Chapter 54

We rode out again the next day early in the morning, and headed east again to another small valley that stood just north of the one we had checked the day before. This one was even smaller in size than the first one. It had a small stream flowing through it that actually fed into the river that flowed out of the first valley. The valley was quaint, but nothing special. It took us an hour to get to it on horseback, an hour to check it out, and an hour to ride back to the base. We made it back in time for lunch.

I spent the afternoon speaking to the uptime women who wanted to stay on the base. One of them was Gloria. I quickly realized that she wasn’t doing well, even though Carmen had been keeping an eye on her and supporting her, both in the sick bay and outside of it. She was still upset that she hadn’t been able to go home to her family.

I didn’t argue the point with her. I could have pointed out that no one had made her stay and that she could have taken the risk involved in going back to our Earth, but that she hadn’t wanted to do that. However, I chose not to nail her on that point. It wouldn’t have changed anything. It was clear that the woman was suffering from depression and possibly worse: PTSD. Regrettably, there was very little that I could do for her. We certainly didn’t have the personnel, the medicines, or the facilities to treat her. All I could do was to speak to her, and listen to what she said.

My gut feeling was that Gloria shouldn’t be left alone. While I definitely wanted a trained medic here at the base or living with Burton in whatever settlement he built, I felt that Gloria shouldn’t be it. Deep down I felt she’d do better in our community with Clara watching over her. At least there, she’d become immersed in our culture and she’d find an established support system, whereas here, most people were still picking up the pieces and sorting out just how they were going to survive in the new world that they were now living in. I told Gloria this. Thank God Kim was with me at the interview. I needed all her help.

The other women proved to be a little better off in regards to accepting the situation they were in, though they weren’t perfect. By now I knew that all of them had been raped at least once, if not more than once; and that most of them had been violated by someone they had trusted, back on our Earth. The women had been betrayed by their boss, their friends, and their colleagues, simply because those people suddenly felt that the old laws didn’t apply anymore. Most of them were still suffering because of what had happened. On top of that, they were unhappy at being stuck here. Even so, most of the women were willing to give the new world a chance, which to me was a promising sign. The big question that most of them had was about weapons. They all wanted a gun. I just shook my head.

I did find out that one of them was a physical fitness instructor by training. She was also a masseuse which was the reason she had ended here. Vivian had been employed by Winslow to take care of his aches and pains, and whatever tension he had been under. Now she was sitting about, wondering what to do with her life.

“Do you know anything like boxing, wrestling, or even better, some form of martial arts?” I asked the woman after she’d told me her background. “I’m sure that at the very least the women here would appreciate some form of defensive training. I know my women did, when I taught them in our settlement.”

It turned out that Vivian had studied Aikido as a girl, and she had taken a couple of police sponsored self-defence courses later on while in college. She certainly wasn’t a black belt, but she had enough knowledge that she could help the women develop confidence in their own ability to defend themselves, particularly since I wasn’t going to hand out firearms to everyone.

That was something that both the men and women didn’t get. They all expected to walk around with a sidearm on their hip and a carbine in their hands, both on the base and off it. They saw me doing it, so they couldn’t understand why I kept saying ‘no’. They couldn’t understand why my people were armed and they weren’t, and telling them the truth would have simply pissed them off.

The truth was I wasn’t against arming the uptime people, but I wasn’t going to arm them with firearms. If I did leave Monty behind I would make certain he had a store of weapons - probably a mix of shotguns and rifles - but those weapons would be used primarily for the defence of the base, and that would be it. Hunting would be done with bows, crossbows, slings, and hunting lances. If you needed a personal weapon, a knife would do or a hatchet. The only time anyone on the base would need a firearm was if the locals got pissed off, and tried to burn the place down. Then hopefully Monty would be able to talk them down. If not, then the firearms could be broken out.

I told people this, but some people just didn’t get it. They had to have their guns. I left it to Monty and Burton to sort out. I had other issues to resolve before packing up and moving back north.

