Anthony Newman - American Survivor

“Mom, how are you keeping count with me falling and asking so many questions?”

“Easy, I ignore you and tie a knot in my string for every 100 paces. Now shut up before I lose count again. We’ll be halfway to Kentucky if you don’t stop pestering me,” Cobie joked.

An hour later Cobie stopped to rest and eat their Clif bars. She untied Bennie’s muzzle guard and fed him some leftover potted ham. He turned his nose up at first then wolfed it down when Cobie acted as if she was going to place the muzzle back on his snout.

“Bennie, I can’t say I blame you for turning your nose up because I can’t stand the stuff myself. Cloe, we are in our hunting area and can start looking for game to hunt,” Cobie waved at her daughter.

“Mom, what can I kill with the .22 rifle?”

“Any small game such as rabbits, squirrels, opossum, and raccoons,” her mom smiled.

The young girl’s face screwed up, “I know you are kidding about raccoons and opossums, but I guess I can kill rabbits and squirrels to eat.”

“You aren’t hungry yet, or you wouldn’t say that nonsense. I’ll be hunting for larger game such as deer, bear, elk, and whatever big game is out here. Meat is meat from now on. Baby girl we only have a few weeks of food and need to stretch that out until we can grow crops and find farm animals to raise. Now let’s hunt.”

“Mom, how will you kill a bear with a shotgun?”

“Baby, I have a three-inch magnum slug shell in my shotgun. People use them for deer hunting,” Cobie answered.

They tried to be quiet but made too much noise, which resulted in most game running or hiding as they approached. After two hours the sun rose above the eastern mountains, Cloe pointed northwest and said, “Well, at least someone is having breakfast. See the smoke.”

Cobie searched the skyline and replied, “That is about two miles back and a mile above our place. If we ever shoot, I want to gather our game and head south about a mile before making camp and then hunt south of the camp.”

They sat at the base of a large pine tree when Cloe saw a large rabbit just twenty feet away. She leveled her rifle, aimed, and dropped the rabbit in its tracks. She and her mom ran over to the rabbit, placed it in a pillowcase, and high fived to celebrate Cloe’s success. Cloe shot another rabbit five minutes later and waved it in the air for her mom to see. They stopped and listened for a few minutes to see if anyone was nearby, and then they headed south for 2,000 paces and begun to look for a campsite along a dry stream bed. They were lucky to find a place where the stream cut deep into a hillside leaving an undercut that made a shallow cave in the rocky embankment.

“This is on a hill sloping down for several hundred feet above us and below. It’s going to be hard to sleep without rolling down the hill. Why camp here,” Cloe asked.

“Cobie answered, “Baby girl, I don’t have all of the answers on how to survive but this place has snow to keep the rabbit from spoiling and anyone coming up or down the hillside will make a lot of noise that will alert us to their presence. That’s why I chose this spot. Please feel free to give me your opinions because I’m just doing the best I know how.”

“Those are good reasons. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Mom. You are doing great.”

The snow was deep against the bank a few yards from the spot they selected as a campsite and Cobie sent Cloe to fetch several pillowcases full of the snow back to the campsite as she cleaned the rabbit. She had Cloe fed the organs to Bennie who ate them with zeal even though it was all Cloe could do to keep from losing her breakfast.

Cobie placed the rabbit in a plastic bag and stuck it in a hole Cloe had dug into the bank and covered it with the snow. They then covered the snow with large slabs of rock to keep animals from digging up their supper.

“This natures icebox would work for perhaps another month before we have to find other ways to keep meat from spoiling. I know that smoked dried meat will last for months and will be good to put in soups or eat like jerky, but I don’t have a clue how to can meat and besides we don’t have the equipment,” Cobie told her daughter.

“Mom, look, there is a raccoon across from the creek bottom.”

“Don’t shoot near our camp. We don’t want to have to move our camp every time we fire our guns. Now that the rabbit is stored away we’ll go hunting south of here.”

They ate another Clif Bar, and some leftover Spam from supper the night before. They then headed south down the hillside to find a good spot to hunt another 3,000 paces from their camp. They carefully traveled down the slope stepping over fallen trees and avoiding the sting of branches as they walked under the thick pine canopy. They arrived at the bottom of the hill only to stumble out into a wide clearing. Cobie dragged her daughter back into the woods quickly.

Cobie looked up and down the clearing and saw overhead electrical wires, a road on the far side of the clearing and several deer about 300 yards away down the left side of the clearing.

“Baby girl we’ll stick to this side of the woods until the clearing narrows just after the bend of the road. Follow me.”

Cobie walked another 200 yards in the shadows of the trees before they crossed the clearing and dropped behind a fallen tree to see if anyone was following them. They started walking toward where Cobie saw the deer when they heard a rifle shot. Cobie dropped to her knees and pulled her binoculars out to see where the shot came from. She saw a man, woman, and a young girl dragging one of the deer into the woods.

“Darn, they shot my deer.”

“Let me see,” Cloe said just as two more shots rang out from further east and the man fell to the ground.

Cobie grabbed the binoculars back and saw the woman drop to the ground to check on her husband as a young man ran up with a rifle looking for who shot the man. Another shot rang out, the young man’s head exploded into a red mist, and his body jerked to the ground causing the woman to scream.

Cobie and Cloe were about 25 yards away, so the sound was muffled as they scrambled behind several fallen trees to watch what was happening. They heard the sound of engines coming toward them from the west and kept low, while the men parked their strange-looking military styled vehicles and walked over to the people with guns drawn. The woman raised a pistol up to shoot one of the men, and another slapped it from her hands. The second man backhanded the woman sending her to the ground.

“Praise Allah, you saved my life. This is another sign from Allah that the Demon shall be crushed.”

“The hundred dead infidels back in Medford and Ashland are a testament to Allah’s will. We will keep raiding the towns until the entirety of our enemies is dead. Their government is powerless to stop us.”

“Praise Allah, it shall be done.”

“Allahu Akbar!”

One of the men tied the woman and girl’s hands behind them and shoved them to the ground. The men examined the stranger’s guns and tossed them aside. One of the men spat on the dead deer and kicked it before they turned to the women. Another man made the woman stand and then ripped her clothes off her body. Cobie covered Cloe’s eyes and turned her head from the horrible scene when suddenly the woman screamed as one of the men turned his attention to the young girl. The man raping the woman hit her on the side of her head with his fist, and she stopped screaming. The men finished their debauchery, loaded the woman and girl into the larger vehicle, and drove east staying in the clearing until they were out of sight.

Cloe cried, then got mad and said, “Those men killed the father and son and then raped the mother and daughter. We need to kill them. Were they Muslim? Those were the same words terrorists use when they kill people.”