Malorie kept the sense of direction in her head and successfully navigated them out of town on a westerly route past the Kentucky National Guard soldiers carrying their issued M16s without any magazines in their rifles. It seemed that the presence of the good guys was enough to keep law and order without having to actually risk life in this part of the world. There wasn’t any power in the town, and although the streets were eerily deserted by day, Joshua wondered how long you could keep thousands of hungry people from looting the shops under the cover of night.
Once they were on the other side of town, they stopped and adjusted their loads and drank some water. Malorie had her M1 Carbine across her lap as she sat down for a halt, as did Megan. They all discussed the importance of the Cooper situational awareness color code and one’s ability to react to threats if one hesitates and/or is not paying attention. Their fluid SOP would be to pull out their long weapons at the halt with the exception of either Megan or Malorie—whoever wasn’t pushing the cart—because she would already have her carbine at the ready. Joshua decided to keep his .270 rifle secured on the cart to not risk bumping the scope, which he had sited in for two hundred yards.
“By the way, thank you ladies for helping me to balance the cart so well back there on the West Virginia side. I’m doing okay with mine, how about you, Malorie?” Joshua asked.
“Mine seems to be riding well, thanks.”
Megan suggested that they try to take a halt every hour if possible and rest for ten minutes so that they could maintain their endurance—especially with the little ones.
Malorie had her regional road map out and said, “I think if we stick to 32 at a good pace we can probably pick up Route 7 West tomorrow; that should take us to the Olympia State Forest by tomorrow evening.”
Joshua craned his head over to Megan and said, “Can I please have the state forest map, beautiful?” She handed him the map and brushed his cheek.
He opened it up and as he looked at it he said, “Here’s my thought process, but please let me know what you think. We should aim for the west side of the lake. Like this dovetail-shaped protrusion into the lake here. We’ll have plenty of firewood and lots of access to water and fishing. This will also mean that we’ll be over any major bridges, an obvious key choke point, after winter is over. Our strategy is not very complicated, but it is difficult—wait out the winter. Like you said, Megan, ‘Stay warm, dry, and unseen.’ We can’t travel fast enough on the road to cover the 120-ish miles to Bradfordsville before winter, and it’s not like we can get ahold of Dustin to come and pick us up, either.” Megan and Malorie nodded in agreement.
“As cruel as it sounds, we’ll have to let the starvation and cold of winter partially clear the way for us. Based on our dependency on cheap energy and given that winter is imminent, plus the fact that people typically only keep three days’ worth of food in their house and the grocery stores operate on a just-in-time delivery system—I’d estimate that we’ll lose about a third of the population before spring.”
“Don’t forget the roving criminal gangs, and people not getting their medicines,” added Megan.
Joshua nodded. “With that said, we’ll have less people between the state forest and Bradfordsville in the spring; however, the bad news is those that are left will be highly suspicious of road walkers.”
“I agree,” Megan said. “But I think that we should walk and talk so that we’re making progress.”
There were still a few vehicles on the road here and there, but not like what they had expected. There were other groups of road walkers as well, occasionally a family, but none of them seemed to be very well prepared. Joshua’s party was wary whenever a stranger approached, and they kept their guns close at hand. Folks headed east would ask them about news out that way, whether they could cross over into West Virginia, if Louisa was peaceful, and so on. Likewise, the small group would try to ask for news to the west without giving up too many details of their own.
At a halt everyone would drink water and eat something, even if it was just three or four dehydrated carrot slices, in order to keep their energy up. Given their slower pace with the boys, the sixty minutes on- and ten minutes off-duty cycle worked out especially well for their mileage expectations. Since they were eating small bites here and there, they didn’t need to take a long break for meals, either.
The group stopped to rest for the night before they reached the Route 7 junction. It was their first full day of walking and everyone was getting used to the hot spots on their feet. They all decided to move one hundred meters into the dense brush off the road to set up camp for the night. The carts were picked up and carried in through the first ten meters of thick roadside brush to avoid leaving any obvious sign of crushed brush that any unskilled tracker could follow. Since they didn’t know who would be coming along the road, they also decided against having a fire that night. Jean and Leo heaped up a pad of leaves and pine needles about ten feet by twelve feet and six inches deep. Megan laid out the large tarp she’d bought at the pawnshop. Then she pulled out her smaller tarp, which was folded in half and zip-tied together on two sides, putting her sleeping bag inside that. Malorie did the same.
Jean and Leo would take turns sleeping with either Auntie Malorie or their mom on a given night, helping both of them to stay warm with each other’s heat. Joshua put his sleeping bag in between theirs, and the other side of the tarp would fold over to keep them mostly dry should it start to rain or snow.
Sidearms were to stay either inside their sleeping bags or inside the fold of a sweatshirt acting as a pillow for ease of access. Likewise, long weapons would be between the sleeping bags to stay dry and not be out of arm’s reach if they were to encounter robbers at night, a fear never far from the minds of the adults.
Since it had been days since the adults had slept, the group decided not to keep a watch that night, and with the exception of bio breaks in the middle of the night they all slept from complete exhaustion until daybreak.
Leo was the first to awake in the morning, when a squirrel dropped an acorn on the tarp. He had grown up on the homestead but had never slept under the stars before. In the still morning air, he just lay there snuggled up next to his auntie Malorie watching and pointing one little finger out of the sleeping bag at the squirrels racing up and down the tree. Not long after, Malorie awoke and noticed that her nephew was watching the squirrels. She kissed his head and smoothed his hair and couldn’t help but think how incredibly hard the next few months would be for all of them, and how they were refugees in their own country.
The group broke camp and repacked the carts after a small breakfast. It was unspoken between the adults to not eat as much as they normally would so that the food supply would last longer for the boys. They would need more fuel for warmth and for growth, and it was their survival that served as the charter for this mission in the first place.
By late afternoon they had reached their destination in the state forest, but they still needed a place to shelter. Megan stayed with Jean and Leo to watch the carts, while Joshua and Malorie left on a recon patrol to find a suitable place to over-winter. Malorie had the map out and was speaking to Joshua on a hilltop overlooking the beautiful lake. “I heard you say that you liked this dovetail protrusion here sticking out into the lake? I think that we should check the south side of that ridge for a suitable cave to shelter in. This way we can maximize our solar exposure and not be as cold.”
“Good idea, I like where your head is at.”