Not Quite Eden

[patience]

I haven't quite finished this one, but my health is a problem and I wanted to get what I have posted. Hope you like what I have here.


NOT QUITE EDEN


CHAPTER 1 The Hunt


The juniper thicket was dense. At least it would stop the wind. It would have to do, Clay decided. Maybe he could get a fire going with some of the papery bark and some dry needles, if there were some next to the tree trunks. It was cold and the wind was stinging his face with freezing rain. Or maybe it was sleet now. He could hear it hitting the dead leaves underfoot. His boots were letting in some water and his feet were wet. He was getting cold. Have to get some shelter up pretty fast, he thought.

If game wasn't so scarce, he would never have ventured onto this ridge where he wasn't acquainted. He knew his general location, but had never hunted here before. He remembered hearing there were some old ponds up this way. He had hoped to catch a deer drinking at one, following a game trail up the hollow and along the side of the ridge. He'd topped out on more nearly level ground when he ran into the cedar thicket.

Clay walked slowly into the tangled mass of dead blackberry briars, wild grapevines, and tall weeds seeking a small clearing where he could make a fire without setting the entire thicket ablaze. He ducked his head pushing through the prickly juniper limbs, using his hat brim to shield his eyes. He couldn't see ahead very well and was concerned about that. There were animals that sheltered in these thickets, too. It was getting dark. The rain blotted out any animal sounds that might have been heard. They were all holed up somewhere tight anyway, and would not be likely to move in this weather. He didn't want to surprise a bobcat, though.

Despite his caution, Clay bumped head first into a tree, he thought at first, then realized it was a log wall. The wind came along the length of it and was stinging his cheek, making his eyes water. Hoping to get out of the wind behind this wall, whatever it was, he fumbled his way to the right, away from the wind. A big cedar blocked the way, so he went around it and the wall was gone. He kept walking around it and found he was at the end of some old barn or something. A maple tree covered part of the entry.

Clay stepped over some roots and found himself inside a dry building. It was very dark in there, so he stopped in case something else had sought shelter here. He raised his rifle, hoping he wouldn't have to waste a shell just to claim a place for the night. His pocket flashlight was small, but it gave enough light to see there were no other occupants. All he could see was the other end wall of logs and some rusty barrels stacked along it. There was a plank door in the wall. He didn't see any window openings and there was no draft, so he decided he had found his shelter for the duration of the storm.

Overhead he could just see heavy rafters, hewed like the log walls. Some kind of boards covered them. The roof didn't leak, evidenced by the almost dusty dry dirt floor. He kicked some dirt around to clear an area of any forest trash that might burn, in a hurry to get a small campfire going. His boot scraped along a big flat rock. No, it was concrete. He puzzled over why a log building would have a concrete floor, but he was too tired to think about it. A fire was what he needed, and soon. He was exhausted, cold, and hungry.

Clay gathered the few dry twigs near the door opening, then went back outside to the big cedar where he peeled some dry strips of bark from the trunk and broke off some of the smaller dead lower limbs. It wasn't long lasting firewood, but the aromatic stuff would start a fire very easily. He found a larger deadfall limb and dragged it inside, too. One end of it was pretty dry. With his rifle and backpack leaned against the wall, he began to carefully build a tiny cooking fire, thankful for finding a perfect shelter for the night this far from home.

He heated water from one canteen in the old GI cup on his homemade wire grille, then used his knife to shred some jerky into his cooking pot along with a mixture of cornmeal and other ingredients to make a thick stew. When the water was hot, he poured it into the stew mixture and put more water on to make a hot drink. While it was heating, Clay flipped his poncho back over his head and draped it over his shoulders to catch and reflect the heat of the fire. His hands were beginning to get warm by the time the cup was hot and the stew was finished cooking.

He listened with a woodsman's ear, only semi-conscious of the sleet falling outside, but heard no other noise. Animals would not be moving until the weather eased up. It was doubtful that there was any other human any closer than his house 4 or 5 miles away. That was too far to go on a night like this, so he planned to stay until daylight. He hadn't seen any deer sign closer to home.

A hot meal inside him made things look better. He could barely see outside with the firelight to notice the sleet had accumulated under the big maple tree by the door. It would probably be deeper out in the woods. He'd be lucky to find a deer moving in the morning if all the grazing got covered with ice.

Ice made him think about firewood, so he ventured out to look for more. It wasn't far to some deadfall limbs that were partly dry. He dragged them inside and proceeded to step on them to break them into manageable lengths, then laid them near the fire. A few green cedar boughs cut from the underside of smaller trees were soft enough to make him a camp bed, overlaid with his poncho and sleeping bag. Clay made certain the cedar was entirely covered by the poncho. He didn't want a stray spark to set his bed on fire in the night.

Feeling much better from the hot meal, Clay added new dry limbs to the small fire that lit the room. With his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he walked back to look at the barrels, wondering about this place, so long deserted. There were raccoon tracks and those of other small creatures, but no human tracks except his own. Only a layer of dust and some windblown leaves covered the concrete near the back wall. He walked to the plank door.

It was made like those he'd seen at restored pioneer villages, with boards and battens arranged in the shape of the letter Z, Heavy rusted hinges and a simple wood latch secured it. Light in hand, Clay lifted the latch and pulled. The door was of thick oak and swung heavily. He expected it to lead him outside, but there was a room instead. He swung the light in the room beyond and stared. A heavy wood workbench sat in the center of the room and shelves with wood and metal boxes of various sizes lined the walls. One large cabinet sat in a corner, with upper and lower pairs of doors. Large wooden chests were stacked against the side wall. Cobwebs hung everywhere over what looked to be a 19th century woodworker's shop.

Across from the door he had entered was one to match it, and on the other walls were thick wooden shutters made the same way, all of them pegged together. He walked across the room and raised the latch bar on a set of shutters and opened them expecting a cold blast of air, but found an intact glass window of many small panes. Through it he could see outer shutters that had protected the glass. He closed that again and went to the door.

This door was reluctant to open, fitted closely. A bump with his shoulder got it opened, to discover another room with large double doors on the far side. A blacksmith forge made of stone sat to one side beneath a wide chimney. There were no windows in this room. Along one wall was a large drill press mounted to a post. An anvil of appreciable size stood on a stump near the forge, and beyond that was a bench with an old style leg vise. Throwing back a canvas tarp on the heavy bench he found black metal tongs, hammers, and other tools. Oddly, they showed no rust. The handles felt waxy. Clay could faintly hear the wind whistling outside, but he felt no draft from it. Along one wall was a machine made of wood and steel that he didn't understand, looking something like a lathe, but with a long spiral wood part extended from one end.

His light was flickering on and off. He knew the batteries were almost gone, so he went back to his pack to find more. He changed the batteries in the LED flashlight, then changed his mind about exploring any more tonight. Batteries were too hard to find. It could wait until morning. He closed the doors to the other rooms and made his way to bed beside his small campfire, the smoke naturally drafting out the door opening and into the treetops.

Clay Whitaker had grown up in these Indiana hills not that far from where he awoke. He thought he had covered most of the area on horseback as a kid, but this ridge was miles farther back in the wilderness by the old State Forest. It was poor country, sold long ago either to the timber companies or the State. Mostly it was overgrown with trash trees now, having been logged heavily in years past. The timber companies had taken all they could get from these hills and sold it off in small tracts where a few cheap houses had been built before the war. None of the occupants survived the diseases that had ravaged the country.

The fire had been coaxed back to life from a few leftover coals buried in the ashes. His morning tea was ready. He'd boiled the teabag until the brew was black and strong. Sitting on his heels and leaning back against the wall, Clay pondered how this building had stood for what must have been a very long time. The maple tree in the door opening had to be at least 20 years old.

Outside, the weather had cleared and warmed slightly. Ice was melting slowly and dripped from the trees, but some remained on the ground. Sunlight filtered through the thicket promising a bit of warmth.

He drank his tea and idly watched out the doorway where the ground sloped gently downhill. A flicker of movement caught his eye making him freeze in place. The deer was looking down and away from him, so he slid silently back out of sight and picked up the rifle. He held the sight picture longer than he should have to be sure of his aim and was afraid the deer would move. But it stood still looking at something. Clay squeezed the trigger and the .223 barked just as the white flag of a tail came up. The deer fell dead, dropping in a heap from the spine shot. As his scope settled back on target, Clay saw what the deer had been looking at. It was his own dog, sniffing along his back trail. The dog's big head looked at the rifleman's position for an instant, then dropped out of sight.


Less than a minute later, the dog barked once. Clay answered, "Jake! In here boy. Come on in."

He heard ice crunching and snuffling, then the black head poked cautiously around the door opening, sniffed once and came in for a welcoming session of petting.

"Whatcha doin' out here, boy? You was s'posed to stay home with Amy!"

The dog whined and looked to the northwest toward home. Then he came back and leaned in close against his master. Clay thought about this and decided he wanted to go home. The dog wouldn't be here unless he had a good reason and he thought he knew the reason.

"Let's get you something to eat. We gotta butcher that deer. Came all this way to find him, so we can't go home without him."

A few minutes later the deer had been gutted and skinned, the meat deboned and packed in it's own hide, The legs of the hide were woven together through slits to a single end with a stick through it in the classic poachers' style. That, in turn, he lashed on near the top of his pack and tied the antlers to the sides while Jake enjoyed parts of the liver and heart. His pack back together, Clay set off down the point of the ridge, heading as straight as possible toward his home with Jake leading the way, tail at half mast. It was a long trek, but Clay thought at least it was downhill nearly all the way.

Leaving the ridgetop, Clay caught a glimpse of another old building through the trees. He was in too much of a hurry to investigate and kept on his way down the steep side of the ridge to the valley below. Then it was a matter of following the small creek back toward home.

The pack weighed less than 20 pounds, but with another 50 pounds of meat on top Clay was tired by the time he and the dog got close to their home two hours later. They stopped in the woods above the house on the hillside and had a careful look at the place before they walked quietly down.

Fifty yards from the house, Clay sent the dog on ahead saying, "Find Amy!"

The dog trotted confidently to the back door and looked back at him with a smile.

***********



CHAPTER 2 Home


Amy greeted the dog and waved at Clay who slackened his pace somewhat, seeing that everything appeared to be all right. When he got to the back porch, he set his rifle against the wall and swung the pack off, collapsing on the porch steps.

"What's the matter that Jake came after me?"

"He got worried because I started labor pains and I yelled pretty loud, I guess. I don't think it's coming too soon, though. They're too far apart still. You didn't have to hurry so. I can take care of things here."

"I was afraid that's what it was. Woman shouldn't have to birth a baby alone," he said. "I would'na left but we was about out of meat." Clay was slowly beginning to feel better. "But this should keep us 'till it's over and you're feelin' better. I brought home most of the liver for ya. You'll need that."

He took a deep breath and tried to relax leaning back against a porch post.

"I got a kettle on. I'll make you some tea," Amy said.

He got up and followed her wearily into the kitchen.

"I should be making your tea. You need to take it easy."

"I need to be up and moving. That's what Mom always said," she told him. "When I have a contraction I'll sit down. You don't have to worry about it until they get to be 5 minutes apart. When they get closer together, I'll lay down. I told you all this before."

"Yeah, I know, but it's natural for a man to worry about his wife."

Clay thought of Amy as his wife, although they had never actually had a ceremony. There was no preacher around to do that. Hell, he thought, I only know of about a dozen people in the county. He wished there was at least a woman around to help her when she had her first baby. But the nearest people were Roscoe and Marta Beam about 8 miles up the big creek. That old woman wouldn't want to come out in this weather, and he wasn't sure if she knew any more about delivering babies than Amy did. He washed and sliced the meat then put it in tubs of cold water to chill on the enclosed porch. Later he drained it and started a slow fire in the smoker. When the meat was well drained, he soaked it in a marinade and laid it on the smoker shelves to start the process.

Doctors were just a memory. Damn the government and all their idiocy! He was sure they had let the weaponized flu loose and didn't tell anyone until it was too late. It killed damn near everybody, government included, as far as he knew. That was cold comfort when you needed help.

Amy leaned on the table and made a grunting sound. "UUNGH!"

She breathed deep a couple times and sat down across from Clay. "Well, they are getting closer together. That was about 20 minutes since the last one. They were an hour apart to start with this morning."

"Okay. If I've got a few minutes I need to tend that meat. I'll be just outside if you need something."

Just at sundown, Amy gave birth to Louisa May Whitaker. Clay felt utterly drained after the experience and wondered how exhausted Amy must be. He had kept some water warm on the back of the wood stove and washed the baby, now nursing at her mother's breast. Louisa had her mother's blue eyes and light brown hair and seemed to be as healthy as could be. Amy had been right that her wide hips had made the birth easier, she'd told him. Clay didn't understand how a woman could go through this and survive, but then he thought they had been doing it without doctors for thousands of years. Still, he wished Amy could have had the benefit of what medicine used to be.

Amy had learned from her grandmother about herbs that were useful for reducing the pain, helping to start the milk, stopping excess bleeding, and several other things. She'd had them all laid out on the kitchen counter with written directions for each one. Clay felt hopelessly incompetent at this. Thank God she didn't need any of it. She didn't even want anything for the pain. She said it would get into her milk and might make the baby sleep too much.

After a last trip to check on the meat, it was midnight before Clay felt like he could chance going to sleep. Jake laid at the bedroom door guarding his growing family.

********

As Clay did morning chores he made a mental note that one old hen was getting broody. I hope she sets some eggs and raises us some more chicks, he thought. We need to get a new rooster, too, or they'll get inbred. He put the eggs in the willow basket Amy had made and went to the house to make some breakfast. He had a corncob fire blazing in the cook stove and eggs frying when Amy came into the kitchen carrying the baby. She was stooped a little, obviously sore and still tired. She sat down slowly and leaned back with the baby close to her chest.

"Feel like eating something?"

"Yeah, some. Maybe fry me some of that liver to go with the eggs. It doesn't sound very good, but I probably need it."

"Okay. I'm frying the tenderloin for me. Yesterday was a long day for both of us."

They ate without talking, listening to the baby make soft sounds when she woke.

"Wish we had some sugar for the tea," Clay said. I ought to go to a town and see if I can find some."

"That's dangerous, isn't it? The Flu might still be out there."

"After two winters it should be gone for good. Has to have a person to live in, doesn't it?"

"I don't think so. I read something once about finding traces of the 1918 Flu virus somewhere."

"Hell, we have to find what we can before it's all gone, or ruined by something. There ain't nobody to fight over things, anyway. I been thinking I could maybe get the truck started. I hooked that little solar panel up to try and charge the battery. It was too dead last I tried it, but maybe it'll go after a few days of sun. Wish I had some fresh gas. Oh well, it's got that preservative stuff in it. Maybe it'll work."

"If you can get it going, I'd like to go along, if you'll wait a few days until I feel more like it."

"Let's see if I can get it going, first."

*********



CHAPTER 3

He had a few tools in his pack along with the regular things. Clay recalled that it was about 4 miles to the little store at the crossroads by the river, so he should be able to walk it in a little over an hour. He hadn't been to this store since everybody died off. At first, they had tried to buy enough things so they could hole up and stay home, then they were too scared to go much of anywhere outside the farms in the creek bottom. Looking back, when the Flu got as far as their town, it would likely be everywhere. The fact that anybody lived was just chance and isolation, the best he could tell. Or maybe he and the other valley folks had been lucky to not be close enough to anybody that was contagious. Guess I'll never know, he thought.

Clay was thinking as he walked, that if the folks on this road hadn't lived like old times they would have starved by now. They had aways canned their garden stuff and lived about half off wild game because they were poor. As it turned out only 4 families had survived, the rest having died from the flu. At the top of the highest rise on the valley road, Clay could see Chris Hamilton's place in the distance. There was a thin plume of smoke from their chimney. It was almost half a mile out of his way, so he wouldn't go to check on them, but it was good to know that somebody was still alive there.

The folks down here in the valley were poor, so they had always heated with wood. Cooking was a problem right away because their LP gas ran out. They had been cooking over a fire outside. Clay had been looking for other things, so it was dumb luck finding the wood cook stove at the antique place. Getting the heavy old cooking range out of the antique shop and onto the truck had been a worrisome job. He'd been afraid he would break something he couldn't fix and afraid there might still be some flu germs in the place. There weren't any bodies, though. The place had been locked up tight. The bodies were in the house next door. He had smelled them. It was no good to dwell on stuff like that, he thought.

They had made several runs to town last year after the dying seemed to be over. Nobody was around, but the town was a mess. Some survivors had broken into a lot of stores and trashed them. He realized now that he hadn't looked closely enough at the stores. They should have taken every last scrap they could possibly use. Then they became afraid to go out anywhere, counting themselves lucky to have not caught the disease in these few trips. Maybe it was too late to find anything useful now. He wasn't sure.

Today their truck wouldn't start. It had been sitting so long the battery went dead. The solar panel hadn't done any good, so he was looking for a vehicle somewhere that might still have a good one, or one he could charge up.

