by Schow, Ryan
They bounced over the country roads, the other vehicle stopping at the house before taking chase.
“Stop flexing your morality and find a place to pull over,” Noah said, looking over his shoulder at the vehicle now closing in on them.
After making the nearest turn, Logan flipped off the lights and slid to a stop alongside the dirt road. Everyone scrambled out. They stood on the road in a firing stance, waiting. The second the chase truck appeared, the four of them opened fire and made hell of the windshield.
The Suburban spun its wheel and went off the road, skidding sideways into the thick trunk of a very old tree. The four of them ran after the SUV, stuck their rifles in through the broken windows and lit up the five soldiers inside.
“Let’s go!” Ryker said.
They jumped back into the Jeep, Logan back at the wheel, and took off. He needed to put as much distance as he could between them and the convoy.
“What did he say to you?” Skylar turned and yelled at Noah.
Obviously tempers were hot. They were all scared and a bit rattled, the adrenalin surging. If the entire SAA came after them, it would only be a matter of time.
“He said this is the front of the convoy,” Noah explained.
“What do they want?” Logan asked.
“President Hu struck a deal with the Mexican President, but then Hu reneged on it and killed everyone he promised not to harm, including his own men.”
“So this is revenge then?” Ryker asked.
“This is an invasion that became personal for the SAA,” Noah said. “At least that’s what the human poopsickle seemed to think.”
“So what next?” Skylar asked.
“They’re coming,” Noah said, his normally powdery voice softer than ever. “Right up through Five Falls.”
“How many of them?” Ryker asked, sitting beside him in back.
“The whole damn army,” Noah said, solemn.
“Oh my God,” Skylar said.
“Where are they headed?” Ryker asked.
“Already told you,” Noah said. “Straight up the five. Right through Five Falls. After that, what does it matter?”
“There’s no way we can hold off the entire army,” Ryker said.
“No shit, Sunshine,” Noah replied.
One eye on the ink black road ahead and the other on the rearview mirror, Logan said, “If we can get the trenches on both ends of the interstate filled back up, and all those Chicom vehicles moved, maybe they can just roll through.”
“How do we stop them?” Skylar said.
“It would be better to just let them through,” Ryker said. “But even if we fill the trenches, the second those vehicles hit soft soil at seventy miles an hour, weighing what they do, there’s a good chance they’re going to tear it all apart and start blowing tires. That’s when they’ll stop. Meaning we’ll have the entire SAA convoy sitting on our front doorstep.”
“After that helicopter smoked the old Sheriff’s office and half the storefronts, the place might as well be dead to the indiscriminate eye,” Logan said. “We just need to hide everyone and do what you said. Let them pass.”
“No way,” Skylar said. “This is our chance to kill them.”
“We’re already screwed and that’s a stupid idea,” Noah said. “This is why we have the bug out location. For this situation.”
“What if we do what we did before?” Skylar asked. “Wage war on them like we did the Chicoms? We can bottle neck them at the trench, move down the lines—”
“You’re high as a kite if you think that’ll work on the entire SAA,” Logan said. “First off, we don’t have enough ammo to wage war on that scale. And even if we did, there’s no time to plan, and we don’t have the kind of hardened warriors you need to pull off something that insane.”
“I kinda feel like we have a few good warriors,” Ryker said.
“Ryker here can’t even watch a good old fashioned broom handling without turning into a girl,” Noah said. “I mean, you boys think you’re tough, but you still ain’t got the mental grit to do what needs doing. Which means you don’t have the stones for this kind of a war.”
“Being able to handle torture like it’s nothing isn’t being battle hardened,” Skylar said.
“The hell it ain’t!” Noah argued. “What do you think motivates a man not to get captured? The fear of torture. And how do we implement this fear? By doing what we push ourselves to do to win a war. And once you see it, it sits in your head forever, letting you know the kind of darkness a heart at war can produce. If you know that, then you know what the enemy can do to you because that shade rests in the soul of every seasoned warrior, whether he wants to admit it or not.”
“What did you do in the Army?” Logan asked.
“I was a Ranger, but them boys weren’t part of the Ed Scisserand admiration squad.”
“Oh, and why’s that?” Logan asked.
“Because when push comes to shove, I’m the guy that’s gonna push things too far, then keep pushing, and pushing, and—”
“We get it,” Ryker said.
“If we can’t get out of town, if these SAA butt plugs decide they want to see what’s what in Five Falls, we’re done. You, me, all of us,” Noah said. “I promise you, it’s a war we can’t win.”
“Well we’re going to try,” Skylar said, her resolve apparent. “Because I’m not going to tuck tail and run. Not from these commie pukes, and not from a bunch of pissed off Mexicans.”
“The town isn’t going to sign off on this,” Ryker said. “I’m with you on it, if that’s what you want, but they ain’t gonna like it.”
“Ryker’s right,” Noah said after a moment’s thought. “I hate to admit he’s right on anything, but on this, he is.”
“Whether they are or they aren’t going to like it,” Logan added, wanting to stand by Skylar, “I’m in, too. Even if this gets us killed. Because it might.”
