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Sean walked outside the meeting place holding Maria’s hand while talking softly with Randy and his Uncle Nathan. They had met with the council for a couple hours following the colonel’s departure. There was just so much to discuss. Brody and Damian met them by the Bronco and they briefly discussed the events of the day. The news about the rest of the country still being in shambles was unnerving even though it wasn’t unexpected. Just before the six of them departed, Pastor Dan stepped outside to wish them farewell. Brody expressed his concerns privately with the mayor over letting the military know the location of their retreats. In response, the mayor assured Brody that he understood his concern and promised that he would discuss it with the council and make sure everyone kept their presence a secret. Everyone shook hands and before long, Sean and Maria were headed back to their new home.
Not far into their trip, Maria put her head on Sean’s shoulder and closed her eyes. “I miss our baby,” she whispered into his ear and Sean let out a brief chuckle.
“I miss him too,” Sean reassured her with a squeeze of her hand. He realized that this was probably the first time she had been away from their son for more than a few hours. As they were getting close to the turnoff towards the retreat, the Bronco was just rounding a curve when they caught a glimpse of another vehicle farther up the road. Brody brought the truck to a quick halt and threw it in reverse ‘til they had backed out of view.
“That sure looked like a Humvee to me,” Brody commented.
“I think you’re right,” Sean’s uncle agreed quietly from the passenger seat.
“We should probably just hang back for a while ‘til they clear out,” Brody recommended. “No need to give them any reason to ask questions on why we’ve left town. I’m going to hike up the road a ways and see if I can tell what they are doing. Nathan, why don’t you climb over here in the driver’s seat? If I signal to you, come and get me, okay?”
“No problem, Brody,” Uncle Nathan answered, in his typical, calm way.
Brody turned in his seat and looked back at Sean. “Sean, did you bring your rifle with you today? I’d like to use your scope.”
“Yeah, it’s in the scabbard on my pack,” Sean replied as he turned around and grabbed his rifle from behind his seat, carefully handing it up front to Brody.
“Okay, I’ll be back in a few,” Brody said as he exited the Bronco and stealthily worked his way up the side of the road towards the bend. Maria was fully awake now and watching Brody as he crept forward. They lost sight of him as he rounded the bend and after about ten minutes Sean started to get a little anxious. He looked over at Maria and could tell she was worried, as well. Just as Sean was about to jump out of the vehicle to check on his friend, Brody re-emerged up ahead. He gave them an OK gesture with his hand and signaled for them to stay put before disappearing around the bend once more. A short while later, Brody appeared again, this time returning to the Bronco. Nathan got out of the driver’s seat and a sweaty Brody climbed in and handed Sean his rifle.
“That was strange,” was the first thing Brody said as everyone else in the vehicle restlessly waited for him to tell them what he had seen. “They were using a winch on the front of the Humvee to pull a fallen tree out of the road. By the marks on its trunk, I assume the rest of the convoy just drove over it. Why didn’t they just move it in the first place, and why bother sending someone back to move it after the fact?”
Nobody had an answer to those questions, so Brody just started the vehicle and they slowly moved forward to the location in the road where the tree had been. They all climbed out and scanned the area for threats before moving forward. The first thing Sean noticed was a small pool of blood on the road where the tree had been. Brody walked over to the base of the tree and found that it had actually been brought down by an axe and didn’t fall on its own.
“What the heck?” Brody exclaimed aloud. “I don’t like this. This smells like an ambush. Let’s get out of here.” They all rushed back to the Bronco nervously. They had travelled this deserted stretch of road multiple times and had never once seen anyone. They stayed alert the short distance back to the North Homestead but didn’t encounter or see evidence of anyone else.
Brody pulled the Bronco into one of the empty garage bays and opened his door. “From now on, I think we need to stay more alert when we travel into town.”
Sean and Maria nodded their heads in unison, agreeing with him. They grabbed their packs and walked in through the mud room to the sound of their baby boy crying from the kitchen. Maria glanced at her husband with a look of concern as she hurried inside. Sean followed her into the kitchen where Sean’s sister handed over their son into Maria’s waiting arms.
