Introducing Flight Attendant Harry Timms:

The airliner traveling northward from Los Angeles, California, had been making good time with a fortunate tailwind. It looked as though the flight would reach Seattle, Washington, a good 10 minutes before its advertised arrival time of 11:52pm, which pleased not just the 215 passengers but the 2 pilots and 3 flight attendants as well.

Then, without any prior signs of issues, the jet's electrical power simply went out: no explosions, no sparks, no clanking or grinding or cracking to be heard. In an instant, the interior of the plane was darker than the outside of it, which was lightly illuminated by the stars and moon here above the clouds.

The pilots found themselves further hampered by the unexplainable failure of anything and everything that might provide them alternative light: headset and handheld flashlights, emergency lamps on the bulkheads, and even cell phones and tablets were dead. It was suddenly as if artificial light had never been invented ... which, of course, the crew and passengers would later find out was far truer than they could have imagined.

As the engines failed, the crew found themselves lucky to be in this particular model of aircraft in two respects: first, the flight controls had been designed to take a default position in the event of a total power loss that would maintain the slowest rate of descent; and second, the steering controls could be operated via manual hydraulics from the cockpit. Sure, they were sluggish and without delicate adjustments, but the result was that the flight crew was able to use the natural light on this cloudless night to direct the craft enough to prevent a total disaster.

In the end, the pilots avoided a forested ridge that would have meant total disaster and brought their plane down on a relatively flat piece of land. Here, there was mostly tall grasses, low shrubbery, shallow wetlands, and only a few tall trees. A lone member of that latter type of flora was the cause of the first serious damage to the plane as a lone tree on the left side violently severed that side's wing from the fuselage. The craft pulled to the left and rolled downward on the right enough to dig the tip of the right wing into a shallow bog, ripping that wing off as well.

The body of the jet continued forward as the right wing exploded, thankfully far enough behind it as to not burn the passengers in their seats. As the fuselage continued sliding across the soft earth, it came to a violent and deadly stop when the nose directly struck the trunk of a centuries old tree. The cockpit was crushed against the immovable object, killing both pilots and the senior flight attendant, who had been in the cockpit at the beginning of the disaster chatting up the man and woman flying the plane.

Harry Timms was one of two surviving flight attendants and had been sitting on the starboard side of the plane, which was now of course the floor of the aircraft. He had come out of the wreck relatively unscathed, with only minor cuts and scratches from debris that had flown through the air, striking him about the skull, face, and legs. He unbuckled from his seat and immediately went to check on the flight crew. Both the pilot and co-pilot had been horrifically crushed and his supervisor on the attendant crew had had her head nearly cut off.

Harry didn't waste time in sorrow there, instead heading aft to check on his second team mate and the passengers. He found himself rather shocked -- thankfully -- to find most of the passengers still alive and only minorly injured. He looked about for fire and saw none; he checked the dangerous/flammable fume indicators -- which didn't require electricity or batteries -- and again found no signs of danger.

"Okay, listen up!" he called out over the mayhem of cries, sobs, and other signs of fear and hurt. "We need to get everyone out of the aircraft. If you are not injured, please help those who are. If you are injured, let your neighbors know."

There were a couple of dozen people at least who were still buckled in their seats and -- if on the craft's port side -- were dangling in the air. Harry organized some of the stronger and/or taller passengers to aid them in getting safely out of their seats. The other survivors began making their way to the aft of the jet where the tail had been ripped off and offered a large gap to allow escape.

It took almost an hour to get all of the survivors out of the plane. Someone with some outdoor survival skills had used the nearby fuel fire to create a trio of fire torches to illuminate the wreckage's interior. With them, Harry and his flight attendant teammate, Connie Flanagan, along with a handful of volunteers searched through the plane for blankets, pillows, coats and other cold weather clothing, food, and water. They tried to be respectful of the privacy of the passengers' carryon luggage, but privacy rated a distant second to ensuring the survivors were warm, dry, and relatively comfortable.

In addition to the torches, the fuel fire led to the building of not just one but three fires nearer to the plane, fueled by gathered wood, brush, and grass. As the survivors settled in on the ground -- some of them using cushions from the plane's seats -- food, water, and a plastic container of little bottles of alcohol was distributed to keep minds off the tragedy just a little bit.

"I need everyone to find a place around one of the fires and sit and stay where they are," Harry told the group once everyone was out of the wreckage. "I found the passenger manifest, and I want to check the lot of you against it."

He and Connie set about circling the fires, asking names, and checking them off. In the cases of injured or incoherent passengers, they checked for IDs. They asked about injuries and -- with the great fortune of having a medical doctor, a registered nurse, and a retired Navy corpsman amongst the survivors -- began tending to the physical results of the crash as best they could. More than two dozen passengers and three crew had been killed during the crash itself, and an equal number would die of their injuries over the next 48 hours.

In the end, 150 people would survive the crash.

Introducing Tammie Wagner, drug addict:

The first indication Tammie had that all was not right in the world was when she found herself laying on a blanket on the cold ground before a roaring fire. She'd been asleep when the aircraft went dark and began its descent. Actually, that's not precisely true: she'd been passed out after taking a handful of sedatives she'd stolen from a lady's purse in the terminal. It had been a dangerous thing to do, of course -- taking the drugs, not stealing them -- but honestly, if Tammie had known they were going to crash, she probably would have welcomed death.

After being picked up during a narcotics bust, Tammie was on her way to a drug rehabilitation center outside Seattle. The Los Angeles District Court had given her a choice between rehab' or jail; Paula Wagner had put up the $45,000 for the private center 1,100 miles away to keep her daughter out of the decrepit County system and -- Tammie fully believed -- out of her mother's hair.

She was very confused upon regaining consciousness, of course, but it was soon explained to her that the plane had crashed. A couple of guys had gotten her out of fuselage and over to the fire, and now an older woman name Helen Hartford was looking over her. Tammie got water and some airline snack food, then she got what she really wanted: booze. She was only given one of those little bottles, but as she listened to so flight attendant talking, she managed to beg, borrow, and steal another four of them, which she downed without delay.

Tammie was soon feeling no pain. She laid down again, wrapped in someone's warm coat and covered by a pair of thin airline blankets. As she drifted off to sleep, she couldn't help but wonder whether the coat in which she curled up into a fetal ball has belonged to one of the dead ... not that she cared. For all Tammie knew, the dead were the lucky ones.

Introducing Javier Flores, gun runner:

Javier was one of the many survivors who'd found himself dangling from a left side seat. After his eyes had adjusted to the low illumination of the moonlight spilling in through the small bulkhead windows, he pulled loose his own seat belt buckle and fell away from his seat. He fell away toward the plane's right wall, which of course was now the floor, and screamed out in pain as he seriously twisted one of his ankles on that window seat's arm rest.

A pair of men got him out to where the other survivors were gathering, and soon a fire was lighting up the night. There didn't seem to be much to see, which confused Javier. His occupation -- gun running and money laundering -- took him up and down the I-5 corridor from as far south as San Diego, California, to as far north as Bellingham, Washington. Some of that travel was done in the dark of night, and never in all of those thousands of miles had Javier ever seen a stretch of land that wasn't fouled by at least one light from a house, barn, street lamp, or passing automobile.

Javier looked to the night sky for lights as well. They were obviously under the north-south air corridor, and yet over the next couple of hours he saw not one single airliner passing overhead. With no light pollution, he should have been able to pick up satellites reflecting the light of the sun which, of course, was over the horizon and out of their direct sight. And yet again, nothing up there either.

A nurse came around to check on him, having heard he was injured. He told her it was just a twisted ankle and asked for something with which he could wrap it. He explained, "I've been a competition runner since I was a kid. This is nothing new."

The next hours were busy with activity, both at the plane and around the fires. And all that time, all Javier could think about was getting to the cargo compartment where his checked luggage was stored. He's put a lot of effort and expense into creating a suitcase that -- if chosen by TSA for random X-ray scanning -- would look like it was filled with anything other than its true contents: 16-9mm semiautomatic pistols, 16 spare clips, and 6 boxes of hollow point bullets, a total of 300 rounds.

Introducing the Sampson Family (Shari, Cliff, Sammi, and Molly) and other passengers:

The morning after the crash:

Shari was the first of the Sampsons to awake, the sun breaking through the mountains to the east and striking her right in the eyes. The 33 year old elementary school teacher grimaced against the blazing light, rubbed her sparkling green orbs back to life, and sat up to check her children. They were all still sound asleep, which honestly didn't surprise Shari as they had always been an outdoorsy family. They lived in Bremerton, Washington, across Puget Sound from Seattle, and they spent at least 20 weekends a year camping, as well as most spring breaks and much of the summer.

The youngest of the Sampsons, Molly, had slept next to Shari. The 5 year old was typically a very adventurous little girl. She'd demanded her own pup tent for her 4th birthday camping party to show she was a big girl, and over the year and a few months since then, she'd only ever once snuck out of her own tent and into her mother's, and that had only been because a sudden wind storm had nearly blown her little abode across the meadow after the stakes had pulled loose.

The terror of the plane crash had been too much for Molly, though. After they'd gotten a share of the seat pads, blankets, and warm jackets from the plane, she'd snuggled up next to her mother and passed out in seconds.

On the other side of Molly was the girl's older sister, Sammi. The 13 year old had been outdoorsy as a young girl as well, but reaching her teens had lessened her yearning for the out of doors. She'd discovered boys, makeup, and social media, and Shari had found getting the girl to go camping as easy as pulling teeth with a pair of pliers.

On the outside was the 17 year old Cliff. Shari's first child and only son was practically Grizzly Adams. Shari and her now Ex-husband had taken Cliff on his first weekend hike through Western Washington's Olympic National Forest when he was barely 6 months old, and he'd fallen instantly in love with the outdoors. The Sampson Family would go on to explore National and State Parks, Monuments, and Forests in their home state of Washington -- as well as many in Oregon, Idaho, Northern California, Western Montana, and Western Canada -- to the point that many of the workers at those locations came to know them on sight.

Shari had treasured her children's love of the outdoors, and she was pleased that even after her Ex dumped her two years ago, the trio still wanted to partake of what had initially been their father's beloved activity. She did worry about Cliff at times, though. He had few friends, even withing the out of doors community, and he'd never had a girlfriend. Shari knew it was because of his shyness, and she often worried that as time went by, he'd become more interested in the out of doors for its escape from social pressures than for the nature itself.

"Kids, let's get up," Shari said softly while reaching out to each for a gentle jostling. "They're serving breakfast already. We need to eat."

The first thing she'd noticed upon waking was that someone had used some metal debris from the plane crash to build what amounted to a barbeque pit, and the smell of cooking food was wafting their way. She slipped back into her deck shoes -- her boots, like the kids', were in their checked luggage -- and headed over to see what was on the grill. Someone explained that a passenger had checked a cooler packed with sausages meant for a Seattle restaurant, and since they were going to go bad when the ice melted, it only made sense to eat them now.

"What about the airline food?" Shari asked. "Is there any of that left?"

"Very little," she was told by one of the Flight Attendants. "The dinner service and what we distributed last night tapped that out. We have some water, juices, milk, and alcohol, but that's about it."

"My kids and I, we fish a lot," Shari offered. "If there's a stream or lake around here..."

She didn't need to finish, seeing that the others understood. She looked around, then to the male Flight Attendant, Harry Timms, who had taken charge the night before. "It looks like there're some people missing."

"Some of the guys headed out to--"

His female team member, Connie Flanagan, cut in, "And women."

Harry smiled, nodded his apology, and went on duly chastised, "Some of the men and women headed out at first light to look around, see if they could find a working phone or a road or house or something."

"Any luck so far?" Shari asked.

Harry nodded his head toward a man and woman who were returning from a walk to the north; they'd departed at first light and ascended a ridgeling to the north of the crash site. Harry expected that they would have seen something of interest to them: after all, the plane had crashed in Oregon's Willamette Valley, somewhere between Roseburg and Portland, and even Harry -- who was a born and raised Angelino -- knew that this region of the state had virtually no open areas where you could walk more than half a mile and not come across a house, a highway, or a power line.

"Nothing," was the report from Harvey Kingston, the male half of the scouting group. "We saw nothing at all: no houses, no barns, no roads, no cell towers. Nothing. We climbed all the way to the top of that ridge and got a clear line of sight to the north through a gap in the forest ... and nothing but more forest, grasslands, and wetlands."

