Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie (32 page)

Dane stayed long enough to bury them and then
, headed back toward Texas. Before leaving Atlanta, he bought two shotguns, a rifle, a pistol, and a large amount of ammo.

The world fell completely apart
after he began driving back. He didn't have a map, so he didn't dare try to travel back roads. He's been looting food and gasoline as he goes, and he's had a rough time fighting gangs, other survivors, and HDI's for the small amounts he was able to get. Some days, he was lucky to make ten miles.

Twice, he was able to find an abandoned house and spent a few days there sleeping and eating food
that had been abandoned.

He got sick from something he ate and stayed there another three days trying to recover

He's been traveling since January 4th. He spent two weeks in a survivor camp near the Georgia/Alabama line until the group split apart because of dissension in the ranks and fighting in the camp. He decided to continue on toward Texas while looking for a good survivor group to hunker down with for winter.

He was very low on gas when he came to the exit near us, so he pulled off to try and find more. He made it into town and became trapped in his truck by a horde of HDI's.

He couldn't step outside the truck to look for gas or food, so he tried waiting it out. He said there was well over 100 HDI's roaming the streets and he was as quiet as he possibly could be to keep from being discovered. He thought he was gonna freeze to death and wouldn't have to worry about starving, but Mick found him.

.I'm hoping he decides to hunker down with us for a while. He seems like a good person
, and Elaine thinks he's easy on the eyes.

By the way, propane and heating oil are the main products his company sells. He knows all about the industry and says he ca
n help us get some of those big, round propane tanks if we can find the right equipment and truck.

Mick and Jason are heading out tomorrow morning to try and loot enough diesel fuel to fill the tank of the big trucks
at the propane company. Hisa told Mick that Dane needs to recover for at least two days before attempting anything physically demanding.

I'm happy that they found Dane!

I have breakfast duty tomorrow, so I'm off to get some rest.

Bye for now.

Tuesday, February 18

It's a balmy thirty degrees outside and this joint is jumping. I made oatmeal with dehydrated strawberries mixed in for breakfast.

Mick and Jason are heading out for diesel fuel and the rest of the gang is doing their morning chores. Mick intends to be back from his diesel run and out, working on the fence, by mid-day.

Hisa came over to
pick up breakfast for herself and Dane. She says he's much better and wants to get out of there, but she wants him to spend today recovering. She made a deal that, if he'd rest today, she'd allow him up tomorrow at lunch. She said "we see how he does walking here and if he doesn't tire much, I let him try a little work." Boy, Hisa really has control of her patients. She may be little in stature but her strong will is big, and mighty hard to break.

I don't have lunch or supper duty today. Yahoo!

I'm gonna spend some time with Pop in the greenhouse. He wants to show me the seedlings and point out which is which. I'm hoping we get a good harvest and enough to put away for winter next year. Pop and Mr. Hobbs plan to start "working the ground" for our big garden. They have Jesse saving goat poop and old hay from his daily barn chores. He's doing a great job with the animals.

The happy little chickens are still laying eggs and we're getting closer to that fried-egg breakfast. Pop told the kids that the
chicken’s names were Larry, Moe, and Curly. No one gives a hoot that they're girl chickens.

See ya later.

1:30 PM...

We have a new RAM truck and six five-gallon cans of diesel fuel.
The gas gauge in the RAM is reporting three-quarters of a tank. The only reason they brought the RAM home was because of the large amount of fuel already in the tank.

I asked Mick "W
hy didn't you fill the RAM with gas from the gas cans and then loot more?" He smacked his forehead with his hand, turned red in the face, and said "duh." I just laughed because neither he nor Jason thought of it.

Mick doesn't want to siphon any fuel out of the gas tanker truck because we might figure out a way to unlock the lids on the huge underground tanks at gas stations. We'll need to drive it to the station instead of making lots of little trips with the small gas cans.

Dane told us not to use the Interstate. He says there’s constant military movement and gangs waiting to ambush any travelers they see.

He also said there aren't many cars on the Interstate
, and getting any decent amount of gasoline was sketchy. A lot of them were abandoned simply because they were out of gas.

If he saw any cars at a business close to the on or off-ramps
, he'd pull off the Interstate to try and get gas. He'd get a gallon or two before he saw "people" or vehicles coming toward him. He'd jump in his truck and get outa there if the number of "people" was more than he was comfortable handling by himself. He thinks some of the cars were put there intentionally, to lure travelers into an ambush.

This afternoon
, Jeremy and Jesse are heading out to see if they can get more diesel fuel. They're gonna top off the RAM, pour what they can in Pop's F350, and take every empty gas can we have.. They'll drive the RAM to the propane company and siphon fuel directly from it into the hoist truck.

The remaining men plan to work on the fence while Jesse and Jeremy are gone. Mick says they are about half-way finished with the right side.

I'm thinking about all those big propane tanks sitting around at people's houses and mobile homes. I hope we can get several.

They have gauges on them and the guys will be able to tell how full they are before they attempt to get them. Mick says Dane's going to teach him how to do everything so we can do
it ourselves in case Dane isn't here next winter.

Marisa asked Dane if he knew how to hook up a propane oven in her house and he said he does and he would do it for her if she has a gas oven. She has one in the old house trailer.

Now she's got me thinking the same thing for our house. It'll be a lot cooler in the kitchen this summer if we don't have to use the cook stove.

