Home Fires Burning (Walking in the Rain Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

waited, patient in the way I had learned on the road.
    “Sorry about Uncle Gary.  He’s a pain in the ass, always has been.  He’s just gotten worse since the lights went out.  Worried about his son, Glen, I guess, and that’s gnawing at him.”
    “Where’s his son?”
    “Branson.  I think that’s what has him all riled up about you.  His boy is in his mid twenties and physically fit, so he’s got to wonder if something happened to him out there.”
    That could definitely make you crazy, I realized.  I was constantly worrying about my own family, and I’m sure they were worried about me as well.  Except for my sister, of course.  At thirteen, she was a bit self-absorbed and probably only noticed my absence in the evenings when she had to do both our chores.  Then I realized how childish that thought made me feel and released it.  My childhood was gone, and everything in this new world required me to become a man and act that way.
    “That could do it.  I’m sorry I lost my cool, but after being out there…”
    I made out a vague motion that might have been a nod.
    “I think I might understand a little.  The first time I came back from deployment, I was a bit lost in the world.  Nobody shooting at me, for one thing.  I had to remember how to walk across the street without running, and things like that.”
    I thought about what Nick was trying to say.  Once you lived in constant danger, then readjusting to the “real world” must have been a struggle.
    “Then you get redeployed and have to learn it all over again, right?  Except now, the whole country is like that, I think.”  Nick’s words made me think he could hear my thoughts or something.
    “Yeah.  You have to understand something, Nick.  I crossed a lot of ground to get this far, and I knew my chances of getting home were slim.  But you have to ask yourself, why did I keep going?”
    “The thought did cross my mind,” he allowed.
    “I kept going because I couldn’t find any place safer to hunker down and try to wait this out.  I know the country can’t go back to the way it used to be, but all I saw out there was fighting and death and mayhem.”
    Nick cleared his throat.
    “I’m sorry, but I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that things are that bad.  Yes, Gentry was looted and partially burned, and I understand the cities must be a nightmare, but out in the rural areas, like here, the situation must be better.  I mean, we’ve not had much in the way of problems around here.”
    I sighed.  Not in displeasure, but because I would need to explain the facts of life to a man nearly old enough to be my father.
    “Nick, from what I’ve seen, the cities are a freaking disaster for sure.  What’s worse, those poor bastards have just about used up all the resources in the cities and surrounding suburbs.  Now they are spreading out from the burned out ruins and hitting the so-called rural areas.”
    “You’ve seen this?”
    “Yes.”  I paused to think about how to explain things better for this man who had already seen so much on battlefields far from home.
    “I told you guys earlier about where I’d been and some of what I’ve seen.  But, I didn’t want to get into the implications.  Let me give you an example.  Like I said, I steered around major population areas but sometimes I couldn’t avoid at least skirting smaller towns. 
    “There was this place, about a hundred fifty miles east of St. Louis, and it was completely overrun with gangbangers.  Or at least, that was what I presumed.  Lots of tattoos on the corpses I passed, anyway.”
    “So how did they get there?  Buses or something like that?” Nick asked, his mind on the logistics I figured.  My father always said getting there was sometimes half the battle.
    “I don’t know, but the locals must have put up quite a fight. Half the town was burned and the other half just carpeted with bodies.  I got there about a week after it happened.