Terms For Survival - John Reeves (readera ebook reader TXT) 📗

life depends on it." He looked into the boy's face for fear, but he didn't see it there anymore. John wondered if the kid had become weathered to the situation.
"I think if we keep moving in the direction we've been going everything will be fine." Samuel added to the conversation. "We're moving in the same direction as the old highway beyond those trees over there."
"Where does that highway go?" Patrick asked.
"It goes down to Billoxi, Mississippi. Down to the Gulf Coast." Samuel answered, and then thought about how strange it was that the boy didn't know that. All the kids knew that road when he was a child. 'Vacation highway' he remembered his dad calling it.
"Why do you think it'll be any better down there?"
"Well I guess I don't really believe that, but I hope it will be better there. Because if it's not any better, well it's the end of the road either way."
"What do you mean by end of the road?" Patrick asked.
"If we manage to make it that far, then we'll be lucky, and in no shape to go on any further." Samuel explained.
"But the food is plentiful down there, and we can recover well, if we make it that is." John added to their talk.

They continued to move through the rough southern Mississippi wilderness. When they'd come across an old house, or found a safe place they'd rest. There was a lot of distance covered between those places. Their feet and legs hurt them, they were physically exhausted, and yet they pushed on because their life depended on it. The terrain was rough, but there was a beauty about it that couldn't be described. The three of them climbed down into the reven, and then up the rocky draw.
"Hold it right there, and I won't shoot you before we speak." None of them saw the older man, but he was there with a double-barrel shotgun in his hands. He stood above them on the edge of the large embankment. They realized the man was alone, or so it appeared. They could have ran, or dangerously tried to overpower the single person.
"Hold it Sir, we are not Rebels, soldiers, or a militant group." John tried to explain.
"Who are you?" The old gentlemen asked.
"We're from Hendersonville. Our group was overtaken by hostiles." John answered quickly and honestly.
"Where were you three headed?"
"We honestly don't know." John said, and was trying to keep the man from killing them.
"This ain't no kind of place to be lost, that's for sure."
"Well we were headed to Billoxi, but couldn't find a way across the river." Samuel jumped in.
"No, since the bridge fell ten years ago people have stopped coming this way." The old man didn't want to shoot them. John and Samuel could see that he didn't, but Patrick was still unsure. He couldn't read the man like they could.
"You fellas look hungry. Since you ain't hostiles, why don't you come back here with me to my place." Harold Sanders hadn't seen anyone in a long time. John, Samuel, and Patrick, they didn't know what to make of the offer. All of them realized the old man could be walking them into a trap. They were also hungry, and the man seemed to be trustworthy. They talked it over for a moment, and then asked him to bring them some food back. They'd hide and wait for him to return, and they'd watch him come back.
Harold came back alone, and he had bread and vegetables. The three of them ripped into the food like a pack of wild dogs. "Now why don't you come back to my place." He again made them an offer. It wasn't yet dark, but the better part of the day had come and gone. They were hurting and exhausted. The food filled them up, but the truth was they were too tired to keep moving. They followed Harold back to his place. If it had been a trap, then they were giving in.
"I honestly don't know how you managed to make it this far, but you are the first people I've seen in two years time. That over there where you came from was a national park, but how you survived going through there now is beyond me. That group just north-west of there, that group up there are a bunch of cannibals. If they'd have caught you, then you'd have been eaten like an animal." Harold continued to talk as they moved along.
"Did you say cannibals?"
"Yeah, they've been there since right after the war. Food supply got low, and they took to eating their dead family members. Then they began hunting people out in the terrain searching for new land. People that know about them stay clear, but you guys were lucky just walking right through there."
"There were ten of us, but a group killed the other seven in an ambush. Maybe that was who killed our people." John explained to him.
"They live in an old school house, and your lucky to be alive. If you didn't see the old school house, a big building, then you're even more lucky. Because they hunt the surrounding area on a constant basis."
"What keeps them from coming to get you?" Samuel asked.
"The national park you guys crossed. See back in the old world I owned this entire piece of property, but now I'm forced out in the corner of my old land."
"Wow this is a nice spread." John said.
"It was very beautiful at one time, but not so much now. The weeds are tall, and everything is grown over. Time is cruel to everything." The old man said, as he walked them into the comfortable little house in the corner of the pasture.
The place was small, and not nearly as full of useless junk as John expected. The man kept a very nice place. There was an old wood burning stove beside some chairs.
"You boys are welcome to stay here and rest awhile. There's enough room there on the floor to make you a bed. It's got to be better than sleeping in the woods." The three guys took him up on the offer to recover.

