Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie (23 page)

It was Mick. He saw me and pulled me in for a quick hug and told me I was bleeding, duh! He started barking orders at the women, telling us where to go.

He told me to go to the basement, and I told him I was going in the house. I ran inside and jumped in the closet with my computer so I could at least have light in there 'til the battery went dead.

I
was typing in this diary when the battery died. Then, I was alone in the dark. I worried about my children, my husband, my parents, and everyone else I'd come to love.

I don't know how long I was in the closet before I heard Mick come in the house and call my name. "Robin, Where are you?" he yelled. I opened the closet and was making my way to the bedroom door when it flew open, seemingly on
its own.

The room was filled with light from a solar lantern. It was Mick. I stood, ran to him, and collapsed in his arms, but only for a few seconds because I had to find my children.

I took off running toward Caleb's house as fast as I could. Jason was on the porch, and he said he was going to help Mick find the rest of us. He had his coat and pants over his long johns and was headed through the woods before I could say a word. I noticed that he was limping.

I could hear voices in the house, so I went in. When I opened the front door
, I saw Hisa and Merry cuddled up together on the couch. Merry immediately asked if I'd seen Soo. I told her that Mick and Jason was looking for him right now.

I grabbed each and every one of my babies and hugged them all in a momma bear embrace. Marisa, Hisa and I were all crying. Carisa and Merry were crying too, and the kids started crying right along with us.

We hugged them and told them we were crying because we were happy that they were okay, and that our tears were "happy tears." They were good with that and straightened themselves up.

Hisa had a bloody chin because she'd fainted on the path to Marisa's house and hit her chin on a rock when she fell. Marisa had to grab her by the arms and drag her. She laid her on the porch and went to get the kids out of the tornado shelter.

By the time Marisa and the kids got back from the shelter, Hisa was awake and stumbling into the house. She has a chipped front tooth and scratches from my heirloom rose bushes to go along with her bloody chin.

Marisa has rose bush battle wounds as well. She also has a big bruise that's already turning black from hitting the top of her foot on the front porch steps. Otherwise, she's a little shaky and has a headache from the loud gunshots.

After making sure everyone there was okay, I headed back through the woods to find out about the rest of the group. I asked Hisa to come with me and render aid to anyone who might need it.

When we got around to the front of the house, we saw that everyone was on the front porch. Mick had carried Diane's body up the hill and laid her on the end of the porch.

There was an unfamiliar man lying on his left side, crying out in pain and rocking back and forth while holding his stomach. I could see blood coming through his fingers and he had his knees pulled up to his stomach. Mick was standing over him with a big hunting knife in his hand. I heard the man ask Mick to forgive him.

"I forgive you, and I'm gonna get your knife back to you here in a little bit, but I want to talk to you first." Mick said, as he knelt down on one knee and quietly started questioning him. A few minutes later, Mick stoo
d up and told us that the man died.

Mick has a long, shallow wound on the left side of his ribcage where a bullet grazed him. He has a lot of cuts and scratc
hes all over his chest and arms with a lot of grass and dirt mixed in. He has a big goose egg on his forehead. It's already turning color and it has a tiny cut which is open pretty wide, probably from the swelling. He has a cut on his left shoulder but it isn't very deep and bled only a little.

Jeremy was laying on the stairs. He has a huge
gash from the top of his thigh almost down to his knee. It was bleeding badly and Hisa made him take off his shirt and press it against the wound. He also has two deep cuts on the palm of his hand and a bloody nose. He has an assortment of cuts and bruises on his face and arms, but nothing as severe as the one on his leg.

He said that Diane came out of the woods and shot the man who cut him. The man fell to the ground and was either unconscious, or dead. Diane was trying to get Jeremy back into the woods when someone shot her. She was still alive when he crawled over to her.

Blood was gushing from a bullet hole in her leg and she was fading fast. Her last words were "Hey J, I see my Momma," and then she died. Jeremy used his fingertips to close her eyes, and then crawled back into the tree-line. He ripped a strip of cloth from the bottom of his shirt and tied it above the long cut on his leg. Soo had to drag him up the hill. He said he almost passed out several times along the way.

Pop has a goose egg above his forehead. He hit his head on the door frame when he was going into the basement to check on Nana. His right knee is almost double in size because he fell on the concrete floor and landed hard. He also has a cut on his shoulder that came from the bottom edge of Soo's motorhome.
It’s a mirror image of Mick’s shoulder wound.