A discussion broke out about the other strange things they'd noticed through the night and this morning: no modern sounds, no lights, no overhead aircraft flights, and -- obviously -- no search and rescue attempt. Someone asked, "Could we have been off course? I mean, could we be on the east side of the Cascades. I know they're wilder, more open, less populated. Or in some little valley in the Coastal Range that's part of a wilderness area or some rich ranger's grasslands with no buildings and such?"

Shari quickly and confidently said, "No, not a chance."

She pointed to the forested hills that surrounded them on the west, the east, and then the north, continuing, "Those are not the Coastal Mountains, those are not the Cascades, and I don't know what the hell those are. There's something missing, more than just houses and highways."

"What?" Harry Timms asked.

"Logging," she said. "Clear cuts."

She gestured their attention toward the thick, pristine forests on three sides of them and continued, "I don't see a single patch of clear cut or young, recently planted forest, and I can tell you with confidence that there isn't a single place in Oregon's Willamette Valley where you can look toward the Coastal or Cascade Ranges and not see at least one clear or new, single species, young forest, usually Douglas fir."

Some of the others said they'd noticed that, too, while still others -- less aware or still occupied with other thoughts -- hadn't noticed. Shari named some of the Wilderness areas in Oregon's Western half, telling the others, "They are the only place where you can't see the evidence of the rape of Mother Nature, and none of those places are within view of the Willamette Valley."

"She's right," someone added. "I grew up in Eugene and Salem. What they do to the forests is inexcusable. But look at'em now. They look..."

"Untouched," Shari finished the thought, adding, "Virgin, old growth forests. And I can tell you beyond doubt, there's no such place on the west side of the Cascades that we could see from down here on the valley floor."

Diego Garcia, a short but muscular Latino who'd been instrumental in helping the survivors out of the plane the night before, asked the question that had already been asked often and was yet to be answered: "Where the hell are we?"

As if on cue, a voice called from nearby. A few of the survivors -- including the man who'd called out, William "Willy" Washington -- had been studying some maps Willy had taken out of the plane this morning. He explained that he'd remembered that a woman sitting near him in Business Class had been looking at them, tapping at a laptop, and talking into her cell phone's earphone microphone during the entirety of the flight, up until the power outage, obviously. She'd died in the crash.

"They're her maps," Willy said, adding, "and I think we found something interesting. I think we know where we are."

The others circled around as Willy and a woman stood and oriented the map between them. He began pointing to the forested hills and then to the map, where similar features existed. After some studying of the map and terrain around them, the overwhelming consensus was that the map did indeed match their location.

"So, where are we then?" someone asked. "I mean, the map doesn't have anything on it that'll tell us where we are."

"We're right here," Willy said, taking out a red marker and drawing a circle fairly close to the middle of the map. "I know for a fact where we are. I grew up here. Newberg, Oregon, population 25,000."

He looked to Harvey, then pointed to the northeast, beyond the ridgeline from which the latter male had just returned. "You should have been able to see the southern suburbs of Portland from where you were. Population almost 3 million, if you count the entire Metro area. It's less than 30 miles from here."

Harvey shrugged, saying with confidence, "It ain't there, Portland. No city, no suburbs ... not a single fucking house anywhere to be seen, sorry."

Willy got a serious expression on his face as he said, "Last night, the sky should have been lit up with light pollution. There should have been airplanes filling the skies, satellites passing overhead, maybe even the International Space Station. We should be able to hear and even feel freight trains."

He pointed a finger to the northwest and, as he swung it eastward to indicate the lower heights of Harvey's ridge, said, "There should be vineyards dotting those foothills. Wine grapes, as far as the eye can see. I know this because -- if this is, in fact, Newberg -- I come out here on tours, wine tours, all the time."

"If this is right place, he right," Diego added with his heavily accented, second language English as he stepped away slowly and scanned the land around him. "I work on vineyards many years while getting Green Card. Creo que este es Newberg. This is Newberg. I am sure of it. Only ... no people."

He looked to the others with an almost frightened expression on his face. "Antes que las personas. Before people. Before there was people."

Shari knew what the two men were trying to say: somehow, they were in the Newberg, Oregon, of the ancient past, the prehistoric past. But, that was impossible. Wasn't it? She stepped closer to Willy, gestured toward the map, and asked, "Show me. Prove it to me."

Harry suggested they go to the hillock to the north again for a better view, and a dozen of them did just that. Once there, they studied the map:

Location: The North Ridgeline

Harvey led the others to where he'd been earlier that morning. The group studied the map and the surrounding terrain in an effort to match them up. They came to two conclusions: first, the terrain did indeed appear to match the map perfectly; and second, there was no way in hell that that could be true because there should have been homes, highways, and so much more throughout the lower elevations both to the north and south of the ridge.

As they descended to the crash site once again, a heated and sometimes comical conversation erupted about time travel into the distant past, a past before Human Beings lived in this area. No one believed it was possible; well, no one wanted to admit that they believed it was possible at least. Some even asked if maybe they'd been casted into the future, one in which humans were no longer here. But the lack of debris from a long, lost civilization made that option even more fantastic.

The first clue that they may very well have been in the prehistoric past came when barely audible screams for their attention began coming from the forested area to the east. Looking that direction, Shari Sampson recognized her son, Cliff running her direction at top speed. He lost his footing on the uneven ground, toppled, rolled, popped back to his feet, and kept on as if the mishap hadn't even happened.

Shari and most of the others headed Cliff's direction as well, and when they all met, the 17 year old was too out of breath to initially explain himself. When he could finally put the words together, he managed, "It got him ... it ... it attacked him ... it killed him ... and ... dragged him away."

"What, Cliff?" his mother asked with concern. "What got who?"

The teen fought for some more air, then looked into his mother's eyes and with all the seriousness he could muster, he told her, "That guy, Harold. He was attacked and killed and dragged away ... by a Saber-toothed cat."

Shari just stared into her son's face, unsure of how to respond. His fear was genuine, but really? Then laughter broke out amongst some of the others, as they began teasing about young men and their imaginations. Shari snapped at them, shutting them up for the most part. She looked to Cliff and demanded, "Tell me what happened. Every detail."

"Harold and I were over there, at the edge of the woods," he said, pointing. "We thought we saw rabbits, and I told him I could make snares and--"

Someone interrupted harshly, "What happened?"

Cliff stood tall, drew another deep breath, regained his composure, and continued, "We heard something just inside the trees and went to see if it was rabbits. Then ... so fast that I almost missed it ... it got him."

There was a pause before someone asked incredulously, "A Saber tooth tiger ... ate your friend ... ate, what was his name, Harold?"

There were some more snickers and laughs, as well as comments about how they didn't have time for this; a couple of the men even turned away to return to the crash site. But when his mother pressed for more details, Cliff said, "I'm telling you the truth, mom. It was a Saber-toothed cat. I know what one looks like. It was no normal lion or tiger. It wasn't a mountain lion either."

Mountain lions, cougars, or pumas -- regardless of what you wanted to call them -- were the only large cat living in Oregon's Willamette Valley in the 21st century, of course, and most of them had moved to the deepest of wilderness areas due to habitat destruction and vengeful hunting of them for their killing of domesticated animals in the urban-wilderness interface.

Cliff went on to describe the animal's appearance, including its large size and long fangs. Shari looked to Harry Timms, who had been quiet so far, and said with all seriousness, "If my son says he saw a Saber-toothed cat..."

She gestured to the area around them as she looked at the other men and women still standing there and asked, "I mean, seriously, look around you and ask yourself, is my son's story any more outrageous than all of this?"

"Take us to where this happened," Harry instructed, breaking his silence.

"Fuck no!" Cliff said, dropping the F-bomb as was not his nature at all. After his mother admonished him, Cliff said, "I'm not going back over there unless we got ten guys armed with elephant rifles."

Harry thought on the subject, then agreed, "He's right. Whatever attacked Harold, be it a mountain lion or a Saber tooth lion, we need protection. Maybe we can fashion something from the wreckage. You know, like, spears or clubs."

The smaller group called to the others that they were heading back to the crash site. Back at the wreckage, they began pillaging around for anything and everything that might be used as a weapon. Harry couldn't help but point out the irony: "TSA does all it can to keep weapons off planes, and now here we are looking for some."

Javier Flores had been sitting alone near the fuselage, trying to figure out how he was going to inconspicuously get to his hard sided suitcase full of guns and ammunition without being spotted. There were people all over the wreckage now as -- under the direction of the other Flight Attendant, Connie Flanagan -- they located, identified, and distributed checked baggage to their owners. Those bags that belonged to the dead were put aside to be opened later, their contents distributed as appropriate.

Javier's own case had only just been pulled out and muscled to his feet when the weapon-seeking people arrived. He watched and listened as they found objects, contemplated their use, and chose to keep them or discard them. Finally, after the group had come up with only a handful of pitiful weapons, Javier invited them over for a discussion.

"You guys seriously think that maybe we're in the Ice Age and there's a Saber tooth tiger out there eating people?" he inquired. The responses were mixed. Javier said, "Whether we're in the past or not, you're saying that we're in danger maybe ... that maybe something out there is hunting us ... some giant killer kitty cat."

The responses were again mixed, but Cliff Sampson was adamant about what he'd seen. Javier listened to the description of the attack, and a chill ran up his spine as he recalled his own encounter with a cougar when he was a child in Northern Baja; the memory made the scars on his right calf and thigh tingle and itch.

***** "I can help you with the whole weapons situation," Javier said, looking between the last of the survivors who were paying him any attention at the moment, Harry Timms and Shari Sampson. "But I would require two assurances."

When he hesitated, the other two looked between each other as if unsure of just what exactly was taking place. Harry finally asked, "What help can you offer, and what assurances do you want?"

Javier stood from the case on which he'd taken a seat, entered the combination on the case's locks, and lifted the lid. Inside were a dozen or so obscure tools -- all safely contained in shock absorbing foam -- that only a person in the wood working industry might recognize.

Harry asked, "We're gonna what, drill or miter the cat to death if it attacks us?"

Javier looked around for prying eyes, then unfastened a secret catch and lifted the layer of tools to reveal the case's true treasure: neatly arranged, again in foam cut outs, were 16 semi-automatic Beretta 92FS 9mm pistols, as wells as 6 boxes of ammunition for the weapons, 50 rounds per box. Both Harry and Shari's faces showed expressions of shock.

"This is what I can offer," Javier said quietly, lowering the tools again as a wandering survivor got too near. After the three of them were again alone, he continued, "The assurances I need are twofold. First, this case and its contents remains a secret between the three of us. I'll give you two of them, and a couple of extra clips, loaded of course. You can tell the others that you found them in someone's checked bag--"

"Four," Harry interrupted. When Javier only stared at him in silence, Harry said, "Four guns. And a full box of ammo in addition to the loaded clips. I'm not going big game hunting without some of the others backing me up. Me and Shari, of course."

The woman beside him seemed to appreciate her inclusion. Shari had never been a gun fan, but she did know how to use one.

Javier didn't like the idea of giving up so much of his hardware. The guns were worth over a grand each on the streets, maybe twice that to a man or woman desperate enough to get an unregistered firearm. But then, here and now, there were no streets or, it seemed, anyone to sell the guns to. Regarding the ammunition, the difference between a couple of extra clips -- 30 rounds total -- and a box of bullets -- 50 -- wasn't nearly as significant. Javier negotiated, "Four Berettas loaded, two extra but empty clips, and a full box of ammo."

Harry thought it over, nodded, then asked, "You said your assurances were twofold."

"If we are in fact in some prehistoric nightmare, these guns are going to be very valuable to you, to all of you," Javier said. "I want that to be remembered, that I gave you the weapons you needed to survive, assuming that you end up using them to survive, I mean."

Harry stuck his hand out toward Javier, whether to shake on the deal or accept a weapon was uncertain to the gun runner. He didn't take the hand, though, instead continuing, "Not done yet."

"You said twofold, not threefold," Shari said.

"The second part has two parts," Javier continued. "If we are not in the ice age and we find out that we're just crashed in some wilderness area with a big, hungry mountain lion ... the guns are still mine. You give back the four I loaned you, and you tell no one about this case, its contents, or me personally. I was never here, nor was the case."

Harry and Shari looked between themselves, with the latter saying, "I have no concern one way or the other about whether he gets caught and arrested for gun smuggling. I only want to find out what happened to Harold. My son ... Jesus ... I've never seen him that scared in all his life."

Harry's hand had dropped to his side, but now -- after a moment of thought and agreement with Shari's statement of apathy about what happened to Javier and his guns -- he reached his hand out again, this time to shake. "Agreed. We will help you find a safe place to hide your guns, and you'll give us what you offered. And if we find out this is all just a big misunderstanding, we'll give you the guns back."

