Surviving Rage | Book 5

by Arellano, J. D.

  Until the ball bounced off his hands and tumbled away.

  “Awww!!!” Gunner’s voice called out.

  Cody heard Johnny’s playful chuckle as he watched the ball bounce away, traveling in the unpredictable way that footballs do. It took a high bounce, then went sideways and through the post & rail wood fence and down into the canyon beyond.

  “Son of a bitch!” Gunner yelled.

  Already embarrassed, Cody turned and looked back at the other boys. “Sorry! I’ll get it!” he called out. Gunner put up a thumb in response as Johnny walked back over to where he stood, still chuckling.

  Turning away, Cody cursed to himself as he leaned under the top rail and descended into the canyon.

  “What’s taking him so long?” Gunner asked, looking towards the far end of the field.

  Johnny shrugged. “Maybe he can’t find it.”

  “Damn. Well, let’s go help.”

  The boys walked across the field until they reached the far end. Standing against the fence, they looked down into the canyon.

  ‘The ball’s right there.” Johnny said, pointing.

  “Where the hell is Cody?” Gunner asked.

  “Cody!” Johnny yelled.

  “Cody!” Gunner called out.

  After a few minutes of calling for him, they decided to descend into the canyon to look for him, thinking perhaps he’d fallen into a bush or unseen ditch. When they didn’t find him anywhere between the fence and the easily visible football, it was clear.

  Cody was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  San Francisco Protective Zone, California

  Day 2

  ‘Damn, this is gonna be delicious,’ Daniel thought, as he poured himself a small glass of the dark liquid. It was only his second time making a chocolate stout, but from all indications, he’d done well. Raising it up in front of his face, he studied the beverage’s foam head. It was a nice, light caramel color, in stark contrast to the dark liquid in the bottom two-thirds of the glass. Leaning forward, he sniffed it.

  “Mmmmm….” he licked his lips.

  “What are you doing?” Serafina asked, as she stepped into the garage. Frowning, she walked over to the table Daniel stood behind.

  “I...uh....just finished this batch,” he replied, looking away.

  “Uh hunh. And are you planning on drinking that?”

  “Well, uh...I don’t want to waste it.”

  “Let me see,” she said, extending her hand.

  Daniel passed her the glass, smiling proudly as he did.

  Holding it up, she studied the color of the beer, before bringing it closer to her nose. “Smells yummy,” she commented, nodding.

  “I know,” Daniel replied, reaching for the glass. “I think it’ll be very tasty.”

  Moving the glass to her lips, she took a long drink.

  “Hey!” Daniel exclaimed in protest.

  When she lowered the glass, she nodded again. “You’re right. It’s pretty good.” Extending the half-empty glass, she said, “Top me off?”

  Rolling his eyes, Daniel sighed loudly. Taking the glass from her, he did as she requested, then passed it back to her. Grabbing a clean glass from the shelf, he moved to the plastic jug to fill it.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Son of a - ” he said, pausing to listen.

  A few seconds later, Ashley’s voice called out. “Dad! Major...Kincaid is here. He wants to talk to you!”

  “Mmmmhhh,” he growled under his breath, before calling out, “Okay! Be right there.” Looking at Serafina, he was about to ask her to meet with the Major when she held up her glass and shrugged. “Sorry. Busy.” Closing her eyes, she took a slow drink from her glass and savored the flavor.

  “Punk,” Daniel said, setting his glass aside and heading for the door to the garage.

  As he entered the home’s kitchen, he was able to see Major Kincaid standing by the front door, chatting with Ashley.

  “Major! Come on out to the garage. I want you to try my new beer.”

  Kincaid smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.” With his hat in his hand, he strode across the dining room and through the kitchen, then followed Daniel into the garage.

  “What did you make?” he asked.

  “A chocolate stout.”

  “Awesome,” the Major said, smiling.

  Daniel grabbed a clean glass and filled it for the man. “Here you go.”

  Tasting it, Kincaid lowered the glass and smiled. “Very nice.”

  “Thanks,” Daniel replied, before picking up his glass and finally filling it. “Damn,” he said, looking at the glass, “that is good.”

