Against the Grain (14 page)

Chapter 14

“Hey do you think I’ll need…”

“Should I be…”
 

“Do you think we’ll have a chance to…”
 

The endless barrage of questions from everyone had made me abandon my “teach a man to fish” approach that I had been using, and I was now giving them straight and quick answers. Unfortunately, most didn’t see my exasperation and they all thought they’d try to ask even more questions since I was evidently in such a helpful mood.

I swore that if anyone started reading road signs and billboards out loud as we drove by them, it would drive me over the edge. By the time everyone was ready to leave, I was ready to be done and home with this little adventure very far behind me.  

It was the morning we had picked to leave and by now I was sitting removed a few feet back from the rest of the assembled group. I was not so patiently waiting for everyone to get their good-byes over with, after all their gear was finally stowed. Everyone had kind of quieted down when my driver Cary looked over at me expectantly.

“Do you want to say anything before we go?”  

Oh for the love of…
 

I got up and slowly looked around at the group, making eye contact with everyone except the few who were studying the dirt at their feet. The nerves and apprehension on some people were plain to see. There wasn’t much fear, but not much confidence either.
 

“So how should I play this one?”
 I thought to myself.

I could read a crowd of strangers well enough, and these people were not exactly strangers to me. I could see they wanted reassurance. The problem was that we were leaving in the next few minutes with only what we would be taking with us. They weren’t going to get any more training or dry runs, so mindset was everything at this point. I could have tried to set their mood and inspire self confidence, but they weren’t going to get any more ready than they would be once we got a few miles down the road. I knew everyone would start to feel better once we got moving and we all just settled into our tasks. So in the end, the dark side of my humor w
on over and I simply replied, “yeah… don’t fuck up.”

Breanne rolled her eyes and sighed loudly as she pulled herself into her seat in the Dodge, and Nick was still smiling broadly and laughing to himself as the three trucks pulled out through the front gate.

Our route would take us down the back roads to avoid all major highways and housing areas for as long as we could help it. I was banking on finding no other barricaded roads like we had done to our own, and while it was a bit of a gamble, it would be worth it to not drive into and through even our own familiar small town where we would attract attention. Although these days no matter where you were seen, one truck, let alone three traveling together, was not a common sight.  

A few miles past the barricade and two turns later, I finally settled down and got back into the teaching phase. In my constant effort to keep the others involved, I started going over things with the crew in my lead car.
 

“Call the range on that grain silo,” I asked of
Cary.

“I don’t know…” s
he replied from the driver’s seat after a moment.  

“Think of it in terms of football fields,” I persuaded.

“I played soccer.”

“…
Never mind.”  

I swore I could hear Derek laughing from his main gunner perch up above us.

It was late summer and the air was warm. Although they were now cracked and rough, we were still on paved roads for another thirty more miles. After that, our planned route would take us onto dirt roads for the middle portion of the trip. I could already imagine what the dust cloud we would be kicking up would look like.  

“Hey
Cary,” I said looking to my left, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure, what’s up?”
 

“This really isn’t a criticism because I’d be doing the exact same thing, but I like psychological stuff like this,” I started in a long explanation before getting to the point. “When do you think was the last time that there was traffic going both ways on this road?”

“It had to have been way over a year ago,” she said after thinking about it for a second.

“And probably even longer since a sheriff or a cop has been out here writing tickets, wouldn’t you think?”
 

“Yeah I guess so,” she maybe started to guess at where I was going with this.

“So why do we still drive in the lane on the right side of the road? Why not on the left, or in the center?”

“Habit I guess,” she shrugged.

“Yeah, I guess so.”  

And maybe it was just habit. But a part of me started to wonder if it was some deep seated conditioning to still follow the rules of a world that no longer existed. Or maybe it was even an attempt to pretend there were still rules. It was all a funny notion as we drove with my AK sticking out the passenger window and Derek manning the 308 Saiga behind us.

Derek and I had easily come to the same conclusion about what gun to have where. He was plenty familiar with each weapon, or at least familiar enough with general weapon handling, for me to give him the big gun after I removed the scope. Having a scope on the Saiga would not do him any good in a main gunner role. It just made more sense for him to have the larger gun while I ran my ’74 from the passenger seat.  

The miles began to tick by and I started getting more comfortable, thinking we may just luck out and not run into any real problems, but deep down, I knew that was just plain stupid and dangerous thinking. I had told everyone else as much before we left.

“Do not get comfortable.”

It didn’t take but another five minutes before my fears were realized.

“Look at that!” Cary exclaimed and pointed at the charred remains of a farm house and barn that were just coming into view.

“Oh man,” I knew exactly what it was I was looking at. I knew all about this house, and not just because of the map in my lap.

“You know whose place that is don’t you?” I asked her.

“No, whose was it?”
 

“Kate and Reid
Marshall. This was their parent’s farm. Kate would have been a year older than you I think, and I graduated with Reid. They played about every sport there was in school. I think I heard that she joined the Air Force and had some kids. They were half the reason I wanted to come out this way, to see how the family was doing.”  

I cut myself off, realizing I was close to rambling, which would undoubtedly be unnerving for her to hear.

“Is that… Oh my god…” she trailed off quietly.

