Tempest of Tennessee (Episode 2): Tempest of Tennessee, page 1
part #2 of Tempest of Tennessee Series
TEMPEST OF TENNESSEE
EPISODE TWO
BY TERRY MCDONALD
TEMPEST OF TENNESSEE
Episode Two
By
TERRY MCDONALD
Copyright, March 1, 2018
All rights reserved, domestic and international
TEMPEST OF TENNESSEE
Episode two
Vikas, John, Annette and I drove the vehicles to parking spots behind the barn. It was getting crowded back there. Besides the tractor and Four-wheeler, our number of vehicles had grown; Billy’s truck, John’s truck, two more trucks from the gang’s place.
From the raid by Sam and his bunch, we’d gained a van. That gave us more than enough vehicles for the number of drivers in our group. Billy’s truck, a four-wheel drive Toyota was mine. The van belonged to Vikas and family, because it could hold them all. Annette could choose one of the pickups.
After a bit of maneuvering, we had them parked in a semi-orderly way. Stepping from the tractor, I called for everyone to check fuel gauges. I knew that the tractor was low. Everyone reported a half tank or better. John came to where I stood by the tractor.
“Tempest, are you badly hurt?”
“Naw, I’m fine, a bullet grazed my neck.”
“A grazed neck covered your face and shirt with blood?”
Annette joined us, overheard his question. “That’s not her blood. Is there a place where she can clean up?”
“Who are you?” John asked.
“I’m Annette, Tempest’s new best friend, only she’s just finding out. Look, be fair, she needs to clean up before getting into her experience.”
John nodded, “She needs a friend. There’s a hand pump beside the house.”
I took charge of me. “I’ll wash at the pond. I hope there’s something ready to eat; I’m starving. After that, I’m lying down.” Then I said, “My “new best” friend can tell you about my ‘experience’.”
It wasn’t until I said the words that I heard the echo of my harsh tone, but I didn’t apologize. I didn’t care. What I cared about was the fact I’d shot the woman at the Ranger Station. Annette was correct, the way she bled, I’d most likely murdered her.
What I’d done was eating at me. What pissed me off was Billy had warned of it, warned that in a firefight bloodlust could take over. It took me over. The woman spoke out while I was in hot blood kill-mode. It didn’t matter that she cursed me. What I’d done was wrong.
I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I was halfway along the trail to the cabins before I noticed Annette was dogging me. I stopped and turned on her. The rest were lagging behind us.
“You need to back off. I’m going to my cabin and then I’m going to the creek to wash. Tell Preeja and Bella I’ve decided I’m not hungry.”
Annette shook her head. “I’m going with you. You’re going to wash, eat and lie down. You do know you’re crying, right? The tears are making tracks in the blood. You look hideous.”
“Fuck, I just told you to back off. You’re beginning to irritate me.”
In a plain tone without a smile, she said, “It’s a free world; I’m going with you to help you clean up. Don’t you need to go to the house for a change of clothes and a towel?”
I almost said, ‘Maybe I made a mistake in not shooting you’, but the words, wrong in their essence, congealed in my mind before they reached my tongue. Instead I said, “We don’t live there, we have cabins in the forest.” I turned from her, but turned back to say, “I don’t need your help or your pity.”
She dogged me the rest of the way but had the decency not to follow to me into my little cabin.
Going to the creek to wash, back on my trail she was. I ignored her all the way to the bank of the pond.
I put the bag holding my wash supplies and fresh clothing on the ground and said, “You should be able to find your way back from here.”
“I’ll help you wash.”
“I’m about to get naked and get in the pond. I’d like my privacy, please.”
She looked at the pond and shivered, “You’re not. It’s freezing cold and that water’s probably colder.”
“No, I’m not kidding.”
She looked at the pond again and then took off her jacket and began unbuttoning her shirt. “If you’re game, I’m game, but you go in first.”
“I don’t want to be naked with you.”
“Since I’m not a lesbian, there’s nothing wrong here. Come on now; show me how tough you are. To tell you the truth, I hope you don’t go into the water.”
I didn’t watch her undress. I got naked, grabbed my soap and a face cloth from the bag and dove into the waist-deep pond. Annette dove in and came up screaming and squealing.
“Good Jesus Christ, how can you stand there and not scream. Aren’t you freezing?”
“Only when I first jump in, after that I don’t care.”
I was standing with my arms across what titties I had. Five feet away, Annette showed no modesty, maybe because she was proud of hers. I turned my back, soaped my cloth and began washing my face.
I felt the disturbance of the water as she came up behind me. I told her, “You’re freaking me.”
Past chattering teeth, she said, “I’m going to rinse the dried blood from your hair.”
The thought of her so close caused me to shudder. “Don’t let your titties touch me.”
I felt water from her cupped hands fall onto my head.
Her fingers began working in my hair. “I’ll do my best not to let my breasts touch you. I’m willing to bet you don’t let anyone into your personal space. You’re ‘Little Miss Lonely’. Demanding my washcloth, she left off on my hair to wash around the wound on my neck.”