A question that did come up - raised by Lottie and Sarah - was what I wanted to take back with us, during our first flight back to the settlement. By that point Lottie had refuelled the helicopter and with the help of an aviation technician that Winslow had made sure of hiring, she had serviced the big bird. She’d even replaced the windscreen panel that I’d blown out when I’d killed the former pilot of the craft. It was one of the first replacement pieces for the helicopter that had made it through the Gateway before the door had been closed. It would definitely make flying the helicopter a lot more comfortable.

The question did matter. While the Chinook’s a big bird, it could only carry so much at any given time. Loads had to be balanced and equipment needed to be stored properly if we wanted to get it from one point to another without incident. We also had the issue relating to fuel. Our flying operations were limited by the fact that fuel had a shelf-life. While the base still had a good supply of fuel for the helicopters, it wasn’t limitless and the shelf-life expiration date was slowly creeping up on us. The fuel had to be used before it became too dangerous or impossible to use, but it also had to be used efficiently, to get the most out of what we had.

The women’s question led to two things. The first was a meeting with Rita Cook. Rita was a tall, fit looking, caramel coloured woman with cropped, nappy hair and deep brown eyes. She also spoke with a southern drawl having been born and raised in Arkansas. I’d spoken to her before; in fact, earlier in the day. Our conversation had been brief though, and it hadn’t delved deeply into her line of work. In truth Rita had been dismissive of what she’d done for Winslow, and I’d actually let her get away with it. All she’d said was that she’d run the base’s POL (Petroleum, Oil, and Lubricant) section. However, once I got chatting with Lottie and Sarah about what we’d be hauling north in the Chinook, and how much fuel we had left, Sarah had pulled Rita into the conversation. It turned out that Rita was ‘Miss Refueller’. She was trained on all the tanker trucks and bowsers that the base used to fuel vehicles, and she knew how to maintain the fuel so that it was usable after having sat around not being used for months. She had been the one to stockpile additives that had been used to keep the gas engine vehicles running; and she was the one who’d been draining the condensation from the tanker trucks and circulating the fuels in the tanks, to keep them from breaking down. Once I met her officially, she became one of my new ‘best friends.’

I still wanted Lottie and Sarah to recover the fuel from the Puma after they’d made their first flight back up to our settlement. Now that I’d met Rita, I wanted her to go along for the ride. Rita assured me that she could recover the fuel as she had an emergency siphoning system that she could use. She’d have to store the fuel for the time being as it was probably contaminated by now; but with luck, and a lot of filtering - plus some additives thrown in - she should be able to save most of the fuel. It might not have the same bang for the buck as fuel fresh from a refinery, but it would get a bird in the air. I was happy to hear that.

The second thing that the women’s question did was to prompt me to take a walk about the base. I took both Sarah and Rita with me, since Sarah was going to be loading the helicopter. Rita had already indicated that she’d need to take an empty refuelling trailer with her, to pump the fuel from the downed Puma into it. The walk was to decide what we absolutely needed to be flown out of here, and what we could do without until an alternative method of getting it to us could be found.

In fact that was something I had already spoken to Burton about. Once he’d built his settlement and he’d ploughed his fields and planted his crops, I wanted him to start working on a road. The base had a small pool of construction equipment that Burton could use, or at least use until the fluids in them became useless. Whilst the vehicles were all electrically driven, the fact was that they relied on fluids to operate their attachments, and those fluids all had shelf-lives just like all the other petroleum based products on the base. Even so, my hope was that he could construct a road northward towards our village and, at the very minimum, bridge some of the larger streams and rivers. It would ensure that our communities stayed in touch.

Talking about construction brought us back to me picking what I wanted to ship back on the Chinook with Lottie on her first trip back. I decided we needed a backhoe. Winslow’s base had four skid-steer type tractors, with a variety of attachments. The attachments included a backhoe with a scoop bucket, an auger, a set of forklift forks, a front end scoop bucket, and a blade. The total weight - of the vehicle, all the attachments, and a supply of lubricants for the machine - was well within the weight carrying capacity of the Chinook. I picked one and let Sarah handle loading it.

