Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie (101 page)

Several yards away
, we found the body of Saitou Yamatsu, aka “Soo.” We will bury him in the graveyard beside his wife tomorrow. I can't come to terms with the fact that he's gone. He was a good man, He will be missed. I'm positive that Hisa's welcoming him with open arms right about now.

We haven't found Ian, Rick, Isaac or the Wilkerson's. Tom Sulligent went to a different unit, so we didn't look for him. Shawna says she's heading out to look for Ian as soon as the sun rises.

Cleanup begins tomorrow morning. There's a lot of cleanup to do and a lot of bodies to take care of.

Before I came in here, I heard Chris tell Mick that he saw more than a few NK's run back through the woods and up the mountainside. Great. Just wonderful.
Bye for now.

Wednesday
, May 14

Well, we know that Ian and Rick are alive. Shawna found a note on the front of the trailer fence. It was written in blood, presumably from the dead NK lying underneath. The note said “Yo S, Me gud, IaR X, LU.” Shawna interpreted it as “Hey Shawna, I'm fine. Me and Rick are going after the ones who escaped. We're gonna X them out. Love You”

Okay, if she says so. I wonder how many soldiers went with them.

The little wooden building where the Wilkerson's slept was blown to smithereens. Chris thinks it took direct hit from a grenade or small mortar. Brody and Serena's bodies were found in the wreckage.

Valerie and Elaine are helping Marisa care for the kids. Josie's there as well. I think she may be researching motherhood.

We haven't found Isaac
, but the body cleanup isn't finished.

The troops who survived are taking special care to record the names of the fallen.

Anything found in the pockets is bagged and tagged for return to any family members still living.

There's no way to take the bodies back to home base unless the unit empties
the refrigeration truck and loads them inside. Chris won't allow that to happen. He says that food for the troops is more important than returning bodies. We offered up our reefer trailer but he said there's too many bodies for one trailer.

I made sure to ask that the bodies not be burned at the power lines. Chris says they'll be
buried in a field near one of the little country churches.

There will be a ceremony tomorrow afternoon and each name will be read aloud. One
dog tag will be buried with the body and the other will be returned to the family. If the soldier has no family listed, the tag will be stored at home base. Bodies that can't be identified will be listed as “unknown soldiers” with the date, place of death, and burial spot.

Chris
doesn’t expect to have an accurate count of the dead until tonight at the earliest.

Enemy bodies will be burned somewhere far away. There's a lot of them and not enough space at the power lines. I don't wanna know about it.

In the meantime...

The Mississippi unit
whose leader was killed is on its way to merge with the remaining members from Chris' unit. They should arrive by mid-week.

The compound looks horrible.

Both swimming pools are gone. They were shot, trampled, and ended up with several bodies in each. Thank goodness for the well.

We have six more little buildings damaged or destroyed. I don't know who lived in them. There's debris and trash all over the hillside. It looks like a war zone in some third world country.

The trailer fence will need four new trailers, which means every trailer will have to be taken out to replace the damaged ones unless we find some kind of huge forklift to pull them out. The iron gate needs to be put back on its tracks and a have little welding done here and there.

The guard tower where Pop was visiting needs to be power washed on the inside. Dane says we can use the
fire trucks and water from the pond. I reminded him about the HDI's in the pond and he said “We'll give it a good rinse with bleach water after it's clean.

The floors and stairs will also have to be rebuilt. Loose netting over the windows will be removed and metal screens will be secured over all windows to keep flaming arrows as well as flies from coming inside.

Shutters or steel roll down doors will also be mounted on the windows with some sort of switch or device on the inside to close them. “Gun holes” will be cut out underneath the windows so the barrels of the badazz guns will have a full range of motion. A soft, flexible, rubber molding will be placed around the holes on the inside.

The onion field is destroyed. There are several small craters
in the ground and the fence is flat in most spots. Bodies are everywhere. It reminds me of a scene from a movie where deadly gas was dropped into a huge party of 500 NK's mixed with real military troops. The number of soldiers lost is gonna be staggering, I'm sure of it.

The trailer that held the wild people was destroyed. One of them must have escaped because they only found five bodies in the rubble. We may find the sixth among the dead in the field where the real mess is located.

Bodies, tents, vehicles, and debris are all over the onion field. I'm not sure we'll be able to grow anything there. The ground is saturated with blood.

I thought I would feel happy when I got out of that wall. I should be happy that Mick's here, my kids are alive and well, and our home is still standing. Instead, I feel depressed and sad. Is this all we have to look forward to?

I need to walk back in the meadow and watch the horses peacefully graze and act like nothing has happened. I don't wanna look at destruction and death any longer.

See ya later.

1:30 PM...

I've just come from the burial of Soo, Kenny, and the Wilkerson's. I feel numb. I can't cry anymore.

Both Merry and Valerie were inconsolable and I admit, I left the job to Josie, Marisa, and Elaine. I simply cannot deal with it. I feel like I'm shutting down.

I've heard children cry for parents who are gone from this earth. I've heard people cry for the loss of a good friend or loved one. I've heard familiar voices changed by pure agony.

I've thrown out furniture, books, and other inanimate objects that meant nothing to others but held precious memories for me.

I've picked up human feces from the corners of our home.

I've washed walls and mopped up who-knows-what from my floors.

