Chapter 13

On arriving at the bunker, our two teenagers were still showing signs of awe. It was a shock to have lived in a rubble filled town, and then to discover that we had a sub way beneath all the ruin and destruction. We tried to ask the boys what they knew about those people in the fallout shelter, but everything was too distracting for them to follow a chain of thought. The biggest surprise was when the doors opened, and everyone was standing there to welcome us and our new members, a scream let out from one of the girls. I looked up to see Mandy Middleson running towards Fred, screaming out his name.

“Freddy, Freddy your alive.” she was sobbing when she collided in his arms. Only the fact that Greg was standing behind Fred and held him up, that Mandy didn’t knock him to the ground. It was then that I remembered the girl telling me months ago that she wanted her boy friend. At least there was someone that was reunited with a loved one, even if it was next to puppy love.

The scene was bringing tears to the eyes of the women. Nora was standing beside me with tears running down her cheeks. I looked around and saw that many of the women were doing the same thing. The good thing was, we had two new men to help with chores. It also gave the girls more of a choice. Course I couldn’t see Mandy sharing Freddy any time soon. Violet made a quiet remark that we were about to lose another virgin. From the way she was hanging on the young man, I had to agree.

After a good deal of hugging and exchanging news, the boys were marched off to the showers. In the light of the Bunker, the grime coating their bodies really stood out. Soap and hot water removed several layers of dirt. New clothes were laid out and when the teens finally came out of the shower, they had clean things to put on.

Dried and dress in our standard bunker clothing, the girls led them both down to the cafeteria and fed them. Dean wasn’t a stranger to the girls and had several clinging on his arm. The mood in the bunker was lifted to a new level. The joy that Mandy was radiating was reflected in the rest of us. It had been a while since we had this much happiness or excitement.

When everyone had settled down, and after the boys were assigned quarters, We brought them to the council room. There we set two bowels of Ice Cream in front of them, and began asking about their ordeal. Most of the questions were pointedly after information on who and where were the Bad Guys. The real question was how did they manage after the attack.

Fred and Dean had been doing some model building in Fred basement. Both boys had lost a parent to the flu and had been living with relaxed rules. Attending school wasn’t high on the list, as most of their friends no longer attended. Some having been taken by the flu and others stayed away, hoping that they wouldn’t get it. When the attack came, Fred’s mother locked them in the basement and possibly saved their lives. The ensuing weeks of severe cold weather, took other lives. Fred’s mother went out to find food and never came back. After all the food in the pantry ran out, the boys went foraging and continued to do so until we found them. There was problems right from the start, adults beat them and took what little they had. No one would let them in to any of the shelters. At first they just warned them to leave, and later were shot at whenever they encountered someone. The stores were quickly looted and then the fires started. The down town burned first, and then the residential areas began to catch fire. Most of the fires were arson, for whatever reason the boys didn’t know.

They found food in the homes, but then there came organized looting. And no house was safe as the gangs did a thorough job of searching every possible hiding place. So the boys went back to the down town area, and began holding up in the ruins. There everything had already been looted and burned. The only danger was from people passing through. At night they left the down town area and visited the local farms. Those were being savaged by the gangs too. Again they tried to join up with some, but were driven off. No one wanted extra mouths to feed, or any one that couldn’t bring a skill to the group. They told of bodies laying along the roads and seeing people being killed. For what reasons, they only guessed it was to take what little they had or just because they didn’t want them in their area.

Guns were an item, that disappeared. When they decided to arm themselves, they couldn’t find a gun any place. Even the police station was taken over and couldn’t be approached. They saw the boarded windows and barricades that fortified the building and knew it was too dangerous to approach. They spent their time constantly looking for food and trying to stay warm. Whenever they found a place that seemed safe they stored their finds and used it as a place to sleep and eat. Then without fail they would return and find it looted and their belongings stolen or destroyed. When we discovered them, they were down to only what they carried on their backs.

The ordeal of the boys didn’t look hopeful for our taking up farming. We would have to guard all our fields and crops. I wondered if we had enough people to do that. One attack upon us, would render us short on manpower, including women too. We just couldn’t risk losing even one member of our group. Yet our supplies were limited, and we needed to increase our larders. We would have to take the risk.

That night as we laid in bed, I asked Violet to snuggle up to me. She smiled and asked what brought that on? I was honest and told her how Nora and I had fought off the cold, and how I liked the closeness. It was moment or two before Violet replied, saying that she wasn’t that kind of woman that needed to snuggle. What she said next took me by surprise.

“If you want that, find someone and bring them in. I’ll understand.” she ended it with a kiss on my cheek. That left me with a lot to think about as Violet turned over and went to sleep.

