Not Dead in the Heart of Dixie by R Kralik

diesel tanker, Nana and Carisa will be packing up the muffins and filling the thermoses for our first lootin' trip.
    They'll also pack four backpacks with stuff like instant oatmeal, dry soup mix, Kool-Aid mix, chocolate bars, coffee, bottled water, matches, and a few other things, in case any of us need to abandon ship and run for the hills. The backpacks will hold a little ammo for each gun we're taking. They'll all be filled the same, so we can just grab one and go.
    Mick's afraid to leave the property without a man left behind to guard it, so Pop and Nana will be staying behind with Carisa, Amber, and Caleb.
    Pop says he won't outfit us with new weapons yet because we need to practice with them before we can count on ourselves and each other to use them properly.
    We'll t ake Mr. Colt and Mr. Winchester along with my Glock 17 and a cute little Walther P22 we keep hidden in the garage. Mick wants to pull his AR-15 out of the gun safe, but he hasn't decided whether he'll take it or not.
    We're also taking a couple of heavy flashlights in case we need to use 'em in dark places, or to bonk someone over the head. It's cold as the dickens outside, so we'll be wearing our big coats, hats, scarves, and gloves along with our most comfortable pairs of heavy duty boots.
    We're hitting the pharmacies first, and then heading to anyplace that might have food. We will take... hold that thought. I hear yelling out front... something about a guy...
     
    11:55 PM...
    We have a guest.
    Jason interrupted my typing earlier by screaming "There's a guy out here on the porch!" Mick and I grabbed the kids, practicall y threw them into Carisa's room, and told them to lock the door. Mick grabbed Mr. Winchester and we and headed for the front door.
    It was a pitiful sight. On the porch near the door was a young man lying on his side in a fetal position and shivering up a storm. He was soaked to the skin.
    Mick and Jason brought him into the living room and laid him on the pallet the kids made. We wouldn't have discovered him 'til morning if Jason hadn't been up with his insomnia when he heard a noise out front. I wanted to smack him in the head for opening the door without telling Mick, but he'd let Tig and Opie out for a potty run a few minutes prior and thought they were ready to come back inside.
    The "guy" has been severely beaten. His face is bruised and covered in dried blood underneath his swollen nose and down the sides of his mouth. His lips are split on top and bottom. Both eyes are bruised and his left eye is puffed up so much that it's almost completely shut. He's peeking out at us with a big, brown right eye that looks distant and confused. He's barely coherent and seems to be suffering from hypothermia along with his injuries.
    He's wearing a thin button up shirt that's torn almost to shreds. His jeans are so filthy that I can't tell if they're blue, or black. He's wearing a black Converse sneaker and sock on one foot, and a filthy, shredded sock on the other.
    He has nicks, cuts, scrapes, and bruises all over his body. Mick and I undressed him completely to look for bite marks. We found none, but he's covered in bruises.
    We washed him up and put some antibiotic ointment on his cuts and some deodorant in his pits before we put him in a pair of Jason's sweat pants and a thick, long–sleeved shirt.
    He's a long, tall glass of water and the sweatpants are too short for him. We moved him onto the couch, then covered him with a big fleece blanket which was already there since Carisa was asleep on the couch before the ruckus. He kept on saying "hep me, hep me God."
    We stood back for a look at him. Marisa added a qu ilted throw on top, put his old clothes in a plastic bag, and set them out on the porch.
    We headed to the kitchen for a mini-meetin g to decide what to do about him.
    Marisa knows him. He "was" a cousi n by marriage to her ex-husband, and his name is Jeremy Caldwell. His side of the family split off from her ex's side, so he