Trace of survival trilog.., p.66
Trace of Survival Trilogy, page 66
That morning he had gotten up before dawn and had started working on the cart’s gearing when he heard several explosions and then gunshots erupt. They seemed to be coming from the direction of the walled community about a mile from his home. He grabbed his rifle and binoculars and headed to a building several hundred yards from the compound. It was three stories high and he had observed activities in the compound from the third story of the building before. Some of the compound leaders had caused him trouble in the past so he occasionally observed their activities at a distance. He made sure they knew he was watching them just to let them know that he wasn’t going to tolerate any nonsense.
This morning he carefully made his way to his observation point and looked at the compound. The gunfire had slacked off before he got there. What he saw was horrific. Along with some holes in the wall, the gate to the compound had been blown open and there were people with automatic weapons moving through the compound. Screaming was heard from several sources. Occasionally, they would point their weapon at someone lying on the ground and fire their weapon. The bodies jerked when they were hit. He saw women being raped and then locked in a storage building. He saw children being beheaded. After watching for an hour or so, he saw two trucks pull into the compound and a few more dark skinned men climb out of the trucks and join their cohorts. They started repairing the gate and walls and piling the bodies of the compound residents some distance outside of the compound walls. After piling them they pored a liquid on them and set them on fire. Todd removed the binoculars from his eyes and quietly left the building and headed for his house. Tears were streaming down his face. Some of the compound residents were friends.
By the time he reached his house he had made a decision. He was too close to the terrorists that now occupied the compound. He packed a large backpack with essential items that he would need for an extended journey. He put it, a couple of plastic tubs of food and an extra can of fuel in the second seat of the cart and strapped them down. He then donned some traveling clothes and boots, made sure he had plenty of ammo for his rifle and two handguns, and then left the house after shutting down and disconnecting the solar system. He needed to get away from the area. He opened the garage door and pushed the cart outside. He closed the garage door and locked it and then locked the house. He pulled the rope on the engine and it started after several pulls. He drove out of his driveway in a direction opposite from the compound with the terrorists. He had decided to head for interstate 75. He was going to travel north until he reached a point where he was going to go west in search of his sister in north Alabama.
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The travelers from Hope had made it through Chattanooga and were now on interstate 75 and headed towards Atlanta. They were south of the Dalton exits when the point rider, DJ, saw a small vehicle with one person standing beside it pulled to the side of the interstate on the north bound lanes. He rode back and got Paul to ride forward with him while the rest of the train stopped and established a defensive perimeter. They didn’t know how many people were with the vehicle. An ambush was always a possibility.
Paul and DJ rode their horses across the interstate median and approached the vehicle with the one person. The man had his rifle pointed down but ready to quickly bring up and put in use. Paul had gotten off his horse when he realized who the man was.
“Todd!” he exclaimed.
Todd didn’t recognize his brother-in-law. He had only known Paul for a short time before the Collapse. After Paul and Trish had married they had visited each other’s homes only briefly. Todd looked hard at Paul and still didn’t recognize him. He had never seen Paul with a beard, while he had had a short one most of his adult life.
“Do I know you?” he asked Paul, while watching him suspiciously.
Paul laughed and then said, “Yeah, you do. I’m your brother-in-law, Paul.”
Todd’s mouth fell open and then he grabbed Paul in a hug. “Oh, my God. Am I glad to see you!”
DJ went back to tell the rest of the wagon train to move forward while Paul and Todd got reacquainted. When DJ told Trish that the person on the other side of the road was her brother, she jumped down from the wagon she and Tony were riding in and ran to greet him.
After she had grabbed him and hugged him hard for several minutes as she and he cried with joy, she asked about their parents.
“I’m sorry, sis, they’ve been dead for several years now. They died during a cholera epidemic that swept through.” They then cried the tears of grief for the loss of their parents. Trish’s fresh grief reignited Todd’s grief for the loss.
The group pitched camp early that day. There was some catching up to do. Todd first told them about the attack he had witnessed earlier that day. Paul immediately set up one of the QRP radios that he had brought with him. He found a suitable tree nearby and raised the long dipole antenna for it and started trying to raise someone at Hope and also tried to contact someone on one of the frequencies that he knew the military monitored. It was later that night when the daytime radio noise quieted down that he was able to get through to someone. He talked to Ty, who then relayed the message through to Kansas City. A couple of hours later Ty radioed back and said that they were to stay put and wait for someone from Kansas City that was flying in by helicopter.
The group settled into camp and waited.
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As the travelers pitched camp in a rest area along the interstate, Trish and Toni sent the ‘Musketeers’ into the surrounding area to gather dead wood for a camp fire. All grabbed a hatchet each and Michelle grabbed her crossbow while Andy had a Ruger 9mm handgun strapped to his belt.
