Dark Titan Journey: Wilderness Travel (22 page)

Chapter 16

Nathan was dreaming that he was walking around his home in Idaho, talking to Tim and Sherry, when Sherry came over and poked him in the left eye. Then Nathan heard her giggle. “Sherry?” Nathan asked as he struggled out of his dream and felt another poke in his eye.

Feeling like all his life energy had been sucked from his body, Nathan cracked his eyes open to see a small, smiling face less than an inch away from his. “What the hell?” Nathan startled, jumping back and Emma giggled as he hit the rocking chairs behind him. Blinking his eyes and realizing his left was really sore Nathan looked down at Emma.

“You assaulted me in my sleep?” Nathan asked, rubbing his eye.

“No!” Emma shouted. She crawled onto his lap.

“Well what did you do to my eye?” Nathan asked as she laid her head on his chest.

“NOOO!” Emma yelled into his chest.

Letting out a sigh Nathan hugged her tightly, making her giggle. “I think you’re going to make me crazy,” Nathan said, kissing the top of her head. To his surprise and shock, Emma didn’t answer. Nathan felt a wet nose on the back of his neck.

“Ares, quit,” Nathan said. Ares walked around and sat down, panting. “Why didn’t you stop her?” Nathan asked him. Ares just cocked his head to the side looking at Nathan. “Don’t look at me like that,” Nathan said.

“Huffff,” Ares snorted, and moved over, putting his face in Nathan’s.

Nathan scratched Ares behind the ears. “Oh all right.”

“What are you doing awake?” Nathan heard beside him. Glancing over, he saw Jasmine glaring at him with her hands on her hips.

“I was assaulted in my sleep,” Nathan said with a yawn.

“Ares wouldn’t do that,” Jasmine said with an unhappy look on her face.

“Well he didn’t, Emma did. She kept poking me in the eye,” Nathan replied in a peeved tone.

“Emma!” Jasmine snapped, and Emma burrowed further into Nathan’s chest. “I’m sorry Nathan. She was chasing Ares around the house while I helped fix some food. I only turned my head for a second,” Jasmine apologized.

“It’s fine I had to get up anyway,” Nathan said, standing up while holding Emma to his chest. “What time is it?”

“Almost three,” Jasmine answered.

“You guys didn’t get much sleep,” Nathan said, noticing all the rocking chairs were empty.

“Us!” Jasmine exclaimed. “You’ve only been asleep for a few hours.”

“I’m good to go. Where are the kids?”

“Some are inside helping and the others are out back getting some trucks ready to go somewhere,” Jasmine replied.

Nathan sat down in a rocking chair and Jasmine sat down beside him. “Damn, they moved fast,” Nathan mumbled.

Jasmine narrowed her eyes, “What does this entail?”

“I’m going to lead a group back to that camp and get those supplies. They could really use them here. Plus I’m getting us some horses,” Nathan told her.

“What supplies? And whose horses?” Jasmine asked, not seeing how the two fit together.

“For this group to survive they need more stuff to defend themselves with, and the rest of the supplies wouldn’t hurt. I made a deal with Bob that I would lead him to the site and load it up. Then he would get us some horses,” Nathan explained.

“Oh,” Jasmine said with a tone that indicated she didn’t like the idea.

Nathan sighed. “Why don’t you stay here with the kids? With those supplies they will make it.”

Stunned at the question, Jasmine sat back in her chair. “You want us to stay?”

“Yes,” Nathan replied honestly.

Jasmine looked out over the yard, lost in thought. Nathan was about to ask her what she was thinking when she spoke. “Tell you what, if all the kids stay I will too. But I just want to know why you want us to stay.”

Nathan took a deep breath. “If you guys travel with me you could get hurt badly, or even killed. This trip has already been dangerous enough and hell it’s barely started.”

“So you just want us to be safe?” Jasmine asked, with a smile still looking away.

“Yeah,” Nathan replied with a long face.

“I thought you didn’t want us with you because you didn’t enjoy us,” she said.

“Since you brought it up, all of you do tend to drive me insane,” Nathan said.

Jasmine turned to him and smiled. “Family does that to you,” she said. Nathan jerked back at her words. “I want to ask you: do you know for a fact if you left us here that we would be safe?”

Blinking his eyes rapidly, Nathan stuttered, “I— I can’t answer that for a fact.”

