Dan and the Bottle Ch. 19

Caleb was soon working as a 'wood prospector', helping to bring in dozens of cords of firewood; Jeanine went to work in the kitchen, helping to dry or can some of the fruit and vegetables from the nearby fields, and both, of course, spent time at the rifle ranges, having their skills carefully assessed by numerous trainers. Caleb passed, though just barely, and was assigned a thrice-weekly training schedule, with a rotating group of instructors, so his training would be well rounded.

Jeanine, on the other hand, though she'd been called a 'natural' by some of her peers back in Kansas, would be starting from scratch; her understanding of the concepts of bullet drop and wind drift were practically non-existent. Within six months, though, she'd nearly be ready to start teaching classes of her own.

After work on her first day, she was knocking on her neighbor's door, to ask where to go for kitchen utensils, pots, and pans, silverware and plates, coffee mugs and glassware, and all the other little things she hadn't thought to bring along.

Cassie threw a semi-sheer robe on over the nearly transparent nighty she was wearing before opening the door. She and Doris had been fooling around a bit before fixing dinner, so she still had a bit of flush to her cheeks and there was the definite aroma of sex in the air, but there was nothing she could do about that, and the fact that Doris was under a blanket on the couch left little doubt as to what they had been doing.

Cassie let Jeanine in, showed her to a seat at the kitchen table, and ran off to the bedroom to get dressed, leaving Jeanine and Doris to a conversation best described as 'awkward'.

Doris was a little amused by the younger woman's discomfort at her apparent nudity, under the blanket.

"So how are you and your hubby getting along, blending in with this place?"

Jeanine looked down at the blanket, not meeting her eyes. "Well... we ain't married.... we're doin' ok, I guess. The people at the kitchens are nice. They let us all take home a jar or two of whatever we're canning for that day, so our pantry's filling up quick. I need to get some more cookin' stuff, though. I've only got one skillet, and two sauce pans.... I need a few bigger stewpots for spaghetti and whatnot."

Cassie came back into the room in jeans and a warm sweater, smiled at the girl's obvious discomfort, and said "Are you ready, hun?"

At the thrift store, she looked over the younger woman's list and led the way back to the kitchen aisles, and had soon collected everything, adding a few things that weren't on her list, but should have been, then, after the clerk took the cost of those things off her passbook and called it in to the accounting office, ran her over to the grocery store, where they spent a considerably longer time stocking up.... the butcher's area had some fresh venison steaks and ground buffalo beef, which both women bought a few pounds of, and Jeanine bought a bunch of small jars of spices, which she hadn't thought to bring along from Kansas.

When Cassie stopped in the apothecary, Jeanine was surprised to see her new friend ask for, and recieve, two big one ounce bags of different types of marijuana.

"They just sell it, in the store here?"

Cassie nodded. "We've got some Jamaican growing in our garden, but we don't have any of the Hawaiian or the Dutch... Mickey likes a little variety, and we'll get enough seeds from these two to start some growing next spring."

"Well, ok, but... I mean... isn't that illegal?"

Cassie grinned. "Honey, we did away with that kinda crap a long time ago. Those kind of laws are as pointless as laws against certain forms of sexuality, or those that say you can't defend yourself in your home. You can't dictate against human nature... you can try, but it won't work."

The younger woman thought that over while they loaded up the truck and headed back.

"So it's basically anything goes, huh?"

"Well.... not Anything.... I mean, if a woman... or a man, for that matter... got caught trying to have sex with a horse or something, we'd likely laugh them right outta town; but if, say, two women want to make love behind closed doors, what business is it of anybody else?"

"Uh.... is that what you and Doris were doing when I came over?"

"You betcha! She's one of the best lovers I ever had!"

"WHAT!!!!"

Cassie grinned. It was nice to see she could still shock someone from time to time. She nodded. "Honey, Doris, Mickey, and I have been lovers for years. We started out as best friends when we were kids, and it just kinda grew from there. We've known each other all of our lives. She's the best pussylicker I've ever known..... even Mickey can't keep up with her. He's better at straight out fuckin', of course, but Doris is pretty good with the strap on."

