The Jared Chronicles | Book 4 | The Devil's Bastion, page 2
part #4 of The Jared Chronicles Series
Chapter 1
April, Eight Months After The Solar Flare
The front sight swayed in almost a figure eight pattern, crossing the rear cutout sight, but failing to steady or fall into place like a deadly puzzle piece. The shooter struggled with the rifle, fighting to marry the two sights into compliance. A lock of golden-brown hair fell across the shooter’s left eye, causing her to wish she’d worn a cap. The strand of rogue hair tickled her cheek, but she remained focused on the task of aligning the stubborn front sight post with the rear aperture.
A masculine hand reached across, brushing the hair out of the shooter’s face. Beyond the little rifle’s sights, a squirrel sat atop a small mound of earth, an acorn clutched in its tiny clawed paws.
“Breathe, Ess, relax, breathe, let the rifle become an extension of your body,” Jared cajoled in a low whisper.
Essie relaxed, took a shallow breath, then refocused on her sights. Relaxing helped, the sights still moved, but she seemed to have more control over where they moved. Crack, the little rifle belched forth a .22-caliber projectile fifty yards across the flat grassy field, striking the squirrel in the neck and toppling him like a miniature felled tree.
Before Essie could leap to her feet, hollering in triumph, Jared laid a staying hand on her back. They were both lying in a prone position, and with more hunting to do, having the eight-year-old scaring away any other potential meals just wouldn’t do. The two waited for a few minutes before realizing the rest of the squirrel population within earshot of Essie’s rifle had gone to ground. Getting to their feet, Jared and Essie walked out and collected the little rodent.
Jared and Essie hunted for the remainder of the day, killing two more squirrels and a rabbit. As late afternoon began to cast longer shadows, Jared moved to the top of a small rise and sat under a young oak tree. The trunk was rough and had enough girth to allow both Essie and Jared to lean against it while sitting side by side. Neither spoke as they watched the skies turn from blue to a light pink. They hunted one day a week together, with Jared teaching Essie what he knew of the land. It wasn’t much compared to many others, but after the solar flare had altered the course of mankind nearly a year before, Jared had been force-fed many lessons pertaining to the land and survival in general.
A flash in the tall dead grass caught both their eyes. A bobcat streaked, seemingly from out of thin air, to pounce on a squirrel; neither Jared nor Essie had even seen anything scuttling about the ground forty yards from where they sat.
“Ah, that should have been mine,” Essie bemoaned, bringing her little rifle to her eye and sighting in on the retreating predator.
Jared pushed the rifle down, shaking his head. “He has to eat too, Ess; plus, we have enough for tonight.”
“I know,” she relented, laying the little rifle on the ground next to her.
Jared stared after the bobcat as it moved, with only the grace a cat can exhibit, down a gentle slope until it disappeared into a large patch of vegetation. Jared was fast learning the errors of mankind’s way before the solar flare had put a stop to any further earthly destruction. Jared had heard all the talk of going green, recycling, and all the fanatics screeching about global warming when just forty years earlier their parents had been screaming about the coming ice age. The bottom line was there were too many humans, and they’d become akin to locusts. Eating everything in sight, leaving the earth a wreckage in their wake.
When the solar flare had arrived, most of the locusts died, and mother earth began the process of healing herself. Nature had a system in place to support all her creatures, great and small. It was called the food chain, and mankind had not adhered to it. At face value the taking of another’s life so you can continue to live seemed an arrogant act at best. A man or beast exploiting a weaker life-form so they could eat, mate, and procreate constitutes the very axis on which the world exists.
The problem with man was he in no way emulated a bobcat, which, after hunting, killing and feeding, would remain neutral in the taking of life until he or she again required nourishment. The bobcat sought shelter using natural resources and made no effort to elevate itself by seeking a more extravagant means of refuge. Man, on the other hand, killed for sport, which in and of itself tipped the scales of life. No, Jared mused, they would not kill again until next week, and never would Jared have shot the bobcat. He wasn’t sure what purpose the bobcat served, but he felt better living in harmony with the animal, sharing the bounties the land offered them both.
The walk back to the Thackers’ ranch took Jared and Essie a little over thirty minutes. When they arrived, Jared set to dressing the little rodents on the back porch. He used a small pocketknife he kept so sharp he could have shaved with it after Quintan Thacker had taught him the finer points of working the small blade across a whetstone. When Jared realized the ease with which he could field dress an animal with the razor-sharp blade, he was sold on the effort it took to keep the knife serviceably sharp.
Essie held her own knife ready to start in on one of the animals when Jared held up a hand. “Tell me how you’re going to do it first.”
Essie rolled her eyes before giving Jared a sidelong look telling him she knew what she was about to do. Jared held firm, with a raised eyebrow, waiting for his pupil’s response.
“Oh, okay.” Essie grabbed a squirrel and drew her finger across both hind legs. “Cut these off.” She then pointed to the back. “Open up the back so we can pull the skin off.”
“And?” Jared prodded.
“Oh yeah, dip ’em in the bucket of water first.”
Jared gave her something halfway between a nod and a shake of his head. “Good enough.”
