Finally, Jared tilted the glass to his lips and let the liquid pour into his mouth. To his surprise, the fluid was not nearly as harsh as the whiskey Bart had given him. He swished the drink around the inside of his mouth before swallowing it. As if the rest of the group were waiting for his cue, they too sampled Dwight’s evening beverage selection.
John downed his drink in a single gulp, placed the glass back on the tabletop, and stared straight at Dwight. “Man, that’s gotta be a two-hundred-dollar bottle of booze. That stuff is smooth.”
“Five thousand.” Dwight snorted indignantly.
It was John’s turn to snort. “Five large? You got to be kidding me.” John hooted as he fished a loaded magazine out of a pouch and waved it in front of Dwight. “This here is worth more now than that bottle of liquor.”
“You couldn’t be more right,” Dwight said with a grim look.
The men finished their first glass before Dwight poured everyone a second. Jared felt the tension in his body loosen its grip halfway through the second glass. The dead bodies of the intruders were outside and only a few yards from where the men sat drinking an unspeakably expensive bottle of whiskey, yet here they were taking a load off after a successful mission. Prior to the event, if a deer died on someone’s front lawn, there would be calls to the police, who would in turn call animal control and so on and so forth.
“You guys killed a lot of people out there,” Dwight said, breaking a lull in the conversation.
Jared could tell John was about to lay into Dwight, so he spoke up to prevent any fighting within the group. “I understand what’s going through your mind right now. From your standpoint, we killed men who were probably your neighbors and were probably just trying to feed their families. Of course, that is one way of thinking about it, but it was never our intent to do something so vicious to people with good intentions. We are living in a new world now, but that world doesn’t change the fundamental elements of right and wrong. Those men weren’t trying to trade what they had for food to feed their families; they were on your property with guns, heavy poles, two snipers, and what they felt was a well-thought-out plan to kill you and take what you spent years accumulating to survive. Was their life more valuable than yours? For that matter, was their life more valuable than your wife’s? It wasn’t. Those men were desperate, and what I’ve learned is that people who act out of desperation can be the most dangerous and reckless beings of them all. They don’t consider what is right; they don’t live by the Golden Rule; they do what they want when they want with no regard for others. What we did, however unfortunate, was get rid of people who lacked a moral compass. I don’t know, Dwight. Maybe this new world needs to start fresh and rid itself of self-serving individuals. But I also don’t know how that can be done without corruption, because the one thing history has shown us time and time again is that you can’t have extreme power without corruption.”
Jared stopped talking. It dawned on him that, while he hated the corruption and power struggle in the world, perhaps the natural repercussion of a successful society lends itself to power struggles and corruption in those who become leaders. While he thought more about this cause and effect scenario, the other men fell silent too, and Jared hoped someone would break the ice.
“We can’t bury them all, but tomorrow before we leave, we can at least lay them all out and cover them with a tarp or something,” John added.
Oh, thank goodness for John, thought Jared. He’s always thinking practically about the next step.
Jared shook his head. “No, we leave ’em as they fell. Their families and friends should see what happened here tonight, and hopefully, it will impact them in a way that leads them to do better than those men out there. Their families need to see the battering ram and know their spouses were out in the middle of the night engaging in savagery towards another man. They need to know this sort of conduct won’t be tolerated by everyone.”
The men dropped the subject after Jared’s proclamation and continued drinking whiskey until the bottle was empty. They talked about solar panels and batteries, then they talked about guns and tactics, but when there was no more whiskey and Dwight made no attempt to produce a second bottle, John stood up and stretched.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a couple of extra beds, would you?” he asked.
Dwight showed each man to his own bedroom, and for the first time since Jared had left the ranch house, he slept in a soft bed with plenty of pillows and a warm comforter. No one bothered with a security watch. John felt that anyone trying to break in would wake them in plenty of time to repel any sort of late-night nonsense. Jared, on the other hand, felt anyone sneaking around the house would see the mess out front and want nothing to do with the home’s occupants.
The following morning, Jared woke up with a wicked headache. He grabbed his gear, slung the rifle, and staggered out to the living area, where he found Barry and Dwight sitting at the kitchen island, sipping coffee. He could smell it now and see the tendrils of steam curling from the men’s cups, causing his mouth to water like a faucet and his brain to develop an urgent need.
“Is that coffee?”
Both men turned in their seats and smiled.
“It is. Would you like a cup?” Dwight responded in a pleasant voice.
“Sure, and a couple of aspirin if you have ’em,” Jared said, running his hands through his disheveled hair and squeezing his head as if that would make the pain disappear. My hair hurts, he thought.
Dwight set about making a third pot of coffee while Jared sat at the island, feeling sorry for the state of his head after all the drinking the evening before. Dwight’s home had been essentially off the grid before the event, and he had ensured his solar and electrical components were designed to withstand any sort of power-overloading event, such as a solar flare or an EMP strike. For the most part, his system had remained intact with only minor damage, which he was able to repair within the first couple of weeks of the event.
