“Name’s Stryker.”
“That a first or last name?”
“It’s the only name.” She looked a bit puzzled. She was an attractive woman, with dark hair that was as smooth and shiny as an otter’s pelt, and even features.
“He’s looking for solar panels,” Tom explained.
“I have eight of them, still in boxes, in my van.” She nodded toward the parking lot.
“What do you want for them?” Stryker asked. He really needed twice that number, but had to start somewhere.
“What you got?”
“I have gold, a ham radio, and two notebooks.”
“How much gold you have?”
“How much do you want?”
“Two ounces.”
“Done.” He extended his hand and they shook. Tom followed them to the van and she opened the rear doors.
“I’ll give you a hand loading them,” Tom said. The two men made four journeys between the van and the Jeep before Tom asked, “You need anything else?”
“I dunno. I guess I’ll pay her and look around.”
“Okay, see you later.” Tom left to greet another shopper. Stryker paid the woman, and then walked from table to table looking at the merchandise. He was leaving when he spotted a giant of man, even larger than he was, screaming at the woman who sold him the panels.
“I want those panels!” he yelled again, shaking a fist at the woman. She backed up, looking fearful.
“I already sold them.”
“You said you’d save them for me.”
“I said no such thing. You weren’t willing to pay what I wanted, so I sold them to somebody else.” The woman was beginning to look really frightened. The man started walking around the table to close on her.
“I bought the panels,” Stryker said as he approached. The man turned around and stared at him with an angry expression. He had close to three inches and fifty pounds on Stryker.
Assess and evaluate.
The man was large, but fat around the middle. He was wearing coveralls and a baseball hat, and was flexing his meaty fists. He wore a pistol in an old-fashioned Western holster with a strap on the top. He would never clear the holster before Stryker cleared and fired his XD, but he would keep a wary eye for any sign the man intended to escalate the conflict. He took an angry step toward Stryker, then stopped and glared at him.
“You falling in love with me? You can’t seem to stop staring. Are you transfixed by my good looks?” The man looked confused for a moment, then angrier. Apparently, it took him some time to process what he heard.
“I want those panels,” the large man growled.
“Those panels are just like a woman. Let’s call her Suzy. Suzy is leaving the dance with me. She is sitting next to me on the way home. So, that means you’re leaving the prom alone. You understand that or do I have to slow down and say it again?”
“What? You some sort of smart ass?”
“Smarter then you, although that really isn’t saying much. I’ve seen dishrags smarter than you. Hell, one-celled organisms look like Nobel Prize winners next to you. You need me to repeat that?”
The man took one stride towards Stryker and launched a huge roundhouse that seemed to be coming at him like a freight train, until Stryker batted his arm down, grabbed it, and spun the man so he faced away. He deliver two kidney punches, really world class in his book, and the man stumbled and stepped away. Stryker closed on him quickly, spun him around, kneed him in the balls, then head-butted his nose and heard a satisfying crunching sound. The man stumbled away again but Stryker delivered a half-knuckled blow to the man’s throat, hard enough to temporarily close the larynx, but not the killing blow he could have used. Still the man would not go down, and again charged him swinging wildly. Stryker used his momentum against him, and delivered a viscous blow to the side of his head with an elbow.
This time the man staggered away with one hand held up as a sign of surrender. But, he was wearing a handgun and Stryker couldn’t take any chances. He closed on him again and delivered two solid shots to his head with the sides of his fists and one more to the throat. This time, the man went down and stayed there. Stryker reached down and removed his pistol as Tom came running toward the scene, AR at the low ready.
“What happened here?” he asked the woman.
“The big guy on the ground attacked Stryker. He wanted the panels.” Stryker handed the pistol to Tom and started to leave.
“Wait,” the woman said as she came out from behind the table to stand with the two men. “Thank you so much. Can I ask you what you did for a living?”
“I was a garbage man.”
“A garbage man?”
“Yeah. It was nice returning to my former occupation today. That was garbage,” he said, pointing to the unconscious man. “I took it out.” She shook her head slowly and smiled.
“Thanks again. He was going to start something with me.”
“I know. I guess I’ll see you both next week.” They all nodded at each other and Stryker went to his Jeep and left town.
As Stryker drove back to the ranch, he remembered how his grandpa added on rules of fighting as he got older. The third rule was to never punch a man in the face with a fist. He explained the rule as they were watching a boxing match and the fighter on the defensive never tried to parry a blow. Rather, he pulled his chin to his chest, turtle like, and took the blow on the crown of the head. “The bones in the front of your skull are really thick,” he explained. “The bones in your hand are really small, thin, and long. No way to win that one.”
Years later, Gramps added a new rule. “Once you have a man backing up, don’t give him time to recover; stay after him until you take him down.” Stryker wondered why the rules were added when they were, and again considered the man who had raised him. A kinder, gentler man he never knew; but there was also a warrior side to his character that was always present, like a spark that could, at any time, explode into a raging fire.
He drove through the gate and saw a beat-up F-150 parked beside his house. The bed was covered with a tarp. He jammed on the brakes, grabbed his M-4, and jumped out of his Jeep. He looked through the scope and saw a man sitting on the rocking chair of his house. Something about the man tickled his memory. He looked again. Then, he moved forward, gun up, and walked toward his house.
