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Nancy is taken.

Too Brave, my Savior once again. Free-pick 163305-21794.jpg

The two trucks quickly backed away, out of sight. This gave me time to get inside. They left their companion on the ground where he lay, dead. Bill was right to shoot him as he pointed his rifle at me, not seeing that I was also armed. It could only mean he intended to kill me and then rob us.

But they didn't leave. We heard the engines shut off not far away. We would have heard them fade if they'd kept going.

We had no idea how many they were or how determined to attack us. The two trucks might be holding up to twelve. I doubt any more could fit. But then there might be others further behind. From the sight they had of our house and buildings I guessed that they figured we couldn't be more than six or eight. But nothing else happened for the next ten minutes, except a single whistle, and the dog ran off.

Miranda and her mother were safe in the bunker. They had instructions to lock themselves in and not come out till one of us yelled to them. I didn't address the other question, what to do if we were all killed. They had supplies for well over a month and I said, if nobody knocked, just stay put as long as possible, then come out at night and figure out what to do. But there I stopped short. I didn't want them or us to think about that dire scenario. If these people were stone-cold killers and prevailed over us, there would only be two futures. They'd be raped or killed, probably both, sooner or later.

The thought horrified me. But it also emboldened me to do everything in my power to prevent that from happening.

I realized now how they found us. It was the dog. What a clever ploy. It was trained to go with Rick and Bill when they left town and must have had a mate dog that sniffed out their path through the woods to the truck. After that it was just a matter of following the tire tracks and the dirt road. This suggested they were a clever band and practiced in this art of killing and looting, as the trick went so smoothly. It must have been used many times.

That told me a little but I had no idea what to do next and I doubt they did either, with so many unknowns. Bill joined us in the house. He said that we had to act quickly while still daylight. If we didn't they could wait till night and pick us off one by one, anybody who ventured outside. They could even do this in daylight, sneaking slowly through the woods and brush. It was too close to the house and even closer to Bill's loft, almost right up to it. All our cleared farmland was behind us. What we needed was information.

He said they were probably up to this right now, at least a few of them, to determine our numbers before any plan could be made and that we had to do the same. The forest was so thick it would be easy to sneak through. You could move from tree to tree, hide behind them and catch a glimpse of anything that moved within a hundred feet and the trucks would be easy to spot from far off.

Then he told us to remain calm. We had the advantage of our buildings. He had to hurry back to his post as it commanded a view of the two sides they'd attack. But he said two of us had to go out on our own reconnaissance right away, one of us sneaking around from his post and the other out the back door into the woods close by. Rick looked down and seemed reluctant to leave his son, so Nancy and I were the obvious choices.

He told us if there were only eight of them with guns, we'd have a good chance to win. He doubted they'd have Uzi's, which along with our houses, gave us the upper hand. The first thing to do would be to shoot out their tires so they couldn't drive off. This was a shoot-out to the death he said and had to be done, even the child. He patted Eric on the head and handed him the pistol and rifle he'd run in with.

All of us loaded up on ammo, Nancy grabbing her favorite rifle while I took six clips for the Uzi. Bill ran out the back with Nancy, while I headed the other direction, not at all feeling brave or confident. But I knew the woods in that direction a bit, some rock outcroppings, good places to hide and I ran the hundred feet to those trees in no time, feeling safer already in their midst. They were mine, my trees, my land. I had the home advantage and a hundred and fifty rounds. I had good eyesight, felt comfortable with the gun and had a far better motive than my enemy, defending my friends against the aggressor. I had right on my side and was determined to succeed.

I was only five minutes in the woods slowly arcing towards the road and almost there when I heard shots ring out. But they came from the direction of the house, dozens of them. I could hardly believe it. These assailants were attacking, probably in one big rush assault. They were making a frontal attack from near the gate, with Rick and his son firing back, Bill too. And I was behind them now, a perfect cross-fire. I ran straight towards the noise and in a minute caught sight of two of them, their unprotected backs, about ten feet apart shooting from the closest trees at the house. They had no clue I was there and I snuck up within fifty feet, took quick aim and let loose the whole clip. They both fell in a second, riddled with bullets.

