Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie (64 page)

I
need to go to the basement and check our food supply. I'm scared to go down there. I hope I find more food than I expect.

Josie, Ian, and Rick plan to go into town after lunch today. They wanna take the Jeep and goat trailer. I think they're crazy but Mick says they are highly trained for combat situations, plus, they're adults and we can't tell them what to do. Josie says she hopes to bring home a t
railer load of things we need.

Jeremy and Jesse are staying home to work on the fence. Pop says rain is coming and they don't wanna get caught in the ra
in with a trailer full of hay.

Mick told Jason that he's worried about getting plenty of propane for the gas ovens, motorhomes, and heaters for winter
, and asked Jason to ease his mind a little.

Jason took the hoist truck and went to out for propane tanks. Mick wants two for each house, motorhome, and wooden building here. We have several tanks down near the trailer fence but we definitely need more in order to have two for each building. I wonder if we can put a propane heater in the deluxe outhouse. Nah...
It’d be a waste of propane.

Shawna and Lisa went with Jason. Lisa was wearing her birthday bug out bag. I was h
appy to see her put it to use.

Emma and Nana plan to work in the greenhouse while Pop harvests peas in t
he garden with Luke and Larson.

Rona and Marisa have lunch duty and I don't know what they're planning.
We still have a couple of 10 pound bags of potatoes and they need to be used because they're starting to sprout. I'll betcha we get potato soup for lunch. That sounds great to me.

I got Emma's story last night and I'll write it out for you later tonight. She's had a very rough life since the world collapsed. I have no idea how she's come through it
and managed not to go insane.

I'm heading out to get dried broccoli florets from the dehydrator. I need to shell peas as well. The food preservation is about to get very busy and I hope I have so much to do that I drop in the be
d every night from exhaustion.

See ya later.

2:00 PM...

We had interesting visitors at the front gate right after lunch this afternoon.

Elaine and Soo were on watch duty when a Greyhound bus stopped at the gate. Elaine stuck her head in the door and s
creamed “BUS AT THE DRIVEWAY!”

The men were just about to head back to fence work and heard her call. Dane and Mick head
ed down the driveway with Soo.

All three of them stood behind the trailer fence and yelled toward the bus. I couldn't make out what was said
, but I knew they wouldn't come out from behind the trailer unless someone friendly stepped off the bus or it went on its way.

I crouched down behind a rocking chair and sent everyone else inside. I told Carisa to grab my binoculars and toss them out to me. I looked through them
and watched the bus door open.

A figure stepped off of the bus and I could tell it was a woman simply by the way she walked. She approached the gate and began loudly talking to the men behind the trailer. Again, I couldn't understand what she was saying
, but shortly after she and Mick had a few words it became very clear what she was offering. She knocked on the rear of the bus and the door opened again. Four women stepped from the bus and walked toward the gate.

When
they were close enough, the first woman motioned to them and they opened their coats. All four of them were wearing bikini's and high heels. I almost flew down that hill to rip their hair out. I mean, I was MAD!

Dane, Mick and Soo talked with the woman a little longer than necessary before the four young women closed their coats and headed back up the bus stairs
. The door closed behind them.

“Madam-never-stop-here-again" had a few more words with the men, then she burst out in laughter and went back to the bus. The door closed behind her and the bus slowly went d
own the road and out of sight.

The men turned and began walking up the hill. They were laughing and joking with one another. I couldn't make out a word they were saying but I figu
red that I had the jest of it.

I stuck my head in the front door and yelled to the women inside “The hookers just left.” Elaine was out on that porch before you could say boo. She was waitin' for Dane. Poor His
a, she missed the entire show.

When Mick, Dane, and Soo stepped back up on the porch
, they had already stopped laughing and had their “serious” faces on. I asked Mick if the survivors on the bus had anything we needed.

He was almost tongue tied and had to swallow before he could answer. He said they were trading alcohol, cigarettes, and women for food, weapons, and supplies. I smacked him in the arm
and asked why he didn't get a pack of cigarettes for me. He had a bewildered look on his face when I turned and headed back into the house, I almost choked, trying not to laugh out loud.

Seriousl
y, that bus better not stop here again. If it does, well, I'd just have to believe that the women on the bus were somehow encouraged to “check back.”

Rick, Ian and Josie didn't come home for lunch and I'm worried. Why in the world did they find it so important to go into
town? I hope they get back soon. I'll be worried sick until they get home.
10:00 PM...

Josie, Rick, and Ian are home. They pulled in about an hour after supper. We had full plates waiting in the
cook stove oven. They spoke with us for a few minutes while they ate, and then went to their little homes.

I told them they look like they've been through hell and Josie said she's pretty sure they have. All three of them are covered in dirt and grime. Their eyes are red-rimmed and their faces look sunken from exhaustion. Shawna sat with Ian and they talked between themselves while the rest of us drilled J
osie and Rick with questions.

Yes, they found some good stuf
f. Yes, they found some clothes. Yes, they found some food. Yes, she'll tell me everything that happened while we're working on laundry tomorrow morning.

They have the trailer load
ed full. I have no idea what’s in there, but I'll check it out with everyone else in the morning.

Since it's still a little early
, I've decided to get Emma's story written out. I truly don't know how that woman’s still walking around.