Clay tramped on, getting closer to the crossroads store. Continuing to wonder about were he might find a good battery, he looked at the Neilson house and felt the revulsion that went with the dead smell. It was faint now, but it still made his stomach roll. As he passed the house, he realized he hadn't seen Tom Neilson's truck and decided that it might be in his garage. Until now, he hadn't looked in either the house or the garage because of the smell and just figured that with no vehicle around that Tom must have been gone and died somewhere else. Clay swallowed hard and walked up the driveway. The smell was almost gone. It was the memory of it that bothered him.

Sunlight shone in the small garage door windows. Clay could see the tailgate of Tom's white truck. He raised the garage door easily enough. There was only a musty smell inside, tinged with old engine odor. The keys were not in the truck. Probably in Tom's pocket, wherever he was. The truck was nearly new, so Clay was afraid he'd mess up the electronics if he tried to hot wire it. He had to find Tom if he wanted the truck, and he had decided he really wanted that truck. It was a Chevy half ton, and it was 4 wheel drive. He went to look for Tom's body.

He went outside and to the glass patio door, wondering how he could get it open. A push sideways on the handle and it slid open. He guessed nobody had worried about locking the door. The smell wasn't as bad as he thought it would be, then he realized that there were several windows open. It still stunk, but he thought he could stand it. Clay walked on through the kitchen into the living room and there he was on the couch, or what was left of him. His stomach rebelled and he ran outside, heaving.

Clay sat there in the tall grass on his hands and knees until the heaving stopped and his eyes cleared. He washed his mouth out with his canteen and sat on his heels for a while. It didn't look like Tom. It looked like something in a horror movie and he had never liked those. This was someone he KNEW. He'd never liked Tom Neilson all that well, being a little snooty, he thought. That didn't matter. It made him sick just to think about that thing on the couch.

But he decided that he would go back and get those keys. They really needed a good truck and Tom sure didn't need it now. Back inside, Clay didn't want to touch that dead body. He looked around for a tool of some sort and saw the fancy poker and shovel by the fireplace. Using the poker and a pair of fireplace tongs, he managed to tear open the pants pocket on the corpse. Lucky they were cheap dress pants and not jeans, he thought, or that would have been a lot harder. The key ring came out with some help from the poker and the tongs. He didn't want to touch them, so he used the poker to carry them outside. There was a gas can beside Tom's boat in the garage. He took that out to the gravel driveway and poured some gas over the keys. He used the poker to drag them over onto the concrete floor and left them in the sun to dry off.

The gas smell helped clear his head. It was familiar and it got rid of the death smell. It was still chilly outside and that helped, too. Maybe 40 degrees, he guessed, then he noticed the big thermometer on the porch post. 44 degrees, it said. Not bad for a March day in Indiana. The keys were dry enough, although still smelling like gas. Clay picked them up and went to the truck. The low battery barely cranked the engine, but it finally decided to fire and sputter a while. The second try it almost didn't crank, but it fired and ran--pretty rough, but it RAN! He kept his foot on the throttle until it smoothed out some. The gas tank only showed a little over half a tank. Clay remembered the gas can and let the truck idle while he poured that in the tank, then set the can in the truck bed.

He backed the truck outside and put it in park so it could run while he rummaged in the garage. He found two more plastic fuel cans, jumper cables, half a dozen quarts of oil, and Tom's big zero turn mower. He had no use for that. Clay wanted a tractor that ran. But it had a battery in it, and it was a pretty big one, car-sized. He had enough tools with him to get the cables off and took the battery outside. He popped the hood open on the truck and set the battery on the ground to charge with the jumper cables. He didn't want to chance not being able to get it started again.

Now he had a plan. Clay methodically went through the garage and whatever he thought they could use, he loaded in the truck bed. A floor jack, 2 toolboxes, some nice fishing poles, some frog gigs, a huge tackle box, and a pair of hip waders. There didn't seem to be much else in there. Then he thought about his boots leaking and wondered what size shoes Tom wore. He went back into the house.

Tom's wife Angela was laying on the bathroom floor and Clay about lost it again. He closed the door quickly and went on past it. The big bedroom had what he sought. The closet had 2 pairs of work boots, one worn and one new. Size 11, they said. Clay wore a 10 1/2. Close enough. He took all the shoes in the closet out and looked around for some way to carry them. Back to the kitchen. Under the sink was a box of heavy trash bags. He packed up all the shoes in one and looked in the other closet. Amy wore a size 8 shoe. The ones he found were 9's, but he took them anyway. He packed all the clothes he found in more trash bags and began making trips out to the truck.

The truck bed was getting full. Then he remembered the boat on its' trailer. He would pack that full and tow it.

When Clay drove into his own driveway, Amy was looking out the window holding a rifle. He quickly shut the truck off and yelled, "It's me!" Jake came bounding out of the house and and greeted him, with Amy following slowly.

"Where did you get that?"

"Tom Neilson's place. It was a mess. I got sick."

"I bet you did. Was it bad in there?"

"Bad enough, but the kitchen and the bedrooms were clean. I brought a lot of stuff home. I'm just gonna back it in the barn for now, in case it rains. We can sort it out later."

"I feel kinda funny about taking other people's things," Amy said.

Clay let out a sigh and said, "Better get used to it. That's all there is now. I don't think there's enough people left in the country to get it going again and make stuff. I turned on the truck radio on the way home and couldn't get anything on it. If there ain't a radio station going yet, it probably means there's nobody to run it, or no power to operate it. I think we are going to be on our own for a long time."

***********

[patience]

CHAPTER 4


"You really think the whole country is dead? That's too horrible to think about."

"Probably some folks left, like us, just not very many. How long's it been since the TV stations quit?"

Amy said, "I think it was right after we made that last trip to town last Spring."

"And there still ain't even a radio station going. Not even the weather channel. Tom's truck's got one of those fancy radios that has the weather channel on it. Didn't get anything there, either. How long's the power been off? Not long after the TV quit, wasn't it?"

Amy's face looked stricken. "Yeah, it was just a few days later the lights and the refrigerator stopped. So, is just everybody gone? Dead?"

"No, there's some folks here, we know that. We need to find out if there's more people around and where they are. Need to find out what kind of folks they are, too. Might be some that ain't so good, y'know? So we better be careful, but we need to do some lookin' around now that we got a way to get somewhere."

"That truck is gonna run out of gas. Can you get more?"

"I think I got that figured out. There's a truck down at the store I saw that had one of those farm fuel tanks in the bed. They got a battery powered pump on those tanks. I think I can use that to get gas out of the underground tank at the gas stations."

"Will the gas still be good?"

"Should be, as long as it's underground it should be good for a long time. It might get a little water in it, but we kept gas in the farm tank when I was a kid for a year or more and that tank was mounted up high in the sun. It will stay cool in the ground and not evaporate all the good stuff out of it. Least I think so. I'm goin' back to the crossroads store and try that. I'll see if he has some more good batteries around there, too, and oil and stuff."

"We oughta go see the neighbors and see how they're getting along," Amy said. "I haven't seen anybody since last Fall."

"Let me go to the store first tomorrow, then we can go visiting."

*********

"You don't need to be carryin' anything yet. You set down and take it easy," Clay said. "I got a lot of stuff at the store and all you need to do is tell me where to put it."

"The kitchen is full with all the things you got yesterday at Neilson's place.

"I got room in the barn for most of this, but there's some canned goods and stuff. I got all the salt and pepper and that kind of thing he had. And there's some coffee and some tea. Got lots of sugar, too."

When Clay had the foodstuffs carried in, Amy said, "I don't know what to do with all this. We need someplace safe to keep things. Can't let the mice get into things. The cats can't get 'em all."

"Lemme work on that. I got some ideas while I was loadin' up there today. I want to find someplace that has some barrels that will seal up tight, and maybe find some big trailers i can pull home to put things in. I'm thinkin' we need to get stuff put away safe before roofs start leaking on all the houses and stores around. We need to talk to the neighbors about that, too."

"I can put some of the food in the spare bedroom upstairs, but we'll have to heat it enough next winter to keep it from freezing," Amy said.

"That'll do for now. I need to work in the barn and get some things put inside."

Clay thought his head would burst with all the new problems. He'd found some dry charge batteries at the store. It was a country version of a convenience store and gas station. The batteries would store in the barn for now. He needed some way to keep batteries charged besides swapping them out in the truck. He should look for more solar chargers of some kind. That might mean a trip to the city and he wasn't anxious to do that. He never liked the cities with their high crime rates and thought that if very many people survived they would be worse now.

*********


CHAPTER 5


Amy decided she wasn't ready to sit and ride that far for a few days, so it was a week later when they planned to go visiting. Clay had been busy for that week, hauling home a lot of things. He had found a delivery truck at the herb and cheese place up on the hill a mile past the crossroads store. The cheese was all moldy green and past hope, but the herbs and spices were just fine. There was a herd of cattle in the big pasture across the highway, too. The cattle were getting along fine, so he had no immediate plans to do anything with them, besides opening some gates so they could get to the hay barn.

The delivery truck was a refrigerator unit. The driver had gone to the house and died there. The truck box was full of molded and spoiled cheese, but it was in plastic containers so Clay had simply shoved it all out the back and left it there. He left the door open and sloshed it out with buckets of water from the well by the house that had a hand pump. The next day he'd gone back with Amy and some spare batteries and diesel fuel. The engine smoked and rattled for a while before it ran halfway decent, but it ran fairly well.

Amy drove the pickup home following him in the big truck in case he had trouble, but it went okay. They stopped at the crossroads store and got some diesel fuel additives that improved the big truck's engine a lot. The fuel tank was nearly full, so he let it run for half a day to charge up the batteries. He was thinking about how to get started farming some ground, and that truck meant he could haul home what he needed.

*********

Tom Neilson had a like new chainsaw that Clay had brought home, so he put that and it's fuel can and tools in the pickup before they left home. He threw in a long tow chain and some tools, in case they found a tree down across the road. It was still too muddy in the fields to be dodging trees that way, 4 wheel drive or not. There were no wreckers around to pull him out if he got stuck.

Except for some tree limbs he moved by hand, they had no trouble in the 5 miles to Roscoe Beam's farm. The baby rode on Amy's lap, and she was getting tired of holding her by the time the trip was over.

"We need to find a car seat for her if we are going to do much of this," Amy said.

"I'll watch for one," he said. He drove slowly up the Beam's long lane.

Roscoe's shotgun peeked out a window of the barn at them until he realized who it was. The older man stepped outside and waved when Clay stopped and shut the truck off.

"We brought you some things," Amy said as he came toward her side of the truck.

"Sorry 'bout the gun," Roscoe said, "Cain't be too careful now. C'mon in the house and set a while."

Clay got out and shook hands with him. "Good to see you're still up and goin'."

"Where'd the truck come from?"

Clay told of his experiences and what he'd found. "We need to start gatherin' up some things before they all go bad."

Roscoe nodded and said, "You think the flu is all gone now?"

"I don't know, but we don't have a lot of choice about it. It's get it now, or do without," Clay said.

Roscoe saw the baby when Amy caught up with the men. "Looks like you got a brand new one there!"

Roscoe's wife Marta met them at the door and spied the baby. "Oooh, who's this you're carryin'?"

Amy smiled and said, "Louisa May. She's 9 days old today."

"Well, come in and rest. You shouldn't be up runnin' around yet. Take that big chair. Can I get you something to drink?"

Amy said, "We brought you some things. Clay has been down to the crossroads store."

Clay came in with a big cardboard box and set in on the floor. "There's coffee, tea, sugar, and some spices and such in there. We got a lot more at home. Just tell us what you need and we'll get it."

They talked until nearly noon and parted after Clay and Roscoe got their pickup going with a new battery and some fuel additive. He left another new battery for the old man's tractor. The men planned to get together the next day and work out a trip to begin gathering goods, over Marta's objections that they might bring home disease.

The next morning over a cup of coffee, Roscoe said, "We need to get some of those trailers from the rental place in town, if they're still there. We could tow 'em home and let 'em set. They seal up pretty good."

Amy asked, "Are you sure Marta is okay with this?"

"No, she ain't okay with it, but she knows we need a lot of things an' there ain't any help for it. We got to do it, and pretty quick now. It ain't just her. Ever'body's scared to death. We give some things to the Harris's on up the hollow, and they was about afraid to let us in. People is about out of everything, though, and they're startin' to go lookin'. The Collier's has been over to around Scottsburg and got some stuff from some houses on the way. Didn't go into town, though. Didn't see anybody they said. Must not be many folks left at all."

"The Harris's, they brought home a crank powered grain mill that they been usin' to make flour. We need to find more of them. We used it and made enough to do us for a while, but now I got the tractor goin' again I can grind all you want with the feed grinder. Long as we got diesel, that is."

Clay said, "That's another problem. The diesel and gas ain't gonna last forever. It goes bad when it gets old. Even if we can still find some, we''ll be stuck with things that won't run."

The older man looked shocked at that and said, "I hadn't thought about that. Oh, damn. We might have to go to farmin' with horses again. How the hell will we cut wood?"

"I dunno," Clay said. "but we better be figuring it out pretty soon."

Amy said, "Let's get what we can now. I don't want to have to dress my little girl in buckskins. We need diapers and clothes and sewing stuff and all kinds of things."

Roscoe said, "We need a place to store a lot of stuff and take care of it. No good gatherin' up stuff and havin' it go bad."

Amy said, "How about the church up here by your place? It's big and it'd hold a lot. They just put a new roof on it, too. It should be good for a long time."

"That sounds good," Roscoe said. "But we need to think about this before we go haulin' all kinds of stuff home. We gotta get crops in pretty soon, and if diesel fuel is gonna go bad, there ain't no need to go crazy haulin' home a lot of stuff that depends on it. We need to think about the long term, too. I want to find some horses, big horses like the Amish use. Maybe we better go see if any of them is livin'."

Clay nodded and said, "Let's do that first. Take some stuff along to give 'em if any of 'em made it, and see if we can work together on this. I know some of them that lived out west of town. I used to do some welding for a few of them and they know my old truck. I should drive it out there so maybe they won't shoot at us."

"Is your old one still going?"

"Yeah. I put a battery in it and I had to find a hand pump to air up a low tire, but it'll go now."

********


CHAPTER 6


Amos Schwartz shook his head and said, "Me an' Delilah is all that's left. Ever'body else died. They got that fever and went to pukin' up blood and didn't last no time. We was home and workin' outside and hadn't been to town in while, so we didn't know about it 'til we went over to the blacksmith's an' he was layin' dead in the yard with two of his kids. We did the best we could at buryin' 'em, but it was a hard row. I seen two of my best friends die an' they wasn't a blessed thing I could for 'em. They kep' sayin' to get away, don't touch me. I did, but it was hard."

He sat there and cried, unashamed. He finally said, "I did what I could fer the horses and the stock. Mostly I just let 'em out to pastures and saw to it they could get water."

"We didn't know how it went out here. Sounds about like what we saw," Clay said. "I was at work at the lumber yard when the boss died right there on the spot and the woman in the office was raving outa her head with that fever. She fell over on the desk and died inside of half an hour. It happened so FAST! I ran outa there and started drivin' home. I saw people laying dead in the streets and I seen one man fall out the door of the drug store. I went home and stayed there. The radio was sayin' it was some kind of flu, but then the stations all stopped. I reckon the people all died. There's---remains---laying everywhere."

The men sat there silent with tears on their faces as Amos' wife came outside followed by 3 small children. Noone spoke for some time.

Finally, Roscoe said, "We brought you some coffee and sugar and some other things. We got it from that grocery on this side of town. It should be clean, 'cause there was nobody in there and the doors were all locked up. It smells a little, 'cause there was some meat spoilt in there, but this stuff wasn't anywhere close to the mess. We stayed away from that."

Clay said, "We brought you some .22 shells and some shotgun shells. We got trouble with dogs and coyotes, and thought you might need 'em."

"Thanks a lot. Yeah, the dogs are like the old plagues of Egypt. They get into everything and they're MEAN! We're 'fraid for the kids to be outside without us."

Roscoe said, "I got an idea!"

Clay asked, "What?"

"Bout them dogs. Let's go to the feed store and get some of that fly bait they sell. The man there told me once it would kill about anything and do it quick. We can't be up all day and night shootin' dogs. Let's poison 'em."

Clay said, "Have to be careful with poison. Most anything is liable to get into it."

Amos said, "It sounds good to me. I can't get nothin' done fer the dogs. Gotta carry the gun all the time."

"We'll fix you up," Roscoe said.

Clay asked, "Did you say there's a lot of horses that nobody owns now?"

Amos nodded. "They's horses all over and nobody to tend 'em. Good horses, too. I can't do much for 'em and keep my place goin'. Not enough hours in the day."

"The gasoline and diesel fuel is going to go bad in a year or so," Clay told him. "That means we're going to have to use horses to farm with. Our machinery won't go without fuel."

Amos said, "I wished we lived closer together. A man needs some neighbors to help back and forth."

