Forsaking Home (The Survivalist Series) (3 page)

“Morg, can you move these buggies away from the river? We’ll be back at some point to get them,” Sarge asked.

“Sure thing.”

“You still got the codebook I gave you when you left my place?” Sarge asked.

“I do, I think it’s still in my pack. I never completely emptied it when I got home.”

“Good. If you guys need anything, just give a shout.”

“Same goes for you. We’ll keep someone around them just in case you need to get in touch.”

Sarge gazed out at the river. “It ain’t the Suwannee, but it sure is pretty here.”

I looked out. “Yeah, we’ve always liked it out here. It’s peaceful.”

“I could live here forever, I think,” Sarge said with a snort.

We spent a few minutes shaking hands and saying good-bye to the guys. Sarge hugged Mel and Bobbie. He knelt down and looked at Little Bit. “You keep an eye on your daddy for me, okay?”

She smiled. “I will, Mr. Sarge! When will you be back?”

“We got some work to do, but don’t you worry your pretty little head.”

She smiled and hugged the old man. It caught him off guard at first, but then he wrapped his arms around her small shoulders. “I’ll miss you,” she said.

Sarge leaned back and ran his hand over her hair. “I’ll miss you too.”

He quickly stood up and got on the boat, and the rest followed. Little Bit gave each of the guys a hug as they got on the boat, telling them to be careful and to come back soon. It brought a smile to everyone’s face, the innocence of a child not knowing the danger they were facing. Taylor and Lee Ann waved as the guys got on the boat, yelling good-byes. Taylor was fixated on Mike and flashed him a big smile. Mike winked at her. I saw it and narrowed my eyes at him. He saw me and put his hands up in mock surprise, and I shook my head, gesturing that I was watching him. Sarge started the boat and they were quickly out in the center of the river, barely moving faster than the current.

We all stood at the edge of the river and watched until they were out of sight.

“Well, they’re gone,” Jeff said.

Thad let out a huff. “For now.” We all stood there quietly for another moment.

I couldn’t help but think of what they were in for, remembering my last run-in with them over at Lake Kerr. Of course, these guys are the real deal—they do this for a living, after all. Maybe it was the image the DHS had built for itself, but there was a concerted effort to intimidate the American people. For the average person like myself, the thought of taking on an entire camp of DHS storm troopers was more than a little daunting.

The fact that Sarge and the guys didn’t have a concrete plan was also a little worrisome. While I know they wouldn’t take any chances, they certainly weren’t afraid to hang their asses out to get the job done. This is what I was worried about. Despite my concerns, Sarge and his merry band of marauders were some sneaky, deadly bastards, and I was sure they would prevail.

“Come on, Thad. Let’s get started on that firewood,” Danny said, breaking the silence. Thad nodded at him and the two walked off.

I looked at Jeff. “You wanna go out and see what sort of grub we can scrounge up?”

“I’m game. Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s take the kayaks. I want to look on the river. There’s lots of stuff out there.”

“Cool. You get the paddles and I’ll put the boats in the water.”

I nodded and walked toward the cabin with Mel to get the paddles.

“You think you can actually find some food out there?” she asked.

“Yeah. It may not be the greatest stuff, but it’ll be edible.”

She looked sideways at me. “I was hoping for more than
edible
.”

I smiled at her. “I’ll see what I can do. It’s not like a grocery store, ya know.”

She patted me on the ass and winked at me. “See what you can do.”

“Well, since you put it that way . . .” I said with a laugh.

She handed me the paddles. “Now scoot!”

 • • • 

I walked back to the river’s edge and laid a paddle in each boat. “You ready?” I asked Jeff.

He answered by quickly hopping into one of the boats and looking over his shoulder. “Push me out.”

I shook my head. “Lazy prick,” I said as I shoved the boat out into the current.

I got into my boat, laying my carbine alongside my right leg, and pushed myself into the slow-moving river. Planting my paddle into the soft mud of the river bottom, I swiveled the boat to face upstream. The kayak I was using was an Old Town Predator, a sit-inside with a huge cockpit. One of the things I really like about it is that it’s one of the few sit-ins you can actually stand up in, very handy for what we were about to be doing.