Javier took Harry's hand, and the later quickly added, "But...! If at some point we find that we need more than just four guns and a single box of ammo ... you'll give us more."

The gun runner contemplated a moment, then reminded the flight attendant of the obvious: "When we run out of bullets, these guns become nothing more than paper weights. You understand that, right?"

Harry nodded his acknowledgement, and the two finished their handshake. The only remaining male crew member located a bag into which the four weapons and box of bullets could be transferred, and that transfer was inconspicuously made. Shari stepped up closer to Javier, offered her own hand, and as they shook, she told him, "Thank you, Javier."

15 November 2021
Day 2, shortly before noon:

"Can I have everyone's attention, please?" Harry Timms called out after he, Shari Sampson, Cliff Sampson, Harvey Kingston, Diego Garcia, Willy Washington, and the others who'd been discussing the Saber-tooth cat's killing of Harold returned to the assembly area. Some people moved closer while others remained where they were, but all turned their attention to the Flight Attendant who had become their interim leader. He'd already realized that the word was out about the big cat's killing. "I know there is a lot of confusion about what exactly's happening here ... where we are--"

"When we are!" someone called out, causing a small uproar of questions and comments. A woman called out, "They're saying we traveled back in time, to the dinosaur age ... fuckin' Jurassic Park."

Harry tried to wave everyone silent so he could continue. He stood atop a crate that had been unloaded from the plane so that the others could see and hear him better. "Please, please! Listen, we don't have all the answers to what's happening yet, but I promise, we'll get them soon. The issue right now is that one of us, Harold, a man who many of you know and respect for all he's done helping you all after the crash ... he's missing--"

"He's dead!" another person called. "They said he's dead, killed by a Saber tooth tiger!"

Again, there was uproar, and Harry fought to get enough silence to continue. "We don't know what happened to Harold, but I assure you, it wasn't a Saber tooth tiger. But, we need to find out, so, I'm asking for volunteers to accompany me to where Harold was last seen, a search party, to find him -- hopefully alive and well -- and bring him back to the camp."

There were mixed responses, but Harry got his volunteers in a flash: Shari Sampson, her son Cliff, Harvey Kingston, Diego Garcia, and three others. Harry couldn't help but notice that one person in particular not only didn't volunteer but didn't even leave his position near the fuselage to join the group: Javier Flores, whose guns Harry was carrying in a backpack dangling from his shoulder.

"If something happens to me," Harry softly told his Flight Attendant team member, Connie Flanagan, after he pulled her aside, "you need to take and maintain control. These people need someone to keep them together."

Harry and the other 7 headed off toward where Cliff said he'd seen Harold attacked and dragged away. Halfway to the woods, he stopped them all and began pulling out the guns, asking, "Who knows how to use one of these and feels comfortable with them?"

There were, of course, questions about the origins of the weapons. Harry told the lie that Javier had suggested, "They were in a checked bag."

Cliff Sampson, Harvey Kingston, and Diego Garcia raised their hands regarding comfort and knowledge with the pistols. Shari was surprised at her son's response, asking, "Since when do you know how to use a gun?"

The Sampson's were "outdoorsy" types and did a lot of fishing, and her two eldest children both knew how to use a bow. But Shari had never known Cliff to use a firearm before. He answered, "Vince O'Malley, he and his father have guns. They took me shooting with them a bunch of times. I didn't say anything 'cause I didn't know if you'd like it."

Harry let the family drama play out, then -- as he had with Harvey and Diego -- handed one of the Berettas to the youngest of the octet. With obvious skill, Cliff kicked out the clip, checked to ensure it was full, slammed it back inside the weapon, and pulled the slide back to inject a round into the firing chamber. He looked to Harry, to his mother, and to the others: "Good to go. Let's go get this kitty."

"This is no joking matter, Cliff," Harry chastised, trying to discipline the teen before his mother did, which he knew would be embarrassing. He looked about the four armed men as he explained, "I don't expect us to run into any trouble, but in case we do, I want you to remember two important facts. First, we have a limited supply of ammunition, so don't be unloading a clip at the first furry animal you see. Second, and yes, this contradicts with the first point, if you see a fucking Saber-toothed cat running at you with it big teeth open ready to bite your head off, shoot the fucker as many times as it takes to take it down!"

They all looked to each other for reassurance that they were ready for this, then towards and then into the woods they went. Whether it was 2021 or 10,000 B.C., the forest looked like just a forest. Yes, there were some unfamiliar plants here and their, but they were overshadowed by the conifers, shrubs, and wild flowers that were oh so familiar. There was movement in the trees above and on the ground at their feet, but for the most part, the creatures scurried away without being seen.

"Oh, God," Shari said, stopping suddenly as she looked off to the left of the scouting group. She turned back to face the group, leaning forward as if to puke and yet retaining her composure. Harry stepped away to look where Shari had been, seeing the dark red of blood spilled all about the ground and nearby shrubs. There was no other sign of Harold, except for his shoe laying on the stained grass.

Harry Timms felt his own stomach roll over at the sight of Harold's blood staining the ground and shrubs. There was so much of it that the nominal leader of the group knew the missing man was certainly dead.

"I want everyone on guard," he said, waving back those who were curious about what had been found, instructing, "You don't want to see this."

He looked to Cliff Sampson, Harvey Kingston, and Diego Garcia -- all armed -- and said, "And watch where you're pointing those things."

Harry gestured the group to parallel his own path, which followed the trail of blood. They moved slowly, cautiously; Harry whispered repeatedly for them to watch their steps.

Shari Sampson finally whispered back, "You know that if there's a Saber-toothed cat out here, we aren't going to sneak up on it. Have you ever stalked wild game, particularly a predator?"

Harry reluctantly shrugged and shook his head. Shari advised him, "The best we get is a very long distant look at the cat as it is running away from us, but there's no chance we'll sneak up on it."

"And what if it's still carrying Harold in its jaws?" he asked, reminding her of why they were there in the first place.

40 minutes later:

Ironically, there had been no sneaking necessary to find the Saber-toothed cat. The 8 stalkers reached the edge of a clearing in the woods and suddenly, there less than 30 yards away, the predator was on its belly at the far edge of the open space ... eating their friend. Harold's corpse was barely recognized as once being Human. His legs were still in his jeans, stained with blood down to his knees; most of the rest of his torso had been eviscerated, with his bowels torn out, spread around, ravaged; his skull was unseen, though, that might have been due to the position of the animal eating it.

Initially, the Saber-toothed cat -- which was sitting at an angle away from the Human's looking at it in awe and fright -- could have been mistaken as being just a very big lion. Its fur was longer than that of a 21st century lion and its mane shorter, but still. And then it turned casually to stare at the other examples of its current meal. Emerging downward from it blood covered mouth were canine teeth -- fangs is what they almost looked like -- that were 8 to 12 inches long.

The cat watched the intruders interrupting his lunch for a long moment as they simply stared at it in silence. Then, it casually turned back to eating on Harold. Willy Washington whispered, "What do we do?"

Diego was the first to respond: "We shoot it. We kill that fucker dead."

"No," Harry said softly. "We came out here to rescue Harold. That's not going to happen now."

"We have guns!" Javier argued, supported by some of the unarmed people who likely felt as vulnerable as poor old Harold.

"We would have to hit that cat a dozen times to kill it," Harry told them, "and it would probably still kill one or more of us before it died. No. We back up slowly and get the fuck out of here."

"What about--?"

"We'll come back to bury Harold later," Harry said. "We'll do right by him. I promise."

Someone murmured, "Do right by what's left of him you mean."

Harry had enough support to get the group to back away, though, and a few minutes later they were out of the woods and heading back for the camp. Again, Harry stopped them just outside the gathering area, saying, "I think it's best if we tell the others that we couldn't find Harold."

That set off an argument that persisted for a couple of minutes. At a calm in the discussion, Harry held his hand out and said, "I need the guns back."

Again, that led to disagreement, but Harry insisted, "We need to create a sort of Camp Watch, to watch out for more of those cats and whatever the fuck else is out there, waiting to eat us. If you want to join the Watch, you get a gun back."

"I join now," Diego said as he stuffed his gun into the small of his back. "I join, and I keep."

He strode off toward the camp, done with the conversation. After a moment of them looking at each other in silence, the rest of them heading toward the others, too. On the way, Shari demanded the pistol her son was carrying, and after Cliff gave it up, she handed it to Harry. She told the man, "My son and I will join the watch, too."

Back at camp, Harry explained that the search had been for naught, but that they were certain that a large predatory feline was in the area. "We need to be careful about our movements. No one leaves the camp without company. No one leaves the camp without a weapon. Anyone who wants to learn how to use the pistols will be shown. We just have to limit live fire practice because we have a limited supply of ammunition."

Harry and Shari both looked to and glared at Javier who, of course, had more guns and ammo. Harry knew a deal with Javier would have to be made if the group was threatened again by the cat or some other dangerous predator.

"In the meantime," Harry continued, "did any of you see the movie The 13th Warrior? Or Braveheart? Or even that episode of The Walking Dead when the Sheriff found Morgan again?"

Many in the group understood just to what Harry was leading, and with the hour, they were working on defenses for the crash site. It was decided that a 13th Warrior style moat and sharpened pole barricade would probably take too long and, in the end, likely not stop the beast, which would simply leap over it. But it was decided that William Wallace-style, hand held lances could be effective, particularly in conjunction with the pistols.

The real problem was cutting down and sharpening the pole. It took hours to find metal shards and debris that could be used as axes or knives. Those tools made of aluminum were weak and bent, while those made of steel were impossible to make sharp. Ultimately, they were able to use just one piece of steel debris that had had a relatively sharp edge on it due to its construction. There were thoughts of using the blades from the plane's engines, but getting them separated from the engine itself was proving to be difficult.

While part of the group worked on defenses, the others fashioned digging tools and buried the dead. Flies and little critters had already found the corpses. There was a great deal of argument about whether the deceases should be buried as is or stripped of their clothing. Some found the latter disrespectful, but when it was pointed out that there was no mall or Walmart at which to buy clothes and shoes once the wardrobes now being worn were worn out, a vote was taken.

Two thirds of the survivors voted to take the outer layers of clothing but leave undergarments in place. Women undressed women, men undressed men, and Harry and Connie Flanagan watched over it all. Personal possessions that had a value to the group were salvaged: lighters, matches, gum, pen lights, cosmetics, cigarettes, etc.; those of a very personal nature, including wallets, photos, jewelry, etc., were buried with their owners.

At sundown, the job was done and much of the group assembled to speak a few words. During a moment of silence, Milka Planinc -- a 34 year old Croatian-American woman who had had to be carried to the grave site due to having both legs broken in the crash -- surprised the others by breaking into a soft rendition of Sweet Chariot in her native tongue of Croatian. It was simply stunning; her voice was angelic and strong, despite the pain she was suffering due to her injuries.

Others showed a desire to join in, but with the song being sung in a language none of them spoke, a handful of them joined in by humming along with her. It was an emotional moment, and when Milka finished, she received thanks from many before the group slowly disbanded to return to the camp some 50 yards away.

Harry sat with two dozen men and women to discuss watch standing, and a plan was hatched out:

• 3 pairs would stand 4 hour watches from dusk to dawn, spread out like the points of a triangle.
• Another watch stander would set up atop the fuselage for a longer distance view.
• Each of these groups would be armed with one pistol, two clips, spears, and clubs; enough of the latter two had been fashioned to supply the Watch Standers as needed.
• The Watch Standers would be just on the perimeter of the camp, not so far out that they would be in danger.
• Fires were built 50 yards out from their positions, to hopefully deter some wild creature -- a cat perhaps? -- or at least light it up if it neared.
• Any survivors who wanted to sleep inside the fuselage were advised to do so. In the end, after more fearful discussion about poor lost Harold, more than 1/3 of the group moved inside.

And so the second night began...

After hours, the work was abandoned for rest and meals. The last of the food was consumed that night, and it wasn't a balanced meal in the least. It was decided that tomorrow, an effort had to be made to find new food sources, as well as water.

For safety reasons

Deleted

((keep going!))

16 November 2021
Day 3, dawn:

Harry Timms had taken the 3rd watch, from 2am to 6am; the 1st watch had begun with the setting of the sun at 6pm, followed by the 2nd watch at 10pm. He was surprised to find Shari Sampson sitting at the fire when he returned from the perimeter, cooking the last of the sausages and some roots someone had dug up for the off-coming watchers. They had a chat about her son, Cliff, specifically about how brave he'd been to step up the day before.

