Transformation (28 page)

36.

The sun was high enough in the sky that it warmed Ron and Weed through the branches of the fir trees. They’d been walking for hours in a huge arc around a large hill. Once they scaled it, they would have a view of the vast weed farm in the valley below. Or so Weed assumed.

The warmth of the sun did much to help the two keep going, but it was still very rough going.

Weed stopped to wipe his forehead and looked back. Ron was a good forty feet behind and moving slow.

“Come on grandpa.” he laughed.

Ron halfheartedly swung one arm up with an extended middle finger.

“You even shoot the bird like an old man.”

Ron came to rest next to Francis and leaned on a tree. An odd noise rumbled in the silence. Ron’s head shot up.

Weed’s eyebrows were high on his forehead.

“Was that a fart?” Ron asked.

“My stomach.”

“I think you farted.”

“If I did, you would know it. Believe me,” Weed chuckled.

“How can you be so happy?” Ron asked.

“I ain’t happy. I’m god-awful fucking miserable. Just trying to get through this is all.”

It occurred to Ron the man has probably been through this type of thing many times already. It also occurred to him he was so beat partially because he had no strong motivation to keep going.

Weed looked uphill and pointed.

“Now we have to climb that shit.” He extended his elbow to Ron. “Take my arm grandpa, I’ll help you up the little hill.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “No you first. Age before beauty and all that.”

Weed smiled and winked. “Bad choice there, Ronnie.” He turned and started uphill.

Ron looked confused at the foreboding comment until the smell hit him.

“Oh Jesus! What the…”

“I told you you’d know!” And Francis guffawed loudly.

The hill was brutal. Both men were so hungry now they had to do something about it to keep going.

Weed stopped and put a hand on a tree to lean. “I’m no outdoorsman, but there’s got to be something we can eat. I’m starving my old grey balls off.”

“Me too, although your visual has helped reduce my appetite a bit.”

Weed looked around. “I ain’t got nothing. You?”

Ron shook his head. “How far are we from the compound?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’m so hungry, I would go back in there to get something to eat.”

“Yeah, I’m with ya’ on that brother. Let’s tackle the hill and see where we are.”

Ron just nodded and started walking. The hill they were climbing was at least eight hundred feet high.

Noon. The sun was straight overhead. Ron and Weed were resting about halfway up. The rough terrain and their weakened condition made the going hard and slow. Every ten minutes or so one of the men would stop and just stand, the other would follow suit. Few words were exchanged and usually it was Weed and that was only to mumble a harsh expletive or curse some part of his body. The climb started with the milder comments.

“Damn, feet hurting like shit!”

The more potent, although more subdued.

“Fucking beard feels like a boiled dog on my face.”

Ron cracked a smile at every comment. The longer they walked, the more venomous Old Francis would become and Ron would be more amused as a result. He noticed that although he was weak and struggling, he actually felt a greater sense of energy and motivation within himself. He realized he was starting to think of Francis as a friend, a fellow member of a group that needed him. He wondered how he would feel when this was all over—if they made it out alive.

Finally Old Francis let loose his longest diatribe yet.

“Shit eating old fucking carcass dragging my shit up the fucking shit damn shit.”

Ron had to laugh out loud at that last one. In addition to all his other ailments, the painful blisters on his feet was cause to do a little more than stand still for a few minutes. Laughing sapped his last reserves of energy.

“That last one did me in.” Ron fell to his knees. He was happy in spirit and thoroughly miserable in body. He’d never been in such a challenging situation and finally understood how it was that Old Francis went to humor to get through tough times. With a buoyed spirit, he felt he could keep going no matter what until he dropped dead.

Francis went to his knees and then on his side. “Last what?”

Ron was on his back now. “That last…” Ron circled his finger in the air as the words evaded him. “That last cursing of one of your body parts.”

Francis closed his eyes and smiled. He could think of a few replies but he never quite got around to spitting anyone of them out.

Weed woke first. The sun was low in the sky, and the wind was picking up, it was getting cold. He felt better and worse in several ways. He rolled to his stomach and pushed himself up to his knees and got to his feet.
The old fart routine is for real this time.

He was only a few feet from Ron who was splayed out on his back sound asleep. Weed gathered up some wood and dropped to his knees behind a large rock. He lowered the wood to the ground quietly. Soon he had a crackling, popping blaze going on.

As the sun dropped and the wind picked up, it got cold. Ron woke shivering in near complete darkness. The stars were dots of brilliance above him. Firelight drew his eye and wood smoke filled his nostrils. He saw the old man sitting by the fire, his face danced behind wild hair and beard. He was sitting with shoes off and staring into the flames.

Ron shuffled into the circle of light and warmth.

“Hey.” Ron felt he could go back to sleep.

Weed grunted.

“Nice spot. Thanks for getting this going.”

Francis just stared into the flames and nodded.

They sat by the fire wishing they were somewhere, anywhere, else in the world. But they were here by choice and didn’t feel afraid. They weren’t captives or victims. They were men on a mission. For the rest of the night, the two men sat in complete silence, keeping the fire going, keeping a lookout, occasionally sleeping. By morning they were ready to move on. They were past hunger, past fear, and into a state of numbness where keeping going was easy. By early morning they were atop the hill and looking down.

“That’s it?” Ron squinted as he looked into the valley.

“Yup. We need to load up what we can and take off.”