“Let’s go upriver, there’s a couple places up there that seemed like they could be good spots for some veggies.”

Jeff was flailing the water with his paddle, cussing.

“You ever been in one of these before?” I asked with a smile, enjoying the spectacle before me.

“No, how’d you guess? And hey, I thought we were going to find some food.”

“We are.”

“You said veggies. That’s what my food eats,” Jeff said as he fought to keep the kayak upright.

“If you’ll just relax, that boat will stay right side up. We can look for some game too, but plants are easier to get. They don’t run and you don’t have to shoot them.”

“Easy for you to say. Lead on, O great one.”

I instructed him on how to turn his boat and get it faced into the current. Once he was facing the right way, I gave him a quick lesson on how to maneuver and control the kayak. After a few failed attempts, we were on our way. It was nice on the water. Since it was still early, it was cool, and the fog was just starting to burn off. We paddled side by side for a while, my eyes scanning for a stand of arrowhead or wapato.

I eased over to the left side of the river, keeping my eyes on the water’s edge. It didn’t take long to find a stand of the arrow-shaped leaves. Now came the fun part.

“Over here,” I said with a nod in the direction of the stand of plants.

I let my boat glide up to the plants, back-paddling to stop beside them.

“What’re you doing that for?” Jeff asked as I shoved my paddle into the mud and started working it back and forth.

“We’re getting wapato. Come over here and use your paddle like I’m doing.”

“Wapato? What the hell is that?” Jeff asked.

“A lot like potatoes, you can boil and mash ’em or bake ’em. They’re pretty good, they were a staple food of Native Americans all over the country. Typically it was the women that collected these, they would wade out into the water, use their feet to release the tubers, and collect them when they floated up.”

“How do you know what they look like?”

I pulled a leaf off one of the plants. “See the shape of the leaf?”

“Yeah, it looks like an arrowhead.”

“Exactly, it’s the only thing in the river that looks like this. We want to get the tubers that are growing in the mud.”

Jeff used his paddle like a pole, shoving it into the mud and pushing his way over to the stand of plants. He watched what I was doing for a moment, and then began digging into the mud. I was half waiting for him to turn the boat over. It wasn’t long before he was stretched out with one side of the boat tipped almost in the water.

“Shit!” he shouted.

“Pull, dude, pull hard, or you’re going swimming!” I said with a laugh.

He managed to get the boat under control and sat there shaking his head. “This is harder than it looks.”

“Yes, it is, my friend. It’s a little tricky.”

Using my paddle, I swept some floating tubers toward my boat and picked them up. “This is what you’re looking for. Let’s see how many we can find.”

Soon enough, tubers were floating all around us, ranging in size from the diameter of a dime to the size of a golf ball. We raked them toward the boats with the paddles and plucked them out of the water. It wasn’t long before they were piling up in the boat.

Jeff was examining one of the golf ball–sized tubers. “Very cool,” he said, and dropped it back into his boat. “Food you can just pick out of the river.”

“They are as close to a direct replacement for store-bought spuds that you’ll get. Let’s see what else we can find.”

I paddled slowly into the current, keeping my eyes on both sides of the river.

“How’d you learn all this?” Jeff asked.

“I studied it a lot. Me an’ Little Bit would go out and see what we could find on the weekends. She had a lot of fun doing it, and it was a good excuse to get her out in the woods.”

“But why? Have you ever used any of this before?”

“Food is freedom. Control the food, control the people. While a lot of people don’t see it that way, if you think about our current situation, it really applies. How many people do you think have gone to the camps because they are hungry? Humans lived for tens of thousands of years before grocery stores, but take them out of the equation and folks panic.”

“I see what you mean. Once the canned food or whatever was stored was gone, most people didn’t know what to do. Hell, I didn’t. If it wasn’t for you guys I’d be fucked.”

I laid my paddle across the cockpit and looked over at him. “But you’re learning and not just sitting on your ass waiting for someone to come rescue you. That’s precisely why I studied it. It offered a level of security for me and my family.”