They sat on the back porch and dropped each animal into a bucket of water before removing the lower half of the animal’s hind legs. Next a hole was cut in the back of the squirrel where Jared could grab and pull the skin in opposite directions, effectively stripping the skin clean off the entire animal. No blood or guts, just a skinless squirrel. Jared did all the skin removal since it took more strength than Essie was capable of. The first few times they went through this exercise, Jared could tell Essie’s former self from before the solar flare struggled with the brutality of the seemingly barbaric exercise.
Now, however, Essie took the skinless rodent and removed its upper rear and front legs, which were thick with meat. Jared retrieved the torsos from Essie and cut out the insides, leaving only the back of the small animal. When they finished cleaning the squirrels and single rabbit, Essie ferried the meat to Margie, who had become a wizard at finding different recipes for the limited different types of meats the hunters in their group brought back from the surrounding fields.
Tonight, Margie had a creamy egg-milk mixture she intended on dipping the meat in before rolling it in flour and deep frying the meat. Shannon was helping by baking biscuits in an old Dutch oven over an open flame in the backyard. When the meat was done cooking, Margie used water and more flour in the remaining grease to make a nice gravy. Once the gravy was smoothed out and cooking, Margie returned the squirrel and rabbit meat to the gravy and continued cooking both together.
The end result was everyone sat around eating a Southern-style meal of deep-fried squirrel and rabbit slathered in gravy atop thick biscuits. No one ate as much as they would have liked, but the meal was delicious, eliciting smiles and much licking of fingers and thumbs.
After Jared and John had been reunited a few months prior, things seemed to have settled down for everyone. They’d returned to the Thackers’ ranch, finding everyone in good health and happy to see them unharmed. Rip, a young SEAL who’d decided to remain with John and Jared instead of returning to the San Diego area with the rest of his SEAL team, was a welcome addition to their ranks. Rip hadn’t needed to go to San Diego since he had no family in the area. Additionally, he and John seemed to have forged a strong friendship during their fight with Carnegie’s troops when the SEALs decided they were leaving the Stockton base and rescued John in the process.
There had been no sign of the rogue colonel since the drone had crashed in a field next to the Thackers’ home only a few days after Jared and John’s return. Everyone had been on high alert, but over the weeks that followed the crash, everyone began to relax. They’d been on scavenging missions and done quite well. Although there were no perishable items to be found, things like flour, cooking oil, and other items that had to be prepared hadn’t been molested for the most part.
Most people after the solar flare looted food they could eat on the spot. By the time many realized the gravity of their situation, it was too late. Millions died of thirst with large bodies of drinkable water within walking distance of their final resting places. Unlike the men during the Gold Rush, modern man did not strip the land of deer and other natural sources of food, mostly because the majority of them lacked the know-how.
The group of twelve people at the Thacker ranch were doing well considering the catastrophic decline of modern civilization. They continued to scavenge and stockpile food sources that at one point would have to be produced when scavenging was lost as an option. The group set up a hunting rotation, which had become rather competitive. Although no one razzed Essie for her three squirrels and the single rabbit, everyone quietly gave Jared a hard time. The group knew when John and Stephani went out, they would eat a little better, and John made sure to let Jared know this in a jokingly older-brother way.
Jared hadn’t been a competitive person before the solar flare, while John was the epitome of competitiveness. His build, prior profession, mindset, everything John, lent itself to being the best. Stephani, although a woman and from a white-collar profession, really wasn’t that different from John. She reveled in striving for excellence in everything she did, whether it be hunting, gardening, or cooking for the group.
Still, Jared enjoyed the lighthearted ribbing he got when he would return with only rodents instead of a deer. The sophomoric hazing was a sure sign a level of harmony reigned within their small community. It was human nature to be competitive, joke, and make the best of any situation, good or bad. In the absence of television and all the other media sources that had previously drained away the hours of people’s days, Jared and his friends spent more time interacting with one another.
Humans have always needed some type of connectivity to something. Now that the options were significantly reduced, they’d mostly resorted back to the old ways of family and friends instead of social-media-stalking strangers with seemingly Godlike lives they’d fictitiously created, but likely didn’t live.
That night, Jared and the rest of the people living at the Thackers’ place ate, then sat around in the pale, flickering light of a very small candle, talking about what had been accomplished during the day and what needed completing the following day. This seemed to be the core of all their after-dinner conversations. Once in a while the group would discuss a larger project that needed attention, but other than that, the after-dinner get-togethers rarely strayed from tasks tethered to the community’s survival.
During a lull, John piped up. “Calvin was right early on when he suggested we transition to traveling on foot or horseback.” John drew a breath as if in regret before continuing, “We shouldn’t have stopped there. I know we have things growing in the garden, and the cattle are definitely part of our long term, but water could really become a problem.”
“How so?” Quinten asked, leaning forward, his brows knitted in genuine interest.
“Drought, we are in California, and a good drought could dry that well of yours up along with other water sources in the area. We also can’t rely on modern water-purification pumps like we’ve been doing forever. There’s going to come a day when either the filters time out or the things just break or stop working. People who lived here two hundred years ago didn’t have purifiers, and they were just fine—least I think they were.”
