He silently moved toward the minivan to get a closer look. It was dead silent, and his footsteps through the foliage sounded like explosions of breaking branches.
The van looked like it had been there a while, and there were no signs of life anywhere, save a few birds.
He walked even closer to the van and peered through the window. He saw a blue baby seat strapped in the back. He grabbed the door handle and opened the door.
“Nothing too strange about an empty vehicle parked out in the middle of nowhere,” he said to himself.
Every door was unlocked and the hatch was popped. It looked as though everything had been gutted from the vehicle, except dangling from the rearview mirror, Aaron saw a picture of a family. It was a baby boy and his mom and dad. It was hanging from a chain and dressed up in a plastic frame. The picture was barely two inches by two inches, but big enough for Aaron to see.
Aaron’s mind flashed back to the wallet he’d seen on Mayor Arnie’s cabinet. It was memorable because who carries a wallet these days? The man and the baby in the wallet were the same two in the picture hanging from the rearview mirror.
How could this be? What’s going on? Aaron thought to himself as he continued his investigation. Why would I be sent out after a red herring?
Aaron rose up out of the van and continued his inspection on the outside. The registration plates said FIRST IN FLIGHT across the top and North Carolina across the bottom.
They were traveling north , Aaron thought to himself.
Aaron went back around to the passenger side and opened the glove box. There was a map and insurance policy inside. He opened the insurance policy and read the names of the owners of the vehicle. “Cody and Joyce Pearce.” Aaron compared the policy to the vehicle and it matched. He assumed the picture on the mirror was of Cody, Joyce, and their baby boy.
As Aaron closed the door and turned around, he saw a trail of trash in the overgrown ditch. The trash looked more and more like clothes the closer he got to it. Stooping down in the ditch, he reached down and grabbed a stick. He buried the stick in the piece of cloth and lifted it up. It was a man’s shirt. Aaron followed the trail deeper into the woods and found a lady’s pair of briefs.
Aaron began to expect the worst as he continued to find things in the woods. His fears came to a culmination when he found the bones of two adults and one infant.
Aaron began to talk to himself as he tried to rationalize this new information.
“Arnie has a wallet…the picture of the man on the driver’s license in the wallet looks like the man that owns the minivan…the baby picture in the wallet looks like the baby in the picture in the minivan…If his son forgot his wallet, then why is the minivan on the wrong side of the town? If his son lived in Virginia, why do the plates read North Carolina? This minivan should be broken down on the other side of town if they were headed to Philly. This doesn’t make any sense.”
Aaron turned to walk away but was met by Alex. His presence startled Aaron.
“What are you doing here?” Aaron asked him.
“When you never showed back up, they sent me out to look for you. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I guess, I wasn’t supposed to be back until tomorrow, but look what I found.”
Aaron pointed at the corpses.
Alex had a shovel that he was hiding behind his back. Aaron hadn’t noticed, probably because of the excitement of having found the corpses. When Aaron turned to show Alex the bodies, Alex hit him over the head with it, rendering him unconscious.
“Sorry to have to do that. You seemed like a nice guy, but we have mouths to feed.”
Later that evening, John, Belt, and the others began to smell smoke from the grill.
“Aren’t you worried about attracting other groups?” John asked.
Arnie just shrugged his shoulders and said, “No, we haven’t had a problem yet. The boys are good hunters. They always bring home the bacon.”
John and Belt could sense that something wasn’t measuring up, but they couldn’t put their fingers on it. Everything seemed too copacetic for a town in the middle of nowhere. John had his guard up and was on high alert. Little sleep was to be had that night, but for the time being, they were going to enjoy some meat cooked over the grill.
Arnie stood up and walked outside to the yard, where he saw Alex at the grill. Arnie patted him on the shoulder as he came up behind him and said, “Nice job.”
Arnie turned back towards the house and pulled up a lawn chair next to a fire pit. “You guys going to stand around or are you going to relax a little?” he joked.
The group walked over and grabbed what chairs were left, and some remained standing. Gideon sat on the ground and stared into the fire, wondering how his brother was doing and where his parents were.
“My folks should have been back hours ago,” Gideon said. He had been holding his peace, but all the while, the other three had forgotten about them.
John stood back up. “It’s going to be dark soon and we still have two friends out there that haven’t returned.”
“Here, let me help you—” Arnie started.
“No, you’ve helped enough. We’re going to be heading out now, back to the bus,” John said.
John, Belt, Gideon, and Michael stood up and brought their rifles to the ready.
“Be back later,” John said as they took off towards the bus.
Once they were out of earshot of Arnie and the others, Belt said, “Have either of you seen anybody else that we haven’t met already? Besides the guys at the barricaded road, have you seen any other people in this town?”
John thought a moment. Granted, the town wasn’t that big to begin with, but surely he would have seen somebody, anybody, for that matter.
“No, I haven’t seen a soul. As a matter of fact, I’ve seen fewer people.”
“I’m starting to second-guess your decision to send Aaron out on his own,” Michael said.
