Chapter 16

The addition of Amy to the colony gave us 20 women, 5 men, and 11 children. We men discussed the situation with Adel, Alice, and Martha (the older women), and came to the conclusion that there was not yet enough diversity in the colony's gene pool. We decided to continue their swapping of sex partners the way we had been doing since the arrival of John and his batch of women. However, if any more men showed up, we could reconsider.

Adel said that now that we had a bunch of children already in the colony, the time had come for us to reconsider the scheduling of pregnancies. She proposed that we try to schedule the pregnancies so that the final term coincided with the monsoon season when there was no way to do much outside, anyway. That way the women would be free to work comfortably outside most of the time in the dry season when we tried to do most of our work and traveling. Any pregnancies that came up at other times would just be treated the way we did now, so there would not be any problem that way. It did put an extra burden on the men during those weeks of peak sexual activity, but we agreed to try to bear up under the strain.

We had finished our most recent harvest just before the monsoon set in for this year; it was great that we could get in two crops in a year, and Angie was doing a great job of managing the farm. She was experimenting with some potential cereal grain plants in hopes of producing flour and making bread. She had high hopes, but it was too early to see any real results.

This monsoon season was one in which we concentrated on trying to improve the cave. It was a lot of work, but we managed to chip out a small swimming hole/bath tub. The work produced a pretty rough surface, but we smoothed it off with some of our home-made concrete. We wound up with a pool ranging from two to four feet deep, about 10 feet wide and 20 feet long. It wasn't much, but it was safe from predators and parasites, so we were glad to get it. The water was damned cold, since it came from inside the mountain, and it was hard as the proverbial rock, so our soap couldn't raise much in the way of suds, but we all enjoyed the luxury of indoor bathing with total immersion.

We really fell into some luck when Amy joined us. She was a senior in the Department of Electrical Engineering, and had been specializing in electricity generation and distribution; her intention had been to work as an engineer for a few years and then move into management. She was able to help us get a more even and effective distribution of electricity through the cave, and she even knew how to make light bulbs with a carbon filament. Lynne's hobby had been glass blowing, so she was able to fashion the globes we needed for the light bulbs. The resulting lights were not of 21^st century commercial quality, but the things worked, and that was what was important! Amy's senior project had been the design of a generator for use in rural Africa, so she was sure that she could build us a larger generator when we needed one, if somebody could do the metal working for her.

The monsoon season was almost over when we experienced our first earthquake. It was not a big tremor, but we did feel it, and it did scare the shit out of all of us! If you have never been in a cave when an earthquake hits, you cannot imagine the fear that we all felt. It didn't happen, but we were afraid that the cave would collapse and bury us so that we couldn't get out. All of us remembered accounts in the newspapers or on TV of coal mine and tunnel collapses, and during the tremor, could imagine it happening to us.

Nothing fell but some dust and some things that were improperly stacked, so we managed to calm down from our initial panic without too much trouble. Nevertheless, more than one resident of the cave moved closer to the door.

Bill, who had a speaking acquaintance with geology was asked to examine the cave to see if we needed to move. His conclusion, which was as near to an expert opinion as we were ever going to get, was that the whole mountain seemed to move as a unit. Therefore, our cave was not likely to collapse on our heads. I'm sure that some people took the reassurance with a grain of salt, but there was really nothing else we could do nor any place else for us to go, so we just wiped our collective brow and went back to our normal lives.

As soon as the monsoon stopped and the ground had dried enough, a scouting mission was sent to the site where my group had landed. They never came back from the trip. Sue and Julia were responsible people, so we knew something bad had happened to them. The only thing for us to do was to send a larger group to try to find out what had happened. The two women had been gone for eight days when the rescue party was sent. We had to figure on a minimum of a three-day trip each way, and we had to add a couple of days to allow for accidents. Nevertheless, we couldn't wait any longer, so a detail was sent to look for them.

Sue and Julia had taken only their crossbows and pistols for weapons, but that should have been enough to defend them from anything smaller than a J. Rex. We decided not to take any chances, Amos with the BAR and me with the M1 led the group. Martha as the EMT and Mary as the backup crossbowman went with us. We thought that we would be enough of a team, since Amos was the strongest man we had ever seen and deadly with the BAR. I was an expert hunter and tracker, and equally deadly with the M1. Martha could handle anything short of major surgery, and Mary was deadly with the crossbow, especially with the explosive warheads, so we figured we were as protected as we could expect to be. Martha and Mary pulled the cart loaded with our supplies and that would be used for an ambulance if we needed one when we returned.

We moved as fast as we could, but kept in mind the necessity for stealth, so we spend three days on the trail. We arrived at the landing site without seeing anything to worry us, so we had no idea what to expect when we arrived. We would have been shocked out of our pants if we had been wearing any—both Sue and Julia were wearing ankle shackles and a collar around their necks. A long chain was fastened to the collar and the other end of the chain was fastened to a large iron ball.

Both women appeared to be working on a meal heating over an open fire in a large cast iron stew pot. They both also showed signs of having been whipped on the back and buttocks. Nearby, there was a sailing boat canted on its side and seven men sitting around, smoking and drinking what we assumed to be rum in pottery jugs.

This was near enough to the other vessels lying about so that we could use them as cover to work our way up closer to the men. Amos took a position lying prone on the ground at the rear of John's boat, and I was at the bow. Martha and Mary climbed up on the deck, but remained hidden from the lounging men. Mary sneaked a peek over the side of John's boat and saw an eighth man sitting on the highest point of the sailing boat, but with his back to our direction.

I was about to say something to the lounging men from my place of concealment when I saw one of them casually pick up a whip and aim a blow at Sue for no reason that I could determine, except inherent meanness. She was just slightly too far away for the whip to land, so the man cussed and shouted something in what I thought was Spanish. The other men laughed, and the whip wielder stood up to walk closer to Sue and draw his arm back for another swipe at her.

This was too much for me, and I put a bullet through his gut! All the other men grabbed for cutlasses and pistols of ancient design. This was the signal for Amos to cut loose with his BAR. He was astounding! Amos put at least one bullet into every one of the remaining six men and put them all out of action. Meanwhile, Mary put a bolt through the chest of the man sitting on the deck of the boat. In the course of only a few seconds, all eight men were mortally wounded or dead!