by Schow, Ryan
“I’m like Walker,” he admitted. “But I won’t share his fate.”
“Walker didn’t have a wife and kids,” she said. “You do, which gives you a different purpose in life. You’re like Walker to a degree, and our kids are like us, but we’re not Walker. We made different decisions. But that doesn’t mean you can’t kick that guy’s teeth in and take your hat back.”
“Do you want to bail me out of jail?” he asked. Faith laughed like it wasn’t a bad idea, and then she smiled like the thought of him fighting was sexy. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“Girls like bad boys, what can I say?”
“Yeah, well, wives like their husbands alive, too.”
“Life is not black and white, Colt,” she said, lovingly cupping his cheek. “Guys like you and Walker understood the gray area—”
He pulled her hand away and said, “You don’t need to tell me what I already know.”
“I’m reminding you of what you once told me.”
“I’m no longer that person.”
This is where she stood taller, resolve touching her otherwise kind face. “Well, you’re going to need to be, because I didn’t marry a pacifist, and you didn’t get this far in life by turning the other cheek. Someone punches you in the face again, you punch them back twice as hard. Someone steals your hat, steal a piece of their soul. You’re a warrior, Colt. Be one.”
“Not anymore.”
Shaking her head, clearly bothered, she said, “Well, then, you’ve learned nothing from Walker, which means he died in vain.”
“He died because he got mixed up in something bad,” Colt said, but Faith had already walked away, leaving him to wonder if the same bad forces that took his brother’s life were now headed his way to take his.
He feared they were.
Chapter Seven
Diesel Daley
The thirty-mile drive from Walker’s obliterated home in Harrodsburg to the rural outskirts of Lexington was the worst forty minutes Diesel had ever experienced.
Burned, stabbed, and sickened by the loss of most of his men, he ground his molars together so hard, a piece of enamel chipped off and got lodged under his tongue. When he finally worked it loose, he spat it onto the floorboards beneath his feet.
Looking at his blistering skin in the rearview mirror, seeing singed hair and a blackened ear, he wanted to scream. He couldn’t scream, though. It would hurt too much. Not that he would admit this to anyone. He wouldn’t. So he drove the narrow two-lane highway, Lexington Rd/US-68, in a near-whimpering silence. Focused on the road ahead—on the traffic in his lane and in the oncoming lane—he fought to get home faster to where his mother could properly tend to his wounds.
Smashing the gas pedal with his good foot, he passed traffic where he shouldn’t, and he refused to pay attention to the scenery for fear of wrecking the truck. Rolling down the window, filling the cab with fresh air that only seemed to hurt his ailing skin, he roared by mobile homes and middle-class houses, chain link fences and picket fences, simple wooden telephone poles with nothing but drooping lines strung from pole to pole.
When the residential scenery fell behind, and all he had to stare at were acres upon acres of mowed fields, he felt his stupid eyes start to water. The pain was bad, but was it really that bad? He had been shot three times in Afghanistan, and he’d killed a few Afghani innocents—half of them Muslim kids—before realizing he shot the wrong people. Even then he didn’t cry. He lost his father early in his life, his brother to fentanyl, and his sister’s love because she chose a stockbroker for a husband over a man’s man. And still, he didn’t cry. When his mother said he was a bad seed, a problem child who got worse by the year, but took his money and support anyway, his eyes remained as dry as the Gobi desert. But being burned and stabbed like this, killing his former best friend and brother in arms, that hurt worse than all the horrors before it.
The second a tear rolled over the lid and skipped off his cheek, he yelled, “STOP!” even though it hurt like crazy.
Seeing larger homes along the way, he thought about the house he had commandeered from his father’s sick friend. The old coot was a firecracker with an odd whistle in the back of his throat, but he was also a man burdened with the weight of sound morals. Now he was a corpse dumped into a hole in the back yard, which was where the old man was always destined to go.
