Against the Grain Read online

  The dry practice was mostly used so we wouldn’t waste bullets and also to get everyone familiar with their weapons. The families here didn’t need an army, they needed people who could hit their target and run their guns successfully, be it against a coyote going after the chickens, or a looter sneaking around the farm. The way I figured it, they needed more mindset and non shooting smarts than they’d need to be proficient in extreme close quarters, or making five hundred yard head shots. So far there had been few threats out here that a couple people with guns, and the smarts on how to have the upper hand, couldn’t take care of.

  “We’ll get in some more live firing soon. I’ve got a few fun drills we can try out too,” I told him.

  We talked on for a while longer before I offered to relieve him of the OP and let him get back to his family. Besides everything else, they were in the middle of the first round of weeding the substantial garden plot at the main house and could use all hands that were available. The families were doing well living off the canned food they had put up from last year’s garden, understandably they were getting a bit tired of the same menu though. I told Nick that I’d see what I could do to mix up their food options, which also meant I’d be gone again for a few more days.

  The only problem was that I did need to stick close enough by so that I could see how Megan was integrating, and if staying here was going to be a short or a long term thing for her. If it didn’t work out, I really didn’t know what to tell her. Unfortunately she really did only have the other options of living alone at her mom’s old house in town, or taking her chances at the shelter.

  Chapter 5

  I was late to dinner. Actually I had missed it all together, but Sue graciously kept a plate set aside for me. The change in food from my own cooking was nice, although it was all the same stuff anymore, just prepared in a different way. I of course wouldn’t say it out loud, but at this point I would have traded a fifty gallon drum of soup for just one avocado, or a real honest to god, fresh and juicy orange. The small greenhouses Breanne’s father David had built were good for starting seeds and getting a good yield of vegetables during the summer, but portions of the crops were rationed for current meals, ensuring that there would be enough to preserve for the wintertime. It wasn’t often that anyone felt full.

  As I was eating, David and Nick filled me in on what they had going on for projects around the house and asked me a few questions, but were reserved enough to mostly just let me eat instead of do the majority of talking. Come to find out, Megan had told much of her story during and after dinner and had captivated her audience. Maybe it was getting news from the outside world, or maybe just hearing a story being told that they hadn’t heard three times before, but the family seemed quite taken with their guest. Everyone living there was confined to the bubble of the immediate area for the most part, not really having a reason to go anywhere else. Cabin fever had set in a long time ago and it was being dealt with by everyone to some degree or another.

  As I was finishing up my dinner the girls were taking advantage of a generator supplied hot shower, a very rare luxury. Usually a couple of stock pots of water would be heated over the stove to supply hot water, so when electrical power was needed for other longer tasks, if planned right, David would flip the breaker for the hot water heater and the well pump while the gen set was running anyway. A full hot shower was a rare occurrence for the women and a near unheard of one for the men. For the guys it was the process of a sponge bath and cool water rinse.

  The gasoline supply for the generator after all this time was depleting, albeit slowly. We had re-supplied ourselves once by a trip into town early on, and then the occasional siphon from an abandoned car kept the cans mostly full. Then there was the problem of having too much gas. The stuff in the tanks was already a few years old now and with no fuel stabilizer to help make it last… well we weren’t there yet, but it was getting close to a use it or lose it situation. Running the generator for a couple of hours a few times a week was a good way to put it to use and make everyone happy. I knew there must be a better use for it, I just hadn’t quite figured one out yet.

  After dinner and a quick conversation with Clint over the CB, I repacked my bag and strapped the new gun to it. I was about ready to head out when Nick reminded me I should probably let Megan know I was leaving. After meeting her, he had agreed with me that so far she seemed like a good fit to the group here, and after a little time if everything still was going well, he was sure they would have a long term place for her.

  Figuring I had allowed enough time for them to finish with the showers, I ventured towards the back of the house. As I got closer to the spare bedroom, I could hear Breanne and Megan talking. Pausing a few steps down the hall, I was unsure if I should continue on or wait, as it sounded like they were in the middle of a conversation. It took me a minute to realize I was the one being talked about.

  “… you aren’t the only one. I guess you could say he did the same for us too, saved all of us really. He brought us all together and set this all up. I mean, my parents and brother had their houses, and my grandparent’s was already empty, but he came into the city when things were at their worst and brought us and the others out here. We never would have made it here ourselves. He jump started us on the food and heat and living here, and… everything,” I could hear Breanne telling Megan.

  “But he doesn’t stay here too?”

  “Not really, he comes and goes, mostly keeps to himself a lot. In the beginning he stayed for a while and was always really adamant that we got to know the neighbors better. He wanted everyone to be able to work together instead of just having one or two families on their own. We’ve offered a permanent place, but he doesn’t stay for more than a week or so at most,” Breanne answered her.

  “And what does he do when he’s not here?”

  I could tell Megan was being respectful while still trying to get a better feel for how I fit in to the picture.