Roscoe and Clay looked at each other, and then Clay spoke. "You can live about anywhere you want to now. There's empty farms all around us that you could move into any time. Good bottom land, too. If it ain't worked this year it'll start goin' back to brush and we'll never get it back."

Roscoe said, "We need to learn from you about how you do things. We're all livin' like Amish now an' there's a lot we don't know. If you'd consider coming to live by us, we'll help you move and get set up. Do the plowin' for you this year, too, while the tractors still work."

Amos looked at his wife who gave a slight nod of agreement. "Let's do it then."

Two days later Amos and his family were settled in the farm just up the road from Clay and Amy.

**********

Clay stopped at the hardware store in town that had a Radio Shack section and took a collection of radios and the biggest 220 volt generator they had. He and Roscoe worked for a couple hours getting the generator hooked up at the gas station. It took a couple trips to the electric shop for wire and parts, but they made the hookup and soon had gasoline pumping into Clay's truck.

"Mister, have you got anything to eat?"

Roscoe turned around so suddenly the boy started to run before he said, "Hold on boy. We'll find you somethin'."

Clay got a fried egg and biscuit sandwich out of the truck and handed it to the boy, who looked to be maybe 12 or 13 years old.

Roscoe got his thermos of milk from the cab and gave it to the boy then sat and watched it all disappear.

Between bites the boy said, "Thanks mister. I was really hungry. All of us are. We cain't get into that big grocery over there and the rest is empty now."

Clay asked, "All of you? How many people are you talkin' about?"

"Five of us. Me an' one other boy and three girls. We're all that's left in town, now that the old man died."

That got Roscoe's attention. "When was that?"

" 'Bout a month ago. He had some kinda breathin' trouble and he just choked and passed out. We didn't know what to do. He had those inhaler things that he used, but they was all ran out. Said it was the azzma, or somethin' like that."

"He was takin' care of you? Helpin' you kids?"

"Yeah, he told us a lotta things. Told us how to get good water to drink and helped us get food and learn to cook it on a fire an' all. None of us wanted to go home. Our parents died and it was awful. We did get some clothes and stuff, but the girls won't go back to their house."

"Where are the others? We can get 'em somethin' to eat," Clay said.

"We been living in Mister Williams' basement. It's warmer down there than in the house, and he had a water tank outside that runs into the basement without a pump. The house is out past the paint store on the highway. I come to town to look for food and seen you here."

"We'll get something for 'em to eat," Roscoe said. "You get in the truck and we'll go to the grocery. We busted the back door open this morning."

"All right! We couldn't figure out how to get in. We threw rocks at the front windows, but they wouldn't break. So, we been gettin' stuff from other houses, me an' Ben. It's bad in there. Dead people."

The boy looked haunted. Clay said softly, "I know. I've been in a few of them. Let's go now."

*********

When the kids were fed, Roscoe said, "We need another truck. Let's go to the Ford dealer and see if we can get one going."

The new truck started easily and was soon filled with gas. They made a few stops at a clothing store and had the back end piled with groceries when the trucks headed for Roscoe's farm.

Marta Beam heard the story from Roscoe and Clay as they herded the kids into the house. Marta shook her head and said, "We can't let kids have to live like that."

She looked over the kids and said, "Food is almost ready. Lemme get you something to eat and drink, but first things first." She pointed at the bathroom door and said, " You all go get washed up. At least faces and hands. I'll be puttin' something on the table."

"Yes Ma'am," the smallest girl said.

The kids trooped into the bathroom and came out looking cleaner. Marta thought they were too somber looking for kids that age, and wondered what all they had endured. She shuffled chairs and added one from the desk to have enough. From the kitchen, Marta took the soup pot off the stove and put it on a trivet in the center of the dining table, then began to fill bowls.

As she went back into the kitchen for milk and cornbread, she told them, "Don't be bashful. There's plenty to eat and more where that came from."

When stomachs were full, Marta said, "My name is Marta Beam and that's our friend Clay Whitaker. the ugly old guy is my husbnd Roscoe. Now tell me your names and how old you are and I'll try to remember them."

The smaller boy said, "I'm Dylan Draper an' I'm almost 13, and that's my sister Melanie," he said, pointing. "She's 14. And that's my other sister Emma. She's 10."

The other boy said, "I'm Benjamin Scott. I'm 13."

"Gina Kelley. I'm 12."

"I'm not telling how old I am," Marta said, but Roscoe is 58. He's going to get to help with the laundry here pretty soon. Do you kids have any clean clothes?"

Gina said, "We've got more clothes, but we couldn't wash ours very good."

Clay said, "I'll get 'em outa the truck. We stopped at Goodwill and got some things for 'em, but I'll let the kids sort it out."

Marta said, "Okay, is anybody feeling bad or hurt anyplace?" All the heads shook no, so she went on to the next thing. "Good! We're going to take turns in the bathtub, so you figure out who's first and we'll have you some clean clothes ready."

"We'll have to bed down one of you on the couch, but we have 2 spare bedrooms that will handle boys in one and girls in the other."

Benjamin said, "I'll take the couch. I've been sleeping on a couch."

Clay said, "Some of you could stay with me an' my wife if you want to. We've got a couple spare bedrooms. You want to go meet my wife and decide? We have a new baby, but that's all at our house."

"I wanna stay with my sisters," Dylan said. He got an anxious look from Melanie, the oldest, but he held his ground.

Gina Kelley stood close to Benjamin as he said, "We'd like to stay together, me and Gina."

"You can all sleep here tonight and we'll sort that out later. We won't make you do anything you don't want to do. But I think Clay has a good idea. Why don't you all go with him to his house and meet Amy and the baby, then you can come back here. It'll take some time to make sure you have what you need, so we can do all that tomorrow.

The next morning Melanie spoke for the group of kids. "We'd like to stay together, but there's not enough room either place, so Dylan and me and Emma would like to stay here, if it's okay. Benjamin and Gina want to stay with Clay and Amy."

Roscoe and Marta smiled at them all and said, "Then we'll just do that, just like you said. I think it will be just fine. It's not far to Clay's, so you kids can see each other a lot. We'll have to get you kids some schooling somehow, so you'll be together for that, I'm sure."

********

[patience]

CHAPTER 7



Amos Schwartz, Clay, and Roscoe made a trip to the tiny village of New Philadelphia where they discovered that the only two families had survived there. Jacob Knepp, the harness maker, had 5 children ranging from 8 to 18 years old. His young neighbor Daniel Schmidt and his wife had 3 kids, 2, 4, and 6 year old. Jacob invited Amos and his family to move to their neighborhood, but Amos soon convinced him to come look at the farms where he lived now. Daniel went along and together they decided the rich bottom land was very desirable.

Several trips were required with two large trucks to move the two families over a peroiod of a couple weeks. The men and Jacob's girls Martha and Sarah helped clean the houses and get them ready to move in. His oldest son Isaac was 12 years old and a big help getting a hand well pump installed and some stalls ready in the barns on both their new farm and also the farm Daniel would be taking over. Their wives came and spent the night a few times getting everything in order, cooking outdoor over a fire until the final moving day when their wood cookstoves were moved.

********

"We need to get the biggest farm equipment we can find and plow this whole valley," Roscoe said.

Jim Collier agreed, saying, "If diesel is not going to last, then we have to use it and get the best out of it now. If we can get most of the valley plowed and planted in pasture and hay, we'll have chance at farming with horses later. They are just too slow to be trying to play catch-up. I know where to find what we need up by Seymour. We'll have to road the tractors and equipment down here. They're too big to haul. Highway driving is hard on tractor tires, but we won't be wearing them out farming, it sounds like."

Roscoe said, "It ain't that far. Those things'll run what, maybe 20 miles an hour? They sure ain't no traffic to worry about now, so we can go right down the middle of the highway."

"Let's do it ASAP, then," Clay said. "I told Amos we'd plow his farm and those friends of his from over by New Philadelphia. That's over 300 acres, and we've each got a lot more to do. This bottom land is slow to dry out. Can we get it all done in time to get crops put out?"

Jim grinned and said, "We'll spend more time servicing the tractors than we do working a thousand acres! If we can get 2 or 3 of those big ones going, it'll keep somebody busy hauling fuel and food to the drivers. We can do a thousand acres in a week, easy. What we need to do now is get everything else ready. Get fuel stocked up down here and find enough seed and fertilizer and some trucks to spread it."

Clay had called the meeting at Roscoe's farm with the Collier,Schwartz, Knepp, Schmidt, and Harris families. He told Jim Collier, "You're the one who needs to be bossing the operation this year. You've got the experience at this. Tell us what to do when and we'll do our best to make it happen. Somebody take notes here so we know what we all agreed to and what to do next."

Albert Harris said, "There's that big truck stop over at Seymour. If we get lucky we might find a tanker of fuel up there. Might find some other good stuff too. When I was driving OTR, there was always 30 or 40 trucks there."

"Anybody else that can drive a semi? Not me, I mean, I could learn I guess, but I never drove one," Clay said.

Jim said, "All I've driven is my grain trucks, and not all that much, but I can get by at it. I can't thread a needle with a 52 foot trailer, but I can drive one down here."

Clay said, "That oughta do it. We can drive somebody up there in my truck and then lend a hand to get things working. Now, about seed. Who knows where to find enough seed?"

Amos said, "You wanted the open pollinated seed if you can get it, you said?"

"That's right. We have to save our seed for next year."

"Well, I know where there's plenty of wheat, and soybeans, oats, and corn. It's that yellow dent corn that we grew and saved seed all the time. And there's some spelt, too, for horse feed. We always saved our seed for crops."

Anita Harris said, "We've been saving our garden seeds for years. We don't have enough for everyone, but we can share some. We got a generator back right before the-- Anyway we got one and we use a vacuum sealer to store our seeds to keep the bugs out."

"That works good now," Marta said. "But that all depends on stuff that's going to run out. We can do it that way now, but we have to think about how we can do things without plastic bags and electric machines. I think our Amish friends can help us there."

Daniel Schmidt said, "We save seeds in bottles. We put in some Bay leaves and peppers and have no bugs in them."

Jim Collier and Al Harris were deep in conversation about trucks when Jim's wife Sylvia said, "Why don't we talk about livestock? We're going to need pigs and chickens and cattle. We need somebody to work on plans for who will have which ones and how to feed them, and how we can find them."

"There's animals running wild now," Amy said. "I've seen chickens everywhere, and some pigs in the woods."

Marta said, "That will be a job, rounding up pigs and chickens. They'll be wild as deer now."

"Maybe we can trap 'em somehow," Anita Harris said.

Jacob Knepp said, "Ve can find pigs. All the pigs you vant. Ve vill need a truck to get dem here. It vill take some days to get dem togedder. Dey are in pasture near my farm. Pigs in der woods iss bad. Dey get mean and attack us. If dey get mean, ve need to shoot dem."

Roscoe said, "You're right about that. We need pigs to raise, but we better kill every wild hog we see. They get viscious and they'll ruin crops. My brother in Oklahoma told me about the wild hogs out there."

Clay said, "As soon as somebody is ready for pigs, we'll go get the ones you're talking about, Jacob."

The conversations went on until it nearly sundown when Clay said, "We better call it quits for now. Looks like me and Roscoe are going with Al and Jim to find trucks, fuel, and big tractors tomorrow. Everyone else take an idea you heard here or one of your own and write down what you need to make it happen. Let's get back together in a week and see where we are then."

********



CHAPTER 8 JUNE, 2015

"I'd say we got about 1,200 acres worked down," Jim told Clay. "There's 80 acres sowed in alfalfa and about 400 acres in hay, mostly Timothy, Brome, and Orchard Grass for the horses, and some Red Clover for cattle. There's a couple hundred acres of those hilly fields that we disced up deep and sowed in Fescue to hold those hillsides. If we can keep that mowed to keep the weeds out of it, we'll have good Fall and Winter pasture for a couple hundred head of cattle there."

"They're planting corn now in those 2 big fields down inthe lower bottoms, about 160 acres of it. The rest is for whatever people decide on. Lot of room for wheat this Fall and we found a couple fields of wheat that reseeded itself up by the highway. I'll try combining that and see if we can get something from it to use for feed and flour."

Roscoe asked, How much of this can we do with horses when the time comes? Anybody talk to the Amish folks about that?"

Jim said, "All 3 families wanted 80 acres broke up to plant this year. They say they can do that easy. But Jacob Knepp said that if he can get more horses over here and ready to work, him and his 2 boys can work a lot more. He brought all the harness and supplies from his harness shop. He said if we get a couple more families and enough horses, we can farm most all of it. Mostly in hay and pasture, but mowing it each year and grain farming about half of it, he says."

Roscoe nodded. "The problem then is getting enough grass and hay ground for this year so we can keep the horses here, right?"

"That's right. I think I can arrange that. There's some kind of poor pasture on the next farm over from me. I've got 80 acres in hay now, so we can winter a lot of horses if we aren't feeding beef or selling hay like I planned."

Roscoe said, "Looks like we've got a chance of making it this year. If we can keep things running for a year or two with the tractors, maybe we can get there."

"We need more cultivators and soon," Jim said. "There's no herbicides to be found, so everything will go to weeds if we can't keep it cultivated. Me and Al Harris are going up to look around Brownstown where the vegetable growers were. They might have some old cultivators, but they went to herbicides lately, too. Most of the old cultivators got sold for junk years ago."

"Nothin' comes easy, does it?"

Jacob Knepp told Clay, "Ve haf cultivators. Ve need to haf more people to drive horses, but ve can find cultivators."

"We'll get a truck and you show us where to go," Clay told him.

A week later there were 2 mid-size tractors and 4 horse teams cultivating corn, soybeans, and large vegetable plots. Jacob's 16 and 18 year old girls, Sarah and Martha, expertly drove teams along with their brother Isaac. Daniel Schmidt drove tractor and cultivator with Jim Collier while Clay and Al Harris were busy with other chores and doing oil changes and keeping the fuel topped off. They kept at it steadily for the next 6 weeks until the corn was too tall to get through, and the mid-summer heat lessened the need for cultivating.

**********

"Get that basket under the pump and I'll wash those beans," Amy said. "You all can go to the shade and cool off."

"I want a drink first," Benjamin said.

Gina echoed, "Me too. It's hot out here." She wiped sweat away with her hand and headed for the pump.

"There's some lemon Kool Ade in the kitchen," Amy said. She glanced at the baby on the porch in her playpen and began to wash the green beans.

Clay came out and said, "Me and Al Harris are going up to the truck stop again to see what's in those other trailers up there. If we find a good one, he'll drive it back. I got my truck tank with treated fuel in it and the fuel pump on it and spre batteries to start 'em with. Anything you want that we might find up that way?"

"Canning jars. Always be lookin' for canning jars and LIDS! I don't know what we'll do when the rubber seals quit working on canning jars. Oh! And some work clothes for the kids. They're growing fast and they need more clothes. Gina has shot up several inches this summer and her clothes are way too tight. She's wearing my shorts now. Look for a women's size 10, and Benjamin is your size, but he's only about a 28 waist. See if you can find some fabric that might suit the Amish folks, too. I'm sure they need it. Oh, and everybody needs shoes. It doesn't matter much now, but come winter it will be important."

"I'll look into that. We should find something in a town that big.

Clay didn't say anything about it then, but he was remembering that he'd done some construction work on a cannery over by Scottsburg. He was wondering if they could work out how to do the tin cans at home. That place was full of them. Of course it ran on natural gas, but he thought they could make it work on propane if they tried. There was that big propane dealer over that way, too, and propane would keep forever, it the tanks didn't leak.

That evening Clay came in with a big grin on his face. The pressure cooker was hissing and making the jiggling noise, the house was full of steam and his Amy was sweating up a storm. She looked at his silly grin and said, "What?"

"Come see."

Parked in the road was a semi truck that said WAL MART emblazoned on one side.

"They have a distributor hub in Seymour. Anything you want and truckloads of it. We got a forklift going and that one is half full of canning jars. The rest is fabrics and clothes. We'll get shoes the next trip."

Amy said, "Well. Ask and ye shall receive."

The next day there were 3 buggies in the yard and Amish women were chuckling over the trailer contents.

"One day the trucks von't have fuel and these miracles you do vill stop," Jacob Knepp said.

Clay said, "That is so true. There are a few things that really worry me about that."

"Vhat is dat?"

"How to grind grain for feed and flour. How to cut firewood. How to do welding without any gas for torches or gasoline for that portable arc welder. How to get in enough hay for the winter to feed all those horses and cattle."

"Some things ve can help. The hay is hard work, but it can be done with horses and put it in stacks. To cut wood by hand iss a lot of vork. Velding can be done in der forge. Ve haf to find one. To grind der flour iss hard. Ve not grind grain for feed. Let der cows und pigs chew."

"How about threshing wheat and oats? Can we do that by hand?"

"Iss too much vork," Jacob said.

"But can we do it if we have to?"