"Strap on?!?"

"Sure.... we got it out of the adult store, back home.... we use that thing maybe two, three times a day. In a few ways, it's better than a man... it never goes soft, never has a headache, never cums, it's always ready to go.... "

"Sounds like Caleb." Jeanine said with a smile.

"Really? Maybe we should invite you two over for our next party."

By now Jeanine was showing enough color in her cheeks to give a ripe tomato a run for it's money.

"Party? What kind of party?"

"A few times a month, we have a few friends over.... we have some dinner, light stuff, sandwiches and whatnot, then some drinks, a little smoke, some music, and... well... things get a bit out of hand from there. Everyone has a good time... and some of the best sex I've ever had!"

"What! You have sex with other people?!"

"Sure, hun. We're all friends, and we all trust each other. We have a good time together, and it helps to strengthen our friendships. Tell ya what... BJ and Jeff are coming to visit next week... they're friends of ours from the old city we used to live in. They originally came from one of the villages our army helped to free. They moved to another small town, about thirty miles from here. Why don't you and Caleb come over while they're here, party with us for a night. If it's not for you, no big deal.... if you like the idea, hey, the more the merrier. Mickey promised he'd be back by then, too, so you'll get a chance to meet him."

"Well.... let me talk to Caleb about it...."

At the small base in northern California, Bergen's crew was working overtime, setting up more than three dozen big log homes for the troopers to spend the winter in. It didn't take long, considering how many people he'd sent down, and it would make a good staging area for expansion into the area; still, setting up the water tower to catch rainwater, the purifiers to handle the volume he expected the base to need, the windmills to provide enough power to keep the lights on, and all of the other little things kept them all busier than a three legged dog in a roomful of cats. Just moving in the equipment they needed to set up the farms to keep them supplied with food had taken nearly a week, and half the fields weren't cleared yet.

As they moved more people in, though, the workload got lighter, and the nearby woods yielded up enough deer and small game to keep them in fresh meat, easing the burden on the Cave supply choppers considerably.

The new base grew until there was no longer room for the airstrip, and that had to be rethought completely; it was eventually decided to risk putting it outside of the perimeter fence.

Elsewhere, crews of scavengers were deployed all over looking for anything the new base could use... solar panels and woodstoves were particularly prized, followed by any kind of scrap steel and iron that could be melted down and repoured into sheets for re-use. It was decidedly crude, but strong enough for their purposes.

Eventually, of couse, an entire small town grew up around the new base, spilling over into the surrounding countryside. It, too, consisted mainly of small, log homes, and these, too, were connected in to the base's power grid, even as more of the wind and water mills were being brought online. The local creek was used for some of these, and proved to be more reliable than the windmills.

The final touch was the cattle drive; two hundred head of beef and dairy cattle were driven from Montana to California, starting on a day in the late spring, just after the final thaw... it would be mid-summer before all the stragglers were rounded up and moved into the several huge pastures, and again, Chinook helicopters were kept busy, bringing in hay by the tons to keep the cattle alive while the field clearing continued.

Large areas that had once been dense forests were cleared of stumps and underbrush and seeded with heavy concentrations of fast-growing grass seed, while younger trees were dug up and replanted in clusters as windbreaks, places for some of the cows and bulls to hide from storms in.

Jimmy McKay cursed, wiping the sweat from his eyes as he drove the small ATV through the pasture.... he and five of his friends had drawn the 'cow pie' detail.... driving back and forth through the miles of pasture land, towing trailers, shoveling piles of cow shit up for the compost piles that would eventually fertilize the farms they got their food from.

He knew who had come up with this bright idea, and in fact, knew, deep down, that it would, indeed, jump start the compost piles; he also knew that old man Smithers had put his name on the list of 'volunteers' because the old fart had caught him in the hayloft, trying to get into the old man's daughter's pants. What the hell, they were both better than twenty years old.... wasn't Genie old enough to make her own decisions about that?

John Davidson and his crew of trader/spys were back, from an extended trip to the east... they'd gotten as far as western Tennessee, and had found many small pockets of survivors.