  “Alright, don’t let it go to your head,” Serafina said, rolling her eyes. Turning to the Air Force Major, she asked, “So, Mike, what brings you here? Hopefully not just for Daniel’s beer.”

  Kincaid grinned, “No, but it is good stuff,” he said holding up his glass and nodding towards Daniel. After sipping from it again, he set the glass on the table and reached into the cargo pocket on his camouflage trousers. “Actually, I wanted to give you this,” he said, passing Daniel the ruggedized phone and the associated charger.

  Accepting the phone, which was powered off, Daniel frowned. “What the?”

  Kincaid took another sip from his glass of beer, then said, “Willey, the computer and electronics technician that works in the main building said you were supposed to get it.”

  “Really? Are you sure?”

  The Major nodded. “Yep. It was delivered to the General, but of course he’s too busy to be out making deliveries. I told him I’d take care of it, and I went back to the guy to verify. He said some,” setting down the glass once more, he held up his hands and made air quotes with his fingers, “‘Army guy’ left a note saying it was supposed to go to you.”

  Serafina stepped closer. “Do you think Paul asked him to do that?”

  Daniel nodded. “Yeah, I do, but I’m surprised he knew to ask. Kid seemed wide-eyed and lost after enlisting.”

  Kincaid shrugged. “Don’t know, but you got it. Those things are hard to come by, so be careful with it.”

  “So this thing works?”

  Kincaid nodded. “Yeah. I asked Willey, and he said it can do basic calls if you’re somewhere where the towers are still operational, like maybe in the larger metropolitan areas. It does better with text messaging. If the cell tower is down, it can shift over to use satellites to transmit the message. Because it’s pure text, it can identify and send only parts of the message if there’s a shift between the two methods of transmission.”

  “I see,” Daniel replied, as he stared at the phone and nodded. Looking back up at the Major, he grinned. “What about Candy Crush?”

  Serafina rolled her eyes yet again.

  Sometime later, after Daniel had filled a pair of twenty-ounce bottles for the Major to take and share with General Armstead, Daniel made his way out to the large balcony at the front of the house. Serafina was there, sitting on one of the adirondack chairs and reading an old paperback copy of The Republic of Plato and sipping a cup of tea.

  After kissing the top of her head, he moved over and settled into the chair next to her. Looking out at the ocean as the waves crashed into the cliffs below them, he felt completely at ease.

  Remembering the phone he’d been given, he reached into his pocket and withdrew it, then pressed the button to power it on. Once it was on, it searched for a signature for nearly a minute before indicating it was connected at the low, 3G level. As promised, the phone was limited in its features. There were no games, nor internet-based apps, aside from the phone and text applications, it only offered a calculator notepad, and calendar applications.

  Shortly after connecting to the local cellphone tower, though, it chimed, indicating a text message had been received.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  Daniel felt Serafina’s eyes on him as he opened the text messaging app.

  “That’s weird,” he said, frowning
at the screen.

  “What is it?”

  “I think it’s garbled or something. Look.” He held the phone so that the screen was facing her.

  92 00 33 50 62 31 94 51 94 41 74 41 53 81 10 43 60 81 30 93 51 53 63 74 63 22 74 91 93 52 81 40 52 40 33 82 41 94 00 61 43 72 53 42 20 32 41 83 21 61 32 22 50 92 74 53 81 20 42 80 62 63 82 61 21 82 32 50 72 90 83 93 71 91 43 94 22 41 74 63 21 81

  74

  Serafina frowned. “That is weird.”

  Daniel shrugged, then smiled slightly. “You know, as Paul was about to head out, he said he’d call me when he could. I was like, ‘what?’, but now I see what he meant.” Setting the phone down on the small table next to him, he said, “I guess the text messaging part isn’t working as well as the technician said it would, but it would be cool if we get to hear from Paul.”

  “Yeah, that would be,” Serafina said, nodding in agreement before turning back to her book.

  The phone chimed again. Daniel looked at it.