"I don't like that he knows how to handle a firearm so well without my knowledge," she said in barely above a whisper; most of the camp was still asleep. "But maybe we'll need him to have that skill." After a moment of silence between them, she asked in even a softer voice, "Are we really in the past? Can that be possible?"

They chatted about what they'd seen thus far, with the conversation ended by Harry: "I think that regardless of how surreal and impossible it seems, we have to assume it's a real possibility."

Over the next hour, as the sun broke over the hills to the east and bathed the camp in red, orange, and then yellow, the rest of the camp came alive. The very last of the food was distributed to the children first, then the adults. There were half a dozen diabetics with concerns over blood sugar levels; they were the first to eat, and even then it wasn't enough.

A hunting party was put together, primarily made up of those who'd gone searching for Harold the day before. And, because there was still concern for the cat-killed man, the party headed east again. They knew where to look for Harold now, of course, though it was uncertain how much of the man they would find once they got there.

The hunting party took its time, walking as quietly as it was slowly. There was plenty of small game sighted along the way, and Cliff Sampson again brought up the topic of snares. It was decided that the group would in fact set game catching traps, but because of the presence of the big cat to the east of the crash site it was determined that perhaps the snares should be set elsewhere.

They group came upon the clearing that had been the furthest extent of their walk the day before. At the edge of the woods on the far side of the open space, the crash survivors saw something they hadn't expected: a multitude of animals waiting for their turn at the feeding trough that once was Harold. Three canines were currently sinking their teeth into what remained of the young man, but just yards away were smaller mammalian scavengers, vultures, crows, and other birds.

Harvey Kingston whispered to the others, "Maybe we should just ... you know ... forget about this and pay homage to Harold back at--"

CRACK!

Everyone in the hunting parting flinched at the sound of the pistol shot, even the young man who'd pulled the trigger. As he stood and strode forward, Cliff looked to the corpse so horribly disfigured, now more easily seen with the scattering of the scavengers. He said over his shoulder to the others, "I'm not leaving Harold here to become bug food."

Over the next few seconds, Diego Garcia, Willy Washington, and Javier Flores each stood and followed after the young man. They arrived at Harold's body, finding very little of him recognizable anymore: his upper body had been thoroughly ripped to shreds, with most of the fleshy parts missing and even some of the bones pulled away or missing. Only Harold's lower half was still mostly intact, though both of his feet had been chewed off at the ankles.

The group had brought garbage bags with them, and now they bagged Harold up for removal and burial. They were ready to head back to the camp when the sound of nearing movement put the group on edge. Suddenly a deer burst from the undergrowth, frightened and likely running from a pursuing predator. It was seemingly unaware of the humans gathered near the woods edge as it ran directly at them. Without hesitation, Javier Flores lifted his pistol, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The bullet entered the deer's chest dead center, penetrating the rib cage and ripping the animal's heart into several pieces. It fell forward at speed, crashing to and rolling up the ground.

The others stared at Diego in surprise, to which he only shrugged and said, "Venison anyone?"

They field dressed the deer, saving all the internal organs save the entrails in another of their plastic garbage bags. They ran a pole between its legs and hauled it away to the camp where it was skinned, cleaned further, and put over the fire.

Harold was buried with the other dead, with whispers circulating the story of how little there was left of him to inter.

The rest of the day was spent building more defenses, pillaging through the checked bags for useful items, and -- for Cliff and some volunteers -- making snares to be distributed about the grass, shrub patches, and forest in every direction but east.

Introducing the Medical Staff, both professionals and "amateurs" (who will be trained):

Cooper Mason -- Trauma Surgeon, MD.
Paula Riggs -- CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist)
Peter Wilson -- Medic, SEALS (retired)
Helen Hartford -- Hospice Caregiver, volunteer
Julia Rivers -- Homeopathic storekeeper
Addler Hoffman -- Civilian with warzone experience; German citizen with poor English skills
Rosalee Davis -- Civilian; concerned parent (her child, Marjorie, is present at crash and unharmed)

NOTE -- The deaths spoken of below are included in the 70 deaths already claimed; the current number of living still stands at 149 (after Harold's death to the Saber-toothed cat.)

Day 3: 16 November 2021 (still, though later in the day)

"Can we talk...?"

Harry Timms, Connie Flanagan, and Shari Sampson were standing together near the fuselage of the crashed plane discussing various topics of importance when the group's only Medical Doctor, Cooper Mason, asked to speak with them. He was accompanied by three others -- Paula Riggs, Peter Wilson, and Helen Hartford. When the first three survivors turned to the other four, the trauma surgeon added softly, "In a more private setting...?"

The group moved away from what was being called the camp by most of the survivors, and Harry asked Cooper, "What can we do for you, Doctor?"

"You can tell me that you are in authority," Cooper said firmly.

Harry considered the request a moment, then responded, "Well, I am the most senior crew member, and I have been leading to the best of my--"

"I need you to tell me that you are in a position to make life and death decisions," Cooper interrupted. When Harry didn't immediately respond, the doctor spoke of the dead and injured, then -- in a soft, sorrowful tone -- finished, "We have at least six seriously injured patients for whom I can ... we can do nothing."

On the word we, the Doctor had turned to look at the others with him. At one time or another since the crash, each of them had had the opportunity to meet and speak with Harry, Connie, Shari, and many of the other survivors, so no introductions were required. Helen Hartford, who had ten years as a volunteer Hospice Caregiver, took a step forward, reminded the other three of her area of work, and told them, "These people need peace."

"And you all think I'm the one to make a decision on this," Harry said, looking between the four, as well as glancing to Connie and Shari. When no one else spoke, Harry drew a deep breath, held it, exhaled slowly, and asked Helen, "What specifically are you asking of me?"

The doctor answered, "Someone has to make a decision as to whether we relieve the suffering of these patients, those with no to little hope, those who are hanging on but who will most certainly pass."

Paula Riggs, the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist, spoke up for the first time: "We have very little in the way of pain killers, but..."

She looked to the Homeopathic storekeeper. Julia Rivers spoke up, "If you will send someone with me ... someone with a gun -- so I don't get eaten by a saber tooth tiger -- I can find what we need in the forest ... maybe around us, in the fields and wetlands."

"What do you need?" Shari asked the woman who had deep knowledge of the medicinal wealth in the plants that could be found all about them in nature. "I know a little bit about homeopathy myself."

Julia easily rattled off the names of a dozen plants that she said she knew could be found in abundance here in the valley or in the forests surrounding them. "I've already seen many of those. They include pain relievers, anti-inflammatories--"

Harry cut in, "We're talking about people who are dying ... people who, I believe you are telling me, people who you want to give some crushed up plant or drink made of berries that will kill them, yes?"

There were a variety of responses, both verbal and gesture; Harry continued, "Is this painless...? peaceful? I understand what you are telling me you want to do--"

"No one wants to do this," the doctor cut in with a firm tone.

The Hospice Caregiver spoke up again, "No one wants to do this, but it needs to be done, Harry. These people are in pain, and they aren't going to survive. This needs to be done, and we need to decide who makes these decisions."

There was a moment of silence, after which Shari Sampson spoke up again: "The Doctor." All attention turned to her, and she clarified, "Harry has stepped up to help lead the group, yes. But these kinds of decisions should belong to the Doctor."

"I gave an oath, to protect life, not end it," Cooper said.

Helen stepped closer to the Doctor and took his arm in a comforting squeeze. She didn't initially speak but eventually told him softly, "We'll be there with you."

Harry and Cooper met eyes for a moment before the former stepped closer to the latter and offered his hand. "I trust you to make the right decision."

Cooper took the other man's hand, and after a moment of silence said only, "Thank you."

The doctor looked to each of the three who had stepped up in one way or another to help lead the group, then to his own staff: "Come with me, and ... and we'll figure out the next step."

The four caregivers returned to the fuselage, which had become a makeshift medical center, and -- joining the other three involved in the survivors' medical care -- came to a hard decision: Dr. Cooper Mason would make a determination as to a patients survivability; anesthetist Paula Riggs and knowledgeable homeopath Julia Rivers would locate and, as necessary, process natural compounds to relieve the pain and/or end a life; and Navy SEAL medic Peter Wilson, Hospice caregiver Helen Hartford, Addler Hoffman -- who had civilian warzone experience -- and
Rosalee Davis -- who was simply a concerned and sympathetic mother -- would be there for the patients in their final days.

17 November 2021
Day 4:

Tammy Wagner was hurting. Her last fix had been at 30,000 feet somewhere over Central California after stealing opioids from another passenger. Unfortunately, that bottle had nearly been empty and its contents were already gone.

She'd gone through all of the little bottles of booze, too. She'd also gone through the half dozen bottles she'd gotten for sucking the cock of one of the survivors who'd squirreled away his own stash.

Tammy had joined Paula Riggs, and Julia Rivers the day before when the two went to the forest hunting. She'd peppered the pair with questions the entire afternoon: she'd feigned a general interest in the effort to find herbs, mushrooms, and more, but in reality Tammy was simply desperate to find something to ease her own pain.

Julia understood the younger woman's pain.  She'd been through her own period of addiction as a teen. Discovering Homeopathy had saved Julia's life, and now she wanted her knowledge to save Tammy, too.

As they foraged, Julia quietly pointed out some mildly narcotic mushrooms to Tammy which the young woman eagerly collected and hid away from the third woman. Julia pointed out several other plants that would be beneficial to the health of the others, with the three women filling a trio of baskets.

Back at the camp, the three peeled, chopped, squeezed, boiled, dried, and more as appropriate. By nightfall, they were dispensing their remedies.

And Tammy got her fix, too. Mushrooms were new to her and ... different, to say the least. But they worked, and soon she was feeling no pain.

18 November 2021
Day 5:

"The it-shay has itteth-hay the an-fay."

Tammie Wagner looked to Cliff Sampson with a confused expression, asking, "What the hell?"

"Pig-Latin," the teen said, continuing when the girl slightly older than him only seemed to remain confused, "Pig-Latin...? You don't know Pig-Latin?"

He laughed, then began to explain, "Take the first consonant or consonant blend, like the letter--"

Tammy cut him off, "I know what a consonant is, and I know what Pig-Latin is. I just don't understand what the hell you mean by the shit hitteth the fan."

The humor in Cliff's face faded as the chastising. He nodded his head toward the group of about a dozen adults standing in a circle out past the far side of the wrecked fuselage arguing. He said only, "That."

Tammy hadn't been paying any attention to the stress and anger and other emotions building in the camp over the past couple of days. She had her own problems with which to deal, the most prominent of which was Julia and Helen's insistence that she clean up her act, aka getting off the drugs. To be entirely honest, Tammy hadn't felt this good in a long, long time: the pair of women had been using their herbal remedies and the less-addictive mushrooms to wean her down, as well as feeding her well, cleaning her up physically, and simply spending time with her in thoughtful and sometimes comical conversation.

But there were still times when Tammy would love to have swallowed a pill or snorted a line or jabbed a needle into her arm. Now, as she looked off toward the group of arguing people Cliff had pointed out, that feeling returned to her. She asked, "What the fuck's wrong with them?"

"Everything!" he responded. "We still don't have enough food, so people are hungry..."

Food was still a problem. There were over two dozen snares now, most of them in the forest, that were bringing in a consistent supply of mostly rabbits but raccoons, skunks, and a wide array of rodents, too. A stream with fish and crayfish in it had also been found. A clever member of the crew -- yes, Cliff Sampson -- had repurposed some of the dead aircraft's wiring into little snares that were secured to a log on which collected seeds were spread; they easily caught a couple of dozen songbirds each day (not that everyone wanted to eat Tweety).

Despite all of this meat and the nuts, berries, seeds, leaves, roots, insects, and such forth coming into the camp, there still wasn't enough to sufficiently fill all 149 bellies each day. It wasn't because there wasn't enough edible flora and fauna near the crash site, though: the problem was that not enough people were putting out the effort to collect and process what was being found.

And that was what the argument beyond the fuselage was about. Actually, the argument was less about who was or wasn't foraging or hunting and more about who was going to make those who weren't get off their lazy asses and start. Harry Timms -- the senior flight attendant who had taken a leadership role and, thus far, been accepted in that position by most of the survivors -- had tried but failed to urge some of the less helpful people into putting out some effort to serve the camp.

Harry had gotten firm support from a number of key people and most of the remaining group; if he'd been pressed to give a number, Cliff would have estimated that the flight attendant had the support of 2/3 of the 148 other survivors.