With that task taken care of I headed off for another night of enjoying the benefits of being leader. Kim kept my bed warm, and Ohba made certain that every woman who was interested ended up in it with me. Tonight Ruba joined us, as did Penny, Olla, and a new young woman that I’d never met before. I just smiled into her deep brown eyes when she was brought to my bed, naked and ready to be had, and I kissed her tenderly. After that the evening was a blur.

I rode out the next morning with Burton, Sygor, and Ozmat once again. This time we rode towards the northeast. I wanted to check out the valley that abutted the escarpment. It was a two hour ride to the north and then another hour east. We crossed several streams getting to it, and we skirted a broad expanse of forest that separated it from the smaller valley.

The valley was larger than the first two we’d looked at. It was also more rugged. The ground was broken by outcroppings, stray boulders, and rough terrain. The valley was at least ten miles long and a couple of miles wide. It twisted like a snake moving across the ground, with several bends and turns in it, obscuring the inner expanse from anyone simply wandering by. It was one of the reasons that Burton had picked the place as his hideout. Only someone making a concerted effort to search out the place could have found him. It helped that most of the hills and rises that buffeted both sides of the valley were covered with growth. There were tall pines, orchards of fruit trees, shrubs, and brush.

The area would make a good place to site a bastion, in all ways except one. The land wasn’t that arable the further you went into the valley. Much of the land closer to the escarpment was rocky. It just wouldn’t do for what I had in mind.

There were pluses to the place, though. We came across a herd of wild cows once we got deeper into the valley. The cattle were grazing on new grass that was growing along a hillside that had a small brook flowing near it. The herd numbered thirty animals including a lead bull, two younger bulls, and four calves that had made it through the winter. The cattle looked healthy enough and after a quick discussion, I let Sygor and Ozmat take a cow each. They would make a nice addition to our current diet of dried fish or aurochs meat. Sygor and Ozmat took their kills with a bow.

The wild cattle were the first big game we’d seen in a while. It was a concern that I knew I’d have to address eventually. We’d been spoilt the first winter back in our first cave. The valley we’d been in had provided us with a wide variety of game to help sustain our new community. We’d been lucky as well in our second valley, in that it too had plentiful game, although less diverse in type. However, here we were seeing few large herds of any kind of animal. I hadn’t seen any horses or bison, and if there were wild pigs about, they were hidden in the forest. It might be why the locals depended on the sea for most of their food, or it might simply be the result of over-hunting by the Forest People or other tribes. What had me worried was the fact I hadn’t seen much sign of large scavengers in the region either. That suggested that large herds weren’t common at all.

My concern was feeding all those women that were now sitting at the base depending on me and my tribe. Over the long term, that problem could be fixed and I knew it. In fact the herd of wild cattle we’d just spotted, of which the young men had claimed two, could form the nucleus of a much larger herd, raised by Burton and those I left with him. It would only take time to achieve. In the meantime, the question of fresh meat would remain a problem.

We rode out once again the next morning, heading further north into the valley where we’d confronted the bevy of local goons that Winslow had recruited. This time we took a pair of packhorses with us. The trek northward was at least twenty miles, if not more, and that only got us as far as the northern fishing village. It was another ten miles to where the River People’s village had been, and after that we had the entire valley to explore. From what I’d learned from Sygor who’d seen it in the daylight, it was very large. We’d definitely be spending the night.

I could have flown there. Burton had returned the missing circuit cards he’d taken from the Huey, and the aviation technician had reinstalled them. The technician had checked the Huey out and it was serviceable. The fuel in it was still usable as were all the fluids. Burton had actually suggested taking the smaller helicopter up for a ride, with Helen volunteering to fly it, but I’d said no. With so little uptime resources available to us, I didn’t want to waste anything just for the hell of it.

