Going Home (12 page)

“I’m going to put up my tarp here between these two trees,” I said, pointing at a couple of young live oaks.

“Where am I going to put my tarp?” she asked.

“We only need one.” I didn’t really expect the look I got from her. It was kind of a split between shock and terror.

“No, no, no, not like that. We are going to sleep in turns so one of us can stand watch, see?” I had my hands out in front of me, palms up. I can only imagine what this poor chick thought. I could see the look of relief wash over her.

“You’ll sleep first. I’ll take the first watch.” I was pulling stuff out of the pack and had our camp set up quickly. I unrolled the sleeping pad under the tarp and then her sleeping bag on top of it. “You’re not hungry, are you?” She hadn’t said much while I put up camp.

“No, I’m still full. You gonna be okay to stay up by yourself?” she asked as she was arranging her sleeping bag and some of her stuff.

“I’ll be fine. Get some rest. I’ll wake you up when I need a break. Do you have a flashlight?” I pulled my headlamp and the LED light out of my cargo pocket.

“Yeah.” She started digging in her pack. “I have one of those little MagLites.” She pulled out a Mini Mag.

With that, she climbed into the bag. “Night, Morgan,” she said.

“Good night, Jessica.”

“Call me Jess, Morgan.”

“Okay, Jess. Good night.”

After Jess was in the shelter and bedding down, I pulled out the NVGs and turned them on to check the settings. They looked good. There wasn’t much of a moon; but without much cloud cover, the stars provided plenty of light. Securing the NVGs to my head, I decided to take a little walk out toward the road, just to see what there was to see.

“Hey, Jess, I’m gonna be walking around a bit but won’t be far from you, okay?”

“Okay. Don’t go far, an’ don’t get lost,” came the muffled reply from inside of her sleeping bag.

Now that’s something I didn’t really think about. I guess I could get lost out here in the dark. Before leaving, I took out the Glo-Toob and turned it on. The lithium version of this device is programmable. By clicking the power switch on and off, you can select any number of various modes. Setting it to strobe, I covered it with a pile of pine needles, so just a little light was coming out. I started walking toward the road. After about ten or twelve steps, I turned and, through the NVGs, could clearly see the pulsating glow from the little light. Turning, I kept going toward the road. I figured that in the next couple of days, things were going to get really rough.

The road was clearly visible through the trees. With no overhead cover, it stood out brilliantly in the goggles. Looking back toward camp, I could still see the light pulsing on and off. I found a large oak tree and took a knee under it, surveying the road up and down its length. What I saw surprised me a bit. I counted three distinct sources of light that were obviously three campfires, two on the far side and one on my side, farther south. Far to the south was a substantial glow in the sky. It was hard to tell its actual distance, but it was certainly there. I raised the goggles and just stared out into the dark. Without much to do, my mind began to drift.

We had been prepping for a couple of years. Mel really came on board in the last year. We had a bit of a fight over a pistol I purchased; she was mad about another “toy” coming into the house. I didn’t help my case any when she asked me, “How many guns do you need?” and I replied, “One more.” Bad idea. I thought it was funny; she did not. I hoped she remembered the combo to the safe. I wondered if the solar panels still worked. I wondered if she set up the Butterfly stove and found the lamp oil. These were just some of the unanswered questions flooding my head.

I started to picture the girls from that morning before I left. My youngest one asked why I took all that “stuff” as she put it with me when I left home. “So I can always get home to you, gorgeous,” I replied.

“Oh, Daddy, you’ll always come home.” Her seven-year-old face lit up with a smile.

I tussled her hair and said, “You know it. I promise.” My oldest was in the bathroom, getting ready for school. At sixteen, everything had to be right, yet she wouldn’t go to sleep at night until I tucked her in. My middle daughter was still in bed; she got to sleep a little later than the others, being in middle school. I went into her room and told her good-bye. She told me she loved me and asked when I would be home. “Tomorrow afternoon,” I told her. I sure wish I had been able to keep that promise.

I hoped they were all right. There was plenty of food and stored water. The backup water pump was connected to the solar system and was DC; so even if the inverter was shot, I hoped the pump still ran. I had a spare pump and spare inverter in a Job Box in my shop. I kept it on two pieces of four-by-fours, insulating it from the ground, not to mention that the shop itself is a metal building on a wood floor supported by concrete posts. The whole thing should make a pretty good faraday cage, if that helps.

The sky was full of stars. A couple of days without man-made light and no exhaust polluting the air made a difference that I wouldn’t have believed possible. I couldn’t imagine being able to count all those stars; it was truly beautiful. I wondered how long the sky would stay like this. Dropping the goggles back down, I looked back north up the road. Another campfire was burning up that way; it looked like it was right on the side of the road. Looking south, I saw what I thought were a couple of new fires burning that direction, one of which was definitely on the edge of the road.
More
people
on
the
move
, I thought.

Wandering back to our camp, everything was just as I left it. I picked up the little pulsating light, turned it off, and put it back in my bag. I sat down under one of the little oaks and got comfortable, took the NVGs off my head, and turned them off. Sitting there in the dark, listening to the sounds of the night, I waited. It wasn’t too hard to stay awake. I had always been a night owl anyway, staying up as late as three and then going to bed and getting up around eight, one of the perks of working from home. About two, I went over and woke Jess up. She got right up, almost cheery. I gave her a demonstration on the NVGs and told her to hang around the camp and not go anywhere. I gave her a quick lesson on light discipline and told her about the fires that I saw and that it meant others were in the area and that it was important not to go shining her light at every noise in the night. She said she understood and sat down where I had been.

I pulled my bag out of the pack and unrolled it on the mat, took off my boots and coat, and climbed in. Jess was sitting there with her little Maglite, yawning. “Stay awake now,” I said.