“Your son is as stubborn as both of you combined,” Allison said with a weary smile. “I can’t get him to take a bottle.” Sean smiled back and gave her a quick reassuring hug as Maria tried to soothe their son and get him to take the bottle.
Maria grew frustrated after a minute or two and turned to Sean. “I’m going to take him upstairs and feed him. Can you put my stuff away?” She didn’t wait for an answer but just turned, headed up the stairs.
“No problem, Babe,” Sean said to her retreating back as he bent over and picked up her pack with a grunt.
“Here, I’ll take that,” Allison offered. With his arms already full of his own gear, Sean gratefully handed Maria’s pack over to his kid sister and led the way downstairs. “What happened in Tionesta? Do you think the attackers may come here?”
Sean shrugged his shoulders in response. “I doubt it, Kiddo. We just need to keep a low profile for a while to make sure. We’re gonna have a meeting in about half an hour, and we’ll go over everything that happened at the meeting. We even had a surprise guest or two...or twenty.”
“Who?” Allison asked, intrigued.
“Now if I told you ahead of time, that would ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it?” Sean said with a grin. She made a mock pouty face in return and Sean just chuckled, not giving in. When they reached Sean and Maria’s sleeping area in the game room, Sean carefully set his pack down at the foot of his cot and sat down to unlace his boots. Glancing up at Allison, he said, “I want to thank you for watching the baby and letting Maria get some fresh air.”
“Don’t mention it. It was fun, except for the last twenty minutes or so. So, are you going to tell me who was at the meeting or not?” Allison pressed.
“Haha! So who is the stubborn one now? It must run in the family,” Sean joked before continuing. “Apparently, the Army has set up a base in Warren. The commanding officer showed up at the meeting and offered to help defend Tionesta if they were attacked again. He also filled us in on what’s going on around the rest of the country.” Allison’s ears perked up at the last comment. “Don’t get too excited, Kiddo. It wasn’t good news. Now, that’s all I’m going to say for now. You’ll find out more at the meeting. Where’s dad?” Sean asked, changing the subject.
Allison realized that she wasn’t going to get any more information out of her brother, so she just frowned and answered his question. “He’s down at the lower field with Uncle Lawrence and a couple others. He’s helping them inventory the supplies in the garden shed.”
“I’m going to have a talk with that man!” Sean replied irritably, throwing his boots against the wall with more force than necessary. “He’s supposed to be staying off that leg for the next two weeks.” Sean pulled on a more comfortable pair of hiking boots before storming out the rear entrance of the basement, heading for the lower field. He wore his new Brokos battle belt and slung his rifle across his back. Sean really liked how light and comfortable the new set up was. Instead of wearing a full tactical vest when working around the farm, he could get by with just the belt. With an extra four magazine pouches (two pistol and two rifle), it provided him enough rounds to fight his way back to the cabin and the rest of his gear should the need arise.
The other thing he liked was that the tear-off trauma kit was also very streamlined, unlike the full medical kit on his pack. Inside was a pair of nitrile gloves, a Celox clotting gauze, a thin “H” bandage, a one-handed combat tourniquet, and two chest seals. It was designed solely for stopping emergency bleeding and to provide time to get back to a full medical kit. He was glad to find Celox instead of the Quick Clot brand that his full kit carried. After discussions with Darren, Sean had discovered that Celox was an all-natural product. This meant that after slowly removing the Celox gauze from inside the wound, the wound could be sealed up and the body would slowly absorb any remaining residue. Darren said that when using Quick Clot, all traces of the chemical had to be removed, which sometimes required serious scrubbing inside of the wound. Sean was also finding the new Blue Force 2-point sling to be very adaptive as well. With the ability to quickly cinch his rifle tight to his chest or back, it was more comfortable to move about and work with his hands while not having his rifle flopping around. In all, Sean was very happy with his new gear.
Sean found his father, along with his Uncle Lawrence, Uncle Will, and his cousin Danny, down at the garden shed like his sister had said. Danny stood holding a tablet of paper, while Uncle Will was on his knees looking over the rototiller. “Hello, Son,” his father said at his approach. “How did the meeting go?”
