Black Autumn

by Jeff Kirkham

  Francisco and Bastardo’s friendship went way back, all the way back to when they were snot-nosed teenagers stealing bikes downtown. He and Bastardo were O.G., Original Gangsters. Two of the first Norteños in Salt Lake City, they had founded Los Latigos together. He owed Bastardo, but this conversation was trying Francisco’s patience. He had a war to win.

  “Where would we go?” Francisco asked again.

  Alberto Romero opened a map from his back pocket. “We’ve picked three possible towns. Each one is close to Salt Lake City. Each one has a year-round stream. And each one has grain silos that should be full this time of year.”

  Bastardo took over, sponsoring the idea, even though he knew it was a hard sell. “Francisco, the town of Malad is just an hour north of here. We can join the town and control the I-15 Freeway, maybe even charge a toll for anyone driving through. Or south of here, we can go to the town of Nephi. It has a stream coming out of this mountain, here.” Bastardo ran his finger down the canyon that supplied ground water to Nephi.

  “Or we can join the town of Tremonton,” said Romero. “It’s closer to Salt Lake and grows maize—corn for cattle. All of these places are clean, and we could easily move in and offer a deal to the townspeople: work with us and we’ll provide security and labor.”

  “Think about it, Francisco. We could have an entire town for Latinos, a place where we make food for the whole region, from Salt Lake City all the way down to Saint George. The only people in this city who know how to work nowadays are Latinos. Work is our weapon. We could own everything. We could trade food for land, food for buildings, food for houses. And food will never be worth more than it will be worth over the next year. The white people will trade everything they own for a little maize or wheat in the coming weeks. We would become rich and it would be honest money.”

  His words were pregnant with an unspoken truth between them. But Bastardo couldn’t say it with a stranger in the room. At our age, shouldn’t we be living honestly?

  “Give me the chance to talk to these towns, Francisco. Let me see if they’ll work with us. Every one of these towns is being overrun with people fleeing from Salt Lake. We can protect the towns from being flooded by starving people. Los Latigos can handle security—man their roadblocks. We can bring them the medicine we’ve captured. We can provide labor for the fieldwork come spring. I just need two days to talk to them and strike deals. Two days, Francisco.”

  Bastardo looked up from the map, praying Francisco would see reason. He knew Francisco planned to attack another neighborhood soon. If they were ever going to retire from the thug life, this would be the time.

  Francisco stared at the map. “Thank you, amigo.” Francisco clapped Bastardo on the shoulder. “You’ve given me something beautiful to think about. It’s quite a dream. Please send in Crudo.” With that, Francisco ended the meeting.

  Bastardo and Romero climbed down from the RV and closed the door. A few minutes later, Crudo knocked.

  “Come in.”

  “Sí, Jefe.” Crudo stepped inside and walked over to the table.

  “We attack Oakwood tomorrow at first light. Every man fights.”

  • • •

  Ross Homestead

  Oakwood, Utah

  In the middle of the night, gunfire crackled across the Great Lawn of the Homestead. Jeff and his teams had been fighting this battle for thirty minutes, and they still didn’t have a clear picture of the enemy. As was usually the case with a night battle, nobody could find their ass with both hands. Being shot by your own side became a bigger risk than being shot by the enemy.

  Jeff guessed that a small group—maybe just ten or fifteen men—had penetrated the upper perimeter in an attempt to sneak in and rob the Homestead. The bullets now thudding into Homestead buildings probably came from a thrown-together group of armed, hungry men, most likely not the gangbangers. Most of the Homestead buildings were made of stone, and all of the tent-people had retreated into the bunkhouse. As long as the property didn’t get overrun, their families would be safe.

  Because of the dark and because of their limited training, Jeff didn’t dare send more than one QRF into the forest after the attackers. If two QRFs went, they could cut each other to ribbons.

