Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie (17 page)

It's still cold
outside and I can't tell if it's night or day unless I look at my watch or the computer clock. The boarded up windows make it pitch black in here. I don't like being alone all the time.

I
need to lie down 'cause I feel like I might throw up or pass out. My back is throbbing. It hurts so badly. I want to scream at the top of my lungs. I feel like my body is breaking in half. Won't someone just shoot me and put me out of my misery? Please, just shoot me right in the head!

feel woozy now

somthig is happen

somone stab.

i her shot. i need

i fad...

Friday, January 17
.

Okay, okay, I'm up. I'm not back to normal but I'm highly medicated and feeling pretty good. Pop found me
, passed out cold in a pool of vomit beside the computer desk. He and Marisa put me in bed. Marisa was washing my face while Mick was running to the house trailer because we heard gunshots coming from that direction.

Hisa was shooting with that little .22 LR when Mick arrived. He saw four HDI's heading toward her, sliding along the front of the
trailer. Soo was yelling her name from the bedroom and she was focused on taking those stinkin' things out, so she didn’t answer him.

Mick jumped up on the porch
beside her, and they took all of the HDI's out with the Benelli and Hisa's .22.

Hisa ran back inside to Soo
and Mick went down to make sure all four HDI's would not rise again. He was positive they were done for and went in the trailer to find Soo laying on the floor in the hallway with Hisa in his arms. They were both crying.

Hisa said she
heard scratching noises on the outside of the trailer. She thought it might be Opie and Tig, but the noise sounded like something was sliding down the wall and getting closer to the front porch. She decided to grab the .22 and peek out the door. Then she saw them. She began shooting immediately and knew one of the men would come as soon as they heard the shots.

Soo is extremely grateful to Mick. He was scared outa his skin. He called her name over and over and when she didn't come, he threw himself out of the bed and
crawled down the hallway.

It’
s seriously time to get started on the fence.

Hisa
examined me. She believes that I passed out from the pain, and that the nausea was caused by my pain medication and the fact that I didn’t eat supper. That doesn't surprise me a bit because it happened once before.

Hisa and Soo decided to sta
y in the trailer. Hisa says it’s worth the risk to keep Soo warm while he heals. God, bless her! She has the guts of an American Marine. Pop says he'll "outfit that little girl with somethin' stronger than a .22."

I wonder when Pop's going to run out of things to "outfit" people with. He carries a Springfield 30-06
and a Colt 1911 at all times He also has a walking cane with some type of bayonet as the handle. You better not mess with Pop.

Jeremy helped Mick load
up the HDI bodies in the bed of the S10 and carry them to a bare spot under some power lines down the road. They doused them with gasoline and lit them on fire. Mick hopes that none of them were the people we saw at the pull-off.

Pop outfitted Jeremy this morning. He got a Marlin, same as mine, and a .38 Taurus. I'm gonna paint something on
Marley with pink fingernail polish so we can tell the difference. I can hear Jeremy having target practice at Caleb's house right now. With all this pain medication on board, the gunshots aren't bothering me a bit, but Mick seems anxious for them to stop.

I ge
t to sit on the couch today. Amber and Caleb will wait on me hand and foot. I'm sure they'll draw lots of pictures and bring me things like pillows, blankets, and socks. I'm sure I'll be involved in a few hands of "Go Fish."

I don't
wanna spend a lot time in the bedroom anymore. I get lonely in here 'cause nobody has the time to just sit with me. They're too busy doing their chores and mine as well.

Nana says
we’re having grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. The bread we have left is threatening to go stale and we need to use it, or lose it.

By the way, the
cook stove looks awesome! We plan to fire it up for its first test tonight. We'll be heating chicken corn chowder and baking cornbread muffins to go with it. Marisa gets to make the first meal on the new cook stove and she wants to try a blueberry pie in the oven. We already have it thawing on the hearth.

Nana plans to give it a whirl tomorrow. She wants to fry up the pork chops we got from Caleb's ho
use and have potatoes and veggies to go with them. She also wants to make biscuits in a cast iron skillet on top of the stove. Go for it, Nana!

11:00 AM...

I came in 'cause it's time to take my medicine and I wanted to check on a couple of long term storage food items that I almost forgot I have hidden under the bed.

I hear a car horn beeping and it's coming up the driveway. I'm using one of those walking canes we looted from Walgreens, and I guess I'll try to get myself to the door so I can see who it is.

2:00 PM...

It was Jason, and he has a little red headed boy with him!

Jason arrived at his ex's house and found it empty. He went inside and the house was a disaster. Things from the closets and cabinets were thrown all over the place and the beds were bare. There wasn’t a crumb of food to be found. He said he could smell the refrigerator without opening it, so he left it closed.

He looked down the hallway and saw huge black letters spray painted on the wall. The letters spelled out "We went to Bills."

Bill is the brother of Jason's ex-wife. Jason knew where Bill lived, and he headed that way.

When he arrived, he saw six HDI'
s roaming around the front yard. They saw him and began heading toward him. He took them all out from the window of the Saturn. He said it was like shooting fish in a barrel. He got out of the Saturn and cautiously approached the house. He had to kick the door in to gain access.

When he walked in
, he saw his ex-wife, his son, and "some motorcycle dude" coming down the ladder from the attic. "Took you long enough" his ex said. He gathered his son in his arms and held him tight.

