“These people are more distrustful of strangers, but they are also more trustworthy than the animals you’ve met in the city areas,” Calvin pointed out.
An hour later, the men heard a single shot, which resonated from the south—the direction they’d heard the rider headed.
Calvin clapped his boney hands together in excitement. “Hot damn, boy, we are going to eat meat for breakfast—only wish we could rustle up some eggs to go with it.”
Jared gave Calvin a wavering smile and shook his head. If Calvin were on the mark, the person riding in or on the vehicle had probably shot something and would be headed back soon. This meant they would be in contact within the next hour or so. Jared rested on the hard ground, shifting from one sore hip to the other as he waited in the darkness. The smell of earth and pine were strong in the absence of his being able to see. Jared still found it strange how when one of his five senses were taken, the others would now compensate.
Jared breathed in through his nose and was able to identify half a dozen different scents in the night air. Jared couldn’t identify them all, knowing only that they were not manmade. It was cold even with no wind, making the wait all that more uncomfortable for Jared. With no birds tweeting, insects buzzing or the chatter of his friends, Jared found the nights out in the wild eerily quiet. There were animals out at night, but they tended to travel silently in order to either avoid being eaten or creep up on something they intended to eat.
Forty-five minutes later Jared and company heard the drone of the machine, indicating the mystery hunter’s return. The machine rounded a corner, coming into view nearly a hundred yards up the road. Calvin and Jared could see it was some sort of John Deere Gator-type vehicle complete with headlights and a full cage. Because of the lights, Jared was unable to see if the tiny vehicle harbored more than just the driver.
When the driver spotted Calvin’s fire, he stopped, and on came the searchlight. Calvin stood next to the fire, warming his hands in the crisp night’s air, with his rifle hidden from sight off to one side. When the driver’s spotlight washed across Calvin, he waved at the driver, whom he was unable to see.
Jared thought how absurd this must have seemed to the person in the Gator and wished they’d devised a better strategy, but it was too late now. They were all betrothed to this plan, and now they must see it to its end.
Chapter 5
Cody had been born and raised in Livermore. He was cowboy through and through, living on his family’s ranch in the hills outside town, where he’d grown up hunting and fishing the thirty-four hundred acres his family owned, not to mention the countless other thousands of acres they leased for cattle grazing.
Cody was seventeen years old and, before the event, considered himself a man compared to the rest of the youth in the Bay Area. He’d driven since he was ten, handled firearms from roughly the same age, and been killing and eating wild game ever since. After the event, Cody and his father, Quinten, enjoyed little time for anything outside of tending to their cattle.
Quinten feared people would slaughter the animals for food, and he was right, they lost fifty head of cattle in one day on a property he leased. Whoever killed the cattle had no idea what they were doing and left so much meat to spoil, it sickened Quinten. The family moved the remaining cattle closer to their home, trying to keep as much of the herd on the thirty-four hundred acres as they could, but there were just too many head of cattle for the land to support.
Quinten was forced to spread the animals out in order to allow the vegetation to regrow and maintain a long-term trajectory in regard to cattle raising. Quinten knew he would lose most of his herd, but this didn’t bother him as he came to terms with what had happened to the world. Quinten knew he and his family could survive with fifty head if they were intelligent about how many animals were slaughtered at any given time.
Quinten would allow his herd to continue to breed and give birth in order to sustain him and his family. Cody, as usual, was a great help by taking some of the pressure off their herd by hunting wild game. Now that hunting with a light was no longer a crime, or at least there were no Fish and Wildlife Wardens to enforce night-time hunting regulations, Cody was able to kill a deer nearly every couple of weeks.
The first few months were tough, and the family experienced their scrapes with people wandering on to their land, looking for handouts. Quinten offered work for food and was nearly killed because of it. After that, no one was welcome on the property. He hung signs to this effect and figured if someone ignored the signs, then they would get what they had coming.
Tonight, Cody stomped the brake when he saw the fire’s flickering light casting ghostly shadows on what looked like an older man getting to his feet and waving at him. Cody and his family hadn’t seen many people up in the hills in the last two months, so the sight of this old man jolted him. Cody pulled his deer rifle off the seat where it lay next to him, and hefted it across his lap.
Calvin stared into the two small headlamps of the Gator, hoping whoever was driving the little machine wouldn’t choose to simply shoot him without at least some dialogue. He waved a second time, then scratched his grizzled beard, trying to see through the blinding light. Jared remained off the side of the road with a much better view of the Gator. He immediately kicked himself for leaving the night-vision goggles in his pack although he wasn’t sure how well they would have worked staring at the headlamps of this mystery vehicle.
“What do you want?” came the worried voice of what sounded to both Calvin and Jared consistent with a youngish male.
“To talk and maybe do a little trading. We are camped up in the hills and have a couple of kids who haven’t seen much meat lately,” Calvin responded in the most grandfatherly voice he could muster.
Silence hung thick in the air as both parties evaluated the situation. Before the event Jared would pass hundreds of people every single day and never once worry about what foul play any one of them might bring upon him. Now, each encounter with a stranger held real potential to turn lethal. Jared suddenly felt very tired of it all, yearning for his life before the event with its wealth of security, warmth and plentiful meals. Nowadays Jared enjoyed none of those luxuries.
