by Rick Tippins
Bart squinted in the flickering light before swinging his boney and nearly translucent legs over the side of the bed. He didn’t say a word as he pulled on his pants and then his boots. Jared stared briefly at the old man’s bone-white legs, wondering if they’d ever seen the light of day. Weirdly, Jared’s mind wandered as he speculated whether the old bastard had ever owned a pair of shorts. Come to think of it, Jared had never seen the man in shorts and, when they’d packed to leave San Jose, he’d never seen a pair of shorts in Bart’s possession. Once Bart had his boots on, he turned from Jared as he readied his gear and slung his rifle.
“Where and how far away?” Bart asked flatly.
Jared relayed what happened, then told Bart he couldn’t be sure how far out the thing had been when he heard the crash. It was very difficult to gauge distance in the near complete darkness, not to mention the eerie quietness that had suddenly enveloped Earth with the sudden absence of anything electronic.
Finishing with his gear, Bart turned back to Jared. “Let’s get Calvin up to man the post while you and I try to find the crash site.”
Calvin was wakened, much to his chagrin, briefed, huffed a bit, and then headed out to the OP. Bart followed Jared off the property and into the hills in the general direction Jared thought the crash sound came from.
Outside, there was a fair amount of ambient light with the moon and stars overhead. Still, the going was slow as the two tried to move as quietly as possible while also keeping watch for any threats. After creeping through the darkness for two hours, both men were breathing heavily and slicked in sweat.
Jared caught the faint scent of something burning and pulled Bart close. “You smell that?”
Bart nodded, staring into the early morning darkness. After a moment, Bart leaned closer to Jared. “We stay here till light; then we can look for smoke.”
They both moved to a cluster of rocks and settled in, each man facing in a different direction for security purposes. Neither man spoke, each lost in his thoughts as they waited for the sun to light their way. Oddly enough, the sun was the reason both men were huddled on the hard-cold ground next to each other, clutching rifles, with no access to all the amenities electricity had offered before the event. The sun they now needed for sight and warmth had recently evicted them from the comforts they had enjoyed, leaving them with only hardship.
Jared’s watch read 0630 hours when the first inkling of light began to creep across the landscape, pushing the night slowly off the playing field. As the day grew brighter, both men caught sight of black acrid smoke curling skyward. The location of the crash, was clearly marked by the smoke and Jared realized they had passed the crash site during their two-hour hike.
The rapidness with which the night became day always amazed Jared. Within what seemed like a few minutes, it was bright enough to see everything around them clearly. Both Bart and Jared saw the body at nearly the exact same time. Bart’s weapon came up, sweeping the surrounding area, a look of concern on his face.
The body was about fifty yards from their position and looked to be a soldier in full battle gear. The soldier was twisted in a very unnatural position, not moving.
“Cover me,” Bart ordered, moving towards the body, weapon raised and at the ready. Bart reached the body then waved Jared forward. The man in the battle gear was a mess, broken and twisted in ways a human body was never meant to be positioned. Bart began removing the man’s battle gear, but left the man’s boots and clothes on.
“I don’t know what happened, but I’d bet this poor bastard wasn’t strapped in when the bird started crashing, and he just fell out,” Bart said as he opened the man’s pack, dumping its contents on the ground. The pack contained small radio batteries, extra socks, ammunition, a rifle cleaning kit, and a beautiful pair of night-vision goggles, which Bart held in his hand like they were the Ark of the Covenant.
“Holy fucking shit, look what we have here,” Bart chortled.
After admiring his find for a few seconds, he continued digging through the pack and found extra batteries for the goggles along with a small solar charging unit for recharging the batteries. He held the items up to Jared.
“Fucking score,” he said, looking like he’d just won the lottery.
After going through all the stricken man’s gear, Bart set aside several items he planned on taking; the rest he’d leave. There were two fragmentation hand grenades, four loaded rifle magazines, the night-vision goggles, along with the batteries and charger. The man’s weapon was still strapped to him, but badly damaged. Jared saw the barrel was actually bent and the buttstock was missing. Bart pulled the bolt carrier group out of the Colt and stowed it with the rest of the man’s gear he had set aside.
“Let’s take this poor soul to the crash site and see if there are others. Poor son of a bitch, what a fucking way to go,” Bart said as he motioned for Jared to grab an arm and help with moving the man. The two men struggled to drag the dead man along towards the crash site, with Jared glancing down every few seconds into the man’s lifeless eyes and smashed face, thinking to himself how surreal it all seemed
Chapter Thirty-Four
The night was cold, and John’s joints were stiff and more than a little sore. He slowly flexed his muscles in an effort to get some additional blood flowing into his legs and arms. The flexing only seemed to cause him pain with no perceptible increase in heat to his tortured limbs. The sun was coming up and would soon bathe his tired, aching and half-frozen body with its lovely warm rays.
John froze as he caught movement at the edge of the clearing near the crashed helicopter. He fucking knew it, there were people living out here in the hills, and he had been right about them being attracted to the crash site. He focused the binoculars on the source of the movement and saw two armed men dragging the body of one of his team members.
