Savage Rising

by C. Hoyt Caldwell

  “I’ve come to give you a ride to the station.”

  He held up his keys. “Got a car, bitch.”

  Nola took a deep breath and then, quick as a hiccup, snatched the keys from Randle’s hand. “You’re gonna wanna ease up on that attitude of yours, Deputy. I got a low tolerance for racists and misogynists, and you’re about to find out just how low.”

  He clumsily tried to snatch his keys back from her, but she easily pulled them away in time. “Goddamn it! I am the law…”

  His cellphone rang, something that happened so infrequently that it startled him. He snatched it from his shirt pocket and answered. “Yeah…Otis, what’s…You’re what?” He placed his finger in his exposed ear. “No, don’t…where?” In a rage, he quickly placed the phone over his chest and screamed, “Everybody shut the fuck up! Police business!”

  The noise in the bar went from a drunken free-for-all to a clattering murmur.

  The phone back to his ear, Randle said, “Where are you, Otis?” Several seconds passed as he repeatedly tried to interrupt Otis. “Goddamn it, Otis, where are you? What church?” A few more seconds of silence from Randle as he listened to Otis’s drunken rant. Finally, he said, “Listen, Otis. Sit tight. I’ll be there in five minutes. Just don’t do anything stupid.” He hung up the phone and turned to Nola. “Give me my keys.”

  “You’re drunk, Deputy.”

  “I don’t give a shit. Just give me my keys.” He lurched for them, but she stepped out of reach. “I’ve got business to tend to.”

  “Fine,” she said, “I’ll drive you.”

  “This is personal business.”

  “Just because it’s personal business doesn’t make you any less drunk.”

  “Fuck!”

  “You can stand there and get frustrated with me, or you can let me drive you to take care of your personal business. It’s your call.”

  He grumbled to himself as he headed for the exit. “Fine.”

  As she followed Randle out, she heard Son say, “How do you like that? She didn’t even have to throw a punch this time. Everyone raise a glass to our queen!”

  Chapter 66

  Spivey was getting old. His bones hurt from sitting in a car most of the day. When the purple-and-orange hue of dusk fanned out across the sky, he called Dani and suggested that they stop at the next roadside eatery and get a bite. His ego didn’t allow him to tell her why. He made up some bullshit about wanting to chat about the box Mac had left for him. He did want to discuss it, but not more than he wanted to get out of the car. She agreed and pulled her cruiser in behind him at the Fuel and Feed Diner.

  The burgers were bad and the water tasted like it had been ladled out of a rusty bucket. The fries were the only thing on their plates that didn’t trigger a gag reflex. They were given special privileges because of Dani’s badge and the dog was allowed to eat with them at the table. What the humans did not consume, he was happy to chow down.

  “The box is labeled ‘The Future,’ ” Dani said, more thinking out loud than trying to engage Spivey in conversation.

  “It is labeled ‘The Future,’ ” Spivey confirmed.

  “It’s full of college catalogs.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And that tells us what? That Mac was thinking about going to college?”

  “I doubt it. She has a doctorate in psychology and a masters in cybersecurity.”

  “What?”

  “She’s what the kids call a brainiac.”

  “Kids from the eighties maybe.” Dani popped a French fry into her mouth. “She doesn’t sound like no undercover field agent I ever heard of.”

  “She’s not. She liked getting her hands dirty. As far as ORO admins are concerned, we were way off-book.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Strictly speaking, we’re digital ops. We get jobs in corporate security, get access to their secure servers, and cull data until we get enough red flags to engage Homeland Security.”

  “You’re a digital op?”

  “That so hard to believe?”

  “You don’t strike me as…”

  “A computer geek? I’m not, but I’ve got a shitload of phony credentials that say otherwise, and I know enough to make it through conversations without looking any different than most incompetent pricks in management positions. Essentially, I’m the muscle on the team.”

  “The muscle?”

  “Let’s just say I have clandestine experience most digital operatives don’t have.”

