Surviving the Fog (11 page)

Jacob shook his head.  "There are more
kids.  About fifty I guess.  And we just met a man named
Hector.  He's from a logging camp.  It's back down this
road and then up the mountain."

"Yes, I know about the logging camp.
 Did you say that there aren't any adults at your camp?"

"I think Hector might stay with us.
 There was a woman named Jackie, but she was killed by some
bad men."

Mary was experiencing shock after shock.
 She stared at the boy.  She tried to collect herself,
tried to tell herself that this story was too fantastic, tried to
tell herself that her long overdue husband would be driving down
the road any time now. But there was a young boy here with a
strange tale that she needed to hear, and the sky was beginning to
darken.

"Come in," she said.  "Let's talk.
 My name is Mary Brown."  Jacob went up on the porch and
entered the house behind Mary.  Inside, he saw two small
children staring anxiously at him.

"Mama, who's him?" the little boy
demanded.

"He's a visitor, Comet," Mary answered.
 "Now you and Star get your teeth brushed, and then you can
play with your toys."

"When are we gonna get the TV fixed?" the
little girl grumbled, as she and her brother exited the living room
through a hallway.

The house seemed very cozy.  It had the
ordinary clutter of small kids without being messy.  Mary led
Jacob through the living room and into the kitchen.  She
motioned towards the yellow Formica covered table, so he sat down.
 She opened a cupboard, and she took out a bag of corn chips
which she put on the table in front of Jacob.  Then she opened
the refrigerator, and she took out a can of juice.  She put
the can by the chips and said, "Help yourself."

Jacob stared greedily at the bag of chips.
 He wondered for a moment whether it was the last bag of chips
in the world.  He looked over at the two children peeking
around the corner.  A feeling of guilt came over him.

"I'm not hungry," he lied.

Mary gave him a disbelieving glance.
 "If you're not, then you must be the only teen aged boy in
the world who isn't.  Eat."

"Uh, maybe just a few," he mumbled as he dug
into the bag.

Mary sat down across from him.  "All
right, tell me what you know.  And you two get into the
bathroom and brush your teeth."  The two young children
scampered away.

Jacob began talking.  He spoke about the
kids' camp.  He related the incident with the motorcyclists.
 He talked about Hector.  He repeated what he had seen
when he encountered the Fog.

Mary had many questions, and it took a long
time for the story to be told.  At times, they were
interrupted by the two children who seemed to realize that
something was wrong.  Jacob had to stop while Mary attended to
her kids.  At last, Jacob finished his tale.  Mary sat
silent.  Jacob realized that he had eaten half of the corn
chips in the bag.

Finally, Mary spoke.  "I knew something
was wrong that day.  First the television picture went dark.
 None of the channels worked.  At first, I thought it was
the TV.  We have satellite TV and internet, and the internet
went dead at the same time.  So I thought, maybe it's the
satellite.  Then the man from the gas station didn't come by
to deliver the mail and messages from my husband, Davis.
 Davis went to Bakersfield in early May to visit his parents
and to buy supplies.  After the winter we stock up again.

"No one ever came from the gas station.
 And there were so many deer around.  Herds of them
started moving past the house in early May.  It's like they
had been spooked.  They should still be grazing lower down the
mountains at this time of the year.  I've been getting more
and more worried.  I'll have to hitch the horses to the
buckboard and go see for myself, of course."

"Are you an Indian?" asked Jacob
abruptly.

Mary smiled.  "I prefer to be known as
Native American, Jacob," she responded.  "But yes, I am."

"Were you born here?  Is there a
reservation nearby?" the boy asked.

Mary laughed. "No, I'm a valley girl,” she
said.  “I was born in Los Angeles.  I met Davis at
college.  We were at USC.  He's a geologist who fell in
love with the mountains and the land.  He always wanted to
live in the Sierra's.  We moved here about six years ago.
 At first, people thought that we were survivalists, but we
just wanted a farm in the high country."

The woman and the boy talked for some time,
and then the woman said, "It's getting late.  You better stay
here tonight.  Do you mind sleeping in the barn?  No
offense intended, but I just met you, and I have small children to
look after."

