Walking in the Rain (Book 1): Surviving the Fall Read online

  As the first tentative rays of the sun began to lighten the sky, still shy of dawn, I roused from my hard thoughts and set about checking what I’d gleaned from yesterday’s salvage. First, though, I needed to get my backpack squared away for this day’s journey. Extra space in the big backpack was available. I just had to fold up the shirts and pants I stuffed in haphazardly the night before. I also drug out two pairs of rolled up white athletic socks that would go to Amy. Another loan, not a gift. She would have to do her own salvaging. She needed better footwear but the thick socks would help short term. While I was at it, I withdrew a pair of gray sweat pants for the girl to cover herself with, noting that the drawstrings remained in place.

  The three handguns from the looters garnered a quick looksee and the prize of the trio was a Glock 21 with three spare magazines. Score one for the good guys, I thought. I set the pistol aside until later for examination, along with the two revolvers. They would need a cleaning and a takedown before I would trust my life to them. I knew the Ruger would work until then.

  Once my own backpack was situated, I began going through the smaller packs the dead men had been carrying. Candles, lighters, small trinkets and useless rolls of cash confirmed these bags contained salvage. I decided as each man gleaned items from the neighborhood, they stowed their treasures in these bags to prevent their fellows from stealing them. I also found a few cans of food, a five pound bag of rice, and packets of tea and sugar. In the bottom of one pack, I found a small bundle of greenish leaves, either oregano or marijuana, I deduced. Either way, I placed it in the keeper pile for now.

  The bags also contained a few boxes of ammunition, but sadly, no 9mm. One nearly full fifty round box of 45 ACP, two fifty round boxes of 38 Special, and a twenty five round box of #4 buckshot in 12 gauge. Each bag also held a handful of loose rounds in the bottom. I did not take time to sort them. Instead they were added to a plastic bag I kept in one of the side pockets of my backpack. That was my odds and ends ammo collection. Even ammo for guns I didn’t have held some trade value. Just as long as the person I traded it to didn’t decide to use it on me.

  Once I was done with the rough sorting, I set aside the largest and nicest of the bags and the only real backpack in the bunch. It was a black nylon North Face model with padded shoulder straps and a waist cinch, and I filled it with the “keeper” materials for hauling. That would be Amy’s bag, and I made sure to include another pair of socks and some rags to stuff into the oversized boots. They might look like clown shoes, but I was betting she would wear them. Going barefoot was not an alternative.

  I spent the next few minutes with an improvised cleaning kit going over the captured weapons as the light grew stronger in our little hide. For bandits and would-be rapists, the men I’d killed took very poor care of the tools of their trade.

  I wanted to get moving before dawn but I decided Amy could use a few more minutes of sleep. When she finally opened her eyes, I saw confusion and fear warring on her expression as she took in her surroundings. Then those bright blue eyes caught mine, and she gave a little smile. No figuring girls, I thought as I tossed her the sweat pants and the socks. She caught the items of clothing and gave me a curious look.

  “Go ahead and put those on. Roll up the legs on those sweats and cinch up the waist as best you can. Otherwise your butt is going to be hanging out,” I said by way of explanation.

  Amy looked at me with her head cocked to the right. In a second I could tell from her blush she remembered she was naked under the sweat shirt. She was covered to mid-thigh for the moment but that wouldn’t do for any traveling. As the girl tried to figure out how to get the sweat pants on without exposing herself, I rose to a crouch and began easing myself out of the sheltered spot.

  “Luke, where are you going?”

  “Giving you a little privacy, and checking on breakfast.” I didn’t look back as I left. I felt a little uneasy leaving my gear and most of my newly acquired weapons with a near total stranger, but either she would work out or she wouldn’t. Anyway, I had a good feeling about the girl.

  Fifteen minutes later I was back in the little sheltered spot with a pair of rabbits tied to my belt and several thin metal cables rolled up to be returned to my pack. These rabbits might be kind of small, but I figured Amy would appreciate the fresh meat. Trying not to make it obvious, I noted the sweat pants fit, sort of, with the cuffs rolled up so the excess fabric did not drag the ground and the waist cinched in tight.

