Chapter 2

We didn't know our exact starting point, but it was somewhere around Arlington. As best we could, we followed streets due west. It was slow going, especially because we had to drag the travois in the dark through the debris accumulated on the streets. It was a little after daylight when we finally came to Route 128. God, the road was in a mess! It was about as bad as the streets that we had been following in the places where it was not worse.

We were looking for Route 2A headed west. This was the original highway headed west from Boston, but it had been supplanted some time ago by Route 2, which had become the major artery across the northern part of the state. By this time, Route 2A was hardly more than another city street. There were houses on both sides of the pavement for at least 40 miles, but these houses were hidden among the trees. Route 2A ran trough the middle of a number of little towns on its path to the west, so we hoped to find some help by following that road.

For some reason, the aliens had avoided doing much damage to the trees that were now covering the main part of the New England countryside. The result of this coverage was that, from the air, practically the whole state had been skipped by the strafing UFOs except for the cities and larger towns. That was the reason we chose Route 2A: there was relatively little destruction along its path.

By the time we got to Rt. 128, we had swapped the travois for two Radio Flier wagons so that we had something with wheels that would not be so hard to pull. We had found the wagons in a garden supplies store where we had stopped for a short rest. Just to be on the safe side, when we swapped the load from the travois to the wagons, Sarah selected a number of packets of vegetable seeds to be planted wherever we finally stopped long enough for a garden to grow.

We also picked up some necessary tools while we were there. I found a selection of knives that looked useful, and, in a fit of optimism, picked up a hand-cranked can opener. I was not sure that we could use the can opener, but I wanted to be prepared if the opportunity came up.

We turned north when we came to Rt. 128 to head to the junction with Rt. 2A. Oh, my God, were we lucky! We were damned hungry by the time we got to Rt. 128 and turned north. We had walked only about 250 yards along the edge of Rt. 128 when we spotted a semitrailer rolled onto its side. The tractor was a mass of ruined metal, but the trailer seemed to be in good condition, everything considered.

We could see a sign painted on the side of the trailer indicating that it belonged to a major supermarket chain. Our hearts were about to burst with hope as we rushed to see what we could find inside the trailer. It was a hell of a lot of work to get the rear door open because of the way the trailer was lying on the ground, but we finally got it opened. Inside, we almost fainted from joy at what we found: the trailer was nearly full of canned goods, and very few were damaged too much for us to make use of the contents.

We were not so particular at this point, so we dined gratefully on Vienna sausage and canned beans. The fact that we did not take time to heat the beans made very little difference in our enjoyment of our repast. In a way, it was the best meal that either one of us had ever eaten. We even fed some of the sausage to Maggie, which was the name we had given to the bitch we had adopted. She, too, was grateful for the food, but I wonder if she appreciated it as much as we did.

Once we had eaten, we discussed what would be our next step. The trailer contained enough food to carry us for as much as two months, so we considered staying with it until we had it emptied. There was a small stream nearby, so we would have a source of water if we stayed, and we could live inside the trailer or under it. The latter was possible because the trailer bridged two small hillocks and had some space under the middle where we could sleep.

We decided to stay with the trailer for now and to hunt up and down Rt. 128 to see what else we might find. Also, there were some houses not far away, and it might be possible for us to move into one of them. That was contingent on whether or not we could move the food to the house. It would be a laborious job to move the food, but we did have the wagons to help us.

It was late in the afternoon of a fine early summer day, so we figured that we could live where we were for at least a few more days while we looked the area over. We spent the rest of the day in preparing a place for us to sleep under the trailer and moving the contents of the two wagons into some spare space inside the trailer.

The next morning, we found some other vegetables to go with our sausage for breakfast, so we had a satisfying meal before we went tramping around the neighborhood. We decided to head north to see what we might find and to come back near the houses that we had seen. Sarah took her Glock and both of us took an air rifle because we had no idea what we might encounter.

We had gone about two miles when Maggie started to growl and to bristle her fur. We did not know what she had seen, but we were scared, nevertheless. We continued on for about 100 feet, and Maggie was getting even more agitated. Just as I was about to suggest that we vacate the area, we heard some strange grunting noises in the bushes. Maggie did not assume the classic pointer stance, but she did indicate rather forcefully that what had disturbed her was in those bushes.

We got our rifles ready to shoot on a moment's notice, and Sarah stayed where she was to be my backup. I screwed my courage to the sticking point and gingerly headed toward the indicated bushes. What I found was both gratifying and frightening. Two medium sized hogs were eating the remains of a human body!

I reacted out of fear more than anything else and proceeded to shoot both hogs in the body. I was almost unforgivably lucky because the single shot to each hog was fatal. Sarah had seen me shoot, and she and Maggie hurried over to see what I had shot at. Maggie walked up to the hogs and satisfied herself that both animals were dead before she backed off and lay down to see what we were about to do.

Hell, that much meat was worth more than gold to us at that time, and we were not about to abandon it to any other scavengers. Sarah had been raised on a farm and knew how to butcher hogs, so she had her job just waiting for her. Fortunately, the knives that I had picked up at that store were adequate to the job, but the question was how we would salvage the meat.

I have no idea why I did it, but I had brought some rope along with me, so we strung up the hogs from tree limbs. Sarah used my pocket knife to cut their throats so that they could bleed out while I went back to the trailer to fetch the wagons. Maggie stayed with Sarah while I was gone.

I managed to get back in less than two hours with the wagons and the knives. Sarah went to work on the carcasses while Maggie and I stood guard. Fortunately, those knives were very sharp and Maggie was skilled at the task, so it took her only about three hours to butcher each hog. I did help her some where extra muscle was needed, but Sarah did most of the work.

She had managed to save a lot of the animals' skins, so we put them into the wagons and dumped the meat on the skins to keep it reasonably clean. This also kept a lot of the blood out of the wagon. We left the offal at the butchering site and pulled the wagons back to the trailer.

We rigged up some smoking racks and put the meat on the racks to smoke overnight. We did cut some of the meat into thin strips to become jerky, but we did not want to take the time to try to make bacon. That would come later, if and when we could find more hogs.

Sarah wanted to smoke the meat for several days to make sure that she killed any parasites living within the hogs. Hogs were well known on the farm to harbor such beasties, and Sarah knew how to handle that situation. I left it to her because I was essentially a city boy, and I knew my limitations.