I crouched and reloaded but other gunfire was still coming from the other side of the road, more sporadic now. I had already heard a few shots ring out further up the road, where the trucks must have been hidden. It had to be Nancy. I ran to the road next and saw two men running away, right down the clear path and I shot them too as easily as the others, in their backs. They weren't seventy feet in front of me where I came out of the trees, running away. I emptied half a clip and saw them both fall. I guessed they saw the road as the fastest way back to their trucks, not knowing the woods, and knew that their battle was lost.

I was close to the gate and ran straight for the house. There had been a huge volley of shots lasting minutes before I shot off the first two men, as I was a hundred yards from them and proceeded carefully. But in the yard, I met with a gruesome sight.

Their tactic had been a full, all out, swift assault, probably thinking we were all in the house and unready. Three lay on the ground, two of them women. The first, nearest the gate was not quite dead and moaning. She looked middle-aged. I picked up her gun and walked by. Twenty feet ahead lay a dead man with a rifle. He was behind the woodpile Rick and Eric had been working on, not three feet high. He'd been shot in the forehead, but I kicked it away just in case. Halfway up the curved porch steps lay another woman, younger, blond, reminding me of Nancy, laying face-up in a pool of blood, with only a handgun and a gaping hole through her neck, her face still beautiful. I shivered as I passed by.

The front door was wide open, the two windows shattered, the whole front wall, riddled with holes. The fact that there were no sounds within sent more shivers through me. I stepped into the living room. Rick and his son lay on the floor, along with two men, all of them shot many times. They lay only a few feet apart. Rick made a sound. I knelt beside him. His words were garbled. He was breathing out his last.

"We won", he said, "take care of ...wife" with that he expired. There was blood all over him and the boy. I fired a round into each of the stranger's heads. The moaning woman, I left where she was. She couldn't seem to move but I frisked her for a handgun and picked up all the guns in the yard. Then I headed to Bill's place.

There was a man dead on the ground outside his window and another half-way up the stairs. He was at his post, groaning. I ran to him and found he'd been shot twice, one in the shoulder and another in his side, near his gut, sitting bent over on the floor and in deep pain, his rifle still in his hand.

I told him the news. Rick and his son were dead but so were the intruders. I told him about the four that I killed, the last two retreating and how lucky it was we acted so swiftly, all thanks to him. He was fully conscious and gave a slight smile. Then he asked where Nancy was.

In all the excitement I'd forgotten about her. I asked if he'd be okay for a few minutes and he told me to go, right away. She might be in danger. So off I ran, as swiftly as I could, straight through the trees to where I knew the trucks would be, at the first bend in the road.

Just as I arrived, I could hear the faint sound of a truck driving away, too far to see. The boy lay dead on the ground with a small calibre pistol in his hand, next to a tree. He'd been shot in the chest. Thirty feet away, the direction Nancy must have come there was a dog on the ground, not the one we had but big, fierce looking German shepherd also shot dead. I went over to investigate.

Much to my dismay Nancy's rifle was there too, and blood stains on a shattered rifle butt and more on the ground. From the pine needles and marks in the dirt I could tell she must have fallen down and even crawled some ten feet towards the boy, leaving her rifle behind. But she was gone.

The red truck was still there, empty now, the doors left open. It had the large cab, able to seat six. I went to where the other truck had been parked and I noticed it must have been smaller from the wheel marks, lighter, closer together. It must have been a two seater. The only explanation was that Nancy was hurt and in that truck with someone else, the enemy, and driving as fast as it could towards town.

I took the boy's gun and noticed four rounds had been fired. It was a small handgun that fit right in his hand, so I guessed it was small caliber and less deadly. Then again, a 22 could easily kill in the wrong spot. The boy's chest had been hit with a single high caliber shot, Nancy's 277, and blasted open. I went to the dog and noticed three bullet wounds. It must have been fierce and attacked Nancy first and while she was distracted with it the boy shot her. But she was obviously able, with the dog dispatched, to take one aim at him and kill him. But why was she gone?

