Carol's Song - Second Verse

"Bobby,he fought like a lion." She paused, looked at me, and said "You would have been proud of him. I know I was. It wasn't enough. We lived at the top on the west side of the mountain. It's woods until you come down on that side and then it's farmers fields all the way to Front Royal just about. We didn't think we would have to run for it. We kept expecting the Army to come. I guess we were out of their god damn zone." One of the women behind her laughed mirthlessly and mumbled "Fucking Zones."

Carol continued "They didn't come. We saw them overhead a few times. You know. Helicopters. Once I saw a little plane. Bobby said it was probably a Cessna. I don't know. I just know they never came. We had radios. You know, AM and FM. Dakota on the next street had a short wave that he ran off a car battery. We heard that the government had the situation contained and relief was being dispatched. I don't know where the hell they sent it but it wasn't where we lived."

"So we were running, no, make that we had run out of food. It was getting cold and it was getting real obvious we were not going to be able hold the line. I think if it had been just Bobby he would have stayed until they killed him. It wasn't just him but he was still bothered about going. He called it "Bugging out." He did it anyway. He was worried about me and the boys. We were hearing some ugly things. Sometimes they would scream at us "We're going to eat you!" I thought they were kidding. The funny thing is they were not as bad off as some of the people we ran across later."

"So we bailed. Bobby said if we planned on eating we were going to have to go while we still had some ammunition to shoot. Our plan was to head for Front Royal. We had friends there plus the radio said the government had a processing center and a camp there. We didn't want to go into one but my kids were hungry." She looked at me and said "You know I had two boys right?"

"Yeah." I searched my mind. I had seen the drawings in her office and the photographs. Names, crap, what were their names? Then an image of stick figures of a family and a dog in magic markers. The name at the bottom was Kyle. I blurted "Kyle!" Then I thought "Oh Jeebus, please don't let be the dogs name."

She smiled. That was nice to see. "Kyle. He was my youngest. He was six." The smile disappeared. "He didn't make it...His brother, Zane, he's eight." I hadn't seen any kids with her. I had a feeling that I wasn't going to either. No sign of Bobby either. Her voice which was almost animated, well, at least it sounded alive, changed to a flat monotone." She looked around and seemed startled for a second. Then she said "I'm sorry G. Please bear with me. I will try and speed it up." I held up my hand "Talk as long as you want Carol. I'm not going anywhere." Loco didn't know it but he might be on watch longer than he planned.