“Good, good. We’ve got a lot to talk about,” Sean answered curtly before confronting his father for being out of bed. “What are you doing up and around?” he asked before turning his attention to his Uncle Lawrence. “And you’re his brother. You shouldn’t have let him come!”
Sean’s uncle just shuffled his feet while his dad answered, “It’s alright, Son. It’s already feeling a lot better since Darren fixed it up.”
“It’s not alright, Dad. You’re down here getting all sweaty and dirty. If that thing gets infected, you could lose your whole leg, let alone your life. What did mom have to say about you coming down here?” Sean asked. His father just shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. “You didn’t tell her, did you?” His father shrugged once more and smiled with a twinkle in his eye, forcing Sean to smile back. “You’re terrible! Alright, let’s get you back up to the house. We’re calling a meeting to discuss what went down today at the council meeting and there’s a lot to share.” Sean reached out to take his father’s arm, but Samuel shook his head and pointed at the wooden crutch leaning against the wall. The group kept a slow pace back to the cabin while Danny read through the list of gardening supplies they had inventoried.
Danny was mostly interested in the last item on the list. “Sean, did you ever notice the large rack of PVC pipe in the garage?” Sean thought about it for a minute but shook his head ‘no’. “Well, we’ve figured out what it was for. In the garden shed we found a PVC fittings kit with instructions on how to make a twelve-foot by twenty-foot greenhouse. There are also two rolls of UV resistant 6mil clear plastic to cover it. By my dad’s thinking, we should be able to get three or four years of use out of both rolls. That should allow us to grow vegetables all the way up through November.”
“That’s good news, Dan!” Sean said enthusiastically. “With how late in the summer it’s getting, I was worried how much of a growing season we’d get before winter hits. That’s not really my area of expertise, though.”
“We should be okay for most of the vegetables. But some of the varieties with longer growth cycles we may have to put in the greenhouse,” Uncle Will added. “Either way, we have to make getting this garden started a priority. I think our food supplies are getting kinda low. Luckily, it looks like the soil is pretty decent. I believe the previous owner must have had someone keeping the ground limed and fertilized.”
“What do you mean ‘your food supplies are getting low’?” Sean asked with concerned.
“I mean that we’ve gone through our food faster than we thought we would,” Will said in his typical gruff voice. “I don’t know any details, but I overheard your mother and your sister, Faith, speaking yesterday. Faith is still in charge of the supplies and she seemed to be a little concerned about the upcoming winter. Your mother told her to make sure she brought it up at the next meeting.”
“Make sure you guys remind me to bring that up during our meeting if Faith doesn’t,” Sean asked of them.
“We will,” his father reassured him.
By the time they made their way into the house, Brody had assembled everyone in the living room. They started the meeting with prayer, as they were accustomed, and Brody led out the meeting recounting all the events of their time in Tionesta. Periodically, Maria and Sean would jump in with details that Brody missed. There were lots of questions from Sean’s family members about what the colonel had said about the state of the country. Brody answered the questions he could, while Sean wrote down some of the other good questions that were brought up. He wanted to give them to Pastor Dan to ask the colonel the next time they met.
As the daylight faded and the room grew darker, discussion moved from the outside world to the ham radio situation. Everyone was excited about the prospect of installing the tower and getting some reports about the rest of the country as well as being able to talk to Tionesta directly and maybe even the East Homestead. Brody put a damper on their excitement, though, when he informed them that to place the radio tower at their retreat would almost certainly tip off the military to their location. Brody and Sean shared their concerns that the colonel wanted to have open communication with Tionesta in case of a future attack and would surely ask questions of the mayor if the tower wasn’t set up in town. Neither of them was excited about letting the military know about the retreat location.
“I don’t know if I agree with you,” Sean’s brother interjected. “It seems to me that if the military is here to bring order to the area, then they might be willing to come to our rescue as well as Tionesta’s. If we get attacked, I would feel a lot better knowing that we only have to hold out for a half hour or so ‘til backup arrives.”
