2nd Earth 2: Emplacement (10 page)

There is a great gun department, where we pick up some very nice guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The boys find a large supply of bows and arrows of all styles and sizes. They also find room for a large supply of fishing equipment to take back. This store has a large supply of dehydrated foods packed in aluminum foil so they should still be good. Naturally we can’t get everything we want in the truck, but we do get a lot, plus we are planning a return trip in the near future. While we are working on the truck, Jenna nudges my arm, and tells me not to look to the left, there is someone next to a building over there. I pretend to be reaching for a wrench and glance that way. There are two young children watching us from behind a dumpster. The only reason we can see them is because we are standing on the loading dock of the store.

Sara and Jenna decide to go back into the store and work their way around behind the children. We definitely don’t want to frighten them away, and we want to know how many more people are here. I continue working with James glancing that way, but at least trying to look like I am looking beyond where the children are. In a few minutes we hear a ruckus coming from that direction, and turn in time to see those two children trying to get away from Sara and Jenna. It only takes a few seconds for a woman to come to where they are, and ask us not to hurt her children. She assures us they won’t bother us, it’s just that it’s been so long since they have seen another living soul. Sara and Jenna assure her that we are not going to hurt anyone. In fact if they would like to join us, they are more than welcome, and if there is anyone else around they are welcome too.

The lady says that she is not sure if there are others around or not, but she has smelled smoke coming from north of where we are. We have loaded everything we can fit in the trucks so we are ready to leave. The lady’s name is Carla, her children are named Beth, who is nine and Sandra who is eight. They decide to come with us, so they gather up their belongings and join Jenna and Sara in the van. We go north looking for any other people who might want to join us. We spot the smoke rising from a fifty gallon drum before we see any people. When they see us they run for cover. We stop and show them that we mean them no harm. They finally decide to at least half believe us, because they do come out, but not close enough if we wanted to grab them.

This is a group of eight. They say they came here a while back, because where they were living was just about out of food. We tell them what we are offering, but I think it’s the young men who actually convince them. Half of the group looks to be about the same age as Teddy, Jerry, and Steve, plus they are girls, so that makes our young men even more interested. The other half of the group is two couples that appear to be in their late twenties. They say that even if just half of what we are saying is true, they can’t afford not to come with us. They say they have seen no one else since they have been here, but we watch carefully as we drive through the city and back home. It is almost ten when we finally get home. Our new people are surprised to see lights that are not candles or lanterns, and the hot meal they are given when we introduce them to everyone, makes them very happy that they came with us.

We will wait until tomorrow to unload the trucks. The other groups come over in the morning to meet our new friends, and to see what we brought back. As usual everyone gets something, plus we put a supply away for any new people that we may find. The new people we brought back with us all say that they have no idea how to do any of the things they see us doing, but they are more than willing to learn and to help. The teenage girls become instant friends of Jenny, Samantha, and the other young teens that take care of the chickens and help with the cows as well. The boys found some really nice, really big hunting knives, that they are trying to keep from their moms but, their little sisters see them and just like that old expression, “time will tell”. Well so will little sisters, if you give them something to tell about. The boys don’t get into any trouble, but they do have to keep the knives locked up when they are not going hunting.

They are big heroes anyway, when the other young men and even some of the young women see all the archery equipment they brought back. They brought back what looks like several hundred arrows made of aluminum or fiberglass, along with several different types of hunting arrow heads. Those are as sharp as a razor, so we insist that those get stored with the guns and ammunition, away from little fingers and hands. Today is Saturday, and the boys are hoping to go hunting, but Don, Dan, and Andrew have been hunting and have filled all the groups’ meat coolers and the smoke house. Actually that’s a good thing, because the weather turns nasty later in the day and doesn’t let up until Tuesday. I for one do not mind the time off to just do our chores and spend some time reading and playing with the children.

I forgot to mention that Billy is now living in his new house, and loves it. His mom and Dayna’s dad Tom, live with him and Ramona, as do Frank and Connie. Tom and Frank have been great friends since Frank and his family joined our family. Frank is our resident farmer and has forgotten more than I will ever know about farming. It’s a good thing Rod, Tim, Ken, and several of our other men are so interested in learning all they can. I am learning, but nowhere near as fast as they are. Josh is getting around pretty good for a gimp, that’s what I told him when I saw him this morning, and I got smacked by Betty for calling him that. He thought it was funny, I got to talk to him alone for a few minutes, and he was smiling from ear to ear. I asked him if he ever regretted taking those bullets. He said what I thought he would.

