Chapter 21

Day 185 - November 22

My wives were all a twitter about the upcoming trip. That was the only topic of conversation at breakfast. Bell and Brenda were just as bad. I asked Homer if he could think of anyone with military or police training we could take along as security.

"Well, there is one guy who I'd recommend. He was a highway patrolman before IT happened. His name is Nathan Adams."

"I don't remember him," I said. "Does anyone remember interviewing him?"

"I do," Evie said. "We interviewed his family during your first trip to Fort Leonard Wood. If I remember right, he seemed like a nice guy."

"Yeah, one of his wives is named Robin," Sandy said. "She's a lot of fun."

"Evie, why don't you and Homer talk with him and his family today and see if they'd be interested in going with us. Syl, would you find Fred and Jim and set up a time we could all get together today to make some plans?"

"Sure, Ed. I have a couple of ideas about that myself."

When we all got together, Nathan Adams and his three wives joined us. I liked Nathan immediately. "Call me Nat," he said as he was introduced. I remembered seeing him around, but I'd never talked to him.

Tiff and Syl acted as our hostesses and made sure we all had some kind of beverage. I led things off. "We're going to need five RVs for the trip," I said. "I really liked the bumper you welded on our RV for the last trip, Fred. Could you do that for all five of them?"

Fred nodded.

"Ed," Syl said. "There are some things I think we should do differently this trip. Would you care to hear about them?"

"Sure thing, Sweety."

"Okay, first off, before we've kind of stuck to the interstates. I think we're missing out on a lot of people by doing that. I think we should have a car or van for each family as well as an RV. A different person could drive the RV every day, and two or more people could go off in the cars. The RV would move ahead to the next rendezvous point and the driver and whoever else is in the RVs could fix dinner for the family. The people in the vans would branch out to each side of the interstate and go as far as they could and still meet at the RVs for dinner."

"That does make a lot of sense," Brenda said. "There are only three in our family, so it would be a little harder on us than it would be on the rest of you. I'd be willing though if Bell and Homer are."

Both Bell and Homer readily agreed.

"Okay, what else, Syl?"

"Each RV should be equipped with a ham radio for contacting home base. Each RV and each van should be equipped with a CB so we can all keep in contact with each other. Every person should have a walky talky for individual communications."

"I agree with all of that," Jim said. "Having vans is going to present some additional logistics. We'll need one or more pumps for gasoline as well as pumps for diesel. We'll need to be sure the vans have plenty of room for signs and the like. We'll also need a hell of a lot more signs."

"Does anyone have any idea where we're going?" Jenny asked.

"I was thinking about zigzagging down to Florida," I said.

"Okay, we'll probably need to have more than one rendezvous point," Jenny said. "Maybe two or three points scheduled a month apart. Any ideas where?"

"How about Knoxville, Atlanta, and Jacksonville?" Chris asked.

We all agreed that sounded good. Jim said he'd talk to June and get someone scheduled to print the signs and Fred said he'd get right on to finding suitable RVs and getting bumpers put on the ones that needed them. I asked Nat and his family to stay after everyone else left so we could get to know them a little better.

Nat and his family were all from Colorado. Nat had lived in Denver. Jan Patterson and Robin Hale were both from the Colorado Springs area and Sally Smith was from Boulder.

"How did you all meet?" I asked.

Nat nodded at Jan and Robin and said, "Why don't you two start it off?"

Robin jumped right in. "Actually, I found Jan first. I'm afraid I'm a talker and I was about to go nuts without anyone to talk to, so I decided to start trying to find someone. I don't think Jan would have ever seen your signs if it hadn't been for me."

Jan was a much quieter person than Robin, but she broke in and said, "Robin is right. I probably wouldn't have found your signs if it hadn't been for her. After living with her for two weeks, her incessant talking was driving me nuts, so I suggested we see if we could find anyone else."

Robin hit her on the shoulder and they exchanged grins. "We decided to go up to Denver and see if we could find anyone. We hadn't even seen any signs of anyone else in Colorado Springs. Denver was another matter though."

"We saw several grocery stores that had been broken into," Jan said. "We didn't know if the people who had broken into them were still around or not, so we decided to put up some signs at each of the grocery stores."

"At one store we said we'd be there at 9:00 AM daily for a week. At another we said we'd be there at noon and at a third we said we'd be there at 3:00 PM," Robin said. "It was on our third day of visiting the stores when we met Nat. We met Sally the next day."

"I'd met one other group from that area the week before," Nat said. "There was one guy and four women in the group. They were heading for California and tried to talk me into going with them. I really wasn't interested in going into an earthquake area, so I declined."

"I had met another group too," Sally said. "There were three people in the group and they said they were heading for Texas. They seemed like nice people and I hope they're doing well, but I'd seen one of your signs and had made up my mind to find your group."

"Yeah, she talked us into it pretty quickly," Nat said. "She had picked up one of your information sheets and it sounded like just what we wanted."

"None of us are sorry we came here," Robin said. "We've worked every day since we've been here, but I think we're all going to enjoy the fruits of our labors."

Tina and Syl filled them in on how all of us had gotten together. They seemed like a good group and I was happy to have them going with us.

After dinner that evening, Della came over and sat on my lap. She put her arms around my neck and asked, "Do I really get to go with you guys?"

"Of course you do, Sweetheart. You are a member of our family aren't you?"

Della smiled then nestled her head in against my neck. "I really loved my parents, but I think I feel closer to you guys than I ever did to them. Why would that be?"

"I think it's because of everything that's happened to the world, Love. I think we all feel things more deeply now and more quickly as well. I also think a lot of it is because we aren't as afraid to show our feelings for each other as we were before. If we can survive, I think what happened is actually going to strengthen the race."

Della sighed and I rubbed her back until she did something she hadn't done for a while. She fell asleep on my lap.

Day 186 - November 23

As Evie and I were having our morning coffee, we got to talking about the trip. "I know it's a little premature to be talking about interviews, but I think we need to be thinking about them," Evie said. "We were pretty relaxed about them in Missouri until you were damned near killed. We were a little better in Ironton, but I think we need to be even more careful in the future."

"Okay, I tend to agree. What did you have in mind?"

"Well, first off, I think we should all take turns doing the interviews. After a while they become boring. If we're bored, we're not going to be as alert."

"That makes sense. Do you have any ideas as to how we should form the teams?"

"Well, Jenny was a nurse, so she could do the physical exams for one team and Chris could do them for the other. I would volunteer to be on one team with Jenny, Brenda, and Sandy. We'd also need two guards, maybe Homer and Fred."

"That sounds like a good mix."

"The other team could be Chris, Syl, Tina, and Tiffany with Jim and Nat as the guards."

"What about me?"

"I think you should just talk to people. Maybe you and Della together. People are going to relax more if you're just shooting the breeze, especially if you have what most perceive as a little girl with you. I think you might find out a lot that would never come up in an interview."