I've watched my husband, soaked in blood, drags tarps covered with dead bodies to the hillside for identification. He's mourning for Soo, who'd become one of the best friends of his life. Soo? Oh, you know. You can
always
depend on Soo.

I've seen Mick's eyes follow Merry as she struggles to deal with the loss of both parents. I know in my heart he's thinking “what if that was Carisa?”

I've watched as scavenger HDI's roamed the onion field and were taken out by men standing watch.

Stand watch. Guard duty. Watch duty. Kill HDI's. Guard this. Death. Guard that. Guard towers. Stand watch. Go to funeral. Stay alive. Stand watch. It's too much standing and watching.

I've watched as brave men became covered with the blood of their fallen comrades as they were forced to go through pockets and “bag and tag” the contents.

This is madness, and I need to “step out for a minute.”

All of the bodies are off the hillside but I can see splotches where they fell and bled.

I can see small chunks of grass torn from the once smooth lawn where boots swiveled, twisted, and turned to change direction and fight off enemies.

There's a hand print smeared in blood on one of my porch posts. Dark red spots dot a couple of the steps.

I saw the bloody handle from a knife that must have broken from a blade left inside someone.

Patches from uniforms, both ours and theirs, litter the ground.

The air smells wrong. It has a bitter, metallic smell. I can almost taste salt in the air. The blood has grown cold, and it smells different. It smells like “hope” has been removed.

We are preparing to head out to a little church about 7 miles
from here where the US Military soldiers are already buried. Several soldiers will be left behind to guard to compound.

Chris will speak, and the minister will speak. The remaining troops will stand at attention as each name is read from a scroll.

When all names have been called, the scroll will be rolled and placed inside a leather tube and taken back to home base by a group of four soldiers. Personal belongings will travel inside a small trailer behind them.

I am so thankful Mick's personal goods are not traveling is some tiny trailer along some dusty road. I pray that his body will
never be buried with dozens of others in a field beside a little church I may never see.

There, I've gone and done it. I've caused myself to become even more depressed than before.

I'm gonna finish getting ready and head out to join the living souls in the line of vehicles on their way to the ceremony.

See ya later.

10:30 PM...

The number of Military soldiers lost in battle is 246.

The number of unknown soldiers is 42.

The number of missing soldiers is 26, and no one knows their names because of the 42 who were unidentifiable.

The number of NK bodies found is 317. They're burning. I didn't ask where and I don't wanna know who's getting the job done.

The unit will be here for six more days to merge with the Mississippi unit and help us get the compound back in order.

I am done for the day.

Bye for now.

Thursday
, May 15

Okay, I'm better today. I haven't fully recovered. Isn't that laughable?

Who am I to say I have anything to recover from when little Merry has lost both parents, Valerie has lost adopted parents, the Wilky Place kids have lost adopted parents, and we've all lost dear friends? I'm one of the lucky ones left alive, right? My family's still alive. I should have no need to “recover” from anything.

Anyway, I'm not crawling back into that hole again. I got “stuff” to do. There's people to feed, lootin' to do, cleaning to do, and a lot more.

Before dawn, Mick, Dane, and several soldiers refueled the gasoline tanker and took it to the truck stop to fill the big tank. We need gasoline to get the generators up and running.

We've decided to take it one building at a time.

We started before breakfast with the kitchen, since we prepare all our meals there.

The women shooed the men outside and went to work. We scrubbed that kitchen from ceiling to floor and then some. It's cleaner than it's ever been.

We sent the teenagers to retrieve pots, pans and food from the tunnel so we could start a couple of huge pots of oatmeal. Nana cooked muffins in the motorhome oven and we cooked biscuits in here. I have no idea how we did it, but we fed whatever number of soldiers there is left.

The floor of every building was covered with sleeping soldiers.

I had to find a way through the maze of sleepyheads in the living room just to get to the kitchen.

I thought I'd step out on the back porch for some air
, but it was covered with sleepyheads as well. It wasn't long after the sounds of pots and pans began banging around that the sleepyheads rose and began their respective day.

We need to start on lunch
as soon as the kitchen is clean, or we'll never get it done in time. We're making beans and rice for lunch and supper. We have lots of green onions ready to harvest, so we'll add those on the side. No meat today. We don't have time. We've got cleaning to do.

Let me say that I've gained all the respect in the world for military cooks. Oh my Lord, their job never ends. They're either cookin' it up or washin' it up all day long.

I'm in here to get out of the way and sit in front of the fan.

There's a bunch of ornery women in the kitchen, cleaning dishes and wiping down counters and tables. I can't squeeze in.

While we were cleaning this morning, I thought of chain gangs with really short chains. That's how it felt having scrubbing buddies on both sides of me, behind me, and sometimes overhead.

Pop, Emma, and Nana are harvesting in the garden and we plan to get everything preserved as soon as possible.

I was shocked when Pop told me the garden wasn't damaged. I was a little fearful about the food, thinking the NK's might have poisoned it.

That topic is still up for debate and a couple of “expert's” from the unit are looking in to it.

The men left after breakfast with several trucks and a lot of soldiers to find furniture. We all need beds and anything else they can find. There's a lot of soldiers still on the compound. They're carrying out destroyed furniture and gathering trash to burn.

Ian stayed on the compound and recruited help from several members of the unit to set up the gas grill and propane cooking
thingamajig with the giant pots we got from the truck stop restaurant.