Avalon: The Retreat (4 page)

Mike guessed, by the colored bandannas over their heads, that they were Crips from the city. Now they were dead Crips. There were thirty-four dead bodies in all, not counting the farmer and his wife, whose dead bodies around the side of the house were still cooking because of their nearness to the fire when they fell. It was impossible to tell which was male and which was female because they both appeared to be lumps of charcoal. Mike merely guessed they had been a man and wife.

There were no firearms in sight, not even those the gang members normally would have carried. Someone had picked the area clean, probably some survivors, and they were long gone. Spent brass lay everywhere indicating an intense battle, and the men wondered how long it had lasted. If there were others in the family, they were nowhere to be seen and they probably would have been taken by those human vultures or scurried off to find safety.

Mike, Greg, and Sam headed back to the group and their bikes. When Caroline saw their faces, she didn’t ask what had happened. Her only comment was,

“Nasty?”

They just stared at her without answering.

The drizzle caught up to them about seventy miles from the next stop, but they all agreed they needed to push on and rest once they got to the next cache. There would be plenty of room there for all of them, including their motors and equipment.

When they had been scouting for cache spots earlier, they found a large cave with a small opening toward the back. It was perfect for expelling a campfire’s smoke, a natural chimney. It had been a shelter for ancient people at one time and long forgotten until Mike’s group found it again by accident.

When they had originally discovered it, the entrance was overgrown by bushes and not at all obvious. Inside were remnants of an old fire pit on the floor and some old Indian pictographs were painted on the walls.

The opening was surprisingly large, but once they narrowed it with large rocks and camouflage, it was actually concealed better than it had been with the natural vegetation growing in front of it. They had rebuilt the fire pit and stocked the interior with kindling and firewood to provide protection and comfort from the elements.

And there sure was a need today!

They wanted a fire to dry out; that would go a long way toward boosting their morale. From here they only had to travel another twenty miles to the old abandoned railroad track bed… the last leg to the retreat.

Mike took out several generous chunks of pemmican, a paste of dried and pounded meat mixed with melted fat and other ingredients, and each person helped themselves. With the timing of current events dinner was out of the question, so the pemmican would have to do. They knew they would have a chance to eat at the hideout but that thought didn’t stop their stomachs from rumbling.

The pemmican was a little difficult to swallow but extremely nourishing and loaded with protein. One of the group members made it earlier in the year with a one-to-one weight ratio of dried venison and suet and 5 percent dried blackberries to take the edge off the taste of the tallow. The secret was to ensure the animal was grass-fed and the meat was never cooked above 120 degrees. Missing either of those critical points destroyed the nutritional value. Early settlers and explorers had proven they could live on it for months at a time with no ill effects.

With a swig from their canteens, the pemmican went down easily enough and even though it wasn’t quite delectable, it filled their stomachs and their need for energy.

Mike made another GPS reading and told the group they would be heading north and east from their current position. This particular route to the retreat was not the everyday path most of them took. It was longer and more complex, but it was the safest means of travel and it kept the group out and away from watchful eyes.

They had all traveled this route before, but it had been quite some time, and today, after what they had seen, taking the normal route would have been a mistake.

Mike took the lead, and the others fell in line single file and remained separated from each other by at least a couple of hundred feet. It was the most secure plan available considering the circumstances, and their reaction time in an emergency could be crucial to their survival.

The group made a calculated decision to choose bikes as opposed to other means of transport. The motorcycles were noisy and could be heard coming from a long way off, so all element of surprise was lost. However, the one persuasive argument to using them was their speed. Dirt bikes could climb, dodge, and carry a heavy load in addition to the rider’s body weight. In general, the bikes could get riders where they needed to go and get them there quickly.

In a quarter of an hour, after they left the small valley in which they had been traveling, the group came to another stretch near the state highway, where they took a welcomed break. Well before they reached the crest where they could see the crowd below, they heard loud voices in the distance.

Many cars were stopped in the road, gridlocked, and hundreds of people were milling around the massive traffic jam that trapped them. Horns honked, people yelled, children chased one another as they played, and several arguments were well underway.

A man and his family had apparently broken down and instead of making an effort to move onto the shoulder, he had just stopped in the middle of the roadway. Someone else left the road to pass and was stuck fast on the high shoulder, which caused other vehicles to pile up. Another car was mired in the soft dirt on the opposite shoulder and that made getting past impossible, and on and on it went. It was stupidity in action on a grand scale and anger was escalating as tempers flared!

One person yelled at another, and suddenly one man’s dog jumped out of the family car, ran over, and bit the other guy on the leg. A handgun came out and with a flash and loud pop, the dog was dead. The dog’s owner, horrified by this incredible cruelty, jumped the man and so did the dog owner’s wife. A few seconds later, they both were shot and lay dead in the road with their dog.

Most of the crowd stood there and watched as the shooter pointed his handgun ominously at them, walked over to his 4x4 pickup, slid into the driver’s side, started the engine, and in one swift movement, shifted and floored it with a roar. The oversized truck rammed cars out of the way and eventually made a hole through the traffic. But as the driver moved around the cars blocking the highway, he too was stopped. The truck was stuck in place when he high-ended it in the dirt, merely tilting it back and forth because the vehicle had no traction.

