Escape to the Choccolocco Valley: Survival Apocalypse, #1

By Buck Hunter

The Survival Apocalypse series opens nearly a century after an apocalyptic calamity caused most folks to die after civilization collapsed. In the days of our epic series beginning with Escape to the Choccolocco Valley, by ones, groups, and tribes man does his best in a world reminiscent of the earliest days of pioneering America.

The adventure opens as young Jedidiah Reuel is forced to flee his home in north Georgia because of nature and relatives. Heading west he encounters interesting post apocalyptic characters, both good and bad, and faces the dangers of a new and primitive civilization. It's the world of Survival Apocalypse.

Be advised...Though the chief protagonist is only a lad, this book is not presented as juvenile fiction. Jed is no Harry Potter. Much grown up action and adventure awaits.

In the Survival Apocalypse series you’ll experience the romance of being a pioneer with all the hardship, challenges, and successes too. You’ll read about love, laughter, death most cruel, and a promise for the new future, post apocalypse.

In the world I have created, scattered humans still manage to survive. But one bunch survives better than the rest, and that’s the residents of The Choccolocco Valley. How they did it, and why they succeed will be revealed in the books beginning with this one. You’ll find no hocus pocus or contrived material. Everything is as accurate and realistically extrapolated as I can possibly make it.

Come enjoy this hearty series beginning with Escape to the Choccolocco Valley

• Language: English
• Publisher: Buck Hunter
• Release date: Mar 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513000473

Buck Hunter

Buck's pioneering series is set largely in the fictional future Choccolocco Valley beginning 89 years after a catastrophic event ends our present civilization. His rugged, romantic new pioneering adventure novels are set in what used to be Alabama and beyond. It's a time when man must make or take what he wants, and there is plenty of that! Buck has been researching his material for the last several years, amassing a library of texts and knowledge. He continues his education every single day to bring you the most thrilling and the most accurate depiction possible of the post apocalyptic pioneer world. He knows much of his material intimately, because he has lived much of it personally. He makes his home in Alabama. With Buck, it’s not about the buck. It’s about the tale. Get to know and love the characters presented in the Survival Apocalypse series and come to love them as much as the man who only reports what he sees, Buck Hunter. Read and tell others about your experiences with Survival Apocalypse in The Choccolocco Valley!

Book preview

Escape to the Choccolocco Valley

The Survival Apocalypse Series Book 1

PUBLISHED BY:

Buck Hunter

Copyright © 2015

Visit Survival-Apocalypse.com

facebook.com/survivalapocalypse

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

Dedicated to Vicky

—The end of the world. Really?

Table of Contents

Cast of Players

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Epilog

Cast of Players

Jedidiah Reuel – A man of humble beginnings who grows into a great leader.

Elias Reuel – Jed’s uncle.

Dominic Dommy Roosevelt – A man also of humble beginnings from Philadelphia.

Nelson Rubio Martin – A man of aristocratic origin from the Vinales Valley in Cuba.

Gideon – A roving preacher.

Chapter One

Young Jedidiah Reuel lay in the aluminum jon boat, his lanky legs dangling into the tepid water of the slow moving river current. Though his right arm covered his eyes he could sense the sun filtering through the overhanging branches scrolling lazily by as the current took him west. He day dreamed of induns and cowboys, his uncle’s surprised eyes, and a kindly-eyed preacher too. And David, his friend. Fever from the wound in his side was full upon him now.

It was thus that he had been drifting along when he sensed a change in the cool metal beneath his back. His little boat vibrated strangely, and then it surged forward, the bubbly roar increasing in volume.

Some days earlier, Elias Reuel, mountain man and hunter of the Tugaloo, had sniffed the air cautiously when he heard a commotion in the bushes near the trail on which he stood.

Not fifty yards distant in a hidden swag down the fingerling ridge projecting from it, someone was busy. The odor was that of human manure.

Taking a few steps from the projection overlooking the trail, with it to his back, he heard a bird chirp, threep. A few more steps and then he was down into the wood. Ahead he glimpsed someone sitting on a cross-wise limb with his head down and his pants about his ankles. Stealthily he approached on his practiced cat feet. The stranger never looked up until his shadow crossed the back of his head, but then it was much too late.

A bit later, the housekeeping all done Elias looked at the naked, middle-aged man, standing, with his ankles and hands tied to the young hickory tree behind him. His pack slung carelessly on the brown leaf covered ground a few feet away and his bowie knife in hand he smiled, but it was not a friendly expression.

