Fire From the Sky: Book 11: Ashes, page 2
“Well, I am assuming it was Clayton Sanders,” Amanda shrugged. “Only he doesn’t seem all that crazy to me. Granted my experience around him has been limited.”
“He’s fine so long as everyone is peaceful,” Greg promised. “It’s when this kind of crap gets out of hand that he gets annoyed. And before the lights went out, rumor had it that he did Leon’s customer service, so to speak.”
“Customer service, huh?” Amanda snorted. “I guess that’s as good a euphemism as any. At least he’s not as scary as Xavier or Zach.”
Greg’s laughter filled the Hummer for the next several minutes as they continued down the road on patrol.
-
Clayton Sanders winced as his ear suddenly had a sharp, ringing sensation. He ran a finger into his ear, shaking it slightly, as if that would help relieve the irritation.
“Problem?” Jose Juarez asked, seeing Clayton’s apparent discomfort.
“Ear’s ringing,” Clay told him. “Somebody talking about me, probably.”
“Now who could that be?” Jose laughed. The two men were watching as their newest recruits went through a series of fire-and-maneuver drills under the watchful eyes of Nate Caudell and Stacey Pryor. The only missing members were Amanda Lowery and Petra Shannon, both of which were on patrol with the Sheriff.
Clay could rarely hide a smile at the idea of Greg being Sheriff. It wasn’t so much that his friend was actually the Sheriff, but the memory of the look on his face when he found out he’d been appointed to the post by the region’s military commander. Under the provisions of Martial Law, the regional commander had the authority to appoint people to such offices and hadn’t hesitated to make Greg, the sole surviving member of the pre-Apocalypse Sheriff’s Department, the new high Sheriff.
“They’re doing good,” Jose noted, missing the sly smile that flashed across his Boss’ face.
“They are indeed,” Clay agreed. “I think at this point we could leave the safety of the farm in their hands, so long as they were leavened by a couple of the older hands. We shouldn’t need it, but if we do, it’s good to have that option.”
A month had passed since members of the farm had ventured to Lewiston to hunt down and kill a team from further south that was sniping at the town as well as abducting and killing townspeople. They had done so not at the request of Captain Adcock, the area commander for the National Guard force responsible for their part of the region, but because a rifleman had killed a girl known to at least three of the teenagers on Clay’s team, including his nephew.
That trip had also brought with it the discovery that the ‘Armies of God’, something that Clay had indeed begun to sweat about, were nothing more than guards and convicts from a private prison in north Georgia. True, there were at least some ‘converts’ out there who were singing the praises of the ‘Great Worthy Boaz’ or whatever the hell the prison chaplain called himself, but it wasn’t an army. Or at least, no army had appeared.
What had appeared, attempting to shake down Lewiston for their food and other supplies, was a loose team of former prison guards and prisoners. While the group had caused a good bit of damage and fear, along with no small amount of pure panic, it had taken less than two days for a small team from the farm to find the undisciplined and poorly led group and eliminate all but a handful, who they had delivered to Captain Adcock on their way out of the woods and on their way home.
Discovering that there was no actual ‘Army of God’ made up of mad zealots looking to kill the heathen who refused to blah, blah, blah, had not been the only unexpected benefit from that small job. Almost forty good horses, complete with saddles and tack, had been seized by the team as ‘spoils of war’, and added to the farm’s growing herd of horses. Knowing horses would be big business in the future, those in charge of growing the herd were glad to see new blood brought to the group. Clay was glad for the horses, but even more so for the saddles and other gear. Atop of that had been a mass of weapons and ammunition, which would be added to their growing stockpile of weaponry taken from the bodies of their enemies to be used later on as trade goods.
In all honestly, despite his not wanting to accept the mission, it had turned in to a rather profitable venture.
In the month since then, Greg Holloway had firmly established the return of the Sheriff’s Department and had discovered that there were more survivors in the area than had been previously believed. Or perhaps feared was a better term. Most of the farm had feared that those people gathered in Jordan were perhaps all that remained of the county’s former residents. Greg’s patrols, however, had found several groups that had escaped the raiders that had plagued the entire area before Clay and his men had eliminated them as well. Most of those people, hardy country folk, were doing pretty well if not flourishing. Greg had talked to many of them and taken notes of their needs. With so few vehicles still operating, or even on the road, Greg’s patrols had become a sort of ‘trading post’ for people out and about.
If someone had an item they wanted to get rid of, they told Greg. Likewise, if there was an item they needed, they told Greg. The new Sheriff then could often manage to put deals together for people, and every so often a gun truck would be pressed into service to make a run and move material around from place to place. While this arrangement could likely never become permanent, it was working for now, and had been a big boost in the popularity of the new Sheriff. Always a plus to have the voters behind you, Clay had told Greg with a smile.
Adcock had visited once in that month, advising him that Whitten had decided, barring any new problems, that they would start spreading their forces into the small winter garrisons by the first week in November. A little less than three weeks from this very day, in fact. At that point, Clay’s appointed teachers would begin teaching Adcock’s soldiers to ride and care for horses. Those lessons, a few meals when and where the farm could spare the means, and a place to post a small force to help have men available close to where they might be needed had been beneficial to the farm on several levels.
