"You had to say that, didn't you?" Barb asked. "You were there when I spun his jaw off his face. You know why it happened and you fucking well know he deserved it. I didn't provoke the man any more than I provoked the folks back at his camp. I didn’t tolerate his shit and I won’t tolerate theirs. I’ve killed more men than I've kissed and that should tell you something about Barb Maguire."
Despite her rant, both Ragus and Conor were smiling.
“She’s definitely your daughter,” Ragus cracked.
“That she is,” Conor agreed. “So much fire in her blood that sometimes she burns herself.”
“Whatever,” Barb muttered.
23
The appearance of riders at Wayne’s camp had a more pronounced effect than it had at Pastor White’s camp. There was a single guard and, alerted by the sound of approaching hooves, he’d taken cover behind a junk car.
“Mad Mick, party of three,” Conor announced. “We’d prefer a booth. Something toward the back if you have it.”
The sentry eased out from behind the car, his gun lowered now that he recognized the visitors. Conor had spent some time with the man the other night and recognized him too. He was among the party that Wayne had taken to Shuck’s house to bring back items the camp could use. He recalled that the man’s name might be Brad.
“Wayne ever recover from our trip or is he still out cold?” Conor asked.
“Nah, he’s awake,” Brad replied. “It’s been a little lively around here this morning. We had some company show up.”
That immediately got Conor’s attention. “Were you attacked or you mean real company?”
“Real company. As in a social call.”
“Who? Someone we know?”
“Wayne can fill you in on the details. They’re standing around the fire. It’s a guy we knew from Michigan. They must have followed us and just caught up. I don’t know all the details because I’ve been stuck out here.”
“Then pardon us, Brad,” Conor said. “I’d like to hear what the man has to say.”
The firehouse was immediately on the side of the road, much like the pastor’s camp. Such situations were hard to avoid in the narrow, mountainous valleys of the central Appalachian Mountains because the only buildable land tended to be at the very bottom or very top of the mountains. What Wayne did differently than the pastor was he that he had guard posts along the road before you got to his camp.
Brad waved them by, a token gesture since Conor had already spurred his horse into a trot. He was anxious to hear news from outside but thought it unwise to run his horse into an armed camp. He found Wayne, some of his folks, and a contingent of newcomers gathered around a smoky fire across the road from the firehouse. It was along the riverbank, where Wayne’s people gathered to talk about business away from sensitive ears. When Conor’s group appeared, all conversation stopped.
Conor climbed off his horse, searched about for a moment, and then handed the reins off to Ragus. “Water him, please,” he said, pointing toward the river.
Ragus stood there frowning, knowing he’d miss any good conversation. While he was lamenting that, Barb tied her reins over his outstretched forearm. “Water it, please.”
He frowned at her and was greeted with a smirk. Before he could say anything she’d walked off to join her dad.
Conor shook hands with Wayne and a few of the other men. Wayne went out of his way to shake hands with Barb, making certain she was included. To Barb, who had been a little uncertain of how she’d be received, the gesture helped put her at ease. They were treating her with respect and that went a long way with her.
Wayne stepped back and gestured toward a thick-chested Hispanic man standing behind him. “Conor, this is my old friend, Pepe. He lived south of Detroit in Taylor, Michigan. We worked together on a lot of construction jobs over the years.”
Pepe extended a hand, shaking with both Conor and Barb. He was intense and focused in the manner of people who’d either come from a military background, law enforcement, or life on the streets. It was that hyper-aware, switched-on state that bordered on paranoia but kept you alive when random people might want to kill you.
“Good to meet you, Pepe,” Conor said. “How the hell did you ever find their camp back here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Wayne came by my house before he left town, explained where he was going, and how he was going to get there. He told us to get on Route 23 at Toledo because the interstate highways might get gridlocked if cars ran out of fuel. He was right from what we heard. We followed Route 23 all the way here. It wasn’t easy, though. We should have left when Wayne did and stuck with his group.”
