2nd Earth: Shortfall (11 page)

Teddy who is Robin’s ten year old son asks if he can come with us tomorrow to gather the nuts and help me cut wood for the smoking fire. He always enjoys tagging along and I never mind so I tell him and his sisters Kathy and Karen that they are welcome to come along as well. In the morning before I start scraping the house we go looking for hickory wood. It has finally quit raining, but the houses are too wet to paint yet. Dayna reminded me that I can always scrape the loose paint off while it is damp. We find several hickory trees in a grove and the ground beneath them is loaded with hickory nuts. We can see the sign of either the big hog we killed or others that have visited here to eat the nuts.

There are what appears to be hundreds of squirrels around chattering at us like they are trying to chase us away. The girls gather nuts into a couple of peck baskets they brought while Teddy and I gather sticks from around the trees that obviously fell off of them. We brought a wheel barrow out to bring the wood back in so when we have all that we can carry without having it spill all over the place we head back. On the way out we hear the sound of several wild turkeys gobbling, I guess it is called. With Thanksgiving only a week away I take note to try to get us a couple of turkeys for that meal. The smoke house needs some minor repairs, which is not surprising because it has set unused for so long, but we make the repairs and make sure we have plenty of wood to keep it going for several days.

We spend the rest of the day scraping old paint off the outside of the house. The temperature seems to be dropping almost daily now so we may have to put off painting until spring. In the evening Tim tries the short wave as usual only tonight he gets an answer from three different groups of people. At least they say they are and we have no reason to doubt them. One group is the same one we talked to before in Texas. The other two are from California and Illinois. They both talk about the same situation that we have found everywhere we have gone. They are doing their best to survive, but it doesn’t sound as though they have been as lucky as we have. Being careful not to tell them where we are we explain how we are surviving and they all agree that they could do that too. They say they are going to go to the library and get some books on the topics we talked about and see what they can do to become more self-sufficient.

We discuss whether or not we should tell people where we are. We decide that we don’t know anything about who may be listening and we can’t always be as lucky as we have been so far. We do agree though that if we find others or if someone comes along we will be more than happy to help them. The others ask if we may be able to be on the radio more often so they can ask any questions they might have. We assure them we will try to make contact with them whenever we can. The days go by and are filled with work, good humor, and a great family. We have talked with the others and have made some suggestions to them, at least the ones in Illinois.

We told them that we were up in New York, but came south to get where survival would be easier. We tell them we settled in South Carolina just in case someone is listening. They get a lot of details about how we got the trucks running and about using generators for electricity. They thank us very much every time we talk to them. It must be terrible to be living in the city and knowing that your food supply can’t last forever and not know what to do about it. Luckily for us Tim and I came from a place where we had the experience to help the others. The day before Thanksgiving Tim, Rod, and I go turkey hunting. I have always heard about how hard it is to hunt turkeys, but these birds have never been hunted. Odds are they have never even seen a man before, unless they have seen us around.

We are standing in a field trying to decide how best to go about getting a couple big birds for tomorrows dinner to go with the ham that should be just about ready today, when a whole flock of them come right into the field we are in and proceed to peck at the ground. We just watch them we are so fascinated by the beauty of them. Finally we decide we better shoot a couple of them or we will be the laughing stock of the family, but we are hoping to do it without scaring the whole flock away from the area. Rod brought a bow and arrow along just in case we could get a clean shot with that. We are hoping for a head shot or a neck shot so not to ruin the meat with buck shot.

Rod decides to try to shoot one with the arrow anyway, we all figure the worse he can do is miss and if he does we will shoot if they start to run off. There are so many it seems almost impossible to miss. He takes aim at a very large tom, which is a male bird, and lets fly his arrow. At first we think he missed because the arrow never even slowed down when it went past the turkey. Actually it went past two of them very closely. Both birds seem unconcerned, but when they start to take a step they both fall over and lay there. Their legs kick the air a few times, but that is all, apparently Rod’s arrow went though their necks severing the main artery causing them to bleed to death quickly. The others walk away totally unconcerned while we pick up the two dead birds and head back to the house to clean them. It is not quite as easy as that because the birds must weigh between 45 and 50 pounds each.

Everyone is pleasantly surprised when they see us coming back because they didn’t hear a shot. Rod gets the chance to do a little bragging about his hunting prowess with a bow and arrow. Everyone is impressed as they should be, I knew guys back when we were in our previous state that would go hunting every year and never even see any game much less kill two turkeys with one arrow. It takes a while to clean them, but we have plenty of help and finally have them hanging fully cleaned and ready for the oven almost. We are totally ready for a big Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.

11

Thanksgiving is a great day for all of us, Tim and I try to explain what football is and we wind up outside after dinner playing a game in the yard. It is with no doubt the most fun I have ever had playing any game. Dayna, Robin, and the children tackle me on every play no matter who has the ball. We decide we have to play more games and have more fun now that survival is a little easier. Not that it will ever be able to be taken for granted, but we at least have a pretty good chance now. Everyone takes turns saying what they are the most thankful for, and for just about everyone it is that we are all a family now. I have never had a problem with hay fever in the past, but today my eyes seem to be watering more than they should. The day is over much too soon and all of us agree that we need a large building or room that we can use for holidays, and just to get together when we want to as a family.