Diesel decided that he needed the house early on, for it had plenty of land, a barn, and a staging ground for his men to both gather and rest. The entire setup would hopefully insulate them from the spillover chaos that was sure to come from the big city. Even better, the house was perched on the property’s peak, which was perfect for holding the high-ground if forced into a defensive position. If he’d learned anything from battle, it was to always get to the high-ground.
Now that his best men were dead, now that he’d left the others behind because he had to treat his burns and his stabbed foot, he turned his thoughts to the coming EMP. It was launching soon, but how soon? Did he have time to get his gun and his treasure back before the grid was officially torched?
If what he had heard about the timeline was true—which was questionable because he’d been using politicians as sources, and everyone knew most politicians were liars—then he had weeks, or even days, to prepare. Before that happened, he needed a replacement militia.
Doing his best to ignore the burns on his hand, he voice-dialed an old buddy of his out of Nashville, Tennessee.
“Yello,” Rhett Jensen said, his version of hello.
“Hey man, it’s Diesel,” he said, steadying his voice so as not to betray his true condition. “I need a favor.”
“Name it, brother.”
“I finally caught up with Walker McDaniel. I put him down in some dump in Harrodsburg, not that it was easy. He pretty much eviscerated my A-team.”
“He always was a caged lion,” Rhett said.
“I’m going to be sending the survivors up to Nicholasville. They’ll hopefully get eyes on Walker’s family, but I’m not sure anything will come of that.”
“He really took out most of your team?” the Tennessee native asked, shocked.
“Yeah, he really did.”
“I knew he was good, but not that good.”
“Luck touches us all from time to time,” Diesel said, more tears now rolling down his face. “For a while today, Walker’s luck touched him. But then his luck ran out.”
“You knew it would end like this,” Rhett said, consoling him.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”
“How many guys do you need?” Rhett asked. “I can spare maybe a dozen or two. Most of them are front liners, but I have a couple of heavy-hitters I can send with them.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Did you ever get that house in Lexington?”
“A couple days ago.”
“Where are the guys gonna stay?”
“In the barn. I’ve got five stalls we’ve turned into barracks. They’re comfortable, but not warm, so have your guys bring bedding, and food if they can.”
“What’s the timeline at this point?”
Diesel pulled up on a new Kia driving the speed limit, rode its tail for a hundred feet, then laid on the horn. The idiot put on the brakes, causing him to brake hard.
“I’m not sure,” Diesel said, gunning it. “Maybe next week, or the week after. Best to be on your toes.”
“I’m like a freaking ballerina,” Rhett joked.
Diesel jerked the wheel, pulling into the opposite lane. He saw an oncoming truck, but instead of ducking back into his lane and waiting for it to pass, he stepped on the gas and blew by the import, forcing the oncoming truck to stand on the brakes. At the last minute, with a dozen feet to spare, Diesel swerved back into his lane to the screech of blaring horns.
“I’ve always known about your predilections for ballet, Rhett,” Diesel joked back. “Keep your pantyhose tight and your tutu fresh, and I’ll send you the a
ddress.”
Rhett let out a boisterous laugh. “You got it, bro. I’ll get ‘em packing now.”
He hung up the phone, not sure if he’d ever see his friend again. Glancing around, the world seemed calm and collected, for now. But he worried about the war ahead, the war for America.
He passed an older couple at work in their yard. They had a kid in a swing set, and there was a small, brindle-colored dog running around in the grass, barking. Diesel missed the America of old, the one in which he’d grown up. What had happened to make it so corrupt?
It didn’t matter, not in the long run. All he knew was that these people had no idea what was coming.
Then again, did he really know? Maybe.
“What did you do now?” Diesel’s mother asked, irritated. She had a pinch of chew in her lip and the TV’s remote control in her hand. She spat in a tin cup, looked at his wounds, then asked, “You expecting me to take care of you?”
“You always have,” he said, trying not to show his anger.
