Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie (27 page)
Read Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie Online
Authors: R Kralik
Marisa is still hobbling a little, but her foot has faded from black to yellow/green and she can stay on it long enough to chase children around and help Nana in the kitchen.
Pop says his knee is a lot better. It still gives him trouble every now and then but it's nothing like it was.
I'm pretty sure a friendship is forming between Jesse and Carisa. I hope that's all it is. It better be all it is.
I'm the only one, other than Va
lerie, who's still on bed rest.
Sometimes, I wonder when people will get tired of me and either put me out to pasture, or walk away from me forever.
Back pain is miserable. After your first costly doctor visit, MRI, and a gazillion x-rays, you get a referral to a pain doctor who gives you medication that isn't good for the rest of your body and makes you take a urine test every three months to make sure you're taking your medicine and not selling it. Buddy, if I sold my medicine, I would probably be the next jumper from the highest building I could find.
I have severe Scoliosis. My spine is curved, and there's no way to "uncurve" it. Add that to two bulging discs, one herniated disc pressing on my spinal cord, a large number of arthritic spurs all over my spine, and disc degenerative disease with bone on bone contact between the last two
vertebras... You get the picture. Go ahead, try it.
Feeling worthless and in constant pain can cause depression, and I have it, and I take medication for it. So, I guess I'm a mental case too. Yay for me.
I'm on every orthopedic surgeon’s wish list. They wanted to do multiple surgeries with a low probability of a successful outcome. I said "No cutting, end of discussion."
Valerie is still in Clini
c Diane under Hisa's care. She said a few words in response to Hisa's questions, but not enough to tell us how she got taken prisoner and tied to a barn post.
She's eating and drinking, and her bowel problems have stopped. Hisa had to go through the medication totes and find something to treat her for worms. She also has her on an antibiotic regimen until she's sure that the bowel problem is over and the sores on her scalp are no longer infected. The sores
were caused by Valerie, scratching her head because of lice. Hisa got rid of those critters real fast.
Mr. Hobbs, Elaine, and Jesse are living in Mr. Peterson's house. It makes me nervous that they're over there
by themselves. Mr. Hobbs said "It's gotta be safer than stayin' at the Lowe's, and we got our guns!" He's right, but I told Mick to keep a close eye on the place because they are the sweetest people you'll ever meet and they'll be a huge asset to our little community here at "Kapper Hill Compound." Yep, that's the name that everyone is calling the place now.
Both Jesse and Mr. Hobbs have some sort of .30-06 rifle, and some variety
of pistol. Elaine has a pistol and her husband’s hunting rifle. I have no idea what brand they have and I can't keep up with what each and every one of us is carrying anymore, so I'll just say they have their own guns and a little ammo to go with them.
The Hobbs crew spend most of the daylight hours her
e. Elaine helps with every meal and Jesse takes care of the animals. Mr. Hobbs spends a lot of time helping Mick with the fence, filtering water, and various other projects.
Anyway, here's their story.
Mr. Hobbs is an average looking man of average height and average skin color. He has quite a bit of gray in his formerly brown hair. He
’s tough as nails and knows a lot about hunting, trapping, and fishing. He was a game warden for a national park near his Tennessee hometown. He says he’s been trying to catch, or trap, a new wife for the past five years, but he hasn’t had luck finding a “keeper” yet, ha
Elaine is a pretty b
londe. She is a total housewife and knows a lot about caring for a home and “making do”. She’s never worked outside the home and was happy to make a career of raising her son and caring for her husband. She’s a “happy homemaker,” and I like that about her. She’s soft spoken and polite. Elaine shines in the kitchen. She’s already taught Nana several tricks for stretching food.
Jesse has a devilish grin. There
’s still a little immaturity in his personality but he’s eager to please and will do anything we ask of him. He has a mop of curly brown hair and green eyes to go along with it. He runs everywhere he goes, even up the hill. He’s cute as a button and I suspect he’s already over six feet tall. Elaine says he was a “B’s and C’s” student, but she thinks he could have been a straight a student if he had put some work into it.
Mr. Hobbs is fifty-four. Elaine is his daughter and she
’s thirty-seven, and her son, Jesse, is sixteen. They brought what was left of Neil with them and buried him in the graveyard close to Mr. Peterson and Diane.
The Hobbs family is originally from Lewisburg, Tennessee. They were
“getting’ the hell outa dodge” and planned to hunker down on his brother’s small farm near Pensacola, Florida. They had only the Silverado and the tiny camper to carry whatever they could fit inside. They brought along $2,000 cash and planned to stop somewhere along the way and get a “bunch a food and ammo.”
They
’d been driving for a couple of hours and needed to take a bathroom break and stretch their legs, so they pulled off the Interstate.
When they stopped at a fast food place, all hell was breaking loose. The road was blocked with car accidents and traffic jams at almost every turn. A military truck pulling a cargo trailer full of HDI
’s had gone off the road and into a utility pole. A Trailblazer had slammed into the side of the cargo trailer, and its occupants were being pulled from the vehicle through the busted windshield by HDI’s.
HDI
’s were pouring out of the cargo trailer’s bent and broken door. They were all over the road, grabbing at passengers in vehicles, howling, and banging on car hoods, roofs, and trunks
Mr. Hobbs abandoned the bathroom idea pretty darn fast. He started driving down back roads, trying to find a way back to the Interstate. They drove in and out of traffic and tried to stay with traffic that was actually moving.
They ended up in the “boonies” without a map and couldn’t find their way back. They drove until they came to the outskirts of our little town.