It appeared that previous campers had cleaned up usable firewood near the rest area so the three moved further out in their search and soon were out of sight of the camp. They had built a good sized pile of wood and were bundling it up into three piles so all the wood could be dragged back to camp. The three had done this many times in the past and had their routine down pat. They intended to get this lot back to camp and then go back out and gather more wood in the same fashion.
As they were securing their bundles, David suddenly raised his head up and started listening intently.
“What’s the matter, David?” Andy asked.
“Quiet, please. I think I hear someone. Sounds like they’re crying.” They all stood still and listened. Soon Michelle heard the crying also.
“Sounds like it’s coming from that direction,” she said as she pointed further away from the campsite. “I think it’s a kid. Let’s check it out.”
“Ok, but let’s spread out some and move quietly like Da taught us.” Andy ordered. The other two nodded in the affirmative as they spread out and started easing toward the sound. After an approach of about eighty yards, they found the source of the crying. In a clearing sat an old RV in the middle of a large vegetable garden. Nearby a boy was kneeling beside a body. He was rocking back and forth on his knees and crying.
Andy turned to David. “Go get our dads and Da and bring them back.” he quietly told his cousin. David turned and quickly went back to the camp site as Andy and Michelle approached the kid. They stopped before entering the clearing and didn’t make their presence known to him. They had been well trained to wait for their adult family or friends if they encountered any unusual situations such as this.
A few minutes later their dads, along with their Da and Todd returned with David. Pete came up to his kids along with David while the other three men moved around the outside of the clearing staying within the tree line and looked for any problems, such as a possible ambush.
Pete whispered to the ‘Musketeers’, “Mick, come with me. Keep that bow ready. You other two, stay here and be ready to head back to the camp if I tell you to.” The three nodded.
Pete and Michelle stepped out of the trees when the other three men gave him an ‘all clear’ hand signal. They approached the boy. When he heard Pete say, “Hey, son.” the boy looked up with a haunted look in his eyes. Pete knelt beside him and started talking to him. It took awhile but Pete finally got some sketchy answers about what had happened.
Late the day before, a group of men had attacked their homestead and killed his father and had taken his mother captive. His mother had hidden him in a small storage compartment before she was taken. He had waited several hours before coming out. He found his dad dead and his mom gone. He had stayed beside his dad all night and the following day. He was in shock. He just cried and rocked while Pete managed to pick the answers out of him over time.
While this was happening Paul had went to Andy and David and told them to get the firewood back to the campsite and bring their mothers to take care of the boy. After Trish and Toni had removed the boy and their kids from the RV site, the four men searched the area but found no evidence of who had attacked the little family. They knew that the boy’s mom had been taken for the killers to use for sexual pleasure. Todd voiced his guess that it was the same group that had attacked the compound near his home.
They took some items from the RV for the boy; his clothes and some personal mementos so he would something to remember his parents by. They also buried his dad before they went back to camp to await the arrival of the chopper.
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Lizzie was so extremely tired of the south Georgia heat. When she and her family had moved here before the Collapse, it had been tolerable because a person could always retreat into a nice cool air conditioned home. Now that the grid was gone, that was no longer an option. Nowadays she always felt sweaty and dirty in the hot months and there wasn’t anything she could do about it except take a swim in a nearby creek on occasion.
That was what she was doing when she encountered the two youngsters. They had walked down from the nearby road to the creek to fill their water containers. Lizzie watched them from about twenty five yards away for several minutes. They were dirty and looked to be near starvation. They sat down and drank some water before refilling the plastic bottles they were carrying in a small backpack. The only belongings they appeared to have were the clothes they were wearing, one rolled up blanket and the small backpack the girl was carrying. She looked to be the older one by several years. Lizzie only had her head above water while she watched them. She had to keep an eye out for snakes and gators also.
The children finally lay back to rest. Lizzie watched a while longer to see if anyone else joined them. When she was sure that they were by themselves, she spoke.
“Hello,” she said loud enough for them to hear. The children sat up quickly and the girl grabbed the small boy and held him in a tight embrace. Apparently, they were too tired or weak to get up and run away.
“Don’t worry,” Lizzie said. “I won’t hurt you. I was just cooling off in the water here when you came from the road. Where are your parents?” she asked.
The two looked at her a few seconds before the girl sighed and replied, “They’re dead. They were killed about two weeks ago. Dad helped us hide before he was killed.”
“Where are you from,” Lizzie asked. “and how old are you?”
“Lake City, Florida. I’m eleven and my brother is seven.” the girl replied.
“Have you eaten today?”
“No. We ain’t had much to eat since we left home.”