I ran back to Bill with the information. He thought about it and said, as if speaking to himself while thinking, "with the full assault they made they would have left the boy behind to watch the trucks, along with the dog to protect him". Then he asked me: "Are you sure you killed those two men running back to the trucks"? I had to admit I wasn't. My first concern was to get back to the house. All I could say was that I saw them both fall flat on their faces and shot at least twelve rounds at them.

He was obviously hurt but said he was okay. I propped some pillows behind him and offered water, but he wanted the bottle of Vodka on the table, which he got. He told me to run and check on the two men on the road and also the woman not quite dead at the gate. I left at full speed, my adrenaline pumping as he spoke.

The woman was much the same, groaning less now, with an arm under her head, as if resting. I ignored her and ran up the path to where I'd shot the last men and sure enough, from a ways away I could see there was only one lying on the gravel road. As I came up, I saw that he was dead, hit at least six times. There were blood stains where the other had fallen beside him, but no marks of crawling. He must have been able to get up and walk away. His rifle was gone and there were footprints heading straight for the trucks. I saw drops of blood every foot of the way so I could tell it was no slight wound.

I felt like kicking myself for this stupidity on my part, not checking on them. But that would have taken another minute of me getting back to the house. He must have been wounded, perhaps badly but now the mystery was explained. He reached the truck and found Nancy still alive on the ground, or he would have left her there. She was out of reach of her gun and he had his, so he put her in the truck and left. I had the strongest fear that my love was lost.

I walked back to the compound slowly, dejected, thinking all this through. I went to the bunker first, banged and yelled through the door it was safe to come out and they did. Then I had to tell them the sad news as we walked to Bill's room. Jane of course burst out crying and her daughter followed suit. They wanted to run to Eric and Rick but I stopped them, saying Bill needed our immediate attention with two bullet wounds and might die if we didn't help him.

I said this just to keep them from seeing the horrific sight, the carnage, young Eric's chest wide open shot with a shotgun at close range, lying on his back with his rifle beside him on the floor and the handgun still in his hand. He also had bullet shots in both legs. I couldn't imagine the gruesomeness of that exchange.  And Rick's face was torn open with a bullet from cheek to temple, other wounds in his stomach and leg, his rifle still in his arm.

It must have been a brutal fight at such close range, the men and the boy continuing to fire upon each other even as they died, as the two strangers also had at least four bullet wounds in each of them.

But Bill needed our immediate help. I had no idea how bad his wounds were, and he was such a trouper, they might be far worse than he let out.

We owed our lives to him in every way. I never realized he was such a calm and swift and clever thinker under fire. Everything he told us to do was the best move possible. I think any other plan would have failed.  I told Miranda, as we went up the stairs, stepping over the dead body, to get a large pot and boil some water. Jane and I would try to lift him to his couch, take off his shirt and examine the wounds.

This we did. He was perfectly lucid and clinging to his Vodka bottle. We saw that both bullets had gone clean through him. The shoulder wound might have chipped his socket. It was high up and not that serious. But the lower wound was three inches in towards his belly, and we had no idea what, if any, organs were damaged. If only Nancy was here.

I told them both wounds had to be cleaned and sterilized immediately with warm water and hydrogen peroxide, then dressed in gauze and bandaged to stop the bleeding and checked on every hour at first. That was the full extent of my medical knowledge. We had all these items in the bunker and I sent Miranda to run for the kit. We had another in the house, closer but I didn't want her going there. That was my next job, while I kept the girls busy, to quickly bury the dead.

