An Undeclared War (Countdown to Armageddon Book 4) (18 page)

     Rhett smiled too and said, “You know, Scarlett and I have been wondering about that very thing.”

     “I’ll bet you also that John had something to do with you coming here. He wants you to establish a block operation over there similar to what we’re doing here. We’re up to twenty one people now, and we’re growing enough food for everybody and then some. We’ve got a very effective security program that keeps us safe, and we’re sharing our excess seeds with other blocks that are just getting established. Ask Scott when he comes back after you and see if I’m right. I’ll bet John had something to do with him dropping you off here.”

     “Well, to be honest, my friends and I have been kicking around ideas for making
Baker Street productive enough to feed everybody who lives there. I’m hoping you can give me some pointers.”

     “Pointers we have plenty of around here. We’ve learned a lot over the last year through trial and error. So you can learn what worked and what didn’t. Basically, you can learn from our mistakes.

     “You’ll notice that all the trees and shrubs have been removed from all the yards except one. The one with the biggest oak tree in the front yard was left alone. That’s officially our park. The kids have a safe place to play, and that’s where we hold a block meeting every Sunday afternoon. Followed by a prayer meeting for those who are inclined to stay.”

     “What happened to the house?”

     “We took it out. Dismantled it, right down to the slab. We took the sheetrock and used it to line some of the houses that are occupied. Slapping an extra sheet of sheetrock along an interior wall reinforces its insulating ability by half again as much.

     “We’re lucky in that every occupied house on the block has a fireplace. The extra sheetrock made it a little easier to heat the houses this past winter.

     “The lumber from the house was burned in the fireplaces as fuel. So now the slab is all that’s left, for the kids to play hopscotch and ride their skateboards.”

     “So, you grow crops in the other yards?”

     “Yes. We cleared out all the trees and bushes and tilled up the ground. Once the ground was tilled, we raked all the grass out of the soil and piled it up in the street to dry out. Then we returned it to the soil as fertilizer and tilled it a second time.”

     “Where’d you get a tiller? I thought none of the machines worked anymore.”

     “Some do. Not many, but some. Most tillers have electric ignitions. They start with a key. Those were toast after the blackout, because the ignitions and batteries all shorted out.

     “But the old fashioned tillers… the ones you start by pulling a cord, they all survived.

     “The police brought us one from a Home Depot Store, and said there weren’t enough to go around and asked if we’d share it with our neighbors.

     “So after I’m done with it for the day, I’ll roll it over to the next street so they can use it.”

     “Where did the seed come from?”

     “The first batches were brought in by farmers, on horseback. They went from block to block, trying to find somebody who was in charge to give the seeds to. It was a dangerous business. I heard a couple of the farmers got killed, and several others were shot at. Apparently by
people who thought they were there to harm them instead of help them.

     “But the farmers, God bless ‘em, kept coming. They handed bags of wheat and corn seeds out, and assorted other vegetables and berries. They encouraged us to take notes and answered all of our questions. They told us when to plant, how to plant, and when to harvest.

     “And most importantly, they told us to take a portion of the seeds we produced from our plants and share them with others, so that eventually everybody would have the same capability to survive.”

     “I notice that all of the houses have gutters and rain barrels up against them. Is that water to drink or for the crops?”

     “Both, actually. That was one of the first things we did. We gathered up all of the garbage cans and cleaned them out the best we could, and put them at the houses that already had gutter systems. We blocked the downspouts so water couldn’t go into them, and made holes in the gutter itself above each of the cans, so the cans catch a fairly equal amount of water.

     “For the houses that didn’t already have gutters, we made them by hammering two by fours onto the
roofs at regular intervals. The water would pour between the two by fours, and that’s where we placed the barrels.”

     “But now that the city’s water supply is running again, you no longer use the rain water, right?”

     “Wrong. The city water system is only running at twenty percent capacity. That’s why it trickles out of the faucets. We use that water for drinking, and use the rainwater for irrigation. If everybody used tap water for irrigation, the city wouldn’t be able to keep up.”

     Lisa spent an hour with Rhett, then Jason took over. Between
the two of them, they supplied him with many of the tools he’d be able to use to turn Baker Street into an operation similar to the one Jason and Lisa managed.

     By the time fourteen hundred hours rolled around and Scott returned, Rhett was gung-ho and ready to go, so he could finish work and go home. He had a lot to do over the coming weeks, both on the job and off.

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     Tom hadn’t tracked a deer in many years. When he was a young man he did it because it was a challenge. Sneaking up on a deer by following its tracks wasn’t an easy thing to do. A little bit of noise, a cough, a change in the wind direction, could all send up an alarm and send the deer running.

     But he enjoyed the game. He did it specifically because it was tough. When he was successful, it meant more
to him.

     When he got older, though, and was no longer able to trek through dense forests for several miles and a couple or three days, he changed his tactics. That was when he found a good place to sit in a tree stand, perfectly still for sometimes hours at a time, waiting for a good sized buck to wander by.

     So, it had been many years since he’d tracked a big buck. And he’d never tracked horses.

     He was glad he hadn’t been asked to do so.

     Colson led the posse of six men, although he told Tom up front he could take over if he wanted to.