“Maybe,” Skylar said. “But we’ve all survived worse than this.”
“We have until we haven’t,” Noah said.
“Does that mean you’re in old man?” Skylar asked.
“Ah hell,” Noah said after a long moment, “what the hell else am I going to do?”
Chapter Seventeen
Before he could find Reina, Filiberto found himself among dozens of other Roseburg captives curled up on the cold concrete runway. In the pitch black of night, he was desperate for sleep, if only to stop the pain of being awake.
The cold set in not long after dark, but that was nothing compared to how hard the ground was on his back, sides and hips. Lying there, teeth chattering, bones aching to all hell, he would have given up everything for a bed. Maybe even Reina.
He hated thinking like that, but humans were not meant to sleep on the ground. And as much as he tried adjusting his sleeping position, it was impossible to stop the pain, the discomfort, the sense of mania building in him.
Then someone scooted next to him, their body leaning against his. He didn’t know this person, didn’t know if it was man or woman, but he found he could get somewhat comfortable. Other people scooted together, too.
No one cared about personal space anymore.
A sort of human puppy pile eventually formed and before long he was able to settle in to sleep. He never got warm, though. In fact, the cold was worse just before dawn and everyone was shivering, unable to share their warmth as much as they were able to share their bodies for comfort.
When the sun finally broke over the horizon, spreading heat over them all, it was the relief they’d been wanting and needing for hours. The sounds of Chicom clapping, shouting, and screaming roused them all.
Huge buckets of slop were suddenly being dragged out into the runway. Everyone scurried to their feet, went after the “food.” When he was pulled into the flock of bodies, he quickly learned this was to be their only meal for the day, and that there was not enough for everyone. In other words, he needed to fight for his food.
; He managed to get to one of the troughs before it was empty. Bent over the metal rim, not sure what he was eating, but knowing it was once food, he shoved as much of the goop in his mouth as he could before hands pulled him off and flung him out of the way.
With food all over his face and hands encrusted with the slop, he stood there, belly half full, wondering what was next. That’s when he saw people lining up for the port-o-potty. He got in line, his stomach starting to make odd, uncomfortable sounds. He waited for nearly half an hour to get into the bathroom, his stomach cramping hard.
“Your system will adjust,” the woman in front of him said when she saw his obvious discomfort. “But it’s bad at first.”
“What is?” he asked.
“Feeling like you’re going to crap yourself.”
They’d passed several smeary remains on the concrete, covering their noses as they moved past the vicinity. He told himself he wouldn’t be one of those people who didn’t make it. The consequences alone were horrendous. To be there, held captive and made to sleep on freezing cold concrete by night, and hot blacktop by day? That was bad enough. To do so with dried runs of crap in your pants, that had to be bad. Really bad. He wondered what kinds of infections one could get from such an embarrassing calamity.
By that time, he reached the bathroom.
When he entered the bluish port-o-potty structure, the smell hit him like a gut punch. He gagged, turning away from the vicious smell. Eyes watering, trying to hold down his meal as he fought to get his pants down, he felt his stomach lurching and bucking.
He dry heaved twice, but managed to get his pants down. When he looked inside the extra full toilet, he saw the lake of steamy mud and urine was only a foot and a half away. He’d never seen something so full before! No wonder it smelled so bad!
One big breath of that was all it took.
His belly belched up a horrendous rush of half-digested food, the mess splashing all over the top of poo lake and the flies hanging out there. All the slop he just ate was now in the slop half the town ate yesterday and dumped out today. He was still throwing up when a violent sensation started shoving through him at the other end. He turned around, got his bum over the hole in time to blow a tremendous amount of ass.
He was a grown man and hadn’t cried in decades. He cried once when he got married and saw Reina in her wedding dress for the first time, and once when Felicity was born, she was that beautiful. Now he wanted to cry for a third time. Or scream.
The nauseous feeling hit him again and he turned and spun back around, belching out more food and bile.
Someone was now banging on the door, yelling for him to hurry up.
Eyes watering, snot dripping out of his nose, his body in total revolt, he finally emptied out. But when he was done, he looked for the toilet paper and found none.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
The banging continued, and the screaming just got louder. Panicked, he searched for something to wipe with. When he realized they were not blessed with such modern comforts, he slipped off his shoe and sock, wiped his ass with the sock and thought about dropping it in the poop soup.
But what about tomorrow? The next day?
Instead of discarding the dirty sock, he held his breath, put it back on and slipped his foot back into his shoe. This was officially rock bottom.
Outside the banging stopped. He finally opened the door to a woman crouched over and crying. “It’s all yours,” he said.
She straightened out and slapped him so hard he stumbled sideways.
“I JUST SOILED MYSELF!” she howled.
He merely stared at her, holding his face as she hobbled into the hot zone. Wandering back out into the masses, searching for Reina, he tried ignoring the wet, sloppy feeling in his shoe, his burning cheek, or how empty his stomach had become. That’s when he heard gunshots.
Everyone ducked down.
When the gunfire subsided, people slowly got back up and looked around. No one really knew what was happening.