I didn't care about our attackers. But Rick and Erik I drug out of the house and into the woods, quickly dug them a shallow grave and covered them up. The earth was soft and this only took fifteen minutes. I wrapped them in blankets as I rolled them in. Then spread the ground with pine needles to hide the place. The others I simply dragged further into the woods, hundreds of feet away from all of us, for the animals to eat. The young, blond woman I quickly buried in another shallow grave. Perhaps it was her face.

Now I had to attend to the older woman. She's been shot in the stomach, and again in the thigh, which must have toppled her. She was heavy set and an easy target. It was a hard task, but I pulled her up the stairs to Bill's, set her on the floor, half propped against the wall and had the women clean and bandage her wounds, making sure no guns were anywhere nearby. She responded favorably to our care and began to talk, especially as we gave her a separate bottle of Vodka. Bill had a dozen of them in his cupboard.

The girls did their work tearfully. I told them what probably happened to Nancy. They were relieved she might not be dead, but not happy she was gone. I asked the older woman if there were others in town and she told me 'No'. This was their whole band, and they'd been there two months, living off the food and never seeing another soul. Then I asked why they attacked us, when there was still plenty of food left.

She told us they'd been very lucky, that marauders in bands were everywhere, roaming the countryside, some much larger than theirs. Some were still diseased and contagious, that they'd lost five of their own to it and another ten in gunfights with other groups, just in the last six months. But the fewer they were, the easier it was for them to hide, and their only plan now was to find the most remote spot possible to hide out and ours was it.

She told us all the bands were much smaller now, with the disease and constant fighting, sometimes even in-fighting as they used to roam in groups of hundreds for strength and take over the larger towns. But they'd always argue and split up. Now it was all hiding, with everything becoming scarcer, except for guns and bullets, which everyone had. America was rich in that department, as abundant as the land. 

The more she drank the more she talked and Bill was leaning on his good shoulder and listening to every word. He asked her if they came across people camped out in the woods. She said they did and would often be given the choice to join or die, the able bodied one's that is. The sick and the weak and the few young children they found were left with their mothers to who knows what sad end. They called them 'baggage'. But there weren't many of them left. Almost all the children had died from the plague, the women too, more than men, or else raped for a week or a month and then shot. Most of the surviving men were ruffians, the type that disobeyed orders and looted and stayed to exploit the situation, in a land without laws. She said there were only two women in their group and nine men. In some other groups they met and fought there weren't any.

Then Bill addressed me. "That's why the last man took Nancy. You have to get her back right away. Take the Jeep and drive as fast as you can right now, before he loses you. The man's hurt and you know the road much better. We need her back".

I couldn't agree more but I said: "look, they've already got an hour start. If they reach the town and highway I'll never find them".

"I don't think they will", the woman spoke up. "They'll head for the basement of the church where we were holed up. There's supplies there and it's the safest spot. The highways are too dangerous. They have no where else to go".

It was still mid-afternoon. I collected two Uzi's and two handguns, left one by Bill's side in case the old lady acted up and told Jane and Miranda to take turns staying up, to help Bill and watch the woman. But she seemed to be growing weaker or about to fall asleep. Blood was still slowly oozing from her belly though they wrapped it tight. There was no exit wound. She wheezed when she spoke.

Jane urged me to hurry. The Jeep was ready and off I sped. In record time I reached the town and parked some five blocks from the main square of the Church, Uzi in hand. Even as I approached, I could see a green truck parked in front. Then the dog we knew ran out and jumped up to lick me. At least I wouldn't have to shoot her.

The door of the Church was wide open. They must have entered in haste. There were blood drops on the floor inside leading to a back door and staircase. I opened it quietly, gun pointing down the steps and carefully proceeded. The light was on and nobody in sight. It was a small empty room with a door to another. Then I heard a man's voice, but it was a sad moan, indicating he was hurt. I wasted no time. The tension was unbearable.

I kicked the door in and saw the two of them, each on a mattress on the floor a few feet apart, each looking seriously wounded. But Nancy lifted herself up in joy on one arm, crying out: "Thank God". The man had his rifle beside him but was too weak to move. I quickly ran up and grabbed it. His mattress was covered in blood. It must have been his on the floor all the way in. I wondered how he made it so far, but he was clearly dying.

