It wasn’t uncommon to hear the refrain, ‘No, no, and hell no!’ barked at the trainees. ‘How many times have I got to tell you people! The second guy through checks behind the door! None of you looked! Congrats! Everyone’s been fragged! You’re all dead!’
When he and Hoplite weren’t around, the students would take part in the age old act of disparaging their trainers. Katherine pointed out Gregg’s proclivity to vigorously rub his head and sigh before proclaiming, ‘Reset and do it again’. The group was convinced that he’d be bald in fairly short order. The other trainees delighted in her ability to be one of them when it was apparent she was being groomed for something more.
Hoplites favorite past time was firing live ammunition over their heads to see how each unit would react. Some didn’t handle it well at first, but they learned to channel the fear into completing the various tasks and missions.
By mid-May, as the first class of students was about to ‘graduate’ from the three phased course of instruction, James implemented a shooting contest. This would be his pre-qual for entry into his adhoc sniper school. With Gregg onboard, it was the pair’s intent to tap the top six shooters from each of their classes for the invitation only sniping education.
* * *
On what would have been Memorial Day, Dallas found himself manning one of the more remote OP’s around the park. Through his high power scope he watched a mother and her two children noisily make their way down the road. The son, who was eight to ten years old by his estimation, was pulling a plastic wagon. It wasn’t the metal Red Rider type he remembered hurtling down hillsides in during his youth like Calvin and Hobbes. Someone, the father perhaps, had wrapped each wheel in cloth and then duct taped it in place. He was thoroughly impressed with the noise reducing ingenuity.
The man watched and observed the three as the mother and daughter continued their argument about a cell phone, of all things. Dallas decided that it might be fun to put the disrespectful teenager in her place. Technically, at least according to the SOP, he was supposed to radio it in and have someone pick them up a few miles down the road. If he had a weakness, it was his propensity to mess with people.
As they neared, he didn’t want to give away the position of the earthen structure so he quietly exited the OP and worked his way down to the roadway. He left the intimidating AR-10 and the .308 hunting rifle in place, but grabbed his Mossberg 12 gauge just for effect. His sidearm was always with him, securely fastened in its thigh holster.
When they were only twenty yards away, he casually came out of the roadside brush.
“Halt!” he decreed in a commanding voice. “Identify yourself, this is a restricted area.”
The sight of a fully camouflaged man with face paint barking orders had the desired effect. The mother immediately grabbed her two children and began to shield them. Dallas was impressed with her maternal reaction.
“State your business,” he demanded.
“We heard there was a park near here. It’s supposed to be safe. We don’t want any trouble,” she quickly answered.
“It’s gotta be safer than that whack job you made us shack up with for weeks,” the daughter mumbled under her breath.
“Shut up!” the woman said in a hushed tone toward her.
“Whatever. If we had a working phone, we could at least call someone to come and run over this asshole,” the teenage girl replied indignantly.
“Watch your language young lady,” her mom cautioned.
The family was disintegrating right in front of Dallas. The father was obviously missing, dead, or split before the EMP. Had he been around or recently deceased, surely one of them would have at least invoked his name, wishing he was there. The son seemed oblivious to the bickering, or at a minimum was used to it. He kept poking his head out from behind his mother and observing the strange man in the street.
Catching the youngster a third time, the sentry smiled at him. In an effort to ease the youngsters fears, he stated, “The park’s a few ‘klicks’ down this road.” As he gestured toward the young boy, he asked, “You hungry?”
The little one slowly nodded in return and then ducked back behind his mother. He swung his pack off and retrieved a meal replacement bar and held it out as he approached the three. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” he said as he slung the shotgun.
The son wouldn’t budge.
Playfully, he offered, “How about a trade? This snack for your sister’s cell phone. Deal?”
“Absolutely!” the mother emphatically replied as she snatched it out of her daughter’s hand.
“Hey! That’s mine! I bought that with my own money! Give it –,”
“Silence!” Dallas barked and interrupted her petulant tirade. “Learn some manners and some respect and you might see it again. If I ever spoke to either of my parents like that, I wouldn’t have gotten the third word out of my mouth before being punished.”
“Screw you, mister,” she retorted indignantly and started to approach. Before she finished her first step, he placed his hand on top of his sidearm. She quickly stopped.
“What’s your son’s name?” he asked the mother.
“Nick,” he replied confidently as he came out of his shell.
“Nick! I’m Dallas. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he responded and offered a handshake to the youngster. As they shook, their interrogator remarked, “Hey, that’s a pretty strong grip. I’m bettin’ you play baseball?” he asked.
“Yeah!” the boy answered excitedly. “I got to pitch last year!”
“That’s great! Where are you guys from?”
“Where from up near Massillon,” the mother stated. “It was hit pretty hard by the inner city gangs out of Canton in February.”
“Dare I ask where the father is?”
“He left us for his pregnant heiress girlfriend in New York! What’s with the twenty questions?” the daughter rudely interrupted.
