2nd Earth: Shortfall (14 page)

14

It is Christmas Eve, at least by our calendar, and since we have no other way of knowing, we are going by that. We made several trips into town over the past week so that people could get gifts for each other. Mostly we went to the local library and found books that we think each other will like to read. Only a couple of the older people even know what Christmas is and they say they had no idea when it was, so they haven’t even thought about it in years. Tim and I talked it over with Dayna and Charity and we agree that we should know the true meaning of Christmas, rather than just the giving of gifts to each other. We killed another wild pig and have smoked the hams for Christmas dinner and Dan, Don, and Andrew each got a turkey yesterday to add to the meal as well.

We have invited our neighbors to join us and they accepted so we will have quite a crowd for the holidays. Ma Horton would have loved to be here. She always invited a bunch of people over on holidays, but for one reason or another, no one ever seemed to come over. That always made holidays depressing for her. Gunny always said that he should order some people to come over to make her happy, but she told him if he did she would kick his butt. I can’t help but think that they would both love to be here with us in this adventure. The excitement of the children on Christmas morning makes me feel like a kid again myself. Dayna and the others are excited as well because they have never celebrated this before.

We exchange gifts and everyone gets together in the meeting building to read the Christmas story about the birth of Christ from the Bible. We take turns reading, I get to hold Kathy and Karen on my lap, and Tina and Tammy, the twins, sitting beside me, while we read and listen to the others read. This has to be the best Christmas ever. We have a great dinner with our friends and neighbors. We also get to talk during the day and Ryan and his wife mention that they saw a fairly large pack of dogs or wolves running across the field the other day. No one wants to see the day come to an end, but as with all good things they eventually do.

It snows overnight, but only enough to cover the ground with a soft white blanket. Look at me. I’m starting to sound like some poet or something. I think having the children count on me so much has made me mature a lot more than I was when we first got here. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we had our meeting and picked our first leaders for our family. Melissa, Jessica, Kate, and Eve were the women chosen to be in the leadership, and Tim, Billy, Rod, and I were chosen to be the male leaders. Dayna was nominated, but we didn’t think a husband and wife should be on the team. We had a lot of discussion about the rules we should follow and what we should do if someone doesn’t follow the rules. What we decided to use for rules are the Ten Commandments from the Bible, and we determined we will decide a punishment if and when someone breaks the rules.

Right now I can’t imagine any of our family doing anything against any of the others, but you never know. Today I am working in the barn farthest from our house, the one closest to Billy’s house. It is cold so we are cleaning the barn up so that it will be ready for the spring. If Jessica and Jenny, along with the three sisters that joined us a month ago, keep bringing in chickens and cows we will definitely need more space to keep them. Billy and I are moving some heavy equipment that we have no idea what it is for when we hear what sounds like a pickup truck come into the yard. We mention that the truck is moving much too fast for the number of children that are often playing in the yard, and start to look out to see who is driving.

We no sooner get to the door when we hear the emergency bell sounding frantically so we run to find out what has happened. I don’t know about Billy, but I am envisioning one of the children being struck by that truck and that image frightens me more than I can express. When we get to the porch Jessica is in tears and saying that a pickup truck pulled into the yard and a man got out, grabbed Rachel, pulled her into the truck, and then took off toward the city we went to. I tell Billy to grab a few men and guns and follow in one of the trucks. I’m taking one of the motorcycles to make sure they don’t have time to hurt her. We have the motorcycles from those guys that came after us when we first got here. Those bikes are not the typical chopped bikes that people associate with motorcycle clubs or gangs. They are big bikes, but they are just stock bikes like they come off the showroom floor.

I grab my .307 rifle and plenty of ammunition and jump on the bike I have ridden a couple of times now. It starts up quickly, which I am grateful for, and head out of the barn as fast as I dare. Dayna is in the yard when I go by her, I tell her Billy will explain and I am gone. I have to make sure those animals don’t have time to hurt Rachel. Of course knowing Rachel as I do, maybe I should be more concerned with her hurting them. I say that mostly joking even though Rachel and her sisters are very independent young ladies, and will never give in without a fight. Unfortunately the kind of men who have her will not hesitate to beat her senseless and then rape her. I am not going to give them time enough to even think about it if I can help it. This road to the city is fairly wide open so they can make pretty good time, but there are some places where the road is blocked and you have to work your way around a little.

On the motorcycle I can go places they can’t and I am counting on that to be able to catch them. The cold air is making my eyes water, but I didn’t take time to grab any glasses or helmet for riding. Heck, I don’t think I have any glasses or helmet to grab, so it wouldn’t have mattered. Actually the cold is freezing my hands as well, I do have a pair of work gloves in my pocket, but I can’t worry about that now. I am starting to wonder if they pulled off the road somewhere behind me when I see the pickup truck in the distance. I pour on the speed, but so do they when they see me so the race is on. At least they know I am back here so they can’t do anything yet. I just hope that Billy and the others can catch up soon. It could get a little interesting trying to fight as many guys as we saw in the city the time we were there.

