“Things are about to get messy,” he mumbled to himself. He looked towards Nathan’s house and started in that direction.
Jessica was just getting out of bed. She was sitting up on the edge of the bed, with her feet barely touching the floor. She grabbed the dirty socks she had aired out all night, gave them a sniff, and jolted her head back.
“I gotta get some cleaning done,” she said to herself. Grabbing her metal cooking pan, she dipped it in a five-gallon bucket of water and heated the pan of water to a boil. She took a drink and used what was left to brush her teeth and wash herself. Her shoulder was still sore from her gunshot wound, but she had a way of pushing through the pain. She soaked her dirty socks in the water and added some lye soap. Using her one good arm, she massaged them in the water and then wrung them out. Her socks wouldn’t smell like fragrances, but at least they would be cleaner.
Jess opened the door of her trailer and tossed the wet socks over the door to catch some breeze and sunlight. That’s when she heard the faint sounds of a man yelling in the distance.
Jess put some shoes on her bare feet and grabbed her Governor. She ran outside and was met by Denny, who had also heard the yells.
Denny started towards the sound, which was coming from the northeast.
“Be careful. It could be a trap,” Jess said.
“I’m always careful,” he replied. “Are you coming?”
Jess hesitated, considering if she would be a liability with only one good arm.
“I think I had better sit this one out, Den. I’m no use until I can get close enough to use a pistol.”
Zig, who had been sitting on his deck, saw Denny and Jess walking by as they talked. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“We heard a man’s voice coming from the northeast,” Jess explained.
“Are you going to need some help?”
Denny looked at the sling on Jess’s arm and then back in the direction of the yells.
“Yeah,” Denny said, not taking his eyes off the direction of the sound. “Go get Ash. Let Nathan sit this one out. We’ll wait here for Ash; then me, him and Jess will check it out.”
“All right. I’ll be right back,” Zig said.
“I guess I’m in,” Jess said.
Meanwhile, at the firewatch post on the northeast side of the camp, along the railroad tracks where Scott had made his hasty retreat with the bus, a man named Chuck was on his firewatch post when he saw a man walking down the tracks and heading toward the camp. Chuck had abandoned his post, which was a perch above an old railcar that sat at the junction of the two railroad tracks that converged in Gorham. He had seen the man, through his binoculars, stepping out of the woods and onto the track that headed into camp.
Chuck had unhitched his horse and rode it a half mile northeast to meet the man. Chuck yelled at him, “KEEP YOUR HANDS UP WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!”
Chuck was off of his horse and walking up to the stranger, who had a pistol in his hand. Both Chuck and the stranger were pointing their guns at each other.
The stranger, being arrogant and argumentative, said, “You put your hands up first.”
“I’M NOT TELLING YOU AGAIN,” Chuck yelled at the stranger.
“I’m not telling you again, either,” the stranger arrogantly said.
Denny, Jess, Zig, and Ash came riding up on their horses at a high gallop and dismounted before they came to a full stop.
Now everybody was pointing their rifles and pistols at the stranger.
“Who are you?” Jess barked.
“Nobody of consequence,” the stranger replied, not taking his pistol off of Chuck.
“If you’re not anybody of consequence, then you must be somebody irrelevant and nobody’s gonna miss you.”
“Why don’t you just drop the gun?” Zig asked in a calm voice.
With that, the stranger had identified Zig as weak. He saw his kindness as weakness and was actively evaluating every person in the group. He saw Ash and Chuck as strong and commanding, although Chuck wasn’t so smart riding in alone; he saw Jess as inquisitive, but was reserving an opinion of her.
The stranger was checking out Jess and asked, “What happened to your arm, there? Did you get shot?”
Jess and Denny knew immediately that he was a Southside Raider.
“I was wondering, I’ve lost some friends and was wondering if you’ve seen them?”
The man began looking towards the town and could see some of the vehicles that the raiders had driven into the town for the raid.
“I think they’ve been here,” he said.
Jess was also doing some evaluating of her own. She recognized him as being a man with a personality disorder.
Antisocial…he definitely has a touch of antisocial personality disorder, she reasoned. She had noticed how arrogant and overly confident he was, despite the fact he was outnumbered and outgunned. Somehow, in his mind, he saw a way that he could still come out on top.
“If you’re not going to tell me where my friends are, I’m afraid I have no further use for you.”
Suddenly, everybody in the group had a sinking feeling in their chest that things were about to get extremely bad.
Jess’s and Denny’s training began to kick in. Quick thinking was all that applied now. There was no room for hesitation. Hesitation equaled bad outcomes, but this man had a gun trained on Chuck. Scenarios flooded both of their minds. If we shoot him, will we drop him fast enough to save Chuck? Where do we shoot him? Can we accurately hit that mark fast enough?
Suddenly the man’s hands opened up and the pistol’s weight swung it to the opposite side of his hand as he raised both of his hands up.
Jess was controlling herself. She felt an intense urge to drop the stranger right there. She had had her fill of close calls and knew it was the best solution, but perception was important to her. She reasoned that she had just killed two unarmed and restrained men in the camp, and didn’t want to push the image to the point of being untrusted.