As calmly as he could, Dallas answered, “Either provide me with the answers I seek or you won’t be invited into the park. Speak that way to me again and I’ll whoop your butt right here in the middle of this street in front of your mother. Am I clear?”
She grunted in reply.
“So it’s going to be baby steps in the manners and respect department I see. Tell me about the ‘whack job’, as your daughter so eloquently put it.”
“I have a name you know,” she spat.
“Eve! Knock it off or I swear I might even help him!”
“That’s very pretty. Too bad your mouth keeps getting in the way. You can call me Mr. McKutcheon or sir. Are we clear on that?”
Eve crossed her arms over her chest and nodded slightly.
“Good girl. And you are?” he asked the mother.
“Josselyn Dell,” she answered. “Everyone just calls me Joss.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Joss. Now, about the ‘whack job’, if you please,” he requested as he discreetly handed the bar of food to Nick.
“When we started hearing that looters and gangs from Canton were raiding Massillon, we didn’t feel a need to relocate because we thought we were out of the way.”
“What did you consider to be ‘far enough’?” Dallas asked.
“Brookside Country Club,” Joss answered.
The man just shook his head. Targets that were perceived to be high value were always hit first. When will people ever learn.
“I know, I know. In our defense, we stayed because no one knew what had happened. We’ve heard plenty of theories though.”
“It was an EMP,” Dallas said flatly.
“What’s that?” Nick asked.
“That’s when a nuclear weapon is set off high up in the sky. It stops the electricity from being used in fancy cars, power lines, computers, and,” he began and glared at Eve. “And cell phones.”
“TV’s too?”
“Yup, those too.”
Nick pondered the explanation and then surprised himself when an idea popped into his mind. “S
o I get to play outside all the time?”
“Exactly like that,” Dallas answered with a smile. “Sorry, please continue.”
“We were pretty much left alone for the first weeks. We swapped food and what not with neighbors. A couple of empty nesters doubled up to conserve firewood and stuff. Then the gangs in Canton and Akron started a turf war of some kind. The group out of Canton attempted to claim the area as being within their borders. Some ‘representative’ came to the front gate for the club and tried to strong-arm the community into paying them for protection,” Joss explained.
“Let me guess. You guy’s said ‘no’ and then they tore down the gates and burned it all to the ground,” Dallas offered.
“Pretty much, yeah, that’s how it played out. We managed to get out before they made it to our end of the club. All we had with us was this wagon, a case of water, a container of rice, a dozen or so cans of soup, and a box of macaroni. Fortunately we used to be an outdoorsy family so we also had a single burner propane stove with some extra cylinders, a tent, and some sleeping bags,”
“So let me get this straight. You walked here from Massillon without any weapons? No gun? No knife?” Dallas asked surprised at their lack of planning.
“My ex was a surgeon. He said he saw enough of the damage in the ER so we never bought one. Plus we lived in a gated community so we didn’t have much crime to speak of.”
“So what route did you take to arrive here on this fine day?”
“We stuck to the back roads and made it to Dundee after a couple of days. Some parishioners spotted our campsite behind their church and let us stay in the chapel for a week or so. There was a break in the weather and we got as far as Baltic. I used to be a geriatric nurse so I bartered my skills for a roof over our head.”
“Good thinking,” he stated clearly impressed. “What did they have you doing?”
“They needed help out at the Oak Point Nursing Center.”
“How was that?” Dallas interrupted.
“They had it bad. When the power went out, everyone on life support or dialysis was gone within a few hours or days. By the time we got there, most of the meds had been dispensed. It wasn’t pretty. After another few weeks there wasn’t much else to do besides bury the dead, so we headed out again.”
“Where were you going?”
“I have a sister in Coshocton, or had, I should say. She was a diabetic. Her neighbors told me she made it about six weeks.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said offering her his condolences. He glanced down at the children and saw that they were eagerly devouring the power bar. Without the kids noticing, he slid another snack from his pocket and handed it to Joss. When they did manage to look up, Dallas’ canteen was being offered to the trio. They greedily drank in the liquid nourishment.
“While we were there, we stopped at a place called Woodbury Outfitters. They’d pretty much set up a trading post of sorts. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anything we were willing to part with, but one of the locals mentioned an elderly man on the outskirts of town. They suggested we offer to trade my nursing skills for food and shelter from the son.”
“I’m guessing this is where the ‘whack job’ comes in,” Dallas stated matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, mom had to sleep with him just to keep him away from Nick. Creepy jerk,” Eve blurted.
Joss flushed and resisted the urge to smack her daughter in front of the stranger.
In as calm a tone as she could muster, Joss stated, “I did what I had to do to protect both of my children from that…” she began as her voice trailed off.
“Pedophile,” Dallas inserted.
“Yeah. Anyway, when the dad died sometime later there definitely wasn’t anything keeping us there.”
“How’d you get away from the son?”
“He was always lurking and watching to make sure we didn’t leave, so we poisoned his stew,” the daughter said bluntly. “Which sucked because we had been saving that can. Bastard deserved it though.”
