Chapter 7
More and more the clouds thinned and the sun shown brightly on the wounded world. Storms still raged in places, but these were normal storms. Not the huge world storm that had generated the tornados, hurricanes and world wide flooding.
The land was changed, world wide. Entire coast lines were changed so as to be unrecognizable. California as seen from space was a burnt land. You could see the burn scar from space.
Australia which had previously been in a drought for some years, experienced such a deluge of water during the storm, that all its water tanks, reservoirs and lakes had been replenished to overflowing. Rivers and creeks flowed to flood levels. They too had deaths, numbering well over a million. But they would survive.
In space, the crew of the space station kept working. They studied the effects of the impact on the world. They monitored every known radio frequency they could monitor to see who was alive. They kept careful records of what they found. Contact was re-established with NORAD and files transmitted to and from the mountain complex.
On earth, people were trying to survive. Cities no longer provided services. In a lot of cases, the cities no longer existed. As the world moved into winter in the northern latitudes, people were desperate, and fighting for food and warmth was now the norm. Another few million died in that transition from civilized human to a survival of the fittest mentality. Slowly, the total human population died off from it's teaming billions to just a few hundred million. These still had the winter to survive and the disease that was to come in the spring.
Sgt Ballerton was recovering. He had Greg's brother's room to himself during his convalescence. He took to looking over the computer printouts of supplies on hand versus supplies used. Greg believed in having total accountability of his assets, which Sgt. Ballerton thanked God for.
He looked the printout over, and was worried about certain items. Well, Beef and hamburger was no longer a problem. However, eggs, bacon, vegetables were starting to concern him, as was milk. They had two cows, which produced over three gallons of milk a day, but with 21 people now at the lodge, that went quickly. There were not enough eggs to give everyone two eggs for breakfast if they wanted that.
So Mrs. Graso had gotten around that by having pancakes, or other items for breakfast. A couple days build up of eggs let everyone have them. They definitely needed to get more chickens from somewhere. Sausage, sugar, and salt were also starting to get lower than he liked.
Sgt. Ballerton again thought about the forethought that Greg and his brother had done, in order to survive winters in this mountain home of theirs. It was only the extra people here that was straining the resources of the house.
Winter was definitely setting in. It was colder, and snow, natural snow, not the freak of nature snow that had fallen before, was starting to fall. Sgt. Ballerton thought back to his recon. It was just as well that he had done that. He had gone, looked the situation over, and made a decision. As far as he was concerned, it was the only decision that could be made.
If this was just a few months ago, he would be in jail for his actions, at least until an investigation had been done. But there was no law. They checked the local radio and television stations daily, and no transmissions were heard or picked up. No transmissions were picked up by the satellite dish either. The telephone was still dead. At least the land line phone. Greg's satellite phone worked fine. It was a bright spot in the lives for everyone here when it rang.
Greg knocked on the door and entered since it was open and he could see the Sgt. Was sitting up reading.
"What can I do for you sir?" Ballerton asked.
"Everyone is curious about your recon, and what happened. So I thought I would gather everyone in the great room, and you could regale us with your exploits." Greg said with a grin.
"I'd rather not sir. It's sort of a private thing, you know?" Ballerton begged off.
Greg shook his head. "What you did affected us all. Call it a report, but be prepared to give it this evening after dinner."
Sighing, Sgt. Ballerton nodded and Greg left him to himself.
Later, after the dinner was over and the remains cleaned up, everyone gathered in the great room, and Sgt. Ballerton was given the nod to begin his story.
"Well, as you know, I went on recon a few days ago. I started well after dark, since the clouds are breaking up and starlight is starting to get through. I took it very slow, as I didn't want to work up a sweat in this weather, and I didn't want to run into any lookouts.
"I stopped every time I thought I saw something, and studied it with my starlight scope until I knew for sure it was not a person. It took me a few hours to make it to the top. I managed to scout out the area pretty easily, as there was no one really keeping a good watch.
"I spent the remainder of the night going over the terrain and exploring the surroundings. I accounted for ever person there. I saw where they had taken the cattle, and every single cow was dead. There was also a stack of human remains left in a sort of gully. I counted 17 bodies in that gully.
