The girl ran swiftly to gather firewood, just like a few notions that began to dawn in my head, just like the sunrise. First, there was an obvious difference in the English that the girl used and the mangled, Appalachian slang of the older women, from the few sentences I'd heard them mouth and mutilate the night before.
'She must have come from an entirely different background' was all I could surmise. "I'll have to root this out.'
The fact that I was beginning to like her for this 'linguistic' superiority, and dislike her companions, made me begin to think of ways of keeping her and shedding them. My humanity told me they were simply the product of a very hard existence, scraping with their bare hands a near-starvation diet in these barren hills, prematurely wrinkled and aged. But my common sense told me they'd been so stamped by this fate, so molded, that they'd never change though I transported them into a kinder and richer world. Their wrinkles and limitations were permanent.
I had all the ingredients for a good cup of coffee in my truck, the beans, the percolator, cans of condensed milk and sugar, along with packets of instant oatmeal. When the fire was bristling I brewed a large pot and woke the others. They were delighted to sip such a brew, sitting on the ground at the open flap of the tent, the girl too, whose name was Kim. We had a delicious, nearly silent breakfast.
As the sun rose and began to warm our little enclave I proposed that the women enjoy their morning and wash in the creek, as we'd already done, while Kim and I drive to the nearest city to collect more canned food, more camping supplies, sleeping bags, a larger tent, pots, pans, all which we'd need if we were to stay out here much longer, as all the supplies I had were meant for one, not four.
They agreed with a nod and off we drove, Kim and I, down the steep highway to Louisville, where stores of every description would be full and open and awaiting us, or only a window smashing away from our grand entrance, the only customers the stores will have seen in the last seven years.
This put me in a cheerful mood, knowing that I was about to take her on a shopping spree, and also sure that she'd never enjoyed one before, as all these people religiously avoided the empty, ghost-like cities, as if they were never meant to be there, though their ancestors built them.
We raided half a dozen stores, Kim always by my side and silently mimicking my actions. By noon we were loading up the back of my truck with new sleeping bags and tents, boxes of cans of food, pots and pans, more guns and ammo, clothes, shoes and candy for Kim, her eyes wide with glee as we pilfered those shelves. Finally we fuelled up on siphoned gas and headed back to the hills.
As I spread out our acquisitions before the women on some new blankets, I asked why they never visited the towns for what they could use. They told me in their broken English their home was in the mountains, which they never left. It was their blood.
I could see all this and also the reason they were still alive. Technology had missed them, like a skip in a record. They were so remote, electricity, internet, visors, the whole twentieth century (much less the twenty first) had never progressed along the narrow dirt trails to their remote, squalid shacks, never had any reason to, never wanted to. The rest of the human race was eliminated while they were still in their rags, plucking feathers off chickens, hunting possum, drawing water from hand-pumps, their ignorance and backwardness saving them from the demise of the civilized and everyone remotely and unluckily connected with them. These reflections somehow reminded me of my own times wandering the woods on horseback alone or with Sarah, or with May and June in the early days, the sylvan life, idyllic and pure. I decided I should resume it again, for its safety and simplicity, but certainly not with these women, maybe Kim.
After a fine, campfire dinner I questioned them on Kim's provenance, right in front of her. They told me in broken English that she was not their 'kin', but that a stranger had come with her and died soon after and they took her in. This was all they knew, because this was all they ever asked. They didn't even have a clear notion of the timeline, except that it happened "seasons ago".
The other burning question in my mind was why they were found out and attacked. I knew it wasn't drones. They lived under the canopy of trees in the most remote regions. They might have been cave dwellers for all that. But I quickly found the answer. I asked if anything had changed in their lives recently. They told me their leader had found a radio and heard others. I guessed it must have been a short wave and that Dora must have quickly triangulated the signal and attacked.
This led me to ask if they knew of others of their 'kind' in the mountains nearby.
They told me there were other groups, further removed in the wilderness, distant kin, whom they'd be glad to join if we could find them. They knew the general direction and nothing more. I told them we'd set out in the truck right away.
