Storm Tide Rising: Blackout Volume 2 (10 page)

Mike found a sizeable pine that would offer him cover in case Alyssa pulled the trigger before she recognized him. He took a deep breath and called, "Alyssa!"  Then louder, "
Alyssa!
"  The woman grumbled something, shifted her weight a bit, but she didn't wake. Finally, Mike shouted,
"ALYSSA!"

Alyssa bolted straight up with a startled yelp. The pistol was instantly in her hands, and she peered through the shadows in Mike's direction. Mike stuck both hands out from behind the tree. "Alyssa, it's me, Mike!  Don't shoot, okay? You dozed off and I had to wake you up, but no sense catching a bullet for it."

"Let me see you!"  Alyssa called in response, a tense edge of uncertainty on her voice.

Mike stepped slowly out from behind the pine tree and breathed a sigh of relief when Alyssa immediately lowered the gun. Despite her hardened facade, Alyssa somehow managed to turn a deep shade of crimson as her embarrassment crept up her neck and flushed her face. Mike felt his own face start to flush, and he started to speak to break the silence, but she beat him to it.

"I must have just rested my eyes for a minute," Alyssa stammered sheepishly. "Maybe I lost track of time or something, I'm not sure. How long were you awake?"

Mike shook his head, thankful that the awkward moment had passed. "Doesn't matter," he replied. "That's why I took the first watch anyway. We're much more likely to get hit early in the night than closer to sunrise, so I wanted to be alert in case someone tried it. I kind of thought you might....doze off.....on your watch anyway."

"You did, did you?"  Alyssa asked in a deceptively soft, but biting tone.

Mike shrugged. "Was I wrong?"

Alyssa grumbled at Mike's unspoken accusation, but she didn't offer any immediate retort. She turned to step away from Mike and nearly toppled over onto her face. "My feet are both asleep!"  she cried as she stumbled to the side and fell heavily back on her bottom. To her credit, though, Alyssa kept her hands on her weapon and managed not to sweep Mike with the muzzle once.

Mike helped Alyssa back to her feet, and she handed the pistol over to him. "Maybe you'd better hold onto this until my feet wake up," Alyssa said as she gripped his hand briefly to steady herself. "I'm sorry I fell asleep. I tried to stay awake, I really did."

Mike nodded, but didn't say anything. He was pretty sure anything he meant to reassure would come out condescending, so he bit his tongue instead. He helped Alyssa hobble over to an old windfall stump, where she sat and massaged her tingling toes to work the feeling back into them. Mike pulled the supports from the roof of the lean-to and threaded them between the layer of evergreens that served as the bed and the layer that served as the roof. With any luck, the green needles would keep enough moisture and insects out to allow the supports to cure and keep in case they ever came this way again.

When he was done sweeping through the campsite to collect any sign they'd been there, Mike helped Alyssa back to her feet. She was more stable this time and took her pistol back from him. The holster on her hip looked oddly large and clearly built for the range rather than concealment. However, keeping the gun concealed wasn't as important as keeping it easy to get to, so holster size hardly mattered. And, when it came down to it, the thing was good for what it was designed for. It held the gun securely and in a position that could be easily drawn.

They left the camp behind and returned to the power line cut through. It was still early enough for the low clouds to hold onto a little of the pink and orange of the sunrise as the sun itself had already begun to slip behind the shroud of clouds. It looked like a strong early autumn front was coming through, and that would spell a few days of rain, thunder, and wind.

The power line cut through suddenly turned to the south, and within a few hundred yards, Mike and Alyssa came to Mountain Island Lake. Mike stopped and Alyssa came up next to him to stare across the water. They stood at the mouth of a narrow arm of the lake where the water was only about five hundred feet across. Still, it looked like a very long way standing on the bank staring across the flat brown water. To their right, the lake broadened out in its main body, and to the left, the arm ran for a good quarter of a mile or more before tapering to a thin drainage creek.

"Should we walk around it?"  Alyssa asked.

Mike arched an eyebrow and shrugged slightly. "How strong of a swimmer are you?"

Alyssa's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Pretty strong, I guess," she answered with only a slight hesitation. "I don't think I've ever swum that far at once, though," she continued as she pointed across the five or six hundred feet between them and the far shore.