I'm going out to work on laundry. The temperature gauge says
its thirty-seven degrees outside. It's a heat wave!

See ya later.

4:45 PM...

Jesse came back about an hour ago without Jason. They got into a battle with a horde of HDI's when they attempted to get diesel fuel from a truck in town. He doesn't know where Jason went when he, himself, decided to jump back in the S10. Marisa's freaking out and the rest of us are right there with her.

Mick, Jesse, and Soo are
trying to find Jason. Oh Lord, please let Jason be okay.

11:45 PM...

They can't find him. They came back home because Mick says it's too dark and dangerous to be out looking. There's at least a hundred HDI's roaming the streets and he figures Jason is hiding out somewhere to wait for day
light.

The kids are finally asleep on the sofa bed and Marisa's sitting at the table, slapping cards down for a pretend game of solitaire. She barely looks at them.

She looks terrified, worried, and stressed out. I doubt she'll sleep at all. I may not either. Bye for now.

Wednesday
, February 19

Mick, Jesse, and Mr. Hobbs are out looking for Jason this morning. They took their breakfast with them.

About thirty minutes after they pulled out, a little red Blazer came up the driveway. The rest of us immediately went on greetin' duty with our rifles and pistols in hand.

The blazer stopped at the top of the driveway and Jason climbed out of the passenger side. Marisa's knees buckled and she almost fell when she saw him. She ran into his arms and
began crying hysterically.

After Marisa calmed down,
Jason motioned toward the Blazer and a man and woman stepped out. Jason introduced them as Adam and Lindsey. They were dressed in layers of warm clothing and look like average college kids. Jason met them when he was grabbed by his collar and dragged into a hallway by Adam.

Adam found Jason when he went down to the street access door of their building because he'd heard gunshots. Jason was backed up against
the glass door, shooting into a crowd of HDI's.

Adam could see that Jason was alive and that the HDI's were about to gain control, so he flipped the deadlock and opened the door to pull him inside.

Adam and Lindsey are living on the third floor of an apartment building in town. There's a man and three women living with them. They told Jason he could sleep there if he wanted to, and they'd drive him back home when morning came.

He says they have a good amount of food and water stocked up and have been looting the apartments and buildings around them. They don't have heat
, but they're making do with lots of blankets and many layers of clothing. They're heating food over a small fire in one of those "coffee table with fire pit" gadgets and using wooden furniture, books, and paper for fuel.

They're using buckets for potty time because they don't have enough water to flush toilets and they want to save any water in the toilet tanks in case they need it
for drinking. They're throwing garbage and human waste out a third floor window on the opposite side of the building.

There's a lot of garbage and a lot of dead HDI bodies on the street around the building. The area
smells like rot, death, and decay.

I told them they were advertising their location with the garbage piles
, and they might want to consider bagging it and leaving it in other buildings they loot. They have no choice with the waste buckets, but they'd be better off dumping them from first floor windows so stains wouldn't be seen running down three floors on the outside of the building. They thanked me for the advice.

They didn't talk much, and didn't want to stay, so they headed back in their little red Blazer. Before they left I told them they were welcome to come here if they'd like and that we were extremely grateful to them for saving Jason and bringing him home.

We need to send someone to fetch Mick, Mr. Hobbs, and Jesse back. I think Soo and Pop are headed out to track them down.

We're all breathing a sigh of relief but we're still on edge because we know Mick, Mr. Hobbs, and Jesse are
out there among the horde.

12:30 PM...

They found Mick and the gang pretty quick. They followed the horde. They had to shoot and push through it until they saw what they were looking for. They said they were terrified having the HDI's all around them but they kept up enough speed so that they were able to outrun and push aside any HDI that might break out a window, jump into the back of the truck, or cause any serious damage. There’s goo and icky stuff all over the front of the Jeep as well as the Silverado.

Soo pulled right up beside Mick and told him Jason was home safe. Jesse started crying with relief and they all came home by taking the scenic route.

When Mick got home, Jason had to explain everything all over again. Jason and Marisa are now at their house with the kids.

Lunch is over and Soo and Mr. Hobbs are heading back out for diesel fuel.
They plan to stay on the outskirts of town and in the abandoned neighborhoods if they can find enough vehicles that use diesel.

They also plan to head to the truck stop since we remembered that there were two or three big rigs still parked at the diesel pumps there. I hope they weren't running on empty when they stopped.

This will be the last run for diesel before Mick and Dane head to the propane company to try for the hoist truck. There’s a couple other trucks there as well and they probably have fuel in their tanks that can be siphoned out if needed.

There are several big
, round propane tanks at the propane company but Dane says they're probably empty because it's common practice to set the tanks with a hoist truck and come in behind with a tanker to fill them. He says he might come back with a surprise if he gets his wish.

I think Elaine is smitten with Dane. She always puts extra food on his plate and says he needs more because he is bigger and needs to gain his weight back.

I think he might be a little smitten as well. I noticed him watching her walk away after she brought lunch to the table. He was checkin' her out. I wanted to tease him, but I kept my mouth shut.

10:30 PM...

We're all exhausted. I think part of it is coming down from the huge adrenaline rush we had while Jason was missing.

Soo and Mr. Hobbs came back with every gas can full of diesel fuel and Dane says he expects there to be at least a little
fuel already in the hoist truck. They got every single drop at the high school bus barn and never made it to the truck stop.