The Switch (10 page)

An older woman asked about
any problems John and his family had encountered in their travels. Renee spoke
first and told of Nashville being burned. She was quick to add they had
experienced no problems from anyone along the way. She was smart enough to keep
the shootings to herself.

John tried not to smile but
he thought, “She speaks with forked tongue.”

Chapter 14

The wagon’s bed was six feet
wide and about ten feet long. It rode on car or truck tires, which provided a
smooth ride. A pair of beautiful and strong gray and white horses were
harnessed to the wagon and stood patiently as a few members of the group helped
load  the family’s bikes and gear early the next morning.

As the wagon was being loaded
Bill Rockford climbed into the driver’s seat.

“These are my horses and
wagon. I will be taking you there but we need to work out the fee.”

John turned to look at David
who was also surprised at the comment.

“I thought we had a deal to
provide your people with food and shelter if they came our way in exchange for
the ride.”

“That’s right, to a point,
but it is a long way and it will take a toll on my horses. I need some personal
compensation.”

“What exactly do you want?”

Rockford leaned over the edge
of the seat an spit tobacco juice onto the ground near David’s feet. He said,
“Money, guns, or ammo, your choice.”

John asked, “You are not
getting any of our guns or ammo. How much money will it take?”

Rockford looked at everything
loaded into the wagon and then at the kids standing alongside. “How about two
thousand.”

John had plenty of cash but
did not want him to see it so he stepped to the rear of the wagon and stood
with his back to Rockford. He acted as if he was discussing the decision with
David and the others as he reached into his pocket and dug out the money.

“Here is the two thousand. We
appreciate the help.”

The horses walked at a steady
pace which was slightly slower than the pace they had been riding the bicycles.
The final leg of this trip would be a little slower, but it would be a lot more
comfortable.

Everyone, especially the
kids, enjoyed the luxury of riding in the wagon. The children were excited
about the horses.

As they rode south Lynn
remarked about the need to find horses for themselves. There would be a lot of
advantages to true horsepower.

They traveled all day and by
the time it was getting dark they were near Cullman, only about thirty miles
from the lake. As the women made camp and started a fire to cook dinner, David
and John helped Bill get the horses free of their harnesses and get them fed.

Thirty miles, John was flat
on his back looking up at the stars trying to get to sleep. After biking over
seven hundred miles he was only thirty miles from home. For the first time
since he left O’Hare airport he felt total confidence he would make it home to
Sue.

Sometime around midnight David
zipped open the door to his tent and got out. He was headed for nearby bushes
to relieve himself and noticed John looking up at him.

“You are almost home old
man.”

“Yea, it has been a long and
interesting trip. I want to get up and move on right now.”

David sat down beside him. He
looked up at the stars. “Do you think it will ever get back to normal?”

“I don’t know. If it does,
I’d bet it will be years.”

“Are we going to be able to
find enough food?”

“I don’t think food will be
our biggest problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“I will catch us all of the
fish we need. The lake is surrounded by forest. I will be able to get us
squirrels, turkeys, and deer. I have plenty of bullets at the house and my
archery gear. Eating won’t be the issue.”

He took a long slow breath.
Think of the everyday things people use. We will have no refrigerator to keep
our food from spoiling. We will have no medicine except what is in the medicine
cabinet. If someone is sick or gets hurt, it will be a problem. Think about
using leaves instead of toilet paper.”

David laughed.

“You are laughing now, but
when your butt gets raw you won’t be laughing.”

David said, “We are lucky to
have this wagon and horses. We will have to walk everywhere or ride the bikes.”

“That’s right. If the bikes
have flat tires then we won’t even have them. Think about how we will have to
cook, keep warm in the winter, heat water for a shower, do without shampoo or
soap. It won’t take too long until we are out of salt, sugar, and about
everything else. Someone smarter than me might know how to make bread from
wheat or corn. But we won’t have any wheat or corn even if we knew how to make
bread. Life is going to be tough. We won’t see any fat people looking back at
us when we look in the mirror six months from now.”

David laid back on the ground
beside him. “One good thing is we won’t have the same problem as the people in
the cities, the problem of people trying to take our stuff. Your place is so
isolated that won’t be a problem.”

“That’s right. But if we do
have a problem, it will be up to us to handle it. There won’t be any cops
around to make an arrest.”

David spoke again, “I know
how to make a hangman’s noose.”

As soon as the sky was
getting light, John woke the others so they could get on the road. Highway 278
from I-65 was one hill after the other. John had driven the road a hundred
times and never really paid much attention to the hills.

But there was no doubt the
horses noticed the hills. The going was slow and Bill stopped frequently to let
the horses rest and have water. If he had been in his car, he could have been
home in less than forty minutes, but as it was, they were going to be lucky to
get to the lake before dark.

As the day dragged on the
anticipation and excitement was nearly unbearable. The thought of a solid roof
over their heads, and the ability to stay warm and dry, was almost too good to
be true.

The kids talked about
swimming, having pets and sleeping in a soft bed. The adults talked about ideas
concerning how to get the lake water purified, how to get the water to the
house, how they might be able to make hot water, and even how running water
might be possible in the house. 

