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Day 2
It was a long night without any sleep. I couldn’t afford to be tired, just had to keep pressing forward. I walked slowly all night. There had been looters out down at the shopping center next to the train tracks. I followed the adjacent trail from down across the brook in the woods where I was hidden in the shadows. Other than a couple camping illegally in the state forest I hadn’t encountered anyone else. It was getting light out and I had to keep moving. The trail through the state forest came out on a main road which wasn’t too far from the school where Linda worked. I decided to take a detour there just to make sure she wasn’t there. Just then I heard a deafening noise. Five military type helicopters flew over very low and very fast. I crouched in the cover of the woods till they passed. The road was littered with cars in both directions abandoned in the road. I made my way across and down the road toward the school. When I got to the front gate that led up a long drive to the school I decided to skirt around a ball field and stay close to the tree line rather than walk the main drive. I hid my ruck under a pine tree and climbed the chain link fence that separated the field from the driveway. As I made my way up the final hill to the back of the hill I saw them. A dozen or so police in swat gear milling around outside the building. I also saw Linda’s car parked near the maintenance office where it usually was. There was no sign of anyone but the police. If she was still there I had no way to get her out now. I had to trust that she followed the plan we went over many times and took off for church right away. I made my way back, picked up my ruck and headed for the church. 

As I walked up the dirt drive toward the pavilion Linda saw me and came down to meet me. We threw our arms around one another and I gave her a big kiss. Boy was I glad to see her. We talked for a while and she told me all about her time at the school and losing power. She said the police showed up shortly after the power went off. They had previously set up a communications hub there with homeland security. All made possible by a grant from the Obama administration. They had a fiber optics link and an antenna installed on the roof. They had planned to use the building for an emergency management station in the case of just such an event. She told me that when she saw the trucks rolling in she just casually walked out the back door, got her back pack from her car and walked onto the ball field, and into the back yard of the closest house. She said it was an easy walk to the church and nobody tried to stop her. It was too soon after the event for anyone to even really know what was going on. Linda brought a co-worker with her. Gina was a young single woman who had just moved into the area and started working at the school. She was all alone with no family or friends to speak of.  When the grid went down and her car wouldn’t start Linda could see she was in a panic and just kind of grabbed her up on her way out the door. As we walked onto the pavilion I saw Pastor, Greg, and Aaron sitting at the picnic table. Gina and Kallie, Aaron’s wife who was three months pregnant were helping prepare the meal. Aaron junior who was eleven months old was in his Dads arms enjoying a bottle. I greeted the group and Linda introduced me to Gina. After the women placed the food on the table Pastor prayed a prayer of thanks for the food and for delivering me there safely. As we ate Pastor brought me up to our current situation and shared his concern for his family and Greg’s wife who were at their homes and cut off from us. Pastor only lived two miles away but Sadie, his wife who was babysitting three of their grandchildren had bad knees and didn’t get around too well. He knew she could not make the walk there. Greg’s wife was at their house in the next town over to the west. About fifteen miles away. Pastors first instinct yesterday was to walk back home. He knew Sadie and the kids would be safe there and had plenty of food and water for at least a couple days. He decided that they were all better served if he stayed and helped Greg work on a plan to gather them and Greg’s wife up and bring them to the church. Down in the garage under the pavilion was an old 1971 bluebird school bus. When Pastor was eleven years old he got saved at his home church in rural Ohio. He was a bus kid. Brought to church on that very bus through the churches bus ministry. He met Sadie years later in Bible College while he was studying for ministry. She knew the sentimental value he placed on that old bus and when the church was going to retire it to the junk yard, she bought it for one dollar and had it shipped on a flatbed out to our church where it was rolled off and placed in the large garage under the pavilion. A few of the guys in the church worked over the years with Pastor in an effort to restore the bus. It was probably about eighty five percent complete at this point. It did run and was even pulled out of the garage a couple times to work on it outside in the summer. Being as old as it was the EMP should have had little effect on it because of the lack of electronic systems used on vehicles of that era. However they were unable to get it to turn over and Greg reasoned that the EMP may have damaged the battery which was marginal at best to begin with. I told him I didn’t think the EMP would have any effect on a battery, but possibly being that it was connected to the truck wiring it may have been hit that way. I told them I thought I had the solution. I went to the garage and got a shovel and started digging at the base of the first fruit tree on the