Working With Cedar: A Post Apocalyptic Tale Read online

  The assailant responded, “I’ll kill this mother-fucker.”

  Nash’s rescuer said, “And I’ll kill you. This isn’t a game. Drop the gun and walk away.”

  The skinny man hesitated a long moment, then lowered the pistol and dropped it to the ground. He walked away glancing back once to cast a glare of hate at the man who’d foiled his jacking.

  Nash began to bend to retrieve the dropped pistol.

  “Leave that alone,” his rescuer said. “I want the keys for the Jeep. Don’t try any heroics. I will kill you.”

  Again, Nash watched someone approach from his assailant’s rear.

  Jill poked the barrel of her pistol into the man’s back. “Drop the pistol or I’ll blow your heart out the front of your chest.”

  A startled expression crossed the man’s face and he began to turn toward Jill, his pistol diverting from Nash. Nash reached out, clamped his hand on the wrist, forcing the arm and the pistol down.

  The pistol fell to the asphalt pavement. “Don’t shoot me, lady. I’m sorry. Just don’t shoot me.”

  Nash kicked the weapon aside. “Get the hell out of here. Don’t try anything stupid.”

  The man scurried away. Jill returned her pistol to the holster belted to her waist. Nash bent to retrieve both pistols from the ground and then turned to Jill. Tears were streaming down her face.

  In an attempt to console her he said, “It’s okay, he’s gone.”

  Jill shook her head, digging into her purse as she did so. Removing a napkin, she said while wiping her eyes, “You think I’m crying because I was frightened. No. I’m crying because

  I’m mad. I’m mad at him… actually at both of those assholes, but mostly at myself. I wanted to shoot him. I had to force myself not to pull the trigger.”

  Shaken by the two robbery attempts, most of his attention belatedly given to his surroundings, Nash still not seeing where she was coming from, said, “I understand.”

  “No you don’t. Don’t you see? Two men, one after another tried to hi-jack your Jeep. I almost shot the second one. We’re barely an hour into worldwide panic and already the animal side of our nature is breaking through. I thought I had mine under control, but old habits are always lurking in the background. Ten minutes ago if anyone told me I was capable of murder I’d have laughed in their face.”

  Finally understanding where she was coming from, the gist of her statement sank in. Looking around the parking lot at all the people desperate to fill their tanks, he suddenly realized the huge target … No, the huge prize their cargo represented. “Jesus, Jill. If you’re at that point, we’d better get out of sight ASAP before we run into jackers more determined than those two.

  Jill followed his Jeep from the truck stop, taking a right onto the road leading east, crossing over the freeway.

  Leaving behind them the tumultuous activity at the Interstate Highway exit, almost immediately they were passing by fields of corn and small farms.

  Exceeding the speed limit, they drove for less than twenty minutes. At a heavily wooded curve in the road, Nash slowed, signaled for a right hand turn and pulled onto an asphalted driveway.

  A wrought-iron gate thirty-feet from the road blocked further progress toward the large mansion set at least a two-hundred feet farther up the drive. He left room on his right for Jill to park her rented van. They left their vehicles and joined to stand at the gate.

  Jill said, “You said it was big, and that is a big house.”

  Nash pulled his phone from his pocket. Pointing at the gate, he said, “The ‘For Sale’ sign’s still up. I’m calling now.”

  He entered the phone number from the sign and put his phone on speaker so Jill could hear. A man answered on the first ring.

  “Jane! Thank God. I’ve been trying to…”

  Nash interrupted him. “I’m sorry, this isn’t Jane.”

  “I thought it was my wife calling.”

  Nash could hear the panic and fear in the man’s tone. “Look, I won’t take your time. I’m at the mansion you have for sale in Buford Georgia. I’m buying it and I’m taking immediate procession. My name is Nash Vaughn. Look me up. I can afford it. We can do the contract at your convenience as soon as this crisis…”

  The realtor interrupted Nash. “I don’t care! Goodbye!”

