Having had their fill of hairier than expected travel, the three opted to get off of the railroad and use the much faster I-77 corridor. They were making excellent time, but for the handful of stranded truckers they came across. Upon picking up their first lost soul, James moved to the back with the trucker in case anyone got any bright ideas.
When the stranded trucker removed his concealed pistol in an effort to get more comfortable atop the luggage, the former Marine quickly drew down on him. From then on, all would-be passengers were asked to turn over any side arms. The weapons would sit in the cab of the truck until they disembarked.
As Dallas approached the disabled semi, the driver door swung open too rapidly for his liking. He abruptly slammed on the brakes and squealed the tires on the pavement. When he saw the double barrel shotgun being aimed in their general direction, he threw it into park, exited the vehicle, and took cover behind his own open door.
James jumped down from the bed of the truck with his weapon leveled. He quickly pressed his back against the sidewall of the trailer and waited for the hand signal from Dallas.
His friend observed the cab for several long moments. When there was no movement or change in direction from the business end of the double barrel, he motioned James onward.
The large man began inching his forward. “We mean you no harm,” he said commandingly. “We can offer you safe passage as far as Wytheville, Virginia if you are so inclined. If you are not, please close the door to your rig and we will be on our way. If you would like to come with us, aim your weapon skyward, exit slowly, and keep your hands visible at all times.”
“How do I know you’re not here to try and take my load?”
James and Dallas stole a glance at one another. Female truckers weren’t unheard of; they’d just never met one. The pair shrugged at each another in an effort to reply, ‘what now?’
This was unchartered territory for them. No traveler had pulled a gun on them throughout the course of the day. The husband and wife driving team they had picked up earlier wanted no part of a shootout on I-77, but they damn sure didn’t want to walk to Wytheville. Instead of jumping out and making a run for it, they pancaked themselves as low as they could into the bed of the truck and started piling luggage on top of themselves. The other passenger sat huddled up against the front of the bed, praying that the man in the cab, and the body of the vehicle, would be enough to stop the slug or buckshot from the shotgun.
Without warning, their remaining passenger exited.
“Ma’am, my name is General Brent Howard. You have my word as a Marine, and a Christian, that these men and I are honorable people. No harm will come to you or your load as long as we are standing here.”
The scared driver slowly poked her head out.
“How do I know you won’t get me in the back of that truck and try and deflower me once we’re on the road?” she asked somewhat authoritatively.
“I guess you’re gonna have to take a leap of faith. We can drive you as far as Wytheville if you want or you close the door and we’ll be on our way. The choice is yours.”
“How do I know you’re really a General?”
“More faith, I guess,” Brent replied.
After several quiet tense seconds, the feminine voice said, “My brother was a Marine.”
“Well then I like him already,” the retired Four Star answered noticing that his compatriot was continuing to inch his was toward the cab.
“He died over there.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. What was his name?”
“Sergeant Ernesto Mattone.”
Dallas’ eyes got as big as saucers.
James’ filled with rage.
His best friend in the Marines had been Ernesto ‘Ernie’ Mattone and he didn’t have any sisters! At the mere invocation of Ernie’s name, the hulking man lunged forward, grabbed the barrel of the shotgun from the cab of the truck, and wrenched it from her hands.
He threw the weapon down, spun into full view of the open driver side door, and leveled his Sig at the young woman who was lying prone across the two front seats. She stared back at him in shock and disbelief. With tears streaming down his face at the memory of his fallen friend, James grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out of the truck.
“Get your ass down here! Ernie didn’t have any sisters!” he screamed at her. “Where do you get off using his name like that!” he continued as he pressed the barrel hard against her forehead.
“He was my step-brother!” she pleaded. “My father married his mother while he was deployed. He knew all about it. I was twelve. We were waiting for him to rotate home to have the reception with him! I swear it’s the truth!”
“Bullshit!” he spat at her in his deep commanding voice.
“I swear,” she said as she continued to beg for her life. “I have all of his letters to his mother in the lockbox in my sleeping quarters! Please!”
“I oughta maim you and leave you out here for these cracker Deliverance hillbillies for making that shit up! We were brothers!”
“James!” Dallas yelled as he approached.
“Sergeant Rooney!” Brent barked from behind him. “Stand down, Sergeant! Don’t make me shoot you!”
The pronouncement of his name and rank in the practiced commanding tone of a General forced him to quickly turn. He rotated his head the other direction toward the sound of the original declaration. Two men, his friends, were directing their gaze and their as of yet unfired weapons at him.
Slowly, he retracted the Sig. For the first time, he saw the look of sheer terror on the woman in front of him. As he released his vise like grip on the clump of hair he had in his hand, she buried her face in her hands and began sobbing uncontrollably.
No words were exchanged as he holstered his weapon. He abruptly turned, walked passed Brent, entered the cab of railroad truck, and slammed the door shut.
“What in the world was that!” the General asked Dallas as they approached the weeping young lady.
