by Steven Kagey
Lillian lowered her head and mumbled, “I’m sorry, Brian.”
Everyone talking at the same time and Lillian’s ignorance was only adding to the frustration and mental anguish surging through Brian’s mind. He just turned and walked away, so angry he was shaking. He was angry at Craig’s truck. He was angry at Brandon for abandoning his post. He was angry at himself for not setting up a better defense for the house sooner, and for not completing the hidden door to the storage room months ago. Soon he found himself out in the woods alone and far enough away from the house that he could not hear noise from the homestead. He dropped to his knees and sobbed. Everything that he had done to protect his family and friends, his wife and little girl, was all for naught. Had he failed as a father and husband?
No! Someone made him fail. It wasn’t Craig or his truck. It wasn’t Brandon. It wasn’t even Lillian. It was the men that came to his home and stole everything! It was their superiors that instructed them to do it! They would pay. Brian had already set in motion their return to the homestead so vengeance could be served.
He sat for a few minutes, his mind racing as he pieced together the plan of attack on those responsible. A rustling in the leaves broke his thoughts and he looked up to see Beast come through the trees. The dog ran up to him and started licking his face since Brian was sitting on the ground at head level with him.
He took a deep breath and stood up with a renewed vigor and purpose. He would not let his friends and family down again. Brian headed back to the house and discovered everyone on the back deck eating.
Evelyn ran up to him. “Are you okay?”
“I am. I came up with a plan.”
“A plan for what?” Sean and Craig said at the same time.
Brian noted that the food everyone was eating was not the rice and canned vegetables that were left on the front porch. “Where did this food come from?”
“Those dumbasses didn’t touch the refrigerators or freezers,” Evelyn said.
“Makes sense. All the other houses they ransacked didn’t have power, so the food was probably beginning to spoil in the fridges. They didn’t even think about it when they came to ours, even with us having power.”
“They didn’t pay attention to the greenhouse or chicken coop either.”
“They hit a major score in the basement,” Brian said. “Once they found that they stopped searching. Too bad they started with the trailers.”
Thank God they didn’t touch the chickens. We are going to need them and if anyone is going to kill that rooster it’s going to be me.
Brian stepped to the head of the tables and looked at everybody. “First, this is no one’s fault except for the ones that came here and did this. They would have eventually found us here, and even at full preparation we wouldn’t have been ready to fight off that many trained, armed individuals without some loss of life on our part. Even with the advance warning of seeing them come up the driveway we would have lost.” Everyone was nodding in understanding. “Now that they have been here, we can prepare for it, and when they come back, we will be ready. They will not have the element of surprise. We will.”
“Why would they be coming back?” Doc said. “They took everything we have!”
“Doc, I am glad you asked. Everyone needs to know I intend to fight these men. To the death. Hopefully their deaths, but anyone who continues to stay here needs to know that I may be putting you in harm’s way. Every family here needs to talk it over and decide if fighting them is potentially worth dying over.”
Brian glanced at Evelyn. They hadn’t had a chance to discuss it, but they had spoken about this type of thing in the past and were on the same page about how it would play out. She gave him an affirmative nod.
Having had the same unspoken conversation with Christina and his parents, Sean said, “Our family is in.”
Craig didn’t even look at Lillian. “We’re in.” Brian looked over at Lillian, who gave a quick nod.
“You know we can’t fight,” Doc said, “but we’re with you all the same.”
“That’s fine, Doc, you know we need you anyway. I actually want you and Lillian to be at our fallback location away from the fighting. If someone does get hurt, I need you two to be able to fix them up.”
Lillian sat up sharply. “Why would I be with him?”
“You two are our medical team,” Brian said. “You are his nurse in all of this.”
“You do realize he is a veterinarian right? He cannot work on people,” Lillian said with an attitude.
Brian stood there with his mouth open. “You’re not serious, are you? If someone gets hurt, where are we supposed to take them? The hospital? I wonder how that worked out for those that burned to death yesterday.” He stared hard at Lillian. “If one of us happens to get shot, who is going to remove the bullet? You?”
Lillian remained silent.
“Doc has the training, equipment, and supplies to take care of all of our medical needs. How many bullets had you had to remove before, Doc?”
“At least ten,” Doc answered, “from police K-9s to horses that were shot by mistake during hunting season. While I can’t take care of all the group’s medical needs, I can handle most, and combat triage and surgery is one of the things I can handle.”
Lillian raised her hand to object. “You had your chance to help us find a people doctor for the group,” Brian snapped. “You said it was too embarrassing to ask them about it, remember? So here we are, in the situation that this group has prepared for over the past few years. Our best medical option is Dr. Hughes. No offense, Doc.”
“None taken,” Doc said with a grin.
“Now, are you going to do your part and be his nurse and assistant or do we have a problem, Lillian?”
“I’ll help him,” Lillian said, raising her hands off the table in a sign of submission.
“We’re with you brother,” Sean said, “but you realize they took all of our weapons right? How are we supposed to fight them and win with no weapons? And as Doc asked a second ago, why would they be coming back?”
“Let me check out the house and gather some things, then I’ll go over the plan and answer your questions,” Brian said.