Mike turned to the underbrush at the edge of the cut over back a few dozen yards from the water's edge. Finally, he dug into a pile of leaves and retrieved two neon orange life jackets. He dusted them off as he walked back down toward the lake and handed one of them over to Alyssa.

"Where did you get these?"  she asked, confused at their sudden appearance.

"Flip it over," Mike answered, and Alyssa complied. On the back of the life jacket was a large logo for the U.S. Whitewater Center a few miles downstream. "I picked them up on the way to you. I figured they could come in handy, and I was out by the Whitewater Center anyway. When I came through here the first time, I hid them under some leaves for the return trip."

"What about our backpacks?"  Alyssa asked, pulling at the life jacket straps doubtfully. "Won't they weigh us down and sink us even with the life jacket?"

Mike shook his head. "They shouldn't. Definitely not for you," he said as he gave Alyssa a clinically appraising look. "They're rated for up to four hundred pounds, and you could carry both packs and not come close to that."

Alyssa smiled sweetly, but her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Thank you,” she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

Mike could think of nothing to say in response, so he just brushed it off and snapped the clasps on his own life jacket as Alyssa did the same with hers. Once they were both in their vests, Mike showed her how to wrap one arm through the straps of her pack so that the pack would be mostly out of the water. “The pack is water resistant, but you’ll want to keep the top up and clear of the water so it doesn’t seep in too much. You can use your free hand to pull yourself through the water, and make sure you kick your legs too. Leg muscles are about three times as strong as arm muscles, so use them.”

Alyssa nodded impatiently, her breath coming in quick, shallow gulps. She closed her eyes tight to steady herself, and when she opened them again, she nodded confidently. Her hands were beginning to tremble with anticipation mixed with a heavy dose of fear.

"No sense talking about it all day," she growled as she stalked down the shallow bank to the water's edge. Alyssa stood there for the space of two heartbeats, her eyes closed and her lips moving quickly and silently.

Then she stepped into the water.

Ch.16

Running Fence

Eric leaned against the thick pine tree to catch his breath. The trees wove together high overhead to shade out the intensity of the sun for all but a few clear patches here and there. The heat, on the other hand, was oppressive and the air was heavy with humidity from the sporadic rain of the early morning hours. Not even the slightest hint of a breeze moved beneath the canopy, and it was stifling. Eric was soaked with sweat from the top of his head to his knees.

He pulled on a pair of old leather gloves and began bending and twisting the end of a spool of barbed wire into an eyelet. He bent the loop first, then wrapped the end of the wire the way Granddaddy had shown him to make the wire bite back on itself and still hold the loop open. The first ten times he'd had to do it, the task hadn't seemed that difficult. Now, though, his hands and fingers were throbbing, and his forearms burned. Eric expected them to lock up with a cramp at any moment.

Tom stuck the straight end of the spool they'd just finished through the eyelet Eric had so laboriously created. He gave a few quick turns of his hands and wrists, locking the free wire into the eyelet in such a way that with three quick tugs on either side of the knot, the two had become so enmeshed that only wire snips could cut through them. When Granddaddy had seen the method the first time, he'd smiled and patted Tom on the shoulder, saying with a chuckle,  "That's a neat little trick."  That was his highest praise and meant he was deeply impressed.

Eric took a deep breath, tucked the gloves back behind his belt, and started unspooling the wire, walking away from the thick pine tree in as straight a line as he could manage. Ahead, he could see clearly a line of bright pink surveyor's ribbon tied to young maples and cedars. An occasional large bodied pine tree was used as a corner or to bridge a gap between more suitable fence post trees. Eric tried to dodge the briars and underbrush as much as he could, but his arms and chest were covered with a pattern of red and bleeding scratches, some of them deep enough to trickle thin streamers of sweat and blood.

Tom followed behind Eric and hammered in iron brackets to hold the fencing in place once it was wrapped around the trunks. The fence would eventually rust through, but that kind of corrosion would take years to set in, maybe even decades. Once the first run was through, they would stretch another length over top of it and one closer to the ground. The final product would be a three-strand fence that ran from a couple of inches off the ground to nearly chest high. If someone was serious about getting through the fence, they'd be able to do so either by cutting it or cutting down one of the trees that served as fence posts. Either way, this fence would be enough to slow them down, maybe enough so they would lose the element of surprise.