  Earlier in the gun battle, one of his perimeter defense guards had shot one of the QRF guys accidentally—the first Homestead casualty—and it didn’t look like the QRF guy was going to pull through. Jeff sent all the perimeter defense men to their duty stations to keep them from wandering around and to prevent further blue-on-blue shootings. Except for the QRF, the Homestead perimeter defenders didn’t have enough training to fight in the dark.

  The best way to kill the invaders without shooting one another would be the surgical application of night vision, thermal vision and excruciatingly careful gunfire. Every one of the QRF fighters wore an infrared sticky badge on the back of his bump helmet. At a quick glance, with night vision, the Homestead fighters could see the badge and refrain from ventilating one of their own.

  QRF One ran the fight in the forest. One Homestead fighter had been wounded by the intruders, and another guy was in surgery, shot by the Homestead’s own guys. Based on the radio chatter, Jeff surmised that the squad leader of QRF One, Tim, was moving his guys carefully across the forest and down the canyon, herding the intruders in front of them toward the Great Lawn.

  Even though it pushed gunfire toward their families, the plan made sense. QRF Two and Three, both at full strength, had set up a U-shaped picket around the Great Lawn. With open fields of fire, the blocking force would shred anyone stepping onto the lawn. The fight blazed dangerously close to the home, but it was the only sure way to contain and eliminate every intruder.

  Winslow had a team of snipers set up on the ridge facing the forest, and they were carefully picking through targets with their thermal scopes as targets appeared between the trees. The first blue-on-blue shooting scared everyone straight, and the process of identifying targets slowed to a crawl. Everything had to be done with great care to avoid another needless death.

  Tim’s QRF One all wore NVGs, but that wasn’t the end-all-be-all solution to winning a night fight in the forest. Yes, the team could see in the dark, but picking through a dark forest with NVGs was like trying to find Where’s Waldo while someone kicked you repeatedly in the balls. The forest looked like black-and-white scrambled eggs through NVGs. Half of the QRF guys carried big infrared floodlights to light up each chunk of the forest, one section at a time. Only the NVGs could see the floodlights.

  The QRF had IR lasers mounted to the fronts of their rifles and handguns, allowing them to sight and shoot without shouldering their weapons. The IR lasers helped identify friendly forces; the QRFs could tell one another from the bad guys from the sweeps of the IR lasers back and forth. This kept the QRFs in a line. Also, every QRF fighter without an IR floodlight had a thermal monocular, scanning the forest every ten paces.

  It was the Easter egg hunt from hell, every step methodically executed, and every pull of the trigger checked and doubled-checked before letting rounds fly.

  “This is Winslow, Sniper One. Everyone stop and point your IR lasers straight up. I need you to copy that. Point your IR lasers straight up.”

  “Copy. QRF One pointing lasers straight up.”

  “This is Winslow. We think we have a bad guy in front of you fifty meters, but I need to confirm that it’s not one of you. QRF One: wave your lasers, please.”

  “Copy. Waving our lasers.”

  “The target is fifty meters in front of the sixth guy from the bottom of the canyon. Sixth man, please wave your laser.”

  “Copy. Standby.” Three minutes passed.

  “This is Winslow. That’s the fifth guy up the line I’m seeing wave his laser. I need the sixth man from the bottom to wave his laser.”

  “Copy. Sixth man waving his laser.”

  “This is Winslow. Okay. I’m seeing the sixth man. Repeat. Target is fifty yards in front of you. Can you see him
with your thermal?”

  “This is QRF team lead. No, we cannot see the target.”

  “This is Winslow. I’m going to shoot. Please confirm.”

  “This is QRF team lead. All team accounted for and online. You are weapons-free to shoot target.”

  “This is Winslow. Shooting.”

  All night long, the snipers and QRF teams worked through the intruders, making every step a deliberate action and adding to their exhaustion and bone-numbing stress with each shot.

  After four hours, QRF One finally approached the Great Lawn. They had killed eight intruders, two deer and a porcupine. Luckily, they hadn’t shot any more friendlies.

  Jeff reminded himself just how right he had been. They should have burned the forest down.

