AFTER THE DUST SETTLED (Countdown to Armageddon Book 2) (21 page)

     “He’s a good man, isn’t he?”

     “He’s the best. I’ll bet he didn’t tell you he’s a war hero, did he?”

     “Really?”

     “He lost the lower half of his left leg during his second tour in Iraq. But he still dragged his buddies to safety while under heavy fire. He lost so much blood he was in a hospital for four months. But he was credited with saving four lives and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

     “It doesn’t surprise me that he didn’t tell you that, though. He’s a very modest man.”

     “Wow. You must be very proud.”

     “I am. Supremely proud. He’s my hero, and has been for a very long time. Even before he went to
Iraq. He was able to get hired by the San Antonio Police with a prosthetic leg. He had to get the mayor on his side to make it happen. He’s the first officer on the force to ever have one, and even with the prosthetic he finished the Academy obstacle course faster than anyone else. I think he’s most proud that he’s been able to prove that wounded veterans are still capable of many things, and shouldn’t be just pushed off in a corner like many people try to do with them.”

     “I can’t wait to meet him-
really
meet him some day.”

     Hannah joined her daughters and watched
Lion King
. She prodded Rachel into opening the curtain long enough to hand Tom and Scott each a Twinkie, and to thank them for their generosity. Hannah called out from the back, “I just wanted to make sure they shared before they ate the whole box and got tummy aches.”

     The rest of the trip was uneventful. Scott and Tom debated on the reasons.

     “Maybe people don’t come out at night any more. I mean, there’s not much left to steal, if the families are living off the MREs that the trucks bring them every day. Maybe the bad guys hole themselves up in their houses at night now like everybody else.”

     “I don’t think they’re out here because they’ve already killed all the animals. You remember the other day we were talking about not hearing any gunshots for several days. I think the game is all gone, and they’ve finally figured out there’s nothing out here for them anymore.

     Hannah came through the closed curtain and joined them, adding her input.

     “I think you’re both right. But there’s a third factor. There just aren’t that many people left alive. FEMA told John the other day that they’ve done an estimate, and they figure there’s only about a hundred thousand people left alive in
San Antonio. Maybe even fewer.

     “Most of the deaths
were suicides, I think. People just couldn’t handle it. They couldn’t live off the land, and they didn’t know how to hunt or fish. So they just lived until their food was gone and then killed themselves and their families in various ways. It was dreadfully sad.

     “And they say that’s where the plague came from. All the decaying bodies. They were able to find the ones in the streets and burn them. But there are tens of thousands of them still in the houses. In some cases whole families huddled together in death. Just rotting away without anybody knowing about them. The flies carried the disease from the corpses and landed on people. That’s how it started.”

     The rest of the trip was completed in somber silence. There just seemed nothing more to say.

-43
-

     As they entered the last few miles of their journey, Scott picked up the walkie talkie and called in.

     “Whoever’s on the desk, this is Scott. Come in.”

     “Scott, this is Joyce. You’re very weak. Can you hear me?”

     “Yes, honey. A little bit of static, but otherwise clear. Your voice sounds like that of an angel.”

     “So does yours, honey. Did everything go okay?”

     “Yes, it went very well. We’re about half an hour out. You’ll have to wake up somebody to move the trees and open the gate for us.”

     Joyce laughed.

     “I don’t have to wake anybody up, Scott. They’re all standing behind me. They couldn’t sleep. Nobody could, knowing you and Tom were out there. And they all wanted to be up anyway, to welcome our new guests. We can’t wait to meet them.”

     Scott looked at Hannah, who put a hand to her mouth and started to tear up again.

     “10-4. I’ll call back when we’re five minutes away. You can probably pick us up on the tower cam by then.”

     “Okay, honey. I’ll be watching for you. And we’ll be ready.”

     At a little after 3:30 a.m., the blue tractor pulled into the compound and Linda replaced the mesquite trees at the end of the drive.
Jordan closed the gate and then went over to the tractor to help carry in the luggage.

     The day before they’d had to do a little bit of juggling to make room in the house for Hannah and the girls. They’d finally given into Zachary’s pleas and let him move down to the basement. He was warned that even with a portable heater and extra insulation on the walls, it might get a little bit chilly down there in the wintertime.

     “Oh, who cares?” he’d said. It’ll still be the coolest place in the house.”

     Sara and Jordan moved in together, at last, into Jordan and Zachary’s old room. Even though they weren’t officially married, and likely never would be, they were very much in love. And Sara was pregnant, so the damage was already done. Scott was happy to find a case of Trojan condoms in the Walmart truck they’d unloaded. He gave them to
Jordan and said, “Use these after the baby is born. So we don’t have to go through this again anytime soon.”