As we drove past the short driveway that let to the old farm house, the charred and otherwise decaying bodies were all too easy to see. In the front yard, four corpses, two of them much too small, littered the ground. Maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me but I thought I could just make out a withered arm stretched out, reaching toward the smaller of the long dead bodies. In the fenced cow pasture off to the side of the house, a coyote pup was vying with two crows over the remains of another body that had most likely been shot down while trying to escape.

“Goddamnit,” I swore sadly. “That was a good family.”  

“One-One, this is Two-One,” Breanne radioed on the CB using our predetermined “call signs.”

“Go.”  

“Isn’t this the
Marshall’s place, do you see the…” her finger slipped off the button as she realized what it was that she was looking at. The rear truck she was in was just now passing by the gruesome scene that we had already driven by.

“Don’t focus on it, deal with it later,” I said into the radio for no one and everyone to hear.

The specifics of “deal with it later” being a physical or a mental act were painfully unclear, so I simply put down the radio and continued to scan the map and the country side, waiting for more miles to tick by.

I began to become lost in my own thoughts despite knowing better. Thoughts of if I should have come out here sooner, or if maybe I could have helped them out like I had with the Harris family, began to invade my mind. One family was no less deserving than the other. Why them? Why any of this?
 

The CB radio speaker crackled to life, startling me before I became completely useless.

“Lead this is rear. I have one dirt bike with two riders; they just turned onto the road behind us,” Jake called from the back of the Dodge.

“Copy. Rate of closure and can you see any weapons?” I asked quickly snapping back to the here and now.

“Uh, it looks like the dude on the rear has one slung. But I can hear ‘em, they’re wide open trying to catch us.”

“Copy that. Turn ‘em back if you can, otherwise protect the convoy Rear, over.”

We were back full on in the game again and it was time to see if I had made the right choice by picking Jake to be our proactive protection for the rear of this little party.

A few long moments after the last radio transmission, even over the road noise, we could hear the muted “WHUMP” of the big semiautomatic shotgun fire a single round.

Not long after the first, a quick string of rapid shotgun blasts could be plainly heard by all of us.

I counted as ten long seconds passed before the radio crackled again.

“They’re down,” followed by a slight, hesitant pause, then finally, “over.”

“Copy Rear. Good work,” I responded unapologetically.
 

“Should we check em out?” Derek bent down and shouted in my ear to be heard over the wind and road noise.

“No. If they weren’t alone then I don’t want to tangle with whoever is out here with them. I’ll check it out on the way back,” I added. I wasn’t actually planning on coming back by the same road and sure as hell not now. I’d have to check over the map and see if there was a side route to take. If so, maybe we could send a single truck back this way on the return trip.

Later that night I found out Jake had taken a few seconds to reload his gun with a single round of bird shot, followed by the double ought buck shot in his magazine. It was forward thinking, which I was glad to finally see, and I understood him wanting to give someone a chance and not just going for a kill shot right away, but it was a dangerous move. He forgot about the gas adjustment you needed to make to run the S12 off the different loads, and if he had have fumbled the mag, or any other number of other issues that could have come up, well it could have been a real mess. Thankfully the gas system on the S12 is a forgiving one and everything functioned just fine. But if that second round hadn’t have been loaded up, he, and thusly we, would have been
SOL. Stuff like that is why I had wanted two shooters in the rear.

Jake told me how he had fired off the bird shot down in front of the dirt bike but they kept on coming. He said as soon as he saw the rear guy shifting the gun around from his back, he emptied the magazine of lethal buckshot into them.
 

What two people on one bike thought they were going to do to take over an obviously armed three truck convoy, I couldn’t even begin to guess at. Maybe that’s what made me nervous about the whole thing.

With the emotional roller coaster of boredom, sadness, and adrenaline winding down and leveling out, we had finally made the turn that took us from the paved back roads that skirted all the developed areas, onto the less maintained dirt roads that wound out to the old highway. I had wanted to divert onto those dirt roads for as long as we could before again turning to get to Derek’s family homestead.  

Nearly two hours later, we were now nearing the end of our travels on those dirt roads and there was still one spot left that I was nervous about. It was the small, unavoidable town of
Wilcox. The place was only made up of a little corner store, one gas station and a few houses, but it was the intersection of five different cross roads, the main one leading to the Interstate highway system, and another to the older, lesser traveled highway that we would be on.  

“Check
point five coming up,” the radio chattered out with Breanne’s voice.  

“Everybody keep your eyes open as we go through Wilcox. No smiles, no frowns. Guns out but don’t track on targets,” I radioed back and gave Derek’s leg a thump with my fist to make sure he heard me as well.
 

We made the turn and after another minute, the first houses came into view. Most everything looked surprisingly intact and there was a wisp of smoke coming from a few of the chimneys. I had
Cary take us down to about thirty miles per hour as we drove through on their main road. There looked to be a couple horses tied out front of the little convenience store, and one or two heads popped out of various doorways at the sound of our trucks. I nodded to one old timer leaning against a fence and was glad my eyes were hidden by my sunglasses as I clandestinely surveyed everything.  

The little town of
Wilcox had always been a run down, redneck haven. It wasn’t even really a town. There was the one gas station with an attached fix-it shop for cars and trucks, and about eight houses within the confines of the little “town.” Many more houses dotted the surrounding area and I guessed it was that population that was keeping this place from turning into a ghost town.