His ex-wife told him that she and Bruce, the
motorcycle dude, were heading north on Bruce's bike and they couldn't take Michael. She said they had no way to keep him safe and nothing to feed him.

Jason said she looked like she had been feeding herself with some sort of "white powder." She was thin as a rail and had huge circles under her eyes. She was fidgeting, and couldn't stand still.

She told Jason to take Michael with him 'cause she wanted to "make sure he'd be safe and have enough to eat." She said "even though it is the hardest thing I ever done in my whole life, I'm gonna let 'im go so long as you promise he'll be took care of." Jason thought to himself "Yeah right, you sorry junkie."

He turned and went straight to the car with Michael in his arms. He didn't even wait to see if Michael had any belongings he needed to take
along.

As he was pulling out, he saw his ex-wife climbing into the motorcycle seat behind Bruce. "I hope you get eaten, you bitch," Jason thought to himself, and he pulled that little Saturn out and pointed it home. He didn't realize that he forgot to ask where Bill was until he was halfway home.

The trip back was going fine until they came to a little town near the Interstate about halfway between here and Bill's house. He spotted a military convoy pulling off the Interstate ramp. There were approximately fifteen vehicles in the convoy and they were headed straight toward him.

He prayed they ha
dn't seen him and took a sharp right turn. He drove down the street and spotted an auto repair shop. He pulled the Saturn into the garage and pushed a tool box on wheels in front of it. He opened the Saturn's hood so it would look like it was in for repair.

He grabbed
Michael and headed down the hallway leading to the building entrance. The door was unlocked and they went inside.

He and Michael spent the next three days camped out in the employee lounge of that shop. There were a couple of vending
machines that hadn't been looted. He said there was enough junk food and soft drinks to hold someone over for a week.

He and Michael satisfied their sweet tooth, ate a few things from the backpack, and watched military vehicles tour the area. When twelve hours went by without any milit
ary vehicle driving past, or gunfire breaking the silence, Jason decided it was time to leave.

Michael snacked on chips and candy bars
the entire way here. He looks a little pale, and he's shy, but I'm sure he'll come around. He was really dirty and his hair looked like it wasn’t washed since this mess started. Jason took him to the bathroom for a giant sized bird bath and hair washin'. Marisa says he can wear clothes from one of Caleb's older brothers.

Marisa and Jason are happy as larks. Now, they have three children to take care of. Lord, help 'em. They better get to work on Caleb's house 'cause we need the
space.

Jason says there's a white delivery truck lying on its side a
couple miles down the road toward the Interstate. We plan to check that delivery truck as soon as we can.

I'll write
later. I'm headed back to the couch to watch the lighting of the wood cook stove. It's going to be a big event in this house. See ya later.

5:30 PM...

Marisa was
ready to start supper when we heard vehicles on the road near her house trailer.

We saw a
convoy of six military trucks. They're traveling slowly and I think they're looking for supplies as they pass.

Mick is having a
conniption fit. He went to the house trailer and told Hisa not to have any lights on after dark. If she needs a light to care for Soo, she'll have to use a flashlight or candle and shut the door. She can't use one of the solar lanterns. The window in the bedroom where Soo is sleeping faces back towards our house. Light from the lantern would illuminate the hillside.

Mick says there isn't any more plywood, so they'll cover the windows of the house trailer with thick cardboard. Hisa says she'll tape it up herself.

About a half-hour later we heard gunshots off in the distance. Mick decided not to investigate. It was getting dark and he wanted to stay close and make sure no light could be seen from the road.

We'll have to be careful about what kind of wood we're burning because we don't want to send up smoke-signals.

We can't have target practice until we're sure that the convoy is out of the area.

We need to get the fence built and plant something to climb all over it to disguise Marisa's trailer and our property. Oh Lord, please don't let those military guys come to our home.
We're scared and nervous.

9:30 PM...

Supper was
delicious! Marisa wants a cook stove at Caleb's house. We all groaned, remembering the effort it took to get the thing up here. Jason says she shall have it even if he has to check every house in the county. He's still beaming because he has his son.

He's thrilled that Marisa is willing to love and raise Michael as her own. I told him that anyone can have a baby, but it ta
kes a parent to raise one. Being a parent doesn't mean you have to give birth to a child. It means that you’re the one who cleans up the diapers, bottles, and vomit, and gets them through potty training, middle school, high school, and college. A parent is the person who's proud to say "this is my son" or "this is my daughter."

He nodded, and I'm sure he knows exactly what I meant.

Mick is a total grump. He's worried about the convoy, and the people in the pull-off, and getting the fence done, and finding a way to collect water, and Soo and Hisa in the trailer, and a hundred other things. We didn't talk to him tonight. No one wanted to get their head bitten off.

He's sleeping now and I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to. I hope I don't startle him when I climb in bed.

Bye for now.

Saturday, January 18

Mick and Jason walked down to the pull-off this morning, before dawn, in the dark! I wish I could smack them both in the head!

I screamed for ten minutes that "they'd forgotten their responsibility to this family, and any member of this family who foolishly puts themselves in danger is selfish and taking a chance with the entire family's welfare, and if they had gotten killed it might have killed us too 'cause we couldn't make it without them, and now they made my back hurt worse 'cause I was all tensed up!"

Mick was brave enough to say "no one would kill you because you'd come back and haunt them." He ducked after he said it.

That was all it took for me to start screaming again. I wanted to throw something at them
, but we need everything we've got.