Defending Camp

5

It had been a long, tiring day. Georgia had taken it upon herself to get the camp not only cleaned up and organized, but also get some long term projects underway. It made sense. They didn’t know when this break of relatively mild weather might end.

Max’s muscles ached from digging. He’d been digging animal traps for the better part of the afternoon. And that was after hauling firewood before that.

He’d been committed to doing his part at the camp, even though he was leaving that night. That was just the way he was.

The sun had set and the campfire was roaring. Sadie and James were in charge of cooking tonight. Which meant more venison, as always. The smells were wafting over.

Max was double-checking his pack, making sure he had everything.

His Glock never left his side, so that was a given. He was taking two rifles. And plenty of ammo.

He’d bring his Spyderco. It never left his pocket. But he was upgrading a little, with a fancy carbon steel survival knife in a sheath on his belt. He’d taken it from the deranged man who’d had his brother and Cynthia tied up. He didn’t recognize the brand, but he could tell it was a good knife.

The camp was replete with new, good quality gear. Spoils from the militia men who’d attacked them. It was too warm now in general for the parkas, but it was good to know they had them if needed. Max would bring one along in case the weather took a turn for the worse.

Even though he was taking the truck, Max didn’t want to rely on it for his gear. He had to account for the possibility that the truck wouldn’t make it, that he’d have to abandon it for some reason, or that it would break down. And for all Max knew, the roads would be impassable at some point. He needed to be able to carry everything essential on his back.

His food would mainly be pemmican, which he’d helped make over the last week. Pemmican was an old Native American food. It was made from dried deer meat and deer fat, combined together to form what was essentially a small meat cake. The ratio of fat to muscle was about one to one. No one could live on pure protein. Not for long, anyway, without risking what was known as rabbit starvation.

Water would account for the majority of the weight of his pack. If the journey took two days one way, like he was planning, he’d have enough in his pack. If it took longer, he’d have extra water in the pickup truck. If something happened to the truck, and the journey took longer, he’d have to rely on the water filter he was bringing with him. Of course that meant finding streams and sources of water.

It was a risk. But that was the way it was.

Max didn’t think too much about what he was trying to do or why he was doing it. As far as he saw it, he was just trying to help this kid who was stuck. No, he couldn’t save everyone. And he wasn’t going to try. But why couldn’t he try to do one good thing? Save one good person? Life wasn’t a philosophical debate. At least not the way Max saw it. He was just trying to do what he could.

There was other reasons for the trip. The main was that he’d get a sense of what was going on in the outside world. Dan, the kid from the radio, was located down past the Pennsylvania border in West Virginia. Max would have to travel along either back roads or highways, through towns and through suburbs. There’d be no cities on the way, but that was fine with Max. He already knew what had happened in the cities, and that was pure chaos and violence. There simply wasn’t any other way things could have gone.

But in the towns and suburbs, there were possibilities. Things might have spiraled out of control in the beginning, in the days immediately after the EMP. But now at this point the survivors in some areas might have started to organize, to rebuild things.

Max didn’t hold out any hope that the government had come back online, that things would ever come back to normal. From what he’d seen, things had fallen too far already. There’d have been some sign if the government was reorganizing.

But that didn’t mean small communities couldn’t have developed, started organizing.

If they were out there, these small communities, Max knew it would be to their advantage to seek them out. Long term survival was a different game. It was more than just fighting off the enemies. It meant really creating communities, growing food, building long-lasting structures. New problems. New challenges.

Trading would be essential. Despite the influx of gears and weapons from the dead militia men, Max knew that there were things his camp would desperately need if they were going to last in their location.

They’d need seeds for growing crops. Animals that they could domesticate. Max had hoped deer could be domesticated, but he’d asked Georgia about it, and she’d shot the idea down completely. “It’s simply not possible,” she’d said. “Deer aren’t like that, no matter how much you try.”

They’d need more medical supplies, too. And countless other things. Eventually, they’d run out of ammunition, no matter how much they had stockpiled.

That was why Max had been digging deer traps all day. The traps weren’t complicated. The technique was borrowed from a Native American tribe. Max had seen it in a movie once and then looked it up online to verify it. The idea was to dig a hole big enough for an animal’s leg to fall into, then line the sides with sharpened sticks. The animal’s leg would get stuck, and the more it pulled, the more the upwardly pointed sticks would dig into its leg. Some might call it cruel. But it was effective.

The only problem was they’d all have to be mindful of the traps. A human could fall in just as easily as an animal.

It was better to scout out the communities now, thought Max. No sense in waiting around until things got desperate. If everything was in chaos in the south, Max wanted to know it sooner rather than later. It would give him time to come up with contingency plans.

Having checked over his pack, Max closed it, cinching it tightly. He swung it around, shouldering it as he stood. His leg rebelled against the extra weight. But it would get used to it. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. Or hadn’t handled before.

Max found Mandy outside the tent, bending down over a large pack. Her hair hung down in curtains around her face. With one hand, she pushed some of her hair behind her ear.

“I see you’re getting ready, just like I thought you would,” said Max.

Mandy jumped a little, her hand instinctively going to the handgun she now wore in a holster at her side.

“You startled me,” she said. “I didn’t hear you coming up.”