We are not sure if we can find enough good building materials to build something that size, but we are definitely going to look into it. The day after Thanksgiving we decide to go to a larger city that is about thirty miles southeast of us. Actually, we decided a few days ago, but this is when we planned to go. Today we are driving the two big trucks in case we find something we can use and it is only Billy, Rod, Tim, and I going. We feel comfortable leaving the others in the capable hands of the other men. The ride down is uneventful although we do see another gas tanker and another propane truck not more than ten miles from home on the highway.

The driving is like always, we have to weave in and out of cars that are left on the highway. It is not as bad as most of the trip down here, but it keeps us on our toes. About halfway there Tim, who is riding with me, points to a building on the side of the road. It is, or should I say was, a banquet house and it is made of sheet metal that looks like it is still in very good shape. We decide to stop to investigate. We all agree that this would be the way to go for our large meeting room or building. We have some tools with us so we try a few of the nuts and bolts holding the sheeting on and they come off with very little effort. The building has obviously been deserted, except for some four legged customers, so we have no qualms about taking it. We will have to come back for several loads, but it will be worth it.

We get to the outskirts of the city and it’s obvious that there are people living here. Not like the way they did before the war, but like we did in the city. It is a pretty good sized city and the streets are pretty much impassable for the large trucks we have. We pull into the parking lot of a large supermarket and from out front it appears to be almost empty. Billy and Rod stay with the trucks while Tim and I go into the supermarket just to see if we are correct. The stockroom still has several pallets of canned goods, but we decide to leave them since we don’t need them and the people here will. Back at the trucks Billy says that they have seen some men running from building to building working their way closer to us. He and Rod both say they look like the predators back in the city. We are sure that we would find people like that in every city we could ever visit. It was like that before the war, and will be like that as long as there are people on this earth.

We decide to look around a little more before going back so we find a street that we can drive down and work our way deeper into the city. The city doesn’t look like it is in quite as bad a shape as New York was, but the weather down here is milder than it is up there. We see men around, always hiding, but so far we have not seen any women. We are almost all the way through the city when we see another farm market like the one we have in the other town. We decide to stop here to see if they have any seed or more chicken feed that nobody seems to need around here. Actually there are pallets full of all kinds of seed like corn, green beans, wheat, oats, alfalfa, melons, tomatoes, and pretty much every kind of seed we could want. We load a couple of pallets into the enclosed truck, by hand of course. We also find a bunch of starter kits for starting plants before you plant them in the ground.

We come across a section in the store that has several books on healing and staying healthy using herbs. Tim says that Charity asked him to get any herb seeds if we come across them. We take the entire display along with a bunch of window boxes that they say are great for growing our herbs in. We would like to be able to browse and look around for more treasure, but we have noticed several men slinking in our direction since we have been in here. We get outside and start to get into the trucks when we see an older man and a woman with two younger women and a young man running toward us. They are yelling at us asking if we would take them out of the city. We can see they are being closely followed by several rather ominous looking young men. We let the first group run up to the trucks while we wait for the men chasing them. They come to an abrupt halt only a few feet away when they see us. The one who is probably the leader tells us to turn them over and we will not be harmed. The older lady behind us tells us that they have been trying to find them to rape them for weeks now. She says if we turn them over the girls will be raped and the men killed.

Since the head man seems to be addressing me, I tell him they can go back where they came from, we are not giving them anybody. At first I thought it might be a setup, but the fear in the women behind us is very real. I can tell they are thinking about jumping us, but with Billy here even I would think twice and maybe three times before I start anything. Apparently since there are six of them and only four of us they think they have the upper hand. They rush us and I see what they are doing right off. They send two of the six to grab the women, while four of them keep us busy. It may have worked if the first four were a lot tougher. With Tim and my martial arts training and Billy’s great strength they are just no match for us. Even Rod who hasn’t had much fight training beats the crap out of the one that came after him. Tim and I both use our legs and boots to stop the first two dead in their tracks while Billy picks the first one to him up and throws him at the two trying to get to the women.

They are all down, so we make a hasty retreat into the trucks, taking the family with us and drive out of there. Going through town the trucks are hit by rocks, bottles, and pretty much anything they can throw, but they do no real damage besides maybe denting the sheet metal a little. On the way through town we are talking to the people we just met. Three of them are in our truck and two went with Billy and Rod. They tell us that they have been living in a town about fifteen miles south of the city. All the food ran out so they decided to walk to the city to see if there was any food there. They say they got here a few weeks ago and found food, but they also found those predators. They have managed to hide from them until today, when they saw our trucks they came out of hiding hoping that we would take them with us.

They ask if there is another town nearby where they can be let out, they don’t want to be a burden to us. I think they are almost as afraid of us as they were those guys back in town. I know I probably would be in their shoes. We tell them we would be happy to take them to the closest town, but if they would like they could come home with us and at least have a good meal before going on. We tell them about our family and how we happen to be here in Virginia.  They are either very impressed or they don’t believe us, because they don’t say anything until we are almost home. They are impressed when we pull into the yard and everyone comes to meet us and help unload the trucks. Naturally the women want to get to know the young ladies we brought home, and they also want to meet the young man, especially when they find out he is the girls’ brother.