Jacob took no offense, and he spent the night
in the loft of the barn.  He found it to be quite comfortable,
except for the smell of the two cows down below.

The next morning, Jacob was awakened by the
sound of Mary calling him.  It was still dark when she hitched
the horses to the wagon.  The two children were asleep in the
back of the wagon.  Mary had wrapped them in blankets, and she
had laid them on old soft hay.  Jacob rubbed the sleep from
his eyes, as he climbed up to sit alongside Mary.

They traveled all day, stopping only to rest
the horses.  It was almost dusk when they arrived at the place
where the mist covered the road.  Mary stared at it for some
time, and then she insisted on climbing the same hill that Jacob
had climbed.  In the darkening gloom it did, indeed, seem as
if they were on an island.  Finally Mary was satisfied, and
she turned the wagon around.  By moonlight, they made their
way back.  At midnight, they stopped to sleep.  Mary
slept in the bed of the wagon with her kids, and Jacob curled up on
the ground, beneath.

The following morning, Mary let everyone
sleep late.  She made a fire, and she cooked eggs and hash
browns using a portable iron grill and a frying pan.  After
months of existing on the camp’s meager fare, Jacob eagerly
devoured this delicious breakfast.  Afterwards, they took
their time going back.

It was after dark when they came to the
turnoff to the logging road.  Jacob asked to be let off.
 Mary protested that she could take him to his camp, but Jacob
reminded her of the grisly sight that the children might see.
 Reluctantly she accepted his reasoning and so, with a last
wave, she turned up the logging road, and the lumbering wagon was
soon lost in the shadows.

Jacob turned toward his camp.  It was a
chilly moonlit night, but he was young and hardy and his fleece
lined jacket was warm.  He hiked in the moonlight wondering
what would happen to Mary and to her kids.  He hoped that she
had enough supplies to last them for a while.  He remembered
that her husband had gone down to Bakersfield to restock.
 Eventually he stopped to sleep.  He rose early, and he
made it to the camp in time for brunch.

Mike was glad to see Jacob, and he listened
with interest to Jacob's report of the farm and its inhabitants.
 He was especially interested in the solar room attached to
the barn.  He promised Jacob that he would send someone to see
if Mary needed help in any way.

Meanwhile, he told Jacob, Hector had shown up
with a load of supplies the day before, and he had taken two boys
back with him to help load and deliver the rest.  That had
taken all day, and they had made several trips.  They had also
scavenged the bikers’ shack and the RV for more supplies, and they
had brought the other motorcycles to the camp.  Then Hector
and Rasul had gone back to the logging camp for the night.
 Hector was going to drive the forklift down today, and Rasul
was bringing his motorcycle.

"Yeah, that lucky dog," exclaimed John.
 He had wanted to ride the motorcycle, but Rasul had some
experience.

By the end of July, Hector had managed to
bring most of the machinery down from the logging camp.  He
removed the seats from the bus, filled it with logs, and delivered
them to the job site.  With the help of the Spears, he built a
log bridge that was stable enough to allow some of the lighter
machinery to cross the river.  In the first week of August,
they began building the log wall in front of the cave.

To his surprise, timid Kathy spoke to Mike
and insisted that they use ropes to secure the forklift whenever
Hector used it to raise a log up to a high position.

"The slope makes it dangerous," she
explained.  "What if it fell backwards?  The forklift
might break and worse, Hector might be killed."

After mulling it over, Mike decided that
Kathy was right, so they used safety ropes when they started
building the wall. Mike allowed Hector to stay in one of the three
cabins still on the girls’ side of the river.  They had moved
another cabin to the boys’ side.  It was still tight quarters
with extra bunk beds jammed into each of the available cabins.
 Mike was still in his old bunk, but at least everyone had
been moved out of the dining hall.

The mood of the camp had greatly improved.
 Privately and in groups, the kids had come to accept the
reality of this new world.  Privately and in groups, they had
mourned the loss of the people they had loved and lost.  Now
their spirits had lifted, and they were looking forward.

These children were resilient, and though
they sometimes felt depressed, they also had a need to play.
 At first Mike was so focused on surviving, that he resented
the time spent on fun, but John and Desi reminded him that they
were still kids, and that they needed to run, jump, skip, play, and
let off steam.