John’s temper began to flare until he realized the soldier was very obviously dead and the men didn’t seem to be showing the fallen man any signs of disrespect. Sure, they’d stripped the man of his load-bearing gear, but they’d also left the man’s clothing in place, including his boots, which John knew, from spending far too much time in shitty third-world cesspools, were the first to be taken from a dead body.
John watched as the two men laid the body a short distance from the still-smoldering wreckage. They moved near the downed aircraft, catching sight of the doomed crew chief’s broken body still tethered to what was left of the aircraft’s fuselage. The two men cut the body away from the helicopter, moving it next to the other soldier’s body before going through his web gear.
The crew chief hadn’t been wearing his pack, so the search went quickly and, again, the men left the man clothed and didn’t so much as touch his boots. John watched as the men next pulled the two pilots from the wrecked cockpit, laying them alongside the other two deceased servicemen.
After the last pilot was laid on the ground, John watched the men sit and drink from water bottles. They talked for a few moments, stood, and began rummaging through the wreckage again. Both men worked on pieces of metal, which they freed from the airframe, and then used the metal pieces to start digging. What in the fuck are these dudes doing? wondered John. Ten minutes later he realized they were digging graves for his fallen comrades.
None of this made any sense to him after what he’d seen in the world so far. He had fully expected to see his comrades stripped and discarded like trash when he first laid eyes on these two. John was pretty sure if it had gone that route, he would have wanted to kill both these guys, but then again, he was already behind enemy lines and didn’t need anyone looking for the killer of their father or brother or whatever these guys were. He had enough trouble simply by being stranded.
It wasn’t that John was scared of being killed; he just was of the opinion that when life serves you up a dick sandwich, you don’t go making things worse with shitty emotionally based decisions.
Now he was doubly glad he hadn’t moved on these two as he watched them
toil in the hard soil. John watched for a few more minutes before packing his gear and slowly moving towards the two. He knew they would be digging for quite a while and felt fairly comfortable in being able to move close enough to follow them after the burial. He wanted to see where these people went and figure out if there were any more folks out in these hills. By the looks of the two gravediggers, John surmised they were well armed, mildly trained, and most likely a threat only to those who would threaten them and theirs.
Jared and Bart dug four shallow graves, placed the mangled and burned bodies into the graves, and covered them with dirt. After the bodies were covered, they piled rocks on top of the graves in order to at least attempt to safeguard them against scavengers. After placing the last rock on a soldier’s grave, Bart groaned and straightened up, stretching his back. Jared wiped his brow with his sleeve, looking out to the surrounding hills.
“We really should have pulled some sort of security while we did this,” Bart said, staring at the nearby landscape.
Jared just stared off into the hills, not saying a word, but getting the feeling suddenly they were being watched.
“Easy, don’t let on. I got the same feeling,” Bart whispered.
John watched as the two men took their break, drank some water, packed their belongings, and then began moving away from the crash site. John’s plan was to track these two, not follow them. Following people oftentimes resulted in your being identified, ambushed and killed. These were just a few things John intended to avoid if he could.
John had set up ambushes on people following him and his mates in the past and knew how well it worked. Once a party knew it was being followed, they would round a bend or some other natural visual barrier, and part of the team would simply drop off the trail, concealing themselves in a hasty ambush position. When the following party arrived in that area, they’d be ambushed, and it would suck for them.
John moved laterally till he was safely out of sight, then began to run. He would leapfrog these two men, letting them come to him, pass, and then he would repeat. This way there was no way John was going to get ambushed since he wasn’t moving along the same path they were. The trick to this tactic was for him not to get too far ahead in case they changed direction. If this happened, he stood a very good chance of losing them. Traveling ahead short distances and keeping them in sight as much as possible was going to be the way he handled tracking this little party.
John moved quickly for twenty minutes before arriving at a spot he felt would be a nice overlook position. He waited for another fifteen minutes before he began to get a bad feeling. Where are these two dudes now? From his position he could nearly see all the way back to the crash site and should have been able to spot the men with little effort. The cool morning air was absolutely quiet except for an occasional bird chirping.
John immediately checked his rear before moving his position to a large rock, where he felt he had the best chance of defending himself should he come under fire. He took out his binoculars and began scanning the hills in the direction he guessed the two men would have taken away from the crash site. Something caught John’s attention about twenty yards up the side of an embankment, something just a bit off, a quarter of a shade different in color from the surrounding vegetation.
John focused the optics on the deviance, adjusting the visual aid so everything was crystal clear. The abnormality came into focus, revealing the younger of the two men lying prone, weapon trained back in the direction the two had come from—the same direction John would have come had he simply followed the two men.
“You sneaky fuckers,” he muttered under his breath. Two minutes later he found the older man positioned another fifty yards straight down the path the two had been following. John didn’t know if the men had intentionally set up an L-shaped ambush or had done it by accident; either way he would have been in big trouble if he was lazy and just trailed the two men.