The deputies and guardsmen had been there for over five hours looting the place. They made off with a substantial score of goods and Brian would make sure they paid for those things in blood. It was getting dark, and the group got up and went about picking up all the clothes and household items that were strewn all over the ground from the trailers being ransacked.
Chapter 15
“They took every shred of food from our trailer,” Christina griped.
Everyone else said the same and then they started talking about how long the food they had was going to last them.
“Please follow me down into the basement,” Brian said when he overheard the conversation. “Cross your fingers.”
When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he sighed in relief. The room outside the storage room was wall to wall shelving, filled top to bottom with gray totes. “Please grab a tote from the bottom shelf. Open it and tell me what you find.”
Everyone moved forward and opened a tote.
“This one is baby clothes,” Carol said.
Craig said, “This one is filled with kids’ shoes.”
“Women’s clothes,” Christina called out.
“Okay. Now move all of the clothing or shoes out of the tote,” Brian said.
“Oh my God I love you so much!” Evelyn yelled. “Will you marry me, Brian Stewart?”
The rest of the group laughed, and there were multiple expressions of relief and happiness. Every tote was filled with what the label said on the outside. Clothing for different age ranges, from babies to adults, multiple pairs of shoes and boots to fit all sizes from toddler up to adult.
Brian had been saving all of Avery’s clothing and shoes that she had grown out of and had spent a whole summer hitting up yard sales and stockpiling clothing that was priced at twenty-fiv
e to fifty cents because you never knew who you were going to come across that needed clothes or shoes in an end of world scenario.
The real prize Brian was now showing everyone was that a layer on the bottom of each tote was a hidden food stash. Some totes had a gallon Mylar bag of rice, beans, or flour. Some had half a case of MREs and freeze dried camping food, and two even had a layer of smaller soup cans with soups and broths that would enhance the beans and rice.
“It by no means makes up for the food they took,” Brian said, “but with what they left and what we have here we should be able to eat for a few weeks. By that time, we better have gotten back some of what was stolen from us to keep us going through the winter.”
The group's spirits were somewhat lifted, and everyone carried some of the hidden food upstairs. Evelyn stayed behind and hugged Brian.
“I love you so much,” she said. “I’m glad I married a paranoid prepper.”
Brian examined the looted stockroom. They had taken every shred of food but hadn’t touched any of the medical or camping supplies on the shelves except for strewing it across the floor. All of the ammo was gone, along with all of the alcohol that had been stored to barter with.
He went upstairs to the hall closet to see if their bug out bags were still in there. Luckily Evelyn had repacked the one that he’d dumped out on the counter two days earlier. Brian believed on redundancy in survival items. Each bag contained three MREs, one a day for three days, six pouches of camping food which weighed next to nothing, two a day for three days, and each one contained a 3600 calorie Mainstay emergency food ration bar, which was also enough food for three days. For Evelyn, Avery, and himself, there were nine days of food in those bags, which would augment the group's food supplies too.
Next, Brian went out into the garage, up into the attic, and dug around in the insulation. He pulled out two four-foot-long, five-inch-wide PVC pipes with screw on end caps and brought them down.
Daniel saw the pipes Brian was carrying. “What are those for?”
Brian set them on the counter and unscrewed one of the end caps, pulling out a hunting rifle that was vacuum sealed along with a couple boxes of ammo. The next tube held an old 12-gauge shotgun that was vacuum sealed, a few boxes of double ought buckshot, and a box of sabot slugs.
“How many more of those do you have?” Daniel asked gleefully.
“Only these two, but we’re a lot better off now weapon wise than we were a few seconds ago.” Brian went to the filing cabinet and opened a drawer. “I’ve got one more weapon.” He pulled out a cheap forty caliber pocket pistol with four full magazines.
“So we have three guns?” Sean asked. “A deer rifle, shotgun, and a pistol?”
“Yup,” Brian said. “I can do a lot with these three, how about you?”
“Dad, we have one more weapon,” Avery said.
“No, we only have these three, Avery.”
“No, Dad, I have my AR-15 in my room.”
Immediately angered, Brian said, “What do you mean your AR is in your room? Young lady, what have I told you about going in the gun cabinet without permission? And how did you get the key to it? What were you doing with it?”
“I asked Mom if I could get it out and clean it. Remember you told me to clean it this week? After we shot last weekend and I didn’t get a chance to then,” Avery said.
Brian looked at Evelyn, and she nodded.
“Well shit,” Brian chuckled. “Looks like this plan is coming together after all.”
“That still leaves us with four weapons against their twenty-eight or more,” Daniel said. “What kind of defense can we mount with that?”
“Oh, this is not a defense,” Brian said. “This is an offensive plan of attack. We are simply bringing them here to us where we have home field advantage. If all goes well, we will have their twenty-eight weapons when this is all said and done.” He motioned for everyone to grab the weapons on the counter. “Avery, go get your AR-15.”
“I don’t have any ammo for it. They took it all.”
“I have it covered,” Brian said. “Head back out to the picnic tables.”