He was furious at the intrusion, at the idea that anybody thought they could occupy his house and not face the consequences. As he grew near, the man raised a beer bottle and shouted, “About time you got home, Stryker. Been waiting for hours.” He looked more closely at the man, noted the ponytail and bearded face, and then a glimmer of recognition passed through his brain.
“Sergeant Keynes?”
“The one and only.” Stryker lowered the weapon and joined him on the porch
“You’re alive!”
“Last time I checked.”
“How the hell did you find me?”
“Went to Pendleton and got your separation address. I figured that the only things that were going to live through the plague was you, me, and cockroaches.” He took a deep pull from the beer bottle, burped, and then added, “you don’t seem happy to see me.”
“More shocked than anything.” He walked over to where the small man sat perched on a chair, plucked him out of it, and embraced him in a fierce hug, then noted that he seemed even smaller and much more frail then that last time they were together. He set the sergeant down and looked at him with a question mark in his eyes.
Keynes looked away briefly, took a breath, and said, “Lung cancer. Diagnosed over two years ago. I got through the chemo before everything went to crap, so who knows.”
“Sorry.”
“Not a problem. I just have one last thing I have to do before I go.”
“What’s that?”
“My granddaughter called me from Baton Rouge last week. I have no idea how the call came through. I left my cell phone on the charger. I don’t know why, after all this time, bu
t yesterday it rang. It was my granddaughter and she was calling to get help.”
“Tell me more.”
“In a second. Did you lose your wife and kids?”
“Yes. You?”
Sarge nodded his head. “They all died. I buried my daughter and son-in-law on the way here. They lived in Yuma, Arizona. I don’t know why I bothered to stop. My daughter and I had a falling out a few years ago. We didn’t even see each other for two years before the disaster.” Sarge wore a grim expression as he said it, as if he was still trying to remember what went wrong between him and his daughter.
“Where were you living when the plague hit?”
“On a small ranch outside of Fallbrook, California.” Stryker wondered how they lost touch of each other when Sarge had only been an hour away from San Diego, but decided to get back on point.
“Tell me what’s going on with your granddaughter.”
“Her name is Erin and she and her sister, Haley, were students at LSU. Apparently, they had some campus police and ROTC units that protected the campus. So there were a few survivors of the plague. They didn’t let anyone near the place. I guess the guards got the plague, and it was overrun a few days ago by some gang. They killed all the male students and captured the females. They’re selling the females to the local men and Erin was sold, but escaped, found a working cell phone, and called me from a farmhouse northwest of the city, where she’s hiding. I guess some satellite somewhere hiccupped and the call came through. I tried to call back after we got cut off, but no luck.
“Baton Rouge, right?”
“Yes. And you happen to be right on my route.”
“How many are there?”
“I didn’t have time to ask.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“You bet.”
Stryker thought it over for a minute, then said, “‘honor, perseverance, spirit, and heart. Never shall I forget the principles I accepted to become Force Recon.’ You remember that?”
“Of course.”
“So you have my answer.”
“I guess we can leave in the morning. If I don’t get some sleep, I’ll be worthless tomorrow.”
“Of course. We need to eat first and get some sleep. We can be there a little after noon tomorrow with an early start.” Stryker paused for a moment, then said, “I hope you have some goodies in that truck.”
“You do remember who you’re talking to?” Keynes replied. “Half of Camp Pendleton’s good stuff is in the back of the truck.”
The men walked inside and Stryker prepared another meal from cans. Halfway through dinner and a few beers, Keynes was sleeping in his chair. Stryker nudged him awake and pointed to the spare bedroom. Sarge got up with a groan and went to bed. Stryker finished his meal, washed it down with a third beer, and went to bed as well.
The following morning, they started to Baton Rouge before sunup. They ate MREs that Keynes brought, Stryker topped off the saddle tanks on the F-150, and they poured cups of road coffee before leaving. Stryker eyed the weapons in the bed of the truck. Sarge had loaded two M-40 snipers rifles, four AT-4 anti-tank launchers, two M4A1s, three PRC 155 radios, and a case of M33 hand grenades. Ammo cans, suppressors, NVGs with spare batteries, binoculars, cans of spare fuel, and cases of water filled the bed as well.
As they pulled out of his driveway, Stryker said, “Is all that stuff back there loaded?”
“Wouldn’t do us much good if it wasn’t.”
“Why the AT-4s?”
“They’re more reliable than the new ones and they never misfire.” Stryker just shrugged.
They rode in a comfortable silence, moving east by southeast on secondary roads until they reached Interstate 10. They drove for another two hours, occasionally seeing cars and trucks moving along the road. Stryker figured they were people going to see if loved ones were still alive. They passed an intersection that had an old gas station on one corner and a vacant lot on the other. Hot air puffed off the land and created a dusty heat shimmer. Then they passed south of Austin and stopped at a truck stop to change drivers.