The chase settles down to me following them at high speed into the city. They keep going until they get to a part of town that is pretty rundown and has some smoke coming from a chimney on one of the houses. I tell myself I can’t let them get Rachel into a house where there may be several others to hurt her. When I see brake lights I stop quickly and aim at the first guy getting out of the truck. He is the driver and is closest to the house they pulled up in front of. As soon as he steps out I shoot him in the head, the others had started dragging Rachel around the truck toward the house, but they run to a house across the street now. That’s exactly what I wanted them to do. With them separated we have a better chance of ending this without getting Rachel hurt.

Some people in the house they were going to, start shooting at me. They are using shotguns loaded with bird shot so the pellets are dropping short before they even get to me. These guys are so pathetic at being tough against a fighting man it’s ridiculous. But against Rachel they are very dangerous. I fire a couple of shots into the house where the fire is coming from and I hear someone yell that they have been hit. I have no sympathy for him. As Gunny would say, if you play with fire, you have to expect to get burned. The others get here and I fill them in on what has happened so far. Tim says it’s a good thing I haven’t killed them all yet or he would be angry with me for not sharing.

I tell them that I am going to get to the third floor of a house that appears to give me a clear field of fire to both houses. Tim says he wishes I still had my fifty that I used in our missions for the military. We have military radios so we can keep in touch. I work my way to a house that has three stories that looks like it will offer a clear field of fire that I need. When I get in place Tim refers to me as Zeus which confuses the others until he explains it to them. With the variable scope I have on the .307 I can look right into the rooms of the houses. In the house where Rachel is being held I can see her, but I can’t see the attackers. I am carrying on a conversation with Tim all the while I am watching. I can see that Rachel is arguing with someone, good he is doing exactly what I want him to do. He walks toward Rachel right into my line of fire. The problem is he smacks her across the face just a split second before I can squeeze my shot off. She falls back in the chair, but he drops dead in a heap on the floor, I wish I had fired a little sooner.

Tim yells in to the one guy left in the house with her to let her go and we will leave them alone, as long as they stay away from us. The one in the house with her says he will kill her if we don’t leave. Tim tells him if he does, we will kill every one of them before we leave town. I am moving to another window to see if I can get a better view into the room she is being held in. This is just like the missions we had before we came here. I hadn’t realized how much I miss this. I just wish it was under different circumstances. From this window I can see the attacker clearly, I tell Tim I can take him out anytime and Tim asks me what I am waiting for. I am ready to shoot him when the guys in the other house catch my eye. One of them is sneaking out the back door, it looks like he is planning to get behind the guys and probably kill them.

I check him out with the scope and see he is carrying a couple of grenades. Now where they got those I can only guess, probably they found a collectors stash in one of the houses. This changes the complexion a little now. I have to take the one working his way around the guys first. Tim says he sees the guy so I can take the guy in the house, they will take care of the one on the ground. I switch my sight back to the house with Rachel and the attacker has moved again. I go back to my original window and he is talking to Rachel, the look on his face is not pleasant so I figure to heck with it and take the shot. He drops like a sack of potatoes and just as he hits the floor I hear an explosion that rocks the building I am in. I am thrown back by the force and when I get back to the window I can see that about half the house across the street from where Rachel is has been blown up. Rachel runs out of the house she is in right into Billy’s arms and Tim asks me if I’m alright.

He tells me that the coast is clear so I can come down now. When I get back to them they tell me what happened. The guy that was sneaking up on them didn’t quite make it. Tim caught him before he got close enough to toss the grenade at them. Tim took the two grenades that the guy had and was coming back with them when he saw two of the guys coming out the back again. Those two had grenades in their hands with the pins already pulled because when Tim shot one of them he dropped his and it went off causing the other one to go off as well. Then there was an explosion inside the house which took out half the house and everybody in it. That settles the problem of what to do with them. Rachel is her old self after thanking us for coming to her rescue. We check the house that exploded and there is no sign of life although there are several dead bodies in the rubble.

We are leaving town when we see a pickup truck driving toward us from the direction of home. It’s some of our neighbors who heard the alarm and came running to see if we need any help. That makes us feel good, plus they are able to tell us how the guys in town knew where to look. Ryan tells us that after we killed those two who attacked Jessica, one of their men took off and they haven’t seen him since. They check out the bodies and tell us that the second one I shot is the one that took off. Well we shouldn’t have any more trouble with these guys. The ride back home on the motorcycle is a bit warmer because I stopped at a store and found a nice heavy work coat, a hat, and some gloves. Rachel wants to ride with me on the way home because she has never been on a motorcycle before. When we get home she recounts the whole adventure to everyone. It’s not quite how I remember it, but it’s close enough.