That’s when the crowd moved in.

Some had guns in their hands and the driver of the 4x4 was dead in a handful of seconds. Bullets flew at him from seemingly every direction, and when it was obvious the deed was completed and they had satisfied their mob revenge, people began to yell and cheer as if it was some grand sporting event. It was a stark reminder that mob reactions were often spontaneous and sometimes deadly.

Mike and his crew moved on.

A few miles further down the road, they came to a narrow bridge where they found cars stopped in front, on, and well beyond it. The jam must have been there for quite some time and the vehicles continued to stack up. The group had to find a way around it, which forced them to ford the river because the bridge was too dangerous.

There was a small town named Fitch another twenty miles ahead, so they turned at the green mileage indicator and circled back and away from the road to take an alternate route that paralleled the arterial road toward the northeast. They would need to cross the river ahead and in this particular spot, the water was deep and swift.

Water fell from the mountains in the near distance, gathering rapidly with streams and the momentum of the fast-moving water grew with each foot of travel. There wasn’t much chance of getting over from this spot, so they grabbed a right at the river’s edge and moved through the brush until a crossing spot came into view another five miles downstream of the bridge.

It took a few minutes of searching for the small group of survivalists to spot an area that was suitable for crossing. They poked at it with sticks to get an idea of the depth of the water and it appeared to be shallow enough to cross. Including the high water area on both sides, the river was about a hundred fifty feet wide here, but Mike recognized eddies and swirls toward the middle that would help them maneuver the bikes and supplies across to the other side.

The sandbar had grown through the years as the sediment washed down from the river and wedged together, one piece after another, forming this crossing. Without the sandbar, the width of the river and the swiftness of the water would have made it impassable. They could easily drown or lose all they carried with just one slip.

Mike went first. The water came up to his chain and he was traveling fast. In a couple of places the bike sank further, wetting him up past his knees. Once he made it to the sandbar, he motioned for them to stay back. He wanted to try to get all the way across before any of them followed to ensure the others could make it safely.

Because he was an experienced swimmer, Mike felt that if he went down he would survive the accident whereas some of the others might not. That was one tragedy he was determined to prevent. His bike slid on the loose stones and he almost lost it once, but finally made it. He unstrapped the shooter from across his back and set his bike against a tree, then chambered a round and made sure the safety was off.

He held one finger up and motioned for them to come across one at a time, emulating a police officer directing traffic. He put a hand to his forehead, just above his eyes, as if to shade them from the sun, and he moved his head from left to right. All the time, he pointed his other hand out in front of him with his index finger extended.

The signal meant to keep a good lookout for “unfriendlies” because the group was vulnerable here. An ambush could go down at any moment without warning and they had already witnessed a great deal of senseless violence. One-by-one they started to cross.

The going was difficult, as all of them were packing a load and the bikes were a little off balance. When Caroline was across the river, she did the same as Mike by putting her sub-machine gun, or SMG, at the ready. She was guarding the area ahead of them and assumed a position with her back to Mike’s, each of them watching the other’s rear. Those still on the other side of the river watched in every direction as well.

Everyone understood that if Mike fired, they were to drop immediately. He wouldn’t miss, but it was better to give him as much room to fire as possible. Sam was next to cross and he guarded west while Greg watched east. Once they were all on the other side, they took a bearing before continuing on in order to pinpoint their position.

The surroundings in which they found themselves were largely overgrown and covered in blackberry bushes, making the going slow. They knew they needed to travel through the thicket because the riverbank was simply too narrow and steep, and it would expose them to potential unfriendlies.

Mike and Sam cut a path through with two of the machetes they had recovered at the last cache. Some of the bushes were ten feet tall, very thick, and they could lay a person open with some nasty cuts.

The disagreeable job lasted about a half hour, but they were soon on their way again and past the onerous bushes. The turnoff to the cave was the next waypoint on Mike’s GPS, so he stopped to see how everyone was doing. They had been riding long enough for his butt to go numb and he thought theirs might be too.

The short rest brought out idle conversations; it always did. They talked about what they had seen in their travels thus far while they absentmindedly finished off the last of the pemmican. The drizzle continued and everyone looked forward to arriving at the cave and getting a good fire going. There were enough of them now to post a guard so the rest could sleep safely.

The group decided to spend the night at the cave and continue on to the next cache the following day. It was important to get off the trail, get out of the drizzle, dry out, and eat. Mike led the way. Twenty more minutes of riding found them at the turn off and he sent all but one of them ahead. He cut a few branches from a large bush and covered the bike tracks as best he could while Greg stood lookout. Satisfied with the concealment effort, they mounted up and followed the group. It was getting dark.

The bushes that hid the cave entrance were much taller than the last time Mike had seen them months ago. He grimaced when he saw the tracks the others had left and covered the ground leading to the entrance.

He surveyed the layout of the approaches to the cave with his back to the entrance and surmised that placing Claymores in a sweeping arc in the direction where he looked would block any surprises during the night. Walking out a hundred feet on the left, he placed one in the ground and away from there about twenty feet; he set another by gently pushing the spikes into the ground.