Calvin leaned toward John with his hands held out, empty since the last of the bourbon had been consumed right after Jared returned with John from the fiasco in Stockton. “And who is going to make sure drinking out of these spring-fed creeks isn’t going to kill us?”
John stared at the older man and almost said you, Calvin, but refrained from joking around with him. “Me. I will start drinking unfiltered water, and if I get sick, which I am sure I will, you all monitor me, and if it looks like the whole thing isn’t worth it, we can scrap the whole idea and come up with another plan. If I get through it, then one at a time we go through it. We should all be able to drink and eat off the land. When you’re hunting for two or three days, you shouldn’t be burdened with carrying a purifier and having to use it just to drink.”
Quinten had sunk back into the chair he was sitting in, a thoughtful look on his face. “John, that’s a good idea. I’ve worked the land my entire life and until now never had the occasion to talk about this with anyone. I’ve always had a theory that the different bacteria, viruses, and whatever else is in water is different from region to region. In my opinion, it’s like Mother Nature’s way of protecting those people who lived in each region. We live here and are immune to any ill effects from our water source, but were we to decide to march on over to Colorado and raise hell with those folks, we’d run into a heap of trouble first time we watered ourselves. Kinda keeps everyone where they belong, I guess.” Quinten shrugged, chewing on the inside of his lip for a few seconds. “No scientific data to back that up, just my view of things after living and working the land all these years.”
Jared, who’d been sitting quietly next to Shannon, listening to all the talking about drinking water without any precautions, decided it was time for his input. “No, John, that’s a bad idea. We need everyone healthy, and there is no reason we can’t keep purifying water even out in the hills on hunting trips. We can scavenge more filters, not use them here at the ranch. Hell, the well is fine to drink, and if we gather rainwater from the downspouts during the winter, we’ll probably have too much of it.”
“Things are going to run out, bro,” John countered.
Jared shook his head. “How many people are even left?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Not many in a world stocked for hundreds of millions of people. I think we’re good for at least a couple of decades if we only use the purification systems when we are hunting or scavenging.”
“Why don’t you get a book about it?” Essie asked softly.
Every head in the room turned first to Essie before exchanging sheepish looks with each other for not thinking of this before an eight-year-old did.
Margie smiled warmly at Essie. “That’s a fine idea, Ess, instead of trying to kill yourself based on ideas and opinions grounded in summations equivalent to quicksand.” Margie shot both John and her husband sharp looks that, although not married to the woman, John translated easily as her way of showing disdain and disgust for the very idea of purposely making one’s self sick in their current situation.
Two days after the conversation regarding clean water, John caught up with Jared as he was helping Barry with the solar-panel array. They had electricity, but only used it to run a few essentials. Never were the lights connected for fear of attracting unwanted attention.
“Bro, we need to head out and check on a few things,” John started in a serious tone.
John’s voice stopped Jared from what he was doing. “Why?”
John glanced around as if not wanting to alarm anyone with bad news before he spoke. “Devon says he’s been seeing signs of men in the area. He told me about it last week, and I went out for a look-see. Couldn’t say for sure, but it did look like something or someone had been walking the farthest fence line to the north.”
Jared was speechless for a second, his mind whirling with dreadful possibilities. “Why didn’t you say anything?” Jared finally blurted out.
Barry had also stopped and was listening while casting sidelong looks in the direction of the far fence line and the hills that lay beyond. The thought of the short yet precious span of peaceful time they’d all recently enjoyed being taken from them again was upsetting to say the least. “Who the hell would be sneaking around this place?” Barry asked.
John gave him a pursed-lip shake of his head. “Don’t know, B, don’t know until we get out there and take a real look.”
Jared was also shaking his head as if the act would somehow nullify what John just told him. “Carnegie?”
John heaved his shoulders. “Dunno, man. Could be, or it could be neighbors snooping around, trying to feel out our weaknesses, or it could have been someone passing through, which I highly doubt.” John tossed his chin at the solar panels. “Finish what you guys are doing, and then we can sit down and come up with a plan.”
Later that afternoon, John and Jared stood at a large workshop table inside the barn, talking about a plan for addressing the possibility of hostiles in the area. John decided, with Jared’s agreement, that if they were to simply strike out in the middle of the day, whoever was out there would be able to see them coming. If they waited until nightfall, their chances of slipping into the surrounding hills undetected went up exponentially.
After dinner they would sleep for three hours before leaving the property and conducting a basic nighttime patrol of the general area around the Thackers’ property. John would have employed Devon on this mission, but he and Jared had been in some scrapes together, while Devon was still a teen and lacked what John would have called grown-up initiative when it came to shooting a man who posed a threat. John didn’t fully discount Devon’s shooting of the man who just a few months previous had killed a friend named Ray.
What John was concerned about was how that shooting had affected Devon in ways not readily recognizable without some serious one-on-one time with a shrink. John couldn’t afford for Devon to realize he was unable to take a man’s life when it was time to do just that. Jared had killed, and although John knew Jared detested the act of stealing souls, John was sure Jared would do it if needed.
