siphoning, or about to siphon, gas from his car. He heard a loud, crunching sound, and realized that the driver had not started yet because he had been held back by the locked cover over the gas cap.
Jake set the wheelbarrow down and ran quickly toward his car. The gas thief had a tire iron and was trying to pry up the cover. He was so intent on breaking into the gas tank that he had not seen Jake approach.
“Mister, I paid an arm and a leg for that gasoline and I don’t intend to stand by and watch you steal it,” Jake said.
Jake’s voice startled the would-be thief, and he glanced up at Jake with a wild look in his eyes. He raised the tire iron he was using over his head.
“Stay back, Major,” he said, remembering Jake’s military rank. “Stay back or I’ll lay your head open.”
“You recognized me,” Jake said. “Are you a soldier ?”
“I was. But there ain’t nobody a soldier no more, not even you,” the wild-eyed young man said. “And you bein’ a major don’t mean jack shit to me no more. So you just stand over there—sir.” He slurred the word
Jake pulled his pistol and pointed it at the young man. “Son, you need to learn not to bring a tire iron to a gunfight. Now my recommendation to you is that you climb in your truck and you drive away. Otherwise I’ll just have to shoot you.”
Seeing the gun in Jake’s hand, the young man’s demeanor changed. No longer belligerent, he lowered the tire iron he had been using to pry open the gas-cap cover.
“All right, all right, I’m goin’,” the young man said, holding one hand out in front of him, palm facing Jake as if by so doing, he could hold Jake off. He glanced at the right rear quarter of Jake’s car. The paint was badly scratched and dented where he had been working to open the gas-cap cover. “I, uh, I’m sorry I messed up your car.”
“Don’t talk anymore,” Jake said, coldly. “You piss me off every time you open your mouth. Just shut up, get in your truck, and drive away from here.”
The young man threw the tire iron into the back of his truck, hurried around to the driver’s side, got in, and drove away.
“Come on, Karin!” Jake shouted. “Let’s get out of here.”
By midnight everyone had returned to Jake’s house and they put their acquisitions together to see how well they had done.
Clay and Marcus scored two five-gallon cans of gasoline. Jake didn’t ask where, or how, they got it.
Deon and Julie returned with fifty pounds of flour, ten pounds of sugar, twenty pounds of rice, twenty-five pounds of dried beans, and five gallons of cooking oil.
“Where did you find this?” Jake asked. “I can’t imagine any grocery store or warehouse still having any of this left.”
“We got it from a VFW kitchen,” Deon said.
“Whoa, good thinking.”
“It was Julie’s idea.”
“My aunt used to work as a cook in the VFW back in Georgia,” Julie said. “I know her kitchen was always well stocked and I thought there was a chance that nobody would think to look there.”
“We also got this,” Deon said, pulling something out of a sack. It was a bullhorn and he held it up to his mouth, then pulled the talk trigger.
“Jumpers in the air, you have a sixty-knot wind coming from your right!”
“Whoa!” Clay said, laughing. “That’s a hell of a wind to be jumping into.”
“Maybe for a leg,” Deon teased. “Not for an airborne troop like me.”
“I’m glad you came up with that thing,” Jake said.
“Why, what are we going to use it for?” Karin asked.
“You heard Deon. What if we see some paratroopers in the air? We might have to give them directions.”
The others laughed.
“Okay, you guys did well. You did very well in fact,” Jake said. “So now, I suggest we spend the rest of the night here, then go out to the post in the morning. Our first order of business will be to find a hangar we can secure; second will be to find a helicopter we can put into flying condition.”
The next morning the eight gathered for breakfast in Jake’s dining room, again eating MREs though, as Jake explained, these were from a broken case and not part of the fifteen cases he had for their survival supplies.
Karin looked around the dining room, gray walls set off by a large seascape painting, a dark blue carpet, and off-white upholstered chairs.
Jake saw where she was looking and he reached out to put his hand on hers. “You are thinking about this room and how we decorated it together, aren’t you?”
“Jake, will we ever come back here?”
“I don’t know,” Jake replied. “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but I have to be honest with you. I truly don’t know if we will ever be able to come back or not. And if we do come back, what will we find?”
Karin nodded. “I know,” she said. “And I’m okay with it.”
Jake squeezed her hand, then looked over toward Willie.
“Willie, what do you say we crank up one of these radios and see if we can pick up any news on the shortwave bands?” he suggested.
“Good idea, yes, let’s see what’s out there,” Clay agreed.
Willie cranked the radio for one minute; then he turned it on and started sweeping through the frequencies.
“Getting carrier waves,” he said. “That’s good.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means there are some transmitting stations that are still up, just nobody talking on them right now.”
Marcus continued to turn the dial until he picked up a woman’s voice. She was clearly on the edge of panic.
“Someone, anyone,” she was saying. “Can anyone hear me? This is Yellowbird. Can anyone hear me?”
Willie keyed the microphone.
“Yellowbird, this is Mickey Mouse. Over.”
“Mickey Mouse, oh, thank God! There is someone out there!” The woman practically shouted in her excitement.
“Where are you, Yellowbird? What is your status? Over.”
“I’m in Portsmouth, Virginia, real close to where the bomb went off.”
“Are you safe?” Marcus asked.
“Safe? What is safe? We weren’t hurt by the bomb, but I don’t know about the radiation. We are so close.”
“You say we. Who is we?”
“My husband, our two children, my brother and sister-in-law, and their three children.”
“Are there others around?”
“Nobody that we want to associate with. There are a lot of men wandering around outside, shouting and breaking into houses and cars. We’ve heard screams and shooting. I’ve been trying to contact the police, but haven’t been able to do so.”
“What you need to do is get out of there,” Willie said. “There are no police.”
“How do you know there are no police? Oh!” In the background, Marcus could hear loud voices and the sound of shooting. “Can you hear that? Why don’t the police come?”
“Yes, ma’am, I can hear it. But you can’t count on the police. There has been a complete breakdown of all government agencies including the police. Do you have a car? And if so, do you have gasoline in your car?”
“I . . .” There was a long pause before the woman came back on the air. “My husband says I shouldn’t answer that.”
Now everyone was huddled around the radio listening to the woman’s terrified voice from the other end,
