Journal (6 page)

They
were there all right, about thirty yards back and trudging along.  Gabriel was
huffing away from the climb, but when his eyes met mine, he managed a smile
with those thin lips of his.  Anna on the other hand, who was only a step or
two behind him, looked straight ahead as if I wasn’t even there.  Her dark
brown hair was soaking wet.  You’d think that it would straighten out because
of that, but the damp only seemed to make it curl all the more.

When
Gabriel reached me, he handed off the journal you’re now reading and the one
other.  Anna, for her part, pretty much avoided eye contact and remained
silent.  It may be my imagination, but I sensed a bit of deference on her part,
or maybe that was just what I wanted to feel.  She’s a pretty tough character.

We
walked hard for the next three, maybe four hours.  The way wasn’t always north
either because this particular area was cut with ravines and valleys that were,
for the most part, clear of any meaningful cover.  So I stuck to the ridges
with the trees, which sometimes veered east or west, and I had to constantly
re-orient myself.   The peaks in the distance kept me going the right way. 
They also worried me.  Not quite mid-April, and there was still plenty of snow
where we were headed.

As
soon as we stopped for a break, somewhat sheltered by a large pine, I asked
Gabriel to climb a nearby tree to see if he could tell if we were being
followed.  As he left, Anna called out and urged him to be careful. the Author

When
he was out of earshot, I turned to her and said, “All right, let’s have it Anna. 
Why do those people want you so bad?”

I
clearly remember her reply because it pissed me off all over again.  “I suppose
you have a right to know.”

I
thought to myself,
You suppose?  You suppose I have a right to know?  You’re
damn right I have a right to know you loony
….  I don’t want to spell out the
word I was thinking at that exact moment, even though I didn’t say it.  I
imagine you can guess what it was anyway.     

She
wrapped her arms around herself and turned those dark brown eyes of hers on me. 
Since we had stopped moving, we’d lost the protection of generated body heat,
and the cold was starting to settle in.

She
said she lived in a small town of about two thousand people near the Washington
/Oregon border.  The town had been renamed to Woburn by one of the town leaders
so that if the people who departed were ever to mention the name, it couldn’t
be located by others on a map.  She wouldn’t tell me what the real name was or
be more specific on its location.

When
all the problems first started, the town leaders were sharp enough to foresee
most of the consequences and started making plans to deal with them.  For
instance, when the power grid went down, some electrical engineers in town were
able to create enough electricity, using a nearby river and a rigged generator,
to power pumps for irrigation and drinking water and to facilitate local land
wire communication.  As the crisis progressed, they sectioned off a portion of
the town, set up a defensible perimeter, and burned the rest so they would have
a clear field of fire should people looking for food try to take it from them. 
They also had several machinists who were able to manufacture some basic
firearms, mostly shotguns.  To feed the town, she said they cultivated the area
nearby, primarily growing potatoes, wheat, and beans.  There were already some
existing apple orchards that they picked over.  For meat, they mostly raised
pigs and chickens.  Everything was carefully rationed by the governing council.  

I
told her this was all real interesting, but I wanted to know why Mr. Ponytail
was still after her.

She
looked to see if Gabriel was OK, dabbed her runny nose on her shirt cuff,
sniffled, nodded her head, and said she was getting to that.  It sure didn’t
seem that way to me.

She
went on to explain that there were a number of very difficult problems they
encountered.  One of them was how to deal with the outsiders who happened by
and saw that they had food and safety, and wanted to stay.  They couldn’t just
allow everyone to move-in.  They didn’t have enough resources for that and soon
everyone would be starving.  Some of the people who happened upon their town
were criminals, crazies, or just plain undesirables who couldn’t be counted on
to pull their weight or respect others.  They couldn’t allow that either.  So
they turned away all but a very few of the outsiders.  She added that there
were some days where the ones guarding the gates literally cried as they
watched children walk off to an almost certain death in both directionstif.  It was survival,
though.  They couldn’t save everyone. 

The
people they did allow to stay were those who had skills that would be useful
for the good of everyone.  However, even the people they allowed in had to be
sequestered for a time in a special area of town, where they could be evaluated
before they joined the township.  It was feared that spies and infiltrators would
be among them.  And in fact, some of those who were allowed in, had to be later
sent away.

There
had since been several raids on their town by large groups of criminals who
wanted to steal their food and weapons.  These were all successfully repulsed
but always at a loss of life to the defenders.  Their weak point was the
growing fields outside their perimeter.  The town had to plant, care for, and
harvest the crops, and that meant people going outside the protected town
limits.  Squads of armed residents had to accompany the workers.

I
must have again shown my frustration at this juncture with her not getting to
the point because she held up her hand to indicate I should be patient.

She
said she was on one of those work details outside the fence when a scouting
party of about ten or twelve people attacked.  Some of the attackers were
killed.  The ones I saw at the farm were the survivors of the raiding party. 
Mr. Ponytail was their leader.  But some of the townspeople were killed, too. 
Gabriel and Anna were taken captive along with another man from the town.  They
tortured this man for information about the town’s defenses.  He couldn’t give
it to them, though, because the crucial information, such as how much food they
had stored, how many weapons, how much ammunition, the strategy for defense,
the weak points, and so forth were only known to members of the governing council. 
But this man did tell them that Anna was on that council and before they killed
him, he begged her to save him by telling them what they wanted to know.

She
checked again on Gabriel and saw that he was climbing down from the tree.  I
noticed that she was full out shivering at this point.

They
didn’t torture her, though.  Instead, Eric, he’s the one I call Mr. Ponytail,
decided to take the both of them to their main camp, where they would use
Gabriel to make her tell them everything.  She broke eye contact at this point
and said, “I think Eric also had some special plans of his own for me.” 

