Percy's Mission (30 page)

“Dr. Jock Bluhm is,” Melissa called to him from the dining room. “This Dr. Bluhm is right here. I should have kept my maiden name for my work,” she groused.
“I’m going to see how he’s doing,” Percy said, ignoring the pregnant woman’s comments. “Barbie didn’t look too good this morning. We might have another inpatient for a while. Until that baby comes, too.”
“I’d better go check on her,” Melissa said. Andy stood and helped her get up from the chair.
“You be careful,” Mattie admonished, wrapped up in her favorite blanket. Her voice was muffled from the congestion of the cold. “You’re not in the best of shape yourself. Be sure to use the tunnel and don’t go outside.”
“Yes, Mother.” Melissa quickly apologized for her sharp remark. “I’m sorry Mattie. It’s not your fault. I just feel rotten. The tyke is kicking me something fierce.”
“It’s all right, sweetie,” Mattie got out before she started coughing.
“Maybe you should go lie down, Mrs. Simpson,” Andy said. “Susie will kill me if I let anything bad happen to you.”
“Thank you, Andy. I think. And I think I will.” Mattie staggered off to her room.
“I think I’ll lie down, too,” Andy said. “My leg is hurting.” He went off to the bedroom he and Susie shared.
“We’ll call you when lunch is ready. Andy paused, lifted a hand from the crutches to wave, and then hobbled on down the hallway.
“I guess it’s just us for a while, ladies,” Sara said.
Everyone seemed to be in a better mood by the time lunchtime rolled around an hour later.
“Makes me thankful I’m doing as well as I am,” Melissa was saying as she, Jock, and Percy re-entered the kitchen to the smells of grilling hamburgers. The sisters were setting out plates and flatware, as Sara monitored the burgers.
“She’s going to be fine,” Jock said. “She’s just having a lot of discomfort. It’ll be over soon. The baby has dropped.” Jock looked over at Percy. “Do you think Amanda would come out for a few days to help? You can up her pay a little. Take it out of my ration. I’d like an experienced nurse to help with the delivery. She’s been doing fine in town since she showed up.”
Amanda Gardner had walked into town one day before the weather had become so bad. She was headed to Arkansas from Wisconsin. She’d been carrying a huge backpack, pushing a mountain bike piled high with equipment, with a pipe strapped to the handlebars to steer it.
There was a two-wheeled deer drag loaded with additional equipment and supplies attached to the bike as a trailer. An inverted adult size snow sled topped the supplies. The sled had been converted to a pulka with plastic pipe and rope and could be used to carry the deer drag and bike in snowy conditions.
There were also a pair of cross-country skis, a pair of snowshoes, and a pair of alpine poles strapped to the equipment to allow winter travel.
When she arrived her intentions had been to stop for a day to rest. She agreed to stay and help with the medical duties for a share of food. She’d been invaluable to Jock, with Melissa able to do limited duty due to her pregnancy. When the thaw came in the spring, she’d head south again, with a fresh stock of jerky and dried fruits and vegetables. She was trading some labor for additional food stocks for her trip.
“I’m sure she will come out for that. And I’ll absorb the additional cost. She wants as much food for her trip as possible.” Percy was adamant about taking care of any additional barter Amanda might want.
As it turned out, Amanda was happy to do it. And it worked out well. Shortly after Barbie safely delivered her seven pound eleven ounce baby boy, Melissa went into labor. Melissa bore an eight pound thirteen ounce baby girl. Both babies were healthy. The happy news was transmitted to those in town.
The births seemed to be a turning point in the weather. It snowed more, but they were light snows, both in intensity and color. For the moment at least, the volcanoes to their west were behaving. There was still over two feet of snow when March rolled around, but it rapidly melted under the often seen sun.
The early rains began not long after the snows had melted away. Since they’d been able to decontaminate the fields the previous fall after stripping the fields for fuel production, Percy began turning the ground as soon as the horses and oxen could get into the fields safely.
Besides the moisture from the accumulation of snow that winter, the early rains, cold as they were, added another significant amount of moisture to the worked ground. The irrigation ponds and canals were also full. Percy was sure that the moisture and significant amounts of volcanic ash would result in bountiful crops. He expected a shorter than normal growing season, so pushed to get things planted as soon as it looked like the danger of a hard frost was over.