"It can be done. Der cutting is done wit a scythe when the grain is not so dry, or der grain falls off in der field. Straw iss tied in bundles. Stack der bundles in shocks to dry in field. Den bundles are hauled to the barn where it may stay until you are ready to thresh it with a flail. Flail iss stick to beat the straw. Den iss taken outside for wind. Grain you throw up for wind to blow away the chaff. Den grain iss clean to use."

"Der vork is too much. Ve use horses pull a binder to cut grain. Der machine ties bundles und ve haul to a t'reshing machine wit diesel engine. But iss no better dan a combine when dere is no diesel. Dere are no new binders, only very old ones. If ve cut wheat wit a binder, we can do maybe 10 acres in 2 days, maybe less if ve have no trouble. To cut wheat wit a scythe, one man can cut maybe 2 or 3 acres in a day, and another man must tie it in bundles, maybe 2 men. It iss a hard way to get wheat for bread. This we need to work on."

Clay said, "Jim told me he could cut 50 acres of wheat a day with a big combine and have the grain clean enough to use. That's a big difference. We have a big problem coming up."

Jacob said, "Farms must be not so big wit more people to vork. Iss the only way wit'out the big machines. Ve do not need so much wheat. My family maybe eats 2 loaves of bread a day. Maybe less. A bushel of wheat is 60 pounds so it makes 60 loaves and ve eat for a month. So, 12 bushels of wheat is all ve need for bread for a year. I grow 40 bushels of wheat on an acre, so dat is enough to feed chickens and have some to sell. I do not need to grow 100 acres of wheat. What would I do with 4,000 bushels? Dere is no place to sell it now, and nobody to eat so much."

Clay asked, "What will you grow on your farm?"

Jacob said, "Ve grow five acres of wheat and have some to sell. Ve grow 10 acres of corn and feed to pigs and cows and horses. Cows and horses need pasture and hay. Ve grow 10 acres of hay. I will have room to grow somet'ing to sell and buy udder things. Maybe ve haff milk cows and sell milk and make butter. Dat would be good. Ve make a good living with 120 acres, but it iss hard work."

********


CHAPTER 9



Amy was kneading bread dough while Clay told her what Jacob had said.

She asked, "So is everybody going to be farmers now?"

"No," Clay said. "What I'm figuring out is that with tractors and combines one farmer could feed a lot of people, maybe 100 or several hundred. But farming with horses and doing things the hard way a farmer might only be able to feed 10 people. I'm not sure, but it won't be very many. That means we need more farmers for the number of people we have, but not everybody."

"So, what are we going to do for a living?"

"I don't know yet. I'm not a farmer, but we can raise most of what we eat. I'll have to do something besides that to trade for what we don't raise or scrounge from salvaging things. Salvaging won't last forever. Things will start going bad form the weather and nobody taking care of them."

Amy said, "You've done welding and worked on machinery. Maybe you could do that."

Clay shook his head, "Not without electricity. I'll think of something. I need to figure out what's left to salvage and what I can do with it."

*********

A fringe of ridges and steep hollows bordered Royce's Creek, all that remained of the old plateau after millenia of erosion since the last ice age. Daniel Schmidt's farmhouse and buildings lay in the mouth of one such hollow sheltered from winter winds. Broad fields spread out in the creek valley beyond along the creek. Corn grew shirt pocket high in the July sun and the creek had slowed to a gentle flow.

This Sunday the valley folks had gathered at the Schmidt farm for a short community worship service followed by dinner in the yard and visiting.

"Ve haff to keep cultivating," Jacob Knepp said. "Weeds keep coming."

Albert Harris said, "It's all that seed that's left in the ground from the days of no-till farming. It will take years to get rid of it all."

"The corn is too tall now to get the cultivators through most of it," Jim Collier said. "The weeds are going to hurt yields this year, and the weeds we don't kill now will go to seed and come back next year."

Daniel said, "We can plow again this Fall and be ready to sow oats early in the Spring. The oats will choke out the weeds and we need oats for the horses."

Jacob agreed and said, "Soybeans we follow wit' wheat this Fall. Ve plow a pasture field for corn next year. It makes the ground better that way."

Jim said, "We can't grow continuous corn now without the fertilizer to feed it. We'll have to rotate crops like they used to do. We need to find some clover seed and sow it in the wheat fields this winter. Then when the wheat comes off in July, the clover will have a good start. It might not make a hay crop next year, but we can pasture it in the Fall. Clover grows thick enough to choke out a lot of weeds, too. Dad used to do that, but we got away from it to make more money with corn. I guess those days are gone now. There's no place to sell all that corn now anyway."

Jim's wife, Sylvia said, "It's a good thing we had the teenagers that could drive extra farmequiment this year. I don't see how all the work could have been done without them."

Several heads nodded agreement.

"Well, I'm no farmer," Clay Whitaker said, "but with somebody to tell me what needs done I can drive tractors and trucks. That rush is gonna be over when the fuel goes bad, or things go wrong we can't fix. I don't know what I'll be doing then."

Roscoe Beam asked, "Didn't you do steel work or something before?"

Clay answered, "Yeah, I worked for Parker Construction out of New Albany. Did a little of everything, but mostly worked in the shop fixing equipment. Did a lot of welding on the heavy stuff and some wrench work. I helped on the steel erection jobs when I wasn't busy in the shop. But that's all over now with no electricity to run a welder and no construction going on."

Daniel Schmidt asked, "Can you make horseshoes?"

Clay said, "I've never made any. I've done a little forging in the shop at work, the heat-an'-beat sorta thing to get stuff straightened out."

Jacob nodded sagely and said, "Ve need a blacksmith. Much horse machinery is old and ve need to make new. You must get a forge and do this."

Clay looked skeptical as he said, "I'm not so sure about that. That would take a whole shop and a lot of steel."

Jacob shrugged and said, "You find all dese other things, the clothing and more. You could find steel and bolts and make dese things. We need someone to make fore carts and put long tongues in the tractor implements, then we pull them with horses. I have seen this done. I show you what we need. Come see me soon."

Jacob realized he was sounding more like his English neighbors. He had always spoken German in their home, but more dealings with their English neighbors was rubbing off. He decided that was a good thing. English was fine with him. Jacob was less concerned about such details of his religion than the Elders of his community had been. He was concerned about raising his family with good people and he was convinced he had found some. Then he remembered that all the Elders were dead now. It occurred to him that he might be elected as Elder for their new small Amish group. He frowned at that, not wanting the position, but realizing that noone else fit it now.

**********

[patience]

Chapter 10


Bottled water was getting very hard to find. It had been over a year now and there wasn't much of anything left in the city. Eddie Grimes had been lucky and he knew it, or he wouldn't have lived this long. The subdivision had been a haven for him until today. It was a huge tract of houses, maybe half a mile long and it varied from 3 to 5 blocks wide. The people had mostly been young families, and Eddy had figured out that the kids had brought the plague home from schools. Everybody in the place must have all died within a few days. Oddly, the housing projects, as the welfare apartment complex was called, fared better for a short time. Some of the old people had lived for weeks, and that was why Eddie left there. Those old devils would shoot you in a heartbeat.

The gangs were all dead now. Eddie had seen them partying after they made a score somewhere, and he didn't want any part of them. They didn't have sense enough to stay away from plague bodies. They'd walk right up and take stuff off a dead person. Any fool should know that you could catch diseases by touching sick people, and this was worse than anything he'd ever heard about. One day a person was fine, but the next he was deathly sick and might die that day, but for sure within a couple more. Eddie decided that people must have been carrying the disease for a while before they got sick, and spread it around. There was no other way it could have spread so much. It reminded him of that Ebola virus in Africa he had seen on TV. People died coughing up blood. He had never been so scared in his life.

Not being very big, Eddie learned young that he had to out think the bigger kids to survive. They didn't like him all that much, but the neighborhood kids all knew Eddie was smart and could figure things out. He was using everything he could think of just to stay alive now. He had gotten by drinking only bottled water, and eating only packaged foods. He washed everything with bleach water before he touched it. He had run away from the housing project when their neighbor died, puking blood. His sister had never come home from work, so there was nothing holding him there.

He'd waited a week, but they were out of food in the apartment so he couldn't wait any longer. The gas had quit working, so he put what he could carry in his backpack and took off out the back door and down the alley to the empty factory to camp out. He knew the wino's that hung out in there. There was only one of them left and he didn't last long. Eddie didn't have a better place to go, with the plague all around him, so he set up to live on the fourth floor where he could see all around. It was nice up there, if you stayed away from where the pigeons were. He found a corner office that suited him and didn't smell like pigeons. He could lock himself in when he wanted to sleep there and the rats didn't come up this high.

He never cooked in there to keep the rats from smelling food. There was an old truck parked down the alley that had a good back door he could unlatch from the inside or out. He was scared of it at first, afraid somebody could lock him in, but he figured out the locks and knew how to get out the back way. It was an old delivery truck, the stepvan kind. The front doors were decrepit, but they had concrete blocks wedged in to keep them shut so nobody could get in that way, either. Some guy had a lot of tools in it and a padlock on the door, but he'd busted that off and got in. It had a vent in the roof so he could cook in there and nobody could tell where the smell came from. The smell of dead people was strong enough to cover it up, at least for a while. He'd had to sleep in there a few times, when he'd seen people around.

A hobo stove had kept him from freezing last winter in the factory, but wood was hard to find now. He'd got by with sticks from trees and broken up furniture. He had a hatchet he got from the truck to cut his wood with and found a file in there to sharpen it. It was on a utility belt and he carried it everywhere. You could do a lot of things with a hatchet. This one had a rubber covered steel handle and a claw thing on the back of the head that he'd used to open a lot of doors.

Going out very early in the morning to find food had worked the best. Most of the canned food had frozen and burst last winter. He'd found some in the basement of a house that kept him going, but it was gone now. He'd have to move and he didn't like the idea. He'd watched the city for months from the top floor of the factory. Nobody was moving around now, at least not in the daytime. Either they were all dead, or they were smart enough to stay hidden. He'd had to take the chance, so he'd gone out with his loaded backpack just as the sun came up one morning in late winter. It had only taken him a couple hours to get to the subdivision he had seen from the factory and find a place to hide in a garden shed. He ate some cold canned chicken and part of a can of peas and waited for dark. He could see out some cracks in the cheap wooden shed. Nothing was moving out there but some birds and a couple cats. He worried about dogs. A lot of them had starved, but there were some real bad ones left.

It had taken him two more days to find a house he liked that didn't have any bodies in it. He had scouted some other houses and found bottles of bleach that he used to clean everything. It had been much nicer living in the house, but he had to go farther to scrounge up some food. He wouldn't touch the stuff in houses where there were bodies.

There was a grocery warehouse down the road about a mile, but he had almost run out of food before he dared to go in there. The door lock had been broken, although the door was still shut. He watched it for several days before he took the chance to go inside. There were two bodies in the front of the warehouse, but they were pretty dried up and he thought the food in cans and sealed containers would be all right. There were several pallets of water in gallon jugs. They weren't busted from freezing,so he knew it had stayed warm enough to not damage the canned food. It kept him eating well for the rest of the winter and into early summer.

The problem came after he'd been in his house for several weeks. He had heard something like a motor running a long ways off, but it quit and he couldn't tell where it was. A couple hours later, he was still watching out the bedroom window in the upper part of the split level house. An older man walked out of the house across the street late that evening and headed straight for his house. He had the look of a scavenger like himself. He moved like a ghost, slow and deliberate, watching all around him. Eddie had seen several of them from high in the factory. He'd seen some murders, too. His mind raced thinking what to do. He knew the guy could smell the difference in his house, because he had used the bleach and aired it out, so it didn't smell musty like the others. He'd only have one chance.

The man walked around to the back door, watching everything. Eddie ran down the 6 carpetted stairs of the split level house as quietly as he could and stood beside the back door along the wall of the mudroom, hatchet held high. The man fumbled with the doorknob, then Eddie heard the wood splinter and break. The shade was down so he couldn't see Eddy plastered against the wall behind the door. The old guy waited for the longest time before entering.

The first thing Eddie saw was a gun held low and then the man's head close behind it as he came in crouched. Eddie swung the hatchet down hard at his neck and heard the solid thud. The man dropped to the floor, quivered a bit, and died. The gun clattered to the floor and all was quiet again. Eddie stood there with the bloody hatchet raised until he realized he was shaking and lowered it. He had never killed a man before. He had never even won a fight before.

Surprised that he hadn't been shot, Eddie's heart was pounding when he looked at the dead man. Then he threw up all over the floor.

********


Chapter 11

Two days later Eddie was riding down the street just before daylight on the old guy's gas scooter. He had the old guy's whole outfit--the scooter with 2 plastic gas jugs on the back, the trailer thing behind, and he was wearing the old guy's backpack and military gear. There was a holster for the Beretta pistol and spare magazines and ammunition for it. A small .22 rifle was in the clips made for it across the handlebars. He was surprised that the scooter pulled the heavy trailer so well. It was bigger than the tiny cheap ones, but very quiet. It would go faster than those little ones, too.

He had dragged the old guy inside the house and shut the door as soon as he was able to function. Eddie had never been a violent person and hated those who were. He thought about it and decided that the important thing now was to get what he could from the dead man and get away from there as fast as he could. He'd taken the military belt and suspenders off the body and cleaned it up with a rag wet with water and bleach. Later, he backtracked the man through the muddy spring-thawed yards and found the scooter in a garage on the next street.

Eddie had had enough of the city. He was going out of town as fast as the scooter would take him. The problem was, he had never spent much time away from the city. He knew the first few small towns, but he had only been on a couple trips to his uncle's place and that was a long time ago. They lived in a small town and had a garden in back of the house. It was the biggest yard he had ever seen back when he was a little kid. He thought he could find it again. He knew his uncle's address.

It was a risk to ride on the road in broad daylight, but he was more afraid to ride at night when he couldn't see much and didn't know the roads. In his 22 years, Eddie had seen a lot, but the open countryside was unfamiliar and worrisome to him. He was shaking again and decided to pull off the road in a deserted looking driveway. It had been a long time since he ate before daylight and he was hungry. He thought if he ate now it would settle his nerves.

There was tall grass along the narrow gravel driveway. He stopped and shut off the scooter to listen, but didn't hear anything. The old house still had a faded foreclosure paper stuck in the front window. He rolled the scooter on down the driveway where it was out of sight of the road between the garage and the house. A weedy field stretched a long way behind the fenced back yard. He could see one farmhouse some distance down the road, but there was no evidence of life there.

After his first hot meal in a couple days, Eddie felt better and spent some time looking around. The house was easy to get into. There was no furniture inside, just some trash on the floors. He found the water heater in the small basement and refilled some water jugs from it. He'd done that before in the subdivision. The backpack was heavy, too, and he had only glanced inside it, being in a hurry to get away from the house with the dead guy in it. He went outside and looked around again, decided he was secure enough for now and began to go through the stuff on the trailer.

It had taken Eddie an hour or so to figure out the scooter. It was a small motorcycle, really. It said "Rebel" on the gas tank and had a Honda emblem. It just wasn't as big as a real Harley motorcycle, so he'd thought of it as a scooter. It was pretty new and had an oversize black muffler on it to match the paint. The trailer was an aluminum box affair with a lot of stuff tied to the rack on top. Eddie was tall so he could handle the bike, but he was thin and not all that strong, so he had to be careful with to not upset the bike. He wasn't sure he could set it back up again.

He checked the gas tank first and found it was still nearly full. He knew he must have ridden 10 or 15 miles out of town, so that was good. Both of the gas jugs were full, too. That was good, because he didn't know where he could get more gas unless he siphoned it from a car. There was a siphon pump thing tied to the gas jugs, but he'd never used one like that. He learned how to check the oil and tried to get the bike as level as he could for that. It was full and the oil looked pretty clean. The bike, as he was beginning to think of it, looked like it was pretty new, so it shouldn't use much oil, he thought.

The trailer was full of surprises. On top were some stuff sacks with a small nylon tent with plastic poles, a rolled up sleeping bag and a foam pad. There was a dark green plastic tote behind that, held on with bungee cords and duct taped shut. He found clothing in there, and some more of the miltary pouches. One of those had 2 big boxes of .22 shells in it, and another had boxes of 9MM shells. He took out a box of each and taped it all shut again with a roll he'd found inside.

He set the tent bag and tote aside thinking he didn't like the idea of sleeping on the ground with only a tent around him. The trailer box was mostly full of pouches of dried food and some cooking things. There was a big water jug in there and a water filter. It was plastic and had hoses and a handle that looked like it was for pumping like a tire pump. He put that back in its' plastic bag with the extra filter cartridges. He had never used one of those but he'd seen them in the Bass Pro shop. They were supposed to filter out about anything, germs and all. He didn't know if it would filter out the plague germs or not. He was glad he'd brought his last gallon of bleach. It tasted bad in the water, but he was pretty sure it would kill about anything. It had worked when they'd had a "boil water" order in the city.