  “Well, he doesn’t really say… but he’ll show up with supplies or stuff we need out of nowhere sometimes. So I guess he’s out finding that type of stuff.”

  “So does he like, loot and steal stuff then?” I heard Meagan ask.

  It was a fair question I guess, but one I didn’t really like. Probably a little too close to the truth.

  “I don’t know for sure… I don’t think so though. I mean, I don’t think he would take something that someone else needed anyway. A lot of people left this area right away before last winter, so I’d guessing the stuff comes from their abandoned places,” Breanne’s voice speculated.

  “And around here, he farms and helps with that stuff too?”

  “Not exactly… he helps out with some of that, but my dad was a maintenance guy at the college so we had the tools and ability, we just didn’t really know what we needed to do. He is the one that set up the radio stuff and got us learning and hunting and that type of thing. He helps around here by helping us just live.”

  “I tried to ask him, but did he join the military or something before, and that’s how he knows all the gun and security stuff?”

  “Well no,” Breanne said. “We kind of don’t know the whole deal really. My husband says he did work with the Sheriffs office once. My brother Andrew thinks he was like a private contractor or bodyguard or something. My other brother Paul thinks he was some survivalist militia nut. From what I know, he never did any of that. I guess he might have, but he’s never told us anything like that before anyway.”

  “I know he was into guns and taught kids how to shoot in a class once. Ours were too young at the time of course… and he did teach a women’s self defense type class I remember, but we kind of don’t talk about any of it. He didn’t meet Nick until a few years out of high school and was in college when we started hanging out, so I don’t know what he did before then. Before Nick and I got married we wouldn’t see him for months at a time sometimes, that was just the kind of friends we were so we didn’t think anything of it.�
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  “Militia nut?” I thought. Yeah well Paul was kind of a wussy little pain in the ass anyway, so it shouldn’t have surprised me to hear it.

  “And now, now I don’t know,” Breanne continued on. “He knows what he knows and he does what he does and it only helps us, so we don’t really ask a whole lot about it. It sounds selfish hearing myself actually say it, but he doesn’t exactly volunteer a lot of information either.”

  “I’ll tell you this though, he came to my brother Andrew’s house one night a while back limping and bleeding. My sister in law Cary told me about it. She cleaned up his arm and took a chunk of metal or wood or something out of his leg, and then he was gone again before they were up the next morning.”

  “Whoa,” I heard Megan’s muffled reply.

  Yeah I remembered that one very well. It had been a hell of a hike after a run in with a couple that saw me before I saw them. I had dove around the corner of the house I was checking out just before they fired. I landed on some broken window glass and managed to cut my arm up pretty good. As for my leg, the best I can figure is that one of their shots must have hit a propane tank. I hated propane tanks. It wasn’t a big movie explosion or anything, but it went off enough to lodge something in the back of my leg right where I couldn’t get to it. I had barely made it to Andrew, Cary, Jake and Julie’s house to get patched up. The two couples were all best friends and had moved in together just down the road after I brought them along with Nick, Breanne and their kids all out here from the city.

  For their help, and I had hoped until now their discretion, they got a nice slightly used lever action 30-30 out of the deal. The original holder of the gun had opted out of ownership earlier that day.

  My leg had hurt like a bitch and I ended up drinking the last of my good whiskey that next day.

  “And no family?” Megan continued to ask about me.

  “Not anymore.” Breanne answered. “But he’s as much a part of this big family as anyone is. Like I said, he and I were friends before my husband and I got married… and before all this… and he’s a great guy. I won’t say I haven’t wondered about if things were different somehow…” Catching herself thinking aloud, she stopped in mid sentence, probably surprised at how much she enjoyed talking with a new friend.

  With that I softly knocked on the door to announce my presence. They both jumped.

  “Damnit I’ve had cats that are louder than you are,” Breanne breathed.

  “I’m headed out, just wanted to give you two a heads up,” I said trying not to let on that I had heard them talking.

  Megan took a step forward towards me.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I’ve got some stuff I need to take care of. I’ll be back in a few days though. Are you going to be okay here?” I asked, not pretending that her new hostess was not in the same room and listening.

  “I think so, everyone is really nice and, well, I wanted to say thank you again… for everything. But really you look tired, why don’t you stick around tonight?” Megan answered.

  Tired? She had no idea… I was beat. I was mentally exhausted before I had spent two days tailing her group, sleeping lightly, moving cautiously, with my brain never able to go on auto pilot. Now that there was an end in sight, the pace I had been on was catching up to me quickly. I hadn’t pulled this type of schedule in a long time and I was out of practice. That was the real reason why I was headed out, I needed some rest and relaxation, big time. The constant work, and more so the constant questions around here, would not allow me the luxury of rest if I were to stay.

  “You just stick with Bre, she’ll get you settled in and show you the ins and outs of this zoo,” I said with a slight smile at Breanne standing in the background.

  An awkward hug or no hug moment was building so I began to retreat out the door but Megan caught me tight before I could escape. She held on just long enough for me to get a stiff arm around her shoulder. I’d been living in the woods too long because she smelled good. I took a step back and looked at Breanne who was now headed my way too. Ah hell.