I
told her there had to be more.  It didn’t make sense that they were going to
all this trouble to get her back when all they would have to do is ambush some
more townspeople and get the information they needed from someone else.

She
was shaking badly now and Gabriel was almost back to us.

She
said that there was more to it.  During the course of her captivity, they got
comfortable with her presence and slipped up and let her overhear not only
where their main camp was, but also that they were planning an attack on Woburn
with over a two hundred fighters for the middle of May.  Several times they also
mentioned having a canon of some sort that they planned to use to destroy the
town’s defenses.  Finally, she told me that many of the fighters had gathered
in the town near the fWhile so engagedwotarm where she and Gabriel had been held, in preparation
for the trek to Woburn.

Now
it made sense.  They had to recapture or kill her.  They couldn’t allow her to
carry that information back to the town.  If the townspeople knew Ponytail was
coming, they could prepare for the attack.  They could also pre-empt the
assault by attacking Ponytail first.

At
this point, Gabriel joined us and said that he didn’t see anyone but there were
also large areas he couldn’t observe because of the trees.  He, too, was
shaking badly.

I
guess I was still feeling a little cranky about the way she had been treating
me because I didn’t thank or acknowledge her in any way for telling me the
story.  Instead, I told Gabriel to give me one of the sections of wing fabric
he was carrying. 

The
piece was about three feet wide and sixteen feet long, so I folded it in half
and cut it into two eight foot sections.  I then took each of those sections
and fashioned them into a poncho of sorts that they could put over their heads
and cinch around their waist with a belt.  I figured that would help with the
cold, certainly the wet.  After that I told them we better get moving again.

After
another hour on foot, we cut an old logging road and then a second one maybe
half a mile beyond that.  The terrain was brutal.  I had scratches and bruises
all up and down my shins from stepping over and through deadfalls.  My hands
were taking a hell of a beating as well.  They were cut, and split, and swollen
from much abuse.  Because of that, the roads were tempting, even if for only a
short distance.   But as I mentioned, though they would have made our lives
much easier, they could also offer a trap.

Being
all banged up like that wasn’t even the worst of it.  The cold was relentless,
digging its fingers deep inside, partly because I was so wet.  For the most
part the rain had stopped but by then it was too late.  I was already soaked
from the knees down and the water had managed to squeeze inside my poncho, down
my neck, and dampen my shoulders, chest and back.  I was just plain miserable,
and I’m sure Anna and Gabriel were too.  It raised some serious concerns about
hypothermia.

Climbing
to about 6500 feet or so, we came upon a large flat area that had apparently been
dozed years before, maybe for the parking of logging vehicles or to stack
timber for pick up, I really don’t know.  At the far eastern end of it was a
creek, and parallel to that was what used to be another single-wide dirt road
that went north.  More interesting, though, was that on the north edge of this
same flat area stood a small wood shack with a metal roof.  It looked unoccupied
but in good condition. 

We
watched the shed from the safety of the trees for about fifteen minutes or so before
I told Anna and Gabriel to remain where they were, and I would check it out.  I
really didn’t want to go down there.  The safe thing to do would have been to
just bypass it because I didn’t really know where our pursuers were.  Maybe
they had somehow managed to get ahead of us and were waiting inside.  But we
were headed into some pretty miserable conditions, and there could easily be
something inside the building that could help us survive.  =tif

I
approached from the west end because there were no windows on that wall, and if
anyone was inside waiting for us, they wouldn’t be able to see me.  From there,
I took a tour around the building to see if there were any footprints on the
wet earth.  Not finding any, I felt reasonably certain nobody was inside and
went in.

It
was just one room, no dividers, with two bare bunks and a sheet metal stove for
heat.  A table was in the middle of the room, turned over on its side.  A
couple of folding chairs were next to it.  On the east end of the building was
a long counter with shelves above.  On the counter top were a few empty plastic
containers such as might have been used for food storage, three or four coffee
mugs, and some flatware.  On the shelf above was a can of tomato soup, a can of
pork and beans, a package of ramen noodles, mostly mouse eaten, and a half
empty jar of instant coffee.  I took off my pack and stuffed the two cans and
coffee inside.

On
the other wall was a small cabinet about the size of a nightstand, only taller,
crudely constructed out of plywood.  Inside that was half a box of .38 caliber ammunition
and a couple of pencils.  I took all of this, re-shouldered my pack, grabbed my
rifle, and went out the door, closing it behind me.  The next rainstorm through
would erase all evidence of my presence.

When
I stepped outside they shot me.  I don’t remember it of course.  That’s the way
it works when you lose consciousness.  It’s like somebody snips out a little
portion of your memory, maybe to save you the experience.  And when they do the
snipping, they always take a little extra along with all the bad stuff just to
be sure they got it all.  I say that because the last thing I remember is
closing the door to the shack, though apparently I wasn’t shot until I was
halfway back to Gabriel and Anna.  I don’t even remember the shot — hearing or
feeling it.  In fact, I don’t even have any sense of being unconscious at all. 
Strange experience.

The
first thing I remember after the last thing I remember was the sensation of my
butt being dragged across that flat area I described earlier.  When I finally
opened my eyes, I stared up at a canopy of green with a million little fingers
pointing, as if in accusation, toward a hostile sky, marbled black and grey.  I
next saw the worried and somewhat frantic faces of Anna and Gabriel, looking
down at me as they pulled me toward the trees by the straps of my backpack.  Finally,
my muddled brain discovered the hurt between my right shoulder blade and spine. 
After that, I got scared.