“James was the sniper providing over watch for Ernesto’s platoon as they worked their way through Falluja. He watched his friend take one in the gut. The insurgents left him there, alive, in the middle of the street. They used Ernie and his wound as frickin’ bait.
“Every time someone in his squad came out to try and get him, they were hit too. After three hours and four dead, he was ordered to put his best friend down.”
“How was the idiot in charge that gave that order?”
“No idea, but he beat the holy hell out of him when he got back to the base,” Dallas answered.
“Did he comply?”
“No, he refused the order.”
“What happened? Did they get his friend out?”
“Not that day. Some FNG had the bright idea to launch a Javelin at the building the insurgents were hiding in. It brought the whole damn thing down on top of Ernesto. They found him under the rubble about a week later. After James cooled off and got out of the brig, he was offered a choice. Face court martial or retire. He already had his twenty so he retired.”
Not realizing that the young female trucker was listening, she broke up their conversation when she said, “Ernesto was going to bring that lunatic to the wedding reception to meet his new family.” She wiped tears from her eyes and concluded, “It’s in the letters. They were supposed to come home together on leave once their deployment was done.”
“Can you show us this letter?” Brent asked as he helped her up.
The girl nodded as she opened a small door near the rear of the tractor and reached inside. She felt around aimlessly for a few seconds until she pulled out a biometrically locked pistol gun safe.
“I can’t open it.”
“Why not?
“Whatever disabled my truck fried the electronics on the reader,” she explained.
The three stood there staring at the useless piece of electronic protection not really sure what to do with it.
“What your name,” Brent
asked reassuringly as Josh’s oldest friend continued to inspect the box.
“Maria, Maria Sanchez,” she offered.
“Hey,” Dallas said as turned the small safe over in his hands. “When the lid is open, where does it latch, in the center, or off center, above this keyhole? I don’t suppose you have the key?”
“Nah, I lost that some time ago, but it springs open once it reads my fingerprint. I believe it latches in the middle. My dad bought this for me.”
“No disrespect, but you seem a bit young to be out here driving cross country,” Dallas said as he walked back to the truck to retrieve some tools.
Brent and Maria followed suit as she answered him. “I’m twenty eight, but you could say it’s in the genes I guess. I rode with my dad for years after mom died. It was just me and him on the open road until he met Anita, Ernesto’s mother.”
Curious, the three passengers had started to poke their heads over and around the side rail and cab of the truck. As they approached, the wife from the drive team asked, “What’s your handle, honey.”
Maria smiled at the sound of another female voice. “Sweet Miss Georgia, and you?”
“Really? We know you! We’re the Shag Dancers!” she replied. Then she turned toward Brent and said, “General, we’ve been on the road with her for years. We’ve never met, but she’s ‘Okay’ in our book.”
Dallas started pounding the screw driver into the seam of the lockbox and distracted everyone from their conversation. The noise startled James and he thrust the door open. In a calmer, but still commanding voice he asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to,” he said as he grunted between swings of the hammer, “Get this,” another swing, “Thing open,” another swing, “So we can prove,” another swing, “You’re a douche!”
His friend sighed. “You’ll never get it like that.”
Dallas stopped his pounding and looked at him. Without seeking an explanation, he removed the screwdriver he had managed to insert half inch into the device and handed it over.
James took it, walked to the end of the truck, and placed it in the dirt on the side of the road. “Ya’ll stand back.”
Their large emotionally comprised man unholstered his Sig and put a round through the locking mechanism in the center. He then fired successive rounds through the lid at specific points. When the fourth round discharged, the cover bounced free and rested of the safe. Without saying a word, James picked it up and gave the two pieces to Maria.
The travelers just stared at him as he climbed in the back of the pick-up and sat down.
“Do you have anything in the rig you want to bring? Clothing? Bedding? Any food or water?” Brent asked
“Yeah, gimme a minute,” she answered as she handed him a stack of letters and started heading to her open driver door. Dallas went with her.
The General turned and glared at the sulking hulk. The man couldn’t take his eyes off of his bootlaces. Without looking up, James removed the envelopes from the General’s hand and began reading.
“What the hell was that?” she asked quietly under her breath.
“That was his apology. Eventually, he’ll form it into words. He and Ernie were close. They went through boot down at Parris Island together. Hell, it took him four years to tell me the whole story,” Dallas answered.
“Let me guess, I’ll really like him once I get to know him, right?”
“Something like that.”
“So how did he do that?” she asked. “Pop open the box I mean.”
“Oh, he made a lot of friends in the military over the years. He occasionally gets calls from a few of them. They usually want him test gear and equipment for their companies. I would venture a guess that yours was a model he was familiar with.”
Marie shrugged her acceptance of the explanation.
“Well, I won’t hold you guys up too long, I don’t have that much in my rig,” she said and started handing Dallas bundles from the sleeping compartment.
Chapter 7
Samantha heard Juan’s old truck before it even turned onto the street. Without the ever present white noise from the surrounding world, the sound of a solitary vehicle on pavement traveled a good distance.
