The Coward's Way of War (13 page)

- Jim Revells

Near Mannington VA, USA

Day 8

The tiny farm was set well back from the road, hidden within a cluster of trees and plants.  It had been years since it had been part of the national food supply, but the people who had owned it had converted it into a place that grew most of their fruits and vegetables.  A small collection of chickens, a pair of sheep, a cow and four horses completed the picture of a very small farm, owned by farming enthusiasts.  Jim’s family had purchased the place years ago, after the previous owner had been busted for growing cannabis on the property.  It had been perfect for their purposes.

Over the years, his family had moved in everything they could imagine needing to stay out of sight for a long time. There were entire racks of military-issue MRE packages, frozen vaults containing food and drink, plenty of medical equipment and dozens of guns.  The survivalists had believed that, in the event of a major crash, ammunition would soon prove to be more valuable than gold, so they had stocked up enough ammunition to fight a minor war.  Many of the guns were of dubious legality – being firm believers in the Second Amendment, Jim and his extended family chose to pay no heed to petty anti-gun laws – but as long as they remained out of sight, they were out of mind as far as the law was concerned.  The few guns Jim chose to show his visitors were merely the tip of the iceberg.  Last, but far from least, was an entire survivalists reference library, printed out and stored below the ground.  If an EMP had turned all computers into useless chunks of plastic and metal, Jim would still be able to access knowledge…and knowledge, he knew, was power.

When the sun rose above the horizon, Jim was already at work, checking through the farm’s facilities and stock.  Brian, his younger brother and the only one with any permanent attitude for farming, had maintained the farm in excellent condition, so well that Jim almost felt guilty about having hardly visited before the crisis had materialised.  He’d funded Brian, of course, with nearly sixty percent of his income fed into the farm and the massive stockpile of equipment, yet it bothered him to realise that his family was now largely dependent on his brother.  It had been too long since he had collected eggs for himself, or milked a cow.  He knew that he was ahead of most of the population – who barely had any idea of where milk actually came from – yet it wasn't enough.  His knowledge was barely enough to show him just how little he knew.

“The hens haven’t been doing too badly this year,” Brian informed him, as they worked.  His brother was quiet, rarely speaking when there was nothing to say.  He had never married, not even taken a partner, something that had led to accusations of homosexuality from the more conservative members of the family.  Jim didn’t care.  His brother was family, after all, and it was the job of a brother to look after the other members of his family.  “I actually thought about investing more money and buying additional chickens, but I decided against it.”

Jim nodded.  Had they known in advance exactly what form the crisis would take, they would have been able to make far more specific precautions.  As it was, the vast stockpile of medical gear they had amassed was slightly skewed, with more attention being paid to emergency care than countering a disease.  It might not matter anyway; he’d read up on smallpox over the night and he had been distressed to discover just how hard it was to cure smallpox.  The early doctors had used cowpox to give some immunity to smallpox, but even if Bessie – their cow – had had cowpox, he saw no way to safely infect the boys with the lesser disease.  The books had warned that there were some medical procedures that should not be carried out except under the most desperate of situations.

He had surfed the internet looking for ways to obtain smallpox vaccine ahead of the rest of the country, but it seemed that there were few reliable leads.  The government was trying to distribute vaccine as fast as possible, yet the process was a slow one and concentrated on the men and women who were responding to the crisis.  Farmers were being fast-tracked on the list, but Jim wasn't sure if he wanted to risk applying and drawing the government’s attention in their direction.  They had, after all, escaped from New York, something that the government would take a dim view of.  Who knew what they might be carrying?  Jim was sure that he and his family were not infected, but there was no way to know for sure until symptoms started to develop.  There were websites offering vaccine shipped in from the more unstable countries – he was amused to see that Nigeria was apparently offering smallpox vaccine to anyone giving their bank details to the company – yet he had no way of knowing if they were reliable.  The internet was already talking about horror stories where someone would inject themselves with something they’d purchased on the black market, only to discover that it was poison or even nothing more than a placebo.

“It can’t be helped now,” Jim said.  There were hundreds of small farms scattered around West Virginia; perhaps, when the crisis was finally under control, they would be able to purchase more animals from the other farmers.  “What about our power systems?”

Brian grinned.  “And you thought that I had converted to greenery when I started buying up those solar panels and the windmill,” he said.  There was no longer any need for the farm to grind grain, but the windmill had been built anyway by the previous owners – for no apparent reason – and Brian had never bothered to demolish it.  “We have enough power on hand for our immediate purposes and we don’t need to tap the grid and reveal our existence.  It won’t last forever, but it will serve for a few months.”

“That’s a relief,” Jim said.  If enough people died, according to some of the projections, the country’s infrastructure would collapse.  America could get by without bankers or social workers – two professions he held in complete disdain – but if it lost the power station crews, or the engineers who would fix the damage, the results were likely to be unpleasant.  Besides, one of the reasons they had bought and fitted out the farm was to hide from an evil government that some of the family had seen coming back during the Carter years.  The last thing they had wanted was to draw power from the grid, which would have attracted attention eventually.  “We’d better get back indoors.  Linda will be getting worried.”