  “I can build a fire if you want,” Amy volunteered, eyeing the rabbits. A smile tugged at her lips, making me wonder how long it had been since that particular expression had crossed her pale features.

  “Sure thing, but let’s get moving first. We can stop in a little bit, cook these rabbits, and take a little time for ourselves. Maybe see if we can find you some better shoes, too.”

  Amy nodded her agreement and helped me finish picking up our little camp, which at this stage really just meant rolling up the blankets and my tarp. Once these items were secured, I eased out through the interlocking tree limbs and waited for the girl to follow. She seemed to be having some difficulty getting her pack to settle right but I knew she would eventually get used to the weight. I did.

  “Where are we going?” Amy asked, still carefully picking her words.

  “We’ll follow this stream for a few miles then stop for a fire and roast these rabbits. In the meantime, have some of these,” I said, and handed her a small can that used to contain baking soda.

  They were wild blueberries. I picked them this morning and though not as sweet as store bought, Amy didn’t seem to mind and ate half the can while we walked for the next hour. Our path paralleled a small stream that ran south and west, headed in my direction and the going was tough as the hills began to grow again. According to my map, we were nearly into Arkansas.

  As if she could read my mind, Amy finally spoke.

  “Where are we headed? I mean, do you have some place to go?”

  Again, I could tell she was trying to choose her words with care and I realized she was trying to avoid provoking an angry response from me. She was rightfully curious, but had been so conditioned to tread lightly that I had to wonder. How bad had her life been before I found her? This seemed more than one scary night’s worth of caution, but what the heck did I know.

  “Yeah, Amy, I’ve got a destination, and so do you if you decide to keep traveling with me. And you can always ask me questions, okay? I may not be able to answer you at the moment, but I will not ignore you. Or punish you.”

  After she gave me a small nod and a wary smile, I continued. Other than glancing over for a flash, I kept my eyes on the woods around us as I spoke.

  “I’m headed home, eventually. Northeast Texas. My family has a farm outside a little town named Ripley. Ever heard of it?”

  She shook her head so I continued.

  “Its south of Tyler, close to Nacogdoches.”

  “Oh, Nacogdoches. That’s SFA, right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered with a laugh.

  With a reputation as a party school, Stephen F. Austin State University had name recognition well beyond its fifteen thousand student enrollment. Growing up twenty miles away, I had gotten accustomed to some of the nicer things the school had to offer, like being able attend plays and visit an actual science lab that didn’t look like something out of Dr. Frankenstein’s basement. Being able to check out college girls didn’t hurt either.

  “That’s a long ways. I think.”

  “Well, I started in Chicago, so I’m more than half way there by my calculations.”

  Amy gave a little squeal of surprise.

  “All by yourself?”

  I nodded, and then kept my silence for a few minutes as we navigated around some falling down barbed wire fencing. That gnarled mess appeared likely to give you tetanus from just looking at it. This patch of overgrown forest might have been a field at some point in the distant past, given the fencing and the immature trees spro
uting all about, but that must have been years, or decades, ago. From my own hiking experience, this kind of terrain offered more hazards than timber company land, or even old growth forest. Only after we’d successfully navigated through the uneven ground did I pick up the thread of our conversation and continue.

  “Traveling in large groups now just makes you a target. Unless you got a lot of firepower and people you can trust. So mainly I’ve come this far by myself.”

  While Amy digested this bit of information, I led her to a small side trail meandering down the hill and intersecting with the banks of a fast flowing creek. When I dropped my pack, Amy took that as a sign to follow suit. As she stood rubbing her shoulders, I asked her to gather up small pieces of dry wood for a fire while I checked our water source.