  Nash returned his phone to his pocket, eyed the padlock securing heavy chain wrapped around the gate frame and post. “Well, Jill, you heard the man. He doesn’t care. Now all we need is a set of bolt cutters which we don’t have.”

  “How about a battery powered cutting tool?” Jill asked. “I bought a Dremel set. It has little cutting disks. I think they’ll cut metal.”

  A pickup truck sped by the driveway as she spoke, prompting Nash to say, “I don’t know what a Dremel is, but if it’ll cut this lock, let’s do it. I feel more exposed here than I did back at the truck stop.”

  It took Jill ten minutes of digging through the mass of supplies inside the van to locate the grey plastic case holding the Dremel tool and its accessories. Nash noted the tiny cutting disk Jill attached to the working end of the tool and was skeptical of its ability to cut through hardened steel.

  His skepticism turned to consternation as the flimsy disk, sending a small comet trail of sparks, easily passed through over a quarter-inch of steel. Reaching to twist the lock and remove it from the chain, he said, “That little thing is amazing. I’m a believer.”

  During the time it took to open the gate, three more vehicles had passed by the entrance to the driveway. Nash hurriedly swung the gate wide and had Jill pass through. When the trailer he was pulling cleared the entrance, he stopped, closed the gate, and wrapped the chain back in place. When properly positioned the lock didn’t look damaged at all.

  Satisfied that was the limit of his immediate ability to secure their new place, he waved Jill on toward the mansion. He parked close behind her on the circular drive in front of the home.

  Nash exited his vehicle. Jill joined him at the foot of the stairs leading to the wide porch extending the full length of the mansion. The entire building, from the foundation walls of grey granite, to the multicolored fired-brick of the two-level main structure was imposingly solid, presenting an almost fortress appearance.

  Jill said, “If we had more hands to hold rifles, we could defend this place with no problem. Tell you what though, just us two, nope, no way we can cover all approaches.”

  Nash considered her words and said, “It’ll have to do for now, but you’re right. We’d need at least ten more people and tons of ammo to hold off a concerted attack by a gang.”

  Jill mounted the eight stairs to the porch and turned to speak. “There’s a lockbox on the doorknob. We’ll need the Dremel to be able to get at the keys.”

  Nash went to her van for the Dremel, remounted the stone stairs and crossed over the artfully, acid-etched concrete floor of the porch to join her by the door. As he extracted the small rotary tool, he said, “I thought about what you said; about having more people. The problem now is that if we try to procure more people here, you know, call our groups and other people we know, we’ll be opening ourselves to the possibility one of them has been exposed to the Ebola virus.”

  Jill took the tool from his hand and began removing the worn-down cutting wheel they’d used on the gate lock. “I wasn’t suggesting getting more people. I was simply making an observation. I agree with you. Let’s try to avoid getting close to anyone else until this mess runs its course. I’m just glad your sister warned you and that you had the decency to pass that warning on.”

  Nash didn’t tell her about Nora’s frantic call.

  Jill replaced the worn disk on the tool and guided the cutting edge to the front of the lockbox to cut between the body and the rectangular lid. The box was of softer metal than the gate lock. After a short shower of sparks, she turned off the tool and gave the box a slap to jar it against the door. The lid fell off and the keys inside the box followed it to the concrete floor of the porc
h.

  Jill retrieved the keys. Standing and handing them over to Nash, she said, “Voila. I love this tool.”

  He took the proffered keys. Smiling, he replied, “Dremel, a burglar’s dream machine. We’ll keep it handy in case we need to do more breaking and entering.”

  The keys allowed entry to a large foyer that opened to a huge living room. Nash entered and reached to flip one of several switches beside the door. Dozens of recessed ceiling lights lit the space. “Whoopee, the electricity is turned on.”

  Jill breezed past him and stood just inside the entrance. “Wow, it’s furnished. Whoever lived here had plenty of money. The furniture is top-notch.”

  Nash mentally agreed with her. He was beginning to wonder just how much of a financial load he’d committed himself.

  Aloud, he said, “It sure is a nice place.”

