*****
“Wake up, Momma, wake up. We’re almost there.”
Charlotte Jenkins drifted out of a restless sleep, feeling the cold steel her head leaned against.
“Lamar…” she murmured.
“No, Momma, it’s me, Junior.”
Lamar Jenkins, Jr. gently grasped his mother’s hand, smiling as she looked up at him. Charlotte could see the young man’s eyes, red and puffy from grief.
As best as she could, Charlotte smiled back, “I’m glad to see you, son. Is everything ready to go?”
“Fuel cans are filled, tanks on both buses are topped off, and we’ve got all the food we can carry and still hold the Congregation.”
“Such a fine young man, Junior. You do your daddy proud,” Charlotte assured him.
Did your Daddy proud, that is, Charlotte thought but didn’t say. Junior must have thought the same, because he immediately turned and headed back out of the bus to see to the final preparations. During the escape from the school, Charlotte read Rusty’s goodbye note to Lamar. Realizing that Lamar read it also, her heart sank. He wouldn’t let his friend go on a mission like that alone.
They had gotten out of so many tight spots together…Lamar would have thought maybe they could get out of this one, too.
Charlotte knew better. For this to really work, those two men would go to any lengths…lead the bad guys as far away from the Congregation as they could.
No way to escape from that.
When Charlotte realized the two men wouldn’t be coming back, she gave the order to bypass the predetermined rendezvous point. No sense in wasting time and letting the bad guys catch up to the rest of them.
Don’t let the sacrifice be in vain. Accept the truth, keep the Congregation strong for them.
The only stop they would make was the Manassas Battlefield Park. After the last gang attack on the school, Lamar and Rusty devised the escape plan that the Congregation just used. The diversion wasn’t part of it – the Mad Max Road Warrior trick, Rusty had said, whatever that meant – but the rest of the plan was working.
Food and fuel were hidden in the middle of the battlefield for what was supposed to be three buses. Lamar guessed that no one would be touring the museums and monuments any time soon. There would be plenty of food for the trip and for the entire group while they were settling into their new refuge several hours away. Pastor had family in Blacksburg, VA. The same trip used to establish the supply cache included another two hundred-mile trip to find the sleepy little college town barely hanging on. Though the extra people from the Congregation might be a burden, Pastor’s family invited them. Setting up on the farm inhabited by Pastor’s family offered them plenty of extra hands to work the fields.
Briefly, the Congregation leadership even discussed making the move before trouble found them in the city. Hindsight being 20/20, wish we would have. But they had just invested too much time and effort in the community they had built around the old school to run away from it without a fight. Besides, they had been able to defend it every time before. Who would have thought it would finally be American soldiers to force us from our home?
She felt sure now; there was no doubt in her mind that the city, any city, held no safety for them. The quiet of Charlotte’s rural upbringing beckoned. God granted her those dreams and memories of her youth as a reminder and preparation for the next step in their journey, that the young ones might experience the same peace and joy she did amongst the animals and the fertile farm fields.
The troops might make it out that far someday. Then they’d have to fight again. The men and women on these buses weren’t hopeless refugees. Combat tested, hardened but hopeful, the farmers in Blacksburg would learn to appreciate the security that came with the trained freedom fighters riding on the bus.
Even if things got too rough and they couldn’t fight back, the hills and mountains of the area offered refuge. They’d blend into the hillside, then reappear when things got better. Things will get better. Hard times follow good times…Good times follow hard times.
Charlotte felt the tears welling up again, she knew not for the last time. Thank you, my love. I won’t let them forget what you’ve done for us.
###
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