Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series (3 page)

Gary nodded. He’d seen the same thing happening during his travels.

“I thought I heard someone trying to break into the storage buildings last night. I shined a spotlight around but didn’t see anyone. First thing this morning we moved some of the important supplies out of the storage buildings,” Will said. “All that stuff is in the garage now. It’s a mess but it’s safe.”

Though exhausted, Gary tried to process what he was hearing. “So are you thinking this is all from the people on the dirt bikes or just different, random groups of people?”

“It’s hard to say,” Will said. “There’s a lot of people just wandering around for lack of anything else to do. Folks have been coming up here on the hill nearly every day. I think some of them are just casing the houses. They’re looking to see what we have that they need.”

“You really think so?” Gary said. He looked out over his property and that of his neighbors. They lived on a flat hilltop of about twenty acres. Gary had about six of those acres and had cut off one each for his married daughters. The remaining property belonged to the neighboring families. The road that came onto the property formed a circle, rejoining itself before going back out the way it came in. It would have been easy for those folks on dirt bikes to drive in and make the circle and then ride back out.

“I’ve never seen so many people walking around up here,” Will said. “I think some of them are just taking a shortcut out of the housing project back there. As for the others, I don’t know who they are or why they’re here, but they all have the same look, like they’re shopping for things they can use.”

Will kept scanning the woods. The kids were all inside now. Gary’s wife and daughters were filing through the door. With them no longer in the open, Will visibly relaxed. “The way that the guys on dirt bikes were stopping in the road and watching us, it seems like they were challenging us. It got to the point yesterday that I geared up and went outside with my AR. There were folks standing at the end of the driveway just looking at the house. I asked them if I could help them with anything. They never answered, just turned away and left.”

“You think those dirt bike riders took the food from the garden?” Gary asked.

“I think so,” Will said. “You can hear those machines running up and down the main road all night. I don’t know where they’re getting the gas to do that. I haven’t been able to buy any.”

“They’re not buying their gas, Will.”

“Of course they’re not,” Will replied. “I should have realized that. I’m just getting stupid with exhaustion.”

“Don’t worry about it now,” Gary said. “Let’s get inside and we can deal with this later.”

*

The evening with his family was beyond words. Gary’s wife and daughters prepared what looked like a feast after the deprivations of the road. Gary ate until he could eat no more, but it was not the food that fed him, it was the presence of his family.

Although Gary did not have Jim’s level of paranoia, he’d read all the same books Jim had read. The effect on him had been nearly the same as it had been on Jim. He long ago began making preparations in the way of storing food, water, weapons, and emergency power. Much of it was stored in the nooks and crannies of his home. Other items were stored in his various outbuildings. Still other items were stored in undisclosed locations because the items were expensive and he wanted to conceal the purchase. It wasn’t that he had any reason to feel guilty for making the purchases; they had the money. It was more of an issue that he was innately frugal and felt guilty about spending money. For that reason, some of his purchases were either disguised or hidden in plain sight.

Part of those preparations he made were in the way of long-term food storage. They had clearly not reached the point where it was necessary to dig into those supplies, though. They were still eating the fresh refrigerated foods and items from their everyday pantry. This was because, like Jim, Gary had installed a transfer switch on his house that allowed him to hook a generator up to run essential circuits, like the refrigerator and freezers.

While Jim stored his in an outbuilding and only brought it out when needed, Gary had gone the extra step of installing a permanent generator housing out back so that the generator could be left in place all the time. All Gary needed to do was go out back and start the generator, then flip a few breakers on the transfer switch to restore power to the circuits he wanted to energize. Gary had no long-term experience with this, but his theory was that alternating between running the generator for four hours and then letting it sit idle for four hours would keep the frozen food frozen and the refrigerated food cool enough that it wouldn’t go bad, as long as people stayed out of those appliances as much as possible.

Gary had explained his theory of generator operation to Will many times and was certain that Will had been responsible for doing this in his absence. Because of the items on the dinner menu, it had obviously been working. Gary reminded himself that he’d need to check the fuel supply later and see how it was holding out. He’d had intentions of purchasing a tri-fuel generator that would run off various fuel sources, but he’d never done it. He owned a gasoline generator, which had been substantially cheaper, and he stored cans of stabilized gas in his outbuilding to run it. He kept about twenty-five gallons at all times, rotating it through his mower or vehicles as it got old and replacing it with fresh.

*

Later, as they were cleaning up from the meal, Gary asked Will if they’d been maintaining a watch at night.

“Like I said, until recently, there’s not been any indication that we needed to. There just hasn’t been any trouble.”

“We’ll need to look at that,” Gary said. “It might be time to start one. We just need to be careful. With everyone scattered out over three houses, I don’t want anyone wandering around outside where they could be shot by mistake.”

Will nodded as he considered this.

“How’s Dave dealing with all this?” Gary asked.

“He’s doing pretty well,” Will said. “I don’t know if he’s completely onboard yet, though.”

“Meaning?”

“I’m not sure if he’s grasping the seriousness of it all. He’s still worried that he’s going to be fired for not showing up to work, even though there’s no fuel for getting there. You and I have talked about disasters ever since Sara and I started dating. We’ve always thought alike. Dave never had any idea how fragile things were until he and Charlotte got married and he started listening to our conversations. He’s trying but I think he might still be in shock or something. He just seems to think he’s going to wake up one day and everything will be back to normal.”