“When the show is over,” she said. Turning her attention back to the HBO sitcom, Curb Your Enthusiasm, she started to laugh, and then she spat in her cup again.
“It burns right now,” he said. “And my foot—”
“It burns right now,” she teased in an ugly, sneering tone.
He sat down on the couch across from her, his skin on fire, and he glared at her. She finally looked over at him, frowned, then returned to Larry David and his Southern California antics.
“He wrote Seinfeld, you know,” she said, pointing at the TV.
“You say that every time.”
She lifted a crooked middle finger at him, her knuckles thick with arthritis, then she settled back into her television show. Diesel turned his attention to the show, saw the birdlike older man refuse to sing “Happy Birthday,” then watched his mother fall into fits of laughter. Her laughing suddenly turned to coughing, which then turned into him getting her a bowl to throw up in. When she was done puking, she looked up and said, “Your hand smells like bacon.”
“I’m kinda cooked, Ma.”
“Get me the burn ointment,” she said. “I’ll maybe see if I can help you out.”
He nodded his head, then said, “I appreciate it.”
“But you’ll have to watch an episode with me before you go,” she said, looking up at him with pleading eyes. “Please, Eugene. You never watch TV with me.”
“Alright, Ma. We’ll watch a few shows together. But I don’t go by Eugene, so you can’t call me that. You have to call me Diesel, okay?”
“Like our old VW Bug?”
“No, Ma. Like a freight train. My name is Diesel. like a freight train.”
“What if I call you Bug?” she teased.
He laughed, but it was bitter. “What if I let you stay back in that house you were in before, huh? What if I let you try to feed yourself, or clean up your own vomit?”
“Then you’d be a bad son.”
“Call me Diesel.”
“Bug.”
“No,” he said calmly. “Diesel.”
“Okay, Eugene. Fine.” She took a big breath, deadened her eyes, then said, “Diesel, will you please watch an episode with me?”
Smiling, even though it hurt his face, he said, “Okay, Ma. We can watch it together.”
This seemed to make her happy, which wasn’t all that bad, considering she’d be dead soon. At the very least, a few good moments together might not hurt.
Chapter Eight
Colt McDaniel
Six days before the event… Most of the bruising in his face was gone, and though he was sleeping somewhat regularly again (except for the occasional nightmare spurred on by news of his brother’s death), life was returning to normal. That meant seven a.m. rucking, followed by a cool-down in the man-cave, musings of a morning beer, then work on the garden and around the farm.
In the man-cave, he pulled on his beanie, slipped on his glasses, then put on his rucksack. The morning air was warmer than usual, although clouds were gathering low on the horizon. The forecast called for rain, which was good, but not good right now.
He walked down the packed-gravel driveway to Watts Mill Road, hit the asphalt of the tight, two-lane country road, then broke into a jog. Instead of running up to US-39, he turned the other way, thinking he was ready to switch routes and head down Brumfield Lane, which wasn’t much of a road. Still, he could turn a three-and-a-half-mile run into something more substantial. By his calculations, he could run all the way to Little Hickman Road and hope he didn’t get shot by one of the residents, which was entirely possible these days. As an extra measure of protection, he carried his wife’s Smith & Wesson, which was light and tight, and just might save his tush in a tussle.
He wasn’t more than a quarter of a mile down Watts Mill when he saw a dirty-looking Jeep on off-road tires barreling around the curve like it had just come from Sugar Creek Pike. He took his earbuds out, stepped out of the road as far as he could, then waited for the Jeep to pass.
As the vehicle neared, the idiot driver leaned on the horn, startling him. Instead of slowing down and giving Colt a wide berth, the driver sped up, not once adjusting his course.
A cloud of road dust broke over him, bits of debris peppering his exposed skin. Turning around, he saw that the vehicle hadn’t even slowed. But that wasn’t what was most concerning. What gave him pause, what had that nasty feeling forming in his gut, was that he recognized the Jeep. The guy who beat him up had been leaning against it at the Kroger parking lot.
