by Eric Vall
“Cool,” Tara said. “I’ll use my silenced pistol that way it will be pretty quiet.”
“I appreciate that,” Renee said. “I don’t want to make this a big thing. I don’t think anybody around here will really miss them, and we’ll explain why we had to do it, but I don’t want to scare anybody, either.”
“Good call,” I said. “I’ll come help you girls. We’ll need to deal with the bodies once we’re done as well.”
“We need to get our jeep, too,” Paige said. “Do you have one that we could borrow?”
“Sure,” Renee agreed. “The keys are in them. There’s only two, but they're both fueled up.”
“Okay,” Tara said. “And don’t worry about it, Tav, we can handle it.”
“Yeah,” Paige agreed. “You should go with Renee and address the group.”
“We should all address the group,” I said. “I want us to be together.”
“Alright,” Tara said. “Whatever floats your boat.”
“Thanks,” I chuckled.
“Everyone else, then,” Renee said, “how about we get some dinner? I’ll grab the guys and get them to the back first, but grub should be ready by now.”
“Food sounds good,” Anna said.
“There’s been so much talk of death, but I’m still hungry somehow,” Kimmy said quietly.
“You get used to it,” Bailey said.
“Renee, Tara, and Paige, why don’t you go get started?” I asked. “I want to talk with Anna and Bailey for a second. I’ll bring them to the fire pit when we’re done.”
“Take as much time as you need,” Renee said, and she led Tara and Paige out the door.
Kimmy looked confused, but Anna and Bailey just leaned against the wall like they had been.
“Kimmy, why don’t you take a seat,” I suggested, and I pointed to Renee’s chair.
“Oh, sure,” the dark complexioned woman said. “Did we do something wrong?”
“Tav just wants to make sure we’re okay,” Anna said, and she gave me a playful smirk.
“That’s right,” I said with a smile. “And are you?”
“I’m fine,” Anna sighed.
“Yeah,” Bailey agreed. “I’m not super happy about it, but ultimately I trust Renee to know her own people. And I don’t think anybody has bad intentions on our side… we just want everyone to be safe.”
“Right,” I said. “Still, I’m sure it was difficult. You all made some excellent points, but right now we have to take even the smallest threat seriously.”
“You’re right,” Anna said. “I almost felt bad for taking the stand that I did. I don’t want us to be on opposite sides, especially when I’m supposed to be your second in command.”
“I want you to be on whatever side you think is right,” I told her. “Even if it’s not mine.”
“Thanks,” the redhead said, and she looked down and smiled.
“What about you, Kimmy?” Bailey asked.
“What about me?” Kimmy asked in return.
“Are you alright?” I chuckled. “I’m sure that was a weird conversation to hear.”
“It was strange,” she agreed, “but I think it needed to be done, and I’m glad I was here to witness it. I find all of this stuff pretty fascinating.”
“I’m glad,” I told her.
“Do you think we made the right decision?” Bailey asked.
“Oh, I couldn’t say,” Kimmy said with a shake of her head.
“Oh, come on,” Anna pushed. “Lay it on us, what do you think?”
“Honestly... I think it was a really tough decision,” she said. “I saw where both sides were coming from. As much as I’m not keen on the idea of killing people in general, in this case I’m glad you came to the decision that you did. I don’t want to be worried about any of us getting shot in the back. I think the world is so screwed up now that you have to prove yourself to be a good person.”
“Kind of like innocent until proven guilty,” Bailey said.
“Yeah, but more the opposite,” Kimmy said. “Like, until you prove that you’re a good person, it’s safer to assume that you’re not.”
“Hm,” Anna said. “I like that. That’s how we have to go into pretty much any situation already.”
“Yeah,” Bailey agreed. “I like it, too. And it makes me feel a bit better. Those guys haven’t done anything to prove that they’re not bad guys.”
“Right,” Kimmy said. “And I think anybody good would have proven so already.”
“I think that’s a smart way to look at it,” I said with a smile, and I stared at the beautiful woman who sat across from me. Kimmy was shaping up to be a real member of the team, and I had to continuously remind myself that this may be her one and only mission.
It wasn’t that we needed anyone else, our team was great as it was, but I liked Kimmy, and her electronic skills could come in handy. Plus, she’d shown that she had potential to be calm under fire and had decision making, two of the most important aspects a member of our team needed to have. Still, she was a mother, and I’d never ask her to leave her child unless it was incredibly important.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s get you girls out to the fire and get something to eat.”
“We got it,” Anna said. “You head around back, I know you want to help Tara and Paige.”
“I appreciate that,” I told her, “thanks.”
“Come on,” Anna said, and Kimmy and Bailey followed her out the door.
I watched from the doorway as they headed toward the fire and were greeted by friendly faces, then I made my way to the back of the building.
“Toby,” I heard Renee say as I walked up. “We all know that you’re a firm supporter of Brody’s.”
“Wait, is that why this is happening?” a male voice asked. “Fuck you, Renee. Brody’s gonna come fuck you up for this. This is some bullshit.”