But there was another wanna-be leader amongst the group, a charismatic and beautiful woman named Victoria Bevens, and Victoria had the support of yet another key survivor: Javier Flores, who of course was the man with (most of) the guns. Victoria had used her charm to find the true source of the Berettas, after which she'd flirted with Javier just enough to draw her into her web. Finding another half dozen or so supporters, she put a 24/7 guard around the gun runner and his suitcase full of tools, then proceeded to encourage others to her way of thinking about the future of the group.

The primary differences between Harry and Victoria were simple: Harry thought every survivor should work every day to further the survival of the group, whereas Victoria's thinking was that she and those with the guns should essentially rule over the others and that these others should do all the work. Harry and his key people knew that this was a volatile situation: one false move from either of the two camps -- yes, the two groups were by now living in two separate areas on either side of the fuselage -- and there could very well be a Shootout at the OK Corral moment.

Tammy -- by now wondering whether or not more knowledge might be better than less of it -- excused herself from Cliff's presence and wandered over closer to the fuselage and, thus, the argument. She wound her way around the separated tail section of the plane until she could hear most of what was being said. It became clear that the current discussion was about Javier's checked baggage: Harry was arguing that the pistols and ammunition should be divided per the size of the group possession them, using the term per capita at one point, which simultaneously seemed both right and wrong to Tammy; Victoria was saying the guns and bullets should be divided evenly between the two factions, regardless of how many of the survivors followed Harry and how many aligned with her; while Javier himself was reminding both Harry and Victoria that he'd already made an agreement to give up only four of the firearms, some clips, and a box of bullets.

What Tammy took away from the discussion wasn't so much about the Berettas but about the 149 remaining survivors: it seemed that they were, in fact, about to divide into two separate groups. What would that look like, she wondered? Were they going to simply continue to live on separate sides of the wreckage? Or was one or both groups going to strike out for new territory?

She realized that she was going to get her answer when the entire group suddenly turned for the larger assemblage of survivors, with Harry calling out in one direction after another, "Attention! Can everyone gather around the big bond fire. Everyone ... please ... we need to talk."

Within a couple of minutes, every survivor save those still in the fuselage infirmary -- 12 patients and a couple of care givers -- and a handful of men, women, and older children foraging or hunting in the forest encircled the last of the fire pits, which currently had only the slightest of fires burning in it. Harry gestured for silence, then explained, "We have a situation that must be resolved, and it's not something I can simply foist upon the group as some sort of self-appointed leader."

He spoke on everything from food to guns to building defenses -- or, more specifically, the lack of building of defenses -- before saying, "It is my opinion that -- as a group, one group -- we need to elect a leader, someone to make the important decisions, the hard decisions."

As Harry was talking, a variety of responses arose all about the group, some verbal, some not; some were obviously supportive of what Harry was saying while other were most definitely not.

Victoria cut in, "And it is my opinion that if we were to have such an election, you would be the obvious winner, and there are quite a few of us that don't agree with that."

Just as with Harry, Victoria's words caused pro and con reactions among the crowd. She stepped closer to the fire and more into the group's line of sight and continued, "Majority rule does not always work. We've seen this for years, decades! Hell, anyone who pays attention to the mayhem that is our government knows that!"

Cheers arose from the crowd, a minority of the survivors but a very vocal one. Victoria continued on about the failings of democracy, then looked directly at Harry as she said, "If you want to be Mayor or Governor or President of your little United State of Survivors, Harry, go ahead. But my people and I won't stand for it."

She looked about the circled crowd with a confident look and asked, "Who's with me?"

Again, there was a minority and yet significant cheer. Victoria looked to Harry again, her lips spreading in a grin. Then, she simply turned and headed away toward where she and her followers had set up their separate camps. One after another, survivors began weaving their way through their unmoving opposites until finally the two groups were well defined.

Cliff Sampson had been listening from the outside of the encirclement, and now he tried counting each of the men and women following Victoria away from the Big Fire. He was surprised when his count was much higher than he'd estimated: something around 60 of the survivors -- 40% of the group -- headed for the other fire in support of the woman who was now Harry's competitor for leadership.

"So, what do we do about this?" Connie Flanagan asked her more senior attendant after seemingly half of the group simply walked away.

Harry Timms looked to his coworker, then to the distant group, then back. He shrugged: "Nothing."

"Nothing?" someone nearby asked. "Whaddaya mean nothing? They took most of the guns and almost half of the people."

Harry was disappointed, of course, but he neither saw anything to do about it nor any reason to do anything about it. He said before heading toward the fuselage to check on the injured, "They want to live apart from us, so be it. And as far as the guns go, we have four still and fifty rounds of ammo. It'll keep us safe from whatever this place has to offer us."

"And what about them?" another person asked, nodding a head toward the other, better armed group. "What if we need to be kept safe from them?"

"We won't," Harry said after stopping and turning back to the group. "We have no reason to feel threatened by Victoria's group. We have nothing the want."

Connie stepped toward Harry and gestured casually past him, saying, "Tell them that."

He turned to see a small group walking from the second camp their way; the Berettas were noticeably displayed in the waist bands of at least four of the seven. As they arrived, Harry gave Javier a sharp look, then looked to Victoria, who was also armed. He looked to the 9mm and asked, "Really? You think that's necessary?"

"We're about to find out," she responded. She looked past him to one of the piles of supplies salvaged from the plane's wreckage, then to the fire where several small carcasses -- a pair of rabbits, a raccoon, and several fish -- were cooked or still cooking for the upcoming lunch. "We want half of everything."

Harry couldn't help but laugh. "Half?"

"Why not?" she asked. "Two groups. Even split."

"There's only about 60 of them, Harry," Cliff Sampson called from nearby. When he garnered attention from Harry, Victoria, and others, he continued, "That's about 40% of--"

"Cliff!" a female voice chastised sharply from nearby. The teen turned to find his mother, Shari glaring at him. She said softly, "Keep still."

"I trust the boy's math," Harry said in Cliff's direction before turning to face Victoria again. "Seems fair: you have 40% of the people, you get 40% of the salvage."

"Not including the food ... 'cause you don't deserve it," Cliff added, ignoring his mother's warnings. When Victoria looked his way, the boy gestured toward the fire pit and clarified with an accusatory tone, "My little hunting club killed all of this. None of your people did shit."

His mother again snapped at him, but Cliff was undeterred. "I made the snares and fishing poles, with Harry's help ... and some of the others helped, too, but none of your people did. Connie cleaned the fish, and Julia Rivers found the herbs for cooking them. Tammy helped, too, and Harvey Kingston, and them."

On them, Cliff pointed to a trio of survivors who'd been more than eager to help catch and gather food to keep their bellies from rolling around within them. He looked to where his sisters were standing together and added, "Even Sammi and Molly helped, and that's saying something since Sammi doesn't like to get her hands dirty now that she's discovered boys."

"Bite me," his slightly younger sister mumbled just loud enough for her siblings and mother to hear. It was, of course, very true: Sammi's love for the outdoors had waned as she's begun turning into quite a young beauty and boys had discovered her!.

"We can feed ourselves," Victoria responded as if she was being challenged.

Harry thought he was detecting some rising tension amongst Victoria's armed escort, and while he didn't think that there was actually going to be a gangland style shoot'em up, he also didn't want to risk someone doing something stupid. Everyone had seen Victoria's people carrying their own personal stuff away with them, from their own bags to the seat cushions, airport blankets, and more that had been distributed that first night and next morning. To be honest, there really wasn't that much more that hadn't already been claimed.

"Half," he said, nodding his head toward one cache, then another. He glanced back at Cliff, then to Victoria: "You can take half the food, too. I'm confident we can replace it by sundown."

Victoria smiled with a bit of triumph in her expression before gesturing to her people to get their stuff. But before they could get more than a couple of steps forward, Harry cut them off: "Not like this!" He glanced to the guns in some of his rival's waist bands and said, "No one who's packin' takes a step closer." He looked to the beauty before him and, speaking specifically for her own ears said, "This is a recipe for disaster. Victoria, I think you were wrong to split the group up, but I respect you for speaking your mind and stepping into a leadership role. But this..."

He now gestured toward the gun in her own waist band and added, "...was idiotic."

Harry hesitated for her reaction, but all he got was a stare and a slight smirk. One of the men behind her stepped closer and murmured, "You don't have to take--"

But Victoria slowly lifted her hand in a quiet gesture, and after the man stood down, she said over her shoulder, "Javier, collect the pistols. The rest of you, go with our friend Harry and get our stuff."

The men and one woman packin' heat were reluctant to varying degrees to give up the guns they'd brought with them, but all did ... except for Victoria. But she also didn't move any closer to the piles of supplies that were now to be split between the two groups. Harry called Harvey, Connie, and Shari forward and told them, "Help Victoria's people, if you don't mind."

"And we'll need half of the medical supplies the woman from the other team said a moment later.

"No," Harry responded simply. "The medical supplies stay with the infirmary ... which will continue to remain fully accessible to your people, just as it will to ... well, mine, for lack of a better word." He could see that Victoria wasn't happy with this and clarified, "Doc Mason, Peter, Paula, Helen ... Addler and Rosalee ... they're all still here with me."

"Maybe you need to take another look at your staff, Harry," Victoria countered. Regarding the retired Navy SEAL medic, she said "Peter Wilson's over at my camp.

That surprised Harry, and while he tried to hide his disappointment, he could see in Victoria's expression that had noticed his disappointment. He said solemnly, "Well, that's his choice. Still ... the meds stay here. If the Chief needs something, he can come ask Doc Mason for it. The meds stay here."

There was a brief argument behind Harry about what 50-50 meant, but it was settled quickly. Victoria's people began heading off toward their own camp with their hands full and in some cases backs full. One of Harry's people grabbed at a bag that, apparently, Victoria's man had already been told wasn't theirs. A brief scuffle began but ended when Harry gave the man permission to take the package.

When only Victoria and Javier remained -- the latter acting as if he were the former's bodyguard -- Harry stepped closer to the woman and spoke softly: "This could have gone much differently." He looked to her waist and the gun in her belt. Looking back into her eyes again and stepping into her personal space -- something that put the gunrunner on guard -- Harry growled at Victoria, "Don't you ever brings guns into this camp again."

Victoria smiled wide, then reached up and caressed Harry's face with soft fingers, something from which he pulled away. She told him before turning and leaving, "I'm gonna miss you, Harry. You're a nice guy. I think we could have been good friends ... maybe more than friends."

Harry stood there in silence watching the woman head away toward the distant camp. Then, gesturing to three of his people who he'd learned had actual battlefield experience -- one each from Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Syria -- and had expressed a willingness and even desire to be part of the security force, Harry said, "I want a 24/7 watch on the infirmary, specifically the drugs. We'll move the rest of the supplies into the fuselage as well. You up to it?"

All three answered in the affirmative, and Harry told them he would find others to help. He then called the entire group together for a discussion about what lay ahead for them: they discussed night watches, foraging, hunting, water collection, the building of latrines, shower stalls, and -- of course -- more permanent housing. "We have everything we need within half a mile of here to make a comfortable and secure home for ourselves: wood for building, food for ... well, eating, duh ... clean water."

"What about that saber tooth lion?" someone asked. "When it gets hungry again..."

The person didn't finish the thought, but Harry responded: "We will build a perimeter to keep it out. We will train people to stand watch with weapons, including the handguns. I assure you: if everyone chips in and puts out the effort, we can build a safe secure home where we will not only survive but will thrive."

There were more questions and conversations before Harry said, "Again, I want to bring up the idea of an election. We need to decide--"

But before he could get any farther, someone called out, "I nominate Harry Timms for the role of leader of our group. Do I have a second?"

Someone quickly called out, "Second!"

The first person continued, "All in favor of Harry Timms being our leader, say aye!"

As he watched, nearly everyone in the crowd either called out or raised a hand or both. He smiled wide with delight and pride. The man who'd started this finished with, "Mayor Harry Timms, speech!"

There was laughter and playful calls of Speech! Speech! Harry only waved them off and said, "Okay, knock it off. We've got work to do."

He called a few people to him by name, then said to the entire crowd, "If you have an immediate concern, please bring it to me."

Harry spent the next three hours discussing vital topics with others, and by the time the sun was halfway between high noon and sunset, nearly every person in the camp was off working on a project for which they'd either volunteered or been assigned. Harry, Connie, Shari, and Harvey stood together watching the survivors becoming busy bodies for a moment, and just before they themselves went to work, too, Harry told them in a serious tone, "We need to keep an eye on Victoria and her gun toting friends, but ... not in a way that makes it seem like we're keeping an eye on them. I believe that eventually, they'll come back into the fold. But for now, we have to give them the freedom to realize for themselves that they are making a mistake."