  “I don’t understand what Mac was doing in Titus Grove cozying up to the Pikes…”

  “We went off-book. NGI plays dirty, but they play smart. We worked them for two years and had nothing to show for it. Would have pulled the plug on the whole operation if not for Nolen calling me into his office to tell me to arrange to make payments to a consultant named Luna Conway. The payments were to be taken out of the security team’s budget and marked as beta-testing funds for a new security protocol for remote employees.”

  “And that was strange because…?”

  “Nolen doesn’t get involved in that kind of low-level bullshit. It wasn’t a red flag, but we could hear it flapping in the wind.”

  “It still doesn’t explain what Mac was doing in Titus Grove.”

  “We needed boots on the ground. I’d become too high-profile at NGI to make it work. Mac’s cover was just a desk jockey. It made sense to send her. ORO admin didn’t approve. They like to stick to the digital domain, but they didn’t stop us, either. So we put together a makeshift plan. She’d find out what Luna Conway was up to and get out.”

  “It doesn’t sound to me like she stuck to your plan.”

  “She didn’t. She fell in love instead. Operation went to shit as soon as it started. Mac went deep cover, on her own.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning she cut off communications with me in order to protect her identity. She went rogue on our rogue operation.”

  “And?”

  “And here we are.”

  Before Dani could ask another question, her phone rang. “Deputy Savage…Fuck…Where?” She grimaced as Randle filled her in on what was happening with Otis. “Hold tight. I’m on my way…Twenty minutes.”

  “Trouble?” Spivey asked when she hung up the phone.

  “Nothing but,” Dani replied as she scooted out of the booth.

  Chapter 67

  “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Harley paced in front of his men, all of them seated in flimsy metal folding chairs in a building as big as a hangar on the Gray Rise compound. Their master general let the reverberation from the echo of his last statement bounce around before he followed it with a quote from Thomas Jefferson. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” The echo danced. “Jefferson was only partially right. He forgot to mention that real change only comes when the blood of the innocent is spilled.” Echo. “The mark of a true patriot is his willingness to slaughter the unthinking civilians who allow tyranny to rule because they’ve grown accustomed to the comfort that comes with being weak and cowardly.”

  He grabbed a college catalog off of a nearby card table and held it up. “This is our target, gentlemen. This college, this disgusting experiment in liberalism and diversity, this is where the war will be begun. This is where the innocent will die, so we can expose the tyranny they embrace.” He tossed the catalog to Oliver. “There are maps of the campus inside. Get with your squads. Your commanding officers will fill you in on your role in the coming attack and run you through drills to make sure nothing is left to chance. We will use a protest by a group of pathetic women who are against our God-given right to carry our firearms out in the open as our cover. There are no victims to be had, gentlemen, only enemies to be taken out. Do you understand?”

  In unison. “Yes, Master General, sir!”

  “Who are we?”

  “Gray
Rise!”

  “Who are we?”

  “Gray Rise!”

  “What do we bring?”

  “Chaos!”

  Chapter 68

  A crowd had formed. The Methodist church parking lot was full of adult Bible-study folks, youth ministry council members, and the recipients of phone calls from the aforementioned. By the time Dani parked her cruiser across the street, close to fifty people had formed a circle around the scene.

  And that scene was a drunk Otis laboring to keep his footing as he paced in front of a smiling Rucker. The bottle of whiskey with just a whisper of auburn-colored alcohol left in it was in his left hand, freeing his right hand to punctuate his slurred outrage with exaggerated gestures.

  Dani pushed her way through the crowd and spotted Randle working to keep up with Otis’s staggering steps and shield Rucker from a sudden attack.

  Nola did her best to push the crowd back without setting off a firestorm. Racial slurs and unkind comments about her gender flew fairly easily from the lips of the crowd of churchgoers.

  “You done it,” Otis shouted more than once. “It was you that done it to her!”

  Rucker saw an opening to campaign for Otis’s job. “This is your sheriff, ladies and gentlemen! The man you voted to keep law and order in this town! Is this how the law is kept in Baptist Flats?”