I rounded the corner to see Tara with her pistol raised, and Paige beside her with her shotgun placed against her shoulder, ready to shoot.
“Renee,” I said quietly. “Why don’t you head back to the group? We can handle this.”
“Okay,” the brown haired woman agreed, and she gave the men one last look, shook her head, then rounded the corner of the building.
“You all are supporters of Brody,” I said as I walked up.
“And?” one of them asked. He had scraggly brown hair and he was stick thin to the point where he almost looked gaunt. There was something else up with this guy. Brody might not be generous, but nobody else seemed to look as thin as this man.
“Where’d you find the drugs?” I asked.
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about, man?” he asked, and I got a quick look at his teeth and saw how stained they were.
“You find them in the barracks?” I asked.
“And what if I did?” he asked. “Just because you got this place for Brody doesn’t mean that I answer to you.”
“Yeah,” the other guy agreed. He was thin, too, but not quite as thin as his companion. “This is ridiculous.”
“Has Brody been giving you the drugs?” I asked.
“I’m done answering your questions,” the guy with the shaggy brown hair said. “I’m leaving.”
As soon as the man stepped forward, Tara put a bullet between his eyes, and then she turned to the portlier fellow and placed one in his forehead as well. Both men crumpled to the ground in a heap of limbs.
“Do you really think they were on drugs?” Tara asked as she nonchalantly holstered her pistol. “I mean, the one was pretty skinny.”
“I think Tav was right,” Paige said.
I leaned down and checked the pockets of the skinny man and found a pipe and a baggie of white powder.
“Fuck,” Tara breathed. “How did Renee not know they were on drugs?”
“She probably has never had to deal with druggies,” I said.
“Must be nice,” Tara chuckled darkly.
“She must not have known the si
gns,” Paige added. “But it would make sense why they were such fervent supporters of Brody if he supplied them the drugs.”
“You think he did?” Tara asked. “I never saw him take any, and he did help us blow up the lab.”
“But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t have the opportunity to take some when we weren’t looking,” Paige said. “We left or destroyed most of the stuff, but he could have gotten to it before we destroyed it.”
“Even if they found the drugs here,” I said. “It probably wouldn’t have been enough to last them this long. Brody had to have been supplying them.”
“You think all of the men that are supporters of his are on the stuff?” Tara asked.
“Wouldn’t shock me,” I said with a nod. “Tara, will you pull a jeep around. Let’s load these bodies up, then we’ll drop them off and pick up our jeep. And ask Renee for a small container of fuel, too.”
“Alright,” the platinum blonde agreed, and she walked around the building.
“If we had known they were druggies there would have been no debate,” Paige said with a shake of her head. “I kind of feel bad now.”
“No need,” I said. “We didn’t know at the time. There’s no way we could have. Renee wasn’t aware that they were on anything.”
“You think they hid it well?” Paige asked, and her eyebrows pulled together in confusion.
“Possibly,” I said. “They weren’t particularly twitchy or paranoid seeming. I could just tell from how thin the guy was and by his attitude and his teeth.”
“She probably just thought his attitude was normal,” Paige said. “Renee did say that they were dicks even before the EMP hit.”
“Right,” I agreed. “She probably just thought their attitudes had gotten worse. Besides, she has a lot here to worry about without having to pay too much attention to a couple of assholes.”
“Yeah,” Paige said.
I went through the rest of the pockets on the guys, but I didn’t find much that was useful besides a couple of lighters. By that time, Tara had pulled the jeep around, and we loaded up the bodies into the back. I hopped into the driver’s seat, then, and Tara took shotgun while Paige got into the back.
“Where are we taking the bodies?” Tara asked as we drove past the small house where our own jeep waited for us.
“I figure a mile or so further up the road,” I said.
“Are we going to burn them?” Paige inquired.
“I think that’s best,” I said with a nod. “I don’t want to feed the wildlife human meat, not with the refinery still so close.”
“Alright,” Tara said. “But let’s hurry this up, I’m starved.”
“Me, too,” Paige agreed, then she caught my eye in the rearview mirror and bit her lip. “How were Bailey and Anna?”
“Yeah,” Tara said. “You stayed behind to talk to them, right?”
“I did,” I said. “They’re fine, they were a bit upset, but they’re team players.”
“Well, now they don’t have any reason to be upset,” Tara said.
“I think they felt better about it already anyhow,” I said. “Kimmy talked to them.”
“She was on our side?” Tara asked. “Psh, we should have just held a vote.”
“Kimmy can’t just be on our side,” Paige chuckled. “She’s not really part of the group yet.”
“Yet,” Tara repeated, then she turned to grin at me, her white teeth reflecting in the darkness of the vehicle. “But soon, right?”
“Probably not,” I said.
“Why?” Tara asked.
“Tara,” Paige scoffed. “She has a kid at home.”
“And?” the platinum blonde asked. “She obviously likes being part of the group, and why can’t a mom also be a badass?”
