Interrupted Journey

Chapter 2 - Meeting with Mike and Laura

I hurried into the barn and was surprised to see that the team had stacked bales of hay and pulled a tarpaulin over them to make a smaller room in the middle. The equipment and stores that normally just lay about the place had been stacked neatly to the side.

"Knock, knock!" I said as I approached the tarp-covered gap in the bales that served as a door.

"Come on in!" Laura replied.

As I pushed aside the tarp and walked in, the scene I encountered was surprisingly comfortable. The large number of bodies in the small space were keeping it reasonably warm and people were sitting on hay bales. Laura was showing Kat how to hold one of the pistols and, across the room, Jimbo was admiring his new rifle. If challenged, he'd have claimed he was inspecting it but in fact he was just admiring it.

Samson was dry shaving himself with that huge knife he was in the habit of carrying. I flinched at the sight - how sharp was it? At least that explained how, in a world where men were becoming increasingly fuzzy, he was managing to keep his head looking like a billiard ball!

"Hi there!" Laura said as I walked in. "What's up?"

"Is Mike about?"

"He's out on patrol with Gary," she answered. "He should be back soon. Can I help?"

"I'm trying to get a feel for where we stand and what we need to do from here..." I told her. "What we've got... what we need... how to get it..."

Laura reached over her head and passed me a clipboard with a sheaf of papers attached. "This might help," she said.

I started skimming the pages; it was a list of the supplies that we had brought with us. "That looks like a great starting point," I said. "How many man-days of food?"

"About three hundred, full combat calories."

"About six weeks then," I mumbled. "Probably the same up at the farm... and we should be able to double that by stretching things with sheep and eggs and so on... six to nine months and we'll be starving."

"Unless somebody decides they want to take it off us," Samson observed from across the room.

"Or we gain any extra members..." I countered. "Whichever way you slice it, it's not going to be enough."

I sat down on a bail and started to look through the notes in more detail as I waited for Mike to return. "One thing we don't have to worry about is ammunition," I commented when I saw the numbers which had received a significant boost thanks to Jimbo's freelancing.

"Don't bet on it," Samson responded.

"We'll burn through that in a couple of minutes of serious combat," Laura added.

A short time later, Mike and Gary reappeared, letting in a gust of wind as they opened the barn doors.

"You're on, Jimbo and Kat," Mike said, dripping water onto the floor as he removed his raincoat and overtrousers.

"How is it out there?" Jimbo asked.

"Just delightful!" Mike answered. "It's not as bad as it was but it's still chucking it down."

"By the way," he added, as the two prepared to move out, "One of the farms down the lane has got a couple of lads standing by the gate with shotguns. You might want to avoid startling them."

"What's up?" he asked as he wandered across and sat on a bail across from me.

"I've been doing some thinking..."

"Dangerous!"

"And we need to get some plans together for the medium term. Things like organising some proper military training for James and me and maybe some of the others and...to be honest, I'm not really sure what questions to ask..."