Linda was working at the stove when they went inside, frying a breakfast of eggs and bacon, along with some healthier cereal for the boys.  Jim had long believed that it didn’t matter how fatty a breakfast one had, provided that one got lots of exercise, but Linda had insisted that the boys – her children – had some healthy foods as well.  She had even made sarcastic remarks about constipation when he had tried to argue with her.  The boys were helping sort out plates and glasses, pouring hot coffee into mugs.  Robin passed Jim a cup and he sipped it, smiling at how coffee always seemed to taste stronger out in the countryside.

“Please be seated,” Linda said, as she dished out the food.  “Let us say grace.”

Jim led his family in the prayer, with a special addition for the members of the family who had not yet made it to the farm, before inviting the boys to tuck in.  They had good healthy appetites at the best of times, but when they were out in the country they ate more, aware that their father and uncle were going to make them help with the chores before they did anything else.  Robin had been hinting about shooting practice, something that Jim could hardly deny was necessary, but chores came first.  A farm required constant maintenance, from feeding the animals to mucking out their pens and everyone – with no exceptions – had to help out.  Even Linda, who did most of the cooking in the farmhouse, helped with the animals as well.

“This is excellent,” Jim said, in honest delight.  Brian had smoked and cured bacon, before placing it in the freezer and storing it for the family.  He could have sold the bacon to outsiders, except that that would have drawn attention from the feds.  There was a health food farm only a few miles away that had been raided on multiple occasions by the feds, who had left it in a mess each time without compensation or even due cause.  They hadn’t found any trace of drugs, or anything else illegal; as far as Jim could tell, they’d done it just for the hell of it.  “You’re a wonderful cook, woman.”

“Call me woman again and you’ll be wearing it,” Linda said, patting him on the head.  Her voice hardened as the two boys sprang up from their seats.  “And you’d better help with the washing up before you do anything else.”

The boys promptly turned pleading looks on their father, but Jim backed his partner up.  “Hop to it, boys,” he ordered, in a tone they knew better than to disobey.  There might be hundreds of thousands of children who were brought up by liberal parents who never made them do chores, even something as minor as washing up after their meals, but Jim knew better.  If the boys worked for their pocket money, they would come to appreciate the value of money far sooner than their friends, who seemed to think of their parents as nothing more than bankers, cooks and maids.  Work first; fun and games later.  “You have a lot of work to do.”

A couple of hours passed slowly as they did the washing up, followed by tending the animals and some other minor chores that required two people to work on them.  Jim smiled at the complaints from the boys as they mucked out Bessie, transferring her cowpats to the pile of manure Brian used to fertilise the ground.   He’d seen city-slickers who had realised just what role cow shit played in farming and fainted dead away, but the boys were tougher than that.  Brian supervised, watching them carefully and handing out a tongue-lashing from time to time.  The boys would get better soon, once they got back into practice.

There was always something to do on a farm, but once the immediate chores were done, Jim went back into the living room and flicked on the television.  He had told the boys more than once that their chores came before anything, even homework, yet he needed to know what was going on in the outside world.  He flicked through CNN and came to FOX, his own favourite channel.  Much to his surprise, the television displayed a debate between two well-known congressmen.  Unlike the debates he’d seen before the crisis, it was obvious that the congressmen were not in the same room and were – clearly – using cameras built into their computers, rather than a proper studio.  It made them look faintly ridiculous.

“The President stated, in her speech, that the Constitution is not a suicide pact,” one of the congressmen said.  He was a conservative known for being one step to the left of Genghis Khan, who had left the Republican Party on the grounds that it was too liberal.  He was very popular with the more right-wing sections of the population, although he was smeared constantly by the left-wing media.  There were times when Jim thought that that accounted for his popularity.  “While I feel that there has been too much disregard for the Constitution in the last two decades, I cannot feel that clinging to a right to travel – and spreading Henderson’s Disease further – is a particularly good idea.”

“But one must question, also, the value of allowing the military to conduct operations on American soil,” his opponent said.  He was a known liberal, with a voting record that had been characterised as far too close to pure socialism for comfort.  Jim distrusted people like him on sight, knowing that their faith in government intervention and higher taxes – to pay for the interventions – ended up leaving the ordinary taxpayer worse off in the long run.  “So far, we have lost more people to military gunners than we have lost to Henderson’s Disease.”

“Congressman Featherstone,” the right-winger said, “are you not aware that all the people who have been shot were shot in the act of trying to break through the road blocks and get out into the countryside?  I am aware that your party seems to believe that no one is ever responsible for their actions – it’s all the fault of their parents, or society, or the evil right-wingers who are provoking them – but we must recognise that there are certain realities we must face.  One of them is that anyone carrying Henderson’s Disease will be contagious for at least three days – perhaps longer – without knowing it.  Do you not feel that people have a responsibility to society?”

“But those people, Blake, could be innocent,” Featherstone protested.  “Did they deserve to die?”

“Perhaps in a perfect world, you would be right,” Blake agreed.  “In the world we have, they chose to disobey instructions intended to keep them – and the majority of the American population – safe from harm.  They brought their fates upon themselves.

“And, as for the American military being deployed inside the country, we have a long tradition of using the military for disaster relief and other such emergency aid.  The President declared a state of emergency and Congress supported her on it.  Her deployment of the troops was legal and, I might add, the correct solution to the crisis.  Had she delayed by even one day, the disease might have spread further.”

“There are hundreds of new cases being reported every day,” Featherstone countered.  “Can we really claim that the President has stopped the disease in its tracks?”