A Small Town

by Thomas Perry

  He told them of running around the rest of the building to find another open door, or even a window he could break to get in behind the woman, but he hadn’t done that. Actually, all he had done was run to Joe Lambert’s car parked down the street, open it with the key he had taken from Lambert, get inside, start the engine, and keep his head low while he looked and listened.

  He waited, but the next thing he saw that he could interpret was the other car that the group had driven from Arkansas. It pulled out of the parking lot behind city hall and took off fast. He could see only two men in it, but he had decided to assume that the other three must be accounted for, meaning not his problem. At that point all he could think to do was to follow the car that was getting away.

  Later Lee Wolf had to admit modestly that he was proud to have been the last man to leave the city of Weldonville that night. He had stayed the longest, “stood my ground the longest,” as he described it, and then hung back to ensure the others wouldn’t be overtaken, or even pursued.

  When Edison Leonard called him on the cell phone and told him that Holliman had been shot in the head and McKinney had been hit in the neck with an ax and Lambert had never been able to crawl out of the council chamber, he had wept. He had pulled himself together after a few seconds and told his own story and wept again, more heroically. The more he told the others about his part in the battle, the more certainty he felt about the details, particularly the reasons for each of his actions.

  He also found it necessary to mention that he had not only heard the sirens coming toward city hall as they had, but he had also stayed long enough to see the SWAT team running along the back street toward the building. Leonard and Mann should never doubt that they had done the right thing in getting out, because what they had not seen coming had been worse than what they had seen. The truth was that the SWAT team originated in Lee Wolf’s head after they’d all left town, and the sirens had been the sounds of two police officers in two cars making all the noise they could because nobody else was coming.

  The three surviving escapees drove hard for the first three hours, and that brought them onto the flatlands of Kansas on Interstate 70. They stopped for a break after that, but not together. If the pursuers in Colorado knew anything about them, it was that they’d come and gone in two cars, so on the way out, they made their single stop for gas, a restroom break, and breakfast in different towns, and not on the interstate highway, where everything was likely to be recorded by surveillance cameras.

  Nearly twelve hours and six hundred miles of driving brought them as far as Kansas City, Missouri. Lee Wolf didn’t mind being the one who was alone in a car and had to do all the driving himself. He had confidence that in any foreseeable situation, he was more likely to survive than Lonny Mann or Edison Leonard. It wasn’t something he would have said aloud, but he was sure of it.

  He didn’t call them on the burner cell phones again until he was on U.S. 24 and leaving Kansas City. He reminded them of the directions to where they were going and made sure that Leonard could recite them into the phone. He also told them that when they reached the end of the open highway part of the trip, they should pull over and wait for him to catch up.

  He said, “We members of the Swift Sword of the Savior are a bunch of violent lunatics, and if that’s what you are, you keep track of every bit of news you can get. If they’ve heard about what happened in Colorado, they might assume the next people coming up that road toward them will be cops of one sort or another. The safest way is to go up with me.”

  “Where is the boundary line?” asked Leonard. “Where’s the place where they might start to get nervous?”

  “It all depends,” said Wolf. “These are free men, and free men think for themselves. If they recognize you, there won’t be a problem. But if they don’t, it’s best to stick close to me.”

  Late that afternoon, Lee Wolf came upon the other car parked a mile from the start of the road leading up into the hills. He had made a lengthy stop in the last town to do some shopping, so they had been waiting for some time. He rolled down his window. “If you’ve got any guns in the car with you, put them in the trunk now.”

  “We already did.”

  “Good. Then follow me.” He drove past them and up the smaller road. The next half hour was spent listening to the high whine of the gears as the cars climbed. The road wound and half-twisted to find the vulnerabilities of the land, the places where pavement could be laid over rock, the spots where a steep incline was made easier by using rocks and concrete to extend its length. Some stretches rose until there seemed to be no more road, but when the car got there, a hairpin turn sent them upward in the other direction.

  Near the top of the hill, the road straightened and even widened a little, and there was a gravel jog off to the right into the trees. The two cars took it and kept going for about a mile until it opened into the grassy meadow with the buildings on it. Lee Wolf set the speed. It was a pace he had chosen to be respectful. It respected people’s concern for any children who might be playing there, or anyone who might be annoyed by cars kicking up dust, or the ones who were always on the lookout for hostile intruders and didn’t like having to look up from whatever work they were doing to make sure a gun was in reach.

  As the two cars slowly moved across the meadow, people came out to smile and wave at Lee Wolf. He drove to the front of the plain clapboard structure where he lived and waited until the other car pulled in beside him. Edison Leonard and Lonny Mann got out of their car, and he said, “You can go right in if you want. I stopped for some groceries on the way, and I’ve got to get them to the kitchen.”