I took one glance around the dim place to make sure no one else was there. It was littered with trash and reeked of rotting food, mattresses strewn here and there in no order and garbage everywhere. You'd think with so much time on their hands they'd keep their living space in in better shape. But they must have had a different mentality by then, living for years like refugees on scraps, hardened and made vicious by gunfights, perhaps careless by now whether they lived or died and knowing all was coming to a quick end.

You don't spend your last minutes tidying up your room when you know the end is near. These people must have felt like that.

A wave of sadness overwhelmed me. If only they'd come to our gate asking for help, with no guns, I would have let them in and fed them and built a bigger farm and housed them in harmony. But they were too far gone for that scenario.

Human beings were turning into wolves under these harsh conditions, with so much ruin and death, snarling wolves, the few that survived. They ran like wolves in small packs, animals now, unable to reason beyond plans of attack. 

I slung the rifle on my back and lifted Nancy up in both arms and kissed her, then carried her up the stairs and to the jeep. She had three bullet wounds, one in each leg and one higher up in the buttock. But they were small holes and not bleeding much. We left the man to die without even a 'goodbye', though I should have, as he could have killed her. Yet he didn't.

Once in the jeep I found out why he hadn't. He had her drive the truck back to town, though she could only use her right leg. He couldn't drive at all; he was too hurt. Once back he had just enough strength to drag her down the steps and throw her on a mattress beside him. She couldn't walk at all.

She told me all this as we drove home, the dog jumping in the back seat just as I opened the door. She was perfectly lucid. I hadn't told her about the others yet. She wasn't part of that fight and had no idea. I wanted to hear her story first.

Just like I thought, she spotted the trucks and was sneaking up, no one in sight, ready to take out the tires. But then the dog lunged at her out of the back of the red truck. It must have been well trained, crouching, and it waited till she was close. She had trouble shooting it as it went straight for her trigger hand, pulling her to the ground. She wrestled with it, tore her bloody hand free and was able to fire a round and hit it in the rear. It let go and she dispatched it with two more. Then she stood up.

But while fighting it the boy had missed his opportunity. He was crouching behind a tree, invisible to her. He leaned out and shot three times. She felt the bullets hit her legs. She caught this from the corner of her eye, swiveled around and shot him in the chest, just as he let off one more round, meant to kill. That was the bullet that grazed her arm and shattered her rifle.

All that time she said the boy could have killed her. He was behind a tree only fifteen feet away. But he waited too long. He was crouching when he put the three shots into her legs just as she killed the dog. That's all he could see of her from that position. When he stood up and stepped from the tree he wasted one precious second to grab the pistol in both hands, which gave her the time to turn and blast him in the chest, her rifle barely held up in one arm. But it was leveled at his chest. Their shots went off simultaneously. He died instantly.

She fell with her wounds and heard the gunfire towards the house. She just lay there several minutes then she tried to pull herself towards the boy, her elbows and hands clawing the loose soil, trying to get to the handgun to blow out the tires. She was almost there when the wounded man appeared, walked right up to her and was about to put a bullet in her head when she screamed out that she was a nurse. She could see he was badly wounded. He kept the gun pointed at her and made her drive, while he bled the whole time. She managed the pedals with her best leg, with excruciating pain.

But all the while she could see he was worse off than she was. At the church he had her park as close as possible to the door. Then he dragged her by the hair to the basement and as he flopped her down next to him, ordering her to bandage him up. She could see he was dying but did what little she could. She was able to rip up a bed sheet into strips and wind them around his stomach wound, not tight enough to stop the bleeding. He lay there moaning, eyes closed, almost passed out. She did a much better job on her own legs and lay down. Then I arrived and saved her.

