Avalon: The Retreat (25 page)

The adults got a couple of gifts each; the children were recipients of quite a few more. They got toys and clothing and the adults received handmade clothing; a jacket to one, a pair of mittens for another, and a woolen watch cap for someone else. All were handmade and appreciated by the recipients for the labor of love behind each gift. When Caroline gave a present to Mike, she stepped up on her tip toes and whispered into his ear,

“The other present from me to you is waiting for you once we get back to the cabin.”

He feigned a surprised look, put both hands to his cheeks, and rocked his head from side to side and said,

“What in the world could that be?”

She socked him in the stomach slightly and said,

“Boy, are you dumb!”

He couldn’t help himself and laughed. He turned to face her as he slipped his arms around her waist and lifted her toward him. He kissed her on the mouth for a brief second and then broke away and said,

“Merry Christmas my love! I don’t know much, but there is one thing I am absolutely positive of… I love you more than life itself.”

Then he resumed the kiss that lasted a lot longer than the first little peck. People ignored them; they were too busy doing their own thing to be bothered by watching them.

The party began to wind down at about ten o’clock that evening. Some of the children were getting cranky and several adults were feeling the drain of the day’s work ebb away and fell asleep in the large comfortable leather chairs in the lounge. To be certain the alcohol was a contributor to the tiredness, but they all worked at something and they had worked hard to make sure the small community of Avalon remained a viable and well run machine.

Several people left and others remained until after midnight talking, laughing, and just enjoying themselves. The music was shut off at eleven o’clock, but no one seemed to notice. Several had to leave to relieve the watch, and when the members of the watch came to the main building, they ate, had a few drinks, and joined in the conversations as if they had been there the whole time. In the morning it was going to be a lax time because of the holiday.

Mike and Caroline retired to their cabin and she stopped him at the door. She put a finger to her lips and said,

“Shhhhh, you’ll wake him up.”

They entered the cabin and over in a corner near the bathroom door was his “other present” fast asleep. Occasionally the pup would twitch and cry out softly as the dream he was involved in wrapped itself around his little mind. She said to Mike,

“Merry Christmas, my love. What will you call him?”

Mike reached down and picked the puppy up in his hands and admired him as he held him up at eye level.

“How does Champion sound? Champ for short.”

“Champ it is then!”

The area in California just north of Bishop, West to the Pacific Ocean, East to the Great Sierras, continuing on down to the Tehachapi’s, and extending into The Imperial Valley that joins Baja, was a completely dry, hot, and dust-laden wasteland now nearly devoid of life. There was some life down in the great valleys; an area once considered by many as the “Bread Basket of America”.

It was now an area of blowing dust filled with roaming, armed thugs on motorcycles. Some of the areas had been poisoned by radiation fallout and these days scarcely a Mojave Green slithered across the sands. It was dry, inhospitable, and a nearly unforgivable wasteland.

Some people had made it to the hundreds of old gold mine diggings and stayed in the tunnels to escape the burning heat. Most of the irrigation canals went dry and they too became lifeless. Those people living in each surrounding area slowly starved to death one day at a time. Hundreds of thousands had already died in just the last two months alone and their bodies could be found lying where they fell when the life escaped the confines of their mortal body. In some areas, the dead were eaten.

The living went in search of food but found little or none at all. There was food to be had in the cities along the coast, but those areas were death traps of starving roaming bands of people half mad from deprivation and lack of food, and the Slavers were working there too.

To say this was a dangerous place to be was to say sky diving without a parachute might be dangerous. Women, in particular, were stalked and used and then killed rather than be left alive to remain in competition for the precious little food that was hidden in basements, on boats still tied to the moorings in the marinas, or in motor homes parked here and there.

Food could be found, but it was a difficult search with fierce competition, and most times deadly. The restaurants, grocery stores, and warehouses were cleaned out months ago. The children, without someone to protect them, died quickly. They were defenseless creatures from the start of the conflagration and many died soon after.

The slave merchants were actively searching out anyone strong enough or pretty enough to be bought by those who still had money, which these days was in the form of food, booze, cigarettes, and anything fit to drink. A candy bar could get you the use of a pretty woman for the night.

Many areas were oozing with deadly and unseen radiation. A foray into those areas brought death to the visitor in as little as a day, and some places were more deadly than others. Los Angeles was extremely irradiated and so was Long Beach, with a bit of a separation between those places struck by the bombs until reaching San Diego where the poison was potent once again. It was all a crap shoot. People could dart in and back out if they were quick, but most died in spite of their swiftness. The unseen, odorless poison ate away at all human organs, bones, tissue, and blood.

A young woman named Beth Kelly was one of those people caught here, but in an area that sheltered her. She made her way to a shelter once the warnings were sounded and waited it out until she believed it was safe enough to get away. She then made her way quickly to the San Fernando Valley where little radiation was affecting the surrounding terrain.

Smart and athletic, although the lack of food was detracting from her natural good looks, she was still a very desirable woman. She was hunted and pursued by the Slavers and managed to get away each time… so far. She was being driven north in incremental pushes to trap her by various groups in search of plunder and slaves.