“Put the gun on the ground,” Denny commanded.
The stranger bent down and placed the gun on the ground.
“Now put your backpack on the ground,” Denny ordered.
“Who are you?” Jess asked again.
“My name is Thomas,” he answered as he maneuvered his pack from his shoulders.
Jess remembered the name. Her memory went racing back to Murphysboro when she was alone in the dark dank basement, as a prisoner. She heard Scott talking to a man named Thomas.
“He’s a scout,” she managed to say just as he pulled another pistol from an open pocket of his pack.
Zig, not remembering the teaching and training he had received from Denny and Nathan, ran out in front of the pack in an attempt to stop the man from shooting his friends.
Zig thought he could beat the man’s draw speed and catch his arm before he shot. The others could not save Zig or shoot Thomas, due to Zig being between them. Two shots rang out. One was Thomas’s pistol, and the second was a distant rifle shot that impacted Thomas’s side from the north and exited Thomas’s other side to the south. Both Thomas and Zig dropped to the ground. Zig had been shot in the chest.
Jess, Ash, and Denny turned their attention and aimed towards a man standing in the distance with a high-powered rifle. Both his hands and rifle were in the air, as if he was surrendering himself.
Denny bent down to nurse Zig, who was reeling in pain.
“Go get that guy,” Denny yelled. “I’ve got Zig.”
Ash and Jess ran towards the man, guns aimed. Once again, Jess found herself resisting the urge to kill the stranger. But this time, the urge was stronger than she could bear, because of what had just transpired. As a result, when Jess was within fifteen yards, she pulled the trigger, shooting the man in the abdomen. He grabbed his stomach with a free arm and pointed his rifle with the other, as if he were shooting a pistol. Ash reflexed his rifle to his shoulder and sighted in on the man, center mass. Both the stranger and Ash pulled the
ir respective triggers and two more high-powered rifle sounds shot through the air.
Nathan came running up from behind everybody and quickly surmised what had happened. His only question was one that he kept to himself. He mentally asked himself, Why wasn’t I included?
The stranger with the high-powered rifle was flopping on the ground, still not dead from having received two gunshot wounds. The stranger had missed his shot and a stray bullet landed somewhere in Gorham.
Jess and Ash were still aiming their guns at the stranger as they cautiously approached him. Nathan saw that his rifle was no longer in hand, but was, in fact, three to four feet from him now.
Nathan pushed Jess’s pistol down and placed his hand on Ash’s rifle, as if telling him to lower it. Ash lowered his rifle and Nathan stepped in front of the crew and walked up to the man.
“Who are you? Why are you here?”
The man, holding his gunshot wounds in both hands, said, “My name is Mark. I’ve been tracking Thomas all day. I had to stop him…”
The man’s voice began to fade.
Nathan dropped his rifle and picked the man’s head up and placed it on his lap and asked another question. “Where did you come from? Why are you here?”
Mark was fading out quick. Cade had sent him to do one thing, and that was to make the people think they were good guys and to kill Thomas if he did anything stupid.
With Mark’s dying breath, he said, “Murphy. Had to stop Thomas.”
Mark’s hands went limp and fell to the ground. His wounds were bleeding through his flannel shirt and onto Nathan’s knees.
For a moment, they had forgotten that Zig had been shot.
“Guys,” Denny shouted.
Jess, Ash, and Nathan ran to Denny and Zig.
“We need to get him to my place ASAP,” Denny commanded. Nathan jumped on Zig’s horse while Ash, Denny, and Jess assisted in hoisting Zig onto the horse with Nathan. Once he was firmly secure, they all rode together back to base camp.
Once they had reached Denny’s place, they cleared a place on the bed.
“Go get Zig’s wife and kids, now,” Nathan commanded, looking at Jess.
Jess jumped up, ran out the door and bumped into ten men in camouflaged utilities. They were decked out in full combat attire, including Kevlar helmets, flak jackets, M4s, radios, grenades, and more.
Jess didn’t take her eyes off of them. She just backed up into the trailer.
Nathan saw her coming back in and said, “What are you doing? Go get Zig’s family!”
The men came flooding into the trailer and everybody that was helping with Zig stood up, all but Zig. They stared at the men until one of them broke the silence.
“We’re US Marines, and we’re here to help.”
Back at the former Menard Correctional Center, Buchanan was receiving radio traffic from Franks. The Recons and Rangers had located a community several miles up Route 3. They had set up a Recon sniper and had watched for some time and determined the community to be peaceful and still practicing free trade and travel, with the exception of an incident involving the shooting deaths of two questionable outsiders that came armed into their community.
The sniper and Rangers provided overwatch from a large natural bluff on the south side of the town.
The Recon Marines had made seemingly friendly contact with the community and were actively assisting a US Navy field medic veteran in lifesaving trauma care for a gunshot victim.
Buchanan felt that he was spread thin and didn’t want to send anybody else out of the area. He contacted Captain Riley on the radio and put him in charge of the prison. Buchanan hatched a plan to ride out to the community. After refueling a heavy-gun HMMWV, he geared up with a gunner in the .50-caliber turret and headed towards Gorham.