“It can’t be,” he said to himself. “Can it?”
A little over a week had passed since he was beaten up and had his hat stolen. The fact that this dirtbag was still in town was deeply concerning, but it was even more alarming that—of all the roads he could have chosen to drive down—he chose this road at this hour. Colt put his earbuds back in and cranked Metallica’s song, Blackened.
Should he continue his run, or turn and run in the direction of the Jeep? He didn’t know. The music was loud, he needed the run, and he was happy to be taking a new route. But that idiot had been unpredictable when Colt met him, which meant he was unpredictable now.
He turned back and started after the Jeep, not sure what he would find.
Colt was just getting his wind when a sharp, honking horn startled him. He stumbled off the road onto a soft, uneven shoulder. Several more cars roared by him, dusting his neck with debris. He hit an uneven spot on the shoulder of the country road, turned an ankle, then dropped to a knee and started cursing. Looking up, groaning, he felt his anger spark.
Biting down on his anger, he realized these were old cars, junkyard cars, the kinds of cars he saw at Kroger.
Still on his knee, he turned to make sure no one else was coming. The road was clear. Standing, walking off the pain, he narrowed his eyes and reined in his temper. This was not the way he wanted to start the day.
Thinking about these guys after he fought to put them out of his head caused a knot to form in his stomach. That knot became a fist when he saw the Jeep and subsequent cars had turned into Vitaliy’s driveway. He jogged toward the house, cautiously. Tucked deep in the driveway and just around the side of the house was a large moving truck.
“Oh, no,” he muttered.
Breaking into a run that bordered on a sprint, he huffed it up the driveway, covering the distance between the road and his man-cave in no time flat.
He ripped open his cabinet door, pulled out his field glasses, then popped off the lens covers and glassed Vitaliy and his guests. Through the binos, he watched the Russian take an envelope from the guy Colt had met at Kroger. He was still wearing Colt’s hat.
“Son of a…” he started to say. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
The Russian opened the envelope, slid out a stack of cash, then nodded, folded it, and slid it into his back pocket.
The guys in the old cars walked around the house like they were checking it out. That’s when he s
aw the girl who had been pinned up against the flour shelves. She was hanging on the guy wearing Colt’s hat like they were steady lovers.
It was sickening to watch.
“Unbelievable.”
“What?” Faith said, scaring him.
He startled at the sight of her. “First off, don’t walk up on me like that. And second, something’s going on across the street. I think Vitaliy is either doing a drug deal or—”
“He’s going back to St. Petersburg to see his daughter,” Faith said. “Apparently, she has cancer.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s too bad.”
“He’s had the place up for rent for the last week. It was posted on the local chat group. So maybe he finally got it rented out.”
That fist of pain in his stomach had since become a bowling ball, or a wrecking ball, as it were. Shaking his head, thinking this couldn’t be happening, he said, “Guess who just gave him cash to rent the place.”
“Who?”
He tapped the last fading bruise on his temple and cocked an eyebrow.
“No,” she said, horrified.
“He’s still got my hat on,” Colt said. “And he nearly ran me over in the road.”
She took a deep breath, looked in the direction of Vitaliy’s house, then reached for the binoculars. “Let me see those,” she said. He handed them to her. She snugged them up against her eyes and took a look. “They look like scumbags through and through.”
“They’re worse.”
“I think your brother gave you that rifle for a reason,” she said as she pulled the binoculars away from her face and handed them back to Colt.
“Not to kill people I don’t like,” he said.
“I meant for protection.”
“What are you suggesting?” he asked, taking in the scene again.
“I’m saying we should head over to Gator’s place, maybe pledge a little brass to the range gods.”
When she said things like this, it was hard to imagine she was ever from California. And though this would have made him laugh any other day, today it made him sad. Things had been changing since the Hayseed Rebellion unleashed their reign of terror. Unfortunately, it was getting worse by the day.
