Day 77
The danger looks like it's been diverted but the work of clean up will take days yet. No one slept much last night. The kids, happy to all be back together again were somewhat rowdy despite the danger outside. Well, all except for our two newest little ones who were exhausted and more than a tad overwhelmed.
Melody is nineteen years old and was a sophomore in the College of Nursing at USF when NRS came to town. She was immediately called to service when the Health Care Personnel Delivery System draft was activated. Luckily she was assigned to a local location and was able to fight her way back home after the Quarantine Order was issued. Her father, a Sergeant in the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department, never came home from work. Her mother died when she was 16 and her only sibling was a sister that had moved back home last year after her divorce became final. The little children, Belle and Trent, are Melody's niece and nephew.
Melody hasn't seen her sister since she simply got up a week after the worst of the rioting ended and walked out on them, leaving Melody the sole caretaker of the children. They quickly ran out of food and their neighborhood began to be overrun with zombies. Melody and the kids had been moving about trying to find a safe haven to hide in. Several times they thought they had found a place to stop only to be chased off by other people or forced to run when zombies became too numerous. It wasn't until they had arrived in our neighborhood that they had felt relatively safe. Melody had just gotten up the courage to come up to the gates and risk rejection again when a large number of zombies caught them away from the house they had been sleeping in at night. They had barely made it to our gates and Melody was nearly hysterical by the time they were in, fearing she couldn't convince us to at least take in the children.
She has been stalwart and calm most of today after we assured her that she and the children were welcome to stay in Sanctuary. Rachel, after giving them all a clean bill of health, urged Melody to allow Belle and Trent to play with the other kids while she took some time to be with the adults. We've been pulling bits and pieces of the story out of her all day long. She isn't much of a talker but will talk as long as others are willing to lead the conversation. She's fine, simply one of those people are naturally shy and reserved.
By moon glow during the night we noticed that ash occasionally floated down from the sky. The ash became heavier as night changed to morning. The smoke was so bad we moved the goats to the carport. Ol' Billy, Butch, and Sundance came to some kind of animal understanding that now was not the time to express their differences.
We had to cook on the grill on the lanai to keep ash out of the food, but we couldn't keep the smell of smoke out. I dampened sheets and hung them on the bamboo shades on the lanai and over the doors that were being used most often, but that only helped a little.
Breakfast as a huge casserole made from dehydrated has browns, powdered eggs, dried onions and green pepper, chopped spam, and powdered cheese. I cooked it in a large aluminum pan I found at the Sunset Diner yesterday. It needed to be browned on top and I would have loved to have some real cheddar, but no one complained. Belle nearly broke my heart when she asked if she was allowed to eat everything on her place or did she need to save some for later?
That simple question reinforced how fortunate we have been. Yes, we've had losses – three graves out in the orange grove prove it – but we are still incredibly well off compared to some of the survivors that are still roaming around out there.
All through breakfast I was in worry-mode and making a list of must-do's. After breakfast I finally needed to work off my worry. I covered the water barrels and asked that they be brought into the lanai. I then told Dante' I needed to requisition all of the sheets we had so I could cover the plants to keep th ash off of them.
James got Cease and David to help him set tarps over as much of the garden as they could. Scott set saw horses with 2 x 4's laid across them and ground in our hanging strawberry baskets and then started moving the rest of the potted plants, trees, and vines that we had been leaving outside. I harvested everything that even approached being ready in the landscape. Lunch and dinner was a grazing buffet. Rose taught Josephine and Melody how to make tortillas and they made enough to last us all two meals before they were through. I had Sarah, Laura, and Bekah scrub and chop and slice jicama, broccoli, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes. Becky and Tina helped by dicing a couple cans of Spam and making some easy dips like Spicy BBQ Bean Dip, Hot Crab Dip (used canned crab and processed cheese), and Ranch Dip Mix. To all of this I added some miscellaneous stuff like a jar of peanut butter, a couple of jars of home preserved fruit, end of garden pickles, watermelon pickles, a jar of relish and another of chow chow, and then a couple of cans of potted meat, deviled ham, and chicken salad. Wasn't the best meal I've ever fixed but it got the job done and we didn't have to do any more cooking.
After lunch I wanted to go gather what all I could from the trees and bushes in the neighborhood but Dixon nixed the idea. He was afraid the wind would change and send the fire in our direction. He did not want any of us to take a chance on getting caught away from our evacuation plans.
As it turned out I was glad I didn't get very far from home. The smoke was terrible. It was hard on everyone's lungs and eyes despite our masks and goggles. Plus it would have been too easy to get turned around and lose my way. Add to that the zombies were acting more strangely than normal and you had a potential recipe for disaster.
Taking my turn on watch I saw an amazing sight. I watched animals you didn't normally see out and about brazenly scurrying away from the direction of the fire. A lot of the wild animals climbed the fence near the canal to find refuge in the orange grove. Not all of them did of course. Most of them continued south, trying to escape the heavy smoke. Members of the silent procession would sometimes get too close to the zombies travelling in the opposite direction and got snatched up and devoured by a walking corpse. It was an eerie sight. A horde of zombies constantly streaming by, drawn by the sounds within the fire. Animals running the opposite direction for the very same reason.
Turkeys, peacocks and peahens, song birds, and hawks hid in the branches of the orange trees side-by-side with raccoons, opossums, and squirrels. Cease who had been up in the oak tree brought in a singed mother calico cat and two equally bedraggled kittens. Waleski, on his turn at the fence, slipped out and grabbed a little female pup barely limping along that Butch and Sundance fawned over quite a bit. I left all the new residents to the care of others.
