Home Fires Burning (Walking in the Rain Book 2) (3 page)

In addition to Mr. Keller and his two sons, I found Hazel and several other senior family members I’d yet to formally meet.  I deduced these were siblings to Darwin and Hazel and I turned out to be partially correct.  Quick introductions were made and I made myself comfortable in an old overstuffed armchair before the questions started.

First, no I didn’t know why the power went out.  I explained my money was on either EMP or CME, but I also added it could have been something else entirely, like the blastwave from a supernova hundreds of light years away.

That most of these folks knew what an Electromagnetic Pulse or a Coronal Mass Ejection was confirmed my belief that these folks belonged to the Prepper subculture.  My third suggestion got me some confused looks but I saw Nick at least nod his understanding.

“Can you tell us how you came to meet up with Ruth and Stan, Luke?”

This was from Darwin, but the others in the room seemed to sit forward in rapt attention as I related the bare bones of the story, from Amy’s insistence that we do something right down to Stan taking out the last of the raiders with a well timed shot.  As I was finishing up my description, I saw Stan slipping in the door and gave him a nod of appreciation once again.  The guy really had saved my life, after all.

“From the reaction I’m seeing, things haven’t gotten that bad around here, I take it?”

Mrs. Keller shook her head, but I caught a hint of something else on Nick Keller’s face.  If the world was splitting at the seams in the neighborhood, chances were her boys wanted to shield her as much as possible.   This made perfect sense to me, but maybe she needed to know some of the ugly out there.

“We’ve had some folks trying to steal food, but nothing really organized.  This community has a lot of farms and ranches and we’ve tried to share and trade with people we know,” Mrs. Keller said.  “Nick and Mark made a run into town last week but they said most of the stores had been looted and the streets looked deserted.”

“Was that in Gentry?  We didn’t come that way but that’s about the same as we saw in Lowell.  What folks left in town seem to be hunkered down.”

“Is it true you walked all this way from Chicago?” Mrs. Keller asked. 

I figured word had already gotten out so I nodded, then added, “except for the use of the truck these last two days, and a ride I got from the Illinois National Guard early on.”

That got some discussions going and everyone wanted to know what the National Guard was up to and if they had some kind of plan.  Mrs. Keller asked about FEMA and behind her back, Mr. Keller just shook his head.

“We have a HAM radio,” Mrs. Keller continued, “and we try to listen every night but all we get is the same message from FEMA and Homeland Security that has been playing for weeks.”

“That’s something I hadn’t heard.  I’ve seen isolated pockets here and there where aid camps were set up and places the National Guard was trying to patrol, but these were just isolated deals.  They tried to put me in a camp one time.  I didn’t stick around.  If you’ve got a map I can try to point out what I saw where, but really I tried to steer clear of cities and towns.  Interstates, too. ”

“So, just what all have you seen out there, boy?”

This came from one of the older men, one of Darwin’s brothers I thought, and he seemed to be intentionally trying to provoke a response.  I gave him my best dead eyed stare before replying.

“I’ve seen the looting and burning.  Fighting and killing.  Lots of hungry, angry confused people out there.”

That brought the conversation to halt and I wondered if I’d gone too far.

“So how are you still alive?”  Mark asked.  “Stan told me you’re only sixteen years old.”

From Mrs. Keller’s sharp intake of breath, this was news to her.

“And where did you get those weapons, boy?  You one of them looters?”  This was from Mr. Personality.  Great.

I turned to Mark and I saw his brother Nick wince.  I guess he saw something in my face, a cast to my features that made him wish his brother had kept his mouth shut.

“My daddy was in the Marines, and he taught me a few things, plus I’ve been moving through the woods and hunting since I was a little kid.  I picked up a few tips in the Boy Scouts, like I told Stan, and I know how to make snares for small game and what plants won’t kill you.  Until I met up with Amy, I traveled alone and hardly talked to anybody.

“Mainly, I avoided people where I could and stayed in the woods, living off what I could find.  Yes, I did take things that didn’t belong to me, but only things nobody else had claim to.”

“So you admit it!  You are a thief and a looter.”  The older man nearly cried out, and I noticed more people were looking at him than at me.

“Mister, I don’t know what you think you know, but unless you’ve been out there, you are freakin’ clueless.  You want to know how I got these weapons?  Ask Stan.  He was there when I got most of them.  But my first pistol, you want to know how I got that one?  Really want to know?”

As I spoke, my voice grew harder even as my volume increased.  I was staring hard at the loud mouthed man and I realized I was nearly shouting at his level.  I answered my own question then, and let my words spew out.

“I cut a man’s throat for that first pistol.  Just slipped into his camp, crawled up to his bedroll and slit his throat ear to ear.  He moaned and thrashed around so much, he woke up the woman that was there with him.”

“Did you kill her too?” the angry man demanded, a look of triumph in his burning eyes.  He nearly spit the words.  I don’t know what was driving him on but I would not back down.

“No, I untied her hands and gave her back her clothes.  The guy had been raping her all day, off and on, and I’d just run across the camp that evening.  She was beat up pretty bad, put up quite a fight, but she said she’d heal.  I left her the shotgun and she made me take the pistol.”

I stopped talking then, my head bowed, my thoughts scattered.  I don’t know why I told that story.  I could have just made something up, but for some reason my subconscious made me tell the truth.  Maybe it was because I felt guilty for what had happened, for not acting sooner.  Or maybe because these folks needed to hear something like this as a warning for what could happen.

Finally, I found my voice and spoke up, my ragged voice breaking the long silence.

“Darwin, if you’ve got a map, I’ll show you what I know.”

That was really all I could do at this point.