  WORKING WITH CEDAR AUGUST, 2068

  Nice place, hell; abattoir of blood is more fitting. Remembering that house caused a shudder to run down my spine. The shudder broke the flow of my stroke with the wood-plane, causing it to bite deeper than I wanted. I glanced from the board toward the house Betty and I shared for so many years. It was nothing but a two-bedroom farmhouse back when we first claimed it. Multiple additions turned it into a rambling structure that had no semblance to the cozy cottage we fell in love with.

  It took over a year for the Ebola virus to vector out. Best estimates from various people put the death toll at over two-hundred-fifty million in the US alone; in the billions worldwide. Anarchy was the ruling force in those days. Still is. So far, every attempt to form a centralized government has failed. Two years after the plague hit, Jess was just an infant; Betty and I decided to go with a caravan of six school buses bound for Ecuador. Climate change, global warming, call it what you like, but for those two years Georgia suffered a drought so deep that even the pines stood denuded. Bobby Helms, a member of the group we joined with for self-protection, made a ham radio contact with an American expat living in Ecuador. He claimed the weather was great and that the Ecuadorian government, seeking to repopulate, was welcoming any refugee willing to work.

  Christ; what a misadventure that turned out. We were using Interstate 40 because of reports there were no gangs operating as toll collectors at major river crossings. That report turned out a fallacious speculation based on rumor rather than observation. Nevertheless, though we numbered over a hundred strong, all of us heavily armed, we strove to pay the tolls if not too costly, but didn’t hesitate to fight our way through when forced to do so.

  It wasn’t a river crossing curtailed our journey. I’ve come to learn that bad things tend to happen when you’re least prepared for it. The motorcycle we used to scout our path broke down earlier in the day. We planned to replace it ASAP, but ASAP wasn’t soon enough.

  West Tennessee

  May 2025

  Just before dark at an underpass hidden by a curve in the road on the outskirts of Jackson Tennessee, the lead bus of our convoy braked at a roadblock made with a railway boxcar. The boxcar stretched across the roadway blocking both directions of Interstate 40. The highwaymen left enough room on each end for vehicles to squeeze by, effectively allowing them to control traffic going west or east. How they managed to move and position the boxcar remains a mystery.

  Stacked cars blocked the exit ramp. The highwaymen had furthered complicated the approach to the underpass by placing cars in a manner that forced any approaching vehicle to zigzag along at a slow pace.

  In retrospect, our string of buses spaced closely together was a mistake. The ambushers waited for us to pass and then drove two dump trucks across the lanes behind the rear bus to close their trap.

  Betty and I couldn’t see him, but Blake Anderson, the man who organized the convoy stepped from the lead bus, bullhorn in hand, prepared to negotiate with the scumbags hiding behind stacked sandbag positions atop the bridge crossing the freeway.

  We heard him call out, “You there on the bridge, let us pass.”

  A sharp crisp sound of a round fired and we knew it was Blake taking a bullet. The men on the bridge had a bullhorn of their own.

  “You people in the buses, listen up. Your man is dead. Now you know we aren’t fooling around. Let’s keep it simple. We want your women and children. Let them leave the buses and we’ll let you keep your supplies and give you safe passage. Resist and you will die. You have five minutes. If the women don’t start leaving the buses, we will open fire; shoot your tires and disable your vehicles. We’ll starve you out. Be sensible. We don’t want to kill you men, but we will.”

  We were in the third bus along with twenty-five other men and women. Our son Jess, only a year old, was in the fourth bus, which served as the convoy’s nursery under the command of Annette Snow, a registered nurse before the epidemic.

  The murder of Blake, so quick and so final had us all in a state of shock. Nash could see the fear written on Betty’s face when she asked, “What are we going to do?”

  He had no answer, but knew there was no way in hell he was going to surrender her to them. What the bastards wanted was to separate the women from the buses and then kill the men. There wasn’t a chance they would leave any man alive to haunt them bent on revenge. Bob Hanson, the boss of their bus echoed his thoughts.