Everyone started nodding their heads in agreement and chiming in before Brody raised his hands to quiet them. “I agree with you all. Having the military nearby and willing to come to our aid would be huge! I’m not minimizing that. Here is my concern. From what the colonel has told us about the UN shipments and how they are arriving less and less frequently, I worry about the military running low on food and supplies in the future. They may be our saving grace in the near term, but who would be able to stop them if they decided to confiscate our supplies should the regiment start going hungry down the road. It sounds like they have over a thousand mouths to feed up there in Warren. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work with them, but we need to be aware that it could lead to problems in the future.”
Everyone was quiet, pondering Brody’s argument. “I still think that the pros out-weigh the cons,” Sean’s brother-in-law finally spoke up. “I don’t see the need to tell them any details about our retreat. We shouldn’t need to tell them how many people we have living here, our food or garden situation, or anything else for that matter. We already plan to keep our food supplies hidden in the sub-basement. My thinking is that if that situation ever arises, we could treat it like any other. Let all of the women, children, and some of the men go out through the tunnel network. When they enter and find the limited amount of food in the pantry, it won’t seem odd if it’s only four or five guys who answer the door.”
“That could work,” Brody said rubbing his chin. “The only problem is that the entire town of Tionesta has surely heard the miraculous story of everyone’s arrival. It wouldn’t take much for someone in town to let it slip to one of the soldiers stationed in town.”
“We could bring up our concerns to Pastor Dan,” Sean offered. “He said they were planning on having a whole town meeting tomorrow to go over the new security details we discussed as well as to let them know about the radio and the military soldiers moving to town. We could ask him to mention it to the townspeople that they don’t discuss our two retreats with the soldiers. I’m sure he’ll be discussing keeping similar items about their own town a secret. In fact, they plan on storing some of the town’s extra food here, so it would be in their best interest as well. We’d also have to be careful about limiting which members of our group enter town. But these are things we could figure out later.”
“So even with the risks involved, is everyone on board with trying to relocate a ham radio tower onto the property?” Sean’s dad inquired. “Let’s make it official. All in favor, raise your hand.” It was nearly a unanimous decision and everyone looked around at each other smiling. Sean figured that having the military ride to their rescue should the homestead be attacked was the driving factor in their enthusiasm and he couldn’t really disagree with them...especially after what they went through at the farm.
“Before we jump into discussions on the food and security details, I’d like to bring something up before I forget. As you know, part of the decision we made to move the family into the North Homestead was based on the fact that the other retreat was overcrowded already. I spoke to Randy privately yesterday and he informed me that he is the only one interested in uprooting his family and moving in here since we have some extra room. This was a big decision for him and his wife, and it says a lot about what he thinks of everyone in this room. I know that a lot of you don’t know him but the ones who do know him to be a stand-up guy. Brody and I, as well as Caleb and Damian, have gone through multiple weekends together getting professional tactical training. He would be a huge asset to our retreat from a security standpoint. I also know that his wife and three young girls will fit in well here and work hard alongside the women.”
Faith raised her hand, so Sean nodded at her. “I’ve met Randy a few times now and I can attest to what my brother is saying about his friend. He was always really nice and funny. My only concern is adding five more mouths to feed. I was planning on going through our food and supply inventory at the meeting today and I have some concerns.” People started looking around worried, so she quickly continued, “I’m not saying there is an emergency or anything.... I am just saying that our current food situation requires that we discuss a game plan moving forward.”
“Is that your only concern?” Sean asked his sister. “I haven’t discussed it with the other retreat yet, but I would assume that they would be coming with their own food supply. I will definitely clarify that point, though, before giving them the ‘Okay.’ Any other concerns?” Sean asked.
Sean’s father stood once more and called for the vote which was approved. Sean noticed that a couple of his extended family members didn’t raise their hands and refused to look in his direction. Open votes were always uncomfortable. Sean didn’t hold it against them, though, and understood that bringing in new people to a tight-knit family could potentially bring trouble and disagreements if personalities didn’t line up. Sean wasn’t worried, knowing they would like Randy and his family once they got to know them.