“My answer stands. If all the kids decide to stay I will also,” she said.

“Will you help me talk them into it?” Nathan asked hopefully.

“Nope,” Jasmine answered instantly.

“Will you tell me your reasons?” Nathan asked.

“Love to,” Jasmine said turning her chair so she could look right at him. “This trip will be dangerous but the destination will be safer than here. Also, you are teaching us how to survive. They can’t do that here. We would have to learn it by trial and error. I really think several errors would cost lives. And we like you. Not that we don’t like the group here. But they aren’t you.”

Feeling she explained herself pretty well he shrugged his shoulders. “It was worth a shot,” Nathan muttered.

“If we stay, will you miss us?” Jasmine asked.

“Yes, I will,” Nathan said honestly.

“That makes me feel better,” she said, reaching over and patting his leg, then stood up. “What time are we leaving going back to the camp?” she asked.

Shaking his head, he told her, “First
‘We’
aren’t going, I am.” Jasmine took a deep breath to retort and Nathan knew it wasn’t going to be good as he held up a hand for her to stop. “Listen, I’m not exposing you or the kids to unnecessary risk, and that’s what this is. And I have a request for you.”

“What?” she asked, letting the air out in a loud shocked huff.

“If something happens to me I want your word you will look after those kids,” Nathan said.

“You think you had to ask me that?” Jasmine barked at him, narrowing her eyes.

“It would make me feel better knowing,” Nathan replied.

“I would do whatever it took to take care of those kids, with or without you,” Jasmine said, making Nathan smile.

“In the bottom of the wagon, you will find a box with ‘supplies’ written on it,” Nathan said, winking. “It is twenty pounds of stuff you can use for them.”

“Well don’t let anything
happen
to you and we will be just fine,” she said, kneeling beside him. “We’ve become attached to you.”

“No kidding,” Nathan said, looking down at Emma, who was asleep with her arms wrapped around his chest. “Come on I have some work to do.” They walked inside and lay Emma on a couch. Nathan told Ares to ‘stay.’

They found Rodger out back with a group of men around five massive tandem axle cargo trucks and one old army deuce-and-a-half. Looking at the other trucks, Nathan could tell they were all farm trucks, none older than 1970. Three of the trucks were pulling empty forty-foot cotton trailers.

Walking over and wearing a big grin, Rodger waved his arm toward the trucks. “Think we can get all of it with these?”

Nathan looked at him with a flat expression. “No, no chance in hell.”

The smile fell off Rodger’s face. “You’re kidding, right?”

Nathan shook his head. “We would need three times this to get all of it.”

“Damn,” Rodger said in amazement.

“I’ll drive the deuce and lead the group,” Nathan said, walking over to the old army truck.

“Sounds good,” Rodger mumbled as he followed.

Walking to the truck and glancing around, Nathan observed ten men working on the trucks, several wearing deputy uniforms. “All of these your men?”

“No, just the ones in uniform. The others are hands here on the farm, or family,” Rodger answered as Nathan climbed up in to the cab of the deuce and a half. “You know how to drive one of these?” Rodger asked.

“We have one and two five tons at the retreat,” Nathan said, turning on the plugs then firing up the engine. “Engine sounds good.”

“Better be, I had it rebuilt last year,” Rodger said.

“Bet that cost a pretty penny,” Nathan said, shutting it off.

Rodger scoffed. “It did. I remind Bob of that every time he uses it here on the farm.”

Nathan glanced around. “Where is Bob?”

“He went to see about your horses,” Rodger answered.

Nodding as he jumped out of the truck Nathan walked over to a picnic table and pulled out some maps. With Rodger’s help, they laid out a route to the camp. Hearing lots of dogs barking, Nathan looked up to see Bob riding down the driveway on a horse leading a string of horses with two donkeys. Nathan counted five horses with the donkeys.
Beggars can’t be choosers
, he thought. All the horses looked in excellent shape, from just a glance. “I see you had some luck shopping,” Nathan said as Bob rode up.

“Yeah. Two more will be brought over tomorrow. All these range for fourteen to fifteen hands. One of the two that will be here tomorrow is a draft, seventeen hands high. The other is an appaloosa, sixteen hands. I could only get three saddles and some tack for these but we can get some more in town at the co-op,” Bob said as one of the farm hands led the horses off.

“You went by yourself?” Nathan asked in an unforgiving tone.