He stopped by the office to grab some printer paper then got his plate carrier and kit out of the closet. His kit had six loaded AR magazines strapped to the front, giving them 180 rounds for the AR-15.
***
“You asked earlier why they would be coming back,” Brian said when everyone was gathered at the picnic tables. “I told Captain Wilkerson to send them back out here in three days.”
“You what!” Christina shouted.
“We discussed that whoever is here intends to fight them and maybe be put in harm’s way, right?”
Christina recalled that conversation and realized that they had agreed they would fight. Brian saw the change in her facial expression and knew she had her answer.
“Why would the captain send them back out just because you told him to?” Sean asked.
“It seems he is an unwilling participant in their plans to seize food and weapons from civilians. He said that some boys from Homeland Security showed up and took control over the region, asking local law enforcement and the Guard to go door to door. The only reason he didn’t resign was so that he could fight it from the inside and try to make sure no innocent civilians got hurt or killed.”
“What makes you think you can trust him?” Daniel asked with some annoyance in his voice. “He could be sending them back out tomorrow, or they could come back with a hundred men.”
“I approached the conversation from a military oath perspective, and I could tell by talking to him that he wasn’t happy with what was happening. I could see the remorse in his eyes, and I think he is the one that stopped them from hitting me anymore and had the medic bandage me up.”
“As far as them coming back with a hundred men, they don’t have that many, and I’m pretty sure the new sheriff will want to come back out personally after I goaded him when they were leaving. I would like for us to have all of our preparations for them done within the next 24 hours in case they do come early.”
Chapter 16
Brian laid out the plan and drew the property on the paper so everyone could see what and where he was describing.
“Craig,” he said, “the first thing I need you to do is get the tractor in the shed running. Then we need to unhook and pull Doc and Janice’s car away from their trailer and pull your trailer up onto the pad.
“Once you’re done with that, I need you to come up with a way to pump gasoline through a mister system. I bought one at Costco that you hook up to a garden hose. I was going to put it on the back porch next summer to cool everything off. Now I need you to install it around the front porch and then retrofit it to pump out gas instead of water.
“I need the porch light modified so it sends out a shower of sparks without tripping the breaker.”
“I can do that,” Craig said, looking confused.
“I’m expecting them to perform a SWAT-like entry on the front door,” Brian explained. “When they line up to break the door down someone is going to start the sprayer and mist the front porch with gas, then hit the light switch to throw sparks and create a nice fireball that engulfs them.”
“How the hell did you think of something like that?” Doc asked.
Brian smiled. “I read about it in a book called Secession by Joe Nobody. It was used against a SWAT team raiding a house. I thought it was a brutal but ingenious idea when I read it, though I never thought I would be setting it up on my own front porch to use against people trying to enter my house. But here we are.”
“Sounds evil,” Doc said, shaking his head. “I almost feel sorry for whatever poor bastard gets to experience it. Almost,”
“Evelyn and Christina,” Brian continued, “I need you two to remove the banister and railing from the front porch. Then I need you to get some heavy duty eyelets from the parts bins in the shop and screw them in twelve inches up on the posts around the porch. Once you’re done with tha
t I need you to get a coil of cabling and secure it to the house next to the steps and then thread it through all the eyelets and into the basement through the window. Leave enough slack so that the cable will lay down under the lip of the porch and in the crevice behind the steps and not be seen.”
Christina frowned. “What are we doing that for?”
“After their entry team is on the porch and trying to come in the front door. We’ll spray the gas and ignite it. They will attempt to get away from the fire and will go off the edge of the porch as fast as possible. The cable will be secured to some weights from an old weight bench in the basement. When the time is right, the weights will be dropped and that cable will snap up to the height of the eyelets and will have tension on it. When they try to get off the porch, they’ll trip and fall.” Brian smirked at his wife. “I told you I would use that weight set one day.”
Evelyn gave him a dirty look.
Daniel asked, “So they are burned and tripped, then they just get up more pissed?”
“No. Well, we hope not. I need you to pound some rebar spikes into the flowerbed right off the porch and then sharpen them with the grinder. Make sure they’re far enough in the ground they can’t be pushed over easily and try to hide them next to the plants. When they trip coming off the porch, hopefully they land on our makeshift punji pit, and it takes them out of commission.” Brian said. He expected Evelyn to have a problem with the flowerbed getting ruined, but she said nothing.
Doc asked, “We’re not going to rub feces on the spikes like the Viet-Cong did, are we?”
“No,” Brian answered. “That was to cause long term infection and eventual death on anyone that survived a fall into a pit. The guys that fall on our spikes won’t live long enough to worry about infection.”
Doc looked relieved.
“Daniel, after you get done with the spikes I need you to go in the shed for some white boxes with bright orange labels on them,” Brian said. “You will find two bags of powder in each. Grab a bucket and lid, empty and mix those powders in the bucket, and seal it up. Get some construction adhesive and go down to the gate. The far stone post on the left side has a hollow old steel water tank inside of it. I need you to pull the stones off the back and put the bucket inside. Inside you will find another stone with a four-inch hole cut into it. When you put the stones back, make sure the one with the hole is centered on the post and bucket.”