Since we had horses, and horses only needed grass and water to keep going, I insisted that we ride. While flying would have been quicker and it would have given me a better view of the terrain and what lay about the valley we were going to check out; riding allowed us to get ‘up close and personal.’ Who knew what we’d find by doing that?

We didn’t go alone on this trip. Ruba and Ohba both wanted to come along. They were both going stir-crazy on the base. While some of the local women had started to organize themselves to go out foraging in the vicinity of the base, most were just stuck there biding their time until I made a final decision on their fate. Ruba and Ohba had been helping to keep them in check, but now that things were running smoothly and their leadership wasn’t in constant demand, the two young women were getting bored. When I told them they could come along, after a night of sharing my furs, both women jumped at the opportunity. They had helped pack our gear, including ample food, and they had taken charge of the pack animals. I couldn’t complain and neither could the other men. Ohba even volunteered to cook.

The ride north along the coastal track proved uneventful. It was a very picturesque route, something that had gone unnoticed the first time I’d travelled it, riding shotgun in the Cougar. I now got to see the coastal plain close up. It would definitely serve as a great location to graze herds of livestock. I also spotted a spattering of fruit trees growing along the track that caught my attention. Some of the fruit trees were definitely apple trees, and a couple were plum trees, however one looked strange to me. I stopped and checked it out.

The trees turned out to be olive trees, or to be more correct, an olive shrub. It definitely didn’t look anything like the olive trees that I’d seen on my vacations in southern France during my service years. It was a gnarled, stunted growth that was virtually bare of growth. The only reason I knew that it was an olive tree was because some of the fruit on it had survived the winter. The fruit was withered and rotten, but close examination of what I found and a few pits lying on the ground told me what it was. Intrigued I pointed it out to the others.

My companions had never seen that kind of tree before and they were unfamiliar with the olive. I had to let the matter lie for now. I’d speak to Rizah or Doha about it later on. Perhaps they knew about the plant. I had no idea about the history of olives and their cultivation, but it would be a major plus for our community if we could add olives to our diet and olive oil to our list of resources. I mentioned this to Burton. He was as lost as I was about olives and their history, but he was just as enthusiastic about finding some as I was. He promised to keep an eye out for more and to see what could be done to establish an orchard.

We stopped at Otho’s fishing village. Our arrival created a stir on two accounts. First, we weren’t expected; and secondly, none of the villagers had ever seen someone ride a horse. The last time we were here with the animals, we’d used them all as packhorses to carry gear.

Otho came forward and greeted me formally and courteously. He still trembled in fright on seeing me. The old headman just couldn’t relax in my presence. I made it clear we weren’t staying long, telling him we were bound for the big valley to the northeast, but that we’d be back in a day or two, passing through again, on our way back home. The old man just nodded his head in acknowledgement of what I told him, but he didn’t make any effort to be hospitable.

I did inquire about the women we’d returned, asking how they were. A look of embarrassment crossed the old man’s face. He reported that the women were well, and that they were with their families. Since the population of the village had disappeared the moment they noticed my party’s approach I was left to accept his word. As I had nothing else to speak to the man about, I turned my mount away and led my people off.

I was frustrated with Otho and his people. They were technically our closest neighbours, and they were terrified by our presence. It wasn’t something I wanted, and I knew that Burton would have to address it sometime down the road. His community couldn’t survive without making friends and establishing trading partners. Hopefully, with time, things would work out.

From the village we turned northeast and headed off towards the valley I wanted to have a look at. We ate in the saddle, eating sandwiches that had been packed that morning by our mess hall volunteers. The sandwiches hit the spot, as did the energy bars that I’d packed, taken out of supplies from the quartermaster’s stores. They were a nice treat.

I rode in silence after eating, musing for a bit on our surroundings. By then we were in the mouth of the valley, well within range of the encampment we’d raided over a week ago. In the light of day I couldn’t see anything that suggested a slaughter had occurred nearby. We hadn’t buried the bodies, but they were now gone. That gave me pause, and after a few moments I reined in my horse.