The older man and woman are the young people’s mother and father. They say they lived on a farm when they were young, before the war. They both say they never saw anything quite like this though and they never expected to either. None of them have seen electric lights since the war and even the parents don’t remember what fresh meat tastes like. We proudly take them on a tour of our farm. We show them the barns, the greenhouse, the winter wheat we have planted, and the meat freezer full of beef and pork. Charity and Dayna are very excited to get the herb seeds and everything else we brought back. Later in the evening, after a very nice steak supper, Tim raises the familiar groups on the short wave. The ones in Texas are doing well as are the ones in California. The group in Illinois says they are leaving tomorrow to head south. They took our advice and did everything we told them. They now have four trucks and a small bus to bring them all out of the cold and snow. We wish them luck and tell them to make sure they get on the radio when they get where they are going. They say they are shooting for somewhere maybe on the coast, like North or South Carolina.

In the morning I ask the new family if they still want to be taken into town and dropped off. The parents ask if it would be too much trouble for them to stay here with us. I can tell from the way they ask that they are afraid we will say no. I tell them I will have to ask the others and Dayna hits me for making them wait to be told they can stay. I do explain that everyone pulls their own weight, I tell them even the newborns do their part by making sure we don’t have any milk left to throw away.  I get smacked again so I figure I will quit while I am behind. The father, whose name is Frank, asks me if we think we have enough wheat planted. I tell him honestly that we have no idea, but we kind of went by the instructions on the bag.

He says that it will probably suffice if we don’t have any problems, but he recommends we plant a couple more acres. When he volunteers to plow it and everything, we are more than happy to let him. He knows how to drive that tractor and what all the equipment we have is for. That makes one of us, he is as happy as he can be driving that tractor around that field. His son helps by moving large tree branches that are in the field so he doesn’t have to stop. The girls are helping paint the insides of the houses, they get along great already. Tim, Rod, Billy, and I go back to get the gasoline tanker and the propane truck to bring them back here for when we need them. We already discussed it and we will keep them across the road so that if something should happen, we will not be in as much danger from an explosion.

By the time we get back Frank has the field plowed and is starting to disk it, I hate a showoff, don’t you? Actually we are very happy to have someone who knows something about farming. When he gets done for the day he asks if we would mind if he starts getting the other fields ready to be planted in the spring. I tell him I was hoping to do that myself and he actually believes me. I have to tell him he can plow the whole state if it makes him feel good. For the first time we decide we should probably define the property that we are going to use. We know that there are a couple of houses toward town that are just a little over two miles in that direction. The other way there is nothing for about five miles. We take a walk through the fields and the woods behind the houses and guess that it is at least two miles before we even see another house and all of those are deserted. We cross the road and go at least that far before we find another farm.

Frank recommends what I am thinking anyway, he thinks we should put markers at about the one mile mark or halfway between the existing farms to be fair in case someone decides to do what we are. Since there is no real hurry to do that, we attend to more pressing matters like supper. We discuss it at supper that Frank is going to teach Rod, Dan, and Don how to plow and get the soil ready. There is plenty to be done so they can take turns while we, that being Billy, Tim, Ramona, Charity, Dayna, and I go to start taking down that metal building we found. The other men are staying home to make sure nothing happens.

Taking the building down is going to be slow going, at least getting the roof and the upper sections off. The women work on the lower sections while we work on the roof. We manage to get about a third of the roof off and the girls disassembled the kitchen walls portion of the building. We mark everything carefully and load it on the truck as we take it down. It is almost dark when we get home, but we can see that they plowed a pretty good section of the fields around the houses. Frank also showed the guys how to cut the deep grass in all the fields and bail it to be used as feed and bedding for the cattle. From the smell of it they learned how to mix water with the manure that is collected from the barns and spread that on the fields for fertilizer. Tomorrow is Sunday, but Billy, Tim, Rod, and myself agree that we need to get that building as soon as possible so we tell the others to rest for the day, but we are going to work on that building.

Dayna says she is going to stay home tomorrow, and along with several of the other wives, they are going to cook a pot roast with all the fixins. In this case that’s potatoes, carrots, and fresh homemade apple sauce for dessert. I forgot to mention that we found an orchard when we went for that walk through the woods and the fields. In the morning we get up early to get an early start, we are surprised when Eric, the new people’s son, and one of our young men, Todd, want to come along and help. They are a huge help because that allows two teams to work on removing the panels and then they can be handed down to the ground crew who mark them, then load them on the truck. By lunch time we have the roof completely off and loaded, we still have room for some of the wall panels, so we dismantle what we can carry of those, then head for home.

We have plenty of help unloading the truck. Then we eat the best meal that any of us have had for quite a while. Before we eat, Frank and his family stand and want to thank all of us for letting them become part of our family. We assure them all that we feel as fortunate as they do that they have joined us. The work they have done over the past few days has helped tremendously. That’s what’s so great about our family. We all appreciate each other for what we are. Not for what we think the others should be.