“Jon, if I had known that getting shot like that would help Betty fall in love with me, I would have asked that guy to shoot me. Caroline and the children stop by to see me every time they come over. It feels so good to have those special spirits hug me and tell me how much they love me. They even asked if they can call me daddy. Betty says that she doesn’t think she can have children so she told me it would be okay with her if Caroline, Samantha, and Samuel live with us as part of our family. I will be forever grateful that you let us have a chance to prove that we wanted nothing more than to be part of a family. I know the other guys all feel the same way.”

I have to tell him that we had our doubts, but they have proven themselves many times over. We are into the second half of February, and the weather is worse than it was last year at this time. We have had more snow, but still very little compared to what they get up north. That combined with the cold is slowing down the progress we were hoping to make on putting in the tunnels and the new homes. Tim is still in contact with other groups around the country, and one evening he even got through to a group that said they are in England. They sure sounded English to us. They told us that they have been in contact with groups in France and Germany, and it sounds like conditions are the same everywhere. We kind of figured that because if other countries were untouched, or had much less devastation, they would have been here to see how this country fared.

It was during one such evening, when Tim was talking to the different groups, that we learned of a group up north that is in serious trouble, and is asking if anyone could possibly help them. The only reason they are able to send out a message, is because they have a man with their group that was into short wave radio before the war. They came across the radio they are using by accident, and were hoping desperately that someone would hear them. They say they are in Rochester, New York, and if they don’t freeze to death this winter, they will probably starve before spring. We talked to them about different things we have done to find food, but they tell us that may work in the south, but when the temperatures are below zero, canned foods whether in metal cans or jars freeze and are no good. We tell them we will try to get there as soon as possible, but that we can’t promise anything.

The general consensus is that we have to at least try to save them. They said there are twenty people in their group, so we will need to take at least two vans and the bus. We will also have to take a pickup truck to carry gas, in case we don’t find any along the way. We will have to travel back almost the same way we came down, so we know what kind of shape the roads are in. We are thinking three days to get there, and that long coming back. We ask for volunteers and the first two hands raised are Sara and Gary. Josh raises his hand, but Betty tells him he is not strong enough for something like this yet. Isaac, Ben, and Hank raise their hands and right after them Teddy, Jerry, and Steve raise theirs. Tara, Steve’s mom, looks at me and shakes her head no, then Becky, who is Jerry’s mom, says that we shouldn’t let three of our best hunters go all at once. Steve and Jerry say in that case they will stay home this time, and Teddy can stay home next time.

I was hoping that I would not have to go, but I would worry all the while they are gone; wondering if this is a set-up or some kind of trap. Little Timmy is almost six months old and is so much fun to play with. We hold a meeting to decide when would be the best time to leave. Tomorrow is Sunday, but since lives may be at stake here, we decide to leave tomorrow anyway. We spend the remainder of the evening getting things ready for the trip. We are very grateful that we found all that cold weather gear on the last trip. At the last minute James, Jenna, and Tim decide to come along. Tim laughs and says he can’t let daddy Zeus go and have all the fun. That’s his way of saying that he is well aware that this could easily be an ambush. I have to admit that I will feel better having him along. I try to talk Teddy out of coming, but he will not listen to any of the arguments I bring up. She’s not here saying it, but I can hear Ma Horton telling me that he takes after me. She was always telling me how stubborn I was when I made up my mind.

10

We leave in the morning, after we have a family prayer. For some reason this trip seems to have a cloud hanging over it. Tim and I were commenting on that earlier, saying that we both remember missions that were like that. It doesn’t necessarily mean that anything is going to go wrong. It’s just that we have this hollow feeling in the pit of our stomach. It may just be that this could easily be the longest trip we have made so far, and that we don’t want to be away from our families for however long this will be.

We head north the way we came down, but then we go a little farther west than we did when we came here. We figure we may as well check the area in between, just in case there are more people that may need our help. The roads are not in bad shape at all, so we are able to make better time than we ever expected. Tim brought a shortwave radio along in case we can find an antenna, but we feel it is important to let the family know when we find those people, and when we are on our way home. We make good enough time that we have a good chance of being there tomorrow. Teddy is having the time of his life, we rode together all day in the pickup, and I don’t think he quit talking for more than five minutes all day. I don’t mind at all, I would much rather listen to him than have him think I am not interested in what he is thinking about.

The weather is much colder already and we are still in Pennsylvania. We are definitely farther west than when we came down, but there is still no sign of life anywhere. We stop for the night at a motel that is deserted, but at least we can get out of the night air. There is a gas station next door to it that we are able to get the generator started to run the pumps. We have a generator with us that we can patch into the electrical controls anyway, but this way we don’t have to. We are able to fill all the vehicles before we turn in for the night. The next morning dawns, with at least six inches of snow, and the thermometer telling us it is only ten degrees above zero out here. I can’t ever remember being so happy to have a good heater in our vehicles.