The saddlebags held rain gear, a poncho, and a spare pair of goggles. Below all that was a pair of hiking boots. The roll behind the seat had cold weather clothing. There was just enough room to wear the backpack with that roll behind it. Eddie began to realize that the guy he'd killed had set him up pretty good. By the time he'd repacked the bike and trailer, he was getting hungry again. He used the cooking pot and a little stove from the trailer to heat some water and followed the package directions to cook a meal labelled beef stroganoff. The stove used alcohol fuel and there were a couple gallon cans of it in the trailer box. It was the best meal he'd had in a long time.

Eddie decided to sleep here tonight, since it was getting late and he didn't know what was ahead of him. He rolled the bike and trailer into the little garage and closed the door. It made more noise than he liked, but he could see for at least half a mile and there was nothing moving.

He realized there was enough food in that trailer that he wouldn't have to worry about it for a while, but he wanted to get to his uncle's place where he hoped to find a lot more in the town. He worried that he might find people there, too. The sleeping bag was too warm for the summer weather, but it made a good enough bed on the foam pad with his winter coat for a pillow. It was a good warm coat he'd found in a house down the street in the subdivision. He'd gotten all the new clothes he wanted there and got enough water out of the toilet tanks to get cleaned up pretty good. He wanted to wash up again, but there was no water in this house, not even in the water heater.

When he woke the next morning the only sounds he could hear were birds singing outside his window. After he ate and did his morning routine, he was packed up and ready to leave. He knew he needed to try the guns be sure they worked and he could hit something with them, so he had let the bike warm up a minute while he went behind the garage and shot the rifle first at a fence post. It hit where he aimed it, so he tried the pistol, expecting it to be louder and it was. He hit a post with it a short distance away and thought that was good enough. He replaced the shells in the magazine, left one in the chamber, and put it on safety in his holster. Dangerous, he thought, but it might save him a split second when he needed it.

A minute later he was on his way toward Salem and his uncle's house.

********




Chapter 12


Mulberry Street was easy to find and soon Eddie found the house number 1217. It didn't look nearly as big as he remembered, and the back yard was overgrown. He found the remains of his uncle in the bathroom. His aunt wasn't there. Eddie didn't like the place now. It felt bad to him, with the body inside. He closed the door and went back out to his bike. There didn't seem to be a soul around here at the edge of the small town. It was bigger than he remembered. He could see the courthouse tower and a street of stores and gas stations. There were many houses, all looking deserted. Weeds and grass grew everywhere and leaves littered the streets and gutters.

Eddie put his bike and trailer in the old garage headed out so he could leave in a hurry if necessary. Up the street half a block on a hill top was an old farmhouse with a big barn behind it. He watched it for a while and couldn't see any evidence of recent life there. He was getting good at that, he thought and then worried about getting over confident. He walked to the house and saw the same leaves and old litter as everywhere else, so he chanced going in the back door. It was unlocked so he left the hatchet on his belt, but he had the pistol in his hand when he entered and he made sure to shove the door all the way open in case there was someone behind it. There wasn't. There was evidence that someone had been rummaging around in the house. Cabinet doors were open and no food remained inside. A closet door was open, but there was nobody inside.

The body was in the barn. He walked past it as far as he could to get to the loft ladder. In the barn loft there was an opening up high and he climbed up to it to look out. From that vantage point he could see all over town. Nothing moved in his range of vision. This street seemed to be a major one in the town, but wasn't a highway. He thought he would be safe to stay here for a time, since if there were any scavengers around they had already been here and probably wouldn't come back. He considered sleeping in the barn for safety, but he didn't like to be that close the dead body. Something had chewed on it pretty bad.

Eddie slept in an upstairs bedroom with all the windows open. He didn't hear anything to alarm him all night and woke feeling better. It was time to get some breakfast and then go search for food. From the barn loft, he'd seen a flat roof that could be a grocery across town. The old farmhouse had a hand pump outside. He'd seen them in movies, so he knew how to work it and soon got some water. He treated himself to a bath with water warmed over his little camp stove. Dressed again, he put on the web belt with its' canteen, holster, and other things. It had a small pack hanging from the belt, where he put some dry granola bars from the trailer food. Leaving the rest of his gear in the barn, he began to walk toward the main part of town. There was no sound or movement except the slight wind.

There was a shallow creek that ran through the town just behind the grocery. He crossed that stepping on some rocks and then decided to watch the grocery for a while from the weeds. Nothing moved that he could see except some litter quivering in the breeze. He had decided to look at the grocery when he heard an engine running in the distance. He about choked at that, remembering the last time he'd heard and engine. He hid as best he could in the weeds and listened. His panic grew when he heard the truck pullin behind the grocery and men got out. He peeked through the weeds and saw kids in the big truck. They were talking and didn't seem to be afraid. Soon the men came back with armloads of groceries.

He watched while they made several trips and loaded the truck. There were already boxes of clothing in the truck bed, and other things. The men never glanced his way before they got back inthe truck and left. Eddie lay there for a long time, his heart pounding in his ears. Gradually he became aware of the stones he was laying on and tried to get comfortable. He was getting hot from the sun on his back when he concluded that the men were gone. Their presence had terrified him, but they didn't look like the scavengers he'd seen in the city. Their clothes were good and they looked well fed. They carried guns, though.

Eddie felt for his own gun for reassurance and knew he had to look in that grocery. He was shaking with fear until he got inside and learned that there was nobody in there but a couple bodies. After selecting a few things he could carry in the small pack on his belt, he called it good enough and left, closing the door like the men had left it. If they came back, he didn't want to leave any sign he'd been there.

That night he thought a lot about the kids he'd seen in the truck. They weren't starving, although they were dirty. They weren't afraid of the men, one a fairly young man and the other old. The truck looked like new, so they had probably stolen it from a car lot, he thought. He wondered why the kids were dirty and the men were clean. That didn't look good to him, but he couldn't figure out why the kids were not afraid. They must not be captives then. The only other thing that made any sense was, the men must be helping the kids.

Eddie got more curious about the men in the truck over the next couple days. The truck had driven out of town to the north. He thought they might come back to town and wondered about how he could follow them and find out where they lived.

It was a week before he saw or heard anything else. He'd heard a big truck coming toward town and got in the barn loft to look for it. He saw it come to the intersection where the stop light was and turn there going out of town to the east. A second big truck followed it. It was hours later that he heard them come back and turn north again. He got up into the loft just in time to see that both trucks had big loads of machinery. Eddie ran to his bike and unhooked the trailer. He took off across town and headed north out the highway the direction he'd seen them go. He planned to stay way behind them and stop to listen where they went.

Instead, he saw the trucks going east again on a county road a couple miles out of town. He followed them slowly on the bike so they wouldn't catch sight of him and turned on the county road. It went over the rolling hills for a mile then turned north. Half a mile further the road dropped down a big hill into a valley. Eddie stopped at the top and pulled off the road in the weeds. He shut the bike off and tried to listen for the trucks. Finally they came out of a wooded area where he could see them far in the distance. There were fields down there with something growing that he thought might be corn. It was the first crops he had seen of any kind. He wasn't about to let those people see him, so he reluctantly went back to town and put the bike away.

The next week he spent getting groceries hauled back to his new house. The men might come back with trucks and clean it out, he reasoned, so he'd better get there first. He did his hauling at night, after learning the streets well. Moonlight was enough to see where he was going. It didn't take many nights to have the house stocked up pretty well.

He didn't know how to make bread and he wanted some bad. It had been ages since he'd had any kind of bread. The grocery had biscuit and pancake mix, so he got some of that and a skillet and some shortening. When he read on the box that he needed milk, he about gave up until he saw powdered milk in boxes and took some along. That evening he had his first pancakes in a long time. The syrup was wonderful, too. He wished he had some butter, but failing that, he cooked them in a lot of shortening and the grease made them better.

Eddie needed a better way to cook and heat water so he went to the hardware store one morning and found the door had been broken open. It wasn't a mess inside, though, so he suspected the men and their trucks had been there when he found some empty shelves.

He found what he wanted, though, a propane camp stove and a big box of the propane bottles for it. He left it there and would go back that night with the bike and trailer to get it all, plus some rope and another can of alcohol for his camp stove. All he took this time was a map he found in a rack by the door. It was map of the county and showed all the small county roads.

**********

[patience]

Chapter 13


Isaac Knepp and his little brother Samuel were hoeing in the garden early one morning before the sun got too hot. The green beans were ready to be picked and that was easier work than hoeing, so they would do that later. Samuel looked up and asked his brother, "What is the noise?"

"What noise?"

"It is a small noise, like the engine on the washing machine."

Isaac stood very still and listended hard. "I don't hear anything," he said. "Wait, yes I do. I think it's on the hill back there."

They both squinted in that direction but didn't see anything. Isaac said, "I'll go tell Ma. Maybe Herr Whitaker is up there. He might come here."

Isaac told his Ma about the noise, but she was busy canning green beans and said, "If it is someone coming here, we will know soon enough."

Eddie lay on top of the hill off the gravel road he'd found that led the direction the trucks had gone. What he saw in the valley below astounded him. There were a couple small boys working in a garden, and a woman in a long dress and bonnet who came out to get something with a bucket. She was picking something. Beyond the house was a field of grass with horses in it, and farther away, rows of corn stretched for miles, it seemed like. He quickly decided that the people were Amish. He'd seen them on TV. Eddie laid there on some soft green vines for a long time and listened. He heard an engine start far away. Then it ran for a long time but didn't get any closer. He finally gave up and left, scratching at his forearms.

That night back at his house he was itching something fierce and the skin was turning red. It took him a while to figure out he had gotten into poison ivy or something like it. He washed with soap he found in the house, but the itching didn't stop. He couldn't sleep that night and had to take off his shirt because his chest was red all over and burned and itched. Finally he got up and walked into town where he found a drug store. He couldn't read in the dark store so he chanced lighting the lighter he used for his stove. He found anti-itch medication, a cortisone cream in a tube and slathered it all over his chest and arms and his ankles. It began to help a little, so he gathered more of the tubes and went back to his house, finally getting to sleep as the sun was coming up. Three days later the itching had calmed down except for some red welts that he thought were bug bites of some kind.

*********

Eddie kept himself busy getting some things collected for cold weather ahead. He had nearly frozen to death in that factory and had to wake up repeatedly to keep a small fire going in his hobo stove. He never wanted to do that again. The old house he had settled in had a wood stove in the living room. He began to wonder how he could get enough firewood to feed the thing for a whole winter. That made him think about someone seeing or smelling the smoke and finding him. He had seen some kerosene heaters in the hardware store, but he didn't know if he could get kerosene for the gas stations or not.

At this time, he was sweating like crazy in the house, afraid to open any windows in case somebody would notice them. He spent a lot of time sitting outside thinking and absentmindedly scratching at the bug bites that just wouldn't go away. They were getting smaller, but they still itched like day one. While it was too hot to be carrying things across town, he sat in what shade he could find and his mind kept going back to those people he'd found north of town. Maybe he could go back and scout some more. There had to be more people around out there because he hadn't seen the ones with the trucks. He got his county map out and looked over the roads again.

Eddie was still poring over the map when he heard an engine start a long way off. It ran for a while faster, then slower, then faster again like it was doing some work in one place. Then, that engine stopped and another one, different sounding, started up. It ran for a while then it began to get closer. He ran into the back door of the house and settled down to watch. A huge truck-like thing with 3 wheels came past with some white stuff in the hopper. It had a fan on the back end like the salt trucks in the city, so it was used to scatter the white stuff, he decided. The wheels and tires looked like an earthmover of some kind, but he'd never seen one like this before. It didn't go very fast for a truck, but still a little dust came off the load. A big dump truck soon followed it down the street with more of the white stuff. The man driving the dump truck looked like one of those he'd seen at the grocery, an older man.

His curiosity may get him in trouble, he thought, but he had to find out where these people lived and if the kids were still with them. Eddie waited a few minutes until he could hear the truck, and whatever the other thing was, get through the town streets and speed up going out the highway. He had to know, so he fired up his bike and followed.

This time, he knew the road where they would probably turn off, and sure enough, they did. He had the map of this area mostly memorized and gave them plenty of time to get ahead of him. This time he went down the big hill on his bike and found himself in the end of the valley he'd seen from above. He pulled off in the entrance to a field and shut the bike off. He could hear the big 3 wheeled thing running and soon he could see it in a field ahead with a huge cloud of white dust behind it. The field was bare dirt and being coated with the white dust as the vehicle ran back and forth on the field. The dust stopped and the driver went out of sight past a hill on the right side of the road.

Eddie left his bike where it was, pretty well hidden from the road and walked in the woods toward the hill ahead. It got steep pretty quickly, so he had to go slower. When he got to the top he stopped to rest and listen to engines running. The trees were thinner on the hill top. Eddie moved along the ridge to where he could see the trucks parked at a farm. The dump truck had emptied the powder in a pile and one man was using a tractor with a bucket on it to load it in the big yellow 3 wheeled thing. He watched, fascinated. it had been a long time since he'd seen very many people and even longer since he'd seen men working.

Movement caught his eye and he looked toward the farm house where a couple half grown boys were carrying something toward the men. The engines shut off and the men got off their machines, going toward the boys. It was something to drink they carried and the men drank and handed glasses back to the kids who ran back to the house with them. Eddie had never seen kids act like that outside of a movie. The boys seemed to be happy and went back inside the house. Eddie leaned on the medium sized tree he was hiding behind and thought about what he'd seen. The man fired up the big yellow machine and drove it back towards the field while the other man walked out to the barn beyond the house.

That man was the older one. After a few minutes he came out of the barn leading the biggest horses Eddie had ever seen. They had harness on them and he led them to an implement where they stood while he hitched them to it. It had round discs of metal that rolled on an axle and a seat where the man rode. He flipped the lines in his hands and the horses walked toward the field slowly, just like he'd seen in western movies with horses pulling a stagecoach or wagon. Eddie was so intent on what he was seeing that he didn't hotice a slight sound behind him.

"Hello," the girl said. Eddie about had a heart attack and grabbed for his pistol, but then he saw the girl was carrying a shotgun. He froze.

"You don't need the gun. We don't bite," she said. "Do you bite?"

"Uh..... no. I don't bite," he struggled to say.

"I saw you from down below and thought you might be hungry. We'll have lunch ready pretty soon and Mom said to invite you to eat."

It was no wonder he'd thought she was a boy, She had on jeans and boots and a man's shirt. Her hair was stuffed up under a ball cap. Up close, Eddie realized she was a cute kid and was wondering what to say when she said, "You're welcome to eat with us. We'd really like some company."

"Ah, uh, okay, I guess," Eddie's voice was a little off from not talking hardly at all.

"We can go striaght down the hill. I came up the back way in case you weren't friendly."

"Uh, if I wasn't friendly?"

"If you wasn't, I'd a shot yer butt."

Eddie saw a glint of something feral in her eyes when she said that and he believed her.

"Yeah. Right."

"Well, let's go down and you can meet the rest of us."

"Okay. I didn't mean to.... I mean, I'm not dangerous or anything."

"Didn't think so. Just nervous like everybody else now. I'm Melanie. What's your name?"

"Eddie. Eddie Grimes. Hey, how come you guys didn't shoot me if you saw me?"

"We don't shoot anybody unless they need it. Pop said if you'd been meaning any harm you would a done shot at us, so he told me to sneak up on you just in case we were wrong. He thought you probably needed some help and were afraid to ask. He'll be back as soon as he sees me come out with you. He just kept workin' to make sure we didn't spook you and make you run off."

Eddie had never met such a girl in his life. There was no doubt in his mind she WOULD have shot him if she thought she needed to. Then she invites him to eat. He began to wonder if he was being captured the easy way, but her face said he didn't need to worry about that. She did keep her distance from him, though, and she was never careless with that shotgun, either.

She watched him while he thought for a while, then asked, "Where ya from Eddie?"

"New Albany. I came out here to find my uncle, but he's dead."

"You got a place to stay?"

"I took a house in town."

They had come to the front yard where two big Maple trees stood. An older woman came out of the house and yelled up toward the woods, "YOU CAN COME OUT NOW CLAY!"

Eddie looked behind him and saw a younger man step out of the treeline carrying a nice rifle with a big scope on it. Eddie was profoundly glad he had not given them any reason to shoot him. Then he noticed the other man slide out of the woodshed with a rifle. He felt a little weak. He kept up with the conversation as best he could while the realization dawned as to how badly he had underestimated this bunch of farmers.

*********


Chapter 14


It smelled wonderful to Eddie. He had never seen such a meal in his life. Long planks sitting on sawhorses were covered with bowls and platters of meat and steaming vegetables. A huge platter of cornbread was right in front of him with a bowl of butter beside it. Marta poured him a glass of milk out of a big pitcher as everyone found a seat on the wood benches.

"Time to introduce ourselves. I'm Al Harris," one of the older men said to him.

"Uh, I'm Eddie Grimes."

"Where you from Eddie?"

"New Albany. I came to find my uncle in town, but he's dead," Eddie told him, repeating what he'd said to the girl.

"What the city like now," Albert asked, knowing everyone was more hungry for news than food.