“You have a three inch gouge a quarter of an inch deep. It looks like the heat from the bullet cauterized the wound. You’re lucky it wasn’t deeper. It went over one of your arteries.”
She lasted long enough to finish cleaning the wound and then to finger-loosen the dried blood in my hair. Squealing, “You’ll need to rinse it,” out of the water she went.
Remaining turned from the shore, I called to her, “Get dressed and then turn around so I can come out.”
Still chattering, she called back. “Oh, believe me, I’m dressing. Jesus H Christ, you are insane.”
Walking back, with my cabin in sight, from behind me she said, “If you like, if there is food ready, I’ll bring it to you.”
“Let me sleep for a couple of hours.”
She touched my arm. “Let me talk for a second.”
I stopped. “I thought you said you’re freezing.”
“Oh believe me, I’m chilled to the bone, but I wanted to apologize to you for calling you a murderer.”
“You called me right.”
“No… no I didn’t. By being with those who were committing the crimes, we were all complicit, each as guilty as the other. You have no idea how many people were killed on our journey from South Georgia to here.”
“That doesn’t erase the fact that I killed when not needed.”
“Yes it does, because as I said, we were all as guilty as sin. What you did today was amazing. When I heard the shooting in the back room and then you came out covered in blood saying there was a shootout, I thought, ‘The poor girl’. Then when you and the men went into the room and the shooting began again, I didn’t know what in hell was going on.
“I realized that it was you doing all the shooting the instant the front door opened and you came in.”
My fingers went to my neck. “Not all the shooting.”
“No, not all of it, but you did the shooting that mattered. I never counted the number of men there—.”
“Thirteen men and one woman with them who was more dangerous than all the men put together. She had mean eyes.”
“Silvia… yeah, you’re right about her. Everyone was afraid of her. She was one totally insane woman, always threatening to cut anyone who crossed her.”
Annette must have seen something in my face, because she hurried to add, “A different sort of crazy. She enjoyed hurting people. Anyway, what was amazing was that in less than ten minutes from the time you first walked in the door, all the men and Silvia were dead.”
“Annette, I’m tired.”
“I know you are. I’m sorry. I want to say thank you for letting me stay.”
“Okay.”
I turned from her, but she added, “Don’t you want to say something to me?”
“What?”
“I don’t know… maybe a thank you for helping you wash.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“Yes, but you accepted my gift… that’s what it was, getting into that freezing water with you was a hell of a gift.”
I was done with her; turned from her and left her to follow. At my cabin, I closed the door on her. I didn’t bother lighting a fire. Dressed, shoes on, I wrapped in my blanket and went to sleep.
************
I awoke in warmth and light to the clatter of pans from someone at my cooking bench.
I pulled the blanket from my face. Annette had lit my kerosene lamp and was pushing food from a plate into a frying pan.
“Do you normally go into people’s homes without being invited?”
Startled, she almost dropped the plate. “Jesus Christ, Tempest, you scared me.”
“What are you doing?”
“How long have you been in here?” Through a window, I noticed it was nighttime. “How long did I sleep?”
“You slept over six hours. I’ve been waiting about an hour.”
I shrugged from the blanket. “The fire’s roaring wide open. It must be a hundred degrees in here.” I left the bed and went to the stove to dampen it. The stovepipe below the damper was cherry-red. “You’re lucky you didn’t melt the pipe or set the wall on fire.”
She glanced from stirring the pan of food over a propane burner. “Sorry, I’ve never lit a wood stove before, my father always did it. It took me twenty minutes to get the wood to burn at all.”
“What are you cooking? It smells good.”
“Noodles with rehydrated vegetables and some sort of meat, I think rehydrated jerky. Preeja served it at dinner. I forget what she called it, but it’s delicious.”
Suddenly I was ravenous. “I’m hungry. It’s warm enough.”
The low-setting lamplight amplified Annette’s glare. “Stop behaving like an unmannered child. You’ll wait until it’s warm. While you wait, I’m going to dress your neck.”
“There’s something wrong with having a naked neck?”
She went to the bench and picked up a bag. “Ha, ha, ha, so very funny you are. A wound such as yours needs to heal in a moist environment in order to minimize scarring.”
“Maybe I want a scar. What are you, a nurse?”
“No, I read that in your first aid manual while waiting for you to wake.”
She arranged my two chairs and pointed to one. “Stop being obstinate and sit. This won’t take but a minute.”
With gentle hands, she spread Vaseline along the bullet groove and taped on a pad made from folded gauze. By then the odor of the food was screaming for me to eat it.
Finished with my neck, Annette wiped her hands, told me to wait and went to the burner. Returning with a plate to place in front of me, she held it on her side of the bench.
She used a hand to fan the aroma toward me.
“Smells good, doesn’t it. Do you have something to say to me?”
“Yeah, I’m hungry.”
Shaking her head, she said, “Beep. That’s the wrong answer.”
I knew what she wanted, so I gave it to her, “Thank you for fixing my neck.”