“Nobody’s saying that,” I laughed. “Obviously any woman can be a badass, mom or not. But what we’re saying is that she might not want to leave her child again.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess that’s true,” Tara sighed. “It’s been kind of fun having her around, though.”
“You think?” I asked.
“It’s always nice to have a new perspective on things,” Paige agreed.
“And since she’s new, we get to kind of train her and help her out,” Tara said. “It’s kind of fun to be the one giving orders for a change.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get too used to it,” I chuckled.
“You know what they say,” Paige said with a smile, “the best way to learn is to teach.”
“Who says that?” Tara asked. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Sure it does,” Paige said. “It’s the concept that if you want to make sure you know something super well, then the best way to do that is to teach it to somebody else.”
“Why?” the platinum blonde asked. “Wouldn’t the best way be to just study it?”
“Have you ever thought that you knew how to do something until someone asked you how you do it?” I asked.
“Hm,” she said, and she thought for a minute. “I was really good at cat’s cradle when I was a kid, and my cousin asked me to teach her, but I couldn’t explain it right so she always kind of sucked at it.”
“Exactly,” Paige laughed. “You’d know how to do it better if you knew how to explain it.”
“Ehhhh,” Tara said. “I think I knew how to do it just fine. She was the one with the problem.”
“I just can’t with you,” Paige chuckled and shook her head.
“It’s not my fault I’m good at stuff,” the platinum blonde said with a shrug.
I pulled the jeep over into a field on the side of the road and hopped out.
We offloaded the bodies of the two men, and I poured the fuel that Tara had gotten from Renee on them, then I used one of the lighters I had confiscated from their pockets and set them ablaze. The ground was damp, I guessed from the river that flowed by just a hundred yards or so away, so there wasn’t much of a chance of the fire spreading.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I want to get out of here before the smell hits.”
Burning human flesh was one of the worst things anybody could smell, and it was by far my least favorite part about burning bodies. I could deal with lighting people on fire, but the smell that came with it was enough to make me gag.
We hopped back into the jeep, then I headed back the way we had come and pulled into the long driveway of the little farmhouse where our jeep was. As the jeep climbed the small hill of the driveway I was reminded of the last time we were there and how we’d taken the refinery. It hadn’t been an easy task, not with all the irreplaceable machinery we had to keep an eye out for, but we had managed. Paige got a nasty gash on her elbow, but other than that, we had all come out unscathed. Our reward had been about fifteen drums of fuel, which was a good bit, but not worth all the work we had done.
I grew more irritated the more I thought about it. Brody had used me and my team to secure the refinery and effectively start a war with his father, the drug kingpin. Not only had we done far too much work for far too little pay, but we had played right into his little game. He wanted to start that war, and he wanted us involved because he knew he was incapable of taking out his father on his own.
I smiled to myself when I thought about how emasculating that must have been for him, to know that he wasn’t able to get back at his father without help. He probably convinced himself that he was just smart enough to make us do the dirty work, but in reality, it was because he couldn’t cut it out in the field anymore. Especially not with the poorly trained soldiers that he had working for him. Part of me wondered then if it had really been a matter of him not trusting his people. Was that really why he hadn’t trained them properly, or did he maybe not know how?
I had gotten out of the service at about the same time that I heard Brody had been in training to lead Ranger units, but I had no evidence that he had passed that training. For all I knew he could’ve been kicked out just after I left, and I never would have known. Even if he ha
dn’t been, I’d been out of the service less than two years when the EMP hit, he couldn’t have led many units during that time, and if he had still been in the Rangers then he most likely wouldn’t have been in Vermont or New York.
Something was starting to not quite add up.
“What are you thinking about over there?” Paige asked as I parked the jeep.
“Just Brody,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Right,” Paige said. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Not right now,” I said. “Let’s get the jeeps back to the refinery and get something to eat.”
“I’ll ride with Tav,” Tara said with a grin.
“Of course, you will,” Paige chuckled, and she hopped out and walked over to our jeep. I tossed her the keys, and she slid into the driver’s seat and started it up.
The brunette followed us back down the driveway, and soon enough we were on the main road headed toward the refinery.
“Are we going to tell everyone about the guys being on drugs?” Tara asked after a moment.
“Not right away,” I said. “We’ll tell Renee first and let her decide how to handle the situation.”
“That seems fair,” the platinum blonde agreed. “We should probably keep an eye out and see if we notice anyone else acting weird, too.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said.
“Do I ever have a bad idea?” she asked with mock horror that I would even imply such a thing.
“Well... there was that one time--” I started.
“Yeah, yeah, that was Anna’s fault,” Tara said with a wave of her hand.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” I chuckled.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said with a shrug. “It’s Anna’s fault.”
“You two,” I laughed. “I swear, you argue like siblings.”
“I pretty much think of all the girls like sisters now,” Tara said. “Or like best friends, maybe. I don’t know. I love them, though, even when we bicker.”
“I know you do,” I told her with a soft smile.
“It just makes me think about poor little Donald and Rosy,” she sighed. “I hope they’re alright.”
“They will be,” I said.