"Nothin' there. Ever'body's dead. The gangs all died. Some fighting, but mostly sick I think. There is a few around, I guess, but they'll kill you if they see you. I had to get out of there."

All was silent around the table as Eddie recounted his experiences up to when the man had come in his house. He didn't want to tell about that.

Marta Beam asked him, "How'd you get way out here?"

"Uh, I found a bike. A motorcycle, an' I rode it out here."

Marta knew that wasn't the whole story, but she let it lay. She didn't push him, waiting for him to say more.

Eddie felt the pressure to talk to them, but he asked, "D'you all let anybody come in an' eat?"

Al Harris said, "If they're peaceful. Not many people left. We need all the help we can get."

"I don't know much about farmin'. I always lived in town," Eddie said. "I mean, I'll help you do somethin' if you show me what to do. I oughta do somethin' for eating your food."

Eddie was making it up as he went along, never having been in this situation before.

Marta laughed and said, "You prob'ly feel as lost as a short dog in tall grass our here. But look, it's like this. We work hard to raise our food and it takes long days to do it. We can use some help, and we'll be glad to see to it you have what you need. Just eat your dinner and we'll work something out later, okay?"

Eddie caught himself staring at the plump woman with the gray hair and easy smile. He smiled back, for the first time in years. He'd never felt quite like this before, but he thought he'd found a friend. Sort of like that old black woman in the apartment below his sister's who was nice to everybody. He felt himself blush a little and looked down at his plate. Melanie saw it but she didn't say anything.

Conversation began in soft tones around him while he finished eating. They all wanted to know if he'd seen anyone on the way out of the city and he said no. When the meal was nearly over, Melanie asked him, "Where's you bike?"

Eddie felt a little guilty saying, "I, uh, left it down the road. I wasn't sure what to expect. I just wanted to see what was going on."

Marta said, "Well, now you've seen. Why don't you go get it and bring it up here? While the men are finishing with the lime in the fields you can help us in the garden. It's time to cut some cabbage and make sauerkraut. There's sweet corn ready to pick, too. You any good with a knife?"

"I suppose so. What for?"

"We need to cut the corn off the cobs before we can it today. The girls are good at shucking it, but you can try that, too."

After Eddie retrieved his bike, he found he was pretty good at cutting the corn off after she showed him how. It sure looked and smelled good in the big pan and there was a lot of it by the time evening came around. Every time he got the pan full, Marta and the girls came out and got it to put it in jars and then in a big kettle to cook. When they opened the kettle and set the jars out they were bubbling inside. Marta told him they would be sterilized by the boiling and when they cooled off, the lids would seal them tight.

The evening meal was mostly leftovers with a couple fresh peach pies, hot out of the oven. He'd never tasted anything like that before. It was SO good! He said so, and Marta gave him a wide smile.

Dylan had been busy with the men all afternoon, so Eddie hadn't talked to him yet. Dylan spoke to him after supper and said, "It's time to feed the pigs. You wanna help?"

"Sure," Eddie said, "What do I need to do?"

"Get that wheel barrow and we'll load up all the corn mess and take it to 'em." The boy pointed at it by the garden shed.

"Okay." Eddie was a bit awkward with the wheelbarrow at first, but he got it in place and helped load the sticky corn cobs and shucks. He pushed it to the barnlot where Dylan directed him to the pig pen. Eddie was enthralled by the animals and a bit shy of them. The smaller boy's confidence made him feel sort of bad. He followed the boy into the barn to get some ground feed in buckets, then to the hand pump to get water. He carried a lot of water buckets before he figured out how to do it without spilling it on his shoes.

Eddie asked Dylan, "What are you going to do tomorrow?"

The boy shrugged and said, "Marta or Roscoe will have somethin' goin' on. Prob'ly more canning. The beets are big enough, I think. Roscoe said somethin' about goin' fishin' again some time, too."

"You have time to go fishing?"

"It ain't for fun. It's hard work. they got this big net and we go down to the lake an' pull it around with a boat. Get a lot of fish, but that means a lot of CLEANIN' fish. C'mon. We gotta gather eggs yet."

Back at the house with a small bucket of eggs, Roscoe said, "Looks like you're gettin' a start at farm work. What d'you think of it so far?"

"It's easy enough work, I guess."

Roscoe smiled and said, "Think you could stand to live like this?"

Eddie smiled a little and said, "I'd sure like to."

"How about you bed down on the couch tonight and we'll see if we can find you a job tomorrow? I know a man who needs some help. You interested?"

"If it's like your place, I sure am."

When Eddie laid down to sleep on the couch, he thought about what he'd seen and done that day. The good smell of the corn, the clean pots and pans, and the shining jars of canned corn set on the pantry table to cool. He'd never been around people who made their own food before. It took all day, but they had a lot of it now. Their pantry had more food than he'd ever seen in a house, and there wasn't much that had come from a store. He'd been worried about what to do when there was no more food in the stores. He had been fishing before, but he'd never killed an animal to eat. He'd seen some hunting shows but they never showed how they got the meat from the animals.

Eddie slept and dreamed about the man with the gun again, and the bloody mess on the floor. He'd been dreaming about it every night. He woke up and remembered where he was, moonlight from the window showing all was well. He tried to go back to sleep, hoping he hadn't made any noise during his dream.

In their bedroom just down the hall from where Eddie slept, Roscoe stayed awake long into the night listening in case the young fellow on the couch got up. He had stuffed the boy's backpack and pistol belt in beside a table so if it was disturbed he would hear it. Marta was a light sleeper and heard him rustling around and saying something. He quieted down finally. A lot of people had nightmares now. It wasn't unusual, so she went back to sleep.

*******



Chapter 15



Ahmal stood in front of the Mullah and said, "We have killed the Great Satan! The US is DEAD! ALL DEAD! Allah be praised! Allah akbar!"

The Mullah stared cold black eyes at the man for moments before speaking. Ahmal was beginning to sweat and be a little nervous by the time the old man responded.

"The Great Satan is dead, indeed. There has been no communication from the US for weeks. Your poisonous experiments succeeded. It was indeed genius to put the virus in the city water supplies. Because it lived in them for weeks before they sickened, there was no warning for the devils, and no chance to stop the attack. There was no possible defense against it. The virus spread even better than we had hoped, by water and by air, and from person to person it went to Europe, and to Asia where the yellow devils also died."

"You have done your work all too well. Now it has spread to the faithful. You and I may be the only ones alive in the city. YOU FOOL! YOU HAVE DESTROYED US!"

Ahmal's mind was slow to work, a product of the fever he had. In a moment he said, "May we all meet in Paradise with Allah!"

The Mullah said, "You have sinned a great sin against the faithful! There will be no Paradise for you! May you burn forever!" The Mullah's voice was weakening even as he spoke the curse.

Ahmal swayed on his feet as his fever increased. In moments he fell to the floor and retched in convulsions as the old Mullah watched, sweat beading his own brow. The Mullah reached for his cup of water, but was too weak and fell from his seat as he too began to convulse.

Goats browsed around the cement building in the desert where the last member of the genetic research team lay on the floor, bleeding from his mouth and nose as he died.

Lacking a living host, the virus died within the dead. The thin protective layer that helped make it so fast to embed in living cells was also its' Achillies' Heel. The virus died in water within days, in air within hours, and in sunlight, even faster. Within a month it would be no more.

The desert oil wells had ceased to flow for lack of power to the pumps. What oil remained would stay deep under the sand. Huge tankers floated with engines running until they ran aground with no one alive to guide them. Airplanes had crashed when pilots died, as did millions of cars, buses, and trucks. The world would take hundreds of years to absorb some of the damage from oil and chemical spills. The oceans would recover, but slowly, and only after some species were extinct. Wild life would increase again in the vast plains, jungles and forests of the world, as forests began to reclaim land they had once owned.

Deep in remote jungles, deserts, and wild lands of the world, indigenous peoples survived as they always had, close to nature and living within its' rules, far from the dead cities. Some pockets of modern humans survived, but only those who could adapt to the new conditions would endure.

*********

Clay told Amy, "I need to clean out that spring at the foot of the hill and make a springhouse there. Then we could get a cow and have a place to cool the millk and cream and butter. We're going to go look for a backhoe, me and Benjamin. We can use it to dig a root cellar, too."

"We don't have to do everything this summer," Amy said. "We have enough food and clothing and everything to last us for several years."

Clay said, "Yeah, but the problem is how long the fuel will stay good. We found some of that fuel preservative and treated the tanker we got from Seymour, but even with that stuff it won't keep forever. The sooner we can get the real heavy work done, the better. We have to do it while the heavy equipment still works, or we'll be doing it with picks and shovels."

"Oh. Okay. Can me and the kids help?"

"You're doing fine. If you can keep me and Benjamin fed and in clean clothes, we'll get it done."

*********

"We have to find more people," Roscoe told his wife.

Marta said, "That new boy Eddie is working out pretty good with Albert and Anita. She said he's a big help. She said he doesn't know anything about the country, but he learns fast and he works hard."

"We need more help like that, but what I mean is it's like cattle. Our herd is too small. The community will get inbred in a couple generations. We need fresh bloodlines."

Marta thought for just a minute and said, "I see what you mean. We need to keep geneologies, too, so nobody marries too close to their relations. That makes me think. We don't have much in the way of writing materials, or books. We need to educate these kids and we need a way to keep records, too. things like your planting and animal breeding and so many things. We should call a meeting about this."

Roscoe nodded and said, "I'll pass the word around. We need to get some radios or fix up some telephones some way, too. Those little radios we got in town won't reach very many people. I'll work on it between now and corn harvest time. Now that we got the oats and wheat in the bins, we'll have a breathing space for a while."

Jim Collier and his son Kevin spent some hot days in their tall farm shop building going over the 2 combines they had retrieved from farms near Seymour. They had only had time to grease them and change oil before it was time to cut the oats crop and then the wheat. It wasn't a lot of acreage for these big machines, but they still needed maintenance. The machines were pretty new, but Jim didn't know for sure without a dealer to ask, or the internet for researching. He frowned, knowing the internet was a thing of the past, and dealers wouldn't be ordering any new parts. If something went bad on the machinery, they would just have to look for another one like it and rob parts. That's why he had insisted that they get two combines exactly alike.

Sylvia Collier came out to the shop and said, "Jim, where are you?"

"Back here. I'm comin'."

He crawled out from under the grain head and stood stretching his back. "What's up?"

"Roscoe came by and said he wanted to have a meeting at his place this Sunday for dinner. It's a pitch-in meal. Wants to talk about finding more people because he's worried about inbreeding and needing people with different knowledge. And Marta wants to talk about schooling the kids around here. They want to hear whatever is on anyone else's mind, too. Stuff like what we need to get done before the machinery quits working and all."

"I was just thinkin' about that," Jim said.

Kevin came out of the back end of the combine and listened.

She went on. "He said that Clay Whitaker has found a backhoe and got it at his place, digging a root cellar and a springhouse. Clay's worried about getting that kind of thing done now, too."

Kevin said, "I wish we had a spring we could use like that. We need a root cellar, too. There's gonna be a lot of potatoes to store pretty soon and if we can't keep them good until planting time next year, we won't ever have potatoes again. Me and Andrea will be goin' to that meeting."

"He said to write down anything that comes to mind so you don't forget it."

Jim nodded slowly and said, "He's right. We can't afford to make any mistakes. We only got one chance to get it right, or do without from now on."

*********

[patience]

Chapter 16


Sweat ran down Benjamin's forehead and into his eyes making to hard to see what he was doing. The concrete truck was noisy enough that he had to make hand signals to Clay when he wanted more concrete in the form. He held both arms up and waved a 'No more" at Clay. The engine slowed down and quieted, but Benjamin walked around to the truck cab so he didn't have to yell.

"The form is full. What do we do with the rest of it?"

Clay said, "Swing the chute around let's run the rest out for a spillway below the springhouse. It'll wash out if we don't have something there."

A few minutes later the truck was empty and washed out. Benjamin was struggling with a shovel to move the heavy wet concrete up on the sides of the ditch that led away from the springhouse. The spring water had been diverted to a temporary ditch until the concrete hardened.

Clay shut the truck engine down and came to help move the concrete. Benjamin took a break and went to the new ditch where he splashed himself with the cold water. He took off his straw western hat and splashed waater on his head, wiped out his eyes and put the hat back on. When he got back to the spillway, Clay had most of the concrete in place with shovel and rake.

"Get that wood float and start smoothing it out," Clay said, "As hot as it is today this will set up fast."

Benjamin nodded and grabbed the long handled float. Clay showed him how to work it, lowering the handle on the forward stroke made it float over the concrete like a ski, then lifting it on the back stroke did the same. That made it operate like a giant trowel, smoothing a 3 foot wide swath at one stroke. It was hard work and they had to hurry. Already the concrete was acting stiff and hard to move.

While Benjamin worked the float, Clay got a bucket of water from the spring and dipped a broom in it to sprinkle water on the surface of the concrete. Amy and Gina showed up with glasses and a pitcher. They retrieved a gallon jug of tea from the old spring pool and poured drinks for the men. While the men rested, Amy showed Gina how to work a metal trowel and finish smoothing the concrete in the spillway. The sprinkled concrete began to look much smoother.

Clay showed Benjamin how to push anchor bolts down into the formed concrete walls where a roof would be built and bolted down to keep debris out of the water inside.

An hour later, the concrete had been washed off their tools and the family sat in the shade admiring their work. The concrete tank they had made was 3 feet wide and 12 feet long. It was 3 feet deep, but Clay had designed it so it would run over the end at 2 feet of water. A much larger wood building would be erected over it. It would be the next best thing to a refrigerator, the water staying at a near constant 55 degrees through the hot summer.

"We're lucky to have it this close to the house," Amy said.

"That's why they put the house where it is," Clay said. "The old folks didn't want to carry water any farther than they had to. And that's why I ran the ditch down toward the barn to that pond so the livestock can drink from it. Cows drink a lot of water, and I don't plan to carry it to 'em. Plenty of work to do without that."

Amy said, "If you guys are rested up and ready to eat, we've got some lunch ready."

Clay said, "Heck yeah! I'm starved!"

Gina and Benjamin lagged behind the adults as they walked. She held his hand on the way to the house and gave him a fond look.

*********

One evening after supper Anita said, "We need to paint the windows and the doors. This old house isn't going to last if we don't keep it painted. The vinyl siding is starting to crack in a few places, too."

"Maybe Eddie can do that," Al told his wife. "I need to see about some new fencing down by the creek. Eddie, have you done any painting?"

"No. I worked for a guy once that did gutters, so I ain't afraid to climb a ladder, butI never done any painting."

"This would be a good job to learn on. It's kind of a slow process, being careful not to get it on the glass, but it's not hard work. You can start on the west side in the mornings and go to the east side after lunch so you'll be in the shade all day."

Anita said, "As soon as I get the canning caught up I can do the scraping."

Albert said, "Okay, I'm going to town with Jim in the morning to help him fetch some things and get some fence wire, if there's any left at Tractor Supply. We can stop at the paint store, or the hardware and find some paint and caulking. There's just so much to do. I'm really glad you showed up Eddie. If there's anything you want for yourself, just says so and we'll try to make it happen."

He gave Eddie a look intended to show he was serious about what he said.

Eddie understood it that way and said, "Well, someday I'd like to have a place of my own. Might find me a girl, you know? But I need to learn a lot about how to grow food and all, so I don't want to leave here. I don't know what to do, really."

Anita smiled without saying anything. She'd seen him around the girls that lived with Roscoe and Marta Beam.

Albert thought for a minute and said, "How about we move you a trailer in here? There's some sittin' in town and I drove for a trailer company for a while. I know how to move one. You'd be close by, but still have your own place to live."

"That sounds good to me!

"There ought to be room across the driveway there." Albert pointed. "We can get Clay to bring that backhoe up here and put in some sewer and drain lines, and with the well pump here in the yard, it wouldn't be any farther for you to carry water than it is for us."

Eddie looked at the spot and agreed. "That would be awesome!"

*********

Roscoe waited until the Sunday meal was over and people had spread out in the shade of the big Maple trees. He called for everyones attention and said, "Some things have been botherin' me and Marta, too, about how we're going to do things from here on. I wanted to talk about that and have you all talk about what's been on your minds. We need to do some planning to make sure we get done what we ought to do. Clay has made himself a springhouse and is almost done with a root cellar. I know we need a root cellar, and probably some others do, too. We need to do that kind of thing before the concrete all spoils from dampness, and the fuel won't run the trucks and equipment any more. We need more people around here if we can find 'em, or the next generation will have slim pickings for mates and be marrying too close to their family."

Marta said, "I got some note paper in town the other day and some pencils. Help youself here at the table and start making notes of what is said today, and I will, too. Now we'll shut up and somebody else tell us what you've been thinking about. Start with whatever problems you've got today, or anything you think of that needs done. One thing I thought of was getting some kind of schooling started. Okay, it's your turn."