Jeff nodded. “I get it. All right, boss, what’s next?”

We continued upstream, stopping once to pull a bunch of watercress. I explained to Jeff that it was a green that was similar to spinach. He shook his head. “This is so cool.”

At a bend in the river, there was a large stand of cattail on the inside edge. We paddled over, pushing the boats up onto the bar created by the plants.

“You might want to take your boots off for this one.”

Jeff looked at me like I was nuts. “You want to get in the water?”

I stuck my hand in the river and splashed him. “Yeah, you afraid? It ain’t too cold.”

“I’m not afraid, asshole. What do you want to do?”

“We’re going to get some of the stalks, but mainly I’m after the roots.”

Jeff took his boots off and began trying to extricate himself from the boat. It was like watching a turtle stuck on its back. I laughed at him for a minute then went over and helped pull him out.

“Thanks,” he said begrudgingly. “Now what?” he asked, looking around at the water.

I grabbed a plant and cut it off about a foot above the water, then ran my hand underwater and grabbed the base and pulled. The plant came up, pulling other roots that were running away from the plant with it. I grabbed one of the pencil-thick roots and held it up. “We want these. See the little knots? That’s the good part. Try and follow them out and pull them up. In another couple of weeks, there will be new shoots we can eat. They’re really good.”

We spent the better part of two hours pulling the rhizomes out of the mud. It was a messy job—the kayaks as well as our clothes were covered in mud by the time we finished. Thankfully the sun was warming up nicely. With the kayaks loaded, we headed back to the cabins. Going with the current made it a fairly quick trip, even with Jeff’s occasional screwy paddling.

The girls were down at the river’s edge as we came up. As the boat drifted to where they were standing, they looked at the tangled mass of roots and tubers and laughed.

“What is
that
?” Taylor asked, pointing to one of the tubers.

“It’s going to be your dinner and part of your breakfast. You better get used to it,” I answered.

Jeff whooped as he stepped out of his boat. “Oh man, I’m a mess!”

Little Bit pointed at him, giggling. “You’re all muddy!”

“I’m the muck monster!” Jeff shouted as he started toward her with his arms out, walking like Frankenstein.

She squealed and took off running. I asked Taylor to go get the big washtub and bring it down. When she returned with it we loaded all the tubers, rhizomes, and finally the watercress into it and carried it up to the picnic table. Mel saw us walking up with it and met us.

She looked at the muddy mess in the tub and scrunched her nose. “What’s all that?”

I held up a wapato tuber. “You remember eating wapatos a few summers ago? We were camping out at Lake Norris and dug some of these up and cooked them over the fire.”

She nodded in recognition and pointed to the white mass of cattail roots. “That’s right. What about that?”

“Cattail rhizomes. We’re going to process them for starch.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“We’ll use it in some pancakes tomorrow for breakfast. It’ll make the mix we have go farther.”

When the girls heard the word
pancakes
, they all got excited. “Really? Pancakes!” Lee Ann exclaimed. It was the first time I had seen her smile in weeks.

I looked at them and smiled. “With real syrup too.” Taylor and Lee Ann high-fived.

I explained to Mel that the tubers would need to be peeled before cooking, and she immediately volunteered the older girls for that job. She said she’d take care of the watercress and that I needed to
deal with
the cattails, as she put it.

I took the tub with the tubers down to the river and washed them by shaking them in the water repeatedly. It was quite an effort to get most of the mud off, rubbing at them with my fingers and swishing them around in the water. Once they were as clean as they were going to get, I filled the tub with enough water to cover the rhizomes. I was wet and filthy by this point, and went back to the cabins to change.
It’s a good thing Thad’s gonna teach the girls how to make soap
, I thought, looking down at my muddy clothes.

When I came back out, relatively clean, Danny and Thad were sitting on the picnic table.

“You guys done getting the wood?” I asked.

Danny pointed to a massive woodpile over by the chicken coop. “That should take care of us for a few days.”

“What’d you guys find?” Thad asked.

I pointed at the tubers that the girls were peeling. “We got some taters, some cattail roots, and some watercress greens.”

Thad picked up one of the tubers. “What are these?”