“Don’t worry about me. Get some sleep. I can’t believe you stayed up so late.” She had her hands shoved into the pockets of her coat.

The light coming out of the east and bringing the woods back to life brought me out of my sleep. That and what sounded like a drunk staggering through the woods. I looked out, and Jess was not there. I got out of my bag as fast as I could, pistol in hand, and jumped up. “Morning, sunshine.” I spun around and saw Jess standing there with an armload of wood.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I said, “You scared the shit outta me. Sounded like a bum with bad feet stumbling through here.”

“I’m getting some firewood so we can make some breakfast.” She dumped her load of wood on the ground.

“That’s great, but no fires,” I said.

“What? How are we going to fix something to eat?” I could tell she was hungry.

“I’ll take care of it. Dig the oatmeal out of your bag.” Going to my pack, I pulled out my Primus multifuel stove. I had one bottle of compressed gas and one bottle of white gas with me. I took the compressed gas out with the stove and set them aside. I took out the one-quart canteen along with the cup from its cover and set them beside the stove. Using my foot I kicked all the leaf litter, pine needles, and other forest debris out of the way to form a circle about two feet in diameter.

“Hand me that green bag, would ya?” I pointed at the Devildog.

She picked it up. “Holy shit! What in the hell is in here? This thing weighs a ton!” She swung it over to me with a grunt.

“Just the necessities of life. Here, put three of those packs of oatmeal in this cup.” I handed her the canteen cup. She started tearing open the bags and dumping the contents in the cup.

I set up the stove and connected the bottle to the fuel hose. From the bag, I took out my fire steel. Turning the valve on the stove, the hiss of fuel came to my ears. I quickly struck the steel at the stove, and it fired up immediately. Jess handed me the cup. I poured in some water from the canteen and set it on the stove. I know they call it “instant” oatmeal, but I still like to cook it.

“You seem to know what you’re doing.” Jess was sitting there, looking at the blue flame licking around the edge of the cup.

“Well, I’ve done this kind of thing before. I like to camp.”

“There is no way I could have managed this on my own. I mean they gave me the oatmeal, but I didn’t have anything to cook it in.”

“You would have found an old can or something. You need to think outside the box. Everything you see you need to think how it could help you.” I took two spoons from the outside pouch of the pack. “I hope you don’t mind, but we’re going to share the cup, but ya get your own spoon.” I held up the spoon and gave her a little grin.

She took the spoon from me. “A spoon. I don’t have a spoon.”

“Or a can opener,” I said. She dropped her head to her chest.

“This is going to be way harder than I thought.”

We sat close together to share the cup of oatmeal. I took the chance to ask her a few questions. I was starting to get a feel for her attitude and had a couple of ideas to help bolster it.

“Do you have a knife or a way to make a fire?” I asked as I passed the cup to her and shoved a spoon of gooey oatmeal in my mouth.

“No, I don’t smoke or anything and never needed a knife before.” She passed the cup back. I took a quick bite and handed it back and then reached over to my pack and pulled out the Buck 110 folder I took off Thomas.

“Here, take this”—I offered and then reached into my pocket and took out the BIC—“and this too. Put them in your pockets, not your pack. That way they are always on your body. If you lose your pack, you’ll still have these.” I handed the two to her. She opened the knife and looked at it.

“It’s big.” I had to show her how to close it. She tucked both of them into her pants pocket.

“Do you know how to shoot?” I was very curious about this one.

“Yeah, Dad was big into the Boy Scouts with my brothers, so some of that rubbed off on me. I like a rifle, but I can shoot a pistol too. Dad had a Berretta that we got to shoot.”
Perfect
, I thought.

Taking the Taurus out of the bottom pouch, I dropped the mag and cleared the weapon and handed it to her.

“Then you should know how to use this.” She took the pistol and pulled the slide back, looking into the chamber. I handed her the mag; she inserted it, racked the slide, and pressed the decocking lever, leaving the weapon on safe.

“It’s a lot like the Berretta, just the safety is on the frame and not on the slide.” She laid it down in front of her.

“There are only nine rounds in it. I don’t have any ammo for it. That’s all you got. Keep it on you at all times; never go anywhere without it, and I do mean anywhere. Never leave it.” She picked it back up and cradled it on her lap, looking at it.

“You really think it’s going to be that bad?” she asked without looking up.

“It already is, and it’s going to get worse. Desperate people will do desperate things. These packs will look like a Walmart to some folks who have nothing. That brings up another thing—we can’t trust anyone, not anyone. It’s going to be hard. There will be times we want to, but we have to look out for ourselves first. Everyone else is second. Got it?” I said, trying to get the point across to her.

“Yeah, I got it. Sounds horrible though.” She was still looking at the pistol.

“Let’s strike camp and get on the road. It’s early, and most folks will hopefully wait for it to warm up a bit.” With that, we went about breaking camp, washing the cup and spoons, packing the stove and tarp, and packing our sleeping bags up. When everything was ready, we hefted our packs and started toward the road in silence.

Pausing just inside the tree line, I glassed the road. No people. I could see smoke from a couple of the fires, but no one was visible on the road yet.

“All right, let’s head out, but remember what I said about others. We’ll be nice and polite, but we gotta keep moving. No stopping by any campfires to chat.”

“All right; whatever you say. I just want to get home.” She was rubbing her hands together against the morning cold, her every breath fogging in the cold air.

“Me too.” And with that we stepped out of the trees and onto the road. The sun was getting higher in the morning sky. A light fog was on the ground, and the air was still and cold. The crunch of gravel under our feet was the only sound. After walking out onto the road, I moved over to the far lane, against the center median. I knew others were ahead, and I wanted a little distance between us. Granted, moving out like that put us in the open with no cover, but I was hoping we weren’t to the point of open combat yet.