Chapter 13

[Central Georgia]

I had been asleep and it was around midnight when I heard a sound. I had brought my pistol into the room and placed it under the pillow. I thought that was a hokey idea until this moment. I got up on bare feet and, with pistol in hand, began to quietly go through the house. I noticed that the door to the room that Janice was in was now cracked open. I looked inside and saw Ed sitting on the bed talking to Janice. Okay, maybe Ed was getting "lucky." I kept going still being careful to be very quiet. Ed's door was open. On the way back, I heard their voices and then a rhythmic low noise from there. I kept going.

I looked out into the living room area and saw nothing suspicious and headed for the front door to look outside though I was pretty sure the sound I had heard was from Janice's room. I saw nothing outside. When I was passing Shirley's door, it was partly open. I stopped there and looked in. A hand pulled me inside by the arm. It was Shirley. She shut the door behind me. "I need for you to stay here tonight and hold me. I'm scared, lonely, and don't want to be alone tonight."

"Uh, okay." I noticed that she was wearing only a tee shirt and panties as she pulled me by my arm to her bed. It, fortunately, was a double in size. She scrunched over and pulled me in beside her. I lay down on top of the sheets and she snuggled in under my arm tightly. She put her arm over my chest and began to cry very softly. I just held her gently.

"What will become of us? Jack, why are people so violent? Hasn't there been enough death and dying?"

I realized those questions did not really have answers and just pulled her a little more tightly to me and we held each other through the night by comforting each other with our presence.

I woke at my usual early time and pulled my chest from under Shirley's arm and body that were sprawled over me. I noticed again that it was a nice body, a very nice body. I went into a bathroom and showered quickly. After dressing, I went into the kitchen and found the coffee maker and started coffee after figuring out how it worked. I went outside as it brewed.

Shirley's parents had a porch that faced east and I sat down in a double chair and watched the sun rise. I had been there maybe ten minutes when I heard a soft noise. Shirley came out bearing two cups and handed me one without saying a word. She sat next to me and we sipped our coffee and watched the sun.

After a bit, she said, "My parents used to sit on this chair together and watch the sun rise. There is an evening porch where they watched the sun go down, also."

I looked over at her and her eyes were glistening with tears. I put my arm around her and said nothing. She leaned into my side warming that part of my body nicely.

"You are a good person to sleep with, Jack. Thanks."

"You are very welcome, Shirl"

When I said that, she teared up and began to cry quietly. She said, "My dad used to call me that but no one else ever did."

"I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

"No, it's all right. Please call me that all the time. I like to hear you call me that."

I was not feeling very intelligent and just said, "Okay, Shirl." She just scrunched closer to me and the warm feeling increased. Maybe I wasn't so dumb. I didn't have a lot of experience with women. I preferred hunting and fishing to parties and casual dating. There had been a few girls but nothing that lasted beyond the beginning of the next hunting or fishing season because I would disappear into the woods or onto the water and they were never interested. I had to admit to myself that this girl interested me greatly.

It was a few minutes later that Ed and Janice came out together. No comments were made about the sleeping arrangements last night. After a few minutes, we all went inside to start breakfast and make plans for the day.

"Shirley, do you know Macon?"

"Yes, but why?"

"I think we should check it out some before heading to my folks' place."

Janice said, "That's a good idea. It would give us some verification that Atlanta is not an aberration and most people are, in fact, dead. I would like to go to town, too. There are some things I need to pick up."

"Well, I guess that's settled. Shirl, would you plan a route and we will mark it on our map. Janice, will a Wal-Mart be sufficient?" She nodded. "After we finish and clean up, we will leave." That's almost what we did.

Shirley wanted to show me her dad's radio equipment. We went into a side room that was his "radio shack." She asked me what I knew about ham radio. I said that I had operated CB some in the past. She said, "Then, I need to give you a fast lesson so we can determine what to do. I have a license also but haven't been active much with school. There's no place in a dorm for a decent setup. Now, this radio is an HF rig. The ham bands are measured in meters by wavelength and described that way. The bands have different characteristics. Dad did not do much on one hundred sixty meters. Those are frequencies just above AM commercial radio spectrum. His activity was primarily on eighty meters, forty meters, and twenty meters. Eighty is good for regional communications like intrastate. Forty is better for more distant stations. All over the US is fairly easy. Twenty is more for long distance. I have never made a Georgia contact on twenty but have talked all over the world on that band. The CB band is eleven meters and hams have bands at twelve and ten meters. For those to work well for distance, you need sunspots and the right atmospheric conditions, which may or may not be happening now. The other, smaller radio is VHF/UHF. It's called a dual bander because it works on the two meter and the seventy centimeter bands. Both are primarily FM and for local communications. There are stations called repeaters that will retransmit a signal for greater distance but it is still mostly for local use."

"Okay, Shirl. What should we do with them?"

"First, let's turn them on and see who may be on the air." She sat down and reached for the switches turning everything on. Lights lit up on the radios. The "dual bander" display started to change rapidly. I thought, and learned I was right, that it was scanning frequencies. The HF started up on a frequency. Shirley said, "Thirty-nine seventy. That's a common eighty meter frequency in Georgia." She keyed the microphone and said, "CQ, CQ, eighty meters. This is K4SAA calling CQ and standing by." She flipped the microphone off and, as we listened, she said to me, "That's my call sign. It's a vanity call. Dad got it for me after I passed my general license test." After a minute of hearing nothing but static, she made the same call again. We still heard nothing but static.

"Now, what?" I asked.

"We need to decide if we want to take anything with us or not."

"Let's leave it here for now. We can always come back. I think you like this house and I agree that it's a nice place. We will probably need more than one radio anyway to accomplish anything useful."

"Okay, let me shut it down and secure it." She flipped the switches including another that I hadn't noticed previously. She reached over and picked up a walkie-talkie from a charger.

"What's that for?"

"It's another dual bander. HT's are easy to carry and can reach many of those repeaters I mentioned. We might find some more people that way."

"Okay, take the charger, too. I think we're ready to leave now."

"For a while," Shirley amended. She unplugged the charger.

"Right," was my response and I meant it.

We joined the other two in the living room. Shirley had more clothes which she was packing and which we loaded into the bed of the truck. We got in and headed into Macon following Shirley's directions. We came back to I-475 and then exited on Highway 80 east. We saw no one anywhere. We stopped at a Wal-Mart that had been lightly looted. Janice picked up a few things from the pharmacy and beauty supply areas. Still no one was anywhere. We wandered around following Shirley's directions for a half hour and never saw anyone. I stopped and topped off my gas tank at a convenience store.