Chapter 2

That morning, 7 colored families showed up at the hotel to join the group. They were welcomed with open arms, much to their surprise. They were shocked when they were given their choice of rooms and invited to eat with the "White folks" at lunch. This was totally outside of their experience.

The McLouds now went after the larger White segment of the remaining population. They rather arbitrarily selected the most distant family as their target and jumped there with the wagon in tow. This time, Donald and Brock waited in the front yard while Mary went to the front door. Just as she was reaching for the doorbell, the door was opened and a hand grabbed hers and pulled her inside.

A woman's voice cried, "Didn't you see those two men following you? You should pay more attention to what's around you!"

At this moment, Donald used mind-speak to tell Mary that he and Brock were in the room as backup if she needed it.

Mary said to the woman, "They are my husband and son. They stayed off the porch because they didn't want to frighten you. May I bring them in?"

"Well, OK, if you are sure it's safe."

"I'm perfectly sure it's safe. If you will turn me loose, I'll call them in." The woman released Mary's hand and Mary went to the door and called to Donald and Brock to come on in.

The two men jumped to the porch and turned off the invisibility aspect of their armor before walking into the house. Mary turned back to the woman and said, "I'm Mary McLoud and this is my husband Donald and my son Brock. What is your name?"

"I'm Susan Hatfield and I live here with three children, so I don't dare let men into my house without good reason. What can I do for you, Mrs. McLoud?"

"Please call me Mary. We're here to invite you to join our group who are banding together for mutual protection. We have about 45 people so far, including the children, and are looking for more. We are staying in the Huston Hotel and have plenty of food and water. We want you to join us because we will need as many people as we can find to rebuild our world. Will you join us?"

"When do I have to decide?"

"You can come any time you like and you can leave any time you want to. There is no pressure for a decision right now, but we can help you move today and may not be able to get back to you for some time. You are pretty far from town and you are in real danger stuck way out here."

"I know that's right. It's just that I have lived here all my life and I hate to leave my home. I don't know what to do."

"Consider your children. Do you want to leave them in danger?"

"No, you've convinced me to give your group a try. What do I have to bring?"

"You don't need anything but clothes. The hotel has everything else that you will need."

"OK, it will take me about an hour to get everything ready. Please sit down and I will hurry as fast as I can."

"Can we help? The two men are very good at carrying things!"

The woman laughed and beckoned for them to follow her. As they were walking deeper into the house, Mary said, "I forgot to tell you that there are colored people living with us at the hotel. Is that going to bother you?"

The woman turned to her with hatred in her face and shouted, "Get out of my house! I won't have anything to do with niggers or nigger-lovers. Get out! Get out!"

Mary, Donald, and Brock looked at each other and flicked on the invisibility aspect of their armor. The woman fainted as they jumped outside to the wagon.

Mary said, "I have met some violently anti-colored people before, but none that violent. I guess it's just as well if she gets killed or captured by Lawrence's men. I just wonder if she has contaminated the thinking of her children."

"Mother, I just checked and she has no children in the house! I think that she must be crazy. Let's get away from here before she becomes violent."

They TPed to the next house on their list and stayed together in the driveway. Donald said, "I'll POV this time before we go up to the house to make sure that it is safe. I also think that I should stay with you, but invisible, while you introduce yourself. Brock can stand in the yard and be your escort."

"That's a good idea, darling. I don't want to get caught like that again."

"OK, there are a man, a woman, and two children in the house. Let's give this one a try."

Mary walked up to the door with Donald invisibly at her side. The door opened just as she was reaching for the doorbell. She found herself facing a double-barreled shotgun pointed at her waist! A man's voice asked, "What the hell do you want?"

"We have come to find out if we can do anything to help you. We represent a group of people who have gathered at the Huston Hotel for mutual protection. We already have over 40 people, including children, and we have come to ask you to join us. We have plenty of food and water, so you have no worry on that account. I should tell you that some of our members are colored, in case that is important to you. We want to rebuild our world and we need everybody we can get to help."