The federal government was doing its best to provide what help it could, and getting weather reports, both short range and long-range forecasts were a priority they had been able to do.
When the roads were relatively safe to travel again, Sara began the spring census of the area. Percy had her take the Chevy pickup with the shell and plenty of emergency supplies. The first few weeks of her work there was still danger of a sudden blizzard. By the end of March, seasonal weather prevailed.
Most of the people that had worked their rotation had been trained in what they would do come spring if they worked at the estate. The preparation and then planting went well. Percy had always saved seed to plant and had more than enough from the prior years to plant everything he wanted, despite last fall’s failed crops. There were a few other farms equipped to do horse farming and the small amount of seed left in the farm supply store was divided among them.
For the first time in his life, Percy deviated from the rotation plan for the fields and garden. He knew the ground was in good enough shape to plant every available acre to get a good harvest. The plan was to go back to the rotation the next year.
Since the weakest of the stock had been used for food during the winter, the stock that was left was in prime shape. Percy had only been using a fifth of the space in the animal barn before the war. The additional animals had filled it, though not to the point of overcrowding any of the animals.
All the animals seemed grateful to get outside the first time they were allowed to do so. They’d all been exercised regularly in the barn, but the freedom of the first pasture trip seemed to bring out the friskiness in all of them, including the chickens. The dogs had opportunities to go outside during the least severe of the weather, so weren’t quite as excited as the other animals were.
Nature had taken its course, as expected, and all of the female animals began giving birth. Susie and Percy had a good handle on it, but Doc helped, as did the Doctors Bluhm. They only lost three piglets and one calf. Baring another disaster, there would be meat for the year.
With the crops in and being cared for by hand and by animal power, other projects began to come to the fore in people’s minds.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Calvin and Nan were able to get to town a few more times before winter hit full force. They helped all they could; wherever they could, helping people prepare for winter. There wasn’t that much they could do. They hauled as much wood as they could get cut, letting the town council allocate it. They were getting a small fuel allocation from the state for what they were helping with, allowing them to conserve their own fuel.
When October rolled around they made what would be their last trip until spring. It saw the end of the gang that had attacked them. They’d been caught in a house in town, the owner of which had been providing the information and shelter. When she traded a jar of homemade preserves to Sheila McGuire for a half pint of liquor, Sheila recognized the label on the jar. It had come from one of the families that had been massacred by the gang. The woman showed it to the Chief.
Calvin was with the group that surrounded the house. They never determined if the gang had heard about the no mercy dictate that had come down, but they surrendered without a shot. They were hanged the next day, including the woman, during another snowstorm.
Calvin and Nan didn’t go outside much that winter. Only to take the occasional look around and to clean the solar panels of snow. The snow was fourteen feet deep at its worst. They could not have gone anywhere even if they’d wanted.
They checked with Bill from time to time on the radio he’d left them. Things were not going well in town, and from what little information Bill was getting, things weren’t much better in the outlying areas like where the Stubblefield’s were.
But Calvin and Nan did just fine. They barely touched their stock of LTS food, using mostly the home canned goods they’d put up the previous fall.
The snow was down to only five feet deep when they decided to try to make it to town. It took them a week of long days of work with the Unimog to get there. They worked three more days in town under Bill’s direction, clearing the most important travel lanes.
Again Calvin and Nan helped in many ways, as spring came in with a whimper. The extreme winter had taken a heavy toll in life. Less than twenty percent of those that had survived the war survived the winter. The town itself lost proportionately more than the outlying areas. Several of the farms, used to being on their own for long periods during normal winters had survived intact. Others had not.
Bodies were buried, including those that had been hanged the previous fall. They had been there the entire winter, it being beyond the capability of the town residents to dig their way to them, much less bury the bodies. The cold weather had preserved them.
One farm family survived the winter by moving an antique wood kitchen stove into their barn and living there with the animals for mutual warmth and support.
It was never said aloud, but there were suspicions of cannibalism at one farm. But everyone there died, anyway, so nothing was done about it. Nothing could be done.
The survivors pulled together to make it. Very little food and not much more fuel came to the town through the auspices of the state and FEMA. They got a little, accepted gratefully. Most of their supplies were scavenged, through a FEMA sanctioned plan, from those that had not made it through the winter.
