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This just keeps getting stranger and stranger.
Chapter 13
Somewhere between Ellisville, VA and Blacksburg, VA
Two hours and three pages of notes later and Dianne was beginning to feel like she understood the dynamics of the encampment. While she and Jason weren’t able to hear anything anyone was saying the body language and habits of the people residing in the fortified gas station made it clear who they were and what they were doing.
The people of the camp were divided into two categories: those with the guns and those without. The people with the guns spent most of their time guarding the place while those without spent most of their time cooking, working on vehicles and performing menial labor. Dianne wasn’t sure if the people who didn’t have weapons had been pressed into servitude or whether they were there by choice but regardless they were treated with no small amount of contempt and dismissal by those who did have weapons.
Tina Carson, meanwhile, appeared to be a unique anomaly. She—unlike the other people sans weapons—was constantly under watch though she wasn’t tasked with any laborious activities. After getting food near one of the fires she had been hauled back into the shed behind the gas station. There were no signs of overt violent activities going on and Dianne wasn’t entirely certain what to make of Tina’s situation.
“Hey.” Dianne heard a whisper behind her and turned to see Jason slinking through the brush.
“Heyo. Everybody good?”
“Yep. Mark said the cameras have been clear and they’ve not heard or seen a thing today.”
“Good.” Dianne nodded. “Thanks for checking in on them.”
“No problem. Anything new about the camp down there?”
Dianne looked down at her notebook and shrugged. “Nothing really. I’ve got a few more notes on red shirt and blue shirt. They seem to be the leaders but they spend so much time inside I couldn’t tell you more than that. The guards traded a few gallons of gasoline with another group that came up.”
“What’d they want for it this time?”
“I think the group handed over a cage with some chickens inside. Seems like a bad trade to me.”
“No kidding. That’s a horrible trade!”
“Somebody drove up in an older car and unloaded several sacks of… something. I’m not sure what it was. Grain or something, maybe. They got several gallons of gas and left.”
“So these guys have set up a trading post?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? They’ve got a bunch of gasoline and that’s got to be in hot demand. With two full fuel trucks and who knows how much underground they can keep this trading system up for weeks or months more before running out. That’s long enough to branch out into other goods if they need or want to.”
“So they’re capitalists?”
Dianne laughed. “Well, don’t go giving capitalists a bad name. They’re still scum of the earth. I’m nearly one hundred percent sure that they keep the people without guns there as slave labor or something. Maybe labor in exchange for safety. They aren’t treated right, whatever they’re there as.”
Jason shifted into a sitting position and scanned the camp with his binoculars. “What about Tina or Dave? Anything new there?”
“No sign of Dave at all. I haven’t seen Tina since they took her back into that shed. Speaking of which, the sheds are definitely dormitories. The large one out front may be storage but the ones in back probably have mattresses all over the floors.”
“What do they use the main building for, then?”
“Who knows. They have a generator back behind it, though.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Must be a small one since we can’t hear it. But they carried some gas around back after the lights inside flicked off and they went
back on a minute later.”
“Maybe those two guys you pegged as the ringleaders are keeping the main building to themselves.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. I wish I could get more information on them.”
Jason pulled out a pack of crackers from his backpack and passed one to Dianne. “What about the two you remember from the grocery store?”
