Chapter 22

I went over and gave her a good morning kiss and a good feel. I tried to be more loving than sexy this morning because that just felt right too. She seemed in the same mood. She had our breakfast ready in just a few minutes and she sat down and ate with me.

"Do you think I should pack up the groceries we have in the house?"

"Is there much left?"

"Not really, probably not enough for another meal."

"Let's just forget it then. I think our first stop will have plenty of food for the taking. It will surely have enough to feed us while we're there."

"Good. I was hoping I was through packing stuff up. I'm ready to just get in one of those trucks and drive."

The others all came out bright eyed and bushy tailed. As bushy as a naked tail can be that is. We all seemed to want a more tender and loving kiss and feel this morning and we had it. The others ate and we all made a last minute check of the house for anything we might have left.

A last look in my Vette, the dualie, and the Cherokee was to see if I'd forgotten anything and I hadn't. I walked through the bluebird and it had been emptied. There wasn't anything really holding us now so we just headed out.

It was only a little spooky as I left when by habit I reached for the switch to turn off the lights and they went off by themselves before I hit the switch. The power died on its own as we left.

We were leaving home. Now the power was gone and there was nothing to keep us here. We had a truck full of meat, two trucks full to the top with other groceries, and we had a truck with nearly five hundred totes of clothes, medical supplies and equipment, firearms, ammunition, gold, silver, jewelry, and other supplies we would need or at least wanted. We also had a straight truckload of tampons. What more could we need?

We were heavily armed to my way of thinking. All of us wore a Glock for a sidearm. I had the street sweeper and the M4 with the grenade launcher, and I was wearing the 44 mag in the shoulder holster just for luck. Sharon had an M16 and Janet had an M16. The other women all had Remington semi-automatic 30-06 rifles and all the women had a Remington Model 1100 12 gauge.

We were heading out - a little convoy of eight tractor-trailer rigs. Jenna was following in the big Ambulance. We'd even found a stock of CB radios in the truck stop and had installed one in the Ambulance so we could communicate as we went.

We were going right up I-35 if we could. I'd scouted our proposed route yesterday - the first twenty miles of it anyway. Everything was strangely orderly and I didn't see anything blocking the highway. I hadn't even seen any cars or trucks pulled over to the shoulder.

I was in the lead with the meat truck - the original truck we took. It had the train horns and the massive sleeper. Sharon was the last big truck in line. She was the most accomplished with firearms and I thought she and I should watch the ends of the line.

I thought about Jenna then, bringing up the actual rear. I called her on the radio and ask her to advance and slip in line between Janet's truck and Diane's. They were in the middle, but it felt better to put Jenna there.

We were settled into a more sensible order now so when we all got onto I-35 I increased the pace. Beverly and I had decided fifty-five was fast enough for now. It would be easier on the tires, especially for the three heavily loaded trucks.

I couldn't actually pinpoint why I'd wanted to gather all these big trucks. I just felt as long as they were available we might as well take them. Their tanks held massive amounts of fuel compared to cars or pickups. Beverly told me any of them could reach either coast from Texas without refueling. This probably wouldn't be necessary but it would mean we didn't have to worry about stopping for fuel on our short trip. We could even refuel the Ambulance from one of the big trucks with just a hose if we needed to.

The first leg of our journey would be short. We were headed for an army base nearby. Ft Hood was one of the largest bases in the United States. I wasn't sure what we would find there, but I was sure there would be some things we could find a use for. This all depended on whether it was actually deserted.

If it was occupied by some military personnel we would try to just leave without them seeing us. We'd park the big trucks a few miles away and check it out in the Ambulance. If it was in fact deserted we could be reasonably certain there was no military whatsoever left. If there were no soldiers at Ft Hood there just weren't any soldiers left.

We pulled into the outskirts of Killeen Texas a little over an hour later. We'd spotted a fuel stop for big trucks and though it was full of deserted trucks we managed to get all ours in the lot. I left Sharon and Janet in charge of security and took Nancy with me in the Ambulance. We followed the signs to Ft Hood and were able to just drive in the main gate and drive around the base at will. We saw no one. It seemed completely deserted so we went back for the others.

Soon all of us parked our trucks in a big lot on the base and we crowded into the Ambulance to explore. It took us over two hours to find a big warehouse that seemed to be a main one. I decided we could just use this as our base of operations so we went back and brought all the trucks to it.

I backed an empty truck into a loading dock and then we paired up and began exploring to see what we could find. We found enough stuff to equip an army and it made perfect sense. We spent five days exploring that warehouse and others and just riding over the base.

When we found the main outside storage area for helicopters I developed lust in my heart. I hadn't thought of it before, but when I saw them I knew just a single helicopter would prove invaluable. They were useless for us though. None of us had any idea of how to even start one.

I'd worked one summer for a flying service that gave lessons and even wheedled my way into four lessons in a single engine plane. If I just had to I could get a small plane into the air and I was hopeful I could even land one. I had no delusions about a helicopter though. My small exposure to them, the service I'd worked for had owned two, didn't even include a ride in one and I knew they were far more complicated than a small plane.

It was just bad luck since there were over three hundred helicopters of all descriptions in this one area. From the way they were scattered around I knew they hadn't all belonged here. I guessed many of them had been brought here from other bases during the military's last days.

Oh well, I was fucked out of a helicopter by my own ignorance. I realized after I'd hit it rich I could have easily afforded helicopter lessons and could have even purchased one. I'd just been too busy trying to fuck everything in sight.

We did make a haul here though. When we left we were all proud owners of M4 carbines with grenade launchers, we even had several extras, as if we'd ever need them. The launchers were easily detached though and if the weight was too much for the women to carry they could just store it. We took hundred of thousands of rounds for the Glocks and the M4s. We took over a thousand grenades. We found dozens of power generating units and loaded four brand new ones. They had eight cylinder Caterpillar engines and massive generators were attached.

We all outfitted ourselves with military clothes too. The camouflage type fatigues. We got several sets each of two different color schemes. We all found combat boots, both leather and the canvas type jungle boots. We left our old web belts and holsters since the army had a much more complicated but more functional type to replace them.

We found a section of military radios and took many to use instead of the CBs that we had. We kept the CB radios too, but intended to use the army units since they wouldn't be as common and we could feel better about talking on them.

Beverly knew enough about radios to tell us we would need antennas specifically for the type of radios we were getting and we spent a couple of hours determining what type we needed and where to find them. We also decided to take some walkie-talkies and were happy to find a pallet of them and then locate a pallet of batteries and chargers. We basically just went around for days looking at the things there and trying to decide if we could use them.

We were finally ready to leave Ft Hood after filling two more trucks with our booty and we'd also acquired a humvee. It had insignia that showed it had belonged to a General. It was longer that the everyday hummers we saw scattered around. It had a metal covering and looked slightly similar to a station wagon or a panel truck. There was enough seating to accommodate all of us, and more. Best of all it was air-conditioned and was already equipped with one of the radios like we'd acquired. We checked our new installations against it and we could communicate easily.

The stretch hummer even had a mount for some type of gun with a door in the top that obviously was for a gunner to stand in. There was no gun attached though. We didn't dream we would actually ever need a machine gun so we didn't even look for one to fit.

It did create a problem. We now had more vehicles than drivers. Beverly asked me if I could use a welding machine. I had worked as a pipe fitter's helper one summer while I was in college and Melvin Stancil was a welder on the job. We got pretty friendly and he showed me the basics of stick rod welding and helped me along as I practiced. I could do rough welding. He'd also tried to teach me MIG and TIG welding but I could barely stick two pieces of metal together using those methods.