  The stream ran by us only a few feet from the trail, and I came to a halt by a small stand of cattails to look at the water. The flow appeared steady, maybe a little high on the banks from the recent rainfall, and likewise the load of sediment washed into the creek made the water a bit murky. Of course, eyeballing the water like this told me little, so I used my stainless steel pot to scoop up some of the liquid for further scrutiny.

  No smell, and cleaner than I had first thought, enough so that we could get by without first pre-filtering. That would save us time and trouble, anyway. I worried about chemicals leeching into the water but since I couldn’t do anything about that without running a complete condensation boiler operation, we would have to continue taking our chances. Heavy metals and PCB pollution had been a big problem even before the world came unhinged.

  While Amy gathered sticks and small limbs for fuel, I carved up enough wood shavings to serve as tinder, then I used a gardening shovel normally strapped on the side my pack to gouge out a shallow depression in the dark, loamy soil. This would do in place of a fire ring and reduced the visible flicker of fire to anyone passing by our waystop. I placed the sticks and wood shavings in the pit in the approved Boy Scout manner and lit it using a Bic lighter.

  Once I had the fire going, I fished out the wire frame stand I’d fabricated to fit the pot and put the water on to boil. While the pot was heating up, I stepped away from the creek side and quickly skinned the rabbits while Amy looked on curiously. She seemed to approve as I checked the flesh for lesions and the internal organs for signs of disease before discarding them, along with the skins, in the bushes. We wouldn’t be here long enough to attract predators, I thought.

  Using a pair of metal skewers, I set the two rabbits to roasting over the fire while boiling pot after pot of water to replenish our canteens and bottles, then on the last pot of water after the containers were topped off, I left Amy to watch the fire while I harvested some cattails and other forage greens I recognized near our little patch of forest. These greens went into the pot, as did one of the roasted rabbits. I let the stew simmer for a few more minutes while I retrieved the second rabbit and wrapped it in some sterilized aluminum foil scavenged some days ago.

  “Why did you do that?” Amy asked, curious as my routine. I decided to give her some lessons while we waited for the rabbit to stew to finish.

  “Okay, first of all, that is for lunch today. I use the foil to keep the bugs off it until we can eat it later. I cleaned up the aluminum the day before yesterday, setting it out over a fire for nearly an hour. Not enough to melt, but close. Hopefully that treatment will kill any germs on the foil.

  “You saw how careful I was about the rabbits, right? Making sure they weren’t infected or parasite-ridden. That is the way I try to do everything out here. Carefully. You said before you could hunt, is that true?”

  “Yeah. That’s how I grew up. Daddy was a trucker but he couldn’t find much work lately and Momma worked odd jobs when she could. Food prices got really bad there before the lights went out but fortunately we lived out in the country in a brokedown old trailer Daddy inherited. I killed plenty of squirrels and rabbits with my .22, and cleaned ‘em just like you did.”

  I wanted to ask Amy how she came to be in her uncle’s care but bit my tongue. Not my business, I decided. Maybe she will be able to trust me with the story later. I moved the conversation on to other topics.

  “Well, we need to keep up the same concept of maintaining sanitation in everything we do. First and foremost, even more important than food, is clean drinking water. That’s why I boiled the water before cooking, because if we had to drop everything at a moment’s notice and haul ass, we filled our water requirements first. You can live for more than a week with no food, but no more than three days without water. That is the real deal.”

  Amy nodded. “My uncle, Daddy’s brother, had some chlorine pills he used to purify the water but that stuff tasted horrible. He said you could boil the water but he didn’t know how long and was afraid the creek water had bugs in it.”

  “I’ve got some bleach too, but boiling is usually enough. There’s other ways of purifying water and there are some things like mercury and other poisons that even boiling or chlorine won’t fix.”

  Pure bleach was a valuable barter commodity, and I salvaged it wherever I could. When money rapidly became worthless, many people realized that certain commodities represented other forms of wealth. A source of clean drinking water was worth more than gold or guns, which seemed to be the new currency, along with pussy and ammo.