“Eve!” Joss shot back at her. “That’s enough with the language!”
“What? What else would you call him? You should have seen the way he looked at me and him when you were checking on his dad. Sleazy whack job. It was like he was savoring his next meal!”
“Okay, I think I get the picture little miss potty mouth. So how did you find out about us out here in the boonies?” Dallas asked.
“Carl, that was the son’s name, he had some radio stuff. Maybe it was a HAM radio or military grade, I don’t know. He’d been listening to Radio Free America and the BBC on it. Are UN troops really on American soil?”
He didn’t offer to explain, he just nodded.
“Yeah well, he was trying to tune something in and found a bunch of Army guys talking on the radio. They mentioned a refuge in Lake Hope and…” she started to say as her voice trailed off again.
Dallas cocked a weary eyebrow at her. “And?”
“Carl said he heard them mention buried treasure, a lot of it. Like they emptied Fort Knox or something and made it disappear.”
The man truly couldn’t think to do anything other than laugh. Josh is gonna be so pissed when he hears about this, he thought.
In an effort to redirect them he asked, “Seriously?” through his feigned laughter.
“That’s what he told me.”
“Well the only thing in these hills is iron, lumber, and rock.” Then he redirected the conversation to Nick. “Hey, do you like magic?”
“Yeah!” he answered excitedly.
“Great! Before I call the truck to have you guys taken to the park, I’ll show you my favorite trick. Here’s what I want you to do. When I count to three, take this phone and throw it as high as possible. I bet you I can make it disappear and then reappear right here in the palm of my hand.”
“Hey!” Eve protested.
“Oh, knock it off, young lady. That thing hasn’t worked in months. Seriously, I don’t know why you’re even carrying it around anymore,” the mother warned.
While her daughter silently fumed, Nick appeared to be trying to figure out how the trick would work.
“Really? Are you sure?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Dallas replied. “Ready?”
The young boy nodded that he was.
“Okay, here we go. One, two,” he began and dragged out the pronunciation of the words to make him wait for it. “Three!”
The aspiring pitcher heaved the device as high and as hard as he could. The phone flipped and spun as it arced down the street. Without warning, Dallas swung his Mossberg up and quickly fired at the target blowing it into dozens of shards across the road.
Without saying a word, he slid the weapon back and went down the roadway toward the debris. He picked up a handful of pieces and casually returned to the family.
“Look,” he said to Nick as he showed him the tiny fragments he had collected. “Magic!”
The little boy and his mother smiled.
“I’ve wanted to do that since the day she bought it,” Joss explained as she gave Nick a squeeze.
“You jerk! That was a brand new smartphone with a hundred dollar LifeProof case!”
“Well maybe you should have spent the extra fifty bucks for the bulletproof case,” Dallas quipped and squawked his radio.
“This is OP4 requesting a pick up. Three friendlies inbound.”
“Copy that. Any Committee Chairs requested?”
“Roger that, Medical. Send my relief and contact El Jefe. Request he meet on arrival,” he stated.
“Copy. Transpo ETA ten minutes.” came the reply.
“OP4 out,” the sentry answered.
“This is crap! You owe me six hundred dollars!” Eve wailed.
Dallas abruptly removed his Glock from its holster. This time he depressed the magazine release. Without looking, he ejected six rounds and handed them to young girl.
“There. That should about cover it.”
Chapter 15
Carlos and Heather finished their load out and departed shortly after dawn. Josh had finally relented and allowed his oldest daughter the opportunity to serve. She was excited for her first taste of duty and the horses provided almost a full hour of uninterrupted time together for the budding couple. Horseback was now the preferred transportation method for sentry rotation. Granted, they were slower, but they didn’t require any of the fuel from the farm’s tanks. Being extremely quiet was an added bonus as most of the regulars that manned the huts picked up some extra grub on their way.
Josh was actually glad that the inventory from the stalled locomotive revealed only a few thousand gallons. The availability of the precious stabilizing agent would prove a hindrance in the long run anyway. The man did mention their good fortune to Mayor Cranston. The word was spread to the neighboring communities with lightning speed. As a result, each town was allotted an equal share with the proviso that it only be used for tractors for the planting and harvesting of crops. There were some unleaded fueled cars and trucks available in each area of operation (AO) however, but again, the lack of vast quantities of Sta-bil forced vehicle usage to extreme need only.
Once the pair was situated on their mounts, Carlos began to explain to Heather, “Coastwatcher relief is probably the most exciting part of the program. When we get there, we have five minutes to swap out sentries.”
“Why so little time? Don’t we need to debrief or something?”
“Everything is recorded in the logbooks that stay on station. The rider returning turns in a copy for review. Just remember, if you find yourself in trouble, each of these desolate OP’s have the ability to communicate to the farm and the park. None of it would have been possible given the terrain if Josh hadn’t collected his friend from Columbus.”
“That’s what Dad says. Oh, that reminds me,” she quickly added. “What does it mean that they couldn’t cut new crystals for the hand held devices?”
By the Dawn's Early Light Page 18
