Chapter 10

Desmond knew that the band was changing and there was nothing he could do about it. The original core group of the chop shop car thieves and the Motorcycle club bad boys had been absorbed into the wider spectrum of store owners, housewives, and rural folks who just wanted to stay alive in a dangerous world.

They were no longer just "looters" like some of the bandit groups of evil-minded survivors doing the devil's work in this society without structure. He sometimes plain didn't know which was worse, the looting mobs of drug-addled sinners or the pious know-it-all bureaucrats and military of the new order. It seemed best to him to just steer clear of them all until the chaotic situation settled down a bit more.

Some of the new recruits were rough and ready country boys from the counties north of Sacramento and they had all the outdoor skills needed to keep ahead of the Military searchers and the local "bad boys". At last count, he saw that they had almost two hundred sworn in members but almost half of them were females. That was not a bad thing but the females tended to lack the stamina for a long patrol and he estimated that almost half of them were already pregnant. It was difficult for them to keep up the "pill method" or the condoms that never seemed to be available when they were on the move. The addition of children into the mix slowed his group down considerably but it seemed to bring most of the members together in a sort of protective circle around the little ones and the weaker women in the family way. Still, he found it necessary to be far less aggressive in his patrols and was now in a definite defensive posture just trying to avoid any kind of hostile contact.

It was not the ideal scenario for a fully functioning "Looter" band but he realized they had evolved from Looters into something more positive. They were now sort of a well-trained Survival group that mirrored many of the other Survivor groups already doing their best to avoid the Military sweep units and Looters like they had started out as back in the beginning.

Just past the foothills, they ran into some small detachments of a Survivor's group that had apparently been successfully on the run for quite a while. His scouts reported to him that the group was comprised of three main sections with an outer perimeter of heavily armed males, an inner perimeter of armed males and females and a central core of defenders with small mortars and shoulder RPGs to keep the choppers off their backs. They didn't leave much of a footprint despite the fact they numbered almost as many as the members of his group. He liked the fact that they traveled light and didn't make any unnecessary changes to the landscape that could be seen from above.

Desmond was fairly certain they were already aware of the presence of his group but they hadn't made any probing actions against them and seemed willing to live and let live providing he did the same. He thought on it a long time and decided that it would be worthwhile to try and set up a pow-wow with the other group on the chance they might be inclined to join forces and give them a better chance of survival against the Military units still sweeping the northern counties.

He took a small entourage of two of the biker gang enforcers with muscles and tattoos of equal proportions along with Tamara and the blonde twins Billy and Bobby. He was amazed how well those young girls adapted to the back country. It was the growing up on a farm that gave them the edge they needed to be "the cream of the crop" when it came to survival. Tamara was able to somehow send signals to those two girls without the need of verbal commands and he wondered if there was some sort of telepathic connection between them or if it was simply the natural connection between them that made verbal communication unnecessary. He made certain they all were carrying AK-47s because he was completely sold on the solid performance of that type of long gun in almost any scenario. He also liked the fact they seldom jammed when that was the last thing you wanted.

The girls were carrying the folding stock ones which they had liberated from a National Guard Armory in Sacramento along with several crates of armor-piercing ammo that made Swiss-cheese of the Chinese made body armor the Military units had been issued by some fool down in San Diego. His followers seldom fooled around with body armor because it slowed them down too much and was marginally effective against the spalling effect of exploding mortars or light artillery.

He instructed his Captains to spread the group out in a sort of horseshoe encampment that would entrap any forces that managed to penetrate into the center. They had used it many times and it was useful in displacing to an alternate position by leapfrogging along either axis. Too many of the Looter units had been overwhelmed and annihilated by the Military sweep teams because they just "circled up" and seldom dug in to keep casualties down in case they were discovered.

The six of them moved obliquely across the narrow stream of mountain fresh water flowing down to the fertile valley below them and did their best to keep their steps on top of the rocks and not in the soft dirt that would give them away immediately. They worked in a trio of pairs with each male taking one of the females along as a back-watcher to prevent being ambushed. He took Tamara with him because he was more familiar with her and was a lot more comfortable with her at his back. The two biker hard-bodies were more than happy to team up with Bobby and Billy and they triangulated their way down the trail keeping their eyes peeled for the Survivor group scouts but still trying to establish contact to set up a meeting with their leaders. He was worried that there were few birds in the area and was not quite certain exactly that that meant because it was something that he had not encountered before. There seemed to be plenty of small game so it was not a hazmat scenario like he would have expected in the Los Angeles or the Las Vegas regions. It might even relate to some sixth sense of an impending earthquake or coming storm that the bird populations seemed to recognize long in advance of the rest of God's creations.