  To reinforce my point, I added a drop of chlorine solution to the cap threadings of each canteen and bottle while I stood explaining things to Amy. I talked about maintaining a low profile, avoiding other travelers, and why we moved before preparing a meal and why we would hit the road soon after as well. I could tell she got that part right off from her response.

  “Yeah, people can smell food cooking a long ways off, even if they can’t see your smoke. It’s like our sense of smell got better all the sudden after the lights went out.”

  Yep. When you are so hungry your stomach thinks your throat has been cut, it is amazing how keen your nose can get in this new world.

  By the time I finished treating the water containers, I could tell the small stew was simmering and ready. Using a pair of tongs, I pulled the pot and metal frame together away from the fire and gave the meal a few minutes to cool. Then I set about rifling my gear and I could tell Amy wanted to ask a question but she held her tongue. Straightening from my pack, I pulled out a pair of spoons wrapped in plastic from the side pocket. She glanced at the one pot and the pair of spoons while I gave her a grin.

  “Bon Appétit. You can go first.”

  Amy dug into the soup with gusto but I noticed she was careful to save back at least half for me. I thanked her and ate my share quickly, eager to back on the move. Out here, staying in one spot too long was an invitation to get attacked. Once I was finished, I carried the bowl and spoons over to the creek, refilled the container with water, and set the rack back up over the flames.

  This time I let the boil go on for a few minutes before using the tongs to pull the setup off the fire pit. Once the water cooled a bit, I tipped the small pot over and let the water drain out, then placed the spoons back in their plastic wrappers, careful where I placed my fingers on the hot metal to avoid contamination. Then I stowed the now cooled pot and wire rack back into their compartment in my pack.

  Finally, I used a stick to drag some of the loose soil over from the small pile I’d made gouging out the hole and carefully smothered the fire. At this point, Amy spoke up, asking why I didn’t use the water instead.

  “I used that water to sterilize the pot and spoons, which is always a good idea. If I’d used the wash water to douse the fire, the heat might have been enough to convert some of that water to steam, like smoke. Since the fire was relatively smokeless, no sense in making a sign of our presence now.”

  “How do you know all this stuff? Were you in the Army?”

  I had to laugh at that, and once I saw the hurt look on Amy’s face, I figured I needed to explain.

  “Amy, how old do you think I am?”

/>   She shrugged. “I don’t know, like twenty five? Old,” she pronounced.

  “Yeah, Amy, I am older than you. Sixteen years old, anyway. I wasn’t laughing at you, just the idea that I am old enough to be a soldier, or that experienced.”

  “Sixteen? That’s just two years older than me. No way, Luke, you’ve got, like, lines on your face.”

  I nodded, agreeing. “Living like this can surely age a person. Plus, not getting to shave regularly gives me this beard. I haven’t looked in a mirror lately but I can bet I don’t look the same at all.”

  “I guess so. I don’t know why you would lie about something like that. Did you have trouble at the beginning, with people thinking you were a kid? That they could take advantage of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened to them?”

  When I didn’t answer, and instead pulled my pack on, Amy got the message. Those three men she’d seen me kill were not the first. Jesus, nowhere near. I tried to keep a journal of sorts as I traveled, of what I had seen and where, but not a list of the men I had killed. Sometimes I saw them in my dreams, but not so often any more. Even after just two months of living in this shit, I’d already learned to process a lot and just let it go.

  I hoped Amy would learn how to do the same. We had a lot of miles to cover in the meantime.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Amy and I continued our trek south for nearly a week, following the shallow little creek as it meandered eventually into a swift moving river. Along the way, we kept our eyes open for any chance to liberate her better footwear and other essentials. Nothing fruitful came along until shortly after we turned slightly west to parallel the river. Then we got lucky.

  Amy spotted it first, a partially burned two story farmhouse set back in the trees. With only a long driveway leading out to a narrow dirt road, this location appeared fairly isolated. And yet as we drew nearer, I could see the windblown trash in the front yard and the glint of broken glass told me even out here, looters had struck.