  He backed up about twenty yards to the big cookhouse, opened his trunk, got out of the car, and began to unload. People who had stopped what they’d been doing to see him gathered to help. He had several five-gallon bottles of drinking water, two cases of egg cartons, bags of rice, sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder. He had two crates of fresh meat—beef, chicken, pork, sausages, turkey—all packed in ice. His biggest investment had been in canned goods. There were two dozen canned hams, flats of canned chili, soups, beans, vegetables, fruits, and tomato sauce. He had cases of beer and soft drinks, and a dozen bottles of scotch and a dozen of vodka.

  As people helped unload, they talked. “So, you’re back,” said a man named Bob Carpenter. “You okay?”

  “We had kind of a rough time,” said Lee. “We lost three good men. I brought the other two back with me. But I thought it would cheer us up to stop and pick up some supplies on the way home.”

  The canned, bottled, and preserved food went on the shelves in the big pantry of the cookhouse, but the perishables had to be refrigerated. The camp’s icehouse was only a few yards away, built from a set of nineteenth-century plans reprinted in a survivalist manual. It was a brick structure, mostly underground, lined in zinc and cork with sawdust around the sides. The group had harvested big squares of ice from a shallow lake nearby during the winter, replenished now and then during trips to town. The icehouse was also equipped with a refrigeration unit that could be powered by a gasoline generator, but so far it had never been used.

  Lee Wolf had been confident that when people helped unload and saw what he had brought to contribute, their reaction would be good, and it was. He had been careful to include things that the end-of-the-worlders would consider practical, and also things that would brighten the outlook of the non-fanatics who drank and gave their kids candy.

  One of them said, “You had three die. Nobody just got wounded?”

  “They all did,” said Wolf. “They kept fighting until they got a fatal hit. I left here with them because they were men I respected. I respect them more now that I saw them die.”

  “We’ve been watching the news online, but so far we haven’t seen anything about it.”

  Lee Wolf looked at the man in surprise. “Now that is strange. We actually took over city hall in Weldonville, Colorado, for a while. I would have thought that the feds would be so proud of
defeating six men with only a couple hundred agents that they’d put it on every screen twenty-four hours a day.”

  A man named Andy Potts said, “They might be reenacting it for public consumption before they release it. They’ve been doing that since the sixties.”

  “Could be,” said Wolf. He never disagreed with Andy, who was always looking for a chance to convince people that the news releases about the government were the secret disinformation projects of Hollywood Jews.

  Wolf went back to his cottage, where Edison Leonard and Lonny Mann were eating hamburgers at his kitchen table, which was covered with bags and wrappers. Leonard said, “Want a burger?”

  “Maybe,” Wolf said. He sat down and felt the bag, which was still a bit above room temperature. “How old are they?”

  “We bought them just before we met up with you. Maybe forty-five minutes.”

  He opened one and began to eat. “Thank you.”

  Mann said, “We saw you bought a bunch of stuff too. What was all that?”

  “Mostly stuff for the whole congregation. It’s important to contribute, and it saves somebody a trip to town and showing his face another day. Have you thought about what’s next for you?”

  “Not me,” said Lonny Mann. “Not much, anyway.”

  “Me neither,” Edison Leonard said. “I’ve been thinking I’ll go back to Michigan for a while, and get in touch with Reggie Varga. If she can get me fresh ID and a real passport, things might work out for me yet.”

  Wolf said, “You might want to give it a little time before you make a move.”

  “I thought this place was safe,” Leonard said. “No police know about it yet, and all that.”

  “All true,” Wolf said. “It’s safe. The last place we were was Oklahoma five years ago. We all went our separate ways, and now we’re back together. We’re in a quiet regrouping and rebuilding phase now. This land was owned by the uncle of one of our members. We pooled our money and bought a plot right in the middle of a lot of land he owns, so there won’t be any neighbors for a very long time.”

  “Then maybe we should stay for a while.”

  “I think that’s the safest,” said Wolf.

  “How long should we stay?” Leonard asked.

  “I can’t tell what the people in Weldonville know about us. They could have surveillance footage of our cars coming into town or leaving. If they do, they might be able to pick us out on the recordings from Interstate 70 or U.S. 24. That would bring them pretty close—to Kansas City.”

  “Do you think they have it?”

  “I don’t know. But it never hurts to be careful. We can’t trade in those two cars or report anything about them to any DMV or insurance company. Eventually they’ll have to be chopped or driven off a cliff in a remote place.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Lonny Mann. “Leaving here is going to be a lot of trouble.”

  “And it’s not a good idea to rush it,” said Leonard.

  Lee Wolf sighed. “If you’ll be here a while, then you’ll want to make yourselves indispensable members of society.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know what your financial situation is after only two years out of prison, but if you have money, share some of it as soon as possible—buy supplies, ammo, and so on. When there’s work to be done, be first in line to help.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Watch them closely. If they think you’re not helping and food gets scarce, you’ll have about one more day here. If you do something they don’t like, you’ll have less.”

  31

  Leah drove from town to town throughout the Ozark region, exploring. There was Bentonville, Arkansas, a built-up, sophisticated place because it was where Walmart had its headquarters, and money had a way of overflowing into its surroundings. There was Eureka Springs, which was partly like a museum, with its two nineteenth-century hotels and steep streets, and partly like an art colony. She visited Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas, Huntsville, Rogers, Siloam Springs, and Springdale.