They had also spread rumors of the militia 'army' that was raising hell across the west, turning Chinese bases back to American use; this, he knew, had not fallen on deaf ears.

In northwestern Kentucky he had run across a young man named Seth, who made the smoothest moonshine he'd ever tasted. The younger man, it turned out, was also already at war with the neighborhood Cubans, so he wasn't troubled about trading two hundred rounds of .308 ammunition for a gallon of the potent, clear whiskey. He also traded four copies of the Ranger's handbook for a short stack of furs, mostly rabbit and beaver.

The furs would be traded again, in southern Ohio, for two small kegs of reloading powder.... which would, eventually, be traded in northern Nebraska for a still good M1 carbine, three thirty round magazines, and fifty rounds of ancient army surplus ammunition.

At every stop along the way, he would talk in quiet tones to the leaders of the communities about the push to banish the communists from the country... and his words were generally well received.

In a small town in Nebraska, they were scavenging for fresh trade goods... needles, thread, lawn and farm tools and the like, when their geiger counters started registering elevated counts.... they were only a hundred miles from a place once known as Omaha, which, according to the old maps, had taken a real pounding during the war. They retreated quickly, giving the place a wide berth to the south. Putting distance between themselves and that place, they had made a beeline for the main base, back at the Cave.

Doc Mason came into the room where Davidson waited, hoping his hair loss was from middle age and not from what he and his team feared the most.

"Well, Doc, what's the verdict?"

Mason looked up from his clipboard and frowned. He didn't much like being called 'Doc'.

"Well, I have good news and bad news...."

Davidson's face fell.... "Ok, what's the bad news?"

"Both you, and, indeed, your entire team, have gotten some degree of radiation poisoning."

The trader's face fell further.

"So.... what's the good news?"

"You got out of there in time. You're still treatable. We can eradicate most of the radiation poisoning from your blood... but your days of trading are over. We've learned a lot in the past hundred years or so, but we haven't found a definitive cure. You can't go out like you used to.... there's too much chance you'll pick up another dose... and any more will be fatal. You'll have to find something else to do, as will most of your men."

"Well, shit... and here I was just starting to get good at it!"

He and his team spent the next three months in treatment, including massive amounts of dialysis to clean out and replace his blood with new blood and a saline solution, and big meals that he, at first, had little appetite for. That changed, for the most part, when one of the younger Doctors suggested he start smoking a few joints a few hours before every meal; a prescription he soon found to be the high points of his day, so to speak.

When Doctor Mason found out, of course, he was furious at first... but he couldn't argue with the results; John, and, indeed, his entire team, were once again eating full meals and putting on weight.

John never did get his hair to grow back, though.

In the meantime, he spent his time training new teams to go out; what areas to avoid, and where to find a warm, or at least a cordial, welcome. He also told the team leaders, after swearing them to secrecy, where to go to find those villages where they were quick to offer their daughters for breeding purposes.

Glen McGuire was back where he belonged, at the controls of one of the big Chinooks. His two escorts--a Huey Cobra and a Blackhawk-- were keeping pace as they made their way to the California base, hauling a load of fresh livestock--chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and ducks, along with an extra twenty barrels of gas. The extra eleven hundred gallons would be enough to refuel all three of the choppers and still leave a surplus for the base itself, which would come in handy for them, considering how much they went through in an average week. Chainsaws, portable sawmills, and woodsplitters alone went through better than a hundred gallons a week, though this would taper off, once they'd built up a suitable sized stockpile of firewood.

Mike Stanton sat back in the bucket seat of the old truck, on his way from the refinery in Colorado to the new base in northern California, with his 'fighter escort' of three Humvees and four guys on Harleys. He knew they were seriously vulnerable... the small tanker he was driving carried over thirty five hundred gallons of high octane gas, and the trailer behind was full of diesel fuel. So far, they'd had a smooth trip, but that could change in a heartbeat, and it only took one tracer round....

He shook himself, trying to will away the nervous thoughts. No point in borrowing trouble.