Checking to see that the gag of homespun in the man’s mouth, secured with a strip of cloth was secure he whetted the knife slowly on his buckskinned pant leg and theatrically whiffed it under his victim’s nose.

Kneeling now, he began circling the man’s right leg with a sawing motion with his dull knife just below the knee in a workman like manner.

Ye pee on me mister, he said grinning, An’ I’ll tie up ye little pecker fer ye, that is... afore I cut it off later.

If anything, the man, now drenched in sweat, as it was an uncharacteristically warm early April morning, the fog just recently lifted, struggled even more ferociously, his high pitched screams muffled quite effectively by the rag in his mouth.

Yer mistake, said Elias, Was in not puttin’ up a bigger fight when I laid my hands on ye. Not that it would have made any difference except to add to my enjoyment.

Pausing to admire his work, his thin cut to the bone producing an excellent blood flow, he repeated the procedure on the left leg.

Now there pilgrim, said Elias straightening up, taking the man’s penis in his left hand, Ye’re bleeding out quite fine. An’ for my next operation, I’m gonna turn yew into a girl...

Elias Reuel enjoyed nothing better than stalking victims and cutting them up. The problem was that he was so good at it that he was having to kill more frequently to satisfy his need for the thrill.

In former times, jaded though they were, he would have been a stand out serial killer.

Go on, he chided delightedly. Gimme some more o’ them whee whee pig screams and I might not cut off your peter.

He did it anyway.

Elsewhere on the outskirts of what had once been the city of Philadelphia, lately bedotted with camps of begrimed grandsons of city dwellers, a young, feral boy of twelve years hunkered down behind an old oak tree, peeking around from time to time at the half dozen men sitting squat legged around their fire inside a large ring of broken cement blocks and bricks. The ashes of previous fires threatened to spill over the sides and the hot coals and hissing, spewing green wood burned on top of the foot thick layer.

The snow beneath the leafless oak rose halfway to the boy’s knees. On his feet were rags tied with strips of rags, and though he wore no coat he was not cold. He was used to it.

Between him and the fire lay a strip of muddy frozen ground which had been much trampled. It was in the mire that the men sat about the fire. Snow is clean, thought the boy while the camp men hunker in the mud like pigs. This he told himself, though the fire looked very inviting.

The men, none older than middle twenty, dressed in rags, each sat on his own rotting pile of leaves and rags, and would have killed to protect his spot. On the opposite side of camp was their crude quarters, a small hut made of saplings tied together and thatched with pine branches and bits and pieces of metal and plastic. Filled with lice and fleas the hut served to keep the snow off while they slept but did nothing for the rain.

Like the other camps that ringed the Philadelphia settlement, these men lived on the things that frequented the garbage dump of the outlying planter class. Mostly rats. Often, each other.

Dominic Roosevelt quietly backed away, keeping the tree between him and the fire, for the desperate men would surely kill him for his meat were they to suspect his presence.

Dominic, who most of his kind knew only as Dommy, lived precariously by stealing from the camps when he could. The domiciles of the planters who called themselves the Bourgeois (boozwah) or ruling class might just as well be on the far side of the moon. It was a good day when he could steal a bite from a fellow peon, catch a rat, or discover a bit of nutrition from the well picked offal of the planters.

Dommy, however, had one thing that the other carrion of his rank did not. He had a last name and once it had been told to him that a man by the name of Roosevelt had once ruled the world.

Where the others had no hope, or the false hope of the indolent life of the fat boozwahs, he alone had a goal, and that was to live up to his name. His mama and daddy, if he ever had such, had given him that much. A name.

The old lady he remembered who had kept him around as her thief when he was just a child had told him his name. Then one afternoon the packs came for her and tore her apart and took everything in her corner of the old brick building. Now nothing remained of his early life, not the old lady and not even the bricks of the building that was his dank cave of childhood. He had always been on his own, really, and he was very good at it.

Now, far enough from the camp he turned to scamper through the rank overgrowth of vines and trees to visit his next target. Perhaps there would be something to steal, or perhaps even a fine rat on a stick. If there was only one or two at the fire he knew he could dash in and be gone with his lunch before anyone could stop him.

These people were dying anyway. But he mustn’t die. He must eat to live so that one day he would be the Boozwah of Philadelphia and more.

Exiting the patch of woods he encountered the old roadway and not far along a square of rotted brick buildings with the well weathered statue of the man on the horse. It was as familiar to him as his own left hand. Standing at the foot of the cracked, chipping base, looking up admiringly at the heavily oxidized bronze statue it was thus that he was surprised when a hand shot out pulling him into a choke hold against the flabby bosom of who he knew not. Nearly strangled, his vision left him. It was all too sudden, the journey into darkness, his breath denied him, to give much time for worry.