Jason has scratches, bruises, and bumps all over him. He looks like he fought a wildcat in a briar patch. He's says he turned his ankle over while sneaking down the hill behind the tree-line, but he doesn't think it's broken. He slid on his butt a little way down the hill and has scratches and cuts on his rear end that he plans to let only Marisa see.

I have a slash across my cheek from a big chunk of brick that was knocked off the corner of house by a bullet. Hisa says I need butterfly stitches. I'm lucky that it didn't hit my eye. I have little scratches and scrapes on my fingers and hands from crawling around on the ground.

We can't find Opie or Tig. We called for them almost an hour before giving up and heading inside.

Jeremy will need to have his leg stitched up, and maybe the cuts on his hands as well. Hisa will use strong quilting thread because we don't have medical sutures. She'll use a small fishing hook with the barb removed and the end sharpened to a point.

All of the goose eggs will get ice packs, and so will Pop's knee, Marisa's foot, and Jason's ankle. Everyone with a head injury will be watched carefully for signs of concussion.

We have to bring up all the alcohol and peroxide we have in the basement, along with the plastic totes of bandages, gauze, tape, and other first aid supplies.

Our pool has two or three bullet holes in it and we've lost all the water we had from about a third of the way from the bottom. Mick found two mangled bullets in the bottom of the pool. He said they were disfigured when they hit the water and fell to the bottom. I'm amazed at the way a large mass of water can stop a bullet.

There's a bullet hole through the plywood covering my living room window. The window shattered and glass is lying on the windowsill and on the ground beneath it. The plywood kept the glass from coming inside.

This is
gonna be a long day. Those of us still walking will have to be "gophers," cooks, and potty bucket emptiers. Hisa will be busy doctoring, and Soo and Mick will be busy burying Diane and standing watch over the hillside.

We plan to have a memorial at Diane's grave tomorrow and everyone will be there. We've decided to use the area where Mr. Peterson is buried as a graveyard. We'll put Jeremy, Jason, Pop, and Marisa in the bed of the truck and drive them over.

What did Mick learn from the man on the porch? He learned several things.

He learned that the gang who attacked us is not military, and always has two members scouting ahead. They're follo
wing a group of survivors. When that group stops for the night, one of the "scouts" heads back to let the gang know their location. The other scout stays behind to keep an eye on the survivor group.

The bulk of the gang then travels to the area where the survivor group is resting. The gang can travel 24 hours a day if needed. They take fuel from vehicles and other survivors along their path.

When the survivor group heads out the next morning, two scouts head out behind them and the whole process repeats.

The people in the survivor group are "a bunch of do-gooders," and they always make friends wherever they stop. This gives the gang information about where other groups are and what kind of supplies they have. They have killed
men and stolen supplies from the military and a lot of survivors.

They'd been watching us all day, through binoculars, from the mountainside behind Mr. Peterson's house. They hung back last night because they wanted to take our property and stay put for a while. That idea didn't work out for them, did it?

What's the most frightening thing he told Mick? The survivor group that the "gang" has been following is Rona and her friends!

I'm not telling Pop and Nana. Pop would be in his truck in no time at all, heading out to hunt and kill the rest of that gang. It's a hard decision, but I can't handle Pop out, getting himself killed. We need him here and alive.

11:30 PM...

The kids helped all day. God, bless 'em, 'cause I'm not sure I could have made it without 'em. I almost fell asleep on my feet several times.

Opie and Tig scratched at the kitchen door around supper time. I can't tell you where they've been, 'cause they won't 'fess up. They marched right in and took their spots by the fire like nothing had happened.

Carisa and Merry were busy all day. They were carrying food, running drinks to injured people, and picking up dirty dishes. They washed the dishes as they brought them back, and that kept the dirty dish pile to a minimum. They were "grabbing a blanket" for this one, and "bringing a book" to that one. They are amazing.

Mick and Soo buried Diane.

Mick cleaned up empty shells and cartridges and checked out Marisa's trailer, and Soo's motorhome. He scooped the remaining water from the pool and did a hundred other things. He also spent time helping Soo measure and dig a few post holes.

We had pinto beans, rice, and sliced onions today. Nana's caring for Pop and Hisa's caring for numerous patients.

Marisa's having a lot of trouble with her foot and Hisa hopes that nothing's fractured or broken. The top of the foot is covered with a huge bruise and is swollen so much that it almost looks round. That poor kid! We sent her to war carrying Multiple Sclerosis, a pistol, and a pocket knife.

We made it through the day, licking our wounds, and planning our strategies. Everyone was exhausted and in some type of pain.