  Randle turned to Rucker. “Shut the fuck up and get out of here! Now!”

  “Me? Leave? I’ve come to worship the Lord Christ with these good Methodist folks, and I’m the one that should leave?”

  “You gunned her down!” Otis tapped his right hip. Dani recognized the gesture. It was something Otis did when he was highly agitated. It was usually followed by him doing something really stupid. She’d only seen it two or three times herself, but her aunt Jeannie used to talk about it all the time. It suddenly occurred to Dani that Otis probably had a pistol in his back pocket. She let out a loud, steady whistle. All eyes turned to her.

  “This crowd will disperse,” she said. “It will disperse now, in an orderly fashion and without incident. Am I understood?”

  They chatter abated, but no one moved.

  “Go back to what you were doing before all this started. This is a police matter. We will handle it. That’s what y’all pay us to do. Let us do our job.”

  A few people broke away from the crowd and started to wander off.

  Rucker sensed he was missing an opportunity to demonstrate his authority, so he did a half turn in Dani’s direction and held out his arm as if he were anointing her orders. “The good lady deputy is correct, folks. This is best handled by the police. I can assure you they will have my complete cooperation, and I will make sure Sheriff Royal is dealt with in a manner befitting the respect and honor the badge he wears deserves.”

  The remaining crowd broke away, and Rucker commended them on their civic-mindedness, and their God-loving, God-fearing neighborly natures.

  Under his breath, he said to Dani, “Taking this town over’s gonna be easier than I thought, little deputy. Your uncle’s drinking himself out of a job. And all these folks just saw a woman do his sheriffin’. May be old-fashioned thinking, but that kind of development weighs on the hearts and minds of good Christian voters. The tail just wagged the dog, Deputy Savage. Thank you for that.”

  She snarled, “I’d advise you to keep your mouth shut, Rucker. I got a gun, and I’m running low on willpower. That ain’t a good combination for you.”

  He grinned and said in a voice louder than required, “Little deputy, I am heartbroken about Miss Laura, and I feel no ill will to your grief-stricken uncle. I don’t wish to press any charges…”

  Rucker stopped mid-sentence as a boot to the back of his knee sent him to the ground awkwardly. Randle swiftly wrenched the disgraced former lawman’s hands behind his back and slapped a pair of handcuffs on him. He had never moved so quickly and so effortlessly in his life.

  Dani was at first confused by what she was seeing, but quickly gathered her wits. “Randle…Randle…What are you doing?”

  “This fucker shot Laura!”

  “He shot her!” Otis said, lumbering forward, only to be stopped by Nola.

  “Easy there, Sheriff,” Nola said.

  “Uncuff him,” Dani said, scanning the vanishing crowd to see if they were headed back at the sight of Rucker lying facedown in the gravel.

  “He shot…”

  “We don’t know that,” Dani said. “We got no witnesses. No evidence. No cause.”

  “Let me up,” Rucker said as Randle pressed his foot between the prone man’s shoulder blades.

  “He’s got motive,” Randle said.

  “I got no such thing,” Rucker replied.

  “Uncuff him,” Dani demanded as Nola led Otis away.

  Randle grimaced. “Fine. But I’m gonna see this fucker pay for what he done.”

  Dani looked at the now-panting Rucker and said, “If he done it, we’ll all see him pay.”

  Chapter 69

  While Dani herded cats in the Methodist church parking lot, Spivey stood outside The Rat’s Tail Gentlemen’s Club anxiously rubbing a half dollar with his forefinger and thumb as he waited for his contacts to arrive. He’d decided that he needed to take measures that were outside the legal lines, and thanks to Dani, he knew the two crackers who could help him level such measures.

  The closeout kings pulled up in Step’s custom truck and exited the vehicle, Kenny in his normally jovial mood and Step with his shitty disposition firmly in place.

  “You two sure this is the guy?”

  Step spoke with his Porter 100 cigarette dangling from his mouth. “You wanted low man on the Pike totem pole. You don’t get no lower than Woodrow Pike.”