“I think we have a problem,” I muttered to the others with me when they reined in as well. “I can’t see anything left of that camp we struck down a week ago. I know it’s about here somewhere. We didn’t bury the bodies and we didn’t take anything when we left. Did the people we liberated take anything?”

“No,” Burton stated with a shake of his head, now glancing about as we sat on our horses, trying to see the spot as well. “My people made certain they got delivered to the cave that night, so they really didn’t need to take anything. Of course someone might have come back and stripped it while we were at the fishing village, or attacking the base.”

I grunted in reply to that comment. It was possible, but I wanted to know for sure.

“Take a look around,” I told everyone. “I want to see if we can spot any sign or tracks. If animals got to the bodies, there should be bones lying about. If people got to them, they had to have left a trail.”

Sygor, Ozmat, Ruba, and Ohba dismounted their horses and they started to look about, while Burton and I stood guard, watching over them and watching over the horses. It did take time to find the spot. It was actually another half mile up the valley from where I’d reined in. Still it had been stripped clean. The fire pits were still there, but everything else was gone.

The four youths searched about some more. The track taken by the people we’d rescued was barely visible after a week. It was clear that whoever had stripped the camp hadn’t come from that direction. It called for a little more searching. In the end Ozmat found the trail. A long path had been beaten into the new grass growing up in the valley, leading away from the site and towards the north. It had crossed the ford that allowed foot traffic to cross the river flowing through the valley, heading off towards the distant forest. That trail was faded as well, but it was still visible enough that once it was found it could be followed.

“Do you think it was Forest People,” Burton asked hesitantly, not looking happy about the thought of running into more Forest People and having to deal with them.

“I think so,” I admitted. “It would make sense. We knew that the bunch we’d ambushed had been from a village north of here. I can only imagine that somehow a band of them tripped over the ruin we’d left behind, and the locals came and got the bodies. We’re definitely going to have to keep an eye open now, just in case of trouble. They might want revenge.”

It did take a mental flip of a coin, but I decided not to track whoever had come and claimed the bodies. I’d come to the valley to see it, and the day was fading. It was late afternoon and I wanted to move on, to put distance between that spot and us, and travel past the village Winslow’s local goons had plundered and destroyed. With a word to my people, who quickly mounted up, we rode on.

In an hour we were past the ruined village and the mass grave we’d dug. Half an hour after that, we were skirting the edge of the escarpment where the rock had crumbled away long ago, to let the river flow through the valley and out towards the sea. The gap wasn’t huge. It was actually more of a bottleneck. As I rode towards it leading my people, my eyes started scanning the heights looking for a possible ambush.

“That doesn’t look good,” Burton noted aloud as he too scanned the gap. The gap was no more than fifty yards across. The southern side of the escarpment had had long ago eroded away. The height gave way to a pile of rocks and boulders and a swath of grassland that looked well travelled. The swath was about seventy feet wide. The river on the other hand was a narrow, turbulent stretch of about ten feet width that brushed up against the northern part of the escarpment. The north side had only a narrow walkway between the shear face of the rocky edifice and the edge of the water.

“There is a plus to the spot,” I pointed out, not taking my eyes off the heights as I spoke. “You could take a couple sections of that wall that Winslow had about the upper base and close this gap off. It would keep people out.”

“Unless they climbed the heights,” Burton chuckled.

“True,” I said as I smiled back, “but it was a thought.”

Burton hung back as I rode through the gap to see what was on the other side of it. To my surprise I found a huge expanse of land that was either an extension of the valley or some sort of box canyon. The river turned sharply to the northeast a few hundred yards beyond the gap. The escarpment seemed to encircle it. It was hard to tell since tall pines ringed the interior of the place.

I looked about for a moment or two more, and then I signalled my people through. The youngsters rode through first, and then once they were through, Burton came through and joined us. When he had, I turned my horse towards the northeast and we rode on.