“Come on then.” Lizzie said. “Let’s go get you something to eat.” She got out of the water and grabbed her rifle and small pack she always carried. She was in sneakers, shorts, and tank top for her swim. She would be dry except for fresh sweat by the time she got home.
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Before she reached her house, she stopped at a large Kudzu patch and picked a bag full of the intrusive vegetation. It had been introduced to the country decades before and was mostly a nuisance vine, but it was good eating. She was planning on making Kudzu chips for supper that night. She still had gallons of cooking oil that she had found in an abandoned restaurant storeroom years before.
Back at her house she fixed the kids a meal and while they were eating she and Anthony slowly questioned them. Their little community of about twenty people near Lake City had been attacked by a group of dark looking men early one morning and everyone was murdered except the two siblings. Their dad had hidden them in a hog shed. The attackers didn’t go in the hog pen where the shed was. They just shot the two hogs kept in the pen. When the attackers had left, the children had ran away in the direction opposite from the way the killers had went. They had been on the run since then. They had been eating berries and other wild plants that their dad had told them were safe to eat. What they had eaten wasn’t enough and they were near starvation and would have died soon if Lizzie hadn’t found them.
Lizzie looked at the two when they had finished eating and talking. “I want you to stay with us. You won’t be able to survive by yourselves out there on the roads. Would you like to stay here?” she asked.
The girl and boy nodded. They were tired and needed rest. Lizzie put them in her son’s old room and they were asleep almost instantly when their heads hit the pillows.
After putting them to bed, she and Anthony discussed the situation for a couple of hours with Betsy and her family. They were worried that they could be attacked by the same group that murdered the youngsters‘ family and friends. From what the kids had told them, the men sounded like they were Middle Easterners. They decided to keep a better security watch and take some other precautions. With the five adults, they hoped to keep an all-round the clock watch from a watch tower or crows nest that Anthony decided to put atop their house. They would start putting it up the next day.
As Lizzie lay down to sleep that night, she prayed. “Dear Lord, Please help us protect ourselves and these children. If it is possible, send us someone that can help us.”
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Todd had been working on the gearing of his cart when he was interrupted by the attack on the nearby compound.. He knew it wasn’t quite right when he left but he had been hoping that it would work as it was. It did, for a while. That was why he was stopped on the interstate. One of the gears had stripped out and he had coasted to a stop less than an hour before the wagon train came by. He decided that it was God’s will that it had done so. Otherwise, he would have driven right on by the travelers from Hope without even knowing that the last of his family was in the wagons.
He and DJ had pushed the cart to the south bound side of the road before the boy was found and brought back to the campsite. The boy was given some water and some travel rations to eat while a fire was started and a hot meal was prepared for everyone. At first, he just looked at the food, but finally hunger and thirst got the best of him and he started eating on the dry rations. Then he laid down on the ground and fell asleep.
DJ was providing over watch on the camp while it was being set up. He had found a spot where he was concealed and could watch the camp site and it’s approaches fairly easily. He saw when the boy was brought into camp and his heart went out to him. After the others finished burying the boy’s dad and returned to camp, he was relieved and someone else took the watch. He went to where the boy was and settled down near him while the boy slept. He dozed off and a while later he awoke to see the boy sitting up and watching him.
“Hey, young fellow,” DJ said. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“My parents called me TJ,” the boy answered.
“I go by initials, also. I‘m DJ,” DJ replied. “How old are you?”
“Nine,” the boy said. From that point on the two became fast friends. TJ said DJ reminded him of his dad. DJ slowly learned more about the boy and TJ decided that he was going to stick close to DJ.
Several hours later, the group had finished eating their evening meal when the ‘Thump, Thump’ of a helicopter was heard. Soon three Blackhawk’s circled their encampment looking for a spot to land. They picked an area on the interstate concrete that was free of obstructions. Paul, Pete, and Todd met the officer and one of his staff that disembarked and headed towards them. The other soldiers in the choppers quickly disembarked, spread out and formed a security perimeter.
As the two approached the travelers one of them struck his hand and said “Good evening. I’m General Arthur.”
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As Arthur’s troops were establishing a campsite, he was having a debriefing with Todd. He and his aide were taking notes on the attack of the compound in Atlanta. He was impressed with the way Todd answered questions and his attention to details.
“Have you ever been in the military, Todd?” he asked.
“Yes, General. I was a captain in the Air Force Reserve. I was released from duty a few months before everything went to crap.” Todd replied.
Arthur was thoughtful. After he had gotten the details that he wanted of the attack, he looked hard at Todd. “Think you could handle going in with me and a couple of people and do a Recce tonight?”
“No problem, sir. I want those bums gone. That is my home.”