15

The winter is going by and life as always takes on a routine that most of us tend to get bored with. We found that we don’t generate enough electricity with the two windmills we have, so we decided as a council, to put up two more and divide the load more evenly. The parts are all available at the farm store so all we have to do is do it. We have been using propane to heat our homes and augmenting with the wood stoves. I am concerned at the rate that we use up propane. It is to be expected with the number of people and especially with the new babies. I just wish we had a renewable source for propane, like we have with the windmills. We discuss the possibility of going to electric baseboard heat when we install the other two windmills.

Our neighbors are doing well, they are learning fast and we share knowledge and labor whenever it is possible. It seems that we are sharing more than that, Dayna always tells me I’m clueless and I am afraid I prove her right more times than not. I just found out this morning that some of our young ladies have moved over to our neighbor’s farm to marry some of their men and some of our neighbors have moved over to our farm to marry some of our people. When I mentioned this to Dayna, Robin, and Melissa at lunch, Robin tells the others that she warned them that having more than one wife would probably either cripple or kill me. They all laugh of course, but Dayna defends me. She tells the others that it has nothing to do with it, I was always this way. That gets more laughs than Robins comments, Karen who is six and Tammy and Tina who are four, come over to me and taking my face between her little hands Karen tells me she thinks I am just about the best daddy in the world. Her sister Kathy and brother Teddy agree with her, I stick my tongue out at the ladies and hug my favorite little girls. Teddy says he is getting to be almost a man and men don’t hug.

After lunch we decide to work on the windmills, it is mainly a matter of assembling the heavy tubing and then letting Tim and Tommy take over because they understand that electrical stuff. Besides they cheat, they have the book and won’t even let me borrow it. That’s okay I get to help with the easy part this way. When both frames are put together and they start hooking all the electrical stuff up I decide to take a walk with Dayna and the children. We head for the orchard just because it is as good a way to go as any. Whenever we come this way the children like to throw rocks into the pond over here. We have been stocking it with fish that some of the young people catch and bring over while the fish are still alive. It seems to be working, at least we haven’t found any dead fish floating or on the shoreline.

While we are sitting here looking at the ripples being made by the rocks being thrown in, Dayna nudges me in the side with her elbow and tells me to look across the pond at what is on the other side. I do, but I am careful not to make any sudden moves. I am surprised because sitting on the bank facing us is a beautiful dog. It looks like the ones that they use in Alaska to pull sleds. She does not seem to be frightened, but better yet she does not seem to be aggressive or wild either. The girls see her at about the same time I do and of course they want to go over and pet her right off the bat. We have to tell them that it may be a wild dog to keep them from it. Of course they tell us she can’t be mean because she is so pretty. I get smacked because I tell them that Dayna is very pretty and she is mean. The children laugh when I tell them, “see what I mean.”

The dog just sits over on the other side of the pond looking at us. She keeps looking back behind her as well, but the ground falls away in a slight hill over there so we can’t see what she is looking at. My curiosity is peaked so I stand up and tell Dayna that I am going to see if she will let me pet her. She tells me I must be crazy. I agree, but I really do want to see if the dog is friendly or not. I take several steps around the pond to get closer to the dog and she just sits and watches me come toward her. When I get to within a few steps she growls a little, but doesn’t bare her teeth or anything at me. She just keeps turning around and looking behind her. I can see a small clump of trees behind her and what’s more important is the gas well I see over there. I put my hand toward the dog and she growls again so I talk quietly to her assuring her I am not going to hurt her.

I have a little beef jerky in my pocket that we made, so I take it out and offer it to her. She sniffs it carefully then carefully takes it out of my hand, it’s like she is being careful not to bite me. Kathy, Karen, and Teddy are holding their breath while I try to pet her. They ask me every few seconds if they can come over and pet her yet. Finally after she has the chance to sniff my hand I reach toward her head to pet it and she actually reaches her head toward my hand. She comes closer so I can pet her back and sides and she is wagging her tail while I do. She takes a few steps back the way she keeps looking then looks up at me like I should follow her. Dayna comes around the pond with the children who really want to pet the dog and we all follow her to what she wants us to see. There in a little hollowed out area next to a large tree are seven of the cutest puppies we have ever seen.