Smiling, she passed my plate. “You’re welcome. I’ll civilize you yet.”
I didn’t respond because my mouth was too full. Preeja is one heck of a cook.
I didn’t need to talk. Annette had plenty of talk in her, plenty enough for the both of us.
“As you can imagine, Preeja and the others were curious about what happened at the camp. I gave them the story as I saw it. You needn’t worry about having to repeat any of it. As a fact, I asked them never to mention it to you.”
I swallowed and asked, “You told them all of it?”
She knew what I meant. “Tempest, I told them nothing that you wouldn’t want told.”
I grunted my thanks and went back to shoveling food.
Annette continued, “After I finished with that, they had a million questions. You here have been very isolated from what’s happened since the airstrikes took out the grid and electronics.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“The President ordered the nuking of the Russo-Chinese fleet. In retaliation, China, North Korea and Russia launched nukes against us. The new anti-missile missiles deployed along the coastlines and in Alaska proved very effective, only twenty nukes reached us. Six of those were specifically used to generate an EMP.”
“Did the EMP’s knock out the entire country?”
“Yes, and there was plenty of overlap. Besides the EMP, ground explosions and low altitude blasts took out Atlanta, some of our intercontinental missile sites. Washington DC took a couple of hits. Most of Maryland is gone.
“New York City is slag, as are Chicago, Galveston and Houston. The anti-missiles on the West Coast took care of all but two of the incoming nukes targeting California. Those hit Silicon Valley and San Diego. North Korea’s missiles wiped out the Hawaiian Islands.
I continued to eat and she continued talking.
“Before the grid went down, the President announced that our missiles launched in a massive retaliation strike and that stealth bombers were in the air and our nuclear subs had their targets.
“He’s dead, you know. Two of the missiles that made it here had the address of his secure bunker.”
“That’s good,” I said, speaking around a mouthful.”
“That is good,” she agreed. “He was a failed human at the helm of a failed nation. I’m glad the West Coast missed the initial attack. That block of states was the most stable of all since the nation divided, but who knows, California may be gone by now. Russia and China have their share of stealth bombers and subs.”
I pushed my plate away and asked, “What about the plague? Is it everywhere or just in the states?”
She looked at my empty plate. “Christ, did you even chew?”
“I was hungry.”
She shrugged, “Obviously. Yeah, the plague’s everywhere. The perpetrators didn’t confine their effort to the US... Nearly every major city in the world was affected. The first breakouts occurred shortly after the nuclear exchange.
“We heard speculation that North Korea and Iran are the ones who loosed it, probably by domestic agents using drones to deliver a low altitude, airburst aerosol. We know both countries had a mass vaccination plan ready to roll. Their borders were porous and the desperate people fleeing from infected countries brought it to them. The antiviral didn’t work. Too bad for them.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked. “Some of that had to take place after the EMP hit.”
“One of the men with us knew all about Ham Radio and Shortwave. He set up his equipment in the fire tower. Nuclear-wise, except for Australia, the Southern hemisphere is in okay shape for now. The plague didn't recognize the equator as a boundary. What nukes didn't do, the plague will. Most people down there will die.”
I belched a long blast and asked, “Will the plague last much longer? How many people do you think caught it?”
Annette waved a hand in front of her face. “Jesus Christ, Tempest, at least put a hand over your mouth.”
“Sorry.”
“The viral entity doesn’t have a name that I know of. Whoever made it engineered it for maximum kill. It’s easy to catch and as far as I know, one-hundred-percent fatal. Except for a possible few who had the means to hunker down, it’s wiped the big cities and towns. I know this because we had to pass close by some of them on our way here from Georgia.
“Many rural towns and areas are spared so far, mainly because the EMP made mass migration impossible. We managed to make it to the decommissioned Ranger Station without infection because Ben’s policy was to shoot anyone who ventured near us for any reason. As you can imagine, the fact we had functioning vehicles made a lot of people venture near us. We left a line of dead people five-hundred-miles long.”
“Will it ever be safe to be around other people?”
“Unless the viral agent mutates to where it infects animals, eventually it will run out of vectors and die out. How long that’ll take is anybody’s guess.”
In a shift of subject, she said, “I forgot to ask the others while I was with them. How old are you, Tempest?”
“I’m sixteen.”
“Jesus Christ, my guess was fourteen. What’d you grow up on, cornmeal mush?”
“Mama tried to have meat for it, but we didn’t eat that all of the time. Supper was usually better.”
“Christ, Tempest, I was kidding about the mush.”
“There’s nothing wrong with mush if it has meat in it. How old are you?”
“I’m twenty.”
My thought was that her saying ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus Christ’ so much, she was probably pissing him off, but I didn’t voice it. I did voice something else.
“You’re not staying here tonight.”
She shrugged. “I figured that. Preeja made a pallet for me. Do you want me to leave now?”
“Yes.”
Her expression told me she didn’t like that answer. She gathered the plate and left my cabin in a huff.
After she left, I was still hungry. I made a batch of seasoned cornmeal mush with a side of fried Spam.