19 November 2021
Day 6:

It was a long night for many in Harry Timm's group: extra watches were posted, to watch for not just Saber-toothed cats but for encroachment from Victoria's group. Other than some rude and sometimes profane comments hollered through the dark across the hundred-yard gap between the two encampments, though, there hadn't been anything of serious concern.

That is until the sun came up and Cliff Sampson-- with a proper, armed escort -- went out to check the snares. For the first time since he'd begun setting the traps, they hadn't caught a single animal. Most of the traps were still set, and Cliff worried for a moment that maybe they'd overhunted the forest's edge or perhaps the remaining, yet-to-be-trapped animals had gotten wise to the snares. Then he caught a little detail that both angered and frightened him.

"Victoria's people raided our snares last night," Cliff told Harry when he returned to the camp. He had the working mechanisms of a new snare he'd been ready to install this morning; it worked identically to the currently placed trap that led him to the discovery. He showed Harry how it was supposed to be set and then how he found it. "They took whatever got caught in it last night or this morning, then reset it."

"Are you sure, Cliff?" Harry inquired. "I mean, maybe--"

"I found two others the same way," Cliff cut the group's leader off, knowing that Harry had been about to ask if maybe he'd set it a different way last night. "Whoever did this thought they were setting it correctly. The trap would have still worked, but ... it's not the way I set them. I'm sure of this, Harry. And ... I think I know who did it, too."

Harry almost didn't want to know who was responsible: putting a name and face on the thief meant possibly having to do more about it than simply questioning Victoria about her people. It meant actually punishing someone specific. After all, this couldn't go without a challenge.

"That Javier guy," Cliff informed Harry. "He went out with us day before yesterday, as our armed escort, in case the Cat was prowling about, he said. He saw where all the traps were set. He's the only one of Victoria's people who knew where they were."

Harry thought on the news a moment, then thanked Cliff and told him, "I'll deal with this. I don't want you going into the forest without an armed escort ... without my knowledge either. Your mother would kill me if you got--"

He'd been about to say hurt or assaulted, speaking about what Victoria's thugs might do if Cliff came upon them looting his traps. Instead, he finished, "Inform me before you go back out there again ... got it?"

"Yes, sir," Cliff said before turning to head off again.

But before he got far, Harry called, "Wait!" The teen turned back, and Harry -- with a spreading smirk on his lips -- said, "Cliff, I have an idea that ... well, it just might solve our problems."

Cliff, Harry, and Harvey headed out into the forest again. They looked for signs of the path that Javier -- or whoever -- might have taken to get to the snares. They found it: like something out of an Old West tracking mission, they found still visible shoe prints in the soft ground and broken branches and grass where the intruder had made his way through sometimes thick foliage.

"Here," Harry said when they found an appropriate location. He looked to the teen and asked, "Can you do it here?"

Cliff looked the location over, smiled, and nodded.

An hour later, they were back at the camp. Later, just before sundown, the trio -- along with three others -- returned to check the traps; they retrieved a rabbit and an opossum, as well as half a dozen tweety birds, all of which would become part of the night's meal for the larger of the two groups of survivors.

After dark fell, Cliff slipped out of the little lean-to in which his family was now living in anticipation of building something larger, more solid, and more permanent. He used the light of the full moon to reach where the two-person night watch was set, just fifty yards or so from the fuselage. (There had been concern about the placement of the watch stations: too far out might endanger the night watch standers by not giving them a short enough retreat path to the camp, while too far in might result in the alarm raised by the night watch not giving the sleeping survivors enough alert time.)

"You're here," Cliff said with surprise, finding both Harry and Harvey at the station. To Harry, he said, "I thought you always took the 3rd watch."

"Not tonight," the leader said. Nodding his head toward the forest, he explained, "I think I better be here for this." He handed a plastic mug to Cliff, asking, "Coffee? It's almost the last cup in the pantry."

"Almost the last cup in the world," Cliff corrected as he took the mug. "Human beings didn't start drinking coffee until the 15th century A.D. ... 11,000 years from now."

Under the moonlight, Cliff saw the looks the two men gave him. He smiled and while they probably couldn't see it blushed, too. "I did a report on stimulants for Health, junior year." He sipped at the cup, grimaced, and handed it back. "That's awful."

Harvey spoke up, asking, "Whaddaya mean 11,000 years from now. Where'd you get that?"

"From Julia," Cliff answered. "She knows so much about plants ... flora she calls it. Putting together what she knows about flora and the fact that a Saber-tooth cat--"

"Theory," Harry cut in, softly chastising, "And we don't talk about that. We have enough panic already."

"The theory that Harold got eaten by a Saber-tooth cat," Cliff continued, "along with everything else we know about this place, Julia and Helen think -- you know she's a history teacher, right?"

Cliff got a nod from Harry regarding his shared knowledge of Helen Hartford. He continued, "Anyway, they think that we might be at the end of what they called the Younger-Dryas period. She -- Helen -- called it the LGP, the Last Glacial Period, capital 'L', capital 'G', capital 'P'. It was the last ice age, and it happened between eleven and half and thirteen thousand years ago ... so ... before 10,000 B.C."

Both men were by now just staring at the teen in amazement. He realized this, chuckled, blushed yet again, and shrugged. "I remember things I hear, generally. And I like history. And ... Tammy was there and was listening, too, and ... well ... I sort of like Tammy, so..."

Harvey laughed and was contemplating something to say about the teen's chances of finding love in the LGP with a damaged woman a handful of years older than him when the darkness was filled with screams of pain. All three men flinched in shock, looking off in the general direction of where they'd built their little surprise earlier in the day.

"Oh my god!" Cliff said in shock, unsure of what else to say. The man -- still crying out in agony -- wasn't dead, obviously, yet the teen asked with concern, "Did we kill him? I mean, do you think--"

"Relax, Cliff," Harry reassured him, "He'll be fine. It's just briar vines. It's not like we made a punji stick pit trap or anything deadly. Cuts and scratches, nothing the Doc can't fix." He looked to Harvey and said, "Speaking of which."

"I'm on it," the other man said, standing and hurrying for the fuselage.

"Go back to your family, Cliff," Harry said. "You don't need to be indicated in this." The teen didn't immediately leave, listening in shock to the injured man and a second man who was helping him as well. "Cliff, go. You shouldn't be out here."

The boy did as told, looking back over his shoulder each time the man who'd set off his briar slashing snare cried out at the help he was getting from his partner in crime. Cliff's mother, Shari, was awake when he returned, sitting up and also listening to the agony-filled cries. She asked him about it and where he'd been, to which he said as he slipped back into the shared blankets, "I was with Harry and Harvey at the night watch."

"What's going on out there?" she asked. "Who is that?"

"Dunno," he said, snuggling into the makeshift bed on the outside of his youngest sister. "Harry told me not to worry about it and go to bed. I'm sure he's dealing with it."

Shari continued making inquiries, but Cliff had gone quiet; he had no answers that he could share.

At the fuselage, Harvey gently awoke the sleeping doctor. Cooper Mason almost immediately detected the distant cries still cutting through the otherwise silent night. He asked what was happening, to which Harvey said, "Get you bag. You're gonna need antiseptics, bandages, and maybe some painkillers."

"I have very little of the first and none of the second," the Doctor said as he was quickly slipping into his shoes and coat. He asked again what was going on, asking a question that really didn't need an answer, "Is someone hurt?"

Harvey shrugged, but after a moment said, "Someone may have accidentally walked into a snare trap made of thorny briar vines ... meant to deter thieves from stealing food from our other snares."

Cooper's eyes widened in shock. As he headed for the door, he murmured, "Jesus Christ, what did you guys do?"

Outside, Harvey used the still hot coals and small flame of a nearby fire to light one of the torches Cliff's family had shown them all to make from available materials, both natural and manmade. The pair was joined by Harry now, and the three of them together headed for Victoria's camp. Halfway there, a guard hiding in the dark challenged them: Harry called out the three's identities, adding, "The Doc is here to help whoever it is that's screaming and waking everyone up. What's going on? What happened?"

The guard told them to stop, but a moment later Victoria called from her own camp, "Let'em through!"

They reached her, and Harry noticed immediately that his leadership counterpart didn't look at all as if she'd just been woken from a deep sleep. He said with an accusatory tone, "You're up late, Victoria. Don't suppose you have something going on you wish to tell me about?"

She stared at him a long moment; her expression told him that she suspected he had something to do with the screaming man. Her response, though, was "Just hanging with my people. I've always been a night owl."

Several quiet, tense moments passed while they all listened to the sounds of the two approaching men: one was still crying out and moaning while the other was telling him he was going to be okay, adding just before they came into the light of the fire, "Stop being such a big fuckin' baby."

Harry wasn't surprised to find out that one of the two men emerging from the darkness was Javier Flores, the man with the guns who -- according to Cliff Sampson -- was the only man from Victoria's camp who knew the location of many or even most of the snares. Unfortunately, Harry thought to himself, Javier wasn't the man who'd stepped into the trap: that honor went to William "Willie" Rogers, who was the only real outdoorsman type that Harry knew Victoria had in her little breakaway band.

Cooper hurried to Willie as the man dropped onto a crate near the fire. He asked with concern, "What the hell happened? Were you attacked? What did this to you?"

The Doctor already knew the facts of the ambush, of course, but he acted ignorant to the details anyway. Willie -- with bleeding scratches and cuts all about his exposed face, skull, neck, and hands -- looked toward the other two men from the other camp and accused angrily, "Those fuckers did this! They set a trap for us."

As Cooper instructed the man to strip his torso for a closer inspection, Harry took on an innocent tone and said, "I don't know what you're talking about. We set snares in our neck'o the woods to catch food. If you happened to walk into one of--"

"Bullshit!" Willie snapped. "That was no animal snare. You set that to catch one of us."

"Now, I don't understand how you come to that conclusion," Harry went on, sounding innocent as he could. "I mean, we wouldn't have expected you in that part of the forest, right? I mean, the only reason you would have had to be in that part of the forest in the dead of night ... would have been to raid our snares of the food that we need to feed our people."

He looked directly at Victoria now, the woman with whom he'd agreed on a division of territory for snares and hunting to prevent just such situations, an agreement that her people had violated not just once but twice and, now, were paying the price. He finished, "And I'm sure you wouldn't have done that, right? Come into our territory and take our food?"

There was a long moment of silence -- well, except for Willie's continuing sharp cries of pain as Cooper cleaned up his cuts -- after which Victoria finally spoke up: "I think Willie and Javier may have gotten lost. It was an accident, I'm sure, and I can reassure you, Harry, that it won't happen again."

"This is bullshit!" Javier growled. He stepped out from beyond Willie and Victoria and raised his Beretta up, pointing it directly at Harry's face.

Victoria growled, "Javier, stand down."

But Javier only pulled back the weapon's hammer and accused, "This asshole could have killed Willie, or me. You can't tell me that--"

"Put it down, Javier!" Victoria repeated.

"Why?" Javier asked, glancing to Harry's waistband where another of the Beretta's was tucked away. "I can shoot him down before he can get that thing out of his belt."

"Sure," Victoria said as she casted her gaze out into the darkness beyond the camp. "But after you shoot Harry, his people out there in the dark are going to kill all of us before we ever even figure out where in the grass they're hiding."

She looked to Harry and asked, "Am I right?"

Harry hesitated, then turned his head a whistled. A moment later, from a 120 degree fan around Victoria's camp, more than two dozen whistles came back to Harry. He looked to Javier, then Victoria: "We may only have 3 guns, seriously outnumbered by what you have ... but they have instructions to kill Javier first ... then you, Victoria ... then anyone else who raises or fires a weapon."

By now, the face of the previously confident and aggressive Javier was filled with obvious concern as his eyes searched the dark for his potential killer. Next to him, Victoria only stared at Harry with a smirk that seemed to show she was impressed. Harry stepped closer to Javier, reached his hand out, and regarding the pistol in the man's hand said, "I'll take that."

"What?" the gun runner asked, quickly adding, "Bullshit. You aren't taking my gun."

Harry hesitated, then whistles again. And yet again, dozens of whistles returned to him in the night. He stepped back a couple of steps, saying, "I don't know how good a shot they are, so ... maybe a couple of paces back.

But Victoria stepped in front of Javier and gestured for the weapon. Javier reluctantly handed it over, and Victoria turned back to Harry, offering it to him. She mused, "To the victor goes the spoils."