In the middle of this account, she caught herself and asked me with a worried look what had happened at the house. I wanted to hear the rest, so I put that off, saying only that we'd won and that Bill had two bullet wounds needing her immediate attention. This seemed to satisfy her and she went on. But when she was done and we weren't quite back, I told her I had some bad news, that Rick and Eric were dead, that there were eleven assailants and we were lucky, all thanks to Bill. Rick and his little boy were both riddled with bullets and must have kept firring while shot many times. And whoever nailed the man behind the woodpile right in the forehead, that was one lucky shot.

This saddened her quite a bit. I told her it was Bill that saved the day and made me speed off to find her, when I assumed she was lost. The rest of the trip was silent.

Back at Bill's all were ecstatic, Miranda and Jane helping me carry her up the stairs to the reclining chair, then seeing to her every comfort. They turned it around. away from us, cut off her jeans and undies with scissors and following her instructions dressed her wounds professionally, much better than Bill's.

That was her next request, to see his wounds. They dragged the chair around right next to his couch. She leaned over and greeted him with a kiss. The girls undressed his injuries, and she examined them from both sides, like a doctor, carefully probing the wounds with a flashlight and a slender, sterilized letter opener. She sent Miranda to a cabinet in our bathroom where she had her old medical kit for me with Valiums, Morphine, pads and lots of other things. Miranda ran, but not before seeing all the blood on the floor where her brother and father had fallen. She came back sadly shaken, handed over the bag, went to a seat in the corner and started crying.

Jane dressed his wounds again at Nancy's directions, then gave him a Valium. But while he was being patched, he told me some more things the old lady said.

She was from Burlington and nursing her sick husband when the evacuation orders came. He was too sick to move so she stayed, saying she'd catch up later. But he lasted another month and by then looting had begun, her car was stolen and the bands of rovers began to form. She had a dog kennel behind their house on the outskirts of town. She trained them. That's why the first group that swept through chose to keep her. They saw her German shepherd and two other large dogs in action, obeying her exact commands and knew they'd be useful. She took the Labrador too, as it was her pet. The other dogs she let loose from their cages, to roam on their own in a radically changed landscape, just like all of us.

Her group numbered sixty at first and were leaving Burlington because it was too lawless, with younger gangs of hoods killing people for fun. These folk seemed like decent people only looking for some smaller town to inhabit. They said they'd never have anything to do with the Church. They'd heard bad rumors about its strict control over everyone, killing those who didn't obey. In that they were right. This information came straight from those who saw it in the first days and managed to escape and flee back home. They were common people from all walks of life. Their story was too consistent to be doubted.

But as time went on, they became hardened by their circumstances, by near starvation sometimes when food ran low, some stealing by night from others next to them, then lying, or the bigger bullies taking the larger share, the weaker ones pushed away. This forced them to dangerous migrations and often into battles they didn't want to fight. Those most predisposed to violence, the men, survived. The best and most humane, the gentler ones, mostly women, shared their food with the weak and dying, depriving themselves and soon following their nurslings to death.

This was no world for kindness anymore and it only got worse, so they died of grief sometimes, just lay down and quit, unwilling to go on in such an ugly drama, this decay of humanity.

She said she regretted having to attack us nice folks. But she had to obey orders. She knew that she was going to die soon from her wounds and said she was glad she didn't kill or hurt any of us. Her time on this earth was mostly well spent, and she was ready to die. With that statement she closed her eyes and fell asleep. Those were the last words she spoke.   

We listened in awe. Bill was now dozing off. Nancy had taken two valiums and left the bottle on the floor beside her. She soon fell asleep. Jane knew that Eric and Rick were dead, but somehow that thought hadn't sunk in. She'd kept focused on Nancy's instructions, patching her and then Bill. Now it did strike her consciousness, and the tears came out in floods.

I took Jane and Miranda into the bedroom, where they lay in the bed, fully clothed, hugging each other for all the trauma of the day.

I lay down beside them, but they couldn't stop whimpering and this kept me awake. After ten minutes of this drama I made each of them take a Valium and took two myself. This did the trick. Soon we were all asleep.

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