The camp was replete with new, good quality gear. Spoils from the militia men who’d attacked them. It was too warm now in general for the parkas, but it was good to know they had them if needed. Max would bring one along in case the weather took a turn for the worse.
Even though he was taking the truck, Max didn’t want to rely on it for his gear. He had to account for the possibility that the truck wouldn’t make it, that he’d have to abandon it for some reason, or that it would break down. And for all Max knew, the roads would be impassable at some point. He needed to be able to carry everything essential on his back.
His food would mainly be pemmican, which he’d helped make over the last week. Pemmican was an old Native American food. It was made from dried deer meat and deer fat, combined together to form what was essentially a small meat cake. The ratio of fat to muscle was about one to one. No one could live on pure protein. Not for long, anyway, without risking what was known as rabbit starvation.
Water would account for the majority of the weight of his pack. If the journey took two days one way, like he was planning, he’d have enough in his pack. If it took longer, he’d have extra water in the pickup truck. If something happened to the truck, and the journey took longer, he’d have to rely on the water filter he was bringing with him. Of course that meant finding streams and sources of water.
It was a risk. But that was the way it was.
Max didn’t think too much about what he was trying to do or why he was doing it. As far as he saw it, he was just trying to help this kid who was stuck. No, he couldn’t save everyone. And he wasn’t going to try. But why couldn’t he try to do one good thing? Save one good person? Life wasn’t a philosophical debate. At least not the way Max saw it. He was just trying to do what he could.
There was other reasons for the trip. The main was that he’d get a sense of what was going on in the outside world. Dan, the kid from the radio, was located down past the Pennsylvania border in West Virginia. Max would have to travel along either back roads or highways, through towns and through suburbs. There’d be no cities on the way, but that was fine with Max. He already knew what had happened in the cities, and that was pure chaos and violence. There simply wasn’t any other way things could have gone.
But in the towns and suburbs, there were possibilities. Things might have spiraled out of control in the beginning, in the days immediately after the EMP. But now at this point the survivors in some areas might have started to organize, to rebuild things.
Max didn’t hold out any hope that the government had come back online, that things would ever come back to normal. From what he’d seen, things had fallen too far already. There’d have been some sign if the government was reorganizing.
But that didn’t mean small communities couldn’t have developed, started organizing.
If they were out there, these small communities, Max knew it would be to their advantage to seek them out. Long term survival was a different game. It was more than just fighting off the enemies. It meant really creating communities, growing food, building long-lasting structures. New problems. New challenges.
Trading would be essential. Despite the influx of gears and weapons from the dead militia men, Max knew that there were things his camp would desperately need if they were going to last in their location.
They’d need seeds for growing crops. Animals that they could domesticate. Max had hoped deer could be domesticated, but he’d asked Georgia about it, and she’d shot the idea down completely. “It’s simply not possible,” she’d said. “Deer aren’t like that, no matter how much you try.”
They’d need more medical supplies, too. And countless other things. Eventually, they’d run out of ammunition, no matter how much they had stockpiled.
That was why Max had been digging deer traps all day. The traps weren’t complicated. The technique was borrowed from a Native American tribe. Max had seen it in a movie once and then looked it up online to verify it. The idea was to dig a hole big enough for an animal’s leg to fall into, then line the sides with sharpened sticks. The animal’s leg would get stuck, and the more it pulled, the more the upwardly pointed sticks would dig into its leg. Some might call it cruel. But it was effective.
The only problem was they’d all have to be mindful of the traps. A human could fall in just as easily as an animal.
It was better to scout out the communities now, thought Max. No sense in waiting around until things got desperate. If everything was in chaos in the south, Max wanted to know it sooner rather than later. It would give him time to come up with contingency plans.
Having checked over his pack, Max closed it, cinching it tightly. He swung it around, shouldering it as he stood. His leg rebelled against the extra weight. But it would get used to it. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. Or hadn’t handled before.
Max found Mandy outside the tent, bending down over a large pack. Her hair hung down in curtains around her face. With one hand, she pushed some of her hair behind her ear.
“I see you’re getting ready, just like I thought you would,” said Max.
Mandy jumped a little, her hand instinctively going to the handgun she now wore in a holster at her side.
“You startled me,” she said. “I didn’t hear you coming up.”
“I figured I might as well just come get you,” said Max. “Rather than trying to sneak off myself and finding you stowed away in the bed of the pickup or something.”
Mandy flashed him a smile. “So you’re saying you want me to come along?”
“I’m saying I doubt I’ll be able to leave without you. So I thought I might as well make it easier on the both of us. Get it all out in the open. Is your bag all packed?”
Mandy nodded.
“You got enough food?”
“If you can call that pemmican stuff food.”
They said their goodbyes quickly. James, who’d been kept somewhat out of the loop, hadn’t known they were leaving until that moment. He almost seemed hurt that he wasn’t invited along. But Max assured him they need him at the camp. And it was true.
Then again, Max wouldn’t have left if he’d thought there’d be another attack like the one from the compound. They’d sent their men. Presumably their best. And quite a few of them. The men had never returned. That was a strong message. The compound only had so many men to lose, no matter what was going on with the leadership now.
John said nothing, standing off to the side. Only when they’d already turned, and were headed for the pickup, did John call out, “stay safe out there.”
Max turned and nodded. He held his brother’s glance for a moment.
“Aren’t you worried about them?” said Mandy.
“They can take care of themselves,” said Max. “And now that Georgia’s doing better, I wouldn’t want to be the one to try anything there.”
Mandy let out a little laugh that quickly faded away. They’d seen so much violence that it was hard to find things like that actually funny. At least that was Max’s take on it. The images of the injuries and deaths he’d caused never seemed to leave him.
The pickup truck was only a short ways from the camp.
They tossed their bags into the bed, where the extra water was. They got in and Max cranked the engine. He listened for a moment, making sure it sounded all right, before putting the truck in first and starting to slowly drive off.
“They think you’re crazy for doing this,” said Mandy.
“Then they must think you’re crazy too.”
“Maybe.”
They drove in silence along the bump unpaved road through the hunting grounds. It took them a good two hours before they hit pavement.
“Weird to see a road again,” said Mandy. “A proper road, I mean.”