“We had symbols prearranged,” Wayne said. “When you’re rough framing a house, you have layout marks that indicate studs, jack studs, trimmers, cripples, and all of the other standard cuts of lumber that make up a house. One of the symbols is a circle with a slash through it. I told Pepe that if we had to get off the road for any reason I would leave that mark on the back of an exit sign.”
“And we found it,” Pepe said.
“Were you able to drive down? You have fuel and working vehicles?” Conor asked.
“No, man. We’re hoofing it. If we’d been in our trucks we may not have noticed his mark, even though we were constantly watching for it. Since we were walking, it was easy to spot. We didn’t know if we should get off at the exit or keep walking down Route 23 but we decided to take a chance. I wanted to see if Wayne and his folks were close by. Most of our people stayed back at the exit while we came looking.”
“We have folks headed there now to bring them in,” Wayne explained.
“So you walked all the way here from Detroit?” Conor asked.
“No,” Pepe said. “We just walked from the Huntington, West Virginia area. We got that far before we lost our vehicles. It’s a long story.”
“And a scary one,” Wayne said.
“Really scary,” Pepe said. “All I’ve got is bad news.”
“We wouldn’t know what to do with good news,” Conor said. “It’s in short supply these days.”
“We stuck around Detroit until it was almost too late. Gangs barricaded the roads and were systematically looting neighborhoods. It turned into a war zone. After they looted a neighborhood they burned it, because that’s what they do in Detroit.”
“They love their Devil’s Night,” Wayne agreed.
Pepe nodded. “The chaos made it difficult to get out of the city, even though we’d hoarded away fuel for the trip. Some of us had campers and some had enclosed tool trailers that we used for our construction businesses. We packed them with hunting gear, camping gear, food, and everything we could carry. We treated it like we were fleeing a wildfire and didn’t know if we’d even have a home to go back to.”
“Sounds like you were prepared,” Wayne said.
Pepe shrugged. “I thought we were. We ran into some hassles on the way but we dealt with it. Flat tires, abandoned vehicles blocking the roads, attempted carjacking, that kind of thing. Then around Chillicothe, Ohio, we ran into the remains of some massive firefight. There were bodies everywhere. Neighborhoods had been burned to the ground. A path of total destruction. We saw some folks going through the dead bodies and at first we thought they were looting them but it turned out they were searching for missing loved ones. When we asked locals what happened, they said it was a group called The Bond.”
“The Bond?” Conor repeated. “What the hell is The Bond? Some kind of gang?”
Wayne shrugged. “No idea.”
“They told us that The Bond hit town a few days ahead of us and set up camp on the outskirts. People thought it was the Army at first because everyone was dressed in Army uniforms, driving old Army vehicles, and using military gear,” Pepe said. “But I don’t think it was the Army.”
“How do you know it wasn’t the Army?” Wayne asked.
“Because if this was the Army, things are worse than we ever imagined. People approached the strangers at
first because they thought they were there to help. Like they were part of some relief effort or something. They found out pretty quickly that wasn’t the case. These guys did whatever they wanted. They took women, food, fuel, and whatever they found. Anyone complained, they died. Anyone stood up to them, they died. Hell, they said The Bond killed people just for target practice. Just to see if they could hit them.”
“How many people are you talking about?” Conor asked. “If people confused it with the Army, you must be talking about a lot of people.”
“Could have been a hundred or more,” Pepe said. “People don’t estimate well when you’re talking about a group that large.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t cross paths with those guys,” Wayne said. “It might not have ended well.”
Pepe’s face darkened. “Oh, we did cross paths with them eventually.”
“You ran into The Bond?” Conor asked.