She found herself in a small area in the High Desert called Jaw Bone Canyon after having crossed the valley. The area is just north and west of the small outcropping designated as a town named California City. It is a rock-strewn area full of snakes, scorpions, spiders, Gila Monsters, coyotes, and now, as of late, feral cats and dogs that once were household pets. She hid in the rocks and watched and waited as the bad guys, armed with all manner of rifles and shotguns, passed no farther than a hundred feet from where she hid. They had large dogs on leashes and the dogs howled and carried on like possessed beasts. Her heart was beating fast and she could feel the pulse in her forehead and neck. There was a little water left in her canteen, so she screwed the cap off and drank from the spout. In a few minutes they passed and headed toward the east away from her.

She leaned against the rock heavily as relief swept through her and she was thankful they were gone. She waited in spite of them passing, just in case there were any stragglers still approaching.

She needed to get out of the sun and started looking around for anything that offered shade. She guessed she was about a hundred or so miles from Death Valley and another fifty beyond that to Bishop. She wasn’t sure but was hoping that was about how far she still had to go and she longed for a map. She was in Tehachapi earlier, but it was crawling with people from Bakersfield, Fresno, and Los Angeles. As she hid from one group, she heard them talking and later, when it was dark, she made her way into the camp, filled her canteen with water, and left without making a sound. She thought if she could stay west of the rocky hills she was traveling in she could avoid the desert and keep going north for the final destination of her quest up in the mountains.

As a small girl her dad took her to this place he called an old abandoned ranch way up in the mountains and she was going to go there unless something stopped her first, either Slavers or death. She remembered the large and impressive sign that hung across the two large trees set in the ground at the entry, and it was like something out of a fairy tale. She was convinced that she would be safe there.

She had a little food, a compass, a canteen almost full of water, warm clothes for the evenings, and some odds and ends she thought were important as she made her way north. She had a sheath knife with a six-inch blade and a stainless steel .357 magnum with a three inch barrel on her belt. She had used it twice, so far. She had a box full of bullets and a few matches in the pouch at her waist.

If anyone came close, she was prepared to use that gun again because she saw what happened to people who weren’t prepared to fight. She watched three grown men rape a little girl about eight or nine years old about a week ago, and when they later decided to sleep for the night, she slit the throat of two of them and shot the third in the forehead, right between the eyes as he woke up. The little girl was dead and they had thrown her aside like a bag of garbage once they were done.

Beth was smart to stay holed up because there were three more bad guys passing her now, laughing about something and they had a boy with them of about nine or ten years old. He was bound at the wrist, and there was a rope around his neck like a dog. She eased out from behind the rock that hid her and stepped in line behind the three Slavers. She stabbed one of them in the kidney with a rapid thrust and it hurt so bad that he couldn’t call out; he just dropped to the ground. She made it in three steps to the next guy and did the same to him, burying the knife deep. The third guy was so busy laughing at his own joke that he didn’t realize what was happening until the knife entered his side. By then it didn’t make any difference.

She searched the bodies in quick time and took what they had. The boy was cowering away from her, but she reassured him that she wasn’t going to hurt him and not to cry out. She untied him and took the rope from around his neck. It was a nice rope, the kind they use for roping cattle, so she coiled it up and kept it. One of them had a bag on his waist that was full of rings and other jewelry, so she kept that too. All three had canteens that were full of water. That was good luck! She said to the boy,

“My name is Beth and we need to get away from here before these guys are missed and their buddies return to find them here. They’ll be looking for whoever did this to them, so let’s go!”

She grabbed him by the hand to emphasize the need for speed and he ran after her. They ran for at least a mile and finally had to slow down and then stop. The boy was weaker than her so she offered him water, which he chugged down and spit out when he started to choke. Good thing she caught the canteen or it may have spilled on the ground. They couldn’t afford that.

“You okay, pal?”

He was still trying to recover as he nodded.

“Take it easy,” she said, “Take small sips and try not to spit any of it out, okay?”

The boy sipped a little more of the water and it seemed to rejuvenate him some. He said,

“Matt…”

She looked into his face and said,

“Wh… what was that?”

“Matthew,” the boy said, “My name is Matthew.”

She smiled at him and reached over and gave him a hug and said,

“Nice to meet you Matthew. Where are your parents?”

Matthew shrugged his shoulders and hung his head down, “Everyone is dead.”

It was very matter-of-fact in the delivery of the statement. Those were the times they were living in.

“I’m sorry, Matthew! We’re going to head north. There’s a place I know about and we will be safe there. Please be quiet when I ask you to, okay? Stay close and try to keep up. We have a long way to go. Think you can do all of that?”

“Do you have any food?” He blurted it out suddenly.

She reached into her small bag and pulled out a Baby Ruth and handed it to him. He tore the wrapping off and devoured it with a single shove of the whole thing into his mouth by breaking it in half and chewing on it a very long time. His eyes rolled up so the whites were visible and he seemed to be staring at something in the sky. He was smiling and rocking back and forth on his feet, first a little forward on his toes and then back onto his heels and he appeared as if he was going to swoon. Finally she saw his Adam’s apple bobbing several times as the boy swallowed the treat.

It was getting close to dusk and they needed to find a place to hide for the night; they would begin the trek north again in the morning. She selected a spot near a rock outcropping and crawled into a corner like a dog. The boy lay down next to her and they slept.