     Linda officially moved into Tom’s little cabin in the compound. Everybody knew she frequently snuck out there anyway, and since the secret was out there was no more need for pretense.

     And that left Linda’s and Sara’s old rooms for Hannah and the girls. They’d grown accustomed to sharing a single bed, so the second room would remain empty while they adjusted. Once the girls were comfortable with their surroundings, Hannah would move them out and have a bed to herself.

     After they’d been shown around the house and met everyone, Hannah asked
Scott if she could use the ham radio to call John.

     He said, “Sure. And if you don’t mind keeping an eye on our security monitors, we’ll all clear out of here and give you some privacy. Just yell if you see anything on the monitors that looks suspicious.”

     “Oh, no. Please. John and I have no secrets. Besides, he promised to call me every day or two. You can’t hide every time we talk. But thank you for the thought. Girls, would you like to say hello to Dad on the radio?”

     “Yay!”

     Scott showed her how to use the radio. She’d used John’s before, but not recently, and this one was set up a little differently.

     “John, this is Hannah. Are you on?”

     “Hi, honey. Yes, I’ve been patiently waiting to hear from you. How was the trip?”

     “Not bad. These are wonderful people. They made sure we were comfortable. And they even managed to scare up some Twinkies for the girls.”

     “That’s great, honey. I’m already missing you.”

     “Me too, baby. It seems strange, us being the ones to leave. It’s always been you that left before, getting on that airplane and going off to war. It’s a little bit different from the other side.”

     “I’m beginning to see that myself. This old house was never as empty and lonely as it is right now.”

     Hannah managed a slight smile.

     “Hey, but at least you can wander around the whole house again, instead of being restricted to the living room and garage.”

     “True.”

    “Don’t forget your promise. I agreed to take the girls to safety, and you agreed to check yourself into the hospital. Today. Not tomorrow. That was the deal, remember?”

     “Of course I remember. You’d never let me forget. Sheesh!”

     This time Hannah chuckled.

     “Oh, don’t give me your ‘picked on little boy’ routine. You go in that hospital and get better so we can put this stage in our lives behind us and get reunited.”

     “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go today, just like I promised.”

     “And you talked to Robbie?”

     “Yes. I told him where I hid the spark plug wire for the generator and how to get it started. I told him the radio is set on the right frequency and not to mess with the dial. And I told him I’d leave the front door unlocked for him. And where the house key is hidden so he can lock it after that.”

     “Did you make him write it all down? You know how his memory is.”

     This time John laughed.

     “Yes. I not only made him write it down. I made him read it back to me.”

     “Atta boy.”

     “He’ll call you every day or two to let you know how I’m doing. And I’ll call you myself as soon as I get discharged, I promise. I love you, sweetheart.”

     “I love you too, honey.”

     “Are the girls there with you?”

     “Right here, Daddy!”

     “I love you guys. Remember what I said, now that I’m not around, it’s up to you two to keep your Mommy in line.”

     “Okay, Daddy. We will.”

     They giggled. Hannah stuck her tongue out at them.

     “And if she doesn’t behave herself, you have my permission to spank her.”

     Hannah looked at the girls and faked a shocked look.

     “Okay, Daddy. We will, the first time she misbehaves.”

     “Scott, are you there?”

     Hannah handed Scott the mike.

     “Right here, John.”

     “Thank you for this. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you…”

     He wasn’t finished with his thought, but choked up and couldn’t go on.

     “No thanks are necessary. But you can repay us by recovering and calling us back real soon so we can see the faces on these girls light up.”

     “Okay, that’s a deal. Hannah, baby, the generator’s starting to sputter. It’s almost out of fuel. I love you.”

     “I love you too, honey.”

     But John didn’t catch her last words. His generator died and he lost contact.

-44-

     Later in the day, little Misty was sitting in her mother’s lap, watching
Finding Nemo.

     Zachary was in the compound, getting grilled by Rachel.

     “So, how old are you?”

     “Fourteen. How about you?”

     “Me too. When is your birthday?”

     “April third.”

     “Ha! Mine is September tenth. I’m older than you. I’ll be fifteen next month.”

     “Okay.”

     “Don’t try to get fresh with me. My daddy was a Marine. He taught me karate and jiu jitsu. Do you know what that is?”

     “Are you kidding me? I can’t even spell it.”

     “Where did you go to school?”

     “
Jay Middle School. How about you?”

     “Vale. We kicked your butts in football.”

     “I know. But our football team sucked. Everybody kicked our butts.”

     “You got that right.”

     “Can I ask you a question?”

     “Yeah, sure.”