As they approached town, they saw HDI
’s roaming all over the streets, attacking living human beings. They made a couple of turns and ended up on the street in front of Lowe’s. People were breaking windows and hauling out all sorts of merchandise as Mr. Hobbs, Neil, Elaine, and Jesse, looked on. They didn’t see any HDI’s in the area, so they pulled into the Lowe’s parking lot and decided to wait it out.
They slept in the Silverado that night, afraid to get out of the truck for fear of being shot, or worse. They decided they
’d pull their truck and camper around to the back of the building and try to come up with some kind of plan to get them headed back to the Interstate. The area had become quiet. It seemed that all the Lowe’s customers got what they wanted and were long gone.
They went inside the little camper to discuss their options and get something to drink. As they were talking, a loud banging sound
came from the direction of the truck.
Mr. Hobbs grabbed his .30-06 and went to take a look out the camper door. He cracked the door open and saw a teenaged HDI girl, banging her rotten hands on the
driver’s side window. He stuck the barrel of his rifle out the camper door and shot her in the side of the head. She fell to the ground and didn’t get back up. Within five seconds, Mr. Hobbs felt the camper door slam into his shoulder. He quickly pulled it closed and locked it.
Elaine looked out the window and said there was a male HDI launching himself at the camper door
, and she could see four more HDI’s roaming around the area near the truck and camper.
Neil, Jesse, and Mr. Hobbs made a decision. They bolted from the door of the camper and began taking out HDI
’s one at a time. There were only five HDI’s in total, and the Hobbs/Halston crew made quick work of them.
They were low on gas and had no idea where to find more. The radio was announcing chaos, rioting, and murder in every city of the United States, so they decided to stay put. They
’d retreat into the Lowe’s building if they needed to. They hoped the military, or police, would come along and get them out of there.
They stood watch in shifts. The daytime shift sat on top of the camper and kept watch, and the night time shift sat in the Silverado and kept watch. They had to shoot several HDI
’s each week, but no mobs appeared. Every time they shot an HDI, one or two more HDI’s would show up within an hour or so. They figured out that the gunshots were attracting any HDI that was close enough to hear them. They piled the HDI bodies in an empty lot at the side of the building 50 yards away.
Food became scarce and they were cold because they were out of propane to keep the heat running. They
’d go one or two days at a time without food, and then Neil and Jesse would have no choice but to go out and try to find something. They said they were lucky to get anything at all because most of the houses and shops had already been looted.
They have
been drinking water out of the toilet tanks inside Lowe’s, and they caught rain water in a barrel they got from the warehouse area. Neil used one of those square, fabric gazebos from the garden center. He inverted the top and put a hole in the center so the rain and dew would run down into the barrel underneath the hole. Clever man!
They considered leaving Lowe
’s several times, but had no idea if they could find fuel or food before their tank ran completely dry. They were afraid they’d be stuck in a situation worse than the one they were already experiencing. So, they stayed there.
The HDI mob was there five or six minutes before Mr. Hobbs heard our vehicles coming around the building. He hoped we were the
Calvary, and in a way, I guess we were.
So, that's the Hobbs story. As I said before, we are happy to have them with us.
I'm going out to the living room to have supper with everyone else. Hopefully
, they won't laugh at me and my metal walker.
Bye for now.
Sunday, February 2
9:00 AM...
Jesse came inside this morning and told Mick that we need to get goat feed. He says we have enough for two or three more weeks. He knows a place where we might find some, but its forty-five miles away and there's no guarantee the place hasn't already been looted.
There's a milling company near Lake Slatersville. Jesse has spent a lot of time at a two-we
ek-long summer camp on the lake and has paddled past the place many times.
The milling company makes food for several varieties of livestock, so we could possibly get chicken feed there as well. They also make dog food and cat food.
We'd have to take a lot of little country roads to get there because the place isn't even close to an interstate, but we may not have a choice.
Mick thinks that, since the place is well off the beaten path and in an industrial warehouse area, t
here's a pretty good chance it has gone undisturbed. It might have been looted only for the corn, grains, and the cattle and horse feeds. There's not a lot of goat farms around with owners that know, or care, enough to give their goats pellet feed to improve milk and meat production.
We want to try the feed store first. If there's nothing there, we'll have to cross our fingers and head to the milling company.
Mick's planning the trip for next Friday because he wants to get more of the fencing up before we go.
I told him that we need to start bringing in hay as soon as we can. I want to go barn lootin'. We'll need to store enough hay to last through next winter, at least, because there will be no farmers cutting hay in the fields this coming summer and fall.
I'm headed out to see what's going on. I might sit on the big tree stump and help Marisa stir the laundry. The weather is quite cold, so I'll need my scarf and gloves.
I hope the metal walker can get me to the
sittin’ stump.
1:00 PM...
Oh Yeah! Mick came inside a few minutes ago and yelled "It's venison burgers for supper, baby! Jason got a deer!"
We'll have venison burgers for supper tomorrow, and we'll pressure can the rest to add to our pantry. Elaine says she knows how to make homemade burger buns. Jason was so excited, I thought he was gonna sprout wings. We'll can the meat tomorrow morning. We need to get the manual meat grinder out of the basement and make sure it's clean.
I can't believe he got a deer in the middle of the day. He says he was sitting on
the branch of a big oak tree in the middle of the woods. It was cool, shady, and quiet. About an hour after he got comfortable, he saw movement and it was something big. He got his hopes up and waited.
The eight-pointer was schmoozing around, eating off the ground, when he schmoozed right over into Jason's line of sight. He fell about fifteen feet past the spot where Jason shot him.