  “Step’s right about that,” Kenny said. “Woodrow don’t even make the Christmas card in his own immediate.”

  “What the fuck’s an immediate?” Spivey asked.

  “Family. Immediate family. It was a joke. Mostly. I ain’t never got a Christmas card from a Pike. So I can’t say altogether if it’s true.”

  Spivey cocked an eyebrow and looked at Step. “Is he serious?”

  Step nodded and headed for the front door of the strip club. “He is, but don’t let that concern you. He’s as lethal as they come when he needs to be.”

  “I prefer not to go there if at all possible,” Kenny said, following Step. “I’m trying to change up my ways. Killing folks weighs on me the older and more experienced I get. I get to questioning the right and wrong of it, and I’ll miss some sleep because of it here and there.”

  Spivey watched them disappear inside the club before he decided to follow. He was questioning the wisdom of bringing in two hickbilly thugs who didn’t seem to be altogether thuggish.

  Inside the club, strippers spanning in body types from skeletal to doughy gyrated and bumped about the dank and smoke-filled main room. They collected paper currency and slaps on their bare asses from men who were a self-help seminar away from being the dregs of society. The smell of cigarettes and cigars masked the scent of cheap perfume, body odor, and the stench of untreated yeast infections. It was enough to make the average person hurl.

  Step made his way to a fat fucker with a patchy beard and a bad case of rosacea. A group of even less desirables sat with him, and their slack-jawed expressions suggested they were high on something other than the watered-down swill and cheap Midwestern name-brand beer that was served in the club.

  Spivey reached the table as Step started snapping his fingers two inches from Woodrow’s face to get his attention. “Up here, boy. Look at me.”

  Woodrow Pike was slow to comply. He didn’t even appear to know he was being summoned for several seconds, but when a look of alertness crossed his face, he instinctively swatted Step’s hand. “Get on! Unless you got tits, I ain’t interested.”

  Step slapped Woodrow’s forehead with the palm of his hand. “I said look at me.”

  Woodrow’s neck snapped back, and he finally set eyes on Ste
p. “Shit. Didn’t know it was you.”

  “That’s why I said look at me, dumbass.”

  Woodrow nervously surveyed the strip club. “Won’t do me no good to be seen talking with you.”

  “Doesn’t do shit for my reputation, either,” Step said. “But this is what it’s come to.”

  “Wha’cha want?”

  Kenny pulled Spivey aside. “You should know that I got a problem with sexualizing women.”

  Spivey gave him a sideways glance.

  “I’m trying to get better on it, but seeing all these ladies in their bareness, I kinda feel myself slipping into some…inappropriate desires.”

  “Kenny,” Spivey said calmly, “I don’t give a fuck.”

  “It’s just that if we’re to be working together, I don’t want you to have low thoughts on me right off the bat.”

  Step snapped at Spivey, “Hey, pay attention. You wanted to talk to the man. Talk to him.”

  Spivey moved away from Kenny. “The Gray Rise…”

  The men who had been near- comatose perked up at the sound of the words that had just come out of Spivey’s mouth.

  “Fuck,” Woodrow said, shaking his head. “No, no, no. I don’t know what that is. Nobody knows what that is. If anyone was to know what that is and they said anything on it, that anyone would be a dead someone pretty damn quick…”

  Step palmed the back of Woodrow’s head and slammed his face into a shot glass.

  The cracker sitting next to Woodrow attempted to stand to deliver a response to Step, but Kenny gave him a rabbit punch to the ear, which caused the man’s leg to twitch in pain.

  Kenny couldn’t keep from smiling. “Caught a nerve. Learned that from a fella in Korea. The Southern one. We was there a couple of months ago…”

  “Kenny!” Step shouted.

  Kenny bowed his head and tightened his lips shut.

  Woodrow leaned back, broken glass protruding from his brow. “You coulda put my eye out! Goddamn it!”

  “You mean I didn’t?” Step slammed Woodrow’s face into the broken glass on the table.