While the pair waited for the Chastain’s and the Calhoun’s to arrive, she and Carlton had efficiently packed all of the food into laundry baskets and cardboard boxes found throughout the house. Aunt Jenny was eighty-four years old and ate like a bird so there wasn’t much to box up. It was apparent she loved her Ramen Noodles, mac and cheese, and spaghetti with pasta sauce though. In addition to that, the basement held a trove of vegetables the woman had canned herself. Once discovered, this caused Samantha to go on a hunt for the pressure cooker.
As they waited for the others to return, Sam was struck by what she saw around the house and surrounding area. Nothing in her memory aligned with the environment. She hadn’t really noticed the changes when she and Josh had visited. With no children of their own, Samantha’s aunt and uncle had been selling off the family farm for years as the pair aged. The national interest in farming, 4H, and FFA Clubs was replaced with materialism, urban living, and technology as the ‘Big Ag’ companies managed the unseen food industry for the American people.
What was telling to Samantha was what wasn’t there. Gone were the endless fields of corn and soy, chickens, goats, and horses. The only thing Sam was able to reconcile to her childhood memories was the large oak tree in the back yard that held the tire swing.
As she and Carlton worked to get everything ready for the evac, they discovered Uncle Jerome’s truck in the garage. The man had bought the old Ford F-150 in 1977 when it was top of the line and brand new. The odometer hadn’t cleared sixty thousand miles yet. The family caregiver didn’t even know it was there, but Sam had vague recollections of it. The pair had smiled at each other like mischievous kids as they climbed in and turned the key. Unfortunately, their exuberance was tempered by the amount of dust and cobwebs. When he tried to turn it over, nothing happened. It was apparent that no one had maintained it since the day Sam’s uncle had died. A more direct secondary review revealed rotting deflated tires in addition to the dead battery. The former Navy Corpsman set himself to the task of getting it running and spent the remainder of the afternoon attempting to complete that.
Emily swung Juan’s truck into the drive and continued on toward the outbuilding. When the headlights illuminated the tailgate of the Ford, Carlton came out from behind the raised hood covered in grease. She put it in ‘Park’, shut off the engine, but left the lights on assuming they would turn off by themselves, just like her BMW. Em and her parents exited the bench seat as Gregg jumped down from the back.
Her husband had been relegated to the bed of the vehicle out of deference and respect towards his wife and the aging couple. He couldn’t in good conscience put his seventy something year old in-laws under blankets while he and Em rode in the heated cab. Plus, he wanted to ride in back. As a result, he willingly accepted his wife’s suggestion. Besides, from there, he was afforded a three hundred and sixty degree field of view and all of his Emmitt’s long guns were packed. It only made sense for him to provide the covering fire if it were needed.
“Mr. and Mrs. Calhoun? I’m Samantha Jameson,” Sam said as she introduced herself to the pair and brushed dirt off of her clothing. “Come on inside.”
Gregg came up the side of the truck shaking his head. He opened the door, reached in, and pushed the headlight knob in. Old habits die hard, he thought.
“What have we got here?” he asked as he approached Carlton and the open garage.
“Sam and I found her uncle’s Ford out here when we were looking for stuff to stage. The battery is dead, but I figured I’d have a look at the rest of it. If you could give it a jump, maybe we can use it too. That is, assuming the tires hold air. We might be able to get some spares at the salvage yard on the way out tomorrow morning.”
“Where did you find the light?” Gregg asked.
“We definitely want to get that loaded,” he replied as he began snooping through the garage using the headlamp he had scrounged out of Emmitt’s hunting gear. As he came to the other side of the vehicle, he saw that Carlton had left the hand pump leaning against the truck.
“How long ago did you put air in the tires?”
The Corpsman raised his dirty wrist and looked at the time. “’Bout three hours, why? How are they doing?”
“They seem to be holding, for now. We’ll probably have to refill ‘em in the morning.” As Gregg came around the vehicle, he finally got a good look at the man. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Grave duty. You didn’t think we were gonna leave Miss Jenny in there… in her bed, did you?” Carlton answered and asked.
“No. I guess you’re right. Buried her out back did you?”
“Yeah, we did that before we went through the house though. Afterword, Sam headed on out there. She was just sitting with her ‘til you folks pulled in.”
Gregg nodded his understanding. “Sorry you guys had to do that.”
“Wasn’t the first grave I ever dug and I know it won’t be the last, not after today.”
“I hear ya,” he responded and then paused. “That’s too damn depressing to talk about right now. How’s the engine and carb look?”
“The oil, power steering, and tranny fluids all looked good. No metal in the transmission. The carb was a little gummed up so I cleaned that out. Hey,” Carlton said as if he were remembering something. “Did you guys bring any gas cans back with you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Miss Jenny’s husband died seven years ago. Had to drain the tank. The tires are only our second highest concern. We ain’t going anywhere without some fuel. How much you got?”
“About twenty gallons,” he answered.
By the Dawn's Early Light Page 8