“Literally,” Pepe said. “We were trying to cover as much distance as possible. Several in my group had relatives in the south with farms. We figured the south would be more hospitable even if we had to rough it for a while. Without power, there just aren’t enough trees and furniture to keep Detroit residents warm this winter. People are going to freeze if they don’t die from the lack of food and clean water first. So anyway, we’re driving as fast as we safely can, just stopping to refuel from our cans and take bathroom breaks. Then we hit the outskirts of Huntington, West Virginia, just as it was getting dark one night. We didn’t want to stop there because there were too many people. We decided to push through and stop once we got past it. We were driving slow, running on our park lights only, and we ran right smack into them. They’d parked in the middle of the damn road.”
“The Bond?” Wayne confirmed. “You’re sure?”
Pepe nodded. “Oh, I’m sure. They just stopped in the road and set up camp right there. Next thing you know, we run up against a roadblock and two armed men. We’d talked about how to handle this situation and we had a plan. At least we thought we did. The lead truck had a heavy bumper and was supposed to push through the roadblock. They were supposed to run over anyone who got in the way but they panicked. They stopped and it all went to shit from there.”
“What happened?” Conor asked.
“We had radios for communicating between vehicles,” Pepe said. “I was in the second vehicle. I immediately told my folks to throw it in reverse and get the hell out of there. Some of the vehicles further back were able to turn around and get away. Some backed into each other in the chaos. Airbags were popping because people were hitting each other. Trailers were jackknifing and getting hung up on the guardrail.”
“What did the sentries at the roadblock do?” Wayne asked.
“I figured that the main force must have been occupied somewhere else. Perhaps searching for food or fuel, maybe off looting somewhere, because there wasn’t a lot of response when the shooting first started. It had to be the same folks, though, because of all that military gear. I would have thought it was the Army too if we hadn’t heard those stories in Chillicothe,” Pepe said.
“How did the shooting start?” Conor asked.
“They tried to pull our lead driver out of his truck. He panicked and shot the sentry. He had his family in the truck with him and he got scared. The guy went down but the second sentry opened up on the driver. I had my rifle ready to go. I popped out the door and nailed the second sentry, then ran up to see if my driver was dead. The sentry I hit wasn’t dead and he was trying to get to his gun. I ran up on him and shot him again. I had a light on my rifle and I could see the guy had a gang tattoo I recognized on his neck.”
“You sure it was a gang tattoo?” Wayne asked.
Pepe raised an eyebrow. “You know my roots, dude. I grew up with that shit. This was ink I recognized. Detroit stuff.”
“Got it,” Wayne replied.
“So my guy’s wife was screaming her head off. I check her husband and he’s dead. I run back and tell my wife she’s got to drive our rig because I’m going to have to drive his truck with his family. Then I noticed that we were boxed in. The truck behind me tried to bang out a U-turn and got hung up. They were stuck. My family and the dead guy’s family were trapped between the roadblock and the stuck vehicle. To make matters worse, I could hear men shouting from the direction of the roadblock. There were more men coming.
“I ran back to the front truck and told my friend’s family they had to get out. Just grab what they could grab and follow me. They were all screaming about their stuff but I told them they had to come with me right then or they were going to die. They piled out and we ran back to my truck. I had a bugout bag behind the seat and I grabbed it. I told my family we were going to have to run and they weren’t any more excited about it than my dead friend’s family. I had to scream at them to get them moving. We just started running. They were all crying and screaming. We ran as hard as we could, trying to find our folks.”
“Did you all reconnect?” Wayne asked. He gestured at Pepe’s companions. “I mean obviously you found some of them but did you find everyone?”
Pepe nodded. “Thank God for the radios. Except for the man who got killed, we didn’t lose anyone. What we lost was gear. About half of the vehicles in our caravan were lost at that roadblock. Some folks eventually figured out they had to disconnect their trailers to get turned around. That meant the vehicles we managed to keep lost any fuel and gear they had in the trailers and campers. That devastated us, man. We were pretty sure we’d make it down south before things fell apart. Now we’re crippled and in survival mode.”
“Did you walk all the way here from Huntington?” Conor asked. “That’s a pretty good haul.”