"Oh, it wasn't that so much as it was a fear that that fucker would shoot me in the back," Harry said as he took the handgun.

Victoria looked to her left and then to her right, seeing that by now nearly the whole of her group was up and around, listening to and watching the encounter with great interest. She said loud enough for all to hear, "[i]From this point forward, no one is to encroach upon the borders to which Harry and I agreed. No more filching from their snares; no more poaching in their territory; no more anything that can be considered a violation of our agreement. Understood?"

There was a low rumble of voices, some of which could have been interpreted as willing agreement while others could have been considered reluctance. Victoria looked back to Harry again, then to Cooper. She told the latter, "Thanks, Doc, but I think the Chief can take care of that."

Peter Wilson was just arriving near the fire, having hurried in from the dark with his belt unbuckled and still putting on his shirt. Harry knew the walk of shame expression he saw in the man's face, though, he'd more often than not only seen in the face of women as men rarely felt shame when they'd just gotten a little.

"Let's go, Doc," Harry said, urging the man to turn over responsibility for Willie. Cooper gave Peter a quick rundown of the worst of the cuts -- one of which was to the man's neck and would require stitches -- before joining Harry and Harvey for the return walk to their own camp.

In the dark, halfway home, Javier called out into the night, "This ain't over!"

Back at the camp, Harry set a double watch and stayed up all night himself.

(Note to my readers, assuming I have any: this post is sexual in nature but not graphic. If you don't care to read it, go to the very bottom of the post for a summary.)

21 November 2021
Day 8:

Over the last two days, the tension between the camps had shifted from hot war to cold war, with no one from either camp going to the other with the exception of some of the Medical Staff and various patients, most of whom traveled from their homes to the Infirmary and back. Harry had lessened the night time watches a bit but was still wary of Javier; he wasn't that concerned with Victoria herself after her show the night of the briar snare incident, but the gun runner -- specifically his leveling of a Beretta 9mm pistol at his face -- was still very much on Harry's mind.

He sent Harvey and another armed man with Cliff and the Hunters to check the snares and do some fishing in a small pool and the creek entering and exiting it. It was a shared location between the two camps as it was the nearest place for fishing, bathing, and washing clothes. Harry and Victoria had agreed to switching days at the pool, to avoid any possibly problems between the two populations of survivors. Harry's hope that Victoria would give up this silly quest of hers to run her own group had thus far failed him. There's always tomorrow, he would tell himself.

Just downstream from the pond, Cliff tossed a makeshift crayfish trap into the shallow waters amidst some large, mossy stones. They'd created it from a wire mesh container salvaged from the plane and baited it with the leftover corpse of a roasted rabbit. Seeing it settle appropriately on the bottom for catching crawdads, the teen then turned his attention to the young woman who was walking carefully barefoot across the bottom of the creek, despite the very cold-water running past and over her calves and feet.

Tammy Wagner had been a beauty before she'd cleaned up her act and gotten off stimulants, downers, and whatever else she could find to alter her state of mind. Now, though, Cliff found her simply incredible. She'd shed her sweatshirt up on the shore before entering the creek, showing off her delicious hour glass figure and plentiful breasts with their now conspicuously pert nipples. She hadn't been paying Cliff much attention since the crash; she had had other issues, of course, and -- though he was legally an adult at 18 -- he was still a kid in her mind, a boy who was yet to experience even a fraction of the good and bad she herself had.

Tammy stopped to ensure she had her balance, then looked up the creek toward where others were fishing, then down stream to where Cliff had leaned against a tree to simply watch her with a yearning expression. It wasn't until she smiled wide at him that Cliff realized he was being watched as well. He quickly dropped his eyes, then looked to the creek as if the trap required his attention.

"It's okay, you know," she called to Cliff as she started walking carefully over the sandy and pebbly bottom his direction. When he only looked to her with a questioning expression, she clarified, "It's okay for you to look at girls that way ... women ... whatever."

"I wasn't looking at you any way," he said shyly. A moment later, as he watched her simply smile while coming closer, he asked, "What way? What way do you think I was looking at you, I mean."

Tammy waited until she was almost within arms distance of Cliff before she said with a soft tone, "Like you want to see me naked."

Cliff's face exploded in a fiery red blush as his eyes widened dramatically. Despite his shock, the teen couldn't prevent his eyes from dropping to the 24year-old beauty's incredible bosom, the very tits that he'd been imagining were on full display to him.

Tammy laughed, reached a hand down into the creek, and splashed a handful of water up at him, not soaking Cliff but hitting him enough that he shivered at the chill. He argued, not really thinking first about his words, "I don't want to see you naked."

Tammy feigned an expression of shock, asking, "You don't?" Cliff stumbled over the words as he tried to explain that what he meant was that he hadn't been staring at her and imagining her naked, and after letting him fumble with himself for a bit, she laughed and said, "Relax, Cliff. I was just messing with you."

She waggled a hand to him for help, got it, and rose up out of the creek bed; she ended up just inches from him, their faces level with one another. Tammy gazed into Cliff's eyes for a long moment, a flirty smile on her lips; she was still holding his hand, even though he had let his own grip lessen. She asked almost in a whisper, "You do want to see me naked, though ... don't you, Cliff?"

She could feel his hand trembling in her own as he opened his mouth to respond but said nothing. His back was against the tree now, and Tammy moved in close enough that her swollen nipples were just a split hair away from touching his chest. She purred, "What would you do for me if I let you see me naked?"

Again, Cliff tried to formulate a response without any words coming out of his mouth. Tammy continued, "I've been told that in the plane, there is a box filled with personal hygiene items taken from some of the suitcases of the dead. And I hear that one of the items in there are a bunch of little hotel bottles of soaps and conditioners and skin conditioner that some klepto collected while on vacation. Have you heard this, too?"

Cliff's response this time was a very honest shaking of his head. Oh, he knew that there was a stash of resources in the plane, of course; everyone knew that. But as to specifics, that hadn't really been anything of concern to him as his mother had been dealing with fulfilling the needs her children had.

"You get me a bottle of each -- shampoo, conditioner, skin conditioner -- and I'll show you my tits," she went on, now pressing forward until her bosom was pressed firmly against the teen's chest. She continued, "You get me two of each, and I'll let you fondle them. You every fondled a woman's boobs, Cliff?"

Again, his response was a very honest shaking of his head. Tammy smiled wider; she laid her hands on the boy's hips, letting her thumbs caress over his waist and inward toward his groin just enough to possibly feel intimate to him ... as which Cliff most definitely interpreted it.

"You get me three of each," she continued, lifting herself on her bared tippy toes until her mouth was just an inch from Cliff's, "and I'll go skinny dipping with you."

She moved her face forward to press her lips softly against the boy's for a short but intimate moment. Then, lowering herself again, she backed away, hesitated, and turned to walk the bank toward her shoes and sweatshirt. She let her hips sway a bit more dramatically than normal, and she donned her shoes by leaning forward excessively to flash her tight, round ass at him.

Tammy gave Cliff one last look, smile, and wink over her shoulder before she told him, "I gotta go pick some mushrooms and stuff. Gotta earn my keep."

And with that, she hurried off into the forest to join up with the foragers to whom she'd excused herself with a feigned need to pee behind a tree.

Near the creek's edge, Cliff -- his heart still pounding, his penis harder than it had ever been in his life -- looked about for sign of anyone who might have seen that which had just transpired. He saw no one, not that he'd expected to. Feeling alone, but actually and emotionally, he slipped away into the thick underbrush to deal with the problem with which Tammy had left him.

Later that night:

Cliff had been trying to get Tammy alone since sundown, disappointed that she was so popular with the others, particularly the men. After dinner and some singing and game playing to fill the space that used to be filled by cell phone games and cable television, Tammy excused herself from the group encircling the fire. Cliff jumped on the opportunity to slip up close enough to whisper, "Can we talk ... in private?"

Tammy was hopeful about the reason for the requested conversation but tempered her enthusiasm when she saw a lack of plastic bottles in Cliff's hand or maybe a little bag of such over his shoulder. Still, she said, "Sure."

She began to lead him away from the group, but Cliff said, "No, this way."

He led her off toward a cluster of shrubs and small trees between which had been strung wires for hanging washed clothes. Once there, he told her to stay put, disappeared into the little grove, then returned with a small child's backpack. He unzipped and opened it: it was filled with dozens of little bodies, miniature bars of soap, and more.

Tammy's eyes widened and her mouth fell open. "My God, Cliff. What have you done?"

"This is good, right?" he asked desperately. "This is what you wanted?"

Tammy laughed. "Cliff, this is far more than what I asked for. In fact..." She looked back toward the camp fire and the people milling about, then back to the teen. She reached into the bag, pillaged it for a couple of samples of this and that, and stuffed them into the pockets of her jeans and hoodie's belly pouch. She zipped the bag shut again, telling Cliff, "Take it back."

Now it was his turn to looked surprised: "Whaddaya mean?"

"Take it back!" she repeated. "This is too much. They'll notice this, and they'll start snooping around, looking for answers, and you'll get in trouble. Big trouble."

Tammy moved close again, stood on her toes again, and kissed Cliff again, only this time more passionately with her lips parting slightly, encouraging the teen to part his own lips to experience the tip of her tongue reaching out. She moved back again, smiled, and said, "Put it back, and meet me at the atream tomorrow where we were today."

"Tomorrow isn't our day," he reminded her. "Victoria's people will be there."

She thought for a moment, then instructed, "Meet me at noon where that funky tree is ... you know the one ... the one that looks like a pitchfork."

She backed away, flashed some of the bottles still in her hands, and promised, "You're gonna be rewarded for this, Cliff. Trust me."

Tammy turned and hurried back toward the little lean-to she shared with Julia, giggling in delight.

(Note: This post includes an image of a scantily clad woman. It's not pornography so relax. The post does not include erotica. Oh, and if you open the link to the picture, keep in mind that it is out of context; there are no pickup trucks in our story.)

22 November 2021
Day 8:

As the sun rose and began pushing the darkness out of the forest, Harry Timms was sitting atop a large rock overlooking the stream, just upstream from the pond. He'd just come off the third watch ... after having stood the second and first watches before that as well. His eyes were heavy as he listened to the gentle splashing of the babbling brook, and if he hadn't had a reason for being here on a day when no one from his camp should have been, he could have very easily laid back in the grass at the huge rock's base and gone to sleep.

But his reason for being here at this time on this day soon presented herself, and present herself she did. Victoria Parcell arrived at the stream's edge some fifty feet or so upstream from Harry, seemingly unaware of his presence. She was dressed against the chill of the early November morning in a stocking cap, long heavy coat, and winter boots. Harry was no fashionista, but even he could see that the outfit was a makeshift one; Victoria, like many of the survivors, were making do with whatever cold weather clothing they or those who hadn't survived had packed for the flight from L.A. to Seattle.

Harry was about to speak up when he realized that Victoria was beginning to undress: she used her toes against the backs of her boots to shed them first, grimacing noticeably at the cold against her now bare feet; she peeled off the stocking cap and shook her head, letting her long, straight, fine, and naturally blonde hair flow down her back; and finally, she untied and unbuttoned the long, thick coat and pulled it from her shoulders, tossing it over another big boulder.

She turned Harry's direction and only now caught sight of him, freezing in place as he stared at her wide eyed. A long, silent moment passed before them as she wondered what the hell Harry was doing here and Harry simply ogled the incredible beauty that was Victoria Parcell.

"It's not your day," she said, finally breaking the silence; her tone wasn't accusatory but was almost friendly.

"It's forty degrees," Harry said, ignoring her statement and pointing out the incongruity of her being out here as she was.

"I thought I would take a bath," she said, slowly making her way down toward the edge of the stream, no longer looking Harry's way.

He repeated with emphasis, "It's forty degrees. I don't have a working thermometer, but ... I know forty degrees when I feel it."

Victoria seemed to be ignoring Harry, but he certainly wasn't ignoring her. He'd already been well aware that she was a beautiful woman, but to see her like this was ... well ... it was having effects on his mind and body.

Victoria was about to vanish from Harry's sight as she descended down behind the rocky stream bank. When only her head was still within sight of him, she looked to him, gave him a flirty smirk, and asked, "Are you just going to sit there ... or are you going to join me?"

She disappeared from his view. Harry chuckled to himself, then called out to her, "It's forty degrees!"

From out of sight, he heard the beauty call out, "Chicken."

Harry stared her direction for a moment, seeing nothing change in the situation. Then, after looking up and down the stream's shore for signs of some of her people, Harry stood and headed Victoria's direction. He again looked about the woods for signs of his counterpart's people, concerned that maybe she had something up her sleeve.