Later, he was surprised that he had reawakened. However, his plight was just beginning, for tied around his eyes was a strip of cloth. His hands were bound as well. Now was the time for worrying.

Many miles to the south in the Vinales Valley, Cuba, Nelson Rubio Martin, age 12, played army with his pals in the lush tropical forest that lay well behind the colonial style house that he was born in.

His grandparents had been in the leadership of the North American retreat to the island of Cuba, some 500 strong many years before. They had just arrived when the general calamity struck, and Nelson thrived on the stories of the heroism and bravery of his conservative ancestors.

He was the only child of his parents, his siblings having died at birth or at an early age. It was supposed even at this late date that the soil of Cuba did not entirely agree with North Americans and that was why the men of the north struggled with their health.

It was thus that he was indulged and encouraged in any way within his parent’s power, and they were a powerful family in the region.

At first the indigent Cubans had been resentful of the American’s presence. Eventually this led to open hostilities, but in the end the invaders fought through and won their place in the local society which survived on the produce of the fields which included the finest tobacco in the world.

It was unfortunate that the world that they left, which once relished the produce of the Vinales Valley no longer existed. In fact, no American who fled to Cuba during the war ever had contact with home again, nor none since.

Even at the age of twelve, young Nelson was aware of these things. Shoeless most times, besandled at others, he was a tall, thin lad with yellow hair and bright blue eyes with a complexion so unblemished as to rival any of the scant remaining lines of the Spanish upper class still treading the dust of the island.

While the North Americans, or norteamericanos as they were called generally regarded themselves as the upper class, Nelson did not, or if he did, did not show it. In this he was well regarded in the cubano culture. He was a natural leader.

As a leader Nelson never let his men do a job that he would not tackle himself, and do better than them. As part of the day’s military exercise it became necessary to seek a higher vantage point to ascertain the strength of the enemy.

Not far to the rear of the Martin plantation property sat two small hills or mountains as they called them. In Spanish they were known as mogotes, or odd bits of hill splatted down onto the otherwise flat plain of the valley. The Martin mogotes were 150 and 200 feet high, the shorter set back further than the other, forming a passageway or short canyon between, which was a natural ambush point, Nelson reckoned.

The mogotes were covered in trees and brush, and although virtually straight up, they could be climbed with luck and skill. Nelson planned to do that very thing one day on each of them to reach the table tops, neither which was more than 150 yards in circumference. Naturally, he was forbidden to do this by his protective parents, which made his objective even more alluring.

Early that April afternoon, it was already hot, though not as hot as it would get, always with the humidity near the saturation point when he began his ascent. Each time he did this he went a little higher. Today he reached the fifty foot level before the crumbly limestone ledge he was reaching for gave way and he fell straight down to the ground, only a fortunate limb far below breaking beneath him to slow him a bit.

Two of his four boyhood friends, all natives, fear in their hearts, ran to the Martin home as swiftly as they could, knocking on the front door, screened with wicker, spewing a panicked stream of Spanish language.

Marjorie Martin, who was in the kitchen, ran to the door, her two servant girls in tow. She very well understood the language of Cuba as well as anyone, but only English was permitted on the estate, so she chided the youngsters.

Come quickly! panted Renaldo, Nelson’s chief lieutenant.  Nelson has fallen from a tree and injured himself, he lied. He will need to go to the hospital.

This knocked the wind from Marjorie’s lungs, but she kept her composure, for it would not do to let the servants see her panicked as it would be the talk of the village. Wishing to scream, but not doing so she asked with clenched teeth, Is he hurt badly?

Si, said Renaldo, forgetting his English, the other boy nodding his head fiercely.

Quickly she instructed her girls to go find her husband and to tell him to bring a stretcher or something to carry her son on.

There were no running vehicles in the valley. Those who could rode horses or wagons. But she had no thought of that as she ran behind the boys to the mogote.

When she arrived at the base of the hill she saw the two boys standing in the little canyon waving their arms frantically, and following them into the little patch of jungle to the cliff face she saw her son on his back, his left leg twisted at the knee in a way that it should not have been.

His face a mask of pain, he still had the reserve to give her a brief smile. Hi mom, he said, before passing out cold, a huge knot rising from his forehead.

Later that evening, back at the house, in his bedroom lit by two candles, his mother sat beside him on his bed holding his left hand.

Father was very mad at me, mother, he said, sweat beaded upon his forehead.

Wiping it away with a linen cloth she shook her