"Thank God! At last, somebody has a positive outlook on the future. Yes, we would like to join your group. What do we have to do. Oh, sorry about the shotgun, but there have been some prowlers around in the last few days."

"You don't need to bring anything but your clothes. The hotel has everything else you will need. How soon can you leave?"

"Is 10 minutes too soon? I see you have a wagon, so we can dump our clothes in some boxes and be ready to leave very soon."

"Great! I'm Mary McLoud and that's my son Brock in the yard. My husband Donald is just around the corner of the porch keeping an eye on me. What's your name?"

"I'm John Appleby, my wife is June, and our children are Janet and John, junior. We..."

At that moment, there was the loud chatter of a machine gun and Brock was knocked down in the driveway. Behind him was a jeep with a man standing behind a mounted .30 caliber machine gun. Brock told everybody, via mind-speak, that he was OK, he was just playing dead. Donald threw up a TK shield around the house, including Brock within its protection; he put a TK roof over the house just in case the attackers had a mortar.

Donald and Mary ran through the door and Brock TPed into the living room. John reacted with, "What the hell is going on with you people? How did you do that? First I hear someone talking in my mind, then Brock teleports into my house. What are you people? You're not human!"

Donald said, "We'll explain in detail later, John, but we are human, we just have ESP abilities"

Brock said, "I just POVed the street. There are two jeeps and a tank out there, along with about 50 men. We can handle them if they don't try too many different things at once. I wonder why they are here."

Mary said, "I'll bet it's because of those 4 rapists you impaled right on Lawrence's doorstep. He must have sent some troops to investigate."

Donald said, "I don't want to kill all of them if I don't have to. Maybe we can sort out the good guys from the bad. Let's mind scan each man and separate them into two groups. The dupes and don't-want-to-be-heres we can knock out and stash in the back yard, the others we can just kill and dump on Lawrence's parade ground. Those we kill, let's make it look like 'natural causes.'"

"OK."

"Check."

The men in uniform all dropped to the ground and lay there. Then they began to disappear, one by one, over the next ten minutes. When they were all gone, Donald said, "Let's move the men from the back yard to the front and see what we've got."

Eleven men were lying in the front yard. Donald now said, "Let's go out and talk to them one at a time. We may have some recruits."

They went out and woke up each man and talked to him a few minutes, then put him back to sleep. Donald said, "It looks to me like we have eleven recruits if we want them. None of them wanted to be in Lawrence's army, but were forced in by circumstance. I vote for taking a chance on all of them if they want to join us."

Mary and Brock agreed, so they woke all the men back up and asked them if they would like to join the group in the hotel. To a man, they chose to join the hotel group. Donald told them to relax by the first jeep and they would get back to the men.

Donald suggested to Mary and Brock that they see if John Appleby was interested in acquiring ESP. They were going to need a lot of help to solve the world's problems and they might as well start with him. The other two agreed, so they went back to the living room to talk to Appleby. John and his wife June were sitting on the sofa waiting to hear what was going on. Donald scanned June's mind and found out that John had told her about the ESP things he had seen and experienced, so it looked to Donald as if he had two potential recruits.

John told them all of the things that they could do with ESP and demonstrated TK and TP for June. They both wanted the ability, so Donald made the changes in their mind. He did add the compulsion about not telling anyone of their ESP powers, just to be on the safe side. He planned to remove the compulsion later.

John said that he had been an infantry platoon leader in the Army up until last year, so Donald asked him to come outside while he talked to the men by the jeep. When they got there, the men all stood at attention and John reflexively said, "At ease!" the men relaxed a little and Donald asked if any of them could operate the tank. Three men held up their hands and John remarked, "There's your tank crew." Of the remaining eight men, three had some training on the machine guns and four could drive the jeep. When the last man was quizzed, he said, "I service radios."

They hooked the wagon to one of the jeeps and organized a convoy back to the hotel. Everybody had a place to ride, so they got there in less than half an hour. There was some consternation when the convoy arrived at the hotel, but Donald told everybody to relax, these were the good guys.