The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning (38 page)

“NO, you can’t leave us here.”

“Shut up or I’ll shoot your kneecaps out.”

John looks at me saying, “Jay, you’re a cold-hearted bastard. I like that about you.”

“Thanks. Right now, it's Miller time. I’m dirty, thirsty and tired.”

John and I walk home while Randy begins welding the gate shut for the evening.

Ricky yells, “Dad, you’re not just going to leave the wounded out there are you?”

“I sure am. Ricky, leave them be. After you help Randy weld the gate, do NOT talk to them, don’t go near them. They’ll tell you anything you want to hear to get you to release them. Weld the gate and come home. Don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, just weld the gate and come back to the house.”

“Dad, I don’t agree with you.”

“Ricky, I expect you don’t agree with me, but I still make the rules, so just follow them.”

Unknown to us, thousands of people from Nashville are heading in our direction. They are heading north out of the ashes of Nashville. They are comprised of eight thousand college students, plus four thousand members of various mobs who agreed to work together to find food. Thousands of tired, hungry and angry people pulling wagons and pushcarts filled with their belongings. They knew the city didn’t have any food, they knew farms were their best chance to find something to eat and feed their children. The mob included thousands of people who are used to taking what they wanted. The mob moved like a swarm of locusts that stripped the land as they moved. They stripped stores, homes and farms bare as they moved north. While they moved north, fourteen thousand hungry people are moving south. They started as a handful that left the ruins of Indianapolis picking up people from every town and city they passed through. They are heading south looking for warmer weather to spend the winter, they are looking for good farmland to grow crops to feed their families. Both groups are traveling on Interstate 65, and we’re located smack in the middle of both groups.

Chapter 19

It took us until 4:00 in the morning to clean up from the battle. We all agree to take a couple of hours off to get some rest before the sun comes up. I can’t rest until I check on Fred, who’s in the infirmary, but the doc won’t let anyone see him since he’s still working on Fred. Cheri jumps into my arms, her face is covered in streaks from her tears. “Cheri, how is he?”

“I really don’t know. The doc’s been working on him since he was brought in.”

“Was he awake?”

“Some of the time, he knows he’s been hit.”

“Cheri, do you need anything?”

“Other than Fred?”

“Yes, want me to send over some coffee?”

“I have some, the doc has his own coffee machine.”

“If you need anything or when the doc finishes, please call me. I’ll send Lacy down to be with you.”

Hugging me, Cheri says, “Jay, thank you.”

“Cheri, he’ll be OK, you’ll see. He’s too hard-headed to go and die on us.”

“Jay, he knows better than to die on me.”

“I’m going back to the mess hall, anything you need, just call.”

Walking into the mess hall, I run into Lacy, I ask her to stop in and spend time with Cheri, “Jay, I was just heading to the infirmary. I have a change of clothing for Cheri and some breakfast.”

“Honey, you’re the best. If Fred comes around, or when the doc tells Cheri how he is, please call me.”

“We will.”

The rest of us meet in the main shelter’s dining room at 7:00 AM for breakfast. Sipping a large cup of coffee, I look at John who also hasn’t gone to bed yet, “John, is it possible to make more exploding mines? If we had lines of them, we should be able to surprise the hell out of the next wave of attackers without us risking our lives.”

“It’s possible, we have everything we need. I’ll look into it.”

“Great, I’d like us to make and bury as many as we can build.”

“The ground is soft which will make it easier to bury them. How soon before you can make more? I’m concerned about another attack.”

“I’ll start after I get a short nap in, I haven’t gone to bed yet. I wanted to review the battle and try to figure out where to move our sensors and cameras so we get a better indication we’re going to be attacked. Had we all not been in your home, we wouldn’t have made it to the trench in time to stop the attack. We need better advance notice. We need the time to man our battle stations.”

“Jay, we’re going to be limited in our mine production by the limited chemicals we have. I know a plant not far away. I’m not sure if they still have any inventory, but it would be a good place to check out.”

“John, if you know of a plant close by, I think we ought to send a team to grab everything they have. One so it can’t be used against us and two so we can ring our property with mines. Get all of the material you can find, we can make hand thrown pipe bombs and rig a lot of surprises for attackers.”

“Damn it, you’re not going to let me take a nap are you?”

“Nope, last night scared me. It showed me we have too many weaknesses in our defensives. We got lucky.”

“Jay, every battle plan goes out the window when the enemy is engaged. We won last night.”

“We won and we lost. What about Fred and Todd?”

“Todd just got creased, not in the least serious. Even the bleeding stopped. Fred’s going to make it, the bullet struck him in the shoulder. A real lucky shot, it struck him through a gap in his armor. Our body armor isn’t magic. It’s designed to block a kill shot. Nothing is going to block a shot that causes a serious wound. We’re very lucky we suffered only one casualty.”

