were in a perpetually good mood bugged the crap out of Travis. This fat cow of a woman, who didn’t even have the courtesy to breathe heavy after pushing a heavy wheelbarrow all the way up to the campground and back was no exception. Her rosy cheeks and smile lines offered a hazy similarity to his second ex wife, whom he despised. Shaking his head, he replied, “I imagine.”
Behind them the sound of the chainsaw racing through smaller limbs was suddenly cut off. Glenda peered around Travis’s shoulder, trying to locate Gus through the thick brush. “Gus . . . are you OK?” There was no answer.
Glenda looked at Travis briefly before calling out again, louder this time. “Hey Gus, are you OK?”
“Yeah, I just threw a chain. Workin’ on it. Be ready in a few.” Gus’s voice came up faint and defused from somewhere behind the brush.
Feeling relieved, Glenda started loading the wheelbarrow with the chunks of wood. Travis looked down at the woman who was still managing to smile and breathe normally despite hefting the heavy sections of aspen into the cart. The sooner it was loaded, the sooner he wouldn’t have to watch that persistent cherubic expression on her face. He bent down to help.
Back at the woodpile, Gus had just finished snugging up the second lock nut to the correct tension against the metal housing of the chainsaw’s sprocket guard. Too loose and the bar would drop down, too tight and he wouldn’t be able to turn the chain adjustment screw. His hands were coated with the thick, viscous bar oil and sawdust mixture that had come from underneath the sprocket guard, but he didn’t care. The smell and feel reminded him of working summers on his uncle’s farm in South Carolina. That had been what . . . about thirty years ago maybe? Judging from the accumulated dents, dings, scratches and scars that decorated almost every inch of the chainsaw, there was a good possibility that it had been around since that time as well. A few minutes later the job was complete. Gus stood up, put his hands on his ample love handles and arched his back, stretching out his shoulders and neck. Satisfied that he hadn’t done any permanent damage from the morning’s labor, he stooped back down to start the saw. Grasping the black rubber pull with his right hand, he steadied the
ancient machine with his foot and left hand. Three cranks later it still had not caught. Gus paused to wipe a bead of sweat from the corner of his eye, rolled his neck to loosen up the kinks, and bent down for another try. This time the old machine fired up on the first pull. He revved up the RPM’s and was just about to make his first cut when his nose wrinkled under the assault of a foul smell. It reminded him immediately of a garbage can filled with dirty diapers. What the heck, Gus thought, did I just shit myself? He turned slightly to the right and froze. Five feet away from him was a gray-skinned boy, maybe fifteen years old. He was dressed in only a t-shirt and gym shorts, and should’ve been freezing to death on this cold morning. If the boy was cold, he gave no indication of it. Scarlet eyes locked on to Gus as the boy advanced two steps. Gus was frozen with fear, his hands still locked on the chainsaw that was idling in his grasp. Another step and the gray skin boy lunged forward, locking onto Gus’s forearms with a vice-like grip. Startled out of his daze by the strength of the teenager, Gus squeezed the throttle all the way and twisted the screaming saw up into and completely through his attacker’s right arm. The boy never even blinked. Panic shot through Gus as the boy shoved him to the ground and tore into his heavy parka, searching for the flesh beneath. Gus still had ahold of the chainsaw and tried to bring it to bear against his attacker, but something twisted his neck sharply to the left. Eyes rolling upwards with terror, his vision registered a second attacker for a split second before the blood pouring from the stump of his first attacker sprayed into his eyes, blinding him. The shock and horror of his predicament barely had time to register before he felt teeth sinking into his neck, trapping his scream and sealing his fate. The overpowering stench of human waste drifted in with his final breath.
Travis finished helping Glenda load the wheelbarrow and watched as the happy, bovine-faced lady pushed the load back towards the campground. Behind him he could hear the idling of Gus’s chainsaw. After a few seconds the RPM’s spiked up as Gus got ready, he imagined, to tackle another fallen tree. Well, this ought to be the last one before the afternoon shift took over. Travis had two thirds of a bottle of whiskey that he was looking forward to sharing with no one, and after two, maybe three more trips down to the work area and back up to the road, his ass was going to be in a chair with a cigar in one hand and that whiskey bottle in the other. That thought imbued him with enough energy to head down the short trail to where Gus’s chainsaw had stopped again.
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