*****
“It’s been three days, Phil. Sheriff Olsen and the convoy should have been back by now,” Mayor Anderson of Tower Hill said impatiently.
Phil continued the “Morning Mayor Meeting,” as he jokingly titled the written agenda he handed out, even with Sheriff Olsen’s absence.
“We knew it would be at least a couple of days, Jim. And I imagine it was hard for them to find a loader that was working or hadn’t been stripped down. They might be loading everything by hand. That's leaving out a few guys for over watch, and considering how heavy the material is they’re working with, I have no idea how long it might be before they return. Clark said that no matter what, they would begin the trip back by the fifth day.”
“I hope they have time to find some more food stores. I don’t like the projection numbers from the schools,” Mayor Ed Newgarden of Findlay said with concern. “People didn’t bring in as much of their own food as I thought they would when they moved in.”
Each family was supposed to bring all food they had left in their homes when they checked into the school shelters. In reality, each family stayed in their homes as long as they could. When they came to the realization that the food stores weren’t filling back up with supplies, they gave up on independence and moved into the school shelters set up around the county.
Even though the county population plummeted after the Pullback, there were still thousands of people living in the small towns and farms. Shelby County had a good plan for handling the situation but the old saying was that no good battle plan survived contact with the enemy. Harvest was still months away, and for the second time they’d readjusted servings of rations in all the shelters. Phil and Clark privately discussed more salvage missions to the larger cities to see if they could find food, but that was going to make them have to answer questions they weren’t comfortable with yet. The concrete supply mission also served as a trial run to see if food finding expeditions would be worthwhile in the near future. Clark intended to send a couple of his deputies out on a search patrol to the area surrounding the port while they were loading materials.
“Have we searched all empty houses yet?” Anderson questioned. “At this point, people aren’t coming back for them.”
“Not yet…are we all in agreement that we violate our one millionth law and start breaking into absent citizens' houses?” No one laughed at the pointed joke. “Ok, then let’s do it. Each town appoints four people to start going house to house.”
“Phil, how are preparations going for our new fortresses?” Mayor Newgarden quickly changed the uncomfortable subject.
“We’re done with the first Fortress Farm,” he said, using the term in public for the first time. “Looks like Frankenstein’s illegitimate child, but I think we can secure it from a Ditchmen raid with just ten trigger pullers. If we move some townsfolk out to the farms, we’re going to take a lot of pressure off of the school shelters and give a great deal of security to the farms.”
Phil continued, “Now, I’ve got the equipment and the concrete forms on site for the priority buildings you each gave me. But I need to ask you another crazy question.”
“Can’t be any crazier than putting Americans into fortified farms,” Newgarden chuckled.
“Wait till you hear what I have to say,” Phil said. “I want to tear down any buildings and houses we’re not using.” Phil paused until the gasps finished. “Most important, I want to tear down all houses and buildings surrounding the schools and churches we’re using as shelters.”
“What’s the point of that? I mean, we’re talking about demolishing our own towns before bandits even have a chance to,” Anderson jumped in.
“If we believe it’s important enough to fortify these buildings, and to move our people into secure locations, then there is nothing too radical to consider,” Gordon Steinbrink, mayor of Strasburg, spoke for the first time in days. Gordon had always been quiet, but Phil felt concerned that he was disconnecting from the group the last few days.
Steinbrink continued, “I’ve been thinking about this situation we find ourselves in. We just aren’t moving fast enough. We’ve had a family killed by some group, we still don’t know who they are, and we believe that major cities have completely collapsed. I agree we have accomplished a lot just keeping people from starving so far. But I fear the real crisis will reach us any day.”
He paused, looking down at hands scarred and nicked from decades of hard work in the machine tooling plant he started shortly after emigrating from Germany.
“What Phil is talking about is opening fields of fire around our shelters. If and when those shelters get attacked, those Ditchmen scum will have to cross open fields to get our people instead of hiding and sneaking up. Think about a prison. There are usually open fields all around prison walls. No sneaking out in that case…and no sneaking in, for our shelters.”
“That makes sense, I’m in. Give the skeptics something new to complain about. We can blame it all on Phil!” Newgarden said to break the mood just a little.
Honking horns broke the meeting, and each attendee of the Morning Mayor Meeting ran to the door to see what the commotion was about.
Relief and concern greeted the men as they walked towards a line of heavily laden trucks parked along Main Street. Some trucks had clearly been hit with bullets. Others were missing glass where a windshield or side window fit just days before. Phil was pretty sure there was at least one fewer truck then there had been when Clark Olsen led the convoy off on its mission.
Shelby County’s last remaining physician ran towards the passenger side of a truck that had obviously been hit with heavy gunfire. Two men helped an unconscious figure out of the truck, with a concerned Dr. Jack Hawksworth already checking the limp man’s blood pressure. To Phil’s relief, the hulking figure of Clark Olsen climbed from the passenger side of the lead truck. Olsen's face held a swirl of emotions…exhaustion, relief...what’s that other look? I’ve never seen that before. The Sheriff headed straight for Phil. The two men had become friends in a short amount of time and there was a lot to talk about.
“Phil, I’m heading to see Maryanne, and then I think we need to talk,” Clark huffed out.
“Sure, Clark. Whenever you’re ready,” Phil said.
“I’m ready now. Will you just walk with me to the house? I’d like to talk in private. Things are even worse out there than we first thought.”