Dwight finished preparing the pot of coffee and set a cup in front of Jared. “Barry tells me you lost a good friend recently.”
Jared looked up from the steaming cup. “He was more than that.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. When my wife passed, I sat in this house, barely eating or drinking for a solid week. Then I realized I had to help myself nowadays. No counselors to help talk you off the ledge or help you understand why something happened. Seems like you’re doing pretty good, keeping busy, trying to stay alive and all.” Dwight nodded at his own statement, then sipped the coffee.
Jared didn’t feel like talking this morning, much less talking about his feelings or Bart. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Jared knew they would leave out the side door, and he wouldn’t be able to help himself from stealing a glance at the grisly scene from the night before. The difference from last night would be the scene was no longer cloaked in darkness and would be on full display in broad daylight.
Dwight sensed Jared’s mood and changed the subject. “Barry had a good idea about using a Tesla battery; only thing is they weigh over a thousand pounds. My advice is to get as close to your little place in the hills and try to find a Tesla over there so you don’t have to lug the thing as far.”
Jared looked up at Barry. “Don’t they build ’em somewhere in Fremont?”
Barry nodded over the cup of coffee. “The old Toyota factory. It’s right off the 880 highway.”
“NUMMI,” Dwight interjected.
Jared didn’t understand. “NUMMI?”
“Yeah, it was called NUMMI. It was owned jointly by General Motors and Toyota—New United Motor Manufacturing Inc—I think that’s what it was called, but everyone just called it NUMMI. Closed down around 2010, and Tesla reopened it a while back and used it to push out those cars of theirs.”
“Anyone know how to get to the battery or remove it?” Jared asked.
Dwight shook his head. “All I know is you’re going to need tools—jack stands and a couple of jack
s at the very least. Now if you find a Tesla closer to your place, it would be a shorter haul up to the house, but you’re going to spend a lot of time out in the open, wrenching on the car, trying to get the battery free, and, well, with things the way they are, I wouldn’t suggest spending too much time in the open. NUMMI probably has car batteries lying around that haven’t been installed. Easier in one sense, harder in another.”
Jared thought about this for a moment. “What about stripping the car, leaving the wheels on, and pulling it with the horses?”
Dwight shrugged. “Could work. Guess all you’d have to do is tear the car apart. You’re not worried about losing screws or how you’re going to get it back together, so, yeah, that’s another approach. Either way, you’re going to want the battery off the ground on a trailer of some kind. Dragging it isn’t an option. If it were gonna be dragged fifty feet maybe, but not miles. You’d destroy the thing before you got it home.”
Jared was about to sip the coffee when a loud pounding erupted from the side door, causing him to nearly spill the hot beverage. Dwight leapt to his feet and raced to the door as Jared was recovering. Dwight flung the door open, and John stepped inside.
“What a mess out there,” was all John said as he leaned the rifle against the island and grabbed a seat next to Jared, who was still gathering himself.
“I didn’t know you were outside. Almost gave me a heart attack,” Jared breathed.
John clapped him on the back. “You ready to do some walking today?”
“Not really.”
An hour later, all four men were dressed and outfitted in their gear. All four were armed, and John had gone over some basic rules about moving in a group so Dwight would be an asset and not a liability to their mission. Before they donned their packs, Dwight brought out four additional bottles of bourbon identical to the one they’d demolished the evening before. Each man stowed a bottle gingerly in his pack, wrapped in an article of clothing, striving to protect the precious fluid in the event a pack was dropped or jarred.
John also had Dwight show him his ammunition cache. Dwight had thousands of rounds in 9-millimeter and 5.56 ammo, which the men loaded magazines with before dumping as much into their packs as was reasonable considering the walk that lay ahead of them. The group took turns digging a large hole behind the house, where John had the men deposit all the cans of ammunition. If they were ever back through this area and needed ammunition, they now had a cache to draw from.
More importantly, anyone looting the property would not have access to the ammunition that could be used against others in the future. John’s stance on the ammunition was if he couldn’t have it, no one else could. He’d been shot at and seen too many people unable to protect themselves being victimized by others who possessed the now coveted commodity. The ammunition cans were airtight, and Dwight had silica bags in every one of them, so John wasn’t too worried about the rounds going bad anytime soon.
After the ammunition cans were in the hole and it was covered, they did their best to eliminate any signs they had been digging in the area, going as far as uprooting several plants and replanting them on top of the cache site.
The men left everything else intact to be used by whoever stumbled upon Dwight’s hard work and forward thinking. John stepped out into the bright morning sun and headed toward the driveway. The stench of death was strong as the four crossed the front of the property. Each man stole furtive looks at the carnage before moving on down the driveway, heading to the gate.
When they reached the gate, Dwight punched in a series of numbers on a keypad Jared assumed would have been inoperable after the event. The gate silently swung open. Keeping true to his promise to John, Dwight left the gate open so others could benefit from the food and supplies they were leaving behind.
