"Sounds good to me. I’ll get a couple buckets from the garage and meet you guys out there," Amber said, walking out of the kitchen.
Cami opened the back door and nodded for Mitch to lead the way. "Age before beauty," she muttered.
Mitch laughed as he stepped out into the waning sunshine. He glanced up. "I think you're right, Cami-san, looks like a pretty good gully-washer coming in."
Outside, Cami looked up at the dark clouds billowing on the horizon. "You know, we should collect the rain as much as possible, too.” She peered through the dense foliage toward Marty Price’s house. "I can barely see through the trees, but I do believe Marty is putting buckets on his back deck."
Mitch nodded. "I'll go help Amber and see what we can find."
Alone in her garden, surrounded by the dense, lush greenery and ripening vegetables, Cami inhaled the deep earthy scent and felt a sense of relaxation and calm descend on her shoulders. It was exactly what she needed. Nothing soothed her soul like getting her fingers in the dirt and tending her beloved plants.
The only thing better would be if Reese came outside with a couple cold beers to assist.
Cami felt the tears well up, then clenched her jaw and shook her head. "No. The time for that's over—no more." She stepped forward through the little weathered wooden gate and approached her tomato plants. "Reese is on his own. I've got enough to worry about."
Chapter 17
Ellsworth, Maine
An hour after leaving the remains of the Trenton Health Center, Reese had to call his little group to a stop. Mud flows, washed over the road from the remains of the tsunami, had completely congested the way forward. Reese struggled through shin deep mud, losing his deck shoes more than once. Red-faced and sweating, he bent over to give Ben, still hobbling along on his broken crutch, a chance to catch his breath.
Ben closed his eyes, exhausted, sat in the muck, then fell onto his back, arms spread out wide.
"He can't go much further like this," Jo said around deep breaths. “I…I don't how much…how much further I can go."
Reese nodded, panting, and trudged his way through the debris-laden muck to Ben's side. “Hey—you hangin’ in there?"
"I'm not gonna lie," Ben gasped, staring up at the late afternoon sky. "I've had better days…”
"Ellsworth can't be that much further up the road,” Reese observed.
"I can't," Ben muttered, closing his eyes. A shudder rippled through his body, and he wiped at his face weakly. "I can't. I'm done, dude."
Reese rubbed his lower back and stretched, groaning with the effort. Looking around, he saw there were no standing buildings nearby of any kind. A house, off the road just west of their position, had been stripped to the foundations. Smoke drifted lazily up into the sky from a pile of debris spread out over about an acre of open land behind where the structure had once stood. Only bits and pieces of pipe and framing stuck up out of the mud to tell passersby that someone had once lived there.
Reese turned his attention to the short, scraggly trees—or the remains of said trees—closer to the road. He forced his way through the mud and found two stout pine saplings, each a couple inches in diameter. “Jo, come over here and give me a hand."
"What are we doing?" she asked, working her way through the stinking, clinging mud.
Reese grabbed one of the pine saplings and leaned back, letting his weight pull the trunk. "Push toward me from the other side—let's see if we can pull this thing out of the ground."
When Jo added her weight to it, the roots—buried in saturated mud and soil—gave way. They struggled a little more with the second tree, but after a few minutes, had a pair of stout poles complete with root balls, laying in the mud next to Ben.
"I don't think I need new crutches," Ben said, shaking his head.
"Those aren’t crutches, you big galoot,” Jo quipped. She removed the sweat stained backpack from her shoulders and dug around inside for a moment. "What's the best way to get an injured person out of a dangerous situation when you can't carry them? I'll tell you how,” she said. “It's with a travois.” She pulled out a bundle of rope in triumph. "You're a crafty one, Reese." She tossed him the rope,
“I may have been a Boy Scout back in the day," Reese said, snatching the bundle of rope from the air. He knelt in the mud and lashed the two poles together, “Might also be a little rusty at this…”
"Here, if we weave some smaller sticks through there, it might give a little support…” Jo said, crouching next to Ben and adding a bundle of smaller sticks to the work in progress.
A few moments later, they had Ben lie on the backing of rope and sticks between the two saplings. "It's not the most comfortable thing I've ever sat on," Ben muttered, adjusting his position and wiping mud off his arms. "And it's probably the most embarrassing thing I've ever had to do…”
"Are you kidding me right now?” Reese said, standing. “You're going to complain?"
"Oh no, I'm not complaining. Embarrassed…eternally grateful…and ashamed? You bet—not complaining, though.“
“Alright," Jo said, wiping her hands. "Let's get this dog and pony show on the road. I don’t know about you boys, but I don't intend to be sleeping out in the mud tonight."
Reese picked up the end of the travois where the two poles intersected. "Okay, on three, let’s get