“There’s a lot of people that think like that. Had a couple on our trip. I’ll talk to him,” Gary said. “Check in and see how he’s doing.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Will said. He looked at Gary seriously. “You know that I would kill to save anyone in this family. I would not hesitate to pull the trigger to save any one of them. I am not sure Dave is there yet.”

Gary yawned and rubbed his eyes. “I’ll have to deal with him tomorrow. I’m exhausted right now. I think I could sleep for a week.”

“Do you want to start a watch tonight?” Will asked.

“I’m not sure it would do any good tonight,” Gary said. “With us scattered out in three houses, we’d need someone awake in each house to cover all this ground. We’ll figure something out tomorrow. For tonight, everyone just needs to make sure their house is locked up tight and that weapons are as accessible as they can safely be kept. And no one should come out after we’re all home for the night. Like I said, I don’t want any friendly fire incidents.”

*

Not long after dinner, Sara and Charlotte left with their families. The children needed to be bathed with baby wipes and those tasks were best done while there was still some remaining daylight. After that, stories would be read and the children would be tucked in for the night. While Jim’s home in Russell County had a backup water source in the way of a spring, and had a well that could provide water under generator power, Gary really had no water source other than what they stored. Their property had public water which had saved the expense of drilling a well when he built the house. It had seemed like a good thing at the time. Then, as Gary started making emergency preparations a few years back, it began to seem like a liability that would be difficult to overcome.

For three years now, Gary had kept every two-liter soda bottle that had come his way. He carefully washed them, then refilled them with water and stored them in his basement. He had hundreds of them sitting on shelves with the fill dates written on them. His plan was to refill them when they got to be around five years old. There was no real science behind that number, it just sounded like a good idea to him.

He had also purchased a blue plastic drum in which he could store larger amounts of water. A hand-operated pump allowed him to pump water out when it was needed. He had the materials on hand to collect water from the guttering on his home too, but he’d never put the system in place. That would have to go on his list of things that needed to be done pretty quickly.

As he thought about the long-awaited fantasy of settling into his own bed that night, the thing that he wanted
almost
as much was to take a long, hot bath. If he had an unlimited supply of spring or even creek water he could have heated it over a fire and gradually filled a tub, just as people had done in the old days. Without any immediate idea of how he was going to replace the water that he used from his supply, Gary did not feel like he could do anything so frivolous. Feeling guilty and wasteful, he took a single two-liter bottle, poured it in a pot, and heated it on the burner of his gas grill.

He went to the nearest bathroom and lit a battery-powered lantern. By that light, he peeled off his crusty clothes and washed the miles from his body. It took a while. He continued scrubbing long after any dirt was gone, as though trying to scrub away the things that couldn’t be seen, the experiences he no longer wanted to have in his head. The bath did not help with that, though. Only time could wear such things away.

When he was done, he looked at the pile of clothes in the floor. He knew that he could never again wear them without remembering the smell of death on them and the images of where that smell came from. He emptied the pockets and removed the belt from the pants, carefully held the reeking pile of clothing away from his body and carried it out the back door to the fire pit in the backyard. There was a bottle of charcoal starter fluid sitting on a nearby pile of firewood. He squirted some on the clothes, then struck a grill lighter to it. As the flames rose, Gary imagined the whole nightmare of the past weeks rising into the sky with the black smoke. He wanted those memories to leave him but knew they never would.

While the physical trials of his trip home had been enormous, his group also found themselves experiencing additional stress from the lack of information. Rumors and conspiracy theories were rampant in everyone they spoke to. Even those with official connections to public information knew very little. Gary had thought constantly of getting home and digging out his Baofeng HAM radio and speaking to other HAM operators. In a disaster, they were always the most reliable source of information. No spin, no cover-your-ass denials, only pure person-to-person shared information.

Gary retrieved his Baofeng from the gun safe. He didn’t know why he kept it there, but he did. It was a $20 radio and he had six of them, but still that’s where he kept them. He turned the radio on and let the extended range antenna stick out the window and located a commonly used frequency in his area.

“CQ, CQ, calling CQ. This is WNFZ960. Whiskey-November-foxtrot-zulu-nine-six-zero.”

No one responded. He changed frequencies.

“CQ, CQ, calling CQ. This is WNFZ960. Whiskey-November-foxtrot-zulu-nine-six-zero.”

There was an immediate hit. “WNFZ960, WNFZ960, reading you loud and clear. Where you coming out of?”

It was strange that the person responding did not offer his call sign, so not wanting to be too specific, Gary responded, “Tazewell County, Virginia.”

“Well, Tazewell, you got Piney Flats, Tennessee, here.”

“How are things in Piney Flats?”

“We’ve had a lot of traffic. Folks west of us got a little scared that things were getting hot in Oak Ridge. You know, hot as in
nuclear
hot. People were trying to get away from anything nuclear in case the terrorists blew it up.”

“Did they?” Gary asked. “Did the terrorists hit anything in Oak Ridge?”

“No,” the man said. “I’ve spoken to someone that lives there in Oak Ridge and he says it was all just paranoia.”

“What about other nuclear sites?”

“There were some nuclear sites hit, but the folks I’ve talked to said there were no releases. Some of the plants got knocked offline and can’t send power out onto the grid, but there were no leaks or discharges that I’ve heard of.”

“That’s good to know,” Gary said.

“They did flood the shit out of Tennessee, though,” the man said. “Nashville is now Lake Nashville since they blew that dam.”

“I’ve been out of touch for a couple of days,” Gary said. “I’m just trying to catch up on what I missed. What’s your call sign, Piney Flats, in case I need an update in the future?”