Hello world, its Jack again. I just happened to be 'grading' Jon's work when I saw Gothe's comment.
I'm probably too late but I'll try anyway. Girl, you've got a choice. Stand and Fight, or Cut and Run.
Chances are, Standing and Fighting will get you killed. However, Cutting and Running pretty much guarentee's you are leaving your mother behind, and you might just die out in the cold. So its a tough choice. But you make it now.
Ok. I'm going to assume you've made you choice. Now read fast. I bolded the headings so you can skip to the right thing.
CUT AND RUN:
If you cut and run, it sounds like you got things packed up in that little boat of yours. You grab what ammo for the rifle you can. You mom isn't gonna make it to the boat, but I'd bet a lot of money she'll hold em off. You need to get out of the house via some way thats not obvious - and you need to be willing to kill anyone that gets between you and the boat - and do it fast. And preferablly quietly. Thats going to mean work with a knife.
Three spots on a man worth hitting with a knife by a smaller person. Neck works if you can reach it, but its a lot slower then most people realize. Make sure its all the way across, so you cut the wind pipe and reduce the chance of them calling for help.
From the front, you go for the belly, or the groin. In either case, you then pull up to the sternum and in. Its messy and you will get bloody. But it'll do the job. Probably lose the knife along the way - but you're in a hurry. Consider it a worthy loss.
You get to the boat, and you *fly* Don't look back. Time for grief later, when you're safe.
STAND AND FIGHT:
The trick to fighting larger numbers is to funnel them. In a Victorian style house that's hard - and walls don't do much to stop bullets. Neither do couches. More then likely if you put up a good enough fight they'll just try to burn you out. So you if you've got a cellar, thats your best bet. It'll cut down the routes to you to maybe two, and if you clog em up with stuff, and shoot careful you can clog em up with *people* too. Try to put something heavy, and metal up as cover. It can still be shot through, but if you back it with something, you might stop *some* bullets. Sand is best, but I doubt you have sand bags just laying around. Human bodies, work pretty well, piled up in a pinch, but you probably won't have the time to go retrieve em as you make em.
Pick where you're going to fight from and get set. Get every last bit of ammo you have for the shotgun and the rifle, and get a secondary weapon, like some knives or a hatchet at hand.
You're going to have to be fast because you won't have much time. You get *all* that ready, and they still ain't come - you might consider being offensive. Mobs like the one that's running your town are only as strong as your leader. Kill him, and the other 'head honchos' and the town just might rise up and throw off the lot of em.
Not a great chance, but its better then nothing. In this case, the size of your house works for you. Get to high ground, out on the roof, and take your shot. You only get one. Second in command is already dead. Kill the boss, and the mob will probably attack, but if you can wound em enough, they'll back off. Remember. You get *one* shot. Then you hightail it back to the house, and downstairs to cover.
When the fight starts, force yourself to take your time. Sounds backwards but the old saying goes, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Better five aimed and effective shots then twenty that don't hit the target.
Good luck, and I hope we hear good news. God speed girl.
-Jack
Good news! I'm not dead, and neither is Mom.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the information. I didn't get it in time, but Mom suggested some of it and Bear knew the rest, all but the part about killing someone with a knife. Or, if they knew it, they didn't tell me, because we went with the Stand and Fight option. And you know what, you're right. They set the house on fire.
You're probably wondering how I'm writing to you now. And you probably want to know who "Bear" is. Well, when Mom asked me to set the lantern in the upstairs window, within two hours Bear came. I don't know his real name. That's what everyone calls him. When this gang got its way into town, Bear and his family took off and settled outside of town and refused to deal with the gang. They tried to intimidate him, failed, and just decided to pretend he wasn't there. He and Mom were friends long ago, before the world went crazy, and he gave her a way to ask for help. Anyways... he showed up with his six sons, who are all teenagers and older, and every one of them is as broad across the shoulders like Bear, all except one, who looks like a bean pole. My mother says, like a lamp post.
They set up to fight, and they didn't go to the cellar or the house. They hid in the yard, around the stone walls and trees. Papa says that Jon might not know about the ground 'round here. It's all hills and trees and very old stone walls, all broken up, and the house is on a hill, so the cellar has an outside door in it. Bear had Mom and I hunker down in the cellar, because there wasn't time to get us out, and they figured they'd fight now and try to get us out and to their property later. Well, I didn't get to see the fighting. But when the house went up in flames, I helped Mom walk a little and we tried to get out of the cellar before the house collapsed in on us. It worked, too, and then someone was right there in front of me, too close to shoot, so I tried to hit him with the rifle barrel, and it turns out it's a good thing he caught it with his hand instead. It was Papa, who was the last person I expected in the world and the one I wanted most.
Anyways, we made our retreat, and Papa called off Bear, so he and his boys made their retreat. Papa had a new boat, a big one, pulled up to the old dock. He said we didn't have time to haul up the sunfish, but when I told him about the supplies he grabbed them on our way out. Like I said, it was a new boat, a big one with sails, and he had helpers with him who got us on board. Our house is.. was.. on a rocky hill, so we just had to go down this winding path to get to the docks, which couldn't be seen from the front yard.
ReplyDeleteThat's why Papa was gone for so long, though. He found us a new place to live in that town New Mystic that he had said before seemed pretty decent. He's an actual captain now, because he has a crew and a sailing vessel. There's this place in New Mystic that was part of Old Mystic, and they had all this information on wooden sailing vessels. New Mystic is kind of like what Old Mystic must have been like hundreds of years ago, but they've got this old beat-up machine in the town library and that's how I'm talking to you.
The house we're going to live in is much smaller than the old one and with no electricity at all, and I don't have much in the way of clothes and stuff because we lost everything but what I'd packed in the fire. But Papa can fish from New Mystic even in the winter, because of the sound. (A 'sound' isn't like a noise, it's a protected area of ocean. There's this long, stretched-out island between us and the open ocean, so the waves aren't as high and the storms aren't as dangerous. I don't know what this long island is named, but I bet I'll find out.)
It's a completely different place here, the neighbors are closer and friendlier, but we have to actually worry about undead attacks every few months to a couple years, because we're near a bunch of places that used to be population centers.
Anyways, I hope you keep writing, and when I can get to the library, I'll tell you how I'm settling in. I might've lost almost everything, but I'm happy, because I've got Mom and Papa, and I'm, well... as safe as anybody can be these days. And I hope someday I'll find out what happened to Bear and the rest of that gang.