She sat down and looked from one face to another until Jim Collier said, "We need to re-think how we farm. I've been doin' some of that and talkin' to Jacob and and Daniel and Amos about how the Amish run their farms. We all agreed we need to get lime on this ground, and get whatever fertilizer we can. I only knew about big scale tractor farming all my life, but that just won't work now. We don't need 50,000 bushels of corn. There's no place to sell it and we can't use it up before it would go bad, so there's now need to raise it. We need chickens and turkeys and pigs and cattle. Jacob knows a lot about how that works, especially doing it with horses, so I'll set down and let him talk to us.

*********


Chapter 17


Jacob Knepp stood and cleared his throat, clearly not comfortable with speaking to a group.

"I thank you for me and for my family that we are invited here. It is a goodt place, and goodt people. It does not matter to me if you are English. Amish are taught that English are sinful, and we must stay separate from the sinful. That is why our Elders made rules for us to do things the old ways, so we depend on each other and not depend on the English."

"Too many have died. There are not enough to be separate. We must work together. I say this because our Elders have died, and I have been asked by Daniel and Amos to be Elder for our group. So, I say this. We have been working together and helping as our religion teaches us to help each other. It has been a goodt thing, doing this, and I see no sin in helping good people. We are doing this now, but I thought it should be said here."

"Our way is to have everyone do as much as they can, but not all can do everything. We should all raise all the food we can and everyone keep seeds. If Daniel's seeds are not good, then he can get some from Roscoe, or Jim, or me."

"Farms should not be so big to need tractors, or too many people. Maybe one raises more pigs and another raises just two pigs, but has cattle to trade. We know about horses and I make harness. But I need someone to make leather and a blacksmith to make the iron parts. So, we need more people who can do these things."

"It is too hard to travel for what we need each day. So, we have a cow, or goats for milk. We have chickens for eggs and meat. Each one has what he needs, but what he does not have, we trade. We are doing this now and it is goodt."

Some things we do not have. We have no doctor. We need someone to teach the kinder, uh children. I cannot think of everything today. So, I ask you to each tell what you know to help us all."

"I let someone else talk now."

Jacob had seen people paying attention, but he was still uncomfortable and felt like he had been rambling in his talk. He had noticed Marta writing things down and was surprised when she stood again to talk. In his culture, women always gave deference to the men speaking, but he did not object, having respected what she said earlier.

Marta said, "I am making a list. Jacob made excellent points that we need a blacksmith, a tanner, a doctor, a teacher, and above all , we need to cooperate. There will be certain things we can all do. Maybe not everyone here knows what each of us can do. I would like for each of us to tell the rest what skills and knowledge they have so we know who to talk to when they are needed."

"I will start with myself. Some of you know that Roscoe and I had a son and a daughter. They are adults and live several states away. There is no good reason to think they survived, since they were both doctors and were working to help with the emergency the last we heard from them."

Her voice quavered and she stood silent for a moment as tears glistened in her eyes. Marta looked down, swallowed hard and continued.

"We home schooled our children before that was a popular thing to do. I still have the materials we used to teach them, so I can teach children through 12 grades. We are close to the middle of this valley community, as my husband pointed out, so we could teach children here at our place. There is room in our house to do it, and we would love to have the children come here if they can."

She sat down on the porch again and said, "Someone else talk now."

Albert Harris stood and said, "I was a truck driver most of my life, but I don't have any special skills. My wife Anita, though, got to studying herbs back when we got interested in the Mother Earth News magazine and what they taught. Maybe our Amish friends know more that could help her so we could have some kind of medicines when the old stuff is gone."

Heads nodded among the Amish women along with some others, men and women alike.

Albert sat down abruptly.

Jim Collier, his nearest neighbor, said, "You're selling yourself short Al. Everybody that has seen your place can see that your a pretty fair carpenter and you always took care of your own truck. You made that solar stuff, too, so tell us about that."

Albert stood back up hesitantly and said, "Yeah, we made a solar food dryer and a solar water heater. We have a little reflector that Sylvia uses to make tea in the sun and I made one solar collector to help heat in the house. Anybody that wants to look at that stuff is welcome to come see it so they can make their own."

He sat down again and was surprised when several people said they wanted to look at his things. Albert said, "Anita got us started that direction because she was always a fan of the Mother Earth News magazine. Still has all the old issues, too. They have a lot of projects in them that might come in handy now, so anybody wants to look at 'em is welcome."

Jim Collier said, "I'm just a farmer, but I can do some carpenter work, and you all know I have a bandsaw mill if we need to run that. It's got a 24 horse diesel engine on it and it's big enough to saw 16 foot stuff. I'll need to find more blades for it soon, though. We've got a good farrowing house for hogs, but it was heated with gas, so if we can get wood heat in it somehow we can raise a lot of pigs this winter. It does have gravity water from our pond, but I'll have to fix up the automatic waterers if I can find parts."

"This is our son Kevin. I'll let him tell about himself."

Kevin stood up and said, "Not much to know about me. I joined the Army right out of high school and went to the sandbox for a tour. I got out before they started sending guys back for 2 and 3 tours. I was an Armorer in Supply doing weapons maintenance. When I was discharged I started an apprenticeship as a machinist at the Jap auto parts factory in Seymour, but I couldn't take their management's attitude and came back to farm with Dad. My girl Andrea felt the same way, so she came with me."

He turned to Andrea and asked, "You want to tell about yourself?"

She nodded once and stood up. "Kevin never lets me forget that I'm a year older than him, but I don't think 30 is over the hill yet." That got a few chuckles before she went on. "I was taking classes after work studying chemistry back...before. I worked in the tool crib at the factory where I met Kevin. My folks...."

Andrea stopped and collected herself before she could go on. "I lived on a farm near Seymour. We raised grain and hogs, so I know how a farm works. My, uh, parents didn't make it, so, uh.... Anyway. I came down here with Kevin one day after work and we were afraid to go back..."

She refused to think any more about that day and all the dying people. Her tears flowed freely, like several others in the group. It was quiet enough that people could hear the scratching of Marta's pencil as she made notes. Her tears fell on her note paper. Marta gathered herself and stood again.

"We have all lost many of our dearest and best family and friends. But somehow, we are all here today. Life is going on. We can make it through this, if we do it together. Each soul is precious, and even more so now. We MUST do all we can now. Everyone's abilities are needed. So let's go on the best we can and find out what those abilities are."

Daniel Schmidt stood up and said, "My English is not so good. I am a farmer, and I raise some seeds to sell and trade with our people. I can train horses to work and ride. I can shoe horses, if we can find shoes for dem. I need to find more shoes and nails. I tink dere are some at the hardware store. We will need dem, so maybe make a trip dere soon."

Clay looked at Daniel and said, "We can get you there to find what you need. Maybe more than one hardware store."

Martha and Sarah Knepp were sitting together near their mother and siblings listening to the meeting, but Martha wasn't keeping up with it all because her attention kept straying back to Eddie's good looking young face. He hadn't said anything yet, but was paying close attention to the speakers and hadn't noticed her. Sarah noticed her looks, and gave her a sly smile. They both looked down to hide their grins, but their mother saw them and guessed correctly that there must be a young man causing them. They all kept silent, though, as the others talked.

Amos Schwartz told that he'd worked for the blacksmith in his community when he repaired buggy wheels and running gear. He said he'd done a little blacksmithing work there and thought they should collect the contents of that man's shop. He choked up a little when he said, "He was a friend of mine, and he would want someone to take care of his tools."

Roscoe had been listening carefully and thinking. He asked Amos, "You probably know everyone's property in your old community, don't you?"

Amos said, "Yeah, we all worked together, so we all been on each other's places a lot."

"I think you could help us find things we needed from there, if you feel like doing that," he suggested.

Amos lifted his chin up and said, "Yeah. I can do that. No need to let things go to rot and ruin. Better save everything we can, since ever'body's sayin' they ain't any more stuff bein' made now. Seems like the right thing to me."

He looked at Jacob for confirmation and got it with a solemn nod.

********



Chapter 18


``
Eddie hadn't said anything during the meeting and Roscoe noticed that, thinking that the boy probably felt out of place with a bunch of farmers. That needed to be fixed, Roscoe decided and asked him, "Eddie, how well do you know New Albany?"

"Uh, well, pretty good, I guess."

"Where's the most likely place to find trucks around there, semi trucks and trailers?"

"Oh. Well, there's that truck driver school up by the interstate, right off the Hamburg exit. And there's the Peterbilt dealer on down Hamburg Pike and a truck parts place there, too. Find all you want there."

Roscoe said, "Thanks! I bet you could tell me where to find a lot of stuff around there, huh?"

"Oh, prob'ly so. Depends what you want."

"What we need," Roscoe mused, "is some more truck drivers. Have you ever drove a big truck, Eddie?"

"No, I'm not a truck driver. I just worked for a contractor and drove his old stuff around a little."

"But you have driven a big truck?"

"Yeah, a little bit. I just worked for him one summer and got laid off. He had a bunch of dump trucks and some lowboys to haul the dozers an' stuff. But they ain't in New Albany. He lived out at Greenville. I didn't come out that way, so I don't know if he's still around, or not."

Albert spoke up, "Oh! Is that Cunningham excavating?"

"Yeah, Danny Cunningham. Hard guy to work for. He was on everybody like stink on s.... Like white on rice."

Eddie had noticed the Amish girl looking at him and almost embarrassed himself saying the wrong thing. He thought he'd better watch his mouth around these religious people. He was glad when Albert got her attention.

Albert said, "Cunningham had all kinds of excavating equipment. We need to look into that. Always top notch stuff, too." He asked Eddie, "Did you ever run any of his equipment?"

"Nah, I was just a flunkie. Well, I moved things around, but I never did no work with it, except the small dozer. He had me on that one day when a guy didn't show up. It wasn't nothin' important, just shoving dirt around and packin' it down. Mostly I was takin' care of stuff, greasin' and fillin' tanks, checkin' oil and like that. I helped load up stuff when we moved it an' all.'

Albert grinned at Roscoe and said, "Looks like we got a heavy equipment operator!"

The meeting broke up into pairs and small groups, socializing as evening came. Marta encouraged everyone to eat again before they went home to make use of the leftovers. Soon, though, the Amish took their leave and loaded all the kids in the buggies to go and others began to go to their various vehicles. Eddie caught a backward glance from the Amish girl as she climbed in the back of their buggy. He was pretty sure that Amish girls were not supposed to have anything to do with anybody outside their bunch. It made him wonder if maybe their rules were changing, or if it was just her being curious.

That evening when they went to bed, Sarah quietly asked Martha, "So, you were looking at the English boy a lot, like you wanted to see more of him?"

Martha didn't answer, but blushed heavily, so Sarah grinned and said, "Yah, I thought so. He is a pretty boy, but father would not allow that you know."

Martha bit her lip and nodded agreement, but she was wondering just what her father would permit. Things were very different now, with so few people around. Maybe some things would change. She fervently hoped things changed for her.

In the downstairs bedroom, Rebeckah told her husband, "Now that you are the Elder, what will you do about our children and the English children? They will see a lot of each other and I see them like each other already."

Jacob let out a sigh, and said softly, "I will pray about this. I think we must live in the world God has given us."

Rebeckah said, "Well said, Jacob. Gute nacht."

"Gute nacht, love."

Clay and Amy had driven home slowly in the truck with Bnjamin and Gina riding in the back end sitting on a straw bale. Amy noticed they were sitting very close together and had arms around each other. Clay didn't let on that he noticed, but he drove carefully so they weren't jostled around too much. It wouldn't do for anyone to fall out of the truck. He was worried that someone might get hurt and not be able to get the help they needed. Amy was thinking something very different about the kids. The baby in her arms had her mind on the subject of babies, and she thought these kids were far too young to be so close.

Jim Collier was thinking of the possibilities of a trip to New Albany with a big truck. He would love to have some spare parts for his farm equipment and there was a dealer close to that truck driving school that Eddie had mentioned. He seemed to recall he'd been down that way to get some bearings once, too.

*********

[patience]

Chapter 19

Roscoe expertly sliced off weeds in the sweet corn row with his hoe as he spoke to his foster son.

"Where did you live, Dylan?"

The boy stared at the woods across the garden before he answered Roscoe. He had never said a word about his home or the rest of his family since the kids came here. Dylan liked this old man and said, "We lived on Sawmill Road back where the road goes down the hill."

Dylan looked away from Roscoe then back again. He said, "It was in the country, but it wasn't a farm like this. We had some chickens and a pig once. Melanie and me took care of 'em 'cause Dad was gone a lot drivin' his truck. Mom had a little garden like this. Emma helped her pull weeds and stuff. Dad came home sick and called us at school an' said don't come home 'cause we'd catch it too. He said to stay with Benjamin until he and Mom got better and he'd call us. He never called and then ever'body got sick and died and..."

Emma walked between the garden rows to where they were and said, "Marta said supper's ready."

Roscoe turned toward her and said, "You go tell her we'll be there shortly, okay?"

"Okay." She turned and trotted toward the house.

Roscoe looked back at the boy who had tears running down his cheeks. He had dropped his hoe and was trying to wipe them away. Roscoe laid his hoe down in the row and told Dylan, "It's better to let it out."

"Boys ain't supposed to cry," Dylan said. "Melanie an' Emma cried a lot and I had to keep gettin' us somethin' to eat and there wasn't nobody else to do it..."

"Boys and men need to cry sometimes, like everybody else," Roscoe said. He reached for the boy and put an arm around him. "Grief is a heavy thing to carry around. It needs to be let out so we can lay it down and go on. So, you just let it out right here if you want to and this'd be a good place to lay it down."

Dylan cried softly while Roscoe held him in a hug and cried with him. Later, he held the boy's hand and walked to the hand pump behind the house where they washed their hands and faces in the cold well water. The cold water helped take away some of the redness from their faces before they went inside to eat.

*******

The big Maple trees shaded Eddie's trailer completely from the August sun, but it was still hot inside, so he sat outside in a lawn chair drinking cold well water and eating his lunch. He had finished painting the house trim a month ago, and was almost finished with the big barn. There were a couple outbuildings yet to do, but Eddie was pleased with the way things looked so much nicer.

He had never lived in a place he owned before. They had always rented an apartment in the city. This was so different. He wasn't part of the family, although Albert and Anita said he was. He felt like the trailer was HIS, though. He had done a lot of the work getting it moved here and set up, and he'd dug the drainage ditch and sewer line, and when he poured water in the toilet he could flush it. He kept the place clean inside and cut the weeds around it that the cows didn't eat. Cows made pretty good neighbors, he thought. Sure, they would crap wherever they felt like it, but they didn't bother anybody. They were gentle and came when he called them for feeding in the evening. That was better than the neighbors he'd grown up with.

Eddie finished eating and picked up his big western straw hat. He never thought he would wear a hat like that, but it helped keep the sun off his head so he didn't get so hot. He fetched the paintbrush from the can of water, shook it out and went back to painting the barn. The wood was old so it took a lot of paint. He was glad they didn't have to pay for the paint. He'd used three 5 gallon buckets of it on the barn and thought it would take one more to finish.

Albert and Anita said he could have the ground on his side of the driveway, and there was a lot of it. The pasture was huge, 40 acres Albert said. When they were talking about it, Anita had pointed out that nobody had claimed the land on past it, either. It had belonged to some big farmer who lived several miles away, but nobody had heard from him so they assumed he was dead. There was an old house and barn on it, but they hadn't been used for a long time. Eddie had looked at it, but he didn't know what he would do with that much land. He wanted to learn more from Albert before he said anything about that land. It had always seemed so simple when he'd seen farms on TV, but there was a lot he hadn't figured out yet. The more he saw, the more he realized how much he had to learn.

He had 10 cows out there getting fat. They came from a deserted farm Clay knew about up on the highway, and Clay said they need a new home, so they'd brought 28 of them down here. Albert had most of them on his side of the farm where he'd taken over the neighbor's empty farm. That neighbor and his wife had never come home. Albert had mowed the pasture and baled some hay from part of the field. It looked really nice now with all those black cows out there. The hay smelled good in the barn, too. He thought about how the city had stunk. After living in the top of the factory for a winter, he had gotten used to fresher air up there. Down on the ground, the city had still smelled bad. He decided he was never going back there to live, even if things got back to normal somehow.

While he painted, Eddie thought about how different this life was. He had never thought he would become a farmer. He didn't have a boss and he didn't have any money, but he had everything he'd always wanted--a place of his own. Well, almost everything. It sure would be nice to have that pretty Amish girl here with him, but he knew that would never happen. It was nice to dream about it, though. Eddie had always been a loner, but he had loved his sister and his few friends. He'd been pretty lonesome for a long time. Funny, he thought. He was alone out here most of the time, but he didn't feel lonesome at all.

*******

Anthony Van Derver was lonely, more lonely than he had ever been. It had been a year and a half since he had fled the clinic where he'd worked and ran away like a scalded dog. He had the overlook place stocked to the max, having taken after his father who had built the place. At first he had wondered if his Dad was just paranoid after a lifetime of lawyering, but by the time he'd finished medical school, he had seen enough reasons to have a retreat. They were different reasons than his Dad had given, but the result was the same.