     “Is your little sister as mean as you are?”

     “Do you really think I’m mean?”

     “Well, to be honest, you’re not being very friendly.”

     “I’m just trying to set boundaries. Dad says it’s important that I set boundaries with boys right from the start. Because otherwise they’ll start thinking that they can be my boyfriend and thinking I’ll kiss them and stuff like that.”

     “Did it ever occur to you that when you’re so mean to boys from the start that you might scare them all off? And that maybe you’ll never have a boyfriend?”

     She paused just long enough to think about it.

     “Why? Are you scared of me?”

     “No. But I’d never try to kiss you
or anything with the way you’re acting.”

     “Really? Good. Because if you ever try, I’ll kick your butt.”

     Zachary smiled, but didn’t say anything else. If there was anything he enjoyed, it was a good challenge.

     “So, I thought you were going to show me around this place. Are we gonna stand here all day, or what?”

     Zachary took her first to the huge garden that Linda and Joyce tended in the compound behind the house. Rachel seemed mesmerized by the variety of vegetables and fruits they were growing. She stopped short when she came to the strawberries and looked longingly at them. Zachary suddenly felt sadness for her, when he realized the life she must have led in the previous months.

     “Go ahead. Pick a few. Mom says she doesn’t care if we raid her garden, and long as we don’t go too crazy.”

     She wanted to, but was bound by a promise she’d made.

     “No. I can’t. I promised my mom I’d be on my best behavior.”

     “Fine. I’ll pick enough for both of us then.”

     Zach picked a handful of the most succulent of the berries. He had no intention of eating any of them himself. Instead, he passed them to her one or two at a time while they walked.

     He led her to the feed barn, and asked if she wanted to help him.

     “Do what?”

     “One of my chores is to feed the horses, rabbits, pigs and chickens twice a day.”

     “Okay. What do I do?”

     “First, the horses. There are four buckets, one for each horse. You grab two and I’ll grab the other two.”

     “Okay.”

     They took the buckets to an open bag of horse feed, and pulled out two scoops of pellets for each bucket. Then, from a wicker basket on a shelf, Zach took four apples. One for each bucket.

     “When we dump the buckets into their feed bins, the feed pellets will cover up the apples. It’s fun to
watch them, because they’ll use their noses and move the pellets around, or blow them out of the way with their nostrils so they can get to the apple. They always eat the apples first.”

     They dumped the buckets into feed bins in each of the horses’ stalls, and watched as Bonnie did exactly what Zach predicted. Digging out her dessert before she ate her breakfast.

     Rachel said, “I’m surprised you feed them apples. I’ve dreamed of having apples, and there just weren’t any to be found.”

     He explained, “One of my other chores is to go to the apple tree by the fishing pond every couple of days and pick a few apples to bring back for everybody. While I’m there, I take a second bucket and pick up the apples that have fallen on the ground. I look at them, and if they look rotten, I’ll just leave them there. But if they’re only slightly bruised, I’ll bring them back for the horses. Do you ride?

     “No. But I’d like to learn if you’ll teach me.”

     “Okay. I’m not real good myself yet. I only learned a few months ago. But I’ll teach you what I know.”

     They pulled off two flakes of hay for each of the horses, and fed the pigs.

     At least Zach fed the pigs. Rachel watched from a distance, refusing to go too close because of the smell.

     “Ewwww,” she said. “They stink something awful! I’ll never eat bacon again.”

     Zachary laughed and said, “I’ll bet you will.”

     The cattle were still grazing and needed no food. They fed the chickens and the rabbits, then took a walk out of the compound and to the huge old apple tree by the pond.

     “Dad and Joyce planted some more trees, over that way. More apples, but different kinds than these. Also peaches and pecans and plums, I think. They don’t have any fruit on them yet, so these will have to do for another couple of years or so. But they’re good apples.”

     Rachel thought so too. She ate two of them while they sat under the tree getting to know each other. She’d have eaten more, but she felt her stomach getting just a bit queasy.

     And she found two of the best looking apples on the tree to take back to her mom and sister.

     By the time they made it back to the house, they were on much better terms. She, for her part, softened just a bit. At least enough to have opened up a bit on her dreams for the future.

     As for Zachary
, he was still trying to decide whether he liked this girl or not. She had a rough exterior, but he suspected she was all girl on the inside. She might never become his girlfriend, but they’d at least be great friends. He was sure of that. As long as she didn’t start threatening to beat him up again.

-45
-

     There was no longer room at the dining room table for everyone in the group, so they set up a kids table in the corner of the dining room for Zach, Rachel and Misty.

     At first, Zach was offended, and stated so.

     “I’m not a damn kid anymore. I’m fourteen years old!”