“Me too,” John said. “This town is heavily surrounded by woods. There’s no telling what secrets are in them.”
“I’m wondering, what are we going to find when we get there?” Michael asked.
“I hope the three of you realize that we’re not going to find Joshwa and Zamora. If Arnie had really sent people out to find them, why didn’t they come in?”
“Even his people didn’t return to tell us if they had found them or not,” Belt said.
“Agreed,” John added.
Gideon was beginning to feel alone. His brother was sent away and he didn’t know how he was, and his mother and father were seemingly missing.
After a while of walking, they were approaching the bus. All four men drew their rifles and pointed them at the bus door. As they walked closer, John took the lead and carefully walked up the steps into the bus.
“Josh?” John said softly.
There was no answer.
“What do you see?” Gideon impatiently asked.
John carefully peeked up over the first seat and saw that the bus was empty. He looked back at Michael, Gideon, and Belt and told them to stay frosty. He slowly and methodically cleared the bus.
“Nothing,” he said as he noticed the rifle rack had been cleared out. The cabinets caught his attention, as well. They had been tampered with. John opened one of the cabinet doors and everything had been gutted.
Belt and Michael were on point, with their backs to the bus, while Gideon was running up into the bus to join John. John looked at Gideon and said, “We’ve been duped.”
“Duped?” Belt asked.
“The rifle rack is empty; the supplies are gone.”
Michael began to curse.
“I spent most of my adult life situating that bus. They did it,” Michael asserted with confidence.
“I would have to agree with Michael,” Belt said.
“Recommendations?” John asked.
“I say we march ourselves back to that town, demand answers, and take care of business,” Michael said.
/> “I agree, mostly,” John said. “Let’s head back.”
The four of them began their march back to town, but upon arrival, they were met with a ghost town. Arnie, Alex, Sebastian, Ethan, Bailey, all of them gone.
The fire that had been on the grill was only smoke at this point. Even the fire pit was smoldering.
The four of them cleared Arnie’s house and found no one. They headed to the old barn in the backyard and entered it.
John entered first. Seeing meat hooks hanging from the rafters of the barn, he thought nothing of them.
John handed Belt his rifle and climbed up into the rafters to acquire some chains.
“We’re going to use these chains to remove the logs and get out of Dodge,” John said.
“We’re not going anywhere without my family,” Gideon said.
“Your family’s dead,” John said.
Michael put his hand on Gideon’s shoulder in hopes of comforting him, but he just shrugged it off and stepped away from the group.
“If you guys already have it determined that my family’s toast, then I’ll head out on my own to find them.”
“Calm down, son. If you go out there alone, you’ll turn up missing too. We need to stick together,” John said.
“He’s right,” Michael said.
“Look, Michael, you’ve lost your stuff. “I’ve lost my family. It’s not quite the same, is it?”
Gideon left the group, despite all their combined attempts to keep the team together.
John dropped a few chains and the three men hauled them to the bus. It was hard work and cost them a lot of time, but they opened the roadway and continued west. Michael drove while John and Belt watched for movement in the town as they left it behind.
CHAPTER XXV
Weapons Company was driving up Route 149 to Murphysboro with Nathan. All Nathan could think about was finishing off the Southside Raiders. They had brought so much death to their peaceful community. Nearly all of its residents were killed or missing. His greatest pain was for his murdered sister, Katie. Now the prospect of having Denny on the fringe of a breakdown over Heather’s disappearance or, worst-case scenario, death caused great sadness in Nathan’s heart. These things made him all the more resolute to finish off the raiders.
Buchanan was sitting in the passenger seat of his HMMWV with Nathan sitting catty-cornered to the rear of Buchanan. Nathan was leaning forward as they talked along the way. Nathan and Buchanan had to yell when they spoke because the HMMWVs weren’t built for a quiet ride. The engines had a way of drowning out soft talk.
“I appreciate this, sir,” Nathan said.
“Well, as I thought about it, I realized that we shouldn’t have an alliance going down the drain over a bunch of idiots.”
“Somehow they managed to get UN vehicles and US military support vehicles. I don’t think they’ve hit us with combat equipment yet.”
“That’s a good thing. It tells me that support services have been going to their community and getting ambushed. Resistance should only be a few civilians now that they seem to have emptied their main group out.”
“When we were here earlier, men came pouring out of the buildings along the main drag and piled into busses that sat at intersections. I hope you’re right about them being cleared out, but I need to make sure. We still don’t know who was running the show or why they were attacking us.”
“Maybe they’ve burned through their resources, or maybe the town is too dangerous to plunder?” Buchanan asked.
“Hopefully option A. I’d hate to run into a problem bigger than the raiders,” Nathan replied.
Weapons had successfully made the trip to Murphysboro. The convoy of combat vehicles slowed and spread out to avoid a bottleneck-style attack.
Trash and debris could be seen sitting stationary on the road. In other spots, the trash blew across the streets, making them remember the old Western movies where tumbleweed rolled through town.