"I waited a couple hours until a couple of guys came out and started cutting into a cow with a chain saw. They were bragging to each other how many times they had raped someone, or beat, that bitch down. I knew it was as bad, or worse than I had thought.
"I probably should have waited, but I sneaked up on them, and as soon as the chain saw started, I killed the watching man, his back was to me. As soon as he was dead, I jammed my knife in the neck of the other man. These men were scum. I had watched as they beat a woman earlier, for what? I never knew. I had no mercy for these scum.
"So with two down, I still needed to know how many in all I had to deal with. I had counted 8 total by then. I was behind the diner when the door opened and one of the ladies came out. She had no coat on, and was not really dressed well. I later learned this was to keep the woman from trying to run. She started to drag a bag of trash to the dumpster when I stopped her.
"She was startled, but filled me in on how many people were inside. 8 men and 4 woman total. I asked her about guards and movement. We didn't have much time as she was called away, but she gave me enough information to know I had a good chance of killing a few more before they knew anything was wrong.
"A couple hours later, a guy came out, and I took care of him quickly. They really had no concept of security. I had to find the next man, as he came out the opposite side of the building I was watching. As it was, I was almost spotted by someone inside. A door opened, and someone shouted something. The man I was trying to locate outside yelled back and that spotted him for me nicely. It took me a few minutes to worm my way over to him. I won't say what he was trying to do, but it had to do with one of the bodies. I shoved my knife in his throat and told him to burn in hell's fire.
"Unfortunately, he managed to pull a gun and fired a shot. That alerted the others, and well, you know the rest." Sgt. Ballerton finished.
Greg looked over at Adam a few times during the sergeant's recitation, and he noticed tears in the boys eyes. He hoped this would help the boy with closure of some sort. A violent crime was a terrible way to loose your family.
Greg stood up and asked if anyone had any questions for the Sergeant. Not many had questions for him. Most accepted what he had to say. A couple did ask about the military aspect of the attack. After about 10 minutes of answering questions, no one else had anything to ask.
Tracy did ask why the Sergeant didn't just capture them. It was pointed out gently to her that we had no jail, or the man power needed to hold them. It was also pointed out most firmly by a couple of the woman that had been rescued that these were animals that had raped and beaten them, and killed all the men that were up there.
Tracy nodded and sat down. Mrs. Graso stood up and announced she would be making a huge pot of cocoa and it would be ready in 20 minutes, and left the room, wiping the corner of her eye.
With the rescue of the women from the top of the pass, they had inherited several large vehicles. Highway snow plows to be exact. Also a front end loader. Greg had hated to do it, but he had his access road cleared, and ran one plow down to the dam parking area and left it parked with a tarp over it's load of salt. One was parked by the barn, also fully loaded. The front end loader was parked behind the barn. The third plow was parked 10 feet short of the access road and pass road junction.
They had also moved several tons of beef to the machine shed for storage until needed. Also taken were all the sugar, salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard, flour, canned goods and frozen goods. All in all, it helped with the dwindling supplies that had started to worry the sergeant.
With the clearing of the road, Greg had a couple people drive back down the pass to as far as it was clear, and see if they could see anyone or anything moving, or tracks of any sort. So far nothing was seen moving. Spires of smoke or steam could be seen in the distance during the day, but the city remained dark during the night. This did not bode well as it was getting very cold now, and snow was starting to fall daily. Not much in accumulation, but a warning that winter was here, and getting ready to drop snow.
The next day, snow started to fall, lazily at first, but then more and more snow, until it was a heavy snow. It snowed all day, and that night. By the following morning, an additional 5 inches of snow was on the ground.
Ed was out with the pick up spreading his salt, and had been for a couple hours. Mrs. Graso had a huge urn of coffee made and had a pot of water boiling for hot chocolate. Greg went to the huge window and sipped a cup of coffee and watched the snow falling. It was nice to be warm and safe, but there was so much more to do.
Authors note no, this is not the end, so don't write asking me why I
ended it. Chapter 8 will be out soon. We still have a long way to go,
and people to get home from space, a crop to plant, etc. etc.
<grin>