Chapter 8

There was an old country song that had the line, "We have a long way to go and a short time to get there." We had to go through Kentucky and Tennessee and the Appalachians to get home. I had never thought of the Woods that way really. I guess I've never moved from Chapel Hill in my mind. We were even slower because we still had people who were hurting and were not equipped as well as before the storm. Our progress was slow.

The surprise as we traveled was how empty the land had become. There were few communities and even fewer individual families. This was an issue that Paul and I discussed via radio and the expedition members talked about as we sat around the fire at night. I expected many more people and it was hard to believe that so many more had failed to survive these few years. Even though there was no power, there was food in the cities for years yet. We had noticed that animals were more plentiful, particularly dogs which ran in packs. That was the reason that we carried pistols. One shot would usually stop a pack.

I began to wonder if weather had had a larger than thought affect upon the northern areas. At the Woods, our winters had been a bit more snowy that in the past as I remembered. Being outside and without knowledge and a group, could make any bad situation into a disaster. If no one had come to help them, all of our injured would have probably died. Doctoring skills would be at a premium in the coming years. Paul and I discussed that via radio and he was having Doc start training anyone with an interest in medical skills. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that lack of medical assistance and lack of survival knowledge had resulted in many areas losing all their inhabitants. We would never really know. I told Wendy that we should have gone three to five years ago. She reminded me that the community would perhaps not have survived at that time if an expedition had left to explore.

We made our slow way down through Kentucky toward Lexington. It was beautiful country. According to our map, it was about eighty miles to Lexington. Our travel time was seven days on good roads. During this time, we only saw two smallish family groups of about a dozen people each. We gave them our radio information though we never heard from them again.

There were some herds of horses that we had never seen before in our travels. Their owners must have set them free and, with the empty fields and broken fences, they had had plenty to eat. We had seen a healthy horse fight off a small pack of dogs.

As we approached Lexington, my worry level increased. Our experiences with cities had not been good. Arnie and Melody redoubled their efforts in scouting and had taken more people with them to teach them how to travel. Poor Shirley violated one of Arnie's lessons in watching activities before engaging new people. This lesson had been driven home. The concern I had was the deserted nature of the land and its ability to sustain a community or communities. Where were the people? This question came to me again and again as we traveled through this deserted land.

We were a bit over ten miles from Lexington when I called an early afternoon halt. We gathered everyone together and I explained my concerns based upon our prior experiences close to other cities and the deserted character of the land. My premonition was that something bad had happened hereabouts and I didn't want for us to go into a potentially dangerous situation unaware and without taking all possible precautions.

We had just passed the town of Georgetown and hadn't seen anyone for two days. We had found some burned out farms which made everyone in our party quickly understand my worries. We decided to go off road for the night and have a hidden camp with a decoy. Even Wendy was taking on my paranoia! I remembered a friend telling me in jest before the Day, "I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough!" That was my feeling. We had come a long way but had never had to fight a prepared, determined enemy. We set up our camp and our decoy. We put out sentries.

Late that night, a strange man and woman appeared at my wagon. He said, "You watch well. My name is Bill Rogers and this is Angel. We're here to help you if you will have us. You are the leader, I think. What's your name?"

"My name is Jim, Jim Woods, and this is my wife, Wendy. We are concerned, but don't have a solid reason why. You seem to think or know that there is a problem around. What's going on and why do you want to help us?"

"There are some very bad people up ahead. They have been ambushing and raiding in the area for about two years. Angel and I are all that's left of our communities. We want some revenge and have been raiding ourselves. We had spouses lost in our communities.

"Let me tell you about us and about the Sin Loos. I am a former special forces Sargent. Angel was in the army but never saw action though she went through the survival school. She was a nurse and a First Lieutenant.

"We have been scouting for about three months together and have taken out about fifteen of theirs. They call themselves the Sin Loos. There are some who have some military training but they are a cruel bunch. We questioned a few of those we took out and the head guy is named Al Baker. He has three to five assistants. It looks like they have around four hundred men and a like number of women. They only take slaves. They try to act like an army but are sloppy. It looks to us that the problem is at the top. If we could take out Baker and his top guys, this group might become civilized. We're not sure."