Not all had starved to death. Many deaths came early in the winter when a storm plummeted temperatures to thirty and forty degrees below zero for days on end. Most of the deaths were caused by freezing, or asphyxiation when wood was burned in snow covered houses with not enough ventilation.
Once travel could be accomplished, most of the rest of the population of the town and countryside opted to go to relocation centers in the southern states. A hardy few, farmers mostly, chose to stay.
Calvin and Nan stayed busy berming up barns and houses for the next winter, and cutting wood for hire. They started the garden and continued to grow vegetables in the greenhouse. They talked about going south, but with some of the farmers sure they could endure the winters; there would be food for barter, trade, and sale. They decided to stay.
FEMA managed to keep a trickle of fuel coming in, and Calvin was able to refill his tanks before the end of fall, doping it with PRI-G and PRI-D to keep it stable, as he had the year before. They were still well stocked with propane.
It was going to be some difficult years, but with the hardy people that chose to stay behind and continue with their lives, and Calvin and Nan with their resources they were willing to use for the benefit of the community, in return for supplies, there would continue to be a human presence in the Black Hills. Even the flora and fauna began to make a comeback the following years.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Buddy was able to barter and trade for quite a few things the next couple of months as they prepared for the winter. He also bought a few things with silver and gold, but he was holding what he had left pretty closely. Though he was pretty sure it was some scavengers, he traded for almost three hundred gallons of gasoline over that time. It kept the truck running back and forth for their weekly trips, plus increased his supply slightly.
FEMA and the National Guard began allowing those with businesses to open them for a limited time each day. Buddy was able to get new ignition parts for the plumbing van. It took several trips to move it and all the supplies he had at the house to the shelter. He also moved the storage building and re-erected it beside the shelter.
Much of what he acquired he was able to trade his expertise as a plumber, and some of his supplies. He was one of six that plumbed water and sewer for the camp as it grew. The tradesmen had plenty of unskilled help to get the work done. Everyone that wanted to stay at the camp and receive assistance had to contribute some of their time.
Buddy knew the winter, no matter how bad it got in the city, would be worse, but he and Charlene both preferred to be where they were, rather than in the camp. He wasn’t sure how well they would make out if the winter got as bad as the forecasts said it would.
And the Captain had been correct, the die-off continued, though more people were coming out of the hills, to the camp, as their supplies ran out. Despite the fact that the total population of the region was falling, the camp population was growing.
Those facts made some things more difficult. Others less so. One of the farmers that was ill and going to stay in camp made Buddy a good deal on two roosters, a dozen layers, and three brood hens. It took Buddy and Charlene several days to haul enough dirt into the shelter to make a spot for the chickens for the winter. The farmer had thrown in the old pen and coop. It was set up near the garden spot they prepared for the next spring.
Knowing what was needed, Buddy took the opportunities during the decent weather to make arrangements with several other farmers to help out on their farms in exchange for meat, vegetables, and other staples. None would give him anything in advance, and he couldn’t really blame them for that.
But as the severity of the coming weather became obvious, Buddy, since he’d already made the contacts, was first in line to stock up on butchered meat as farmers culled the animals they had left to herds they could take care of during the winter.
Things like freezers were cheap. Buddy picked up two twenty-one foot chest type freezers for next to nothing and installed them in the shelter. He filled both of them completely full with meat. Hunting laws had been relaxed, or more truthfully abandoned. Game had already begun to disappear during the immediate aftermath of the war, due to the radiation, but also to hunters taking anything and everything they could to survive.
But there was still a little left, and hunters were out in force. Buddy bought as much fish, fowl, and game as he could to finish filling the freezers. He hunted some himself, on his property and added to the take.
That was when he ran into the only trouble they had in the aftermath. Buddy had Charlene with him, teaching her to hunt. They were looking for anything they could get so Buddy had the Savage 99, and Charlene was carrying the Stoeger Coach Gun. They were at the edge of the property nearest the road when they saw three men, who also appeared to be hunting.