He felt the guilt every waking moment for not having stayed at the clinic to help fight the plague, until he'd been at the overlook cabin for almost a month and heard the shortwave transmission. He heard someone in Florida late one night, clearly on a "skipped" signal, because the relay towers were all down by that time. The man said something about weaponized Ebola Virus from the Mideast. The signal faded and then came back and he heard it again, "...from one of the Arab countries the CDC official told me. He was dying and swore it was Ebola, but that it would die out. That was why the government had their officials in the bunkers, but they had quit transmitting..." " ...all dead, or they would be trying to reach us..." That was the last shortwave transmission he had been able to pick up. It had been over a year since then.

Anthony still felt twinges of guilt, but then he reminded himself that there was no chance of surviving the virus if you caught it. He kept telling himself he had done the right thing. He could not have stopped the impossible, and only if he lived could he help anyone who survived it. Some days he almost believed that. The trouble was he had only seen one living person since then.

That person had been riding a motorcycle, going west on the highway, away from the city. He wouldn't have seen or heard the motorcycle, but he had heard some shots and looked out the front of the A-frame cabin toward the sound. Atop the 300 foot bluff, he had plainly heard the shots below. It had been little pops first, probably a .22, then some louder ones, maybe a larger pistol. It didn't have the crack of a high powered rifle. Then the motorcycle drove away with a small trailer behind it.

Maybe there were survivors after all. Anthony was tending his large garden behind the cabin when he heard the trucks below.

*******



Chapter 20


It was early in the morning. Anthony liked to work in the garden just after sunrise to avoid the heat later. He rushed into the house and to the front where he could see two pickup trucks driving slowly toward the city. He went to the telescope and picked out at 3 people in each truck, before they disappeared around a turn, then reappeared too far away for inspection. He went to the side veranda and pointed the parabolic microphone their direction. Above all the wind noise he could hear the trucks still driving. He decided they were no immediate threat to him, so he went back to his gardening, his determination increased by his growing distaste for freeze dried meals.

He had never liked hunting, which had frustrated his Dad, but he wanted to save life, not end it. That got put in the back of his mind after a year of eating freeze dried meats and he opened the gun safe to get the scoped and silenced .22 rifle. The first morning a rabbit got put in the skillet and a week later a couple squirrels. He was thinking about shooting a deer this Fall, when the weather got cold enough to keep the meat for a while.

"A reluctant survivalist, that's what I am," Anthony thought as he picked sweet corn. "Now. What do I do about those people in the trucks? If anything. They could be killers, or worse. Or they could be good people. How do I figure that out?"

He had watched the trucks out of sight, then finally got the idea when he noticed the long whip antennas on the trucks. He turned on his CB scanner to listen. He finally found their distant traffic on channel 11. It came and went, but he had the channel now. If they came back, he would hear them.

********

"There's the truck driving school," Eddie told Clay. "Turn in by the guardrail there."

It took over 2 hours to find keys, charge batteries, refresh fill fuel tanks, and get a pair of semi's ready for the road. They took 40 foot trailers for easier handling, leaving the longer ones and headed out in a convoy toward the truck parts business down the road. Clay opened the small side door to the warehouse with a heavy pry bar and then found the way to the loading dock doors they opened from the inside to avoid damamging them. They got a propane powered forklift running and loaded four 55 gallon barrels of diesel engine grade motor oil while Al searched for the right filters for the trucks they had taken. Jim Collier found cases of cetane booster and fuel preservative and loaded those while his son Kevin stood guard with a pump shotgun, mostly watching for stray dogs. They hadn't seen any sign of life so far on the trip.

They were in and out in less than an hour and on the road again, slowly driving down the secondary road toward the bearing wholesaler. That took a little longer, loading up every sort of bearing they could imagine using. They were careful to shut the warehouse door securely, like they had at the truck parts building to preserve what was inside. The next stop was Rural King.

"Take 'em around to the back," Al called on the radio. "Will do, good buddy," Eddie answered from the other semi and got a chuckle from him. Al let Eddie back to the loading docks first, and then easily slid in beside him with his rig and set the brakes. Trailer doors were opened and dock plates were slid into place.

"You all know what you want, so let's see if they got a forklift that will run," Clay told the group. Again, they entered by the small door in back and found noone inside. The warehouse was dark inside, so they opened all 3 dock doors to get some light. The store was much better lighted from the plate glass front windows, but it was still dim. Some flashlights were found and spare batteries and the search and loading began with large flatbed carts. There was no forklift, but there were a couple good pallet jacks that enabled them to load the trailers fairly efficiently.

"I'm going to the canning section first, or my wife will have my head on a platter," Clay said.

Roscoe said, "I have my orders to bring jeans and work boots to fit everyone, so I better get after that."

Eddie said, "I think they have those straw hats the Amish wear in here, don't they? I'll go with you to the clothes and stuff."

Clay found the flashlights and batteries and got several 6 volt lanterns going to light up the store. One cart after another rolled to the warehouse where the goods were stacked and tied as best they could be on spare pallets and loaded. It was hot in the store with no air conditioning, so the men made frequent trips outside to cool off. Bottled water was passed around and very stale snack foods.

Roscoe munched on a stale candy bar and said, "Amazing how this stuff never seems to go bad, ain't it?"

"I guess it's all those chemicals they used to put in things," Clay said. "Or, maybe it wasn't really food, just plastic and sugar."

"Speaking of chemicals," Jim said, "I think they had Round Up weed killer in here. I gotta look for that."

"We better go clean out the vet supplies, too," Al Harris said. "I can do that."

"I"ll give you a hand," Eddie said. He grabbed some empty boxes and a flatbed cart.

Kevin Collier said, "I'm going to Sporting goods. I want some traps for coyotes and some other things."

When he returned later, he said, "Be careful how you stack these boxes. It's mostly ammunition."

Clay said, "Let's put that in my pickup to be extra careful with it."

Jim Collier was back outside cooling off when Roscoe told him, "We need to save some room to hit that big drug store over by the grocery. Marta said to be sure and get all the medications we could find, so I better come home with some. We got those 3 kids to raise and kids are always getting something."

Jim yelled at the rest of the group and said, "Better wind this up. We're burnin' daylight and we gotta stop at the drug store."

On the way out of town, the trucks were loaded full, although most of it wasn't really heavy. The drug store had been intact and provided enough boxes to finish filling the last trailer before they got everything they wanted from it. Roscoe had tried hard to get a good selection of things, but it was a hurried job and he was sure he'd forgotten some items. He hoped he could come back later and do this again before long.

Jim insisted on stopping at the Case-International dealership to get parts for his equipment. It was more difficult than he thought, wth no computers to look up the items and locations. He settled for some filters and mower sections and other common items in the interest of saving time, since it would be sundown in a couple hours. He gave it up and took off leading the convoy in his pickup out the highway toward home. On the CB, he called to each driver in turn and was assured everyone was on the road and following in sight of the next truck. They weaved around a few wrecked and stalled cars, giving them only a glance to see if there was human remains in them, but not really wanting to see it.

"Breaker, Doc to convoy on highway 60. Breaker, Doc to convoy on highway 60. Anyone there?"

Everyone in the trucks was dead silent, not knowing whether to answer or not. Kevin shucked his shotgun and everyone else checked their weapons. They looked all around them and didn't see anything moving. Jim Collier answered, "This is convoy, who are we talkin' to?"

"This is Doc Holiday up the road from you. I'd like to talk if you have time. Haven't talked to anyone for over a year."

"Doc this is Jim. What's on your mind?" Jim slowed his truck from 40 MPH down to 25 MPH, causing the group to slow behind him.

"Jim, I'm just looking for living people to talk to. Only saw one person go by in all this time."

"Anybody with you?"

"Just me. I'm up near Borden, and I'm up high so I can get your signal. Are there more people out there?"

"There's quite a few of us, but we could use more people. How can we get to meet so everybody feels safe here?"

"I haven't figured that out. You have any ideas?"

"Not really," Jim said. "Is there a place we can meet where there's lots of room around?"

"Okay. You know where the golf driving range is? The one with the bar?"

"Yep, I can find it. Not too far away," Jim said.

"I can be there in about 10 minutes. I'll be on an ATV, a green one."

"Okay. See you there."

Jim pulled into the driving range parking lot alone and told the others to stop some distance away. He stood alone in the parking lot beside his truck with noone else in sight. Kevin was under the porch of the bar building with his shotgun and Roscoe was across the road laying behind the tall grass with his .30-30 lever action pointed out at the parking lot.

Soon they heard the small engine on an ATV coming down the highway. There was a rifle strapped on the rider's back, but nothing in his hands as he rode slowly into the parking lot and stopped some distance from Jim's truck. With the engine shut off, the men could easily hear each other 50 feet apart.

The rider said, "You aren't going to shoot me, are you?"

"Not plannin' on it, but better lay that rifle down slow, so my friends know you're friendly."

He did that and turned back around slowly. Jim spoke then, "To tell you the truth, it's good to see another person."

The rider said, "That's the truth if I ever heard it. My name's Anthony Van Derver. I'm a doctor and the only one I know of that's still alive."

"My name's Jim Collier and we're a bunch of farmers just out lookin' for what it takes to stay alive. Ar you really by yourself?"

Anthony nodded soberly. "I have been since my nurse died at the clinic up the road. I'm staying in my Dad's old place, The Overlook cabin on the ridgetop."

Jim said, "Oh, that A-frame way up on the hill?"

"That's right. Dad built it a long time ago and I inherited it."

"How'd you stay alive all this time?"

"Dad was a survivalist. He had the place full of stuff so he could live up there for years. That didn't help his heart attack, though. He passed away while I was an intern at Jewish hospital. I moved here when I started at the clinic."

Jim was fascinated, but finally remembered his people and said louder, "It's okay, you guys can come out now."

Roscoe and Kevin slowly made their way to the other pair in the parking lot. They met and shook hands with Anthony while Jim got on the CB and called the other trucks to come up to the lot and meet this man. They spent an hour talking and getting acquainted before Anthony agreed to come visit their community.

"My Jeep won't start and I'm no mechanic, so I don't have a way to get there and back," Anthony said.

"How about you ride with us and we'll bring you back when ever you want to come? I know that's asking you to trust us a lot, but we'd be damned fools to do any harm to real doctor these days."

"I guess that's true. I don't have any better ideas. I should go get some things, though. I want my black bag and some clothing at least. Probably should take my pack, too. Dad said don't go anywhere without it."

Jim asked, "Can I drive my pickup up there?"

"Sure. The driveway is a little washed out, but not bad and it's not steep at all. It goes around the back of the hill."

Kevin elected to ride with his Dad in case of trouble, but there was none. The doctor's things didn't take much room, which was a good thing, the truck being loaded full.

"How far is it to your farms?"

"About 10 miles past Salem. Take us most of an hour at the speeds we been going."

Anthony chattered all the way there. He was so glad to have real people to talk to he was almost hysterical.

Jim said, "We can take you to our house if you want. it's the furthest up the valley, but we'll see most everybody on the way there. We're going to stop at Roscoe's first and put one of the big trucks there, so you'll get to meet his wife and the kids. I think Clay's wife was gonna stay there today, too."

"You have kids? Real live kids?"

Jim laughed, "We don't, just Kevin here, but Roscoe's got 3 they took in to raise, and Clay's wife has a baby and the Amish all have a houseful.

Anthony said, "I can't wait to see kids again. I thought they all died. I really did." He wept as they hit some bumpy patches that got his attention back on the road.

********



Chapter 21


"Dad was a lawyer. An ambulance chaser. He made a lot of money, but he raised the cost of malpractice insurance a lot all by himself. I couldn't do that. I heard all the tales about people with injuries and felt like I had to DO something about it," Anthony said.

Marta said, "I'm glad you did. We had two children that had just completed their internships when the plague hit. They were both working in Atlanta. We didn't hear from them after the first wave of sickness hit the city."

"I'm sorry. I had no idea."

"That's okay. We all lost family. What we have now are parts of families put together into new ones. This is Melanie, Dylan, and Emma Draper. They came to us from our town. This is Amy Whitaker, Clay's wife, and their baby Louisa May. That handsome devil in the corner is Benjamin Scott and the pretty girl is Gina Kelley. They are part of Clay's family now. You'll meet the Amish families when we have our Sunday meeting."

"What day is it? I've lost track," Anthony said.

"It's Tuesday, at least we think it is, and that's what we are calling it, August the 14th," Marta told him. "We've got a meal ready, so, are you hungry?"

"What I smell is heavenly! I'll try not to embarrass myself eating real food. I've been living on freeze-dried food."

"Oh, Yuck!" The kids had experience with freeze dried food. Melanie gave him a sly smile and said, "If we feed you good will you stay around here?"

"You couldn't chase me off now," he told her with a smile.

Melanie went into the kitchen to help her sister carry food to the table. Emma said, "You got a goofy grin! You like him, doncha?"

"Sure I like him. He's a nice man."

"No, I mean you REALLY like him!"

"Hush! He'll hear you!"

Emma chuckled and followed her sister to the dining room with a big bowl of mashed potatoes. Melanie did like the looks of his shock of blond hair and the bright blue eyes. She spent all the time she could looking at him during supper.

********

Jim and Kevin Collier had driven the other semi and Jim's truck to his farm where they told Sylvia and Andrea to get a room ready for a visitor.

"YOU FOUND A DOCTOR??!!"

"He found us, really," Jim said and told the story. "So now he needs a place to at least spend the night. Marta is feeding him, and he looked to have an appetite."

Sylvia said, "Oh, I hope we can get him to stay here! We need a doctor here so bad!"

"He was getting a pretty warm reception at Roscoe's. And the way he talked our ears off on the way home, I dont think you could chase him away. He's been by himself all this time and he seems to like being around people."

Andrea said, "We'll have to find him a place of his own. There's not many houses left down here in the valley."

Sylvia said, "He needs a place to work, too. And it should be easy for everyone to get to. Maybe down by the church somewhere. There's that house just past the turn where the jackson's lived. But it's a mess of course, since they died in there. Maybe we could clean it up if we all worked at it."

"Hey! It doesn't have to be solved tonight! We've got a spare room, so I thought he could stay here for a while if it suits you all."

The women agreed they would love to have him, so they got busy cleaning the spare room and airing it out. The day had been hot and the evening breeze was welcome. Jim excused hiself after having something to eat and drove back down to Roscoe's to fetch Anthony. Clay and his family had already gone home, but it still took a while to get him away from the Beam family. Jim drove slowly up the valley just as the sun was setting. They waved at Albert and Eddie who were sitting in the yard with Anita, well aware of who Jim was taking home.

Anthony introduced himself to Andrea and Sylvia, who offered him coffee. He declined and said, "I'd just like to sit here on the porch for a while, if it'sall right. I think I am a little overdone tonight."

Jim smiled and said, "I've got just the thing for you. Sit still and relax." he went inside and came back with 2 glasses and a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey.

"Have some and rest a while."

"I'll do that. Thank you."

The women went inside and soon the soft glow of a kerosene lamp lit the front window. Crickets chirped and lightning bugs flew slowly around the yard. In the distance a whippoorwill called. Anthony relaxed. He and Jim talked a little about the farm and what was there. When darkness fell, the two men went inside and the women showed Anthony to the bathroom where he was amazed to find a flush toilet that worked, and warmed water from the kitchen range to wash up.

He fell asleep that night as soon as he laid his head down.

In the days that followed, people worked to clean and sterilize the house by the church. It was as clean as hard work and lots of scrubbing could make it when Anthony saw it the first time. He decided that since it was fairly large with 4 bedrooms, there was room for him to live and have a small clinic. Storage space might be a problem, since he wanted to bring all his medical goods from the clinic near his old home and the stored things at the Overlook cabin.

Jim solved that in a hurry. "We'll just go get another semi trailer. We need to go back to the pharmacies and Rural King, so we'll just bring a trailer for your things."

"I have a lot of books, too. We'll need some bookcases. I suppose we could just bring the bookcases they are in now, since I'm not going back there. A lot of medications need to be stored where it is dark and cool, so I think the basement will do for that if it's dry."

Jim said, "Yes, this is a good dry basement. They had somebody put some kind of sealant on it outside before they finished the inside. If you need more storage, we can come up with something."

********

[moldy]

Excellent story - thanks!!

Praying for your health.

[patience]

moldy,

I can sure use the prayers. They told me I have inoperable stomach cancer about 10 days ago. Won't take the chemo since statistically it makes little if any difference in life expectancy. I'm doing an extensive herbal treatment instead. It made the difference when my wife had cancer about 6 years ago, so I have some real confidence in it.

I'll get more story up tomorrow. And yes, I wrote this long before ebola was in the news.

[Lake Lili]

Great story patience! Hope your health improves so that we get to read MOAR!!!!

[moldy]

Let's just say I have a passing acquaintance with what you're going thru. I'll be praying for you and your family.