An hour later we stopped to make camp. By then we’d gotten a good look at the lay of the land. Three miles northeast of the gap we’d come upon a hill standing out on the open valley floor like a big pimple. It was covered in trees on one side, but open on the other and on the top. We rode up atop of it. It was a good hundred feet high at its summit, and with the aid of binoculars, Burton and I could see everything. Once we’d had a good look around, we made our camp for the night, right where we were.

“We’ll camp here,” I told the others, out of habit, as I put my binoculars away and I started removing my gear from my horse. “It should be a good place to stay the night.”

“Agreed,” Burton stated as plainly a second later, just as he turned to his horse and he started removing his gear as well. “So what do we do about supper? Do we eat what the women packed, or do we go hunting?”

“Well,” I murmured thoughtfully as I considered the question.

It was getting late. The sun was already far to the west and it would be night within the hour. On top of that we were in unfamiliar territory. I really didn’t want people wandering about. Even so, I knew I would have to allow it. The moment Burton had mentioned a hunt, heads had popped up. Sygor and Ozmat certainly wanted to go. I think Ruba did as well, but she was holding herself back, knowing the men wouldn’t want her hunting with them. In the end I simply sighed and nodded my head.

“You’re not to go far. Burton and I spotted a small herd of wild cattle to the north of us on the other side of the river. If you can find a ford, you should be able to make a kill with ease, and then make it back here by dark. Regardless, once the sun goes down, you’re to turn about and come back. Do you hear?”

Both Sygor and Ozmat declared that they had. Ruba kept her mouth shut. I looked at her questioningly.

“I’ll stay here and help set up the camp,” Ruba finally declared, noting that I was silently making her an offer that she could go with the others. “Perhaps Ohba and I can go hunting tomorrow.”

“Perhaps,” I muttered in agreement. “We’ll have to see.”

Ruba and Ohba set up the camp while I stood watch and Burton went in search of firewood and kindling. It didn’t take long. It also didn’t take long for Sygor and Ozmat to return. To my surprise, they brought back a young deer.

“We didn’t get more than half a mile from here,” Sygor informed me. “There was a dip in the tree-line, where the land rose towards another large hill. The deer was just standing at the edge of it nibbling on new leaves. Ozmat killed it with his bow.”

I congratulated the youth on his skill and his luck. The youth beamed with my praise. Burton congratulated him as well, as did Ruba and Ohba. The deer had already been field dressed. With the help of Burton, the two young hunters hung it in a tree for the night. Of course part of it went into our supper, which Ohba made, while Ruba dealt with the skin.

We posted sentries that night as I didn’t know the area or who or what might be about. I doubted that if there were people about that they wouldn’t be the same people who’d come and collected the dead that we’d left to rot further down the valley. Those people were probably somewhere in the forest to the north of where we’d killed the raiders. Even so, I didn’t know for certain and I definitely didn’t want to take any chances. It was better to be safe than sorry, which turned out to be a good idea before the night was over.

A pack of wolves showed up in the night. Burton was on watch at the time and he woke everyone up. The pack was actually a large one, as I found out peeking through my night scope at it. I counted eight fully grown adults and three juveniles, and all of them looked hungry. Part of the pack was focused on the carcass of the deer that had been hung up in the tree, but part of the pack was also interested in our horses, which was something I could not allow.

It wasn’t time for bows. I’d have loved to use them, but the horses were invaluable to us and I wasn’t in the mood to let the wolves chew on them. Once I’d had my look-see through my scope, I started putting rounds into the animals. I went after the wolves closest to the horses and us. Once I’d started firing, my fire was joined by that of my companions. In a matter of seconds we’d all but destroyed the pack. Of the eleven animals in it, only one of them got away.

Thank God my people were skilled when it came to skinning a kill. This time Burton stood watch while I fetched the carcasses of those animals that had fallen to our shooting. I dragged the heavy carcasses back, one at a time, so that the youngsters could skin the furs off the animals, and then while they cleaned the skins up, I dragged the remains off into the woods. If any more predators showed up during the night, hopefully they’d content themselves on scavenging what was left of the wolves.