Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie (54 page)

T
hey found a bakery and took the barrels from the back. They had to clean icing out of two of them, but the other four were already empty and only needed rinsing out. They also brought home a 50 pound bag of cake flour. There was no other food left in the place but there were plenty of HDI's in the area. Those two men are sneaky and quiet. I'm glad they're on our side.

They said they'd take me to the truck stop tomorrow because most of today is already used up. Sounds good to me.

Mick, Jeremy, and Soo brought home two wooden buildings. They left them on the trailer, and headed back to the trucking company to get another flatbed trailer and two more buildings before dark. I expect them home within the hour.

Dane wants to load up Mr. Peterson's wood shop and bring it up the hill for Elaine, Jeremy, and himself. It's about twice as big as the wooden buildings. He wants to attach two little wooden buildings to use as bedrooms. He'll probably have to put it in the front yard behind
the remains of Marisa's old house trailer. That'll give him about thirty yards between his “house” and the trailer fence. He'll need to build an outhouse as well.

I have supper duty with Elaine tonight. She's making chicken pot pies and I'm making peach cobblers to go with them. I feel l
ike I'm working in a cafeteria. We're cooking large amounts of food every day. If we don't find more very soon, we may have to cut down to two meals per day.

We are using every drop of milk the goats give us. I think Luke, Larson, and Deuce drink a gallon a day between the three of them. They want milk at every meal.

The chickens can't keep with up, so we have to use powdered eggs from the pantry more often than not.

I think we're at our limit
for taking in people. We simply do not have enough food to feed any more than the ones we have now.

We must loot the stashes Josie was talking about, and soon. We also
need to hunt. I think I'll give Luke and Larson hunting duty for the coming week if it's okay with Rona. I'm sure Mr. Hobbs will teach them to make snares.

Mick and the guys are back. I'm heading out to see what they brought home.

See ya later.

10:00 PM...

Mick brought home two more buildings and they're larger than the ones they got earlier. Soo said they got them from a different display lot and there are six more there. I suppose we should get them
all, just in case anyone else wants to “add on” to their homes. Getting those buildings is easier than building log cabins from scratch.

Dane still plans to take apart the Peterson house
, but it may be next winter before he gets to it.

Supper was delicious and there was nothing left.

I checked on the piglets and noticed milk on the ground. Those boys have been giving milk to the pigs. No wonder they’re growing like weeds. I threw a fit.

I hope we can keep the pigs
alive until butchering time in late fall. I'm gonna send Mick back to the milling company to see if the pig feed is still there because we aren't getting enough table scraps for them anymore. Please, lord, let it be there.

Mick’
s taking the gasoline tanker to the truck stop tomorrow to refill the tank. We have about 20% left and that makes him nervous. We really need to keep the refrigerator and freezer running.

Dane and Kevin plan to head to the lumber yard for another load of l
ogs. Kevin has a thirty-foot-long trench waiting for the log fence. Shawna wants to go along and they told her she was welcome.

We've had to fill the generator a lot less often since we hooked up the big one we got from Mr. Wilson. It's a relief
, not running out to fill our smaller one twice a day.

Pop and Mr. Hobbs intend to start another garden spot between the pools and the trailer fence. Pop says it won't hurt him a bit to sit on the Kubota and plow a garden spot. We need i
t to feed the extra mouths we've acquired. We still have seeds from Lowe's.

We also need more canning jars.

Ian knows how to build a solar dehydrator and said he will get it done before the first harvest. That will help immensely, but we need more baggies. Actually, we need more everything.

It's time to start pulling out summer clothes and most of the folks here don't have any. We'll either have to loot clothing stores and pray they have summer clothes left from last year, or loot a fabric store for patterns and fabric to
make our own.

The problem is that all the fabric and clothing stores are in town with all the HDI's. I still have the tub of fabric Josie left the first time she was here
, but we're gonna need a lot more than that.

I
believe I recall Mick saying they left a lot of clothing at TSC. I guess we'll all be wearing cut-off jean shorts this summer. I'm worried about our bare skin being exposed to flies.

I'm headed to bed. I hope tomorrow brings some sort of good news.

Bye for now.

Thursday, March 20

I made oatmeal for breakfast. We have a lot of oatmeal and it's really good for filling bellies.

I'm here to gear myself up for truck stop lootin' with Rick and Ian. Jeremy's going as well.

Dane said that Elaine can go if
she wants, and he's “not her boss.” I think she wanted him to say she couldn't go. Women folk like to test men folk sometimes. Anyway, she offered to take my place cleaning the kitchen after breakfast and she's going after every little speck like a crazed lunatic.

I'm ready to go. Wish me luck.

1:30 PM...

I truly hate HDI's.

Nope... I'm going to start this entry on a good note.

We headed to the restaurant in the Jeep with the flatbed trailer from the tractor shed attached. We were at the pull-off and just about to turn left when Jeremy started pointing.

In the large field behind the pull-off were three deer. I wanted to scream “SHOOT 'EM!” but kept my mouth shut.

Rick lowered the windows on the Jeep and took aim. Ian took aim out the rear window. Rick whispered “you ready?” and Ian said “mmm hmmm.”

The deer were still grazing and either knew we were there but didn't care, or didn't know we were there at all.

Rick counted down a three count and both men shot at almost the exact same time. Two deer hit the ground and the third took off like a jet plane. Rick aimed and shot that beautiful hunk of roast. It turned a flip and rolled several yards before its body ran out of forward motion.