As they stepped outside the gate and onto the road, the sound of women’s voices drifted across the quiet morning air, causing the group to scramble back inside the gate, where they took refuge behind the stone wall. John motioned for Jared to watch the opposite direction from where the voices were coming while he looked to see if there was a threat approaching. Jared nodded his acknowledgment, leaving John free to move up to the gate and peer down the road.
As the voices grew louder, John moved back away from the gate. Just as Jared caught sight of three women, John stood and let his rifle hang in a gesture of goodwill. The women were gaunt in stature, with a couple having the drawn facial look of a woman who’d had some surgery done in her quest to outrun father time. Their clothes were expensive, but worthless now, and the shoes they wore were not practical by anyone’s standards.
“Howdy, ladies,” John greeted them, a giant smile stretched across his handsome face in an attempt to ease the tension he was sure he’d cause by appearing out of what assuredly seemed like thin air.
One of the women screamed, and all three shrank away from John, who held up his hands, palms out in a gesture of goodwill.
“Easy, ladies, me and my friends are just passing through. Not here to bother anyone,” John cajoled.
For a moment the women just stared at him, with their hands clutched over their chests and their faces painted in fear.
“We don’t want any trouble; we’re just looking for our husbands. They went out last night to look for food,” one woman blurted out.
John’s smile disappeared. “Your husbands take part of a telephone pole when they went out?”
The woman who had spoken nodded her head. “Yeah, so they could get into abandoned houses. Everyone’s starving to death around here.”
“Come on out, boys,” John said.
Barry, Dwight and Jared stepped out onto the road, which caused another episode of panic amongst the women.
John gestured to Dwight. “This man lives here, buried his wife in the backyard a while back. Some men have been coming up here and trying to break into his home. This man prepared for what happened, and therefore he has been making it just fine. Then along came your husbands who think, since they outnumber this man, they can take what’s his.”
The first woman looked frightened but demanded clarification. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I think your husbands came up here several times and tried to kill this man and get into his house. Hell, one night they tried to burn his house down with him in it. Then last night they brought that pole and used it as a battering ram while shooting at his house to kill him, and, well—I’m sorry, but they paid dearly for acting that way. They weren’t just trying to get food. They were trying to kill this man to get his food.”
All three women clapped their mouths with their hands and gasped. One woman began crying as she sank to the ground. The woman in the middle put a hand on her friend’s shoulder, looking horrified.
“What have you done?” cried the first woman.
“Who the fuck goes looking for food at night anyway—fucking shady—did y’all know what they were up to?” John barked in a voice devoid of any empathy for people who turn a blind eye to bad behavior in family members but would be outraged if they fell victim to the same bad behavior by an outsider.
Jared stepped forward. “Listen, ma’am, we did what we had to do to survive. We’ve been doing it since day one, and not once has anyone here taken advantage of another human’s less fortunate position in all this mess. It is very probable that your husbands are lying dead up there at the house because they were trying to take advantage of what they errantly thought was a weaker person. There are twelve very dead men up at the house. I suggest one of two things. If you all have any menfolk left, have them come up here and deal with the dead. If you don’t, then you should probably circle to the rear of the house and avoid the front yard. There’s an open sliding glass door you can access the house from if you come through the backyard. The house is full of food and water. This man”—Jared gestured to Dwight—“did what he had to do. Take what you need and know the four of us would never have done what your men tried doing last night.”
Jared turned and began walking south. The other three men hesitated for only a second and then pivoted and followed Jared. They weren’t concerned for their safety since none of the three women were armed, and they seemed more in shock than anything else at the moment.
“That’s it?” shrilled the first woman.
Jared stopped and drew a deep breath before reeling on the woman. “Do good, make your men do good, and for God’s sake, teach your kids to do good—it’s literally that simple.”
The women stood dumbfounded as the four men continued walking south. After a few seconds, the three women hurried up the driveway, disappearing into Dwight’s heavily vegetated landscape. Less than a minute later, the four men heard a woman’s scream.
“I told ’em to go around back,” Jared muttered, not even bothering to look over his already tired shoulder.
Chapter 19
The men’s packs were twenty pounds heavier than the trip into Woodside, which made for a slower pace. Anytime the foursome stopped and drank, they searched for a water source. When they located one, they topped off all their water containers. Running out of water was a sure way to get into trouble. John still itched from his poison oak episode, but, for the most part, the blisters had either popped or gone down. Dwight had given John a tube of lotion for the rash, and he had administered it liberally, especially in and around his genitalia, which brought him some much-needed relief.
As the men trudged along the side of Portola Road, Jared lamented about what they had been forced to do the evening before and wondered if they could have handled it differently. Could they have deescalated the situation, or would the men have simply gone ahead and done what they were there to do anyway? Jared didn’t have the answer to his question, but knew he was quickly growing tired of all the killing. It seemed like every good act was accompanied by a ferocious act of violence, and this haunted him greatly. Jared wished he could do something good for someone without something bad being part of the equation.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos Page 14