Before either Calvin or the person in the vehicle could speak, Jared stepped out onto the road not far from the fire. “No one is out here in the middle of the freezing night to harm or steal from anyone. If you’re not interested in trading, then carry on, and we’ll go back to bed,” Jared stated rather matter-of-factly.
Cody’s heart leaped at the sight of a second man, who was armed and whom Cody hadn’t seen until the man materialized out of the shadows like some supernatural revenant. There was something about the second and younger man that caused Cody to let his foot slip from the Gator’s brake, allowing the vehicle to roll gradually forward. The younger man was armed, but his weapon wasn’t pointed in Cody’s direction, so the teen rolled straight at the older man, stopping next to the fire.
Jared smiled at the fresh-faced kid, noticing the rifle in Cody’s lap along with a fairly large doe strapped to the rear of the Gator. “Nice kill,” Jared congratulated him.
Cody smiled tightly. “Thanks. What are you guys doing out here?” he asked hesitantly.
“Passing through, trying to get somewhere we can hunt and fish for food,” Jared replied as he pushed his rifle over a shoulder, allowing it to hang unthreateningly down his back.
“How’d you get this thing running?” Calvin asked, staring enviously at the Gator.
Cody shrugged his youthful shoulders. “For whatever reason, it didn’t stop working. We have a couple of things that still work at the ranch. A couple of tractors and another Gator all run—never stopped.”
Jared looked the Gator over, and although he wasn’t familiar with these types of machines, this one seemed like an older model. He surmised the little vehicle probably didn’t have a sophisticated enough electronics package to have been affected by what had happened.
“Well, d
o you guys trade with anyone out here?” Jared pressed.
Cody shook his head. “No one has ever asked. Most people we saw in the beginning were out here to take things, not trade.”
“That’s not us, son,” Calvin interjected.
“I can’t trade anything without checking with my dad,” Cody informed the two.
Jared nodded, then pointed to the gate and up the dirt road leading into the hills where the rest of the group was waiting. “Go home and ask your dad if he’s interested in trading. If he is, come on back in the morning after the sun’s up. Follow the road around the hill and let us know you’re coming.”
Cody dipped his head in respectful agreement. “I’ll ask him, sir.”
Calvin smiled at the kid and gave him a two-finger wave. “Hope to see ya soon.”
Cody pressed the gas and slowly pulled away from Jared and Calvin, heading home, wondering about what had just happened. Cody was pretty sure his father would be livid that he’d stopped and made contact, but what choice did he have? The men had been between Cody and home.
Jared, along with the rest of the group, found it impossible to sleep after the four men returned and relayed what had happened. By 0500 hours, they all began heating food and packing sleeping bags, tents and other essential items they’d used for the encampment, while Carlos sat on the hillside not far from camp, watching the dirt road. Shortly after 0600 hours, Jared heard Carlos’s low whistle and knew they had company. A short time later the teen from earlier appeared on the dirt road, accompanied by an older man who Jared assumed was his father.
The man carried a lever-action rifle like Jared had seen in old western films, while the youth held the same deer rifle Jared had seen him with earlier in the morning. The father and son walked straight into camp and were met by Jared, who stepped forward, leaving the rest of his group standing behind him.
The older stranger held out his hand. “Name’s Quinten, and this is my son, Cody.”
Jared took the man’s large callused hand. “Jared—nice to see strangers who aren’t shooting at us for a change,” Jared said with a grin.
Quinten looked at the ground for a moment, then met Jared’s gaze, his face a mask of seriousness. “Thank you for not harming my boy.”
Jared slowly shook his head. “That’s not us. Sorry if we scared him coming out in the night like we did, but it isn’t every day you hear a working vehicle of any type.”
Quinten glanced around the encampment, then back to Jared, who knew the fact that he and his group had a VW Beetle with a motorcycle strapped to its rear hadn’t been lost on the other man.
Quinten gestured with his chin toward the motorcycle and VW. “Either of them run?”
“Both, but engine noise seems to attract bad people. We’d rather use the horses for a quieter transition, if ya know what I mean,” Jared advised.
Quinten bobbed his head slowly. “Double-edged sword. My son, Cody, can hunt on foot, but using the Gator with the light at night increases our chances of eating meat tenfold.”
Jared smiled, knowing the man’s conundrum and enjoying the experience of talking to a complete stranger without fear of any underhanded or double-dealing behavior from the man. Jared was beginning to understand a subculture in the Bay Area he’d never known existed. People who lived in more rural areas tended to be less reliant on outside help in order to survive and therefore were not struggling as mightily to manage the huge disadvantage the solar flare had placed the rest of the area’s population at.
Jared’s view of the world before the event was there were a lot of people living in densely populated cities, where work was plentiful and pay was obscenely high due to the Bay Area cost of living. On the flip side there were also the folks living on the fringe of Bay Area society, like Quinten and his son, Cody. Today Jared found himself in a very rural setting in Bay Area terms and was enjoying the reversal in roles the solar flare was manifesting across the land. Quinten might have been middle class before the event, but now he sat atop the world with his ability to provide food for his family through tending to his cattle, hunting, and being overall self-sufficient.