We were
all hootin’ and hollerin’ inside that Jeep.

Rick blew on his knuckles and rubbed them on his shoulder while he laughed. Ian pounded him on the back and called him a “lucky s o b.”

Rick drove the Jeep into the pull-off and began driving into the field. Several yards in, we almost got stuck. Rick said “nope,“ and backed up to the pull-off. We went after the deer on foot.

There were four men and one weakling woman
, but we only made one trip into that field.

We headed toward the two deer that had fallen together. Rick and Ian picked up two thick, long tree branches near the tree-line at the edge of the field. They pulled
out para-cord from their backpacks and began tying the deer’s legs together over the branches. They tied two does to the heaviest branch and a 10 point buck to the other.

Jeremy and I
had to haul the buck, and it was rough. I have no idea how Ian and Rick walked back looking so casual while totin' a branch with two large does hanging from it. Jeremy would've had a better time of it if he didn't have me for a partner.

Rick said he could help Jeremy and carry the buck branch on one shoulder and the doe branch on the other if we needed him to. There was no way in H, E, double-toothpicks, I was gonna let that happen. I made it but, man oh man, it was rough.

All three deer were tied to the trailer and we went back to the compound to drop them off. When Ian got out to open the gate, we saw Kevin coming down the hill on the backhoe.

He
was headed around front to leave the backhoe in the area we want the little wooden buildings placed when he saw us arrive. He headed down to find out why we were back so fast.

He almost fell out of the backhoe cab when he saw what was tied to the trailer
, and started hootin' and hollerin'. He honked the horn on the backhoe a couple of times.

Pretty soon
, Mick, Jason, and Dane were there, hootin' and hollerin' with Kevin. Pop drove down on the Kubota and said he'd “never seen anything like it in his whole life.” The four mighty hunters were grinning from ear to ear (that includes me, ya know).

Pop drove back up the hill and told the women on the porch what was going on. We knew the instant he told them 'cause they all started jumping up and down, h
ootin' and hollerin' themselves.

I turned to Mick and told him to go to the trucking company for one of the refrigeration trucks because we don't have enough jars to can all that meat. He nodded and said he and Jason would head over there right away. Rick said to make sure the tank on the trailer was filled with diesel and
switched on as soon as they got it in place.

Anyway,
the men loaded the deer into the bed of the Silverado and took them up the hill while we pulled out to head for the restaurant again. I was prayin' for the same kind of luck the entire way there, but it didn't happen.

We pulled into the truck stop parking lot and had no choice but to drive around to the rear. There were HDI bodies everywhere. I don't know if there were more
, or less, from the time Dane and I had our HDI experience, but it looked like there were more. Of course, it could be my imagination. Suspicious mind... Remember?

Rick stopped the Jeep
a few feet from the back door and we all hopped out. Rick, Ian, and Jeremy scoped out every direction around us while I was pacing, anxious to get in there and get started. Ian and Jeremy went in to make sure the coast was clear, and it was.

The rotting food on the buffet table had almost lost
its smell. I suppose bacteria and bugs have done their jobs.

The restaurant looked the same as
the day we left it. I headed toward the kitchen and storage areas to start gathering supplies. The men waited for orders from me. They had no idea what to grab. I told them to find boxes and start loading every dish, glass, cup, and piece of silverware they could find. They nodded and went at it.

I
looked for paper goods and anything else useful. I pulled a wheeled, two tiered cart along as I loaded it. I got several boxes of napkins, straws, and individually packaged sets of plastic eating utensils. I found two giant, industrial sized rolls of plastic wrap and three industrial sized rolls of aluminum foil.

I grabbed a huge box of big garbage bags and several empty five gallon buckets. I took every plastic tub I could fin
d that didn't have food inside. I also found one of those big meat slicers and three huge frying pans. My rolling cart was full and I pushed it out to the restaurant and left it beside the back door.

Rick and Ian took apart a large table-like gas appliance. It holds two humongous pots and I'm guessing they
’re for large quantities of soup. Ian said we could put it back together and hook it to a propane tank at the compound. I loved that idea because we eat a lot of soup and oatmeal and those pots will be perfect to hold enough servings for our bunch. They also disassembled the big, flat grill that the 100 lb propane tanks had been hooked up to

I pulled a garbage can over to the buffet table and started dumping rotten food into it. I wanted all the large serving dishes from the buffet. I'll pour water from the creek in them and let them
sit for a few hours. Then, I'll scrape them out, wash them, and soak them in bleach water before putting them away.

I tied up the garbage bag and pulled it out of the garbage can. I added the garbage can to the pile near the back door.

I turned to look for more and saw movement at the windows out of the corner of my eye. I turned toward the windows and almost passed out. I yelled “help!” two or three times while running to close the back door because we had it propped open.

I
can't believe that no HDI's came through the door. I will never prop open a door in any building I'm looting from now on.

We all had weapons on our bodies
, but the extra ammo was in the emergency backpacks inside the Jeep. I couldn't keep my attention off the windows. I knew HDI's were bound to bust through sooner rather than later.

I was a terrible participant
in the “what to do” discussion. I noticed black goo was running down the windows in large streams, and pieces of flesh were sticking to the windows or splattering any HDI they happened to land on. I felt sick at my stomach.

I was almost in a daze and decided to follow instructions from the men.

Jeremy said that just about every business around here has heating and cooling units on the roof, and restaurants have huge vents up there as well. There is usually roof access inside every building. Ladders are kept in the building storage room or locked storage sheds out back.