CHAPTER XXI
General John James and Admiral Belt McKanty were held up in the mini bunker prepped by a group of people who were friends of Aaron and Gideon, the sons of Joshwa, a District cab driver. John and Belt had spared his life so that they could get out of the District. The guard towers had armed men in them, and they had their food, guns, ammunition, and their leader in the bunker with them.
“How long do you plan to keep me prisoner down here?” Michael asked John.
John looked at Michael and said, “I’m sorry it came to this, but you weren’t cooperating with the plan.”
“Maybe if you would have shared your plan with me, we could have worked something out,” he replied.
“Doubt it. You seemed pretty cozy here and reliant on yourself. I don’t see how this could have went any other way.”
“So, what’s this plan of yours?” Michael asked.
“It’s classified. So is our identity,” John said, looking at Joshwa and his family. They were all in the same room, some sitting, some standing.
“But I will tell you this: Any moment now, a group of angry UN soldiers are going to come through those woods with dogs. They’re going to shoot at your guards. Your tower guards are going to return fire. While the Blue Helmets are occupied with your towers, we’re going to make our getaway with food, guns, and ammo. You’re welcome to escape with us, but that’s where our story ends and our paths separate.”
“So you used us!” Aaron said to John.
“Like I said, I’m sorry it came to this. I really was playing this by ear. When I heard he wasn’t going to help us, the plan had to be altered,” John said as he looked at Michael.
Michael was genuinely scared at the thought of what was coming through the forest. John had said something that had triggered a flood of fears in his mind. John and Belt could read the fear in his eyes and knew he was about to suffer from some kind of emotional breakdown.
Michael didn’t have to say anything with words. His body language said it all. John looked at him and said, “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be saving your tail before it’s all said and done.”
No sooner than General John James had said that, they heard the muffled sounds of gunfire coming from the outside world.
“They’re here,” Gideon said with a loud and fearful voice.
“If you guys want to survive this, you’ll need to work with us. The UN doesn’t take POWs and they don’t accept surrender. They believe their god grants them access to heaven for dying in battle. They’re here to convert you or to kill you, and judging by your nationality, option one isn’t even on the table,” John said as he looked at the Jewish family.
“What about Michael?” Joshwa said.
“What about Michael?” John answered, looking at Michael.
“If I have a choice between dying with my hands tied behind my back and dying trying to live, I’d prefer to take my chances with a gun in hand,” Michael answered.
Belt cut the bootlaces that were used to bind Michael’s hands.
“Lock and load,” John said as he chambered a round in his rifle. Everybody followed suit as they piled next to the exit hatch behind John and waited for the word.
John opened the hatch and everybody approached the back door under the sounds of gunfire outside.
“We don’t have time to waste. The longer we idle, the more time they have to surround us and lay siege,” John said.
“Let’s do it,” Aaron shouted.
Everybody jetted out the back. They ran as fast as they could, maintaining a low profile as they ran.
Michael led them to a bugout bus that his group had spent time prepping. It had metal shields, bolted and welded in place, upon the windows. They had also spent some time syphoning gasoline from other vehicles to make sure this one stayed prepped and ready to roll.
Michael jumped into the driver’s seat and started the bus. John sat directly behind him and Belt ran to the back and provided a nervous watch for everybody on the bus, except his friend John, who he had known and trusted for years.
Belt figured he could make sure there would be no retaliation or change of plan by keeping everybody between him and John.
John had his
pistol pointing into the back of the driver’s seat of the bus, but nobody was seated where they could see it. Everybody but Belt was watching through the windshield. They all wanted to see what Michael was seeing.
The bus door closed and Michael put his foot on the accelerator.
“Turn your lights off,” John yelled at Michael.
“But I won’t be able to see.”
“You’ll see just fine in a few moments; just don’t drive like an idiot. The moon is bright enough to light the way and your night vision will come back shortly,” John said.
John was nervous about letting him come along, but knew he needed the firepower in the event they ran into a bad scenario.
The UN soldiers were looking for a family of Jews that killed two UN soldiers. They did not expect, nor come with enough firepower, to stop a bugout bus or as many men as they had at the compound. John and Belt knew this, but spent the last several hours bluffing the amateur civilians.
John and Belt figured that by now the guard tower snipers had killed the UN search party, but that encounter only complicated matters. Now that the UN had most likely contacted their superiors, a larger more battle-ready group of UN fighters would come in and destroy them, maybe even attack them from the air. Either way, John and Belt were now safely on their way to South Dakota. Their passengers consisted of four Jewish men and a petite Jewish female.
As they traveled along the empty back-country road, John began thinking about the strategy. The men were capable fighters, but inexperienced. The female didn’t have any use that he could think of. She would only be an extra mouth to feed and resources were limited. John had to check himself. Sometimes his survival instinct overpowered his humanity. He needed to talk to Belt about the situation, but understood why it was tactically responsible to keep everybody in sight.
“So where are we going, again?” Michael asked.
John’s mind snapped back to Michael’s question. “Just keep heading west. Stay on back roads and avoid major highways and interstates.”
“There’s going to be several smaller communities on these back roads that we’re going to need to deal with,” Michael said.
TYRANT: The Rise Page 14