  “Stay safe out there,” she admonished and gave me a rare quick hug as well… she smelled good too.

  “I’ll see you soon,” I said to the pair and as casually as I could, turned, and promptly banged into the door frame.

  Keeping my back turned and mouth shut, I just kept on going.

  Chapter 6

  I elected to hike the four and a half miles back to my place all that night instead of making a camp and extending it out. I might have been exhausted, but I wanted to get it over with. Plus it was a nice night with a good moon that showed plenty of light to walk by. My path took me through the heart of the woods north of the Harris’s houses, and it was treacherous in all the right spots if you didn’t know where you were going. Fortunately, I had done this a lot. I tried not to go by the same path too often so as to create a trail, although there were a few spots that it was unavoidable. There was only one area narrow enough to jump the little creek to keep your feet dry, and you had to drop through the bit of a canyon at just the right point or otherwise be redirected for an extra couple of miles around. I knew the way well and from the time I had spent back here in these woods, I also knew that there were no other occupied houses for miles and miles all around. A hunter would have to really be lost to make it all the way out here, no matter where they had started from. That’s what I always hoped anyway.

  My walk that night gave me time to reflect on what I had heard Megan and Breanne discussing. I usually tried not to over think the part I was playing, but now it was fresh in my mind. Unintentionally, I had developed a certain persona around the others. Part of it was scripted for show, and part of it was just born out of the differences between me and nearly everyone else living there.

  I tried to keep them in the dark about the grizzly things I had had to do in the last couple years, but not so much as to let them naively believe it was safe beyond just a few miles from their front doors. None of them needed to hear the gory details from behind the gun sights, some things couldn’t be hidden though, and the rest was apparently guessed at.

  Coincidentally, a bit of a legend had grown up around me. And perhaps I did start to play into it that a bit too, for a good reason. While I had found a balance in my life with the world, I seemed to be an exception. During the height of the economic crumble and then the harsh winter after it all really had fallen apart, there was little to no hope. There had been plenty of panic, lots of suicides, and many people took it as a freeing of the burdens of laws and morals… which all meant that the good people who were left were rapidly losing everything they had ever known, including hope. People needed hope to continue on living, it was their underlying purpose. Hope for a better car, better salary, better relationship, or nowadays, a better crop of food.

  The truth was that I wasn’t that special or different than anyone else. I had never served in the military, I wasn’t some civilian contractor and I never wanted to be a cop, I had just been plugged in. With camping and shooting there was a natural connection to some survival related discussions and unlike most of the other basement dwellers who read and talked too much, I had put what I was doing and hearing together, and tried things out.

  Clint Fenner had been very similar to me, in our interests anyway. We both lived out of town most of our lives. We camped, hunted, and shot at a few competitions together and we were traveling partners for the instructional classes that we attended… and we were friends. It all had just fallen into place with us.

  He had been around longer than I had, and he had a dream, or maybe more accurately a nightmare, of what would be needed to be done if things ever did go south in our country. A country tearing itself apart was not unheard of; it was just usually on a smaller scale. A full blown civil war, revolution or invasion was not logistically ever going to happen to us, but a slide into decline, into third world hardships and general lawlessness driven by desperation, he and I both knew that was a very rea
l possibility. All a person would have to do was actually pay attention to past and current history to put the pieces together and see what path we were on. Clint believed it. I believed it too, and our lifestyles helped us to be able to ease into the transition we found ourselves in when things started sliding downhill faster than most could keep up with.

  We had also used it as a victimless hobby. We put tactics and gear to use when we went out into the woods or played paintball, but we never took it, or ourselves, too seriously. We enjoyed hiking around and staying out in the woods overnight with just a small pack and rifle, crossing through land with no one ever the wiser. We mapped routes and role played a little and it was fun... up until it wasn’t just for fun anymore.

  A few years back we went to a climbing and mountaineering emergency medical workshop. The way we conducted ourselves, our approach, familiarity, and comfort didn’t go unnoticed. The local Search and Rescue and Sheriffs office’s each had representatives attending the same training, and a dialog was established. A few handshakes and business cards later, we went on our merry way until a month afterward when we were contacted to assist in a rescue in our area.

  We ended up helping out with a handful of different issues, with a handful of different agencies, but the unpaid volunteer status for what was essentially a part time job, never sat well with me. Still I played nice for a while longer. We never received much respect from the official paid guys, which I didn’t like, although I could understand it. They didn’t like needing guys that knew the land or could read a map when they were used to having the budgets for updated electronics, helicopters and dog handlers.

  More and more though, I caught on to what others in the underground media buzz-worded as the “militarization of the police.” I essentially had no qualms witnessing a no knock, warrant-less search of a cabin with a meth lab in the front yard, or the rough handling of a escaped convict, but after a while, too much got to be too much for me and I started having other things to do when the next call to volunteer would come in.