Tragic Tracks

As reluctant as I was to travel US highways with all the road hazards, I had to follow those tracks. Fortunately, US 50 probably followed an old Indian trail through rather benign former farming country. The tracks took me to Owensville where they turned off into the small town. I parked the truck and let the goats out to graze after checking for any signs of predators. 

Charlie and I hopped on the ATV and we followed the tracks of the truck throughout the town. A few of the older, brick and masonry buildings were still standing and it was obvious that the truck had stopped at some of these. Their doors were recently broken into. I quickly got the idea that whoever it was in the truck, was scavenging. Most of the doors had been pried open. Some of the locks had been shot with a gun. A dangerous practice because bullets could ricochet. They were in a hurry.

The whole of Owensville was only a few blocks long with US 50 Main Street down the middle. Since the truck had driven up and down some side streets in its raid of the town, it had maneuvered around some of the obstacles that I was faced with to get through with the Peterbilt and trailers. Charlie and. I remounted the ATV on its trailer behind the trailer and I plowed my way through a couple of derelict cars at Broadway and out of town, still on the tracks.

It was the same for Marathon, Fayetteville, Dodsonville, Allensburg, and Hillsboro, all little farming towns before the meltdown. They still held that character even though the farmland had mostly returned to trees like were there before settlers in the mid-1800s came and completely cleared the land creating farmland and these towns. They say that one man could clear one acre a year. Five with a mule. That was all growing back.

From the pattern of looting, it looked to me that these scavengers were looking for food because they broke into groceries and convenience stores. I was in no way trying to be a detective and determine what their motives were, but they did seem to be rather destructive and disruptive, and then, moved on. Perhaps a pattern that they had been doing for a very long time.

I didn't see their method of food gathering as very productive. The only food that wasn't spoiled or filled with bugs was food that had been sealed very tightly in glass, plastic, or cans. Rusting and leaching of heavy metals in cans made most of the canned food inedible. Cereals, flours and any kind of packaged foods in paper, cardboard or cloth was full of weevils, worms or worse.

I thought that they probably got any fresh meat the way I did. They also broke into gas stations, bars and shops that had guns. Probably looking for fuel for their truck, liquor, and guns and ammunition. I had done the same on a much smaller scale. What it boiled down to was raiding the countryside to take stuff back to wherever they were holed up, either permanently or for the winter, like me. I had to find them and find out.

Hillsboro was much bigger than the other towns, so they had run up and down all over town leaving their, now familiar, tire tracks and break-in pattern. Still, perhaps, more than a week old, because it hadn't rained for a few days and the tracks were still obvious. There was some sign that vines that they drove over had started growing back, so the tracks were not fresh--just hopeful.

Just outside Hillsboro, the tracks disappeared. Apparently heavy rainfall had obliterated what was left of what I had seen earlier. But I already knew the pattern I was following, so I drove on, hopeful that I would pick up the tracks later. I also had to move more quickly if I was going to ever catch up.

I drove on through Rainsboro, Bainbridge, Bourneville, Anderson and Chillicothe, the only town with a Native American name… The others all from original settlers whose names became a part of Americana as it had become known from those early pioneer days. I stopped only in those places briefly to see if there was evidence of the kind of breaking and entering I had experienced earlier when there were readable tracks. I really didn't see anything until I got to Chillicothe, and then I saw the evidence that I needed that I was still on their track, without tracks. Off and on, it rained. Not making it any easier.

Londonderry, MacArthur, Albany and Athens followed. After that, Canaanville, Guysville, Coolville and Torch. I crossed the river into Parkersburg and West Virginia. There, while I found evidence of breaking in, none of it was new. I had apparently lost the trail somewhere. I backtracked to Torch and took 124 south to where it followed the Ohio River on the west side, more on a hunch than anything else. I really wanted to find whoever was making those tracks. The river was high, but it wasn't flooded. It had been recently and left mud on the roadway. When I reached the intersection with 144, tracks of the truck were there and were very recent, less than two or three days old. I was overjoyed.

I was worried about driving along the river with the possibility of landslides and being caught by flash flooding. But, a river like the Ohio didn't flash flood like smaller streams and both the roadway and roadbed of 124 were old and well established. I was beginning to find the drive very pleasant with lots of critters like woodchucks, snakes and birds along the road and many ducks and geese on the river.

I spent the night on the river at a turnout and caught some nice bass for dinner. I was close, and could hardly sleep that night knowing that I would find them soon.

I followed the river south and east the next morning. Generally, there was a high bank on the right and it dropped off on the left into the river, but I was on the sunny side in the morning and it made the drive all the more pleasant. The tracks were still there and quite strong. I would know that tread anywhere by now. Believed that it was the one that I had seen from the overpass four years earlier.

About 9 am, I was coming around a bend when I saw a pickup coming toward me quite fast. When they were about 100 yards away, I could clearly see two men in the cab and the one on the passenger side stuck a pistol out the window and fired a shot at me, striking my windshield and coming through above my right shoulder and going on into the sleeper behind me. The windshield had instantly developed a spider web like pattern throughout except for the hole where the bullet came through.