Bob brushed him off with a gesture. “Please, I went with two of the hands. They are riding around the property now,” Bob replied making Nathan feel better. “They get some rooms cleared out for you yet?” Bob asked.

“Huh?” Nathan asked.

“I told them to clean some rooms out for y’all to sleep in,” Bob answered.

Rodger took his hat off, rubbing his balding head. “Ah, no I’ve had everyone getting the trucks ready,” he said sheepishly.

Seeing Bob get red in the face, Nathan spoke up. “If you don’t mind, I wanted to sleep in the loft of the barn. It’s out from under foot and it gives us two places of fire if we are attacked.”

Bob studied Nathan. “We are good people here, Nathan,” Bob said misreading Nathan’s gesture.

“Bob, I know you are good people. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. You need to spread out inside this yard like we talked about,” Nathan said. “I just want a place to crash that is easily defendable. If the kids want to stay inside, that’s fine, but I would like to stay in the loft.”

Bob smiled. “You are more than welcome to stay there. I just didn’t want the guest that saved my son and his family to sleep in the hayloft.”

“I do thank you. If the kids and Jasmine want to stay in the house, I appreciate it.” Nathan thought for a moment. “There is one thing though. I want a hot shower.”

Bob laughed, “Yeah me too.”

“You don’t have a generator?” Nathan asked.

“Of course I do. But it got fried with everything else,” Bob told him.

“Have you tried to fix it?”

“Not yet, but we’ll get to it. If we can’t, then I’ll throw the old one back on. To be honest, we’ve been pushed hard. The big tractor I just bought died and we can’t fix it. We did get the two old ones running. The fields were already planted and had to stay tended. We just finished spraying them day before yesterday,” Bob said.

“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” Nathan said. “I’m going to get John. Rodger, go and get the NVGs from Howard’s family. I’ll collect them from my crew. Just remember, we want them back.”

When Nathan was gone Bob looked at his brother. “That man is something else.”

Rodger nodded and sighed. “I wish we could get him to stay here.”

When the sun ducked below the horizon the line of trucks pulled out. All lights were off and each driver and at least one other person in each truck had on night vision. The kids had acted just like Nathan thought they would when he told them only John was going: They went ballistic. When Nathan finally got them calmed down, he explained why and told them if they didn’t like it they could stay with this group. But if they stayed with him they had to do what he said even if it didn’t make sense. Reluctantly they agreed.

Nathan took the lead with John beside him and Ares in between them. John held his M-4 out the open window. John had never been picked for anything over anyone else and Nathan had picked him to go on a mission. Not football or a game but a real-life mission. He was so excited he could barely stay still. Nathan had said if anyone got in the way, Nathan was going to run over them. If anyone shot at them, John was to shoot back, no matter who it was. John smiled and agreed he would shoot back. He thought this was the best thing ever.

Rodger was at the back of the convoy in his ’57 Chevy police cruiser. There were at least three car lengths between each vehicle and they were moving along at forty-five miles per hour. Nathan knew that would give him enough time to brake if they come up on a blockage.

They were on a dirt logging road that they would use to enter Alabama when Nathan’s radio went off. “We’re in ’Bama,” Rodger called out.

“Copy, stay alert,” Nathan called back. Seconds later they pulled onto a small blacktop road. “Moving it up to sixty,” Nathan radioed. This road had only a few blind corners and long sightlines. Nobody answered but Nathan looked in his mirror and saw everyone keeping up. He would’ve loved to go faster but many of the old trucks, the old deuce he was in included, were maxed out at sixty.

Less than two hours later, Nathan slowed the convoy. Up ahead on the right was the dirt road he had led his small group down. I seemed like two lifetimes ago instead of days when he had last walked up this road. They shut the trucks down and Nathan climbed out, followed by John and Ares. Two men jumped out of the trucks behind them and climbed in the truck Nathan was driving. Rodger pulled his car up and climbed out the passenger side with another deputy getting out the back.

“Thought only you drove that,” Nathan said.

“Usually,” Rodger said, grabbing AR-15s out of the car for him and the deputy. “If we have to bullshit someone, I wanted the car ready to roll.”

Nodding in understanding, Nathan spoke to the group. “Okay, stay close. If we see someone we will make a judgment call. If they look like the ones that were there, they get the same. If it looks just like regular people we will only take what we need and leave them what’s left.”