Bringing another woman into my bed was okay with Violet, but what about the woman. It might be hard finding a woman that wanted to snuggle up, and have another woman sharing the bed. If I hadn’t been so fatigued I might have stayed awake all night, but I was soon asleep. Course it didn’t keep my dreams from including those thoughts.

With the dawning of the next day, Bill insisted that he be included with the next outing. He wanted to be in the nest checking out the Fallout shelter. It didn’t take a lot of figuring to know that Bill wanted to take some of them out, and wreck vengeance. We needed the man power but not a loose cannon going off and starting a war before we were ready. Bill said the only problem we had, was we were doing too much standing around and not enough killing our enemies. Even though he was speaking through clinched teeth we clearly all understood him. The sniper nest would be manned later tonight. For today, we would do some readying of our farm machinery.

Greg took our two new teenagers and headed off to the Equipment shelters. There he would get everything ready to move to one of the out laying farms. As yet we hadn’t made a choice. It would take a couple of days to check out which farms and how many we intended to Farm. Time was short and I knew we had to make the decision soon.

The first part of the day, we went over the satellite map of our area, looking at the local fields and trying to deduce what we could from the map. Bill was studying the area around the Fallout shelter, and had me point out the spot where we had the sniper nest. I told him that was so far just a name, not a fact. We hadn’t shot anyone, so it was a snipers nest in name only. I knew that we would have to let him man that position, or we would lose him and any use that he would be to us. I just hoped that he could restrain himself.

Dave told us that Shelly Ames was down loading another map. The satellite was back over us again. It would take several days before we had enough material for another large map, but when seeing the section I was pouring over, Dave had Shelly print out what she had so far. It was enough to show the east section of town and all the lands clear to the coast. Shelly only printed out a blow up of our town and the local area to the east. Taking the new section and studying it with our old map, we found several changes.

There was a compound in the first map, that showed some buildings with a fence surrounding it. It was a mile or two outside of town, and appeared to have several cars and trucks in the large fenced in area. On the second map, the fence was more pronounced. It had been thickened, and built up. The cars and trucks in the compound were replaced with trailers or motor homes. The buildings looked the same, but we could see evidence of traffic in and out of the large doors. The tracks led out to the road where they turned north and finally faded out. That told us the compound wasn’t paved and had a lot of dirt or mud in it. What they were doing there, we couldn’t tell. It was an area that needed an eye kept on it.

For the time being, I had two small maps of the East Compound printed out. One before and one after. I took them back to the council room and left them on the table for later discussion. Violet saw me put the maps in front of my chair and came over to peruse them. She asked what the maps were for and I explained I thought the East Compound was something the People in the Fallout shelter were connected with. I had other things to do and left her there going over the maps.

I was stopping at the cafeteria for a cup of coffee when Mandy found me. It was a good thing I had set my cup down before I was locked in a bear hug. Mandy had her arms thrown around me and was holding on tight, thanking me for bringing her boy friend to her. I didn’t say anything about my forgetting all about Freddy, as she called him, but just enjoyed the gratitude. I did managed to squeeze out a Your welcome. She let me go and again thanked me for finding him. I did explain that it was just dumb luck that we bumped into them.

“You could have left them out there, but you didn’t. You brought them in. Nobody else would have.” She gave me a peck on the cheek and then left me to my coffee.

It was nice, that peck on the cheek. I was feeling pretty good about that, when Donna slid into the chair beside me. “You did a good thing, bringing those boys back. Cut into your harem though.” She smiled at me.

“What harem?” I chuckled to myself. “If it wasn’t for Violet, I’d be a monk.” Living with all these women, and only Violet showed an interest in me. I was aware that she had informed the Bunker to leave me alone, so I would have a clear head for running things. Her sleeping with me was just so I wouldn’t become frustrated and consumed with sex on the brain. I had to admit, so far it was working. Almost. I still remembered the feeling of Nora laying with her arms across me. Even though it was just to stay warm in that cold basement, it was a feeling I would gladly go through everything just to have it again.

“You could have one if you wanted.” Donna was looking me in the eye. I sipped my coffee as she talked. “Violet said for everyone to wait until we left the Bunker. Were getting ready to do that aren’t we?”

My thoughts were racing ahead. Sure it seemed like Donna was asking as if she wanted to be included. Over the years, I’d learned that women liked to lead a man on for more then one reason. Sometimes it was to start a relations ship, and other times to achieve some information that had nothing to do with sex. I didn’t know where this conversation was going so I just played dumb and gave general answers.

“Were not leaving the Bunker, just yet. All were going to do is start planting some crops and try to take care of them. It’s going to be a while before we leave the bunker completely.”

“Well, when we do, and you want to start your harem...”She paused and then added. “Don’t look at me.” With that she got up and walked away.

“You were first on my list.” I said to her retreating figure. It was like I suspected, she was just wanting to put a dig into my side. Women like her had come into my life several times in the past, and I found that the less I had to do with them the better. My coffee still tasted good.

