Without Law 13

by Eric Vall

  Betty had packed some deer meat sandwiches and canned fruit, and I dished up my plate and went and sat in the shady grass with the girls.

  “So, how’s the tree marking going?” I asked Anna and Bailey before I took a large bite of the venison and bread.

  “We’ve almost got it all done,” Anna told me through a mouthful of food.

  I nodded my agreement and continued chewing.

  “How’s the tree chopping going?” Bailey chuckled.

  “Not too bad,” I told her with a smile.

  “We’ve got quite a few down on our side as well,” Tara said with a point.

  I looked across the yard to where the other civilians had been working and saw that they’d cleared quite a large area already. Granted, most of the trees weren’t huge in diameter, but it was still one hell of a workout to try to take them all down, and I knew that everyone’s arms would be sore for weeks after this. But at this rate we might be able to have the perimeter done by the end of the day, and since we didn’t know when the fire would make it to us, that would be the best thing to do. We had to push ourselves now to be prepared for when the fire did arrive, there was no dilly dallying at a time like this.

  “Is there anything that we need to do once we’re back on campus for the night?” Paige asked.

  “We need to go over an evacuation plan,” I said. “Why? Is there something you’d like to do?”

  “I just wanted to do some research on fire patterns,” the brunette explained. “But I can do that after we go over the evacuation plan.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  “So what is our plan?” Anna asked.

  “We’ll retreat to the fort if we have to,” I said.

  “Just the thought of having to do that makes me kind of sad,” Bailey said with a frown. “What about the animals?”

  “I think Betty has a trailer in the barn,” Tara offered. “But I don’t think it’s big enough to hold all of them at once.”

  “Definitely not,”I agreed. No normal horse trailer could haul the dozen or so cows and two horses that we had at our place, not to mention the chickens.

  “So we make more than one trip?” Anna asked.

  “Not in an emergency situation we don’t,” I told her.

  “What do we do, then?” Paige asked.

  “We cut them loose,” Bailey said.

  “What?” Tara asked. “That’s crazy talk. How would we find them again?”

  “I heard Betty talk about it one time,” the blonde explained. “If there was ever a natural disaster or a fire or something, you set your livestock loose. They’ll get away and odds are they’ll stay close enough for you to find them. Or at least most of them will stay together since they’re herd animals.”

  “That’s exactly what we’ll do, then,” I said. “And if we can find them after it's over that’s great, if not, then we’ll have to move forward without them.”

  “What about going to the fort?” Anna asked. “Couldn’t we take them over there?”

  “I don’t know if Renee could house them on such short notice,” I said with a frown.

  “What about the King’s Garden place?” Bailey asked. “I was over there and there’s only a couple little gates to get in and out and the rest is a stone wall. I bet that would hold them.”

  “Good idea,” I told her. “We’ll work on getting the animals over there as soon as we can, but if we get caught by the fire before that then we’ll set them loose.”

  “Alright,” Anna agreed. “That sounds like a good plan. I’m not sure how everyone else is going to take this evacuation plan, though.”

  “Especially Betty,” Paige said, and she pursed her lips. “She barely wanted to leave this place to move to campus.”

  “I know,” I said, “but none of the farmers will be able to deny that it’s for their own safety.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Tara muttered. “They’re all pretty hard headed.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but I had to try my best to make them see that it was the only way for everyone to survive. There was no way I was going to allow a sixty something year old woman to stay on a farm if the fire got too close. I’d drag her out myself if I had to, and the same went for anyone who dared to try to stay.

  As we ate, the wind began to pick up and the smell of smoke filled the air. I knew that the fire wasn’t right near us or the smoke would be much worse, but I heard some of the civilians begin to panic, so I stood up and let everyone know that the fire was still a ways off and we had time to finish our work. I advised anybody with breathing problems to see Marla if they needed to, but otherwise everyone should be fine.

  That news seemed to calm everyone a bit, but not by much, and I could tell that they were still on edge. Smelling the fire themselves must have made it all the more real, but I noticed a lot of the civilians hurry to finish their lunch and get back to work.

  I hated that everybody was in such a frenzy, but it appeared to be helping them to get the work done faster, so I didn’t dare try to calm them down too much. Besides, how could I? This was a natural disaster that we were only equipped to prepare for, not deal with directly. They had every reason to be scared.

  After I finished my lunch with the girls I headed back to my station to find that some of the guys had already started again, so I picked up my axe and got back to work.

  It was late afternoon by the time we finished, but we’d managed to clear the tree line around the farm, and Rolly had gotten the fire lines in place. That was all we could do then, and I felt more exhausted than I had in a long time. My arms and abs were practically numb, and I could feel the ache in my whole body. I was still drenched in sweat, and so was everyone else as they packed up their axes and we got ready to head back to campus.

  The sun dipped just behind the horizon with the start of the evening, and my stomach growled as we drove slowly down Betty’s driveway back toward home.

  “Geez,” Anna chuckled. “Hungry?”

  “Starving,” I said. “You know how many calories we all must have gone through today?”