     Tom had the sense his friend wanted him to prove hi
s mettle. To gain the respect of the men in the group who didn’t know him. When they stopped to let their horses catch their breath and drink from a creek, Colson confided that a couple of the men had expressed an interest in becoming deputies once the new sheriff’s department was established.

     “This will be a chance for you to see if they might have what it takes.”

     “Oh, hell, Jim. I haven’t even said I’d take the job yet.”

     “But you will.”

     “Now how in thunder do you know that?”

     “Because I know you, Tom. You may
live in a modern world now, but your soul is that of an old cowboy. You still believe in right and wrong and you believe in justice. Justice ain’t always pretty. But it’s essential if peaceable people are gonna be able to live their lives without looking over their shoulder all the time. Somebody’s got to step up to the plate and make sure that justice is administered.

     “And I know you well enough to know you never run from a good challenge.”

     They were off again at a good pace, and Tom had time to process his friend’s words. He suspected that Jim knew, just like Linda and Jordan knew, that it was just a matter of time before he agreed to take the sheriff’s job.

     Now that he had Linda’s blessing,
he knew it too. He just hadn’t admitted it to himself yet.

     What Jim said was true. Tom did love a good challenge. And somebody had to do it. Why not him?

     They didn’t stop again until they came to a road where someone had seen the outlaws take the woman the night before.

     Mason Jobe, who everyone called Mace, was the best tracker they had. Tom knew him from the old days too. He was a good man.

     Mace dismounted and took a good look at the tracks in front of them.

     “Yep. This is them. Twelve, fifteen hours old. They’re moving pretty slow. Probably because she can’t stay on the horse at a full run. Not with her hands tied in front of her.”

     Tom said, “Well, that’ll work to our advantage. Maybe we can catch them before they have a chance to harm her even more.”

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      They rode another hour, with Mace at the point, watching the tracks in the dirt.

     A cou
ple of times the ground turned rocky, and he could no longer see the tracks. He stopped occasionally and examined the rocks, to see if any had been kicked over.

     “You look for dirt on top of the rocks,” he explained. Normally, rocks only get dirt on the bottom. The rain
and the wind keep the top of the rocks clean. If you find any rocks with dirt on the top, they’ve been kicked over. That means that somebody rode through here since the last rainfall.

     “And the last rainfall was just two days ago. See this rock, with the dirt on top? The dirt is still damp. It hasn’t had time to dry out in the sun. It was kicked over within the last couple of hours.

     “We’re getting close. We’d best slow down now.”

     Scott remembered from the old westerns he watched as a kid that outlaws sometimes used tricks to evade the posses behind them. One was to enter a stream or a river, then to walk or swim up or downstream and come out at a different place on the other side. Sometimes trackers spent hours trying to pick up the trail again.

     Another trick was to leave the trail on rocky ground. An inexperienced tracker might have a hard time knowing that their prey had changed course and gone off in a different direction.

     But old Mace wasn’t an inexperienced tracker. He knew to watch for all the signs. Besides the dirty rocks, he examined every patch of dirt they came across for signs of a hoof print. And on each side of the trail, he watched for broken twigs or tree branches.

     They were moving at a walk now, and Mace had already given them the universally recognized signal to stop talking, by putting a finger to his lips.

     At one point he dismounted, and tied his horse to a mesquite tree.

     Without a word, the others followed suit.

     They left their horses behind, and proceeded on foot. Cautiously, for they didn’t know if the outlaws knew there was a posse after them.

     Until this point, no one had ever chased the bad men who had a habit of doing hit and run attacks on the citizens of Kerr County. The citizens themselves were terrified of the outlaws. In previous incidents, the frightened citizens generally stayed at home, licked their wounds, and considered themselves lucky that they hadn’t been killed.

     But this… this was different.

     In recent weeks, the gangs had been getting more and more bold. Instead of striking mostly at night, they’d been doing daring daylight raids. Some of them no longer covered their faces with bandanas or masks.

     There was a sense that they felt they finally owned the city of
Kerrville, and could do as they pleased.

     They were also getting more and more vicious. They had always shot dogs who tried to defend their homestead
s. But lately they shot all dogs on sight. Even the old or infirm. Even the dogs who showed no aggression.

     In addition to getting
increasingly more and more afraid, the homeowners had been getting angry.

     That was why they’d entertained the thought of reestablishing the sheriff’s department.

     It was getting quite ugly in Kerrville, and they’d had enough.

     The attack on
Bill Nowak and his family had been particularly brutal. The Garza gang had come knocking on the door, saying they were merely looking for a drink. When no one answered the door, they became angry. One of them shot a cat out of a tree in the front yard.

     A young girl of eight,
Bill’s granddaughter, ran from the house screaming, “They’ve shot Toby!”

     She picked up the cat and cradled it in her arms. The man who’d shot it punched her square in the face, knocking out several teeth and sending her reeling.

     The entire family came to the girl’s aid.

     It didn’t matter that none of them were armed.
Garza himself shot Bill in the head in front of his screaming family. Then they noticed his daughter Amanda.

     One of the gang started to rape her, and she begged them, “No, please! Not in front of my children!”

     It was then that a boy of three ran toward her, screaming, “Mommy!”