Pop's knee looks terrible. Hisa has him on pain medication, elevating his knee and staying off his feet until the swelling goes down. Nana's has him in the motorhome and is alternating the icepack with a warm cloth that she heats in a pan of water on the stove top.

Mick is in bed, trying to sleep. He's had all his cuts and scrapes cleaned and bandaged. We kept ice on his goose egg for a while, but he said it
was giving him a major headache and he refuses to use it again. He says he is sore all over.

Hisa believes that Jason's ankle is badly sprained. She h
as it wrapped in an ace bandage and told him to elevate it and stay off it as much as possible.

Jeremy's leg is stitched up and it was a nerve-wracking experience for all of us. I gave him three shots of Jim Beam before Hisa started on him. He yelped, hollered, and gritted his teeth all the way through it. I don't know if the cleani
ng was worse than the stitching. I gave myself a shot of Jim Beam during the process.

Hisa didn't like giving him pain pills with
the alcohol, but did it anyway and he has two pills on board. She didn't stitch his hand. She cleaned it and put butterfly stitches on both cuts. She bandaged the hand up so much that it looks like a fingerless mitten. He's on a 14 day antibiotic regimen.

I have
butterfly stitches on my cheek and they itch. My back is killing me even though I've taken a pain pill. I couldn't care less about the other little nicks and scratches, but Hisa made me clean them anyway.

I can't remember the
last time I had a tetanus shot but I know it's been more than ten years. Hisa said "That's unacceptable." I said "Fine, give me a tetanus shot please," and she got mad. I believe she cussed in Japanese as she stomped out of the room.

Hisa
cleaned and put butterfly stitches over the cut on her own chin. There's nothing we can do about the chipped tooth, but we cleaned her scratches with alcohol pads and I enjoyed it even though she didn't. She was still having "tetanus shot rage," and I figured that alcohol pads on fresh scratches would give her something else to think about.

She says Diane died because the bullet severed her femoral artery causing her to bleed out fast. Every single one of us is heartbroken. We didn't have Diane long, but we already loved her.

Hisa has Jeremy in Diane's motorhome because there's heat there and she wants him to rest comfortably while she keeps an eye on his leg to watch for any sign of infection. Soo's there with them.

Hisa, Soo, and Merry will be moving to Diane's motorho
me because their own is "over-ventilated" with bullet holes.

I'll figure out breakfast after we get off watch duty in the morning, and we'll go from there. From now on there will be someone standing watch day and night.

Mick and Soo will head to the pool place tomorrow and see if there’s another pool we can loot. If not, they'll try to do something with the one we've got. Duct tape can do amazing things. I told Mick to keep a watch out for pools that might be in neighborhoods they travel through.

Jason and Marisa will be on watch duty while they're gone. We have plenty of lawn chairs, so they can sit and prop their feet without causing themselves more pain.

The men will begin fence building tomorrow, if any of them can move. I'll help them all I can. I'll pull out the old back brace I used to wear and see if it fits.

The first area we want to fence is the front of our property, the Stang property and Caleb's property.

We’re extremely lucky that none of those idiots made it up to the house. Some of our canned food will be moved to the tornado shelter in case we get attacked and are unable to defend our supplies.

Mick says that, if we can get enough fencing, we'll fence in Mr. Peterson's house and field across the road. The field
would make a great garden spot and we hope we can find someone who wants to live in the house and provide an extra set of eyes or two for standing watch. That'll have to wait 'til we get the fencing on our side of the road finished.

We haven't been more than six or seven miles away from home. We should still have a pretty good bit of gasoline in the tanker. We use it mostly for running the generator, and we don't run it all night.

Mick says that, when summer comes, we might have to run the generator all the time. It gets as hot as hades here, and there's no way can we rely on our food to be safe if we cut the generator off during 85 degree nights. We may not have anything but goat’s milk to refrigerate by the time summer gets here.

Mick wants to find a bigger generator so we can run more things in the house.
He would prefer finding a solar set up, but I have no clue where we'd find one. He says he knows of several homes and commercial buildings that have solar panels on the roofs, but our priority right now is the fence.

One of our does gave birth to two little
buckling’s today. They're doing fine. I thought about how much Diane would have liked to be here and meet "BBQ3" and "BBQ4."

I have no way to contact my sister and let her know she's being followed. I'm praying for her safety as well as the others who are riding with her.

I'm going to lie down beside Mick.

Jason and Soo have the first watch tonight and they will wake Mick and
me at 3:00 AM for the second watch.

Bye for Now.