“No,” Pepe said. “We made room in the vehicles we kept and crammed inside them. Had to throw away a lot of gear, though. We made it to Pikeville, Kentucky, before we burned up the last of our fuel. We’ve been walking a couple of days.”
“I’m sorry, man. I know what that’s like,” Wayne said, patting his old friend on the shoulder.
Recounting his experience had depressed Pepe. His excitement at finding Wayne’s group was replaced with hopelessness as he remembered their situation. “We’re pretty much fucked,” he said. “We had a plan. We had enough gear to at least get us started. Some of us lost everything except the clothes and gear on our backs. Our friends who managed to keep their vehicles had to dump part of their gear to make room for us. We should have left when you guys did, Wayne. We might have made it then.”
Wayne shrugged. “You see how far we got, man. We didn’t make it, either.”
“What are you going to do? What’s your plan?” Conor asked. He did his best to make it not sound challenging, like he was trying to run Pepe and his group off. He’d sounded that way when he’d first encountered Wayne and he was trying to do better, trying to improve his people skills. Like Barb, he was a work in progress.
Pepe didn’t take offense at the question. “We have to get off the road. I don’t think we have any choice.”
“Why?” Wayne asked.
“Because I think The Bond is headed this way.”
24
“Wait,” Conor said, holding up a hand. “You haven’t run into them since Huntington. What makes you think they’re headed this way?”
Pepe shook his head as if trying to rid it of a bad memory. “We don’t know for certain, but once we literally ran into them, several things we’d seen along the road fell into place for me. There was a lot of devastation on Route 23. Massive campsites with a lot of trash around them.”
“That could have been anyone, Pepe,” Wayne said. “There are a lot of people on the road and a lot of them are headed south.”
“We saw a lot of that, but this was different. There were signs of gunfire everywhere but these people don’t just shoot up a place, they devastate it. We found spent 40mm grenade casings along the route. Twice we found discarded rocket launcher tubes near buildings that had been blown all to
hell. None of that hit me until we found out about this group. We were apparently following in their tracks on our entire journey.”
“And you’re certain the things you found are tied to this group you call The Bond?”
“Hell, man, how can I be certain of anything?”
“It’s possible they are thinking the same way I thought,” Wayne told Conor. “They realize the communities along the interstate will be picked over and they’re hitting smaller routes.”
“I wonder who they are,” Conor said. “What is The Bond? Why that name?”
“I don’t know,” Pepe said. “They’re proud of the name though.”
“Why do you say that?” Conor asked.
“They leave their mark.”
“Like a sign? Do they write it out with spray paint or something?”
Pepe laughed coldly but there was no mirth in his eyes. “They write it but not in spray paint. A couple of times we found it written in the dead.”
“They carved it into the bodies?” Wayne asked, appalled but trying to grasp what Pepe was alluding to.
“Sometimes. Other times they twisted the dead up until they spelled the name out with the bodies. We found that twice.”
“That’s fucking sick,” Barb said.
“That doesn’t sound like military men unless they’ve gone very, very bad,” Wayne said. “The people I served with wouldn’t do shit like that.”
“The people we spoke to in Chillicothe were certain they were military,” Pepe said. “They had military weapons and older military trucks. They wore uniforms.”
“They might be running those multi-fuel trucks,” Conor said.
“Just what I was thinking,” Wayne said. “They’ll run off anything petroleum-based. Diesel, gas, heating oil, aviation fuel, you name it.”
“Man, I hate to ask but do you know of any place we can hole up?” Pepe asked. “I’m not asking for charity. We’ll try to fend for ourselves until we can move further south but we need to get off the road for a little while. The children are cold and exhausted. Everyone is terrified of The Bond catching up with us. We need a place to stop for a few weeks and regroup. After that, we’ll continue on south and hope we can outrun the winter weather.”
Brutal Business: Book Three in the Mad Mick Series Page 15