She looks at the puppies, who look to be only a few days old, then up at Dayna and I. The only thing we can figure is that she must have belonged to someone and they probably died or somehow they got separated and she has been running wild. I move toward the puppies and the mother seems to be okay with that. I pick up a squirming little ball of fur that is a puppy and show it’s mommy I mean it no harm by rubbing my face against its fur. She seems happy that I like her babies. I take the one I am holding over so that the children can pet it gently. Mom doesn’t seem to mind so Dayna picks one up and is instantly in love with it. Actually, I think we are all in love with the whole litter.

The children start petting the mom and she seems to love the attention. Dayna has a basket with us that she brought along just in case we found something good and we did. She tells the mommy that she wants them all to come up to the house with us and they can live with us where it is warm. I could swear that she understands every word that Dayna is telling her. When Dayna has all the puppies in the basket she holds it at arms length so the mommy can see her babies while we walk back to the house. The children are walking on both sides of the mommy dog petting her all the way back to the house. When we get back we are not sure how the mommy will react to going into a house. We have nothing to worry about because when Teddy runs ahead to tell Robin and the others about our treasures, the mommy follows him right into the house and is waiting when we come into the kitchen door.

Melissa is trying to keep Tammy and Tina away from the mommy dog, but they are much quicker than she is and are hugging that poor dog like a stuffed animal. The mommy dog doesn’t seem to mind at all, she just sits there wagging her tail watching Dayna put her babies in a box with a blanket in it. The box is big enough for mom to climb in with them and she does much to the puppies delight as soon as it is ready. The puppies converge on mommy and it looks like it is meal time. We sure don’t need a babysitter this afternoon, just about every person under ten and some quite a bit over are sitting in our kitchen watching the puppies. We adults discuss whether or not we can trust the mother dog. Melissa tells Dayna that if she had any doubts why bring them in the house, we could have taken them to the barn. Within an hour none of us have any doubts when the mommy goes up to Melissa while she is sitting in an easy chair and puts her head in her lap. Naturally the twins who are sitting on my lap along with Kathy and Karen while I read them a story have to run over to their mommy to pet the dog. Melissa falls in love with her as much as the rest of us have.

In the days following getting the dog I express my concerns to the other guys about our lack of a long term source for propane or any kind of gas really. Tim points out that on the side of the propane trucks we have there is an address and a phone number to call. I tell him I will rush right in and see if they can make a delivery today. He looks at me like Ma Horton used to when I would get sarcastic with her.

“That’s not what I meant Einstein. What I meant was that with an address we can maybe find the larger storage tanks where we can refill the trucks and bring them back. Where is the map we have of Virginia?”

We go into the house to check the map. The puppies are getting big enough to get out of the box, but chasing them down and putting them back keeps the children busy so it works out pretty good. Tim looks at the map and points to a small town about thirty miles from here if the map is accurate. We decide to take a trip over there just to check it out. We take two pickup trucks with us just in case we find something worth bringing home. We go through the small town and it still doesn’t look like anyone is living here. The other town is just about an equal distance from here as it is from our farm to here. There are more farms over this way as well, but none of them show any signs of life other than once in a while we see cows and lots of other animals in the pastures.

The town looks as deserted as the one closer to us. The store doesn’t look like anyone has been in it in years. We take time to get a load of food including several very large bags of flour and other baking items. The propane dealership is easy to find, there are several large tanks in a fenced in area. We check and most of the tanks still say they have more than three quarters of a tank left. We decide we can probably have propane for several years before we run out, but I still think we need a renewable source at least until the world starts to be more like it was before the war, if it ever does. We stop at the farm store on the way back to check out some electric heaters, we are mainly interested in the baseboard kind. We find several and decide it can’t hurt to try some in a couple of the houses and see if they work as well as the propane ones we are using now.

We find a large cushion that is made for dogs and some food dishes that are made for them as well. When we get home we install the electric heaters in Tim’s house and Billy’s house. I tease Ramona and Charity telling them that Tim and Billy were saying that they don’t keep them warm enough at night so they need some more heaters. As usual it backfires on me, they tell Dayna and Dayna smacks me for causing trouble. I spend the rest of the day painting one of the bedrooms in our house that no one uses yet. We know we will when the children get bigger and want some privacy or just space of their own.

The mommy dog seems to love the big cushion we got her and the puppies. So far it is working out very well, she goes to the door when she needs to go out and comes back in when she wants to. The puppies are all getting personalities of their own, the children love them all, but they each have their favorite. The twins love one little puppy that is almost all white with just a little gray around its eyes and the sides of its head. It chases them around the kitchen whenever it gets the chance. They love to sit on the couch or a chair and hold it in their laps while they pet it. It doesn’t seem to mind at all, it does try to nibble on their fingers though which makes them shriek and laugh. They are all so cute. The other children all do pretty much the same things with the puppies they like best. It will be more fun when they get big enough to take outside and play with them.