  “Jeff, Tim calling, over.”

  “This is Jeff. Go ahead, Tim.”

  “QRF One is two-zero-zero yards from the Great Lawn. Estimate five Tangos between you and us. We have approximately eight Tangos down so far. Over.”

  “Copy that. Do NOT get any closer to the Great Lawn than one-five-zero yards. Jeff out.”

  The pace of fire picked up over the next twenty minutes, with the last remnants of the intruders fighting desperately, sandwiched between two forces. The QRFs methodically annihilated them like rats driven by fire from a cornfield. Every time a stranger squirted out onto the Great Lawn, pushed by QRF One, they were cut down by the blockers.

  After another hour of painstaking night fighting, all gunfire ceased. The men of QRF One combed every inch of forest again with their thermal monoculars, IR floodlights and NVGs, finding only dead and wounded.

  The Homestead med staff rushed into the gap as soon as the battle slowed, pulling men out of the tangles of Snowberry bushes and Oregon Grape, hauling the still-living to the infirmary.

  Once Jeff felt confident they had eliminated all the enemy, he turned his attention to his wounded. By his count, his men had taken two casualties; one of them a “blue-on-blue,” friendly-fire incident and he had already died in surgery.

  Jeff had seen the medical staff carrying a number of bodies and that worried him. He hopped into his OHV and headed to the infirmary.

  Doctors and nurses rushed about like ants, patching men up and preparing others for surgery. Right away, Jeff knew he had a problem. Most of the men on gurneys in the doctors’ and nurses’ care were enemy combatants.

  He had tried to raise this issue ahead of time, of providing medical care to the enemy, but he had never reached an agreement with the medical staff or the Homestead committee.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Jeff shouted over top of the chaos, “I respect and honor your commitment to treating the wounded. But we will NOT be keeping enemy combatants here, nor will we be providing them medical aid.”

  The doctors and nurses howled in protest, but Jeff brooked no discussion. He couldn’t allow enemy eyes inside the Homestead wire, observing their resources, noting their defensive strength and consuming their precious medical supplies. Every moment these wounded men remained here, the risk increased that they would contribute information to the next attack.

  Jeff scooped up a man from a gurney, shot in the gut, and threw him over his shoulder. An IV line popped out of his arm and the attending nurse shrieked in anger. Jeff walked to his OHV, and dumped the moaning man into the truck bed.

  Jeff ignored the raging protests from the nurses and doctors. He scooped up another man, this man shot several times, and sat him beside his comrade.

  The medical staff went crazy. Some of them tried to physically block Jeff from their patients. Jeff brushed them aside, men and women both. Other nurses and doctors worked even faster on their patients, trying to give whatever aid they could before Jeff came, like a pugnacious Grim Reaper.

  Jeff loaded four enemy combatants unceremoniously into the back of his OHV and ordered the commander of QRF Two to stand guard, not allowing anyone but Homestead troops to receive medical aid.

  Leaving screaming nurses and bellowing doctors in his dust, Jeff roared up the mountain to the upper perimeter at the top of the ridge, some two miles behind the Homestead, intent on laying the dying men beside other dead trespassers.

  “Don’t leave me here to die,” one man pleaded as Jeff lifted him out of the back of the OHV.

  “Why wouldn’t I? You tried to kill my family.” Jeff sat the man back down in the small bed of the OHV, half on top of the man’s friend, who looked like he might have died on the trip up the mountain.

  “You tried to kill my family first,” the dying man croaked.

  “How so?”

  “You poisoned our water. We found the rotting porcupine you buried in our stream. That was our bug-out location. We had nowhere else to go. You made our kids sick. One little girl in our camp, she died because of the bad water. You attacked us first. We didn’t see it coming and that camp was the only way we were going to survive this thing. So we fought back. But don’t leave me here to die, please.”

  “Humph.” Jeff neither confirmed nor denied poisoning the stream. He hadn’t thought about the porcupine since he had put it in the Beringers’ water supply two weeks ago. Had he caused this attack? He didn’t like that idea at all.

