“When we built it, we were thinking about catching bullets while retreating, not stealth,” Michael said.
“Well, who wants to go out there and see if they’re friendly?” Belt asked.
Nobody volunteered.
John surveyed the environment. They were on a bend in the road, which was surrounded by forest and heavy vegetation. There must be a community they’re protecting around the bend, he thought.
“Okay, here’s my plan…” John said. “Every one of us files out the back door with a rifle. We hit the forest in two teams. Team one goes north and team two goes south. Both teams head west through the woods until we can flank the men at the roadblock.”
“I like it,” Aaron said as he looked at his brother, Gideon.
“Me too,” Gideon said.
John and Belt looked at the others and waited for a response.
“I’m down,” Michael said.
They turned their attention to Joshwa and Zamora.
“I don’t shoot,” Joshwa said, pulling his wife in closer.
“Then you stay here and guard the bus,” John said, handing them rifles. “If anybody comes through those doors, you pull that trigger,” John said, pointing towards the trigger and trigger guard.
“Michael and I will go south,” John said, pointing to himself and Michael, and then he pointed at Belt, Aaron, and Gideon, saying, “Belt will lead you two north. Got it?”
Everybody nodded and grabbed their rifles, making sure rounds were chambered. Belt was closest to the back door, so he opened the exit and the two teams deployed from the bus and into the woods.
Shots were being fired from the roadblock, but none of them made their mark.
The vegetation was heavy and cumbersome to move through. Everybody was thinking the same thing: “By the time we get there, they’ll be reinforced or gone.”
The teams were trying to move both quickly and quietly, but the terrain offered them little for either possibility.
Belt’s team arrived first to find four men hunkered down in kneeling positions behind the makeshift roadblock of logs.
The element of surprise was not with them, thanks to the loud bus that had alerted the armed strangers.
Without waiting for John and Michael to be in place, Aaron and Gideon jumped out of the woods and ran up on the strangers, yelling, “Drop your guns or we’ll shoot.”
“There goes any hope of negotiations,” Belt said under his breath.
John and Michael heard the yelling and knew that they had run out prematurely, headlong into trouble. They hastened their speed and came out on the other side of the roadblock to see four men pointing rifles at Aaron and Gideon. Belt had not exited the forest yet. John knew that Belt had remained concealed and had not yet revealed his presence.
We may still yet have an element of surprise, John thought.
“Put your rifles down! You’re outnumbered,” one of the strangers told Aaron and Gideon.
“Uh hum,” John coughed from behind, revealing himself to the four strangers.
“So what! We’re even!” the other stranger said.
“Says who?” Belt said, stepping out of the woods.
Now seeing that they were outnumbered and outgunned, the men lowered their weapons and leaned them against the wall of clumsily stacked logs.
“Why are you here?” one of the strangers asked.
“We’re just passing through, and it seems you have taken it as your duty in life to hamper our progress,” John said.
“We’re protecting our homes,” one of them said.
“Shut up, dude, you talk too much,” the other one said.
John could tell they were not schooled in social etiquette. All four men were wearing flannel shirts and holey jeans.
“We’re not interested in your homes; we just want to pass through,” Belt said.
“Even if you do get through here, you won’t get through the next town,” one of them said.
“Why not?” Gideon probed.
“Because they steal, kill, and destroy. That’s why we have these barriers up. So they don’t come through.”
“How many of you are there?” John asked.
“About two hundred and dwindling,” one answered.
“We have farms that we have to protect.”
“Dude, I said shut up!”
“Come here, son,” John said, motioning to the man that was revealing so much. John figured if he was going to get any information from them, it would have to be by getting this one alone. He liked to talk and didn’t seem to have an option for discretion.
John took him a bit up the road and probed him for answers. He learned that the town used to be a town of seven hundred before the Flip. Most of the people had left for the cities with their families. They were never heard from or seen again. Others banded together and formed survival groups. Those that were left were the unprepared and those who made sustenance from the earth.
John also learned that the group up the road were brigands and killers. They would kill passersby and take their property. The man was unsure what they did with the corpses, because he never saw their bodies again.
John knew he didn’t have much to work with, but turning back seemed just as hazardous as moving forward. All the fuel they had spent to get to where they were would be in vain if they headed back.
“Who’s the leader of this outfit?” John asked.
“Arnie,” the man said.
“My name is John James. What’s yours?”
“Alex. And those guys are Sebastian, Ethan, and Bailey.”
“Thanks. Now tell me about this Arnie.”
“He’s our mayor. He used to have kids and stuff, but they disappeared with a few of the church people that used to live here.”
“Is Arnie nice?” John asked.
“Yeah, he’s cool. He lives in the old mint-green-colored house on Second Street.”
“Thanks, Alex. Have your friends ever killed anybody?”
“No. We’re just guards. We take turns on guard duty to keep the Pack from coming into our town.”
“The Pack?”
“Yeah, they live down the road in the next town. They run things down