I like animals as well as the next person but I just didn't have anything else to give right then and I'm worried about the additional mouths to feed. The goats can be fed on garden scraps and forage but dogs and cats are carnivores and the animal food found won't last forever. Scott caught me gazing down on Sarah with the animals and climbed up to the roof with a fresh bandana to use to cover my face with. We sat talking about our myriad of concerns while searching the smoke laden horizon for signs of flames, eventually being interrupted when Melody came up the ladder to join us.
"Rose said I should talk to you two," she started out but then seemed to get stuck.
Scott as direct as ever asked her, "About what?"
"We can really stay here? I know this is your real house. I mean your house from before. We can stay here indefinitely? I'll do all the work we need to get us a spot. I'm stronger than I look. I just need to know for sure," she replied hunched over like she expected us to have changed out minds.
Scott and I finally convinced her she and the children were indeed welcome and that nothing more would be asked of her than would be asked of the rest of us. Our enclave operates as a team and while we do have a hierarchy of authority of sorts, but each of us also has our individual talents and interests that we pursue as well.
She said, "in that case I should tell you that there is a big house over off of Vandervort Road that is full of that survival type food like you used at breakfast."
"What kind of food?" I asked.
"That stuff in those big cans and buckets. Some of it is beans but there's a lot of other stuff too. Powdered eggs, stuff called Alpine Aire, Provident Pantry, Mountain House and things like that."
Scott was suspicious and wanted to know, "How did you find this out?"
"Belle, Trent and I were in a little block shed next to the house when these scary crazy looking people showed up with this big black semi truck. They were dressed in khaki but they weren't real military guys."
"How could you tell?"
"My sister's ex was military. You can tell the difference between real military and people who are pretending. Besides none of them had the same type of khaki on. No one matched liked they would if they were a real unit."
"OK, then what happened," Scott prompted.
"The guys with the guns were pushing around some other people that didn't have guns and made them take everything out of the truck and into the house. It took them hours to unload it all."
When she seemed about to stop again I asked, "Are the men still there? Do you know?"
"Most of the people left with the truck and the other vehicles they were driving. Four guys with guns and two women stayed at the house. Something must have happened because several days later no one had returned and the six people they left behind started arguing and drinking. Then one night something must have really gone wrong because one morning when I woke up one of the women had turned zombie, the other woman was in pieces in the drive way, and two guys were shooting at other zombies in the yard. I watched for a while and the two men tried to make a run for their car but they never made it, one of those nasty ones came out of the bushes and fell on 'em in the car. I don't know where the other two guys went."
"But how do you know what's in the house?" I persisted.
In a quiet monotone Melody continued, "We were so hungry. Finally, after another day I didn't feel like I had any choice. Trent was getting sick and Belle, she had this awful look in her eyes. As quiet as we could we went over to the house. The women zombie had wandered away. The zombie and the two men had torn each other apart. There was blood all over the inside of the windows of the car. The side door where the guys had come out of was still unlocked. There was a lot of blood on the floor and walls inside the house and it really stank, but not zombie stink. More like septic stink. All I cared about was finding food for us as soon as possible."
She had stopped but this time began talking again without prompting and with a little sob said, "None of the fancy food does any good if you don't know how to fix it. Even if I had known how to cook it there wasn't a can opener to be found. I barely figured out how to work the MREs that were in the kitchen. There was about a dozen bottles of water and some granola bars too. It was like being handed the key to the city only to find they've changed the lock."
After another pause she asked, "Have you guys seen any cops? Any cops at all?"
"No honey, we haven't."
"Yeah, me either. I miss my dad. He would have known what to do with that food. He switched to desk duty after mom died so that he could work more regular hours and be there when I needed him to be. But they put him back on patrol during the riots. He came by the clinic to tell me to be careful and to give me a kiss. If he was still alive he would have come home. I just can't deal with the idea of him wandering around as a zombie."
Poor kid; she wasn't much older than Rose and sounded like she had led a pretty sheltered life until recently. She let Scott and I comfort her while she cried a bit and when she had cried all she could I took her back inside to Becky and Tina so they could put her to bed and keep an eye on her.
I asked Dixon and Matlock if they had a moment and asked them to come up to the roof. We got up there to find that McElroy and Cease had come to take over the watch. The six of us discussed Melody's story. McElroy needed convincing that it wasn't just that … a story.
I told them she didn't strike me as the type plus she waited until we were sure she and the kids could stay before telling us about the food. She could have used the food location as a bargaining chip, but she didn't.
Dixon said the black semi could have been a NRSC supply truck. They were all black and unmarked just like she described. One could have been found or hijacked. We wouldn't know for sure until we checked Melody's story out.
As the day worn on the smoke cut off visibility from 50 yards down to 50 feet. Sunshine was completely muted and being outside was like walking in a stinking fog. Small explosions could be heard every so often.
I didn't want to admit it but I was scared. Matlock had ordered enough vehicles prepared to carry us all in case the flames got too close. Throught out the day we monitoried which way the flames traveled. They zigged and zagged coming ever nearer. But, in the end the fire was driven west of us by a light breeze. We will stay on high alert for a few more days in case any flair ups occur.
Zombies wander out of the smoke with little warning. It's one of the reasons we have remained behind the fence. And now it is too dark to patrol. Tomorrow promises to be a full day. Two patrols are going out; one to assess fire damage and to see how close it really came to us. The other patrol would check out Melody's story. The rest of us will remain at Sanctuary and try and clean up the mess the smoke and ash has left behind.