     Linda was having none of that.

     “You use that word again you’ll be fourteen years old and missing some teeth, young man. And last I heard, fourteen wasn’t grown up yet. So technically you’re still a kid.”

     He sulked, until little Misty chimed in.

     “If you’re not a kid, how come you’re acting like one?”

     Out of the mouths of babes…

     In the end, though, Zachary learned to like the kids table. He got to sit next to Rachel, who he was developing a real fondness for, and they could talk about things that interested them, instead of the gloom and doom that the adult conversation usually steered to.

     On this particular evening, talk at the “big people table” turned to the changing weather, and things that needed to be done before winter set in.

     Scott said, “We still need to dig that trash pit before the ground gets hard. It’s a lot harder to get motivated to go out and work when it’s cold outside, too. Jordan, do you want to help me?”

     “Sure. But tell me again why we need a trash pit? I mean, we’ve been burning the trash in a pile all this time and it seems to have worked out fine.”

     Scott laughed.

     “Sure, it seemed to
for you, because you were always in the house watching it from the windows. You weren’t the one out there when the wind started to swirl, standing by with a water hose in case one of the embers got blown onto the roof of one of the barns.”

     Tom added his two cents.

     “Yep. The wind does tend to go in circles inside the compound. I guess that’s Mother Nature’s way of telling you she wasn’t happy about you putting up a big fence to block her wind’s natural course. But I’ll help as well. What’s your plan?”

     “I thought I’d dig a pit about six feet square and sixteen feet deep. Not so deep we can’t climb back out of it with a ladder.
Put sections of irrigation pipe in the corners with half inch holes drilled in it so it gets air all the way down. Then once it’s done we can just fill it up with garbage. When it’s full we can dump a little gas on it, let it smolder as long as it wants until it burns down to ashes. Then we can fill it back up again.”

     “How do you plan to keep the youngsters or the animals from falling into it?”

     “Well, I first thought about putting a plywood fence around it, but decided that might be a bad idea because of the ember problem. Then I remembered that we have all that sheet metal left over from when we turned one of the barns into a big Faraday cage. Might as well put it to use to line the plywood on the inside of the fence so it doesn’t catch fire and burn down.

     “Want to start tomorrow?”

     “Sure. Why not? With the three of us working a few hours a day, it shouldn’t take but a few days. Then maybe we can start thinning the herd after that.”

     That got Joyce’s attention.

     “You’re going to thin the herd? But why?”

     “I’ll let Tom explain it. He’s the expert, and the one who suggested it.”

     Tom finished chewing a bite of pork roast and said, “You’ve got too many cattle. You should only have two bulls. Your best breeding bull, and another one in case the first one goes sterile or dies. And two or three cows. If you have any more than that, they’re just taking up space and eating up your feed supply.”

     “Well, I guess that makes sense.”

     “Something else we’ve decided to do is talk to John when he gets out of the hospital. See if he can find a big patch of grazing land and the people to guard it. If he can set something up where a herd of cattle can grow without somebody poaching them, then we’ll take him a bull and a couple of cows. If they slaughter their oldest cow for every second calf that’s born, their herd will grow and also give everybody an occasional steak. Eventually their herd will be big enough to feed hundreds of people, if they can protect it.”

     “So after what we want to leave for our own herd, and what we want to take down the mountain, we’ll have three head to butcher.”

     “Wow, that’s a lot of beef. Where are we gonna put it all?”

     Tom said, “I looked at the chest freezer over at my place. When I cranked up the generator, it seemed to work fine. So Scott and I are going to put it across the bed of one of the Gators and haul it over here. Between that one and the two you’ve already got, it should hold most of the beef. And we’re going to turn a bunch of it into beef jerky to take back down the mountain with us. It’ll be shelf stable and won’t have to be refrigerated, but will retain most of the protein that those folks will need down there.”

     “Have you guys ever butchered a cow before?”

     “I have, many times. And I’m going to walk Scott through the process. Anybody else who wants to learn, too. It’s one of those things that you never know if you’re going to have to do someday. Especially in these troubled times we live in.”

     Linda said, “I’d like to learn.”

     “Well, come on out then, little lady. The more the merrier. But I have to warn you ahead of time, it’s not a clean process. You’re likely to lose your appetite for meat for a few days the first couple of times. It’s not like walking into a supermarket and picking up a couple of steaks.

     “After a time or two, though, you’ll get past the bad part and won’t think anything of it.”

     “Okay, count me in. When do we start?”

     “We’ll wait until after we dig the trash pit. By then we’ll see if the flies are gone for the year. If they’re gone, we’ll go ahead and do the butcherin’”