The Last Layover (15 page)

Chapter 14: Faith and Friendship

The rest of the drive to the farm, where the plane was kept, was uneventful, yet tense. They only came across a few more groups of people along the road, in addition to one vehicle that was driving as they were. It was a gray Nissan Pathfinder with four guys that looked like they were straight out of Philly. They definitely didn't look like locals, who were generally the only people that frequented the back roads in the area. Most of the people who used these roads were local family-owned farm workers, which regardless of ethnicity, had a general look about them by the way they dressed as well as the tell-tale signs of working long days outdoors.

As they passed by Jim's F250, uneasy stares from each of the vehicles were the only interactions. As they drove on by, Carl noticed that there was no license plate on the back of the vehicle and the lock on the tail gate hatch was damaged. He knew the odds were that they were up to no good, and only hoped they weren't headed back towards Delaware City— at least not until Jim's group got underway and they got out of there.

When they arrived at the gate to the farm, Jim honked the horn three times. Carl jumped out of the back of the truck, walked over to the gate, unlocked the large padlock, swung the gate open, and held it as Jim drove through.

“What was the horn for?” asked Evan.

“Oh, that was just to make sure Charlie isn't surprised to see us driving across the field towards the barn. I don't want him to get trigger happy or anything.” 

He pulled to a stop just past the gate and waited for Carl to hop back in the bed after closing it again, then they proceeded. Jim looked at Jason in the passenger seat and said, “I'll drop you guys off at the barn and you can check the bird out and get her all dusted off. I'll drive back up to the house to explain what's going on to Charlie, then I’ll be back down in a bit.”

They pulled up to the barn and everyone got out of the cab of the truck and Carl hopped out of the back. Jim took them over to the main doors where he removed the old rusty lock and chain. He and Carl then swung the barn doors open to let the daylight in. There sat the Maule M5-235C parked diagonally in order to make room for an old Ford tractor and some implements.

“She's a little dusty, but trust me, when we parked her, she ran and flew great. I just got a little busy and the next thing you know she was out of annual. She's sat for the better part of the last seven or eight months. We may need to put a quick charge on the battery, but other than that, I think you'll be happy with her.”

Jason and Evan walked around the plane together and began to go over the details. Jason asked Evan, “Do you have any tail dragger time? I've always been in tri-cycle birds.”

“Yeah, I've instructed and flown in quite a few from Citabrias to Stinsons to C-195s. Never a Maule, but it should be pretty straight forward,” Evan replied.

“Good,” Jason said. “You can do the takeoff and landings then.”

They checked the prop and it looked good with no leaks coming from the hub. No leaks were found around any of the seals on the motor either. Jason checked the oil; it was clean and the level was right where it should be.

Jim saw Jason looking at the dipstick and said, “There is a case of Aeroshell oil on that shelf in the back that you are welcome to take with you. I won’t have a need for it.”

“Thanks,” Jason said with a nod.

The panel was a straight forward “six pack”, as it is commonly referred to. This meant it consisted of two horizontal rows of three round mechanical instruments. The top row from the left to the right consisted of the airspeed indicator, the attitude indicator, and the altimeter. The bottom row consisted of a turn coordinator with an inclinometer, a heading indicator, and a vertical speed indicator. These basic instruments could be found in most airplanes made before the glass cockpit era that came into play in the mid to late 2000s. Evan and Jason both being trained on this traditional setup felt right at home with it. The aircraft was powered by a simple two hundred thirty-five horsepower horizontally opposed, air cooled, carbureted Lycoming engine.

Jason joked, “And I used to think of that old magneto ignition system as being ancient junk, now I look at it as being EMP proof.”

They both shared a chuckle and continued to check out the rest of the airplane. “What's the fuel capacity?” asked Evan.

“Forty gallons at a 12.5 gallon per hour burn. That should give you about three hours and twenty minutes at seventy-five percent power down low. When we bought it, we wanted the sixty-three gallon long range tanks, but got a sweet deal on this one.”

“Oh well, forty will do,” replied Evan. It should only be about two-and-a-half hours to Zanesville, so that gets us there with a little to spare.”

They checked the flight controls and everything seemed tight. They also checked all of the flight control cables that they had access to. Jason turned to Evan and said, “Looks good to me, how about you?”

“Oh, I love it. You made a great trade Judith,” Evan said as he looked at her and smiled.

“Well, at least I could contribute something,” she said.

Jim looked at them and said, “So what's the plan? Are you leaving tonight under the cover of darkness?”

“That would normally be a good idea,” Evan replied. “But under the circumstances, with blackouts being the norm, we would have to time it so we arrive after sunrise since there won’t be any airport lights operational. That would put us at the risk of morning clouds or fog as well. Not to mention the fact that hugging the terrain at night would be risky, and if we had a problem and had to make an unplanned landing, we would be up the creek without a paddle. With no power on the ground, there are no runway lights or instrument landing systems or the like to get us down without being able to see.

“Also, considering how late it is in the day already, by the time we get the battery charged I think we will be cutting it too close to getting there in the dark. I think our best bet would be to get it ready, get a good night's sleep here in the barn, if that is okay with Charlie, of course, and head out first thing in the morning. If we buzz the tree tops all the way there, by the time anyone sees us, we will be out of their sight in a flash.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” replied Jim. “If you want to get that old generator over there fired up so you can plug the charger in, I'll drive on up and tell Charlie what we are doing down here and what your plans are. I don't think he will have a problem with that though,” said Jim as he walked over and hopped in the truck.

Carl helped Jason and Evan drag out the old generator and get it running. It took quite a few pulls on the recoil starter, but it finally shook, shuddered, and roared to life. They went ahead and practiced a load-out of all of the gear behind the back seat of the Maule.