“John, we can’t afford to lose many. We’re not starting out with many people. We can’t afford to lose even one if we’re going to survive. We need numbers to fight off a large attack.”

“Jay, we are in a war. Call it anything you want, but it is a war. Think in terms of the Middle Ages, you’re the local landowner. Instead of a castle, we have barbed wire.”

“Which didn’t keep the gang out.”

“It slowed them down, which is all barbed wire is supposed to do.”

“I wish we had a twenty-foot wall around us.”

John laughs, “There aren’t enough building materials around to build a wall like that.”

“It’d be nice.”

“It would take years to build a wall like that, years we don’t have. Have you seen the last reports from the HAM operators?”

“No, what do they say?”

“Complete meltdown across the country. I don’t think there’s a city that isn’t burning. People are starving to death, they’re fighting for a slice of moldy bread.”

“Crap, I’d hoped we could get to winter before it turned this bad.”

“Why winter?”

“Cold will keep people off the streets. It’s still warm enough that people will be out looking for food and supplies.”

“Jay, with the cities destroyed, I estimate the country is going to lose over a third of our people by the time spring comes around. There’s not going to be enough food located where the people are. There’s a lot of food in the country, it’s just not where the people are.”

“John, I’ve said for a long time the country is going to tear itself apart.”

“Jay, it’s going to be a complete disaster. I’m worried about next spring when the weather warms and all of the bodies that were left where they died will rot and spread diseases. We could be seeing the spread of diseases, unlike anything the world’s seen since the black plague.”

“Shit, what can we do to protect ourselves?”

“Stay clean and be careful of strangers who might be carriers of whatever bug that spreads across the world. While the doc is good, we don’t have access to the CDC or anything like it anymore. All kinds of diseases are going to make a comeback. Stuff we thought was gone will be making a comeback.”

“You’re always full of good news. By the way, who’s watching the cameras while you scare the shit out of me?”

“Your son-in-law, Todd. I trained him to be my primary backup.”  

“Good, John, how far can we place cameras or sensors so we get as much advance notice of uninvited guests?”

“I’m looking into that right now, I’m planning to test small radio-controlled drones.”

“Will they work at night or in bad weather?”

“We can mount one of the FLIR cameras on the drone, but I don’t know how the drone will operate in bad weather. We need more tests.”

“Please remember we only have a small number of FLIR cameras.”

“I know, but it’s the only way I can think of to give us the range we need and also function at night.”

“I know you’ll keep us informed of the tests.”

“Why don’t you join me for a test tonight, around 10?”

“I will, I’ll ask Tony to join us.”

Tony walks over saying, “Did I hear my name taken in vain?”

I laugh, “We were just talking testing an RC drone with one of our FLIR cameras mounted on it. John invited us to see a test tonight around 10.”

“Count me in. I agree we need as much advance notice as possible, last night could have ended differently had we not all been together when the alarm sounded.”

John replies, “The issue is even with forty people, we don’t have enough bodies to operate over 1,000 acres of farm and provide security. We should be operating random patrols around our perimeter plus have a ready forcefully armed and ready to respond to any incursion to our property. A large force can overwhelm us before we can respond, we have too large an area to defend. It can take ten minutes or more for people working in the fields to arm themselves and arrive at the fighting. They could come under fire in transit to the main battle area. Anyone who is serious about attacking us can watch us for a couple of days, they’ll quickly learn our routine. If I were leading an attack against us, I would watch our routine and I’d attack when I saw most of us in the far corners of the fields. I’d know how long it takes us to respond. I’d place snipers in position to take down our people when they try to make their way from the fields to the front line. I could reduce our numbers by 15~20% with a couple of good snipers.”

Tony and I sit down in surprise and fear. We look at each other asking John, “What should, what can we do with our limited numbers? We can’t stop working on the farm, it’s how we feed ourselves.”

John sips his coffee, “I’ve given this a lot of thought, we can’t reduce the numbers working in the fields or we won’t get the yield of crops we need. We can’t keep a large number of people in the trenches 24/7 because we could be attacked in a different position. We need advance information, and we need to slow down any attack, we need to keep them tied down at our perimeter before they can get close enough to us to hurt us. I want to increase the number of hunting traps and mines along our border. I think we should dig more pits, and increase the depth of the barbed wire fence. We have enough wire to add another layer in the sections near our gates.”

Tony replies, “Don’t forget about the gates, we thought the locks were secure, last night we learned they weren’t as secure as we thought.”

“I’m going to increase the number of locks and also add some steel rebar poles to block the gate from opening. If we assume most of the attacks against us will occur at night, we can add spikes and barbs to the ground which will slow the invaders down.”

John, “I think we need to add barbed wire or something on top of the gates to slow down anyone trying to climb over them. My other concern is anyone checking us out will see our defenses in the daylight, they might map them to know the areas to avoid.”