  92 00 33 93 40 62 31 94 51 94 41 50 00 41 53 81 10 43 60 61 32 30 93 51 53 63 74 42 20 22 74 91 93 52 81 22 63 52 40 33 82 41 94 61 52 61 43 72 53 42 20 52 23 41 83 21 61 32 22 31 21 92 74 53 81 20 42 10 73 42 80 62 63 82 61 81 73 82 32 50 72 90 83 91 43 71 91 43 94 22 41 32 62 63 21 81 73 51 62 31 40 30 73 94 00 21 60 72 10 00 53 82 10 20 23 22 10 52 23 30

  33 71 41 94 61 10 10 21 81 40 10 80 32 33 93 51 23 91 74 61 62 73 43 62

  84

  “Weird,” Daniel said again, shaking his head. He set the phone down on the table again and closed his eyes so that he could listen to the sound of the waves hitting the cliffs.

  Maybe the text messaging app was messed up, but as long as the phone app worked, it would still be a nice gift.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Outside of Kingston, Tennessee

  Day 3

  The sun was still far from the horizon when Jimmy Jones gathered Billy and the other members of his locally grown militia together in front of the double-wide trailer his family had called home for the last forty years. Though it was still dark, he figured that would help them capture the element of surprise when they went to Billy’s home to deal with the government troops that had taken it.

  ‘I can’t believe they used the virus as an opportunity to take people’s property from them,’ he said to himself as he lit his third cigarette of the early morning. At six foot two and one hundred and sixty pounds, his slim frame scared no one, which was why his modified AR-15 was never far from his side and prominent in all of his pictures on social media.

  ‘Damn government, always tryin’ to screw the white man,’ he thought as he took a long drag from the cigarette. Stepping forward on the small deck in front of the mobile home, he blew a big cloud of smoke into the air then looked out at the group assembled on the gravel driveway in front of his home. There were twenty-one men in all, and not only did each of them carry at least one handgun and one rifle, with plenty of ammunition for both, three-quarters of them wore at least a few pieces of body armor, as he did. Four full-size trucks, the lead of which was Jimmy’s, were parked behind the crowd, each one ‘American-made’ (even if they’d been assembled in Mexico), and each one had a bracket mounted so that they could fly the Confederate flag from near the truck’s rear gate, making it wave in the wind whenever they drove around their small town.

  “Fellas, it looks like what we thought would happen, finally has. The gov’ment sent armed men to take Billy’s house, breakin’ through the door violently and trashing his house in the process,” he said, before taking a pause. “Billy was there when it happened, and like the proud American he is, he defended his home. He even managed to shoot one of ‘em. To that, I say, good job, Billy,” he said, pausing again to let the group applaud his childhood friend.

  Raising his voice to be heard over the men’s voices, he continued. “Unfortunately, he was simply outnumbered.” Shaking his head, he added, “Billy, while me and all the other fellas were real sorry to hear ‘bout your parents dying last week, I gotta say, it mighta been a blessing that they didn’t live to see this. Your pappy always said the gov’ment could’n be trusted, and if he had been there when they came, I think it’d a broke his heart.”

  After a short pause, Jimmy pointed his finger at Billy and wagged it. “Not that he wouldn’ta fought back, though. Your pappy was a tough son of a gun.”

  Billy nodded enthusiastically as he looked down at the ground, trying to keep his emotions in check. The man next to him clapped his hand on Billy’s shoulder, comforting him.

  Taking another drag from his cigarette, Jimmy held it in for a long moment before exhaling another big cloud of smoke. “Now, our forefathers had the wisdom to see that this could happen, which is why the Constitution protects our right to bear arms.”

  Inhaling from the end of his cigarette one final time, he held the smoke briefly this time before exhaling. Tossing the cigarette butt onto the deck of the home, he used the heel of his steel-toed boot to crush it.

  “Now, who here’s ready to help Billy take back his home?”

  The group cheered enthusiastically.

