“Joshua, do you have much hunting experience?” Malorie asked.
“Truthfully, I don’t. I have plenty of trigger time, so if a deer wants to hold the broadside pose I can hit it, but I know that there is more to woodscraft than that.”
“Megan and I had lots of hunting experience with our papa, so I think that we should set out to hunt/patrol at least three days a week.”
“Good idea, Mal,” Megan said.
“We can move slowly, take notes, and report back on what, if anything, we see. And if, I mean when, we take a deer we can quarter it, hang it up, and pack it out in two trips.”
“After we harvest the deer, we’ll have to find a way to smoke it since we don’t have nearly enough salt to cure the meat in order to preserve it. I’ll start thinking of how we can do that.” Malorie rubbed her fingertips across her eyes and said, “After our meat stock is good, we can certainly switch the patrol schedule around.”
“I think that any two-person party leaving needs to leave a plan behind: where they’re going, who’s going with them, what’s the intent, when they should be expected back, and what actions are to be taken if they don’t return by that time. This will all be critical since I can’t just take the boys with me to go get you or vice versa,” Joshua said.
“I agree, let’s do that,” Megan said. “Also, we have all of our eggs in one basket here. What do you think about taking the bug-out bags and stashing them in another cave under a tarp covered with leaves? Perhaps taking the compact valuables as well as the junk silver, my AR-7, or ammo and cache that somewhere else, too? This way, if we do get hit here we can escape and evade without losing everything.”
“I like it. It spreads out our attack liability,” said Joshua.
“Since this is ‘home’ for a while, we need to set up a watch around the clock. This is going to mean a lot of boredom and downtime on watch. I don’t mind taking the night shift provided that I can sleep during the day.”
“I have an idea,” said Malorie. “If everyone takes exactly eight hours with a small pass down at shift change then we’d be pretty much stuck on the same schedule all the time. But if we rotate seven hours or nine hours, then the watch will slowly change over time and no one person gets stuck.”
“Hmm, Mal, that might just work,” Megan said. “The other fourteen or eighteen hours could be divided up into sleeping or taking care of the camp, cooking, cleaning, looking after the boys, etcetera.”
“But for us to really make the most of our time here, we’ll need to hunt and do patrols as well. When it comes time to move in the spring, we’ll be familiar with each other enough on the trail to cover the ground to Bradfordsville with the best possible chance of avoiding detection,” Malorie said.
With the battery slowly running out of power on her phone, Malorie noted the date and devised a way to count tick marks to keep a written calendar on the cave wall so that they would not lose track of time. The group also took turns reading the survival guides out loud with the screen on the lowest brightness setting. They hoped that if everyone read them out loud, perhaps as much as 40 percent of the information could be recalled among the five of them.
23
SIGNALS COLLECTION
While we all benefit in some ways from modern technology, I do wonder what state our world would be in if we suddenly lost the electrical power necessary to keep our communications functioning. Would the younger generations know how to grow crops to feed a family? Would they know how to drop anchor and wait for the catch? Would they know how to survive by the sweat of the brow? New is good. Old is necessary.
The days continued to get shorter and the nights were colder. It was not common to see other people in the state forest, but when they did see anyone it was usually one or two people hunting for food.
The long times together in the cave off shift gave Megan and Joshua time to really talk about their spiritual, political, social, and any other kinds of beliefs they held. Joshua joked, “You know, maybe when this whole Crunch blows over, we can start a couples’ wilderness retreat and do premarital counseling—this is great!” The large overlaps were comforting to Megan, and the points where they disagreed were not fundamental orthodox doctrine, so they could be mutually overlooked. Joshua was strict during watch, but on his off time he diligently worked to carve two wedding rings out of the core (or what would be called “quarter sawn” lumber) from an oak branch.
Jean would often go fishing with his auntie Malorie, and although it was not enough to subsist on, everyone was able to get his or her fill of sushi that winter. Leo and Jean were both becoming quite adept at finding edible plants, although they would stick to the ones that the group could positively identify, using the description from the survival apps on Malorie’s phone until the battery ran out.
The three adults would train to stay in shape four times a week doing hill sprints and floor exercises. Each adult learned all the parts and the manual-of-arms for every individual firearm, in case someone had to pick up someone else’s weapon to return fire. Jean and Leo were taught the parts of every firearm as well, but were strictly admonished not to touch one if it was loaded—and all weapons were assumed to be and were, in fact, loaded. The group slowly learned how to successfully move over terrain in two-person patrols, staying together and communicating with hand and arm signals. They knew that when they headed west in the spring they’d be traveling at night and sleeping during the day.
The winter had in fact come early, just as the farmer’s almanac had predicted. One cold December morning while Megan and Malorie were out on a deer hunt, Megan left a plan with Joshua that they would head due west to recon the nearest road, gather any information possible, and see if there was still any vehicle traffic. Both Megan and Malorie kissed the boys and headed out to the west. With all of the cold and hunting pressure, it was hard for Megan and Malorie to get a shot at any game. Megan suggested that they make the most of their time and survey Clear Creek Road, which ran parallel to Route 211, to see if there was any traffic.
“You have to admit, this is boring, Megan.”
“I freely admit that! I can think of better things I’d rather be doing than lying here on my stomach in the snow looking through Joshua’s scope for signs of life.”
Malorie asked, “Say, do you mind if I take a spell?”
Megan answered, “Be my guest. There is a patch of leaves over there that looks a little dry—I’ll be right back.”
Malorie scanned from south to north up and down the road. At that distance, she would not have been able to successfully pattern any deer by spotting the tracks through the snow, but she held out hope that she might at least see some movement along the narrow valley floor. As Malorie was just about to give up, she noticed what looked like a man sitting back against a tree along the east edge of the road.
“Pssssst, Megan! Psssssssst. Over here, I see a guy.”
“I’ve seen one of them before, too.”
“You’re hilarious, you know that?” Malorie was not in the mood for humor. “He’s sitting up against a tree right down there on the road.”
Megan reached in the breast pocket of her jacket and got a pad and pencil. “Okay, let’s take a SALT report: size, just the one guy?”