  “From the sweat on my clothes, I’m guessing a lot,” Paige said dryly.

  “Yeah, I’d say so,” I chuckled.

  “I’d offer to help make dinner, but I think I’m dying,” Tara sighed, and she leaned further down in her seat as if she couldn’t bring herself to sit up straight.

  “And just how many trees did you cut down?” Bailey asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “I don’t know,” the platinum blonde said. “I didn’t keep count. Did you guys?”

  “Twenty four,” Paige said proudly.

  “I got twenty six,” Bailey said.

  “Thirty five,” Anna added.

  “What the fuck,” Tara breathed. “I know I didn’t get nearly that many. How in the hell did you guys manage that?”

  “I just kept chopping,” Paige said with a shrug. “But Tav probably got double the amount that we did.”

  “I didn’t keep track, either,” I said with a smile.

  “Yeah, but we all know you took down a bunch of them,” Tara said with an eye roll.

  “Probably,” I laughed. “But it is hard work, and we all managed to get it done together. Don’t feel bad if you weren’t able to get as many as someone else.”

  “Upper arm strength is not my forte,” the platinum blonde chuckled.

  “Neither is hard work,” Anna muttered, and Paige giggled next to her.

  “Hey!” Tara said with narrowed eyes.

  “I’m just teasing,” the redhead replied with a laugh.

  The drive home felt incredibly long, though it was only a couple of miles. But with how sore I was already feeling and how sweaty I still was, it felt like forever. At least it began to cool off somewhat with the evening, though, and Anna and I rolled our windows down to get a nice breeze going as we drove home.

  Once we arrived back on campus, everyone piled out of the trucks and found spots in the grass to lay or sit down. We were all ver
y clearly exhausted after such a long day of work, but I still needed to go over the evacuation plan with everyone, so I gathered them all around and let them know the details.

  “First off, I want everyone to pack an evacuation bag,” I said.

  “What does that mean exactly?” Jenny asked, and she bit her lip slightly.

  “A few pairs of clothes and any necessities you need, such as medications,” I explained.

  “What about the food?” Donna asked.

  “We’re going to load one of the trucks with supplies from the gym first thing tomorrow,” I said.

  “And the livestock?” Betty inquired.

  “We’re going to try to move them to Renee’s,” I said. “But if we can’t do that before the fire hits then we’ll set them free.”

  “Alright,” she said with a hard nod, but she looked at me with serious eyes. “And where are we evacuating to exactly?”

  “On my order everybody will load into the trucks and head straight to the fort,” I explained.

  “I don’t want to leave my farm,” Betty said, and she raised her chin at me slightly.

  This was exactly the resistance I had expected, but I was prepared.

  “I don’t want that, either,” I told her. “We have our crops there, and I know it’s important to you. However, if we are in danger I fully expect you to follow my orders and evacuate with everyone else.”

  “I understand,” she sighed.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Briar, her farmer neighbor, said, and he patted her shoulder gently.

  Honestly, I had expected more resistance than that, but it seemed that Betty understood that I wouldn’t let any danger come to her and she wasn’t willing to argue with me about it. Good thing, too, because after the day I’d had I was in no mood to try to argue anything.

  “What’s going to happen if the farm does catch fire?” Marla asked, her dark eyebrows pulled together with concern. “Would we have enough to make it through winter without those crops?”

  “Honestly, probably not,” I said, and the group began to murmur in shock. “But, we can always go on plenty of runs or go hunting. There’s other options. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does then we’ll make it work.”

  Though I didn’t think that calmed everyone down too much, it was all I could manage right then. There wasn’t much more I could do without promising things that I may not be able to deliver. We had to be logical about what was going on, and that meant telling everyone the hard truth and not trying to protect them from it.

  “One last thing,” I said. “Tonight, how about we all find something to eat from the supplies and meat. It’s been a long day, and I don’t think anybody should have to cook. Does that work for everyone? Especially those with children, can you manage?”

  Kimmy, Marla, and a couple of the women from the compound nodded their agreement so I excused everyone and told them to get some rest. We had another big day ahead of us tomorrow.

  After our meeting, I went and found a spot in the grass to lay down. The green strands were cool under my body, and I relished in the feel of them. The sun dipped further below the horizon as I laid there and just felt my exhaustion take over. At that point I wasn’t sure that I’d even manage to get into the gym and find myself some food, but I also didn’t really care. As hungry as I was, I was far more tired.

  I could still smell the smoke in the air, though not quite as much as I could at the farm earlier that day. The wind had died down a little, so it wasn’t pulling it toward us any longer. It smelled faintly of barbecue, or a bonfire, though there wasn’t one around right then. I hoped the smell wasn’t scaring the civilians too much, but there was nothing I could do about it even if it was.

  I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew I felt a kick on the bottom of my shoe.

  “Wha?” I asked as I sat up and looked around quickly.

  “We made you dinner,” Tara said with one hand on her cocked out hip and the other holding a plate out to me.

  “Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “I mean, it was pretty clear you weren’t going to do it yourself,” the platinum blonde chuckled, and she took a seat next to Bailey and Anna who were already sitting in the grass beside me.