Saturday, January 25

Pop says we are officially in trouble with our ammo supply. He has a little stash back at his house, but it's not even close to the amount we need to have on hand.

I’m going into town with Mick and Soo sometime today or tomorrow. We'll take the Jeep and our little enclosed goat trailer. We're going back to the place where Mick found the pool. The name of the place is "Poolin' Around." Oh, how clever (sarcasm).

We'll make a
list of any place we see that has chain-link fencing, propane, or anything else we need and can't grab right then and there. Jason and Marisa will stand watch while we're gone.

I am heading out to the porch for a cigarette before I go in the kitchen and make a gazillion biscuits and muffins.

3:30 PM...

As soon as I finished cleaning up from breakfast, Mick told me to meet him and Soo at the driveway because we were going to town. "This is a little too soon, isn't it?" I asked.

"We have to get this done as soon as we can, baby" he replied. "There's probably not much left out there after a month of this crap. If we don't get to it, someone else will." He smacked his hand down on the table and said "If we had a fence, Diane might be alive and the rest of us might be walkin'. We are in a dangerous situation, baby. We need the fence and supplies as fast as we can get 'em. I don't care if it takes all day today and every day. As long as we have gas, we're going out there and get what we need to protect ourselves."

He shuffled his feet and I could tell he was rarin' to go. "What'll they do if I'm not back to fix lunch?" I asked. He looked at Carisa, who had just come back from grabbing dirty dishes. “I don't care if they have to eat peanut butter off a spoon, and you can tell 'em that if you need to" he said. He turned and headed out the door.

I
, wrapped three muffins in plastic wrap and threw them in one of our emergency backpacks. I took three bottles of water and put them in a different backpack. I told Carisa to "babysit Pop, and tell Nana to run in here and throw something together if I'm not back in time to fix lunch." I stuck the Glock down in the back of my waistband, slung three backpacks over my shoulders, and headed after Mick. My stinkin' back was hurting.

As soon as I sat down
, Mick said "take the damn pistol outa your pants. If you fall on it, you'll break your back. You are not Laura Croft and this ain't TV." I growled at him and took the Glock out of my waistband. I stuck it in my big coat pocket and wished I’d grabbed my holster. It was too late for that 'cause we were already headed down the driveway.

There's nothing left at the pull-off. The place looks almost like no one was ever there. The only thing that remains is a hole in the ground filled with ashes. Mick looked at it and swore, then he pointed the Jeep towards town. I noticed that the little HDI girl I'd seen on our last trip to town was no l
onger jumping on her trampoline and I wondered where she went.

The road to town was empty. We saw no living creatures, HDI or otherwise. We came to the little shops on the edge of town and saw garbage strewn here and there. We saw papers and leaves floating aroun
d and landing, sitting silently until the breeze scooped them up again and sent them on their next short journey.

It looked like a ghost town until we turned off the main road and onto the road with the pool business. Then, we saw HDI's, and there were too many for me to count. I'm telling you, I almost peed my pants. Don't tell anyone I said that.

They were shambling around all the little shops at the strip mall where "Poolin' Around" is located. They were on the sidewalks, in the parking lot, and glaring at us from broken shop windows.

A couple of them
headed toward the Jeep. Pretty soon, there were a lot of them headed toward the Jeep. Their arms were outstretched like actors in some B rated horror movie. Some were fast and some were slow, but they all wanted us for a mid-morning snack.

It seemed like there was
a hundred of them coming toward us. Mick continued down the street and made a right turn onto the next street over. He parked behind a corner building and got out to look around the corner and see if they were still following us, and they were. He ran back and jumped into the driver’s seat.

A "man" missing his right arm came around the corner. He had strands of ligament, tendon, and muscle hanging out of his bloody stump. He had no pants, but he did have boxers, thank goodness. His shirt was hanging from him in shreds and half of his bottom jaw was gon
e. He kept swatting at his face and I could see little things squirming around the barred teeth of his bloody mouth. I knew they were maggots and I almost called Ralph at the top of my lungs. I had to look away.

Why are there maggots? It's too cold for maggots!

I couldn't help myself. I know my brain is a little "sick 'n twisted." Even though my knees were knocking together, my mind kept singing "Magic Man" by "Heart," but it was coming out as "he's a maggot man, momma, he's got maggot hands." I had to get that out of my head. I was disgusted with myself.

Behind him were more HDI's
and they were all missing various limbs or chunks of flesh from just about any part of the human body you can think of. They were dressed in an assortment of clothing from fancy formal gowns to skateboard attire. We were pulling away and they were still coming toward us.