Chapter 21

[Preservation – Janice]

We went out the back with my horse and picked up Bennie's. We stayed in the woods trying to shield our movements from the hill post. Bennie said, "Leave your radio on simplex and try to call Amy. Act like you're concerned but still in the rest area. Let's see what you may hear. I'll monitor Jim on the triple nickel."

I nodded. "Amy, this is Janice. Do you read? Are you okay? Over."

There was no answer. We wanted to get there immediately but that was our worry talking not our heads. We rode staying well under cover in the woods. We rode further than last time and crossed the Interstate out of sight of the hill. We circled around to come at the hill from a very different angle. Finally, Bennie and I dismounted and tied the horses. We would continue on foot. We separated by about twenty feet and took turns going up the hill staying under cover as best as we could.

We came to our camp and saw Elroy, Irene, and Mac tied and gagged. They didn't see us and we kept going toward our observation post though even more slowly. We got as close as we could and saw George and Tom busily abusing Amy. I saw Bennie pull his rifle from his shoulder and take careful aim. I removed my pistol and readied for a charge. Tom was actively involved and laying over Amy's body. George was just starting to look around after he dressed. Bennie shot him between the eyes and I rushed to the top as the shot rang out and George toppled dead. Bennie started then but I had reached George was ahead of him and pulled George off Amy spinning him around. His naked body sprawled out next to her and I gut shot him twice. He screamed with pain, as the second shot was lower than the first going into his groin. I moved to comfort Amy as Bennie charged up and kept George from any guns or other arms.

I lifted Amy in my arms as she cried with heavy sobs. Her face was bruised as was most of her body but she didn't seem to be bleeding badly anywhere. I was angry. I looked over at Bennie and grimaced to let him know that she was okay physically. I saw Bennie was angry, too. He had come to like this young girl who had lost so much and then had her hopes abused by these two evil men.

He looked at George, "Why?"

"Tom said that we could capture all of you and take you in to the Penn's and they would make us leaders. It was Tom's idea. I hurt. I didn't mean anything. I was just following Tom."

Bennie looked at him and said, "You will follow Tom. It will take a while. The question is, "do I kill you now or let you bleed out or the animals get you?'"

"No!" He whined. "That's not fair. I was just..."

He screamed when Bennie shot him in the left kneecap. He said, "Preservation's laws are simple. You are responsible for your own acts. You aren't the first one caught abusing a girl and every one of them never did it again after we caught them. Your sentence is death." With that statement, he grabbed George by his good leg and began to drag him away from our observation post.

Blood loss killed him about two hours later. His last two hours had to be bad as Bennie drug Tom's body over beside him. I continued to hold and comfort Amy for much of that time. Bennie gently caressed her hair and said, "It will be okay. Janice will be with you." He left to release the other three from their bonds.

I switched frequencies and called Jim. "It's okay. Two of the ones we had rescued were bad. One's dead and the other is dying. Bennie's releasing the other three. The young girl, Amy, was hurt. Jim, is one of your wives here?"

Jim answered, "Yes, Louise is here. Mary stayed with Jen."

"Okay. Send her up to the top of the knoll. I need her to help me."

"I'm on the way." Louise said.

The rest of the day passed quietly. Louise helped me with Amy. Louise is a mother of all type, the kind of person who receives and heals others. She made me feel better more than once and I helped rescue her from the Blasters long ago. I've always thought she made the triple marriage with Mary and Jim work. She's not the prettiest or smartest but cares about people and it shows. In two hours, Amy was calling her Mom.

We slept armed and ready that night. When the replacements came the next morning, we had the bridge blocked and a sign up saying, "No trespassing. Preservation territory." They came close to the roadblock and were told to turn around. Mark was with the blockade crew and added some colorful references as to ancestry and what would happen if there was an attempt to enter Georgia. They turned around and left. Bennie suggested to Jim that someone in the Penn's might have and be able to read a map. There were other roads moderately close. We would need flankers to guard against someone coming over one of those bridges and attacking from one or both sides. Jim picked out two pairs of scouts to go up and down stream to the next bridges in each direction.

He did two other things. He sent two men back in a Humvee with all our companions except Mark and Elroy along with Louise back to Poppa in Preservation with a request for more fighters. He told Bennie and me that he had a bad feeling about the Penn's.

The three of us spoke to Poppa that night and discussed our concerns. Poppa agreed and said he would gather another twenty or more fighters and send them to the state line. He said we would need to hold out for a couple of days.

The next morning, we took Elroy and crossed the river down from the dam like before. We were on a scouting expedition as well as hunting for Elroy's mate, Carrie. We were in stealth mode and had to caution Elroy a few times to be quiet. At least, he listened and seemed to learn. Elroy had a radio tuned to the usual simplex frequency. Bennie and I had our radios set to scan between the five two simplex and the triple nickel simplex frequencies.

We slowly made our way along and south of I-85 watching signs of people. There had been a guard station at the South Carolina welcome station with three men. We left them undisturbed and continued on looking for a larger concentration of people. Sine we wanted to stay close to I-85, it was much more difficult as the lake and creeks were everywhere. Upon reaching the area of Anderson, we took a detour to check out this small city. I'm glad we did.

We hit pay dirt. There were a number of vehicles parked around the town with scavenging groups making the rounds. There seemed to be two types of people in these groups; fighters, who were all men and armed, and workers, who were women and men. The workers were dressed more shabbily and were dirtier than the fighters. The women's clothing was sometimes insufficient to cover them decently. We were observing through binoculars until Bennie pulled us to one side.

"Elroy, you will stay here hidden with the horses while Janice and I go closer. Is there some particular way we can spot your lady?"

"Maybe. Carrie is slim and as tall as I am. Her hair is light brown and is cut short. She wears an old man's shirt, light blue, tied at the waist and, last time I saw her, dark blue shorts with sneakers and no socks. Oh, she has light blue eyes."

"Okay, we'll do what we can. I don't want to get into a chase with these folks with so much daylight left but, if we see her and can possibly do it, we'll get her away. Janice, let's go. Carefully now."

We began to sneak into town with a real risk of being seen. We had our guns on our shoulders and our bows ready. We would try quiet if we could. We found a building and entered it leaving no trace and went up to find windows that would give us a better, closer view of what was going on in town. We knew they were scavenging but what were they searching for and taking and what did they skip. Those questions would tell us some more about our potential enemy.

The first thing we noticed was that there were two trucks at the police department and sheriff's office. It would appear that guns and ammo were an issue. With the various bases in and around Atlanta, this had never been an issue for us. It appeared that the Triple-A's had raided military bases in the Carolina's thoroughly. We captured enough arms to outfit a decent sized army with what they had been carrying. Another advantage we had found with military arms was the common ammunition, which made arming easier. We had few big guns, like cannon, but had plenty of mortars, rockets, and grenade launchers. We had used some against the Triple-A's. The Penn's might be more lightly equipped and more inclined to fight in small groups. This would particularly be true if they had no radios.