dirt drive. It didn’t take me long to hit the first pail. I pulled it out and opened it up. It was a thirteen gallon pail used originally to package chemical stripper we used at work on the floors. Inside was a new car battery which was fully charged when I put it in there about a year ago, three boxes of ammo for the mini fourteen and three boxes of 00 buck shot for the Mossberg. There was also a one hundred foot roll of 550 para cord, a knife, a leather bag full of tools, a flashlight, a package of Bic lighters, a feral rod and carbon steel striker to start fires with and several other useful items. We switched out the battery and the bus started. At first it cranked slowly and I was afraid the charge on the battery had been lost. Then it popped and fired up. Greg yelled out to keep it running because if it stalled out we may not have enough juice to get another go at it. Pastor was like a little kid in a fire truck behind the wheel of the bus. There was no way he was going to let it stall out. Inside the garage were five, five gallon cans of gas used for the mowers. Luckily for us Greg had just filled them at the gas station yesterday morning before the EMP attack. We poured four of them into the bus, saving one away on the side. It was decided that Pastor, Greg and I would go retrieve Sadie and the grandkids and bring them back to the church. That would leave Aaron there to oversee the security for the group. He was a hunter and experienced shooter. He had a couple rifles and a shotgun. In high school in Pennsylvania where he grew up he was on a shooting team at a local gun club and had won several marksmanship awards. Kallie, his wife was from northern Washington State and grew up with a Dad and Brothers who all hunted and shot guns regularly. She herself was certainly no stranger to firearms. It was now 3:30 pm and it was decided that we would make the short two mile trip to Pastors house to get Sadie and the kids and grab whatever supplies we could and come back. The trip to Gregs house was longer and would wait till the next morning. We didn’t want to be out there on the road at night. Especially in that old unregistered bus. Greg was disappointed that Lee would have to spend another night without him and was visibly worried about her. He knew waiting till morning was the smart move and agreed. It took us ten minutes to get to Pastors house about forty minutes to gather any supplies we could find and ten minutes to drive back to church. Gone just about an hour and we returned safely with Sadie and the kids, fifteen gallons of gas, three ten pound cylinders of propane, as well as four cases of water, six boxes of food and a huge pile of blankets , pillows clothing and medical supplies and toiletries. A very productive hour by any measure. After we unloaded the supplies from the bus it was just after five pm and we were hungry. The ladies had a fire going as well as a grill and something sure smelled good. Aaron and Kallie were the youth group leaders in the church as well as the musical directors. They had been planning a youth field day at the church for this upcoming weekend. For that event Aaron had purchased a bunch of ribeye steaks, a couple loaves of freshly baked Italian bread, and two gallons of homemade ice cream from a local dairy. He reasoned that we had no way to preserve the meat. He and Kallie made garlic bread, cooked the steaks over the fire and we had homemade butter pecan ice cream for dessert. That really hit the spot. We sat around the fire and discussed our situation. We decided that we would post a man on watch all night long. So far nobody has come onto the property but as time went on people would, no doubt become more desperate. Then there was the police staging at the middle school just a mile away. There was a bell tower adjacent to the pavilion. From the top one could see for miles in every direction. There was a platform enclosed to just above waist height on all sides and a panel on top which would keep rain off us fairly well. There were rungs welded to the tower itself with the lowest one being about fifteen feet off the ground to keep people from climbing on the tower. We had a ladder in the basement that would get us to that rung with no problem. Aaron went to his house and came back with a 30-06 with a scope and three boxes of ammo. He told us this could be used as the tower gun by whoever pulled watch up there. The pavilion was at the top of a hill on the property and we could clearly see the entrance to the driveway from where we were sitting. It was decided we didn’t need anyone in the tower until we all retired for the evening. Greg volunteered to take first watch, and we would rotate every three hours. We let the fire burn down and the last of the men went inside at about eleven pm. Aaron and Kallie moved Aaron juniors crib into their bedroom, giving the nursery/guest room to Pastor and Sadie. The grandkids shared the pull out couch in the living room which they just thought was the coolest thing ever. It was like having a sleep over Macey, the oldest announced. At age four, her whole life was one grand adventure. Linda and I took gym mats from the hall downstairs in the church and set up in the choir loft. At the other end of the church, upstairs there was a small one bedroom apartment which was used for visiting preachers and missionaries to stay while there. It was decided that Gina would sleep up there tonight. When Greg was done with his watch he would crash on the couch in Pastors office. We planned on getting up early and having breakfast and being on the road to Greg’s house just before dawn. I was exhausted, not having slept in thirty six hours and was asleep before my head hit the pillow.