One day John became so annoyed with Mike’s
solemn attitude that he grabbed the smaller boy in a headlock, and
then he marched Mike down to the meadow to throw a Frisbee for an
hour.  Soon Mike was laughing, running, and screaming, and at
the end of the hour he realized that not once had he worried about
food, shelter, or the dangers of winter.

After that, Mike asked Yuie to organized
archery contests, baseball games, and dodge ball challenges.
 He made sure that everyone had some private time to just kick
back and take it easy.  He asked Erin to explore developing
natural substances for creating makeup, and to hold classes to
teach the younger girls how to apply that makeup.  All of the
books in the camp were confiscated, and a library was created.
 Eric was the camp librarian.  The kids were glad to have
a more relaxed atmosphere, and they griped less about the tasks to
which they were assigned.

There were plenty of tasks.  Beside the
effort, led by Hector to construct the Lodge, and the effort, led
by Jacob, to supplement their food supplies by hunting, there was
the hated kitchen duty, dreaded clothes washing, and never ending
fire wood gathering.  Mike charged the Spears with patrolling
the perimeter of the camp.  He established guard posts on the
slopes overlooking the camp.  He spent a lot of time thinking
of ways to improve their situation and their chances of
survival.

Sometimes, his ideas were eagerly adopted.
 Sometimes, they were not.  One night at Meeting, he
proposed a new idea.

"I think we should strip down to our
underwear for three hours a day," he said confidently.  There
was a stunned silence, and then the uproar began.

Chapter Five Making Plans

"Are you crazy?"

"Did the boys tell you to say that?"

"I'm not letting those girls see me in my
underwear."

"I think that only the girls should strip,
especially Big Tits Erin."

"You shut up, Pencil Dick!"

"All right, all right!" Desi shouted.
 Everyone subsided into low mumbling and grumbling.  Then
Desi turned to Mike.  She crossed her arms under her chest and
in a demanding tone asked, "Why?"

Mike looked around helplessly.  "Uh...
um.... well, it's going to be cold this winter, even in the Lodge.
 We'll probably be wearing our clothes most of the time.
 I just think it would be a good idea if we save them for when
we really need them.  If we wore just our underwear part of
the time, our clothes will last a lot longer."  There was a
low murmur from the group.

"See," said Desi, talking to the crowd of
kids.  "He always has a good reason for his ideas, even his
dumb ideas."  She looked back at Mike and glared.

Erin stood up.  "Chief, even if I didn't
like the idea of taking my clothes off in front of everyone, it
wouldn't work.  We can't go without wearing our clothes
because of the elevation."

"It's warm enough some days," Mike
insisted.

"It's not that, Chief.  It's because
there's not enough atmosphere at this elevation.  We would all
get severe sun burn."Mike was thunderstruck.  He had not
thought of that at all.  He felt like an idiot for not
remembering about sun burn.

"Oh," he said.  "I guess that was a dumb
idea."  His statement was followed by hoots from the
audience.

"Quiet!" yelled Desi, and when they calmed
down she continued.  "Look, the Chief had an idea.  It
won't work.  But if we give everyone a hard time who thinks up
a dumb idea, everyone is going to stop telling us their ideas.
 They'll be too afraid that we'll laugh at them.  And
then someone is going to have a really crazy good idea that they
won't bother to tell.  Maybe it will be an idea that will save
someone’s life.  So when someone suggests something, even if
it sounds crazy, we have to listen.  Okay?"  There was
more mumbling after that, but generally they agreed with Desi.

“We have a related problem,” said Yuie.
 “Some of us are growing out of our clothes.”  There was
a murmur of agreement from some of the kids.

“The bigger kids are going to have to share
some of their clothes with the younger kids,” Erin stated.
 This brought a protest from some of the older kids.

“What happens when we grow out of our
clothes?” an older boy asked.

“If you are a boy then you can wear some of
the clothes that we took from those men, or else you can wear some
of the clothes that we found in the RV,” Erin answered.  “We
girls might have to make some new clothes, although we have some of
Jackie’s things, some of the other counselor’s things, and we found
some ladies clothing in the RV.”