Arriving near where Victoria had disappeared, Harry stopped suddenly at the sight of the plaid shirt she'd been wearing, now laying over the top of a shrub. He hesitated, moved forward, and stopped again as he found more of Victoria's clothing laying on the sandy shore. Upon further review and recalling how little she'd had on when he last saw here, Harry was certain the blonde was now very much naked.

There was a splashing sound from the far side of a massive bank boulder, followed by Victoria calling again, "Are you coming in, Harry? Or are you the shy type?"

He hesitated, unsure of just what the hell was happening here. His comments to her about how cold it was were not exaggeration; it was most certainly in the low forties Fahrenheit, and the water was surely even colder than that. But after the woman egged him on again, Harry descended from the higher bank to the sandy shore and neared the water enough to find Victoria in the water up to her neck, laying back in some mossy stones such that her bountiful breasts nearly broke the surface for his viewing pleasure.

"Hot spring," she said, smiling and laughing at the shock in Harry's face. "One of the women found it two days ago when she was down here collecting water for the fire. It bubbles up from somewhere below me and mixes with the stream water. It's not quite bathtub temperature, but it's close to the temp' of my pool in L.A."

She raised a hand and curled some fingers to him invitingly: "Take your clothes off and join me, Harry." Her lips spread in a devilish smirk. "I promise I won't tell your people that you're cavorting with the enemy."

"I don't consider you the enemy, Victoria," Harry said without hesitation. He did hesitate, however, before adding, "But I am a little concerned about the whole cavorting idea."

"Meaning...?" she asked.

Harry was having a hard time keeping his eyes on the beauty's face and away from the surface water below which her incredible body was so barely hidden from view. He thought about what he wanted to say -- he'd been contemplating this conversation for days -- then instead looked up the bank in the direction from which they'd come. Looking back to Victoria, he asked, "Are we expecting company, or ... are you really here--"

"I'm alone," she cut in, answering his question with a firm tone. "Javier has instructions to keep my people away from here, to give me some alone time." Her devilish smirk returned as she pointed out the obvious: "I wasn't expecting to have company, obviously."

Again, Harry's eyes dropped to the water and the almost distinguishable sight of Victoria's womanly shape beneath the ripples. He looked up to her twinkling, hazel-green eyes again, saying, "Your people ... my people. How did this come to pass?"

"You wanted to be king, I wanted to be queen," Victoria answered quickly, as if she, too, had been contemplating this conversation often. "You are well liked, Harry. Your people like you. My people like you. Hell, I like you."

He began hesitantly, "Then ... why--"

"I don't take direction well, Harry," she cut in again. "I don't like being told what to do. Never have. Do you know what I used to do, Harry, back in my teens and early twenties?"

"Early twenties...?" he inquired, chuckling. "When was that, yesterday?"

"I turn 26 in four days, Harry," she said, that smirk returning. "Yeah, I know, most people take me for being younger. I get carded constantly. I used to take it as a compliment, but more often than not, I suspect guys -- I never get carded by women -- I suspect guys are just wanting my name and address. You'd be surprised how many bartenders and bodega clerks just happen to be wandering down my street a couple of days after they'd carded me at their bar or club or store. Creepy."

Victoria went silent for a moment, simply studying Harry, before he reminded her, "You were telling me what you used to do."

She smiled and giggled. "Yeah. I used to be a model. Preteen clothing, then older stuff. Got into lingerie and bikinis and prom dresses and LBDs and God knows what else. It's all kind of a blur now."

Harry smiled when he suddenly realized why Victoria had been so familiar to him days earlier: "You were in that video, um ... who were they, that Indie Rock band out of San Francisco--"

"Gloo," she filled in, smiling. "Yeah, I was in three of their videos ... shaking my ass and tits in clothes that almost weren't there."

Harry suddenly realized that -- just as had happened when he'd first seen Victoria undressing -- he was getting excited down below his beltline. He wasn't really that eager to have Victoria notice his growing erection so he sat atop an old rotting log to free up the groin of his jeans.

She talked very briefly about that portion of her career, then about the years before that before saying, "Since I was 9 years old, all I've ever done was be told what to do: stand here like this, turn there like that, smile, don't smile, give us a profile, show us your ass. I'm sick and tired of it ... and Harry, you were going to do the same here."

He took offense to that accusation, quickly reminding Victoria that he hadn't been giving out orders but had been making suggestions of what needed to be done if they were all going to survive. She responded, "So you say."

Harry was about to clarify further but before he could, Victoria disappeared below the surface of the water. She reemerged a few seconds later, smoothing her hair back against her scalp and wiping the water from her eyes. Harry couldn't believe how naturally perfect the young woman was, without the need for a full layer of whatever it was that women put on their faces to cover what they considered imperfections.

"If you're not going to join me," she said after a moment, "how about you give me some privacy so I can wash up and get back to my people."

Harry wasn't sure what else he could say, let alone whether or not this was the right time and place to say it. He looked a bit lower down Victoria again; she had shifted her position in the water now, causing the upper curvatures of her still firm, still incredible breasts to nearly emerge from the water; he was certain he could see the darker flesh of her nipples, which caused a little voice in the back of his mind to scream out desperately Take your fucking clothes off and get the fuck in there, you asshole!!

Instead, Harry only gave Victoria a polite smile and reminded her, "It's your day here. I'll get out of your--"

Suddenly, the natural quiet of the early morning was shattered by the very unnatural sound of not very distant gunfire. Harry's first instinct was to crouch down, in case the bullets were coming his direction; his next action was to pull out the Beretta in the small of his back and move up the shore a bit for a better look. The gunfire was continuing, now up to ten or twelve rapidly expelled rounds.

Not really thinking about what he might see, Harry looked Victoria's direction ... just in time to see the fully nude woman hurrying out of the water toward him. His eyes widened at the sight of womanly perfection and she herself was asking in panic, "What is it? What's happening?"

Harry forced himself to pull his eyes from Victoria's amazing body. A second round of firing had started, and it sounded as if it was coming from a slightly different position. "I don't know. I need to get up there. Get dressed."

Harry searched the forest before him as he rose from the shore higher up the bank. He glanced back again, finding Victoria back into her faux-jean shorts bikini bottom and pulling the accompanying top over her delicious mounds. She caught him looking her way and gave him a what the fuck expression. He murmured before looking back to the forest, "Sorry."

The shooting had stopped by now, with Harry believing that two full clips of 14 rounds likely had been discharged. He could hear voices now, excited sounds; some of them seemed happy while others most certainly were not. Victoria hurried up the bank past Harry to her coat and boots, which she quickly donned.

"What's happening?" she asked as she dressed. "Is it over, whatever it was?"

"Seems so," Harry said, now walking in the direction of the fire. He paused to look back, and once Victoria was again fully dressed, he said, "C'mon, let's go see what happened."

"You want to be seen with me?" she asked, a mix of humor and accusation.

Harry smiled and reminded her, "You're the one who wanted her own little realm. ... Queen Victoria."

She hurried not just to Harry but around him, leading him up the trail instead of the other way around. When they emerged from the forest into the grassy plain that included both camps and the wreckage between them, they found most of Victoria's people gathered about 50 yards away. She continued their direction in a hurry, and when someone finally caught sight of her, she called out, "What's going on? What happened?"

As she and Harry neared the group, it parted like the Red Sea to reveal a now very dead, very bloody corpse of a Saber-toothed cat. Javier Flores -- showing off -- lifted his own Beretta, ejected the clip dramatically, and popped another one into it with the loud metallic sound of the slide slamming forward to inject a new round. He bragged, "I killed it."

"We killed it!" another of Victoria's people added quickly.

Javier laughed at the man, correcting, "You unloaded a clip at it without even making it flinch. I'm the one who--"

"Shut the fuck up, Javier," Victoria snapped at the man; the crowd had moved back a bit and she was taking a slow walk around the big cat. She looked to Harry, who seemed just as amazed at the sight as was anyone else. "It's not a cougar, and it's not a lion-lion, not that we should expected one of those here in Oregon ... I mean, unless one got out of a zoo or animal park."

Someone reminded them that there was a place in Southern Oregon called Wild Safari, but one and then another and then many people were commenting on what most of the group had by now accepted: they weren't in the year 2021 A.D. anymore.

Harry began examining the feline more closely, noting how many places blood was emerging from the corpse; Javier -- and possibly the other man -- had hit the Saber-toothed cat at many as twelve or more times.

"Where did it come from and where were you when you started shooting?" he asked the second man.

Javier cut into the inquiry with, "What the fuck is he doing here?"

Victoria caught Javier's eye and again, this time softer but with emphasis, told the man, "Shut the fuck up, Javier." She looked to the other man, instructing, "Answer his question: where'd it come from and where were you."

"I was over there, taking a piss," the man said pointing, then blushing when he realized he'd given a bit more information than necessary. He pointed three more times, saying, "It came from there, heading that way, right at Maria. Javier was over there."

The cat had essentially fell straight forward onto its belly, not rolling to either side. Harry looked at the wounds on the animal's hide, poking his finger into some of the entry points to ensure that they were in fact just that: bullet holes. He finally looked up to man who'd been braggin, smiling with a strange, devilish delight. "There are 11 entry points on the cat's right side and only three on the left side, Javier ... your side. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I doubt very much that you--"

The trigger-happy man wasn't having it, though, cutting in, "The fucking thing dropped after I shot it."

Harry wasn't looking to start a fight, particularly with a man who'd already pointed a pistol at his face. Instead, he looked to his counterpart -- who was on her knees studying the cat's face -- and said, "Congratualtions, you have enough meat now to feed your people for quite a while. And you've got yourself a really nice fur coat ... or blanket or whatever you want to do with the animal's pelt."

He turned away, intending to head back to his own camp, but Victoria stopped him by admitting, "We don't have anyone who knows how to ... whaddaya call it, tan a hide?"

Harry stopped and turned back, after which Victoria continued her reluctant admission, "We, um ... we've been throwing the hides of the rabbits and other furries away because ... well, I told you ... we don't know what to do with them."

Harry casted his eyes about the group, thinking no one knows how to cure a hide? All he saw were eyes diverting away from him or simply staring back at him as if to say and I'm sure you're an expert at it, right?

"I'm sure Cliff Sampson would be more than happy to teach a couple of your people how to do it," Harry said.

"I'll provide the people," Victoria said. Then, seeing the thoughtful expression on Harry's face, she asked accusingly, "In exchange for ... what?"

"Another Beretta and a box of ammo," he said.

"Bullshit!" Javier immediately snapped off.

But Victoria agreed, "Deal."

"They aren't your guns, Victoria!" Javier said.

Victoria's response was to glance to another man, Frank Rollings, who was standing fairly near Javier. Frank moved up behind Javier silently, grabbing the latter man's gunhand and pressing his own 9mm to the back of Javier's neck as he said softly, "Don't even twitch."

Harry had never seen Javier frightened before, and as he Frank disarm Javier, he realized that he liked this look on the man better. Victoria was pleased as well, gesturing Frank to give her Javier's piece, which she then handed over to Harry: "I'll get you the box of ammo after Cliff comes over here and shows us how to make a fur coat." She looked down to the cat and said with humor, "I'll look good in that color, doncha think?"

Javier was grumbling about what was happening just loud enough to ensure that both Victoria and Harry heard him. The woman leading the second group told Frank, "Go get the gun case and keep it secure away from our friend Javier here." Then stepping up close to the gun runner, she said, "Don't worry, Javier. I'll remember how important you are to our happy little family. I'll just be remembering it without worrying that you're going to shoot me in the dark, like you wanted to shoot Harry ... like you've threatened to do to others on, what, at least three occasions. You're not a man I want to have walking around me carrying a piece. Trust me, Javier, this is better for all of us, including you ... because I was just about to the point where I was going to ask Frank to put a round in your skull."

Harry wasn't entirely sure just how authentic Victoria's words were; was her camp really so much on the edge regarding Javier? It seemed so, and -- to be honest -- Harry didn't doubt it, what with his previous experiences with the gun seller. Victoria gave Harry one last look before she turned for her camp and called over her shoulder, "Send Cliff, please, Harry. If I remember what I was told, we have to cut this beast up soon, otherwise the meat goes bad."

Harry watched Victoria, Frank, and most of the others head back toward their camp, while Javier -- glaring at Harry with true hatred -- and a few stragglers stayed to look at the dead cat. Some of Harry's people had by now come to the shooting sight, and Harry joined them for the walk back home, explaining what had happened.