That was all John wanted to do, recover and relocate. If his family were still alive, his son would be a grown man, and he couldn't be sure he'd recognize him or his wife. It was easier to just believe they died peacefully. He knew that he would never see them again.


6

John and Samuel were checking out the map. They'd stayed two weeks with Harold helping him as much as they could in exchange for a place to sleep and eat. There were many thing a guy his age couldn't do, but the things that he could got done routinely. The men were going to have to leave, and part of them didn't want to. For a moment they'd tasted their old ways of being free. They'd constructed a raft out of logs and rope from the Kudzu covered barn in the back of the field.
"The map says the river will take us right down the mouth of the Mississippi. If the raft holds up on the river, then we have a chance to make it out to the islands just off the coastline." Samuel pointed it out to John. The raft had been constructed down by the river, and was ready to be dropped into the water.
They were leaving behind a safe haven of sorts, and were again moving out into a violent and deadly world. When they departed they wondered if they just left their chance to maybe live. Harold was an old man, and he could have definitely have used them. There was a guilty feeling for abandoning him, but he'd made it alright before he met them. John thought that both had done favors, and that they ended everything on a square note. "We're better for having Harold." Samuel had told Patrick.
The river level was still high from two days of rain fall when they took off. They had poles and ores to help guide the vessel, which was holding up well in the swollen river. The three of them found no trouble in navigating the raft at first, but when the waters got rough it tossed them around. All of them were afraid of what nightfall would bring. They wanted to get as far as they could, and maybe try to dock the raft for the night. Guiding the vessel at night would be dangerous.
The river was moving swiftly below the well built raft. It was bounced and tossed around on the powerful rapids. Patrick was afraid and the other two men were more than concerned themselves. There were handles built into the raft for holding onto in rough water, and sandbags to help slow the vessel when needed. None of that helped them nine miles from where the launched. The raft hit a rock that sent it into a spinning motion, then it flipped in the rapid moving water.
It wasn't quite dark, but if they could have gotten the craft stopped, then they'd have taken a break for the night. None of them could see each other, and they all swam toward the riverbank. They were not close, but could see the trees off in the distance. That gave them something to swim toward as dusk fell on Mississippi. John and Samuel tried to find Patrick who couldn't swim very well. They were being swept down the river as they tried to swim to safety. It was farther than they thought, and they knew that Patrick couldn't have made it, as it was a test for two great swimmers.
John had made it to the bank, but there was no sign of the other two guys. He shouted for them, and searched for them, while also being careful of his unknown surroundings. He slept on the riverbank that night, and was searching for them with the morning sun. Unwilling to give up; he searched the day away looking for them. Then spent a second night in the remote wilderness. He was sad, because he had come to care for them like he'd cared for his family. The night was used getting it all registered in his head, and accepting that like his family they'd never be seen again.
When they hadn't comeback by the next morning John left without them. He thought about going the nine miles up the river to Harold's place. Maybe if they survived they'd try to go back and find it. John wasn't even sure he could find it. The river had moved and turned, and he wasn't even sure which side of the river he swam to. Harold's house could have been nine miles up the other side of the river. Maybe they'd swam to the other side of the river.
John moved carefully through the woods, and had found the local group's compound. He approached it carefully. As he got closer the place looked abandoned. Soon he realized the village had been wiped out. Nobody had been there for a long time. After checking out the land, he'd work back down to the river. There was still no sign of Samuel or Patrick. He was never going to see them again. He began to walk back up the river where he thought Harold's house was.
He was confused, afraid, and upset with losing two close friends. He knew their odds of survival were low, and he wondered how things could have been. It