Chapter 4

“We need to begin an orderly move to the cave that Tommy found last night,” Cheryl was addressing everyone. “We can be out of the weather, protect our food and water from gangs and animals, and be safe from storms.”

We set about packing up tents, collapsing inflatable mattresses and packing everything in ways it could be moved by hand. After about an hour, I wandered out of the clearing and started searching the forest for a path wide enough to pull the trailer to the cave. If we could get it out of the clearing, anyone happening on it would think they’d found just another old campsite and move on. It took a few hours of determined searching but I managed to mark a path that would require only cutting down saplings and very small trees, while avoiding ditches, sink holes and large boulders. The tools I’d grabbed included an ax, pick-ax, and shovels, so I marked the trees in the way and set about cutting them down.

By the time I had the trail cut in, everything was packed into the pick-up, van, and camper. After the arduous task of driving through the woods, I returned and systematically covered our route, dragging tree limbs, leaves, rocks and other things over our route, hiding the evidence of our decampment. The trail I’d made to move the vehicles to our cave pretty much disappeared by the time I was done and with a little more work and some of mother nature’s efforts, it would be nearly impossible to detect, unless you were an experienced woodsman, in which case, they wouldn’t need a trail to find us, anyway.

When I returned to the cave Judy, Cheryl, and the girls had managed to move us into the cave, set up a home of sorts, and were working on a meal. I needed a bath and grabbed a towel and soap, along with a change of clothes and headed for the stream. It didn’t occur to me to worry about being observed, but just as I finished I noticed one of the girls openly watching me bathe.

The water was cold enough to make Mr. Johnson almost invisible, so it wasn’t like I was trying to lure anyone into joining me. Rather than make an issue of it, I washed with my back mostly turned away from the bank and let my peeping Jane think she got away with it. It would have been useless to cover up, anyway. She’d had time to see everything. So I finished, waded out of the water, dried and dressed. My voyeur slipped away leaving me alone to make my way back to the cave. The only problem, as I saw it at the time, was that I had no idea what her name was, or if we had a history between us. The thought did occur to me that, before the plague burned itself out, we would all have some serious history between us. In some ways that was thrilling. When I thought of how little I knew about the life of the boy I had taken over, it was not as thrilling.

That night found us glued to the radio listening as the news brought wave after wave of terrifying statistics to us. The number of cases had exploded, as I suspected they would. By late evening of day three of the outbreak, over three-hundred thousand Americans were either dead, or expected to die within hours to a day. All transportation, airports, ships, railroads, bus service, and private vehicle traffic were temporarily suspended and people were ordered to stay indoors at all times. Those infected were instructed to hang a bright red garment outside their front door to alert relief workers to the condition of people in their towns. Hospitals had to stop admitting patients, as there were no beds available and no one to offer medical aid if there were. We kept encouraging the girls to phone home and keep their parents from worrying about them. Those phone calls also gave the girls comfort, knowing their parents were still alive. We had a dozen portable solar charger panels, and they provided plenty of electricity for basic needs and kept the phones charged for everyone.

The next day was spent camouflaging our location, trying to protect us from marauding gangs of thugs and rapists. It’s hard to hide a gigantic fifth wheel in plain sight, but everyone helped at one point, or another and it was certainly became harder to see than it was before. The other benefit of my distraction with securing our hideout was that the girls pitched in and offered both muscle and suggestions. We had plenty of supplies to sustain us for as long as it took. The vast majority of others did not and many were going to strike out and steal what they couldn’t find, killing anyone who was in the way. That thought kept me up nights worrying about security.

During the afternoon I was working away from the cave trying to hide our existence when one of the girls slipped away from the campsite, snuck up on me and asked, “Are you really having sex with Mrs. Clawson?” Before I could frame an answer she went on, “Patty keeps talking about how she looks at you like some thirteen year old in love for the first time.”

I guess my first in-depth conversation with one of my classmates was going to be rather adult in nature. This girl was the picture one has in their head when they think of the girl next door. Her mid-shoulder length, sandy blond hair framed a pleasant, if plain, face. She had a typical high school girl figure. Her curves were evident and fresh, as was her clean, fresh, sex appeal. Her weight was probably holding her back in the boyfriend department. She was about twenty-five to thirty pounds above optimum, but after the decades of sampling what the feminine half of the world has to offer, I still liked a girl with some flesh on her bones.

Carrie – I remembered her name just as I was about to invent a way to ask without looking stupid - had a charming smile, combined with the last vestiges of baby fat adorning her hips and bottom. She also had a quick wit, compassionate personality, and a tremendous crush on Tommy, now me.

Carrie took care of her identity by talking about herself in the third person. I would have been Ok either way. “My mom says that you can always tell when people are really into each other, but trying not to show it. She’d say, ‘Carrie, just look for those little secrets. You’ll see them look around to see if anyone is watching, and then they’ll smile just for each other. Those two are having a thing.’”

My smile was noncommittal, but not without some romance. Carrie wanted to think she had a shot with me, and if I gave her something to wrap her arms around, she would probably forget to question me about Judy. “Your mom sounds like someone that has had a few crushes in her life,”

I laughed. “My mom used to say that the look people give you when they don’t know you’re watching tells the real story about how they feel about you.

“My mother loved to smile at everyone, and make them feel like they were the only people in the room. It gave her so much joy to see others respond to her smiles that I try to emulate her and make people smile, now.

“I miss my mom...”

Bingo!

Carrie immediately shifted from inquisitor to supporter. “Oh, Tommy, I’m, so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad, thinking about your family. Please forgive me.”

She had no way of knowing that we were thinking of two entirely different mothers, and that was for the best. We talked about ... well ... not much. Then again, we talked about everything, just not much of anything about everything,

We just talked and Carrie seemed to be willing to talk for the rest of the year. When I got back to work on the campsite she pitched in, and we talked while we worked at hiding our existence as much as possible. “If we walk out towards the truck and try, really try, to see any signs that our group came this way, then we can work on covering our trail until everything just blends together into the undisturbed woods around here.

“What it will look like when winter comes is something I’m not too sure about, but if the plague is still killing people six months from now, we might have to hunt for more permanent housing.” Carrie winced at the thought of hiding in mountains for six months. I completely understood. It was important to be honest but give them all something to hope for. She wanted to continue our talk but the radio saved me...

... in the worst possible way.

Judy ran up and urged us back to the campsite to hear the report.

“We have just received word from authorities at the Center for Disease Control that the manufactured plague seems to have broken out – far worse - in the Middle East and Africa, than we are experiencing here at home...