John watched the two for the next hour and was impressed with their patience. He didn’t know if they had a solid reason for doing what they had done, or if it was one of those things where people being watched sometimes felt an energy from those doing the watching. Either way, they had to be dealt with carefully now that he knew they weren’t just a couple of dumb-ass city folk.
At the hour mark, the older man stood, waving to the younger fellow, who rose from his position, glanced about, then jogged down the hill, joining his older companion. They conversed for a few seconds, gave the surrounding hills one last visual go over, then turned and started off in the direction they were traveling before their security stop.
The two men set up an ambush two more times over the next two hours as they steadily made their way east through the hills. John was ready for this and easily avoided any contact with the two men. During one of the ambush stops, John never actually spotted the other two men until the older man rose and they continued on their way. During one of John’s leapfrog runs, he stopped short when a small house came into view. He skirted the house, moving into a position where he could observe the two men’s approach to the little domicile.
A short time later the two men came into view and were met outside by a woman who was accompanied by a small girl. The older man tousled the girl’s hair, after which the younger man picked her up and gave her a hug. The woman spoke with the two men gesturing towards the crash site numerous times.
Five minutes into the conversation, the younger of the two men left the group, walking up the road away from the house and in the opposite direction they’d come from. Several minutes later the younger man returned with a third man, also older, but looking in better health than the original old man.
When Calvin reached the small group standing outside the house, Bart filled him in on what had happened, telling him he got the feeling they were followed even though they hadn’t seen anyone or any sign of any survivors. Bart just kept shaking his head, saying something wasn’t right.
“What were they doing flying into the city with just the crew and one soldier?” Bart asked the group. “It makes no sense at all. If they were gathering aerial intel, they’d have had at least a couple more folks, I’d imagine.” Bart scratched his head and peered around at the hillsides. He didn’t like this new turn of events.
After a bit, Shannon took Essie and moved to the OP so the men could grab some much-needed rest. Bart and Jared crashed immediately after eating a quick and cold breakfast. They both slept for several hours before rolling out of bed, getting dressed, and arming themselves. When Bart was finished, he moved through the house to the front door and exited.
Jared watched him leave, feeling the old man’s struggle and pondering the man’s future. He moved to a window where he could see the older man. Jared knew the night before had taken a toll on Bart, and he was beginning to see him weaken almost daily. Outside, he saw Bart hunched over in the side yard, coughing into a small kerchief. Bart didn’t see Jared watching as he withdrew the kerchief, sucking in a breath while wiping a small rivulet of blood from his mouth.
Bart spat a bloody glob onto the ground, gathered himself, and then moved back towards the front of the house. Bart returned to the house, staring blankly at Jared as he entered. Jared wasn’t sure if Bart knew he’d seen his coughing episode. Either way, Bart made no indication had and returned to his bedroom.
Calvin was still sleeping, so Jared wandered down to the OP to relieve Shannon. She jumped as he approached, clutching her rifle tightly in her hands.
“Bart’s right, someone is watching this place. I can feel it, call it woman’s intuition or whatever, but they’re out there.”
Jared tried to smile to ease the woman’s tension, but he felt it too. Although Jared felt the same uneasy feeling, he just wasn’t going to say anything with Shannon already obviously wound up over it.
“Head back and get something to eat. I’ll sit out here till someone relieves me.”
Shannon nodded and took one more glance around the countryside before she
and Essie moved off towards the little house. Shannon’s rifle was slung haphazardly across her slender shoulders, while Essie’s tiny hand was clasped tightly in hers. Jared watched the two walk away, thinking what an outlandish sight this should have been. Two months ago, this picture would have been absurd, even alarming. Now it seemed bizarrely normal.
John had moved into a position where he could observe not only the house, but its occupants’ little lookout position. He was mildly impressed by two things: first and foremost, that the tiny group actually had a lookout position and manned it twenty-four hours, day and night. Secondly John was impressed at what a great spot it was in regard to covering all the avenues of approach to their dwelling. This made his moving around the little ranch substantially more difficult than John would have preferred.
John watched all morning, not seeing the two men he followed from the crash site till close to noon. The older man looked haggard when John saw him emerge from the house. John watched the older man as he coughed, spit blood on the ground, wiped his face with a rag, and then walked back inside the house. Shortly thereafter, the younger man stepped out and made his way to the OP, where he conversed with the female for a few minutes before she took the child and returned to the house.
John rolled over onto his back, questioning just what in the hell he was doing out here. Why was he spying on these people? Was it because he was God knows how far from home base and his entire team along with the exfil group were all dead and buried nearby? Why hadn’t he simply moved past these people and kept going to a point where he could establish comms with someone in the rear and get picked up? He thought about it hard for a full minute. The entire world had changed while he and a select few refused to admit it and worked tirelessly to pull society back together.
He had always been driven to the point of seeing his objective through a pair of drinking straws at times, losing all peripheral sight altogether. This had always served him and his mates well in the old world, where they didn’t give a thought to the reason for a mission, instead focusing only on its completion. They simply got their marching orders, figured out how to achieve the objective, and then went to work.