  Standing on the porch in the dim pre-dawn light, Corporal Derrick Snyder stepped forward to the edge of the covered porch and spit, sending a thick, dark glob of chewing tobacco and saliva down onto the overgrown rose bush near the steps. Realizing most of the nicotine had been depleted from what remained of the wad inside his cheek, he worked it toward the front of his mouth, then reached in with a finger and scooped it out. Tossing it into the rose bush as well, he was in the process of wiping his hand off on his uniform trousers when he noticed a slow moving procession of vehicles headed towards the house.

  “What the fuck?” Spinning on his heel, he moved quickly to the door, he opened it and shouted, “We’ve got company!”

  Closing the door behind him, he jumped down from the porch, rushed to the Humvee, climbed inside and made his way up into the seated gun mount.

  As he spun the barrel around to face in the direction of the oncoming trucks, he heard Jeffries’s voice behind him, near the front of the home.

  “What do we got?”

  “Four trucks, coming up the drive slowly.”

  Looking back at the other Marines, Jeffries began shouting orders. “Healey! Get Chang and Bowman into the basement! Khan, take Sanchez and watch the back. Tomlinson, man the other fifty! Milligan, take the north corner. I’ll take south. Snyder, stay out of sight for now. Everyone keep your radios on. Don’t fire unless I do or I give the order.”

  Inside the home, men and women moved quickly as they followed Jeffries’s orders, quickly transitioning from a resting state to one ready for action.

  Healey burst into the bedroom where Corporal White was resting. Looking past the man on the bed, she focused on Doctor Chang and Doctor Bowman.

  “Let’s go! I’ve got to get you down to the basement!”

  “What?” Chang asked, as he rose from the chair he’d dozed off in.

  “What’s going on?” Bowman added.

  “We’ve got hostiles! I’ve got to get you to a safe location.”

  Looking at Corporal White, who had woken but was too weak to do much more than turn his head in Healey’s direction, Chang shook his head. “No.”

  “What?” Healey asked, practically screaming the question.

  “I can’t leave him.” Looking at Bowman, he nodded. “You go. If something happens to me, you can handle the neurological research aspects.”

  “I - ”

  Shaking her head, Healey strode across the room and grabbed Doctor Bowman by her arm before she could react. As she pulled the tall blonde woman from the room, she looked at Chang and shook her head. “You’re screwing me on this, Doc!”

  “She’s right,” Corporal White said, weakly. “You should go, Doc.”

  “Can’t do it,” Andrew replied, shaking his head. Turning his head, he looked towards the outer wall of the house. Glancing at where White lay on the bed, he did some mental measurements, then moved to w
here a dresser was. Straining, he managed to move it across the hardwood floor and into position against the wall, lined up so that it was between the wall and White.

  Breathing heavily, he grabbed his bulletproof flak jacket and put it on, then grabbed White’s and laid it over the man’s torso. Next he put the man’s helmet back on him, then donned his own. Finally, he grabbed the padded chair he’d been sleeping in and dragged it over to the side of the bed and sat down.

  Taking a breath, he looked at the young Marine. “Let’s hope whatever is going on out there doesn’t lead to violence.”

  White smiled wryly, “I wouldn’t count on it, Doc.”

  While the trucks’ owners had made some effort to stay dark by turning off their headlights, their running lights shone like beacons in the fading darkness of the early morning.

  By comparison, the trained Marines knew from experience that the cover of darkness was an advantage, and with eyes fully adjusted to low light, they moved about quickly and silently, leaving their readiness unknown to the approaching men.

  The first truck in the group drove along the road in front of the home until it was parallel with the north end of the home. With the three trucks evenly spaced behind the first one, they covered the entire length of the home. Once stopped, the men inside the trucks quickly jumped out and positioned themselves on the other side of the vehicles, using them to provide cover and a place to rest their weapons.

  Moving forward, Jimmy Jones called out loudly, “All ya’ll inside that house need ta git out!”

  He waited for nearly a minute before shouting again. “That is not yer home, and ya’ll ain’t allowed to take it!”

  This time a voice replied, speaking loudly and calmly. “We have no intention of taking his home. We will be leaving in a few hours. When we do, you may return. However, one of your men shot one of my Marines. Based on that act of violence, I need you to stand down immediately, otherwise we will be forced to protect ourselves.”