Emma Jane Riley and her husband, Cleve, have two sons. The family is Mormon and both sons were in El Salvador on mission trips when the world fell apart. Emma
says she'll never see her sons again.

She and Cleve lived on a small farm way out in the boonies. Cleve was a mailman and had a walking route in the city. He was t
hree weeks away from retiring.

Emma was a homemaker. She tended the animals, garden, and little produce stand they had on the side of the road. She sold
produce, eggs, and blueberries during harvest season. She never had a permit to sell any of it. She didn't know she needed one.

She had several customers from the city that visited her regularly for eggs. Other customers were those that happened to be driving by
, or neighbors from a trailer park about a mile down the road. She says a bunch those neighbor's owe her money to this day.

She and Cleve had a good sized flock of chickens, a dairy cow, three barn cats and a dachshund. Cleve had a couple of hunting dogs that he kept in a large pen off the side of the barn. He had a doggie door installed in the side of the barn so his hunting dogs could have shelter at night and whenever it rained.

Her little dachshund was named Loki and he was almost twelve years old. She got him when he was six weeks old and he's been her constant companion ever since.

They had a big garden and rarely bought groceries except when they needed things like coffee, flour, sugar, etc. Emma canned all sorts of things from the gard
en to see them through winter.

She quilted, kept house, and t
ook good care of Cleve.. He told her that any money made from the produce stand belonged to her. She bought herself a new sewing machine for Christmas.

She loves to make quilts. She hand quilts them after she puts them together with the sewing machine. She's a “little bit famous” in a couple of fancy stores “up north in Tennessee” for her homemade denim quilts. She makes them from blue jeans she buys from thrift stores and yard sales. She told me there are about 25 different shades of blue denim. I didn't know that
, and she seemed proud to share the information with me.

She and Cleve also had a stockpile. Emma says “you're not a real Mormon unless you hav
e a stockpile.” God Bless her!

Anyway, they had enough food to last the two of them about 18 months. She had plenty of flour, sugar, and other staples along with all the food she canned and a lot of long term stuff they bought. She had a strict rotation system. When anything was taken out of the stockpile
, it was written down on the grocery list to replace the next time they went grocery shopping.

Cleve came home from work one day and said he wasn't going back. Emma was shocked because he was very close to
retirement. He told her what was going on with the virus and she agreed that they needed to lock themselves up and sit it out.

They stayed on their little farm two weeks before she
saw the trailer park burning. A little boy and two little girls escaped the fire and showed up at Cleve and Emma's place. Emma and Cleve took them in.

The children were there a week before a big problem arrived in the form of a small
National Guard unit.

It took 15 minutes to convince her
the men were pretending to be National Guard troops, and were not the “real thing.”

She was shocked.

Back to the story...

There were fifteen men in the unit. The leader was a man called “Top.” That's the name he went by and Emma never he
ard him called anything else.

They told Cleve and Emma that they were requisitioning all their supplies and weapons. They would be staying on the farm until they received orders to leave
, and that Emma and Cleve had to make sure they were taken care of. Emma said they had no choice. The men had taken all their weapons and they were helpless

Things went smoothly for several days before two new men joined the group. The new men had brought along quite a bit of rum and vodka. By supper time
, every man in the unit was “rip roarin' drunk” and some of them were mean drunks.

They began teasing, pushing
, and hitting the children. The kids were terrified. The men made the kids carry alcohol in a shot glass balanced on a small log. They had to carry it 10 yards and then turn around and bring it all the way back without spilling a drop. If the kids spilled one drop of alcohol. the men would beat them and make them start all over again. Emma said it went on for thirty minutes before Cleve came out of the basement, saw what was happening, and stepped up to put an end to it.

The men began arguing with Cleve and sent him on an “around the circle” punching fest. Cleve screamed out to Emma and the kids to run and hide. She grabbed Loki and wiggled in behind an old recliner they had sitting on the porch. She was not going to run. If Cleve was going to
die, she wanted to go with him.

The children began to run toward a wooded field. Two of them made it but the third one didn't. One of the little girls was running past the porch when Top pulled his pistol and shot her in the back. She fell to the ground but didn't die right away
. She cried out for her mommy.

Emma stuffed Loki behind the chair and crawled out. She headed toward the little girl. Top stuck his foot out and tripped her. She hit the ground and two men grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. Top instructed them to tie her to a
post facing the little girl.

Emma was tied to the post and couldn't get loose. It felt like a hundred painful years went by as she was forced to watch and listen to the little girl cry and scream for her mommy. Whenever Emma tried
to close her eyes, she would get smacked in the face with a hickory switch until she opened them again. When the little girl finally passed away Emma breathed a sigh of relief.

“Top” stood on the railing at the edge of the porch and hollered for
the men to “bring 'im 'round!”

Several men pushed and shoved Cleve until he was standing across f
rom Emma.

There was an old
Volkswagen Beetle that one of her son's drove when he was a teenager parked behind Cleve. The men were ordered to push the Volkswagen up to the base of the porch.

When they got the VW in place
, they were ordered to strap Cleve across the hood and roof with his feet hanging near the headlights. This put him right below the post where Emma was struggling with all her might to free herself.

E
mma started begging. She begged until her voice was hoarse, the bib of her apron was soaked with tears, and blood was dripping from her wrists from trying to pull herself free of the post.