The going is a little slower in the snow because we can’t see the pot holes, and the places where the pavement has moved and caused some pretty hefty bumps in the road. Tim radios all of us that he is going to write to his congressman for the shameful lack of snow plows on this road. Some members of our team have no idea what a snow plow is, so we have to explain it to them. They think it’s funny when they know what he is talking about. Teddy is not talking quite so much today. I think he is starting to worry, because the snow is not showing any signs of stopping, and it looks like we are heading right into the worst of it. By the time we get to the outskirts of Rochester it is getting dark, and we are pushing snow with our bumpers. Tim has been trying to raise the group of people we are here to rescue, but has not had any luck yet.

We figure we will be better off looking for them in the daylight, so we find another motel and gas station, and settle in for the night. With the snow continuing to fall, we discuss our options, and decide we need to find some snow chains for our tires, just in case. We cannot see anywhere in the dark where we might find something like that, so we decide to wait until morning, but we definitely have to do something, or we may get snowed in until spring. In the morning we are able to raise the people that we are here for. They tell us where they are in the city, but this is a large city, and we are not sure how accurate our maps are. Behind the desk on the way out, we find several maps of Rochester, and the surrounding area. One of the maps we find shows us that we are not more than maybe ten miles from them. We head out again pushing snow with the bumpers of our vehicles. We come to an intersection where there is a large plaza that has two auto parts stores in it. We turn in and check out the stores for chains and anything else we may need.

We find what we are looking for, and some shovels that will come in very handy as well. We decide not to take the time to put the chains on until we need them, but that is starting to look like it will be pretty soon. The closer we get to the people we are here to pick up, the more wary we become. Everyone is watching all around to make sure we don’t drive into an ambush. It doesn’t take long to find the folks we have been talking to. They are extremely happy to see us. Their leader is a man who looks to be in his mid forties. His wife and two children are here as well, along with ten more women and girls, and six other men and boys. We checked a couple of super markets on our way through the city, and what they are telling us is apparently the truth. They have a pretty good place to live, but I am sure it is terribly cold all winter here. They are heating just like our group did before Tim and I came along. They stand around a fire barrel, and at night try to have enough covers to keep you warm.

The snow is continuing to fall, I remember where we came from, this part of the country was always getting storms that would drop snow by the foot, not the inch. Tim reminds me that one year Buffalo, not far from here, got eighty inches of snow in a weekend. They had snowplows, and a population to drive them, and it still took several days to dig out. Across the street from where we find our new friends, there is a large garage, where we can pull our vehicles in and put the snow chains on them. We have been sliding all over the road for the past two days. Thinking about those snow plows gives me a crazy idea. I talk to Tim, Sara, Gary, Jenna, and James and they think it’s a good idea, if we can find one and get it running. Isaac, Ben, and Hank have no idea what we are talking about, and our new friends don’t either, but if we think it’s a good idea they are all for it.

We think about looking in a phone book to find the nearest place where we might find one, but when we ask if our new friends know where we may find a phone book, they tell us anything like that would have been burned already. Teddy, who is scrounging through the buildings around us, comes running back and asks if this is what we are looking for. He says he found it in a pile of junk in the building a couple doors down. It’s a phone book alright, and we are able to find the city garage, and it is only about ten blocks away. At least the closest one, this city is large enough, or at least it was once large enough, to need several garages located strategically around the city. Gary, Sara, and I take the pickup, with the chains on the tires, and go looking to see if we can find that place.

Actually luck is shining down on us because we find it, and there are several large trucks parked in a row in the back of the parking lot. There are more plows than trucks, lined up neatly, waiting to be picked up by the trucks. We try to get one of the trucks running in this cold, and we are freezing, so we use the pickup to tow the truck to the huge garage doors they have, apparently to service these vehicles when this place was functioning. We would never have made it without the chains, it’s a struggle as it is, but we manage to get the truck in out of the wind anyway. Our team is getting very good at this sort of thing. I head for the generator, while Gary checks out the compressor, and Sara is already checking the tires over for cracks and splits from sitting for so long. The engine is diesel, so it is less complicated than a gasoline engine. Sara has the engine running in less than an hour, after we get the generator going and the compressor.

The tires will hold air so our luck is holding so far. We drag one of the huge plows inside using the pickup, and have it mounted in place, and the hydraulics working in about another hour. Since we have heat in this building, with the generator running, we decide that I will go back to get the others and we will spend the night, since it is starting to get dark anyway. There is a store a short distance away, so Gary and Sara are going to check it out and see if they can find enough food for all of us, at least for tonight. That will help our supplies last if they can. I get back to the group, and I no sooner get the truck parked and start to get out, when a bullet slams into the side of the truck near my head. I look toward the building with our friends in it and they are motioning me to get down. That’s a waste of effort. What do they think I’m going to do when someone is shooting at me?