Charlie flew into a frenzy, bouncing around the cab and screeching. I slammed on the brakes and the whole rig slid sideways as the pickup flew by me on the left. My rig ended up nearly blocking the road with my nose almost off the road on the left and my ATV trailer up against the right shoulder slope. There was no time to lose, so I opened my door and jumped out, slamming it before Charlie could react and get out with me. I ran, following my skidmarks to the back of the trailer as the pickup continued up the road a ways and then slammed on its brakes, stopped and begin to turn around to come back.

I jumped up on the trailer hitch and opened the vent door on the left hand trailer door. I then, threw open the big door on the right and jumped in, closing it behind me. I ran for my gun rack where I had my crossbow, Browning 12gauge over and under shotgun and Winchester 30-06 waiting, loaded for hunting purposes. I grabbed the Winchester and pumped a shell into the chamber. I took a look through the vent window and saw that the pickup was racing back and there was a guy in the pickup bed leaning over the cab with an automatic rifle aimed at me. I saw him fire as rounds hit the doors in front of me loudly.

Two rounds ripped holes in the vent screen, so I stuck the barrel of my rifle in one of the holes and ripped it bigger. Taking a huge chance, I bent down and aimed at the driver of the truck and fired. I then stepped back as more bullets hit the door and one or two came through the vent window again slamming into the back of the trailer where the goats were--bleating loudly.

I heard the truck accelerate and approach. Quite unsure of what to do, I dropped my rifle and pulled out my 357 Magnum as the truck hit the trailer with a loud scraping sound and then rolled over the bank where it was caught by small trees. I heard splashing as something from it fell into the river.

I opened the door to see that there were no skid marks. I must have killed the driver and he must have fallen forward onto the gas pedal that caused the sudden acceleration. Otherwise, they would have stopped and confronted me.

I ran down to the truck on its side over the bank held up by several small willows with its wheels still spinning. I reached the double cab of the pickup and climbed up on the running board to look in. There was a lot of stuff in the back seat and the driver, still belted in but half hanging out of the rolled down window, his head dripping blood from a gaping hole in the back where my bullet exited. But the shooter was gone.

Some things were being carried away by the swift Ohio and one of them looked like the other man, facedown and floating away.

I jumped off the truck onto the roadway and ran down it trying to keep up with the rapidly moving body, but It didn't show any signs of life and was quickly moving downriver by the current. I started running back to get the ATV, but then, I saw a four foot long bloody swipe above the scrape where the truck hit my trailer and where the guy's head had hit the trailer with enough force to smash it before he was violently thrown from the pickup bed with all the other things they had salvaged into the river.

I shook my head at the waste. Why had they attacked me? I didn't know the answer and never would. I went to the tractor cab and let a very disturbed Charlie out. He looked at me like I had abandoned him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell him what I had just been through. Instead, I let him follow me to the back of the trailer where I let the goats out to graze while I tried to figure out where these guys had come from.

It was hard to get to him, but the driver looked no more than 20 years old with a scrubby little unshaven beard. He had apparently spent his teens faced with the violence of the meltdown and probably never recovered. I didn’t have the patience to bury him, so I just unbuckled him from his seatbelt and pushed him out the window where he fell to the river below and then floated on out of sight like the other man.

Information in the pickup’s glove box, along with a couple of pistols, indicated that it was owned by “Speer Industries” of Morgantown, West Virginia. As much as I hated the idea of telling next of kin what had happened to these two violent guys, I felt obligated to try to find this company and see if there was anyone else there that I could relay, at least, that I had tried to greet them amicably.

I began to regret not getting any information, perhaps a billfold, from that driver before I pushed him into the river. I guessed that I would have to lie that I found no identification and that I buried him properly. It didn't really matter anymore. What was done was done.

I wasn't going anywhere except tracking down these tracks. So Morgantown, West Virginia was as good as any place to go while the summer sun still shined. Except for the scarring on the trailer, the bullet holes in the trailer doors that I patched up with tar and a new screen, and the bloody reminder, my rig was okay and I was grateful for that. The windshield, with its spidery cracks and bullet hole that whistled as wind blew through it was serviceable but I vowed that I would replace it at the earliest possibility.

A day later, taking US 50 out of Parkersburg and then, I-79 north, I arrived in Morgantown, hopeful of finding where those tracks came from. This combination university and old industrial town showed the ravages of violence that erupted everywhere else. I drove around the difficult, sometimes,  very steep, streets of town that had been ransacked by the occupants of that pickup and found numerous examples of those tracks here and there, most of them quite old. Eventually, I found a burned out office building with a sign, "Speer Industries" on its façade, but didn't find any evidence that anybody had ever stayed there or even been there since the meltdown.

Finally, in desperation, I started following roads out of town for a few miles to see if I could find where those tracks might lead me. State Route 7 out of town to the southeast was one of the last that I tried. As I followed it out of town, I saw numerous places where those tracks had been made on the shoulders and even on the pavement where there was standing dirt or mud. I knew I was onto something. That white dust was everywhere. I found it about 3 miles out of town. A limestone mine. The sign at the entrance capable of handling big rigs like mine read, "Speer Industries Limestone."