They were laughing and
talking when they rounded a bend at the top of a steep hill and got their first
look at the lake. The kids started screaming with excitement and jumping up and
down which startled the horses.

Bill called out for everyone
to calm down and tugged back on the reins until they stopped. He stepped down
from the wagon and walked to the front of the horses and held the bridles until
they calmed.

Renee and Lynn talked to the
kids and got them to sit back down in the wagon so they could continue.

They saw no one as they
passed through the only intersection in Arley. The small municipal building was
dark as was the only gas station next to it.

Lynn said, “It looks like a
science fiction movie with no one alive.”

As they passed the gas
station David jumped from the wagon and ran across the parking lot and looked
through the window into the store. He ran back to the wagon and jumped aboard.

“It looks vacant. The shelves
looked empty.”

John added, “I think it will
be like that in every store for a long time.”

The mile and a half to the
county road to his house was the longest two thousand yards of John’s life. His
heart was pumping as hard as it did when he had to do wind sprints in the two
a-day football workouts back in high school.

The last bend in the road
before his house was built on what was not much more than a dirt dike built
during the construction of the damn which allowed access to a long narrow point
of the lake. As they neared that section of the road John stood up in the wagon
and stared. The water level was normally ten to fifteen feet below the road.
But now, it was almost level with the asphalt.  

“Holy cow, look how high the
water is,” John exclaimed.

John asked Rockford how much
rain there had been since the power outage. Rockford said that the second week
after the outage, it had rained really hard for over a week. There had been
other rainy days, but nothing like those eight or nine days right after
everything went dark.

As they rounded the end of
the lake, John jumped from the wagon and pulled his bike down with him. He
yelled over his shoulder that he would be waiting for them at the house and pedaled
hard the remaining quarter mile to home.

He covered the distance in a
sprint. He coasted down his concrete driveway and dropped the bike in the yard.
The door of the house was open and he raced in. He called for Sue but there was
no answer. He ran outside and started screaming.

Sue, Sue, where are you?”

He had screamed her name several
times when he heard someone running through the woods from the direction of the
neighbors’ house. Sue was both laughing and crying as they wrapped their arms
around each other.

“Jesus, where have you been,
I thought you might be dead.”

He laughed, “How could you
forget my name already? My name is John, not Jesus.”

They were still hugging and
laughing with excitement when the wagon arrived. She could not believe her eyes
when she saw the kids jump from the moving wagon and run in her direction.

The long hard trip south had
finally ended. They were home.

Chapter 15

The lake had risen to over the
sea wall and was only about thirty feet from the house. Sue quickly saw him
studying the lake level and told him of the rains and how fast the lake had
risen. She said the lake came up six feet in one day and had risen steadily for
over a week.

Lynn and Renee approached and
looked at the water so close to the house.

Lynn asked, “Will it keep
coming up and get into the house?”

John did his best to explain
the situation. “The lake is a Corp of Engineer lake and rises and falls
depending on rainfall and how much water was needed to cool the power plants
several miles downstream of the dam. The gates on the dam must have been closed
when the power stopped. The water will continue to rise until it flowed over
the flood level of the dam.”

Sue said, “We don’t have far
to carry water.”

John noticed the canoe pulled
up on the bank and the fishing rods resting on the seats.

“Catching any,” he asked?

The smile on her face told
the story.

“It’s been good. I have been
eating fish nearly every day. The water being up in the bushes has really helped.
They are killing top water baits.”

“How have you been cooking
them?”

She pointed to the grill. “I
ran out of propane last week, so I’ve been building a small wood fire in the
grill. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done.”

That evening as the others
were getting settled in and choosing their beds, Sue and John sat on the upper
deck of the house and talked about his trip from Chicago. He told her of the
thousands of abandoned cars, the empty shelves in the convenience stores and
about the shootings and of the civil unrest. 

As the conversation
progressed he brought up the delicate topic of her son Chris and his wife Katy.
He knew that she had always been reluctant to discuss any topic that worried
her and there was no doubt that she had to be worried about Chris and Katy.

“What do you think Chris and
Katy will do?”

“I don’t know. I hope they
are on their way here or on their way to Jimmy’s.”

John thought about her
ex-husband Jimmy who was a retired cop and living in Arkansas.”

“Do you think Jimmy will be
able to help them? I wonder if he will be able to take care of himself.”

“I don’t know about that. I
know the kids will be better off with him or here with us than in Kansas City.
The way you describe what you saw in Nashville and St. Louis, the big cities
are not the place to be.”

He thought about them trying
to get to Alabama on their own. He doubted they would try it. He took a deep
breath before saying, “If you want me to try to go the KC and look for them, I
will.”

“No, no, I don’t want you to
go. Thank you but you need to stay here and provide for us. Chris is a smart
kid. He will know he is welcome here and that we can provide for them.”

The soft bed and warm body
next to him was unbelievably comfortable. After all those nights sleeping on
the ground, that night was one of the best John could ever remember.