  “Everybody arm up. Lock and load. I just spoke with Patterson, Blake’s follow-up. They’ve given us no choice other than to fight. You all know the drill. When Patterson gives the command, the men in the first two buses will attack the bridge.

  “We, along with bus five will exit and lay-down suppressive fire to support them. Bus six will guard our rear. Use the abandoned cars and trucks as cover. Don’t worry about ammo, lay it on thick.”

  Like everyone else in our convoy, thanks to raiding a National Guard armory, Betty and I had M-4 carbines. We were near the rear of the bus. After checking that our safeties were off, not wanting to deal with the weight, we took our spare magazines from our go-bags and pocketed them.

  We could hear Patterson speaking on the radio but were too far from the front of the bus to make out his words. The five minutes given by the ambushers were almost gone before he spoke to us.

  “This is it folks. On my go, get out and start shooting. We’ll lay heavy support fire on the bridge, but take any target of opportunity, especially watch for flanking snipers. Let’s do it on a three count; Ready! One…Two…Three, go.”

  We were closest to the rear door and were the first to jump from the bus. Betty stuck close to me as I raced to get behind one of the cars used to make the zigzag approach to the bridge, an old Cadillac Coupe de ville.

  The attacking force used the overgrowth on the hill leading to the top of the exit ramp for cover.

  The battle for the overpass was over almost as fast as Patterson’s three-count. The potholes in the pavement, blast holes really, should have registered as a warning, as should have the mangled condition of the vehicles on the roadway. We barely made it to the Cadillac. An explosion of the far side deafened me. Fire and smoke rose into the air. A barrage of rocket-propelled grenades followed that first blast. Another explosion sent body parts flying past us; a large hunk of leg with a foot attached slammed against the side of the car.

  A glance toward the front of the convoy was all it took for me to know the attack on the bridge was doomed. The men on the overpass weren’t firing at the buses, but the RPG’s, combined with automatic weapons fire took an immediate toll on those charging up the hill. I doubted a single man or woman made it halfway.

  Those closer by, the ones who should be aiding the attacking force, were like us, pinned down behind any shelter they could find. Betty said something, but deafened by the blast, I couldn’t hear her. She recovered from a fit of coughing caused by the smoke and debris filled air, and put her mouth close to my ear. Pointing to the open trunk of the Caddie, she said, “Let’s hide in the trunk.”

  I saw no other option. She climbed in and I followed her, pulling the lid shut behind us,
praying the smoke provided cover for our action.

  It was a tight fit for the two of us and to make things worse, the lid wouldn’t latch; it wanted to spring back open. The chaos outside continued to rage and I had to shout for her to hear me. “Feel around; see it you can find something to tie the trunk down. It won’t latch.

  She squirmed around, said, “I found some jumper cables,” and passed one of the clamps over my shoulder. I dragged the clamp and the attached wire to where the lid should latch. Working in the dark, fiddled until the clamp caught hold of something that secured the trunk lid.

  There was no letup in the sounds of the battle raging around our pathetic refuge. A close by explosion rocked the Caddie. A moment later came another, even closer that jarred the car, lifted the front off the ground. Again, our ears suffered. I smelled the acrid odor of spent explosive.

  The explosions stopped, but sporadic rifle fire still occurred. I could picture the way-layers picking off wounded survivors one at a time. The rifles ceased firing and the same voice spoke on his bullhorn.

  “You people made a mistake and you paid for it. If any men are still alive, the same terms apply. The men can leave, but the women and children stay. Don’t think you can wait us out and try to sneak away in the dark. As soon as night falls, this area will be lit up like a stadium.”

  There came a long, silent period, silent except for the cries and moans from the wounded. My ears recovered enough to hear Betty whisper, “If we keep quiet they may not think to look in here.”

  “Then let’s keep quiet. Whatever happens, just know I love you.”

  She said, “Those people are liars. They will kill you and any man that surrenders. I have my pistol. I won’t be taken by them. If they open the trunk I’m putting a round through my temple.”

  I wished I could turn to her. “If the trunk opens, I’ll meet you in heaven. If it doesn’t, we’ll sneak away in the dark.”