  “You’re from the Beringers?” Jeff drilled down, hoping he wasn’t.

  “Dick Beringer.” The gut-shot man reached out a blood-and-gut-soaked hand to Jeff. Out of reflex, Jeff shook the dying man’s hand.

  “I can’t take you back to your camp,” Jeff blurted out his bottom line. His fault or not, he couldn’t endanger his family and the rest of the families by allowing this man to return to his camp.

  “Then can you stay with me while I die?”

  Jeff sagged in his own skin like the air had gone out of him. He rolled his neck and gathered the man in his arms. Jeff propped him against the wheel of the OHV and lowered himself down to sit beside the Beringer man.

  Jeff had sat beside many dying men. With the battle over, he had always felt begrudging respect for any man who fought for a cause, no matter how mistaken their philosophies. Given the circumstances this night, it was an easy choice to see this man as a fellow sword-bearer off to Valhalla.

  “Talk to me,” Dick Beringer pleaded.

  “What do you want me to talk about?” Jeff asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. Tell me about yourself.”

  Jeff babbled about his military career, starting from his early days in the army, serving in Asia and making his way to his many deployments in the Middle East. Jeff talked for ten minutes, looking into the night, before turning back to Dick Beringer. While he had talked, the man had passed.

  Jeff wiped his face, only then realizing that his hand smelled like guts. He sat next to the corpse of Dick Beringer for another fifteen minutes, taking in the smell of death, mingled with the scent of autumn. He needed a little time just to sit. It had been a very bad night.

  After there was nothing else to think, Jeff got up and carried the dead men, one by one, over to the fence posts marking the boundary of the Homestead. He leaned one dead man against each post, a warning to others who might trespass.

  • • •

  It was almost dawn, and Jacquelyn sat on a plastic chair in the infirmary, her hands hanging between her legs, staring at Tom’s body. Like a lawn mower that refused to start, she couldn’t get her mind up to speed to accept this latest piece of information.

  Her husband was dead. He had been shot by one of the Homestead’s own men. Nobody would tell her who.

  It was information, like numbers in a column on a massive spreadsheet that she couldn’t begin to understand. It didn’t help that she hadn’t slept and it was six in the morning.

  The kids were asleep in the bunkhouse. How was she going to tell them their father was dead? She needed someone to give her the words because she wasn’t coming up with anything.

  Kids, your daddy’s gone to heaven…

  She and Tom hadn’t made religion a priority. Talking about heaven wouldn’t mean anythi
ng to the kids.

  Kids, your daddy died last night protecting us…

  What would happen when they found out he had been killed by another Homestead man by accident?

  Kids, I’m falling apart, and I’m not capable of being your mommy anymore because your daddy is dead, and I don’t have the faintest clue what to do next…

  Oh, my sweet lord. She could not, would not, make this worse for them. But Tom’s death would change them, and not for the better. They would break, each in some fundamental way, and then spend the rest of their lives trying to heal that wound. She had seen it over and over again as a therapist. Less than an hour from now, her kids would receive a shock they could not bear, and their sweet, innocent minds would rip, and blackness would flow into the wounds, forever darkening their lives.

  Oh, God, why?

  Her mind turned again to God, even though she didn’t really believe in Him. So why did she keep thinking about Him as though He were gravity pulling her at every turn.

  Oh, God, be with my children. Make the wounds such that they can heal. I know the wounds will be deep, but make them not so deep as to forever scar.

  There she was again, praying to a God she didn’t know existed.

  Give me the words. Give me the heart. Carry me and hold them as I tell them their father is lying on a plastic table, lifeless forever.

  And then she felt God around her like a blanket. Or maybe it was the universe. It was something. Whatever it was, she felt not-alone for a moment.

  It will be okay.

  From the bottom of her soul, she cried for her children. Then she cried for herself. Then she cried for this simple, honest man who only ever meant to be a good man.