Terry gave Ken a hug: “That was close!”
Ken asked, “Do you think they were looters?”
“Might’ve been. Maybe just refugees. Whoever it was, that sure scared me.”
“Ditto,” Ken added.
They waited a few minutes. There was no sound of alarm in the camp. When they resumed their march, they paralleled the railroad for nearly a mile.
This necessitated crossing several barbed wire fences. After a while, they got good at it—not snagging their pants, and not leaving a trace. Ken always made a point of wiping off any mud clinging to the wire from their boots.
Despite their stealthy movement, they had a few unexpected scares. Twice, stray dogs darted across their path. They were gone even before they had the chance to react. Another time, Ken almost tripped over the feet of a man who was lying in a sleeping bag. The man had positioned himself with the foot end of his sleeping bag protruding into the trail. Either he was sound asleep, or dead. The Laytons didn’t linger to find out which.
They reached the banks of the Mississippi during a heavy rain—the first significant rain since they had left Chicago. There was virtually no ambient light. The railroad bridge was several miles north of East Moline. It connected East Clinton, Illinois, with Clinton, Iowa. Crossing the bridge was frightening. It was dark, the bridge was wet, and it hadn’t been designed for foot traffic. They knew that the chance of a train crossing the bridge was slim, since there hadn’t been any trains running in days. Nevertheless, the prospect of being caught in the middle of the long bridge had both Ken and Terry very anxious.
7. Wheat Berries
“The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.”
Durant, Illinois
Late October, the First Year
The rain continued and it was getting colder. The Laytons were cold, wet, and miserable. They realized that they were at risk of hypothermia. Three miles southeast of Durant, Illinois, they came upon a large silo complex that belonged to Cargill Corporation. It looked as if it was designed to hold millions of pounds of grain. It was one of the largest silo operations they had seen since leaving Chicago. Oddly, there was no one there.
They walked into an open-sided terminal building that was designed to accommodate eighteen-wheel grain-hauling trucks. They were just happy to be out of the rain. The building was dark and deserted. Most of the terminal building was set up with a complex arrangement of vertical silo chutes for filling rail cars and trucks. But one quadrant of the building was a pallet and front-end loader operation. Here, there were two large forklifts and a front-end loader parked, and enormous piles of bagged and loose corn ringed on three sides by six-foot-tall concrete retaining walls. They climbed over one of these and unshouldered their ALICE packs behind a tall loose pile of corn. Next to the back wall, the corn was just a few inches deep. There, they rolled out their sleeping bags and got out of their wet clothes. Terry was shivering, on the edge of hypothermia. They laid their clothes out flat to dry. Terry estimated that dawn would come in less than an hour.
At just after 8 a.m. they were awakened by the sound of a vehicle driving into the south end of the building. Peeking over the top of the containment wall, Ken saw that it was a Sheriff’s Department patrol car. But no sooner did the car arrive than they heard it leave. Ken and Terry gave each other shrugs, and then crawled back into their sleeping bags. Outside, the pouring rain continued.
They slept for most of the day. After they stopped shivering, they were comfortable. The building was quiet, except for the frequent sound of the flapping wings of pigeons. In the afternoon, they awoke and shared a meal. Ken began to methodically clean and dry their guns and magazines.
The sign hanging above the corn pile where they were camped was marked “Yellow Dent—Untreated—Super Tested.” Ken knew that dent corn was used for livestock feed and that hunters used it to attract deer. Since it was untreated, he also knew that it would be safe to eat. He added heaping handfuls of the corn to two of their water bottles and left it to soak for their next meal.
At just before 8 p.m., another patrol car arrived. This time, since it was dark, a sheriff’s deputy scanned the building with the car’s searchlight. The car was there less than a minute and then it left.
Terry was becoming feverish and the weather was horrible, so they decided to stay. It rained steadily. The pattern of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. vehicular patrols continued for the next three days. After that, the silo complex was completely deserted, save for the Laytons. They surmised that a shortage of fuel had curtailed patrols. Their only companions were a few pigeons, which Terry referred to as “our fellow freeloaders.”
Soon, the rain transitioned to sleet. That was followed by snow. There were snow showers for two weeks. Very gradually, Terry recovered from her illness. They assumed that it had been a flu. They spent many hours in their sleeping bags talking with their faces just a few inches apart. These conversations left them feeling more connected than ever before in their marriage. The precariousness and immediacy of the situation were enormous, but they felt calm and reassured to be together. As Ken put it, he felt “ready to take on the world, just as soon as the snow stops blowing sideways.”
Ken’s and Terry’s diet consisted almost entirely of corn soaked in water. They didn’t leave the grain pile except to gather water from a downspout and to relieve themselves in a “cat hole” that Ken dug with his entrenching tool, thirty yards out in an adjoining field.
While they were there, Terry discovered that she had lost her headset walkie-talkie, most likely the day before they arrived in Durant.
Three weeks after they arrived, the sun finally peeked through the clouds one afternoon. It was still cold but Terry was again feeling healthy. They decided to press on. There were six inches of snow on the ground, and it was deeper where the snow had drifted. They filled their packs with as much dent corn as they could hold. Ken also filled the cargo pockets of their pants with corn. They planned to eat that first.