“All we have to do is avoid the booby-traps and armed Nazis,” Ron said deadpan.

“Yeah,” Weed sighed. “That’s all.”

The downhill trip was much quicker and easier than the uphill climb. Both men were exhausted and lost their footing several times. One would fall and the other would help him to his feet and continued on without a word. The steep hillside dropped them rapidly into the valley.

Ron stopped at the last of the drops to the valley floor and Weed sidled up next to him. Before them were hundreds, maybe thousands, of marijuana plants. The border between natural vegetation and cultivated plants was clear. They walked the last few yards to the very edge of forest and stopped.

Weeds voice was gruff as it rattled from his parched throat.

“Fuck it. Let’s go back.”

Ron smiled. That was so horrible an idea it was funny.

“I kind of miss my old room at the Hitler Hilton.” Ron started forward and with that they were amongst the plants and creeping carefully along.

Weed was surrounded by green gold. This was his garden of Eden, a personalized heaven, but he wasn’t feeling it. He had a job to do.

“I’m not seeing any tripwires or anything suspicious.” Ron squinted, his eyes shifting left to right.

Weed pulled all his hair back over his head with one hand and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

“Yeah, I think we are entering the valley from the park side and the traps were probably setup mostly on the front end near the roads. Anyway, I’m too fucking beat to do much more than drag my ass through these plants. Speaking of which.”

Weed dropped to the ground on his hands and knees and rifled through the fallen plants. “Oh dear lord, they’re dry.” He was all smiles as he rolled a giant wad of dried leaves into a paperless joint and lit it.

Weed bent over the thick smoke that streamed up from the burning leaves. He inhaled and instantly started to hack and cough. When he looked up his face and beard were wet the tears that rained down from irritated eyes, but he was smiling.

“You mind rolling me one?” Ron asked. “I’ve never learned.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think there’s enough for both of us,” Weed belly laughed. “I’ve never felt so shitty but been so happy.”

“I just feel shitty,” Ron said.

Weed rolled and handed Ron a joint along with his fire stick.

“Well Ronnie, now for the hard part. We have to truck out as much of this as we can and not get killed.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that. Maybe we should go get a bigger vehicle, a truck or something.”

“Fuck. We can get an eighteen wheeler,” Weed slapped his leg and grinned.

“Maybe so. Do some scavenging on the way back home.” Ron was serious about hunting for supplies but the area around the garage still had a lot of food on shelves and in pantries. He wanted to get back home as soon as possible, but also dreaded it.

“Yeah.” Weed rolled up on one elbow. “Say Ron. You like eggs?”

“Yeah sure.”

“Man, I love eggs. It occurred to me we can get some chickens. Let’em fuck or whatever so they start shitting out eggs.”

“Yeah, we need some fucking chickens,” Ron smiled at the old man’s colorful way of speaking.

“So, how many people were on the compound? Did you get a good look around?”

“Well I think there were sixteen including Gay Hitler, as I like to call him. I can tell you that seven of them are dead. Out of the nine left, maybe three of them looked to be a threat. They all had guns and knives coming out their asses.”

“Well, how big is this farm? Are there roads into it from another direction?”

“From what I know, this place is huge. Thousands of plants on a few hundred acres. Not the biggest farm, but still big. We need to take a walk around the fields. The more I think about it, there has to be a another way in and out. The size of this place, there needs to have a warehouse, storage sheds, all kinds of shit.”

“Maybe a truck too. They had to move the stuff.”

“True, brother, true.” Weed nodded and held his shrinking joint up with a big grin on his face. “Farm fresh.” He laughed a bit too much at his own joke and Ron laughed just as hard.

“I think I’ll be ready soon to start walking. I am getting pretty high.”

After a leisurely hour, the two rose, Ron first. He offered a hand to Francis and helped him to his feet.

“Thanks.”

They walked for a while, following the clear line between natural foliage and cultivated plant. They went up and over small rises in the terrain, down the same, and up again. At the top of one of the many little rises Weed stopped. Ron pulled up next to him.

“Look over there. You see something? My eyes suck.”

Ron shielded his eyes with one hand and squinted. He could clearly see a building with a fenced yard around it. There was another building closer to them but harder to see as it was painted in waves of black and dark greens to camouflage it. The fields ended close to it.

“Yeah, a few hundred yards and we get to a couple of buildings.”

“Let’s get on then.” Weed walked faster than he had in days.

The plants stopped, replaced by several rows of another crop neither man recognized. Some squat fruit or nut tree. They were approaching the buildings, the rearmost warehouse that was camouflaged was just ahead. It was larger than it looked from afar. They approached slowly, cautiously. Weed held up a hand.

“We need to be careful now. We don’t know who might be in them buildings.”

“Or what,” Ron said as he pointed to a small opening in the rear of the building.

“Yeah. These types always keep some big old pissed off dogs around.”

The door was large for a dog door and the frame was badly shredded on both sides. Ron assumed from a chained dog running in and out of the building.

It was still early afternoon as the two men walked softly to the rear of the building. Weed stood back from the small door. He whispered to Ron.

“Don’t crowd in behind me in case I have to get the hell out of there fast.” He dropped to his knees and stuck his head in the hole. After a moment, he crawled forward into the small black doorway.

Ron kept watch, surveying the area as he waited for Francis. After less than a minute passed he started to wonder when he should check on the old man. But it was soon after he heard Francis whisper from the little door.