I am armed, but only with my 9mm pistol, so I pull that and return fire, while I am working my way to the building where everyone else is. I manage to get inside, but not without a couple of very close calls from our attackers. Tim meets me as soon as I get in the door, and tells me he tried to warn me, but there was no way to tell me, without getting shot himself. I tell him what we have accomplished, and what we are planning. Actually, now that’s what we were planning. My SEAL training is kicking in, I’m studying the surrounding buildings to see if I can get an advantage by getting above or behind our enemy. The leader of our new friends comes over and apologizes for everything. He says that they were hoping to get away before those guys out there realized they were leaving.

He explains that those men and women out there leave them alone as long as they find food or other things that those people want. He says that’s why they are in danger of starving and freezing to death, because those predators take everything that they find. I call them predators, he called them guys. So far they have left the women alone, but they have been making some references about the young girls keeping them warm this winter. He tells us he wouldn’t blame us if we left them here, they shouldn’t have gotten us involved in their problems. I tell him and the entire group that we wish they would have told us up front, we would have been better prepared for this, but that’s all water under the bridge. Now we have to figure out how to get out of here.

Tim shows me my fifty caliber rifle with the heat sensing scope. I was hoping he got that out of the van before they were attacked. I can see a four story office building that should give me a pretty good range of vision, and help me spot our enemies. Teddy asks if he can come with me. I tell him that our new friends need him here, besides if anything happens to him, his mom will skin me alive. I slip out the back door and make my way to the building I saw. Tim, James, and Jenna estimate the enemy as being about ten or twelve strong. They are basing that on what our friends have told them, and what they were able to see from the windows. These people are much better at military tactics than any we have met so far. I am impressed with the composure that Isaac, Ben, and Hank are showing. They have been taught by us, but have no real formal military experience. They are good men to have on our side. I have to quit thinking about anything except what I have to do right now. It’s been a long time since I have needed these skills.

It sure is cold out here, all I want to do is get our group together, and head for home first thing in the morning. I am at the building now, I get inside and work my way up to the fourth floor without being seen. At least there have been no shots in my direction. They are continuing to shoot at my friends in the building I just left. I have a walkie-talkie that I can stay in touch with Tim on. I am telling him my progress as I make my way up to the fourth floor. I get there and find out I can’t see what I wanted to, so I decide to go up to the roof. I am worried about that, because there are places where the snow is coming right in through small holes in the roof, where it has obviously rotted away. Just how rotten it is I won’t know until I am up there. I get to the roof and I can feel the roof giving under my feet, but not all the way, so I keep going as close to the edge as I can get.

There is a raised edge on this roof, about three feet high. I am crouching, to keep from being seen from below, until I get to where I expect to be able to see our attackers, or at least some of them. I am right in that respect, from where I am now I can see into the buildings that they are holed up in. I am continuing to talk to Tim telling him what I see. I ask him if I should kill or just warn those people, after all they haven’t killed any of us. He tells me I’m getting soft in my old age, the Daddy Zeus he used to know would never think about giving them a second chance. I tell them what the people I see look like and Sam, the leader of the group, tells me the guy I am looking at assaulted one of the teenage girls last summer. He doesn’t finish saying it when that fifty speaks loudly, and we have one less attacker.

I am spotted by at least three of them, so I have no choice anymore. I take aim one at a time and take out all three of them firing at me. I can see two women sneaking out the back of the building where I shot a man just a minute or so ago. They look like all the fight is gone from them. It’s always easier to attack people who can’t fight back. I am looking for more targets, or at least proof that they are calling it quits, when I hear a sound that scares me instantly. I can hear the roof creaking under me, and then I hear the report of a large caliber gun directly below me. I feel the bullet tear into my leg and go out the other side, just before I crash through the roof into the room below. I try desperately to hold onto the gun, but the hole I am falling through is jagged, and rips it out of my hands.

I land hard and awkward, I feel the bone in my leg break, and my arm is broken where I landed against a desk, or something down here. I must also have some broken or badly bruised ribs, because I can hardly breathe. I am more worried about the guy, or whoever it was that fired that shot. They must still be down here, or hopefully I got lucky and fell on them. There is not that much luck in the world. I can see the fifty about ten feet away, but I am not sure I can move that far to get to it, even if I don’t get shot again before I can. I try to move toward it and the pain in my leg, arm and side is pure agony. I can’t recall ever being hurt this badly before. I hear a very nasty laugh coming from my left side, and it’s all I can do to turn my head in that direction. I see a man holding an M16 military rifle, casually pointing it at me.