“I figured I might as well just come get you,” said Max. “Rather than trying to sneak off myself and finding you stowed away in the bed of the pickup or something.”

Mandy flashed him a smile. “So you’re saying you want me to come along?”

“I’m saying I doubt I’ll be able to leave without you. So I thought I might as well make it easier on the both of us. Get it all out in the open. Is your bag all packed?”

Mandy nodded.

“You got enough food?”

“If you can call that pemmican stuff food.”

They said their goodbyes quickly. James, who’d been kept somewhat out of the loop, hadn’t known they were leaving until that moment. He almost seemed hurt that he wasn’t invited along. But Max assured him they need him at the camp. And it was true.

Then again, Max wouldn’t have left if he’d thought there’d be another attack like the one from the compound. They’d sent their men. Presumably their best. And quite a few of them. The men had never returned. That was a strong message. The compound only had so many men to lose, no matter what was going on with the leadership now.

John said nothing, standing off to the side. Only when they’d already turned, and were headed for the pickup, did John call out, “stay safe out there.”

Max turned and nodded. He held his brother’s glance for a moment.

“Aren’t you worried about them?” said Mandy.

“They can take care of themselves,” said Max. “And now that Georgia’s doing better, I wouldn’t want to be the one to try anything there.”

Mandy let out a little laugh that quickly faded away. They’d seen so much violence that it was hard to find things like that actually funny. At least that was Max’s take on it. The images of the injuries and deaths he’d caused never seemed to leave him.

The pickup truck was only a short ways from the camp.

They tossed their bags into the bed, where the extra water was. They got in and Max cranked the engine. He listened for a moment, making sure it sounded all right, before putting the truck in first and starting to slowly drive off.

“They think you’re crazy for doing this,” said Mandy.

“Then they must think you’re crazy too.”

“Maybe.”

They drove in silence along the bump unpaved road through the hunting grounds. It took them a good two hours before they hit pavement.

“Weird to see a road again,” said Mandy. “A proper road, I mean.”

“With any luck, we’ll get some information. Now we need to keep alert. There could be anything out here. Things could have changed a lot in the time we’ve spent at camp.”

“I can’t see how it would get any worse,” said Mandy.

“It’s a possibility we’ve got to prepare for. Keep your rifle ready. OK?”

Max glanced over at her, and Mandy nodded back at him. There was fear in her eyes.

Max ignored it. “And keep the maps out. It’ll be helpful if you do the navigating.”

“Already on it,” said Mandy, starting to unfold a large map.

Now that they were on the pavement, Max didn’t have to concentrate on avoiding bumps and potholes. That was good. It let him keep his eyes moving away from the road, scanning the trees along the side, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

The plan was to head south about 30 miles on this road, and then they’d be able to either pick up a highway or continue on the backgrounds. Both would take them south. Max wanted to see what the roads were like before he made his decision.

He was glad to have Mandy along, glancing at her now, her hair blowing in the wind. The moon was high, casting plenty of light on the both of them. Both windows were down even though it was really too cold for that. But it felt good. It felt like freedom, to be cruising down the road.

It almost felt like the EMP had never happened. Not that Max could keep that in his head for more than a split second. And not that he’d want to. That wasn’t the way his mind worked. He preferred to think about reality.

Max knew very well that driving was a luxury that would soon vanish entirely. Sure, they might be able to scavenge fuel here and there for a while. Maybe even a few years. But eventually it’d all run out. And there’d be no more oil refineries to produce it.

They continued to drive in silence for another fifteen minutes. Max’s mind was busy strategizing, trying to think of the things that he hadn’t yet thought of. It was a mental exercise that Max liked to use. It’d come in handy before. It was difficult, but the goal was to find the gaps in your own thinking by approaching it from different angles, recontextualizing the situation until the familiar seemed strange.

“Max!”

Mandy had seen it before Max.

Just around the bend ahead of them, there was something blocking the road, illuminated in the headlights. Max couldn’t tell immediately what it was. It was massive, taller than the car, and long, stretching completely across the road.

Max had his foot on the brake instinctively before his mind really registered what it was. It seemed so out of place that it took an extra moment to understand it.

It was a crashed plane, lying perpendicular across the road. A commercial airplane, by the looks of it, fairly large.

“Shit,” muttered Mandy. “You think they’re all dead? All the passengers?”

“We’ve got to check it out,” said Max. “There might be some survivors.”

“After all this time? It must have gone down when the EMP hit, right?”

“Yeah,” said Max. “But people are tough.”

Max had the truck in neutral, but he put it in first again, and started turning the truck around.

“What are you doing? I thought you wanted to check it out.”

“Just getting the truck facing the right way in case we need to make a quick escape.”

“Right,” said Mandy, a little bite of sarcasm in her voice. “You think a few starving plane crash survivors are going to be a threat? And that’s if any of them are still alive.”

Max put the truck in first, and killed the engine.

“You never know,” said Max. “There could be something going on we’re not aware of. I’ll keep the keys in the truck. If I don’t make it back, you’ll be able to start it. Here, I’ll put them right here.” Max jammed the keys between the seat cushions so that they were partially hidden.

“Right,” said Mandy. “That’ll fool everyone.”

“Take this seriously,” said Max. “Grab your gun and let’s go.”

He already had his door open, one of his rifles in hand.