  “Where’s Paige?” I asked.

  “I think she’s in the library,” Anna remarked.

  I nodded and turned my attention to the plate on my lap. It wasn’t a hot meal, but after the day we’d had in the heat I wasn’t exactly craving something warm to fill my belly.

  On the plate there was a large slice of venison with some sort of pasta on the side as well as some green beans. I picked up a bit of everything and took a bite. I sighed as I savored the flavor of the mix of foods. Tara was always an excellent cook, and even though I could tell that this was just something she’d whipped up, it was still delicious.

  I devoured the food on my plate quickly, then I set it down in the grass and took my water bottle from my pocket to guzzle whatever was left in it.

  “You really were hungry,” Tara chuckled as she chewed a bite of green beans.

  “I was,” I sighed. “Thank you for making me food.”

  “Of course,” she said with a smile.

  Paige came out of the library then and spotted us on the grass, so she quickly made her way over and took a seat with a small stack of books in her hands.

  “What’d you find out?” I asked when the brunette didn’t say anything, just sat down and bit her lip.

  “It’s not good,” she said in a small voice.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, my eyebrows pulled together with concern. “You were looking up fire patterns right? What is it?”

  “I did some research to see if I could figure out the average speed that a forest fire travels,” the brunette explained. “And then I used the maps to determine how much resistance it would meet and how long it would take for it to travel to us.”

  “On with it,” Tara said impatiently.

  “What did you find out?” I asked Paige.

  “That’s the thing,” she said, and she bit her lip. “I’m not really sure.”

  Chapter 10

  “What do you mean you’re not sure?” Anna asked.

  “Yeah,” Tara said. “How long do we have until this thing hits us?”

  “It depends a lot on the wind,” the brunette explained. “We basically have three scenarios.”

  “The good, the bad, and the ugly?” I asked, though I knew full well that none of these scenarios were going to be good.

  “Basically,” Paige sighed. “If the wind stays the way it is, or dies down, then we probably have two to three days max.”

  “Is that the good scenario or the bad?” Bailey asked.

  “That’s the middle,” Paige answered.

  “Well, shit,” Anna breathed.

  “Three days still isn’t a lot of time,” Bailey said in a small voice.

  “And that’s the maximum we’d have,” Paige said.

  “What’s the next scenario?” I asked through a hard set jaw.

  “If the wind hits from the south or the east or west, then it could push the fire back,” the brunette said. “It could miss us totally.”

  “That sounds good,” Tara said.

  “That’s why that’s the good scenario,” Paige sighed.

  “So, we have the good and the middle ground,” Anna said. “What’s the bad?”

  “If the wind picks up from the north, then we could have less than a day,” the brunette said, and she bit her lip as her eyes filled with tears.

  “It’s okay,” I told her, and I put my hand on her shoulder. “Thank you for looking into this.”

  “I wish I knew more,” she said as she looked up at me with wet eyes. “The fire will travel slower, through areas with more hardwoods, but I have no way of predicting the wind or anything, it’s just…”

  “You’ve done all you can do,” I assured her. “And I appreciate it.”

&nb
sp; “What do we do now?” Anna asked.

  “We continue with our plan,” I said confidently. “We have the fire lines done on the farm, that’s all we can do there. Now we put them up on campus and hope for the best.”

  The girls nodded, but I knew that they were upset. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do or say to make them feel better. We’d done all we could do at the farm. The fire lines were up, but there was no guarantee that they’d be enough. We could prepare all that we wanted, but even with all of our preparations, the fire could still overtake us and destroy our crops.

  Then it would be a really difficult winter.

  “Should we tell everybody?” Anna asked.

  I thought for a moment about my options here. It was important to be honest with the civilians, but at the same time, I felt that if I told them right then, they would panic. If panic set in, it would be more difficult to keep everyone organized and get things done before the fire did hit us.

  “No,” I said with a shake of my head. “We just went over the evacuation plan, so they know what to do. We’ll do what we can until that becomes necessary.”

  “What does that mean?” Tara asked.

  “Tomorrow we’ll cut the trees and grass around campus down and hope that we can get this place as secure as the farm,” I explained.

  “What if the fire comes while we’re here working?” Paige asked.

  “Then we follow the evacuation protocol,” Anna said with a hard nod. “We know what to do.”

  “Alright,” the brunette agreed.

  “I think you all should finish eating and head to bed,” I said. “I’ll be up there soon as well.”

  “You’re not coming right now?” Tara asked.

  “Not quite yet,” I said. “But I’ll be up there soon.”

  The girls made their way into the dorms and several of the civilians followed. It was nearly dark then, and since it was summer time I figured it had to be around eight or nine o’ clock, though I couldn’t be exactly sure. I took a deep breath as I sat in the grass and cleared my head. My only thought was that I had to protect my people at all costs.

  I wracked my brain to try to think of something else we could do to protect the farm and campus, but I knew that we had done all we possibly could at the farm already. The trees were trimmed, the fire lines were up, and hopefully our crops were protected.