Jared turned and introduced every member of their group to Quinten and Cody, then asked Quinten and his son to have breakfast with them.
Quinten cocked his head, turning to the rest of the group. “Everyone here okay with that?”
To a person they not only affirmed Jared’s invitation, but made it clear they would be offended if the two didn’t stay. The two groups sat and ate together, talking about what they’d all been through since the world took a hard left turn a few months prior. Quinten told Jared and the others that he and his family lived on a ranch not far from where Jared’s group was camped and were lucky the first month with food stores coupled with the remoteness of their home. Quinten told Jared he’d employed three men at the time of the solar flare, and after two days Quinten had sent them home to bring their families back to the ranch if they chose to do so.
One of his men never returned, while a second man did, bringing with him his wife and two daughters. A month later Quinten caught his third employee and several other men stealing Quinten’s cattle. Quinten was quiet for a bit as his mind traveled back to the encounter. Quinten told Jared that was the first day he began to fully understand the magnitude of his situation. The men were belligerent, insisting they were taking Quinten’s cattle even after he confronted them.
The result turned out, Quinten shot and killed two men and severely wounded his former employee. Quinten forced the remaining man to carry the wounded former employee from his property at gunpoint, and never saw either man again. When Quinten told Jared and the group he’d dragged the bodies of the dead to edge of his property and draped a sign across their bodies that read Cattle rustlers will be shot, Cody started, making it clear to all that the youth hadn’t heard this version of the incident.
Quinten pursed his lips as Cody stared open mouthed at his father. “That’s not to be repeated in front of your mother, or anyone else for that matter,” Quinten warned his son.
Cody gulped, then nodded his head as his father turned back to Jared and company. “So what’s your story, my friend?”
Jared relayed a Reader’s Digest version of his experience, then waved at the rest of his friends, telling Quinten they all had a story. Quinten nodded, surmising he’d hear their tales at some point or he wouldn’t.
“So, what do you all figure on trading?” Quinten queried.
“We have a small cache of canned goods, probably no ammo by the looks of what you and Cody are carrying though,” Jared answered.
Quinten drew a deep breath and scanned the wooded area before responding, “Why don’t you get your folks packed up and come on down to the house. It’s not far, and we can talk some turkey.”
Calvin knew immediately Jared wouldn’t know what talking turkey meant, so he stepped forward. “Sounds like a fine plan, Quinten. What’s the address?”
“Just head north till you see a drive with the Circle T Ranch crest. That’s us. Come up the drive, and if you’re there before lunch, we’ll return the favor,” Quinten said, hefting his now empty meal container.
Without another word, Quinten and Cody got to their feet and trudged out of the camp the way they’d come. Jared held the two in his gaze as they grew smaller and finally disappeared around the bend in the road. Country folk were like that, when everything that needed saying was said, that was it. No need for long drawn-out goodbyes, a tip of a hat or a dip of a chin and away these people went until the next time.
Chapter 6
After Quinten and Cody left, Jared stood, flexed his hands, and felt his own fingers callused and slightly swollen from the state of low-level dehydration his body was constantly in. He wasn’t dying of thirst, but he was always a little behind on what would have been perfect fluid levels. Jared was also keenly aware of their group’s nutritional shortcomings. No one ate like they’d eaten before the event, so everyone was marginally hungry
most of the time. The food they ate lacked fresh fruits and vegetables and came almost entirely from a can or bag. Jared wondered if this Quinten guy would have fresh vegetables when they got to his ranch.
He caught sight of Essie huddled just inside a tent, looking cold and more than a little gaunt. They needed better food and more water. Jared knew it was hard to get everyone to drink when the weather was so cold. He had to do better reminding everyone. The group was always moving, lifting, hauling and struggling, so the need for lots of water and good food was very real. Essie caught Jared’s stare, which she returned blankly. He smiled as warm a smile as he could muster on such a cold and wet morning. Essie stared back, unsmiling.
Jared’s heart ached as he thought of her life over the last several months. Most recently she’d enjoyed relative comfort and stability in the ranch house, where Shannon had proactively implemented a routine of homeschool and chores not only for Essie, but Salvador as well. Then after the helicopter came, anything closely resembling days of old evaporated. Now Essie slept on the ground in a freezing cold tent and rode in the VW or atop a horse during the day. School was put on hold since life on the road required everyone’s total participation in order to remain safe from potential threats.
Suddenly Jared felt very alone and vulnerable. He shuddered for no apparent reason as he swept his gaze about the camp, taking in all the people who had come to rely on him and John. Now that John was gone, they relied solely on Jared. He didn’t feel he harbored the strength, know-how, and quite frankly the ability to be relied upon, which terrified him. Only a few months into the disaster, Jared had been witness to unmeasurable human despair along with death and violence on a scale he hadn’t even seen in the movies before the solar flare. Jared was convinced he couldn’t lose another friend because of a bad decision he made without suffering at least a small breakdown.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 3 | Chains of Tyranny Page 5