CHAPTER FOUR

After laying out my bedroll next to the old Ford pickup, I found myself unable to sleep.  Mr. Keller had offered me a spot in their bunkhouse, but I admitted I didn’t know if I could sleep indoors again for awhile.  Amy accepted the offer from Ruth and Stan to sleep on the blow up mattress in Ruth’s old room after I insisted.  She could use the rest and really, I just wanted some time to myself.

I stared up at the stars and thought about what to do next.  My goal remained the same, get home, but maybe I could rest up here a few days and get myself better outfitted.  After we finished going over the map, Mr. Keller allowed that he would be willing to trade with me for my share of the extra weapons we brought.  Seems the immediate family was well set on firearms, mainly PTR-91 rifles for the men and ARs for the ladies, but the cousins and such trickled in with little more than a few shotguns and hunting rifles.

“You got a minute?”

I’d heard the man approach, and when I recognized the voice I released my hold on the Glock under my pillow and sat up.

“Got nothing but time, Nick.  Come on over and have a seat.”

The man shaped shadow moved slowly in the dark and I felt more than saw his body sink down into a seated position.  I waited, patient in the way I had learned on the road.

“Sorry about Uncle Gary.  He’s a pain in the ass, always has been.  He’s just gotten worse since the lights went out.  Worried about his son, Glen, I guess, and that’s gnawing at him.”

“Where’s his son?”

“Branson.  I think that’s what has him all riled up about you.  His boy is in his mid twenties and physically fit, so he’s got to wonder if something happened to him out there.”

That could definitely make you crazy, I realized.  I was constantly worrying about my own family, and I’m sure they were worried about me as well.  Except for my sister, of course.  At thirteen, she was a bit self-absorbed and probably only noticed my absence in the evenings when she had to do both our chores.  Then I realized how childish that thought made me feel and released it.  My childhood was gone, and everything in this new world required me to become a man and act that way.

“That could do it.  I’m sorry I lost my cool, but after being out there…”

I made out a vague motion that might have been a nod.

“I think I might understand a little.  The first time I came back from deployment, I was a bit lost in the world.  Nobody shooting at me, for one thing.  I had to remember how to walk across the street without running, and things like that.”

I thought about what Nick was trying to say.  Once you lived in constant danger, then readjusting to the “real world” must have been a struggle.

“Then you get redeployed and have to learn it all over again, right?  Except now, the whole country is like that, I think.”  Nick’s words made me think he could hear my thoughts or something.

“Yeah.  You have to understand something, Nick.  I crossed a lot of ground to get this far, and I knew my chances of getting home were slim.  But you have to ask yourself, why did I keep going?”

“The thought did cross my mind,” he allowed.

“I kept going because I couldn’t find any place safer to hunker down and try to wait this out.  I know the country can’t go back to the way it used to be, but all I saw out there was fighting and death and mayhem.”

Nick cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that things are that bad.  Yes, Gentry was looted and partially burned, and I understand the cities must be a nightmare, but out in the rural areas, like here, the situation must be better.  I mean, we’ve not had much in the way of problems around here.”

I sighed.  Not in displeasure, but because I would need to explain the facts of life to a man nearly old enough to be my father.

“Nick, from what I’ve seen, the cities are a freaking disaster for sure.  What’s worse, those poor bastards have just about used up all the resources in the cities and surrounding suburbs.  Now they are spreading out from the burned out ruins and hitting the so-called rural areas.”

“You’ve seen this?”

“Yes.”  I paused to think about how to explain things better for this man who had already seen so much on battlefields far from home.

“I told you guys earlier about where I’d been and some of what I’ve seen.  But, I didn’t want to get into the implications.  Let me give you an example.  Like I said, I steered around major population areas but sometimes I couldn’t avoid at least skirting smaller towns. 

“There was this place, about a hundred fifty miles east of St. Louis, and it was completely overrun with gangbangers.  Or at least, that was what I presumed.  Lots of tattoos on the corpses I passed, anyway.”

“So how did they get there?  Buses or something like that?” Nick asked, his mind on the logistics I figured.  My father always said getting there was sometimes half the battle.

“I don’t know, but the locals must have put up quite a fight. Half the town was burned and the other half just carpeted with bodies.  I got there about a week after it happened.  Anyway, the refugees appeared to have finally won, because the bodies I saw crucified on the way into town didn’t have as many tattoos.  I know, these days it is hard to say.  Anyway, I cut cross country after I saw the nailed up bodies, and I just got a glimpse of the downtown area through my binoculars before I hauled ass.”

The silence that followed stretched into several minutes before Nick spoke again.

“And you think that will happen here?”

“I think it is happening everywhere.  This really isn’t that rural, Nick.  From looking at a map, the Bentonville/Fayetteville Corridor is a pretty built up area, and when those folks get hungry enough, they will come for your farm.”

“We are already working with our neighbors to contribute nearly all our harvest to the relief effort.  Dad’s been talking to a representative of the mayor over in Siloam Springs to arrange for distribution.  Heck, we are already shipping our eggs and extra milk into town.”

That shocked me.  I had no idea they had a big enough operation going here to spare that kind of farm production.  But then, I’d barely seen the place before nightfall.

“Seriously?  I figured you guys were just getting by with enough to feed the gang you got here.”

“No, my Dad is big on diversifying.  He has that big chicken house out back with about three hundred layers and sixteen Jersey cows we milk in the parlor.  He was selling to the milk to the creamery in Siloam Springs and the eggs to a wholesaler for some local stores.  Wouldn’t sell to Wal-Mart.  Said they wouldn’t pay squat.  Now he’s basically just giving it away, like most of the other farmers out this way.”