The convoy came to a stop and the Marines exited the vehicles. The gunners in the turrets did not leave, but stayed and maintained a defensive posture against a possible attack or surprise ambush. Several others were on foot. Urban warfare has proven, throughout history, to be one of the most dangerous and dreaded ways to fight.
Nathan remembered driving through Murphy just a few short years ago and seeing dozens of Black Hawks flying low through the small city. The news reports said that the military and police were conducting training missions and emergency deployments. Nobody could understand why American troops and police were training in American cities. Before, they had trained in mock towns and simulated force-on-force combat, but as time progressed, FOX News had discovered that there was a large-scale training program currently underway. Every police department and military unit was being utilized and FEMA was overseeing the training operation, by order of the president. It wasn’t until the Flip that it was understood why the training op was on such a grand scale.
The Flip didn’t go as planned. When America was taken captive by a tyrannical government, the people resisted, causing widespread rioting. The rioting and mobs only justified the reasoning behind more executive orders until the government’s grip on society was so tight that it suffocated. The military and police couldn’t maintain control of the mobs and weren’t being compensated enough to make it worth the effort. But mostly, the reason it had failed was because America’s military and police were, by and far, more patriotic than tyrannical. A few stuck around, but not enough to make a difference.
Buchanan, Nathan, and the other Marines were stacked against the wall of an old electronics store, making their way to the corner of Route 149 and Fifteenth Street. The intersection was wide.
“This is about where they had all their vehicles staged,” Nathan said. “They came running out of those buildings there and from over there.” Nathan gave directions, pointing with his hands.
Buchanan could tell that there had been minor combat at a minimum. There were locations where moderate grenade-sized explosions had taken out doorways and storefronts. The corners of some of the buildings were knocked out.
Nathan glanced over at one of the old antique shops and saw what was left of a dead man. “Obviously the victim of a grenade kill,” he said.
They were now stacked at the corner of the storefront. Buchanan peeked around the corner and saw a company of UN troops and vehicles, consisting of about thirty vehicles in all. Most of them were armored personnel carriers with mounted light machine guns. Standing apart from the company of APCs were three formations of UN troops with about fifty to seventy-five troops in each formation.
Buchanan backed the line of Marines up and away from their current position. Fearing they had only a brief window of opportunity, Buchanan returned them to their antitank equipment, where he gave them a brief speech.
“Listen up, gents. These jerkies are in way over their heads. Today’s going to be a bad day, for them. They have found themselves on US soil, where we are supreme and have the home-field advantage.”
Buchanan opened up his notepad and called his platoon sergeants in for a quick briefing.
“Edwards, I want you to take a CAAT platoon and double back that way. Come back around to this location, approximately one block from here. Martin, I want you to take another CAAT platoon to this location and set up right here. Me, Nathan, and Quintin will move into this position. If all pans out correctly, they will have no avenue of escape and will not be able to return to their APCs. Whatever happens, do not leave a survivor. We are not taking POWs, and we are not letting them reach their com. TOWs I want you to focus early in on those personnel carriers while heavy guns lay down some fire on everything that lives, breathes, or moves. Do you understand?”
Everybody nodded their heads in agreement, and Buchanan released them to return to their units. The vehicles fired up, and every unit went to their preassigned area of responsibility.
It seemed all too easy as the Marine units arrived almost simultaneously
, opening fire on the United Nations units while they stood in formation.
Buchanan knew that this type of warfare would never have been allowed before the Flip. As far as Buchanan and the others were concerned, the rules of engagement had changed. No longer were they under the Geneva Convention Rules of Engagement, but were now living in a new world, where survival was of the fittest, and these invaders were not a single nation, but a conglomeration of nations.
After the victory over the UN invaders, Nathan was walking amongst the destruction of the Russian-made equipment when he heard radio chatter coming through the frequencies of the radios that had not been destroyed in the attack. He heard a Middle Eastern accent speaking in clear English come on the radio.
“Guys, guys, over here,” Nathan called to Buchanan and the other Marines.
They all ran to where Nathan was, next to a BMP, and he said, “Listen.”
They listened closely.
The radio signal was broken, but the accent was clearly Middle Eastern.
“These guys are amateurs,” Nathan said. “They say way too much on unencrypted radios.”
They continued to listen.
From everything they could put together from the English-speaking Middle Easterner, a shipment of new technology had just been received from the Chinese.
The Chinese had been biding their time since the Flip, waiting to see what was going to become of America before they became more involved. For them, it was a wise move to tarry until they were certain that America was down for the count. Seeing General Muhaimin in the Oval Office was the signal they needed that America had truly been stripped of its democracy.
The transmission may have been intermittent, at best, but it still revealed enough information that the Chinese were making their move, technologically. They were supporting the UN by sending hi-tech gadgets to the shores of America. The speaker did not say what the shipment consisted of or where the shipment was going to land, but everybody assumed it would come in from the Pacific Ocean and rest somewhere on the west coast of America.
“It only makes sense, seeing it’s a straight shot to California from China’s east coast,” Nathan said.
Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1) Page 33