Don Anderson sat back in the passenger seat of the old Ford pick up, still trying to wrap his mind around the idea of a Militia base up by the Oregon border. He wasn't sure how he felt about it; he had, after all, been assured that his Wyoming counterparts had no interest in moving out this way.

Now here they were.... and they'd built an entire base, with a surrounding town, which he was assured was for training new troops and to offer his own people support and backup. He didn't even have enough new recruits for his own base, at the moment!

Still, he had to admit, having an extra thousand people at his disposal would be a good thing... and having a new base for training couldn't hurt either, considering the experience of the people involved. He knew his people had a lot to learn, and these were just the people to give them those lessons. So for the time being, he decided to hold his piece and see what unfolded from here.

When they got to the new base, he was astounded by what he saw.... two big, two story log buildings seemed to anchor a long line of smaller ones, though even those were huge.

Across the dirt street stood another line of buildings, these made of what appeared to be gray cinderblocks, with signs identifying some of them; water treatment, power regulation, sewage treatment, armory, supply, and others.

He was startled, as he got out of the truck, by the sound of gunfire. He looked over at the driver who had brought him here, Greg Collingsworth, raising an eyebrow, who answered the obvious question.

"Target practice, for your first class of new recruits. Locals, mostly, from a village about five miles west of here. One of our advance teams found them, the day after you and I met, in fact. Some Chinese soldiers were giving them a rough time, and our team took them out and handed their weapons over to the members of the community they had been bullying."

"So you guys stepped in."

"Well, not at first, no. We had to establish this base, first, and build up the systems. We've housed most of them here, since then, started their training and put them to work planting crops and taking care of the cattle and whatnot when they got here. They're actually working out better than we'd expected. They should be ready to join up with your people in about two months."

"How many are there?"

"Thirty two. About half of them are going to make decent snipers, and I think four or five are going through flight training, too."

"But.... we don't have any planes!"

"Not to worry.... we have a few extras we can give you. Choppers, too, for that matter. We've got more than we know what to do with. Some of these folks are going through mechanical training, too, so they'll know how to fix the planes, the trucks, and the armor we're bringing down."

"Armor?!"

Collingsworth nodded.

"Our city is getting a little overcrowded, and we have plenty of drivers and crews for our Abrams and Bradleys, so we figured we'd send a few down this way. They're in transit even as we speak, along with a few fuel trucks. I'm surprised Commander Corcoran hasn't already talked to you about all of this. I know he said he wanted to see if you were ready to take your group to the next level."

As they were sitting in the mess hall, drinking cups of coffee, a sinister looking black car, with a bullet like nose and a big wing on the back, pulled into the parking lot out front, and a man in tiger-striped fatigues got out, hitching at his pistol belt and heading towards the door.

Though he showed no badges of rank, he carried himself with an air of quiet authority, and the hints of gray at his temples spoke of his age.

Men and women in uniform saluted him; some, who didn't recognize him, almost did so automatically, while those who knew him did so out of obvious respect.

Collingsworth rushed to the door, opening it for the older man. "Commander Archer! Good to see you, Sir!"

"Greg... how's the wife?"

"Oh, same as always.... mostly pissed at me for staying away so much, but happy as hell when I take a break and head home for a few weeks, you know how it goes, Sir. May I present Don Anderson, Sir... head of the California Militia."

Don took note of all the 'Sirs' Greg had tossed out while addressing the older man, and his almost reverent tone while he did, and reacted accordingly. He saluted first, then held out his hand. "Sir.... Welcome to California."

Archer returned the salute and took the proferred hand, shaking it twice and saying "Mr. Anderson. Let's forget about the salutes... I'm retired, for all intents and purposes. Just wanted to take a ride down, see how operations were shaping up down here. Looks like Frank's crews did their usual exemplary job."

"Yes, Sir.... we're already training new recruits for Commander Anderson, here, though he didn't know about it until today. We should double the size of his force in another couple of months."

"Impressive. The armor you requested should be here tomorrow... I was traveling with them, but they're a bit slow, and the old Superbird isn't happy unless it's going fast."