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."
***********
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.
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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."
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