“It will be a cozy fit, but it will work,” Evan said as he scratched his head and put his cap back on, standing back to admire his packing job. “I'm just glad this is the big motor Maule and not the one hundred and eighty horse model or I would be sweating the grass strip we have to get off of,” he added.

“Yep, it's kind of short compared to what we are used to,” said Jason.

 Evan was flipping through the airplane’s pilot operating handbook and other documentation that was in the seat back pocket. He stopped on a page of interest and said, “Well, it says here at max gross weight we can still get off in six hundred feet. Jim said the strip is around a thousand so we should be fine.”

Just then, Jim pulled back up to the barn in his F250 with a grizzled-looking old man with a fuzzy gray beard in the passenger seat. Carl saw them and said, “Oh, that's Charlie.”

Jim and Charlie got out and walked over to the group. In a gruff voice, Charlie said, “Hell no, you ain't sleepin’ in my barn! After what Jim told me you did, going through all of the trouble to bring his brother back to him and his family, there is no way I would let you sleep out here. You all are going to spend the night up at the house with me and the Misses. She's gonna whip up a feast to send you all off right. After what you went through for the Rutherford’s, you are all friends for life, as far as I am concerned.”

Jim just stood there with a big smile on his face and said, “Now come on, everybody hop in the truck. We can come back down after dinner to shut the generator off. There should be a good charge on the battery by then.”

With that, they all climbed in as Jim said. Charlie took the front passenger seat, the ladies took the back seat, and Clint, Evan, and Jason jumped up into the pickup’s bed. After the quick drive to the farmhouse, Jason took one look and said, “Now that is my idea of a dream home.”

“Yeah, it's straight out of an old movie,” said Carl.

The home was an old style, two-story farmhouse with a porch that wrapped all the way around. It had a chimney on each side of the house as it had four fire places total for wood heat. Two fireplaces were located on each floor, one on each end of the house. As they went into the house, they felt as if they had stepped back in time. Oil lamps were in each room, giving them ample light and there was no television or other modern devices around that anyone could see at a glance.

Charlie had an old Civil War Springfield musket hanging over the main parlor’s fireplace mantel. Jason walked up to it and said, “That looks like a real one.”

“It is,” said Charlie. “It has been in the family since the war. It's been handed down generation after generation. The Misses and I never had kids, though, so I'm the last of the line. I told her just to bury it with me,” he said with a smirk on his face. “Besides, I might need it if the rapture doesn't go so smoothly.”

They all shared a laugh, and then he led them into the kitchen. Charlie's wife, which he always just referred to as “The Misses,” looked as if she was right out of history as well, standing there in a homemade dress, cooking over a real antique wood stove.

“Wow,” Judith said. “This kitchen is amazing.”

“Oh thank you,” said Charlie's wife. “I'm Clara, pleased to meet you.”

As Judith ran her fingers across the intricate details of Clara’s stove, she said, “Your home is just amazing, and this stove is unbelievable.”

Clara smiled and said, “The stove was actually put in this house when it was built back in the mid-1800s. It's an antique just like me. I think you would probably have to tear a wall down just to get it out. And since we heat the house with wood anyway, we might as well throw a few logs on the stove every once in a while. It helps keep the kitchen warm, plus it's always ready to use that way.”

“You seem well prepared for this type of situation, Charlie,” Evan said.

“Well, it's easy to be old school when you never went new school in the first place,” Charlie said. “We barely notice. We do have to keep an eye out for thieves and looters though. For some reason, that city vermin think they can just come take what we have once their precious supermarkets are emptied. It's like they think farmers are here to serve them or something. This is my damn farm, and I'll die protecting it if I have to!”

“Now, you old coot, just calm down,” Clara said with her hands on her hips, giving him the eye.

Judith and Peggy helped Clara with dinner, which consisted of fresh steaks from a cow that they had just butchered, fresh-baked homemade bread, potatoes, carrots, and a homemade apple pie for desert. This was truly a feast for the group as they had been living on tuna, oatmeal, and the like, pretty much since everything had gone down. While the men sat in the living room by the fire, Jim jokingly asked Charlie to come along with them on their boats.

He said, “Charlie, you and Clara need to come along with us. You're way too close to Wilmington and Philadelphia here to not have some sort of problems from people as they desperately leave the city in droves, looking for food. They will be like zombie hordes.”

“Hell no, I ain't leavin’!” he said with a passion. “I've not got a whole lot longer on God's green earth as it is, and I'll be damned if I spend that time running. This farm is where I was born, and I can't think of a better place to die than right here on my family's land, defending it.” All of the men just nodded in agreement and raised their coffee cups in a silent toast to honor what Charlie said.

After dinner, Clara showed the ladies to their quarters for the night while Jim took Evan and Jason back down to the barn to check on the battery and shut the generator off. As they got out Jim's truck, the noisy generator shut off on its own. They looked at each other and crept over to the barn. They saw three figures inside the barn. Evidently, the noisy generator had masked the sound of Jim's approaching F250 and the looters had not been alerted to their presence. Evan and Jason had foolishly left their rifles in the back of the Maule, but luckily, still had their Sigs holstered and ready to go.

As one of the men began to reach into the back of the Maule, Jason fired a shot at his feet and began to scream, “Down! Down! Down! Down on the floor or die where you stand!”

One of the other men immediately ran for the door. Jim grabbed a shovel that was hanging on the wall by the door and ran at the man, swinging it at him violently. He hit him in the head, making a loud metallic thump, instantly knocking the man unconscious as he plopped onto the floor of the barn, face down like a rag doll. He began hitting him in the back with the shovel over and over while screaming expletives in a fit of rage.