Buddy had grown a bit careless since things had been going so well. He hailed the others, intending to see how their hunt was going. Their response was to fire at Buddy and Charlene. Fortunately all three missed, and Buddy and Charlene dropped below the slight rise they’d been coming up. It flashed across Buddy’s mind that this needed to be taken care of right now. They couldn’t allow any rogue hunters that were willing to shoot on sight to have access to the property.
“Charlene,” Buddy whispered, guiding her to a rock outcropping. “Hide here, with the shotgun out. Give it a couple of hours. If I don’t come back, make your way to the shelter, being really careful. Anyone comes up and it’s not me, shoot first and ask questions later. I’ll make sure you know it is me. If I call you anything but Char, you know they caught me and they think they are making me show them where you are. Come out shooting. I’ll go down to give you a clear field of fire.”
“Buddy, I’m scared!” Charlene whispered back.
“I know. So am I. But we have to take care of this now. We can’t have them at our backs. They’ll eventually find the shelter and kill us. You know that time I won’t talk about much?”
Charlene nodded.
“What I learned then applies to this situation. Just stay quiet and keep a good watch. I’ll see you in a little while. I love you.” Buddy leaned forward and kiss her deeply, and then faded away into the forest.
Charlene set out several 12-gauge shells, and loosened the Glock 21 in its holster. She was as ready as she could be. She jumped once several minutes later when she thought she heard a shot. But she couldn’t be sure.
She was gathering up the shells, in preparation to head back to the shelter, as Buddy’s time limit of two hours was almost up, when she heard Buddy’s strong voice. “Char,” he said, “It’s me. Everything is okay.”
She lunged into his arms in the fading light. He held her for a few moments, and then said, “We need to get back to the shelter. One of them tagged me before I got him.”
With a gasp, Charlene stepped back and looked at Buddy in alarm. Then she saw the blood on his pants. “It’s not serious,” he said quickly. “But it hurts like the dickens and it’s starting to get dark.”
Despite not needing it, Buddy finally accepted Charlene’s shoulder as support as they walked back to the shelter in the fading light. She cleaned and dressed the wound at the shelter, without another word, and then just held Buddy silently, until he fell asleep.
The next morning there was a foot of snow on the ground, and it was coming down heavily. Buddy got dressed, grunting and groaning a bit, over Charlene’s objections. “I have to, Honey. It won’t take too long, but those three had some things we can use.”
“Well, I’m coming with you!” she insisted.
“Are you sure you want to? It’s not a pretty sight.”
Charlene gulped slightly, but she nodded. “I insist.”
Buddy suggested they forego breakfast, and Charlene was glad he had. Stripping the equipment and then the clothing from the first man made her stomach churn. The second and third time weren’t as bad. Buddy had made clean headshots, so there wasn’t much gore. Just the fact they were handling dead bodies.
Buddy had insisted they wear their Tyvek suits, with rubber boots, gloves, and respirators. There was some type of bug going around and he didn’t want to chance that the men might have it.
It was an amazed looked on Charlene’s face when Buddy led her to the county road and she saw the truck there. They threw the gear in the back of the pickup truck, on top of three deer carcasses and half a dozen turkeys.
The truck was a small Toyota four-wheel-drive pickup that had seen better days, appearance wise. But someone had loved the truck at one time, Buddy pointed out, opening the hood. The engine was immaculate and it started right up.
Buddy was hurting by the time he finished dressing out the game. There wasn’t room in the freezer for it so he hung it in the storage shed. It would be plenty cool enough now for it to keep until they used up some of it and made room in the freezer for the rest.
They didn’t get off the property until the following spring. When they got to the city they found a virtual ghost town. Whatever had been going around the previous fall had been deadly. FEMA and the Guard had pulled out when only a few survived. What supplies were left were adequate for the few people that chose to stay behind.
They only knew that because the one person they found in the camp had kept a journal. It was still in his frozen hand when Buddy and Charlene found him. They loaded up the remaining supplies over the next three days and took them to the shelter. They used it to trade with those few on the surrounding farms that had survived.
Buddy fulfilled his promise to help on the farms that had people that made it through the winter and received enough supplies, in addition to their own garden, to make it for at least two years.
By that time the area began to recover. FEMA moved back in and began to help those that were left. Buddy and Charlene needed little actual help, but welcomed the fact that fuel and supplies were again available on a limited basis. Life would be hard for a while, but they would make it.