The chief benefit was the addition of sixteen trained and experienced soldiers to help defend the farm. A farm that had become extremely popular and important to the soldiers in general thanks to at least two great meals and the friendly reception they had received.
The second benefit, easily as important as the first in Clay’s eyes, had been assistance in ‘looting’ what was left of some building materials and home furnishings to erect new lodgings for the people of the farm. A two-story barracks-type building that would double as a defensive position in case of attack had been constructed on the western side of the hilltop square to house the sixteen young women who were now finishing their training to become part of the security forces for the farm. The bottom floor would be for bunks, while the top would be for defensive uses, but could also double as a recreational area for the women, especially during winter when board games and card games would be most of the available recreation.
Along the eastern side of the square were six new cabins, each with three bedrooms and a large sitting room, as well as a partial loft area. The cabins could be used for individual roommates or for a family dwelling either one. People from both groups would make use of the facilities and mess hall in the square.
A single, separate cabin, smaller but still with four rooms and a loft, was constructed for Evelyn Lacey, now permanently known as ‘the Goat Lady’ behind her back. This cabin was placed to the west of the three large buildings on the Troy farm, with fencing giving her goats a good five acres of fenced safety to roam in, along with her two Aussie Shepherds. A creek running through the area would provide water, and Clay had already had a small pond scooped out near the center with a rock dam to slow the flow of water and fill the pond for the goats.
Lacey used the goat’s milk, among other items, to make soaps, lotions and other goodies that were immensely popular among most all the women on the farm. It was in fact that popularity with one Lainie Harper, Clay’s live-in lady love, that had prompted the effort to move Lacey, lock, stock and dogs, to the farm. The cabin had ample living space as well as providing a workshop for her services.
The final new construction lay on the eastern side of the Troy farm, and was like the dorm erected for the young women on the hill. A roughhewn two-story construct to house the soldiers that would be garrisoned on the farm over the winter, complete with a private room for their NCO, Sergeant First Class Sean Gleason, another for a visiting officer, and an upstairs area for both defense and recreation.
The addition of the second floor had been made after the success of the women’s dorm on the western side. The same thick walls were added to the soldier’s barracks, making it a solid defensive structure to make a stand in. In the future, whenever soldiers were at the farm, this was where they would stay.
Some were less than enthused by the presence of the soldiers, that fear sparked by a group of raiders posing as soldiers who had ravaged several small communities in the area during late spring. Clay well understood that unease, which was why the young women in particular, all victims to one degree or another of those same raiders, were as far as possible from the soldier’s barracks. Some contact between the two groups was inevitable, given that the farm had taken responsibility for training the soliders to ride, but Clay was determined to keep that contact as limited as possible. If the ladies wanted to meet with the soldiers they could, but it would be on their terms. That was the best compromise Clay could come up with, and even Beverly Jackson, the resident psychologist, had agreed.
“-ready…you haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Jose’s voice broke through Clay’s train of thought.
“What?”
“That answers that question,” Jose sighed. “I was basically saying that I think they’re ready. They’re trained well enough to work in the field if they decide they want to. I think they’ll do fine here at the farm.”
“Sounds good,” Clay nodded approvingly, attempting to get back into his ‘command presence’ voice. “Good job.”
“Thanks,” Jose commented dryly. “What are you going to do now?”
“I guess go look through the new haul and see what’s there,” Clay shrugged. “I’m really starting to think of building a general store across the road. It would mean allowing people access to the farm, but it might be worth it. Think it over and see what you decide.”
A final benefit from the visit to Peabody with the National Guard detail was the discovery that the ravaged town was apparently abandoned. Clay couldn’t blame the former residents for that. With over half of the town in ashes and the rest ravaged by repeated gun battles, what remained bore only the slightest resemblance to the town he remembered from before the lights went out.
While Clay hated to see his hometown look so destitute and ghostly, it did allow his teams to collect anything and everything in town that they could make use of or possibly trade away. Some would look upon them unfavorably for that, but it couldn’t be helped. Leaving supplies and equipment to rust away to ruin was too wasteful. Even things like tin roofing taken from buildings that were burned hollow on the inside was something the farm could use.
Oddly enough, the schools had not fallen victim to the fires, nor had they been used as shelters, something Clay could only attribute to the public’s fear of staying in town during the violence. The schools had netted books, paper, writing utensils and other education needs for the growing number of children on the farm, as well as the contents of the library. The high school, designed as an emergency shelter during a remodel only a decade before, had produced fifty army cots with thin camp mattress pads. While not the most comfortable things in the world, they were much better than a cold floor.
It never ceased to amaze Clay the things that were overlooked, abandoned or unused in a time of such great turmoil and destruction. It was possible that those fleeing the fire or the violence or both simply didn’t have the time to gather much. On top of that, with no working vehicles to speak of, carrying off large or heavy items would have been impractical if not impossible.