Sarge kicked the F-150 up to 100 miles an hour and the miles flew by. South of Houston, he slowed for an old construction zone where the highway narrowed to one lane. The signs and barricades were still there, a reminder of another time. Once they crossed Burnett Bay, they again traded, and Stryker took the wheel. They stopped at a rest stop. Sarge pulled a road map out of the glove compartment and studied the map with narrowed eyes, stabbing it with a finger and grunting with satisfaction.
“Checking the route?”
“Yeah, we need to turn off before we hit the city and take service streets to the farm she’s at.”
“And you’re double checking, right?”
“Fourth time, but I’m not counting.” He looked up and said, “Let’s go.” Stryker chuckled and returned his attention to the road as they pulled away. He noted the earth has turned a darker, richer color and the mesquite and cedar were replaced by colorful azaleas that were planted in the median between the roads. Dogwood and massive oak trees dotted the landscape, and the air seemed more humid and heavy. They passed an abandoned refinery and oilrigs dotted the terrain. A pipeline ran parallel to the highway for several miles, and then turned south.
They crossed the Mississippi, immediately turned north, and rode for another hour on secondary roads before Sarge announced, “We’re almost there. Turn left on the next gravel road.” Stryker saw a lonely farmhouse on a hill in the distance. It was white; as they approached, he noted two outbuildings and an old tractor sitting on flat tires parked in front of the barn. Stryker stopped around fifty feet from the house. Both men got out and grabbed an M-4 from the truck bed.
“Cover me,” Sarge said, then walked toward the house with the carbine at the low ready. Stryker saw a curtain move slightly on a front window and immediately raised his weapon and brought the scope to his eye. The front door exploded open and a young lady burst through it screaming, “Grandpa” while she ran toward Sarge. They collided and exchanged fierce hugs.
When Sarge turned toward Stryker, his face was glistening with tears. Stryker kept his distance and let them finish their reunion. She asked a question, and when Sarge answered, she put her hands over her face and wailed in anguish. A minute or two went by. Sarge whispered to her and she straightened up, wiped her eyes, and adopted a resigned expression. When Sarge gestured for him to come over, he shouldered his weapon and stopped a few feet short of where they stood.
“This is Erin,” Sarge said.
“Name’s Stryker. Pleased to meet you.”
“Same here,” she replied, her upper lip still quivering. Stryker examined the girl with a frank and open stare. She was unusually tall and slender, with auburn hair tied in a ponytail and striking green eyes that glowed with intelligence. She was wearing shorts and a tank top and her arms were muscled. Her features were fine and her legs were long and well defined. She returned his stare with one of her own. Stryker could see absolutely no resemblance to Sarge.
“Are you sure my folks are dead?” she asked her grandfather.
“I buried them.” Another long pause went by, she looked away and then back. “How’s your sister?” Sarge asked, the concern clear in his voice.
“She was fine when I left. We are going to get her, right?” Now the concern was in her voice.
“Bet your ass we are,” Sarge replied. “Let’s go inside.”
“I’ll unload the truck,” Stryker offered.
“We’ll help,” Erin said.
After three trips with them loaded down like Sherpas, all their gear lay stacked neatly in the living room. Stryker got MREs and bottled water. The sat at the dining room table with their carbines against the wall behind them. Sarge said, “Give us a brief. We don’t need much until the time of the attack. From that point on, I want every detail.”
“Understood.” She stopped to collect her thoughts and said, “When everybody started dying, one of the men in the
dorm who was studying medicine called his father who was a doctor. He said we should seal off the dorm by locking the doors and taping duct tape around the cracks and windows. We were next to the cafeteria, so we moved canned and dry food into our rooms. We didn’t leave the dorm for the first year. The water and power both came from the campus utility facilities, so we were good to go.
“After a year, we lost power but still had water, and everyone who was going to die had died. We knew that, sooner or later, the virus would die and it would be safe. Problem was we didn’t know how long that period would be, so we stayed put. We started going out to find more food in the cafeteria and didn’t see anyone, so we got a little bolder and left the building. That’s when we realized we were being protected by the ROTC guys and the campus police. They took turns guarding the main gate and would only talk to us from a distance so we couldn’t catch the plague if they did. About six months later, they were all dead. Two of them died at the gate.”
Stryker looked at Sarge and they both wondered how the guards lasted that long, but remained silent. Erin continued the story. “When the food from the cafeteria ran out, we started raiding other food facilities on the campus. We heard gunfire at night, but always off in the distance. We figured we’d be fine so long as we stayed on campus.”
“So you didn’t touch any bodies?” Stryker asked.
“There weren’t any in our wing of the dorm. It was spring break and there were only seven of us there. Five girls and two boys.”
“Did you try to find weapons?”
“Of course, but it’s a college campus. Weapons were banned. They only ones we could get our hands on belonged to the dead guards and nobody wanted to take a chance on touching anything on them.” She paused, thinking for a moment. “I think Mike and Ed were going off campus to raid stuff. They denied it, but I think they were going to pharmacies to get drugs. Whatever happened, the gang followed them back to the dorm and waited until everyone was asleep. All I can tell you is that I woke up with a gun to my forehead.”
Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Page 5