Eric was just beginning to think that the morning was going to last forever when he rounded a large pine tree and found himself face to face with Christina and Beth-Anne. The two women held baskets layered with bundles of neatly wrapped and carefully tied old newspaper. Nanny kept sacks and sacks of old newspapers tied away and stuck in most of the closets, both underneath the clothes and on the shelves as well. The newspapers were used for everything from starting fires in the winter to wrapping snacks and jars of tea or water like a cooler in the summer.

"Nanny thought you 'boys,' her word, could use a snack," Christina said with a wink as she handed her basket to Eric.

Beth-Anne smiled and handed hers to Tom, then turned to go without saying a word. Eric frowned and shook his head slightly, "I don't get her," he said truthfully.

Christina chewed her bottom lip in thought as she watched Beth-Anne picking her way through the trees back toward the field. "I think she's just scared and grateful and a little bit uncertain all at the same time."  Christina turned back to Eric and squeezed his hand. "Babe, even though I've known your family for more than two years, and I’ve decided to become a part of it, the whole clan can be a bit overwhelming at times. Beth-Anne just got tossed head first into it, and she's probably just trying to figure her way around everybody."

Tom tried to cover his laugh with a cough, and when Christina shot him a glare, he turned and took a few steps back down the fence line safely out of earshot. He took one of the round bundles of newspaper that held a mason jar of ice water and picked up a few peanut butter and Ritz cracker sandwiches from one of the other bundles.

"Just give her some time, Babe," Christina said as she leaned over to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. "She'll settle in after a while, once she figures out where she fits in with the rest of us."

Christina squeezed Eric's hand and turned to follow Beth Anne through the trees. When she caught up with the older woman, Christina put her arm across Beth-Anne's shoulders. It was almost a motherly gesture, but instead of brushing it off like Eric thought she would, the older woman patted Christina's hand and walked a little closer to her than before.

As the two women disappeared through the trees, Joe, Chris, and Henderson all arrived from back down the fence line. They joined Eric and Tom as they took long drinks from the several mason jars of water and sweet tea. The brief meal was shared in silence other than the occasional clink of ice against the thick side of a glass jar. Henderson was every bit as out of breath as Eric, and he quickly downed a few crackers and tried to catch his breath as best he could. The three older men were winded, but handled it better. Still, they didn't talk, and Joe seemed consumed by some deep thought or worry.

Joe ate only two cracker sandwiches and drank sparingly from the quart jar in his hands. Still, he waited for the rest of the men to finish their refreshments before breaking the silence. "We're making good time, men. Actually, we're making much better time than I thought we would. We're more than halfway finished."  Joe pointed ahead and to the right. "You'll angle out to the right up here and come out of the woods on the right side of the old hog house. I want you to follow the ribbons I tied up on the tree line and then close off the road to the river. The line goes along the back edge of the old hog pen, around the bottom corner of the garden field, then straight back up the hill behind the old pack barn to the road."

"Just out of curiosity, what time is it?"  Eric asked

Joe snorted a short chuckle. "Not sure, but it ain't midday yet. I'm going to take Chris with me, and we're going to start at the road and head in the other direction with the fence. We'll probably meet down around the back edge of the garden field before noon. Then we'll break for lunch."  Joe finished off his jar of water and set it back in the basket. He collected the leftovers, gave Eric and Tom a jar of water to share, and headed back toward the farmhouse with Chris.

Henderson lingered a little bit longer to finish his crackers. Then he too started back toward the road to gather a new bundle of barbed wire. By the time Eric finished the one he was using and got about halfway through the spare that Tom had, Henderson would have had enough time to fetch two new bundles for them. It was a tiring process so the men rotated the responsibilities to give everyone a chance to learn new and use old skills. Eric had started the day carrying barbed wire while Tom unspooled it and Henderson tacked it to the trees. They'd switched only once so far, and Eric was now determined to see this run through to the end.