Late that afternoon, Violet called everyone into the council room. She passed a written piece of paper around for us all to look at. When it circled the table and came to me, I saw that it was a letter addressed to whoever was in the Fallout shelter. In a nut shell it stated, that if any of them wanted to join their group, they were to leave the shelter and gather in front of the old Waller Ville theater. There they would meet with them and discuss terms. A time was set for the meeting, two days from now. Violet said it was to give them time to think. It was one way of acquiring more help. The women all thought it was a good idea. Better give them a chance before just attacking and wiping everyone out.

Bill wasn’t for it and said so with a disgusted shake of his head. “Were just wasting our time with this. I saw how much they wanted to join us. You won’t get one person from that shelter to join us.”

“We have to give them a chance.” Donna spoke up, she was sitting across the table from Bill and glared at the both of us. So far I hadn’t said a word but I was closer to Bills thinking then Violets.

“All that letter will do, is give them time to plan something for that meeting.” I put my two cents worth in. “I’m not really in favor of setting up any sort of meeting. We either find out what they want on our first contact with them, or not. Let’s not give them enough rope to hang us.”

“Your too absolute, Mr Johnson.” Donna slammed her words at me. “There are other ways of dealing with people, then just ramming head on. You are not god, you don’t have the right to decide for yourself what is to become of these people.”

“I’ve said it before, there are no rights anymore. We decide what is best for our people, not some destroyed court house in Salem or Washington DC.” Pretty as she was, I was regretting that I didn’t kick her ass out along with Carl.

The arguments went back and forth for several minutes, but time was short and Violet wanted her message delivered tonight. The next thing that happened was a vote. That surprised me, as we had never voted on anything. In the past we discussed the issue and came to a decision that we could all agree to. It never was entirely what everyone wanted, but it was something we could agree to. This time it was different. We didn’t agree to any of it, but a vote was called, and the women voted overwhelmingly to send the message and hold the meeting.

Greg could see the good points of having a meeting, if it saved us a blood bath. “ Besides” he told me after he volunteered to deliver the message, “we might get some good help out of there.”

I didn’t see it that way. Bill and Marla had tried contacting them in a peaceful way and were almost killed because of it. Okay, so I did want to hit them head on. I just didn’t want the lesson we learned the first time, to be wasted. More than that, I was angry with Violet springing a vote on me. Hell I was the head man, and it should have been up to me, whether we voted or not. I didn’t think the women and girls had enough smarts to know what they were doing. Now Greg and I were going to deliver a message that could set us up for a very bad experience.

I saw Violet by herself shortly before Greg and I left to deliver the message. What I had to say wasn’t very nice. Perhaps I should have waited until I cooled off, but I didn’t. I jumped her about calling that vote, and asked her if she was now head man. She cocked her head, giving me the look that said, I’m going to explain something to you. What she did say, was that She’d been Head Man for quite some time. After all, who was running the place? Well, that was probably true, but it was the wrong answer to give me. I grabbed my gear and headed out.

Despite being angry, I kept my cool and moved cautiously towards our nest. I expressed my views to Greg that he basically agreed with, but thought we should go along with what everyone decided. It was the democratic way after all. We didn’t have much time to talk as we were soon out of the Lift and through the bank. The night was young, and not as dark as we needed. We had to hug the walls and the shadows as tight as we could to keep from being a silhouette. We’d spaced ourselves yards apart and moved slowly along. Lifting our feet and softly putting them down before shifting weight on to the foot. It was slow, but it kept us from making a sudden movement, and attracting someone’s eye.

Even after we left the street and moved into the building where our Sniper Nest was waiting, we continued our careful transit. We scanned each room and everything that was in it. The night vision goggles were wonderful, and we could see every nook and cranny. I looked hard checking anything that could hide another sniper, waiting for us to arrive. I kept it well in mind that the sniper nest had been unattended for a whole day. It could have been discovered and a surprise might be waiting for us. The deeper into the building we went, the less light our night vision goggles had to work with. Oh how I wanted to turn on the infrared switch and light up the room, but I knew there was a good chance it would give us away. There was always that chance when using the infrared. It was good in total darkness when there was no light at all for the night vision to collect. It was while I was fighting off my urge to use it, when I saw a faint gleam. It seemed to be in the air, just a few feet off the ground. It was only there for a second, and then gone. I was in the lead, and put a hand out to Greg, stopping him. I slowly moved my body back a few inches and saw it again. A thin line of reflected light off something strung across my path. I looked for the source of the light that was reflected off the fishing line in front of me. Then I saw a broken piece of glass that was angled just right for moon light to beam across my path. It lay clear across the building, a window smashed and laying on the floor. Just enough to send the faint moon light to save my ass.