The Journal: Raging Tide: (The Journal Book 4) by Deborah D. Moore

glass at them. The ribeye steaks were done medium
rare over the hickory smoke fire and could have been cut with a
fork. There were small red skinned potatoes roasted in garlic and
olive oil then garnished with fresh parsley, plus a small side
salad.
    “Yes, thank you, especially for the salad!”
I said. “I have a greenhouse back home and manage to have enough
greens for a salad once a week. It’s been awhile though. What was
that dressing?”
    “A specialty,” Kora said. “It’s yogurt,
cucumbers, and wasabi. I was hoping you liked it.”
    “How do you grow the fresh stuff?” Jim
asked. “I didn’t see a greenhouse.”
    “We have a part of the basement sectioned
off for hydroponic growing. Here in the woods, a glass house is too
vulnerable to damage and is too easily covered with heavy snow. The
solar array originally was for all the grow-lights, although we
quickly realized that with enough panels and batteries for storage,
we didn’t have to do without many of the conveniences we were
leaving behind,” Lee answered.
    “With a bigger system, Lee was able to put
in an on-demand hot water unit for me. When we first made the
decision to move off-grid, hot water was my biggest obstacle,” Kora
said.
    I had a flashback to the time my ex, Sam,
told me we didn’t move to the woods for me to have
conveniences. After seven years I still never had running hot
water. These people seemed to have found a way to make it work. I
shook off my sour memory of a former life.
    “Once the ash clouded the sun for days on
end, the larger battery bank was a life saver. We might not have
had direct sun, but even ambient light is enough to keep a charge.
We shut down a few systems to keep the hydroponics going and once
the sun came back out, even on a limited basis, we got everything
working again,” Lee said.
    “How long have you been here?” I asked.
    “Five years now,” Lee said. “We both needed
a complete change after we found out we couldn’t have children. I
sold my software business and we built this. We took on a
ninety-nine year lease with the feds so we wouldn’t have to put up
with neighbors.” We all laughed.
    “Any regrets?”
    “None,” Kora answered quickly. “Other than
not having children. It is what it is though. What about you,
Allexa? Any kids back home?”
    “I have two sons and two grandchildren, a
boy and a girl, and another due this fall.”
    “What about you, Jim?” Lee asked.
    “No kids and never married. Military life
isn’t kind to relationships. I’ve always moved around too much,”
Jim answered honestly.

CHAPTER 10
     
    April 20
    “Are you sure you won’t stay another day?”
Kora pleaded.
    “We can’t. Even
though they don’t know we’re coming, we’re overdue meeting up with
Jim’s unit,” I said while we were packing our things into the
Hummer. “I promise, though, that if we get back this direction we will stop to see you!”
    “I want to warn you about a group of
convicts up the road,” Lee said. “I heard those three talking about
them. Seems that there are quite a few of them holed up at a summer
camp about twenty-five miles from here. I don’t know exactly where,
all I know is they’re a mean bunch, maybe twenty of them, led by
some guy with lots of tattoos. Even those three scumbags were
trying to get away from him. The smart thing to do would be to get
out of the Hiawatha as soon as possible.”
    “I’ll take that into consideration, thanks.
How much further is it to I-75?” Jim asked, looking at the
laminated map from Major Kopley.
    Lee looked over Jim’s shoulder at the map.
“We’re about here,” he pointed, “and we’re fifty miles from I-75.
From there the roads are still fairly good, even after the quake.
Once you get to that point, Sault Ste. Marie is a half hour
away.”
    “I put an ice pack in the cooler for you,”
Kora said with a mischievous grin. “So don’t forget to check it
tonight.”
     
    *
     
    The drive was uneventful with