  The Ouachita Mountains had some high, rough country, and so did the Boston Mountains. She kept passing signs commemorating Civil War battles where up to three thousand men were killed over territory that must have seemed as remote and wild as Amazonia to some of them.

  Lake of the Ozarks turned out to be a huge expanse of water full of giant cruisers, speedboats, Jet Skis, and drunken partiers. The minute Leah saw it, she was sure nobody would hide there.

  She stopped in many small towns and wandered around. If there was a large gun store, she went there to look and listen, hoping to find people who were trying to make large purchases of ammunition or multiple identical firearms. She didn’t find any who made her suspicious enough to follow. She also spent time at food markets watching for people buying enough food for a few dozen people. She saw none of those either.

  It occurred to Leah that if a fanatical group based in Oklahoma disbanded and had come back together to start up again in Missouri or Arkansas, they would have needed to find jobs. She might be able to use this information by making a list of the employers who hired large numbers of new arrivals without requiring degrees or credentials, and then watching the doors at shift changes.

  Leah wasn’t looking just for the members of the Swift Sword of the Savior. She also had to look for people who were looking for the Swift Sword of the Savior. She didn’t want to find the group right as an army of federal investigators arrived.

  While Leah was interested in the domestic terrorists, she had to be sure not to miss any federal agents. Either group would be carrying concealed weapons on their bodies and probably long guns in their vehicles. Seeing a suspicious bulge might be less than conclusive in this region because Arkansas was a “shall issue” state, where getting a concealed-weapon permit meant asking for one, and Missouri, a short drive to the north, didn’t require any permit.

  Leah had spent her working life around law enforcement people of all kinds. She had some confidence that she could pick out a federal agent. She favored looking at shoes and watches. Usually if the person, male or female, was a federal officer, he would wear shoes with rubber soles and sturdy leather uppers, often with roomy box-toes reminiscent of combat boots. The agents also disproportionately favored watches with thin cases, dark faces with large numbers, a sweep second hand, and a fabric band. The women didn’t wear shorts or skirts unless every single other woman was wearing them, and no tank tops. They never wore dangling earrings or hoops.

  In their photographs, the male members of the Swift Sword of the Savior looked a lot like farmers or tradesmen. They wore blue jeans, baseball caps, T-shirts with long-sleeve shirts over them, and usually some kind of work boot. Leah had seen a number of photographs of Lee Wolf and the accomplices arrested for helping him with the bombings, arsons, and murders—both surveillance shots and mug shots. The photographs had not included any women.

  She had decided that the women wouldn’t be wearing overly conservative, modest clothes. If a woman was up to no good, she would want to look like the majority. Leah also didn’t believe that the motivation for any group that would include Lee Wolf could be religion. Their record of arson and murder proved it wasn’t Jesus because they thought like Jesus; it was Jesus because saying the group was Christian meant “You’d better look just like me.”

  Leah Hawkins watched and listened in six towns on the average day, mostly near the border between Arkansas and Missouri, but nothing led her closer to the place where the three killers were hiding.

  At night Leah sat in her hotel with her laptop on, trying to find her way onto the site that was being used by the Swift Sword of the Savior. Each night she gave it another try. She had gotten into the dark web through Tor and tried finding the site by typing in the group’s name, all the subjects she could remember that white militias liked to talk about, various names for the region, and even scrambled letters made from the name of the group. Nothing worked. Finally, as she became more
impatient, she looked at the date on her computer.

  She typed “September 30,” and then scrolled through long lists of posts, sites, updates on things she had no time to identify, and then stopped. She clicked on something that said, “Today’s Subversive Thought,” posted August 21.

  There was a male voice. “It’s getting to be the tail end of summer, and you know what that means. It’s the time of year when most of the country’s kids go back to school. I understand that in some places like California, a lot of them have started already. The whole idea is to get another great big dose of propaganda to socialize the kids.”

  “Is that you?” Leah whispered. “It sounds like you.” Only a few weeks ago she had spent a nightmarish evening listening to his voice.

  “They learn to love their neighbor, regardless of which sex he is, and do unto others, and share. I guess you could see that as all one lesson.”

  Yes, it was definitely Lee Wolf.

  “And then they learn a lot of probably useless stuff,” the voice said. “They study languages. When I was a kid, they used to make you learn French. They called it the language of culture, which is still important to a lot of rich people. Their idea of culture is ordering fancy food in French restaurants. None of them ever got good enough to carry on a real conversation, and who actually needs to talk to French people anyway? That’s kind of tapered off. Now it’s Spanish. They’re taking over this country, so we may as well speak our new language.

  “The plain truth is that if anybody in power had a brain, they wouldn’t force children to go sit indoors and be indoctrinated with the boatload of stupid and self-punishing propaganda that was made up by all the spinsters, female and male, who never learned to be strong, quick, or brave, and think those qualities don’t exist or don’t matter anymore.