Clay truly hated the level of destruction that had come to Peabody in particular and the entire county in general. While he knew from Whitten and Adcock that other areas had it worse, much worse in the case of the larger cities, this was his area. His home, his family’s home for generations. Much of the ruin he had seen through the county had played a role in his childhood, or his teen years. Many of those who had perished had been known to him, if not friends, and even those he didn’t know were known to his family.
He shook those thoughts away. It did no good to dwell on them. It didn’t fix the problem.
Nothing would fix the problem.
-
“I have no idea how our ancestors didn’t end up going naked or dressed entirely in fur,” Angela Sanders declared abruptly as she paused in her efforts to spread wet flax across an unused portion of pasture in order for it to dry.
Once harvested, the flax had to be soaked for two weeks, give or take, until the outer and inner strands of the fibrous plant could be easily separated. That had been accomplished. Now, the plants had to be dried. Sun-dried was the preferred method, spread across the grass to allow the water to drip and drain away from the plants.
After that it would have to be regathered and tied into bundles and stacked to allow the drying to complete, and prepare the flax for ‘stutching’, or the process of separating the inner and outer layers. At its very basic, it meant gathering a bundle of plants and beating the stuffing out of them with a flat stick to break apart the inner fibers. That process would continue with something called ‘crimping’, which would further break the inner fiber down. It was from those inner fibers that they would get what the Scottish had called true linen.
While it had become highly industrialized by the mid-20th century, the farm lacked that industry themselves, and so were reduced to using old tried and true methods found by the Duo of Leanne and Leon Tillman on the internet before the lights had gone out.
As it turned out, it was an incredibly involved and labor-intensive process.
“Well, fur would be hot to wear in summer, I guess,” Lainie mentioned, pausing to wipe a slight sheen of sweat from her forehead. While it was no longer truly hot, it was still warm enough to work up a sweat with such exertion.
“And hard to come by if you weren’t able to hunt very well,” Dottie Greer agreed, working further down the line of plants to make sure they were spread thinly and able to dry.
“I’m just saying this is a very involved process,” Angela noted.
“I thought you had seen this done before,” said Amy Mitchell, her arms full of wet flax as she made her way to the end of the line to start anew.
“No, I’ve seen spinning and looming done before,” Angela corrected. “But with cotton. We grew cotton when I was a girl and it was something my mother… actually it was more my grandmother doing it, really,” she amended, remembering those long-ago days. “They made thread, or yarn, really, I suppose, which they then either spun down finer for thread or else weaved into cloth in order to make clothing. This,” she waved to the flax all around them, “is a completely different material, but the spinning and weaving process is much the same. But instead of cotton, this will produce linen.”
“Linen being much lighter and more breathable than cotton,” Greer opined. “Hence the name ‘linens’ for bed clothes and what not.”
“Exactly, yes,” Angela nodded. Sighing, she prepared to return to her work. “But I fear this is something we may as well get used to doing. It will be years if not decades before any kind of industrialized material making returns to this area.”
“Way to cheer everyone up, Angela,” Lainie chuckled.
“It’s a gift,” the older woman laughed along with her.
-
Dixie Jerrolds fought the urge to sigh as she looked around her at the sheer number of childen she was responsible for. While she did have assistance with them, she was the only teacher and was forced to take the role of authoritarian. It wasn’t that she minded the work in itself. She had always wanted to teach, ever since her freshman year of high school. She never even considered another line of work and had devoted herself to being the best of her vocation.
But she had never imagined that she would end up with so many children of so many different ages, all at one time. She had gained an incredible amount of respect for the teachers of old, who had taught multiple grades in the same one-room school during the nation’s early history. Trying to separate the lesson plans for children of wildly varying ages was already a task, never mind having to watch out for so many children.
There were a few high points of course. Today for instance. It was a gorgeous fall afternoon, and they were all outdoors, different age groups spread accordingly over blankets on the ground. She went back and forth between groups as the children read from their schoolbooks and answered questions on small chalk board rather than paper. While the older children had found that oddly challenging, the younger children had loved using the chalk.
“Miss Dixie, why did it take so long for the United States to have a Constitution?” Lila Webb asked. “Even after the Revolution was ended, it took years to have a real government.”
“Well, Lila, technically we did have a real government in the form of the Continental Congress,” Dixie reminded the teen gently. “But one of the problems with that was that the Congress didn’t meet on a regular basis, and it was the only real branch of government on the federal level. There was as yet no Supreme Court, no President of the United States, there wasn’t even, technically, a United States, save in form.”
“So, what made them decide that the first government wasn’t working?” Nathan Caudell asked, clearly interested now that the subject had been raised.
“Because it wasn’t working,” Dixie replied with a smile. “Consider that the Congress could print money, but it wasn’t worth anything. It had no value behind it and only the promise of a weak and somewhat disorganized government. If they borrowed money, how did they pay it back? Who could they borrow from to start with? There was also the issue of taxes. How would the states be assessed for taxes, and how would they pay them? That tax money would be how the Congress could pay soldiers, who were the most unifying part of the nation at that time. Former soldiers who had fought the British were the first to oppose any sort of infringements and often revolted against even a hint of tyranny in local governments. It was that threat more than any other, I would say, that kept many otherwise crooked politicians honest in those days.”