“Who was shot?” he asked the man next to him. The guy shrugged his shoulders. Filiberto asked another person. When this stranger told him the Chicoms had to kill enough people to match the diminishing food supply, and that they needed to make examples of them, Filiberto said, “Is this a detention facility or a death camp?”
“I think it’s one until it’s the other,” a nearby woman chimed in.
After half a day, he found Reina. His heart soared as he pushed swiftly through the crowds to meet her. Her eyes found his seconds later. They shot wide open and it looked like she was going to cry upon seeing him. They came together in a fierce hug that lasted forever. She was shivering, crying, speaking so fast with apologies, fears, and the ramblings of a woman broken. He wiped her tears, then kissed her. It was both the worst day and the best day of his life.
“I’m going to get us out of here,” he said, looking around, making sure he wasn’t heard.
“How?” she asked in disbelief.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But I’ll find a way.”
“Where’s Felicity?”
“I sent her to Five Falls, to see Clay,” he said.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because he might help us,” Filiberto said. “You saw the man. He was a war hero, and he took care of our little girl. Maybe he’ll help her again. Maybe he’ll help us.”
A steady stream of gunfire erupted, and like before they dropped to the ground, clapped their hands over their ears, and prayed they didn’t get hit. In the distance, just outside the fences, came the crashing sounds of metal smashing into metal, and then a wicked explosion.
What they didn’t see, but rather heard, were two very pissed off Roseburg residents in a pickup truck welded up with backyard armor and gas can bombs strapped down in the bed. If they could have seen those two idiots, if they would have known what was going on, Filiberto and Reina would have seen a Mad Max looking vehicular abomination catching top speed on NW Stewart Pkwy, just outside the detainment facility. They then would have seen said vehicle jumping the curb right into the stock of Chicom vans and vehicles. Once the pickup truck took out several of the vans, if they had that bird’s eye view, they would have seen a massive explosion as the redneck bombs went off. All this on the Chicom controlled dirt lot that once held the Honda dealership’s overflow inventory.
The gunfire everyone heard inside the fences was not the boys getting shot to hell. Not yet anyway. It was the Chicoms shooting at the incoming truck. The two idiots were not in the truck by then. They’d jumped out wearing reinforced body suits, along with kneepads and helmets. When they safely skidded to a stop, they stood and pulled their automatic rifles out of their padded packs and started shooting at the Chicoms.
They ran out of ammo, but that’s when the two idiots started lobbing homemade grenades. Only half of them detonated, but the ones that exploded did the work of two grenades. The two idiots then ran, sending the Chicoms into fits of frenzy.
What the prisoners inside the chain link walls didn’t know was that a number of vehicles were damaged in the ploy to take out the Chicom reserves, and a dozen soldiers were killed. The initial bomb, and subsequent grenades was enough to spur a massive Chicom retaliation.
They were going hunting.
But they also decided to put up nearby roadblocks, each of them armed outfits with binoculars and plenty of weaponry on hand. No more trucks would be used as bombs if the Chicoms had it their way.
One of the prisoners straddled the shoulders of another, getting up high enough to see what was going on. To the others, he said, “Someone destroyed the Chicom auto yard!”
Filiberto looked at Reina, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“What does that mean?” Reina asked, her expression wrought with fear, with cautious optimism, with a hundred unasked questions.
“It means Roseburg isn’t taking this lying down,” he said.
Seeing this small victory by one of their own embold
ened the prisoners, especially Filiberto. He did not say as much to Reina as he was working to keep the satisfied smile off his face. But it was there: the hope. They both felt it.
But if Filiberto and Reina knew what was going on in the Department of Transportation, they would never have embraced such optimism, for there would be no reason to feel an ounce of hope or resurgence.
Inside the Department of Transportation—what had become Chicom headquarters, Roseburg—Na Huang asked the field officer in charge of the facility if he should call in reinforcements.
“And embarrass ourselves with such a request?” the man who wished to be called The Curator asked with disdain. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll handle this on our own.”
“What about the loss of our men?” Huang asked. “That has to mean something.”
“Reinforcements will be arriving in three days,” the Curator said. “I think we can handle things until then.”
Huang looked at his CO, the Curator, and he knew the man’s pride was damaged. The Chinese culture demanded he run a light staff rather than suffer the embarrassment of loss.
Just as Huang was about to leave, the Curator said to him, “If anyone even sneezes in the wrong direction, you make an example out of them.”
“How so?” Huang asked.
Turning all his frustration and rage of the defeat upon Na Huang, he made a fist, clenched his jaw, then said, “They must be so horrified, and so frightened of retaliation, that they will quiver in terror at the mere thought of disobeying orders! That’s your job. DO YOUR JOB!”
“Yes, sir.”
Outside, unbeknownst to all of this, Reina held tight to Filiberto, terrified of being separated from him again.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you,” she said.
He merely smiled, bothered that it took something of this magnitude for her to finally listen to him, and trust his instincts. Still, speaking to this would only serve to weaken them when what they needed most was strength and unity.
He was going to get them out of there. He had to.