“Well, while we are on the subject of voting people in...,” Brody said nervously as he stepped forward once more. Everyone turned their attention back to him and his face instantly grew red. Sean couldn’t help but smile and guessed it had something to do with Beth Ann. Brody continued, “I have been thinking about...about asking Beth Ann to marry me...and that would obviously involve us living together...hopefully here.”
Sean let out a loud “Whoop!” in response, cutting him off. “It’s about time!” Others smiled and Joshua let out a cat call, making everyone laugh and Brody’s face grow redder. Seeing a budding relationship forming during those dark days was a morale booster for everyone in the room. Brody stumbled on, “I haven’t discussed it with her yet, and I’m not even sure what she will say, but I wanted to discuss it with you all first as it would affect where we would have to live. I know that she has her own personal garden that she is growing in town, but she is also on the town’s rations, so I can’t speak to how much food she could bring with her.”
Sean’s father walked over to Brody and squeezed his shoulder to put him at ease before turning back to the rest of the members, saying enthusiastically, “Let’s have a vote! Who would like to see this young man get married?” This time the vote was unanimous. Sean walked over with a smile and gave his friend a congratulatory handshake before a red-faced Brody slinked back into his chair.
After a minute or two of congratulations to Brody and smiles all around, they got back to business with Sean calling on Faith to step forward and speak. In Faith’s typical, organized way, she went through her notes and lists of their supplies. She rattled off the number of empty canning jars and lids that were available, the replenishing of soaps and cleaning supplies from Mr. Andrews’s stock, and how short they were on some of their basic supplies like toothpaste and toilet paper that everyone took for granted during normal times. From that point forward, the retreat was to ration and use the least amount possible of each item. She had also spent the last seven months tracking the depletion of their food supplies and had a pretty good feel for how fast their large group was going through it. She explained that by her calculations, they would run out of most canned goods by the following March and the spring garden probably wouldn’t start producing until June at the earliest. She insisted that they must get a productive fall harvest if they were to make it through the winter.
This news was alarming, but Sean and Danny calmed everyone down by sharing the discovery of the greenhouse plans and supplies. At the same time, they reiterated the group’s need to get the garden started immediately. There were some semi-heated debates on whether or not to use the noisy tractor to till the large area with the possibility of looters and raiders in the area. In the end, it was approved by the narrowest of margins. That vote directly led Brody into the subject of security. Their security measures hadn’t fully been implemented yet, and he insisted that if they were to use the tractor for planting, then they must first use it to dig the new LP/OP and get it ready as soon as possible.
Sean discussed putting together an explorative group to discretely search the surrounding areas and find out how many people were living in their vicinity. Once that was established, Brody felt it was important to study the survivors from a distance to see what resources they might have. With the empty chicken coops and stalls on the property, it would be great if they could barter for some chickens or other farm animals and breed them through the winter. The remaining canned beef they brought with them from the family farm would soon run out and they would need to find a replacement source of protein for the following year. In the meantime, they would put together a hunting party to find out if the local deer population had survived the previous winter’s onslaught from the starving locals.
Danny brought up a really good idea also. He had noticed a couple rabbits in the lower field while on watch the day before. He thought instead of just shooting them for a single stew, it might be a good idea to try and trap them and raise them in captivity. Rabbits were well-known to breed quickly and have large litters, but no one knew the answer to whether or not wild animals would breed in captivity. They all agreed it was worth a try, so Danny volunteered to construct a trap, with Uncle Nathan’s assistance, and build some rabbit hutches in one of the empty chicken stalls after the garden had been started.
Over the course of the next hour, multiple other ideas were discussed and kicked around. Sean had taken a seat next to Maria who held their sleeping son in her arms. He thought back to the initial days after the EMP and the overwhelming fear and uncertainty that had consumed him for months. Things hadn’t gotten any easier and there was always some pressing issue that needed to be worked through, but he had finally learned to deal with the stress and just be grateful for each day he was given. He looked around at his relatives and thanked God for their arrival. When the meeting was finally adjourned, and everyone had their assignments and plan for the next day, Sean’s family dispersed to make preparations for bed.