The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning (42 page)

The mob was overjoyed with their success. They took over both farm houses, the fields, crops and barns full of animals. The slaughtered cows and pigs, they dug pits where they roasted the animals while one hundred returned to escort the main body of the large group to the farms. Thousands of hungry and tired people pitched tents and lay their sleeping bags in the fields of the farms. For the first time in months, everyone had a hot meal of fresh meat and roasted corn and peppers. People lined up to shower with hot water and use a flushing toilet for the first time in a long time. People were happy for the first time in months. The leaders took turns staying in the homes they’d conquered. They sent scouts to look for stored food on the farms. The wells provided them with all of the fresh water they’d need. The leaders agreed to spend a couple of days investigating the two farms before they planned their next move. Some of the people wanted to stay on the farms for the winter.

We saw smoke from their campfires on the horizon and we wondered whether our two neighbor’s homes had caught fire or they’d been attacked.  John tried to reach them on the radio we’d given them, no one answered. John called their phone which was answered by someone John didn’t recognize, “Hello, Dan are you OK?”

“We’re fine, who’s this?”

“Dan, this is Frank, don’t you remember me? Three farms over on 127
th
street?”

“Oh yes, Dan, how’s everything with you?”

“Fine, we saw some smoke on the horizon, just checking that you’re OK.”

“We’re fine, we’re burning some of our fields, nothing to worry about.”

“OK, great, thanks. See you soon at the monthly get-together.”

“Sure thing.”

John calls me, “Jay, the two farms were overrun, I told them I was Dan from the farm on 127
th
Street.”

Laughing, I respond, “John, that was a good one, they’ll go crazy looking for 127
th
street since we removed all of the street signs. Considering those farms were sold to a developer, all the attackers are going to find there is the start of a new housing subdivision.”

“We now know they’re violent. I think they’ll stay there for a few days, rest and eat everything they find. They’ll most likely slaughter and eat their animals before they try to locate the three farms you told them were on 127
th
street. Once they realize there're no farms there, they’ll realize they were suckered and think about us again. I’d say we have maybe five days before they hit us.”

“In the time we have left, let’s see what we can do to make it harder for them to reach our homes.”

“I agree. I’ll come to the security shelter.”

“I’ll be here trying to get as much information as possible about what happened at the two neighboring farms.”

Chapter 22

Robert and the other leaders relaxed in one of the captured farm houses. They drank beer they found in the basement of one of the farmhouses, they ate fresh steaks from the cows they recently butchered and grilled. They discussed their next actions.

Jason, one of the oldest and most experienced said, “Guys, my people have been on the road for months, this is the nicest place we’ve found. I’d say we stay here except the crops we’ve found and the animals are only enough to feed us for four to six weeks.”

Robert looks around the comfortable living room responding, “Jason, I think we might be able to harvest some more of their crops which should let us make it through the winter.”

Len, the youngest shakes his head, he says, “Guys, we won’t make it through the winter, there’s not enough shelter for all of our people. Most of our people don’t have winter clothing, they’ll freeze to death the first night the temperatures drop below freezing. We need to move someplace further south, someplace we can be safe and find enough food to live on while we start again.”

Jason looks at Len thinking about what he said, “Len, you might be on to something there. Let’s do a census of our people, we need to figure out what they have and need before we decide where or when to go. When our two groups combined, we lost track of the condition of everyone. I think we should spend the next few days checking on everyone. Everyone is resting, they have enough to eat and clean water to drink. Everyone is going to shower, they’ll be in a much better frame of mind after a couple of days rest and having enough to eat.”

Robert says, “Guys, we came from Nashville, there’s nothing there. When we left, the city was in shambles, most of it was burning out of control.”

Jeff, a leader of the northern group, says, “I think we should pack up all the food and water everyone can carry and head south towards Mobile. Being along the coast where’s it’s much warmer is going to do everyone a lot of good.”

Jason replies, “Jeff that means we’ll have to make our way around the three major cities, Nashville, Huntsville, and Birmingham. I think Huntsville might be OK, the military had a large presence in Huntsville, and they may have been able to hold control of the city. Birmingham, on the other hand, could be a real mess. I wouldn’t want to go there in normal times. The city was famous for race issues and riots before things got crazy.”

Jeff asks, “Can we reach Mobile without going through Birmingham?”

“There’s a highway that goes around the city, however, I think it’s going to be a fight anywhere near the city.”

Jeff asks, “Is there anywhere between Huntsville and Birmingham we can find a place to stay?”

Robert says, “Maybe we can find a place to stay in Huntsville or near the river like in Decatur. The last time I was in Decatur, there were many farms.”

Jeff says, “I like being next to a major river. It could provide us water for farms and transportation like our ancestors did. Based on the distance between here and Huntsville I think we’re going to need sufficient food to keep us going for at least thirty days.”

Robert says, “I agree. There are three bikes in the garage, why don’t we send three scouts south to check the conditions.”

Everyone nods their agreement to Robert’s idea.

@@@@@

Tony is sitting across from John in the security shelter, “John, we know our neighbors have been overrun, do we know anything else?”

“Unfortunately, we don’t. We don’t have any cameras with a field of view that far. All we know is when I called, someone else answered.”

“We need information to have some idea of what we’re up against.”

“Tony, I have one out of the box idea, it’s a little dangerous, but it’s the only way I can think of without putting any of our people at risk.”

“What are you thinking?”

“We send one of our drones over their farms.”

“Can we do that?”

“I think we can. If we lose one, we’ll be down to only seven. Our camera wouldn’t be able to transmit to us, but the camera will record on an SD card, which we’ll review when the drone returns.”

Tony looks concerned, “John, so if something happens to the drone, not only are we out the drone, but also the camera and the SD card.”

“Tony, you see the problem. We only have a limited number of cameras, drones, and SD memory cards.”

“I can’t believe we missed stocking drones and cameras.”

“Yes, we blew that one. I don’t think it occurred to you or Jay cameras or drones were a high priority item. You were focused on stocking food, weapons, computers, medications and farming equipment. You guys did better than I thought possible. We have enough food that if we had to move to the shelter and live off of our supplies we could do so for a few years. I’m amazed you two pulled it off.”

“What we didn’t think through was the need for information.”

“Why should you? Neither of you had the experience to protect a facility. I used to have to design security for fire bases in hostile areas. The Indians were always looking for ways to get to the good guys. They surprised me with the number of ways they thought of to get to the good guys. We needed information, such as how many people we’re facing, how’re they’re armed and how they’re treating the farms they conquered.”

Tony looks at John and back to the monitors, he’s very concerned about the group sitting less than a mile away. Tony’s thinking to himself,
I knew we should have either purchased that land or found a way to bring them under our umbrella. They didn’t think they were in danger, they lowered their defense, it got them killed.
“John, since I can’t think of any other way to get information, you have my support. I do, however, have one suggestion.”

“Sure, what is it?”

“I suggest you paint the drone. Currently, they’re dark gray and black for night operations.  If we’re going to perform a daylight mission, I suggest we repaint it so it doesn’t stick out against the sky if they look up.”

“Damn it, great point, I forgot all about that. I’ll get right on it.”

At 5:30 PM with the sun setting John and Todd launched the drone. Tony, Fred with his arm still in a sling and I crammed into the security shelter with John. We tracked the drone, we watch it cross our front boundary when our RF signal strength falls off cutting the live video stream off. John says, “That’s the end of our live video until it returns.”

Fred asks, “John if you can’t see how do you control the drone?”

John smiles responding, “Who said anything about flying it? We programmed a course into it and let it go. We sent it to GPS points we know from visiting the farms. We instructed the drone to fly to the first GPS location, fly four increasing circles, then move to the second GPS location and repeat the circles. It should repeat to the third and fourth GPS waypoints before it returns home.”

I ask, “John, why only four GPS locations?”

“Jay, it’s really five, we have to enter our location since we can’t fly it in the normal manner. The drone will only store five locations.”

“I should have gotten better drones.”

“Jay, you wouldn’t have known. I was surprised to see you even had drones.”

Fred asks, “If I understand what’s going on correctly, we won’t know if the drone operated correctly until it returns. We have no way to control it or see what it’s recording until it returns. If it doesn’t return, we lose a drone, camera, and memory card.”

John nods, saying, “Fred, you got the key issues correct.”

Tony asks, “John, how long will the mission take?”

“Thirty minutes. I hope.”

“What do you mean, I hope?”

“I hope it doesn’t crash or get shot down.”

The drone flies over the two farms without incident, when the clock reaches 27 minutes we run through the tunnels to exit in the field looking for the drone. None of us sees it when it drops out of the sky by our feet. John picks it up saying, “You’re a good little drone, you came home to your papa. Now show us what you saw.”

We run back to the security shelter with the SD card we removed from the camera and inserted it into a laptop which displayed the images on a large wall screen. The image starts blurry, it quickly clears up. What we see stops us in our tracks, our mouths hang open. We didn’t expect to see rows and rows of tents, sleeping bags, and campfires. John said, “Looking at the tents, I’m going to estimate there are a few thousand people in the camp.”

Tony replied so softly we had to strain to hear him, “Thousands? My God, it’s worse than I thought. Can we beat them back?”

John looked at the video before speaking, “Tony, we can slow them down with mines and traps, we can shoot the hell out of them. However, if they keep coming up our driveways, they will overrun us. We don’t have enough people to take them all down. If everyone hits a person with each round in their magazine, which you all know isn’t probable, in fact, it’s not even possible. We have to change magazines after 30, 40 or 60 rounds. Which means if I use 40 rounds as an average, times the 30 adults and teens we have trained to fight, then we can hit 1,200 of them before we have to change magazines. That assumes every shot equals a person hit. Let’s also assume we can stop 300 of them with our mines and traps before they reach our trench line. If 3,000 people race up our driveway and lawns, they can reach us before we can take them all down. We’ll be lucky to take 20% of them down. Many of our people are going to be stressed out, they will miss most of their shots, they may hit one person more than once. A single attacker may be struck by more than one shooter. Our people may fumble their reloading or because of the stress, forget to reload. Frankly, we’re screwed. If we had air support we could win, if we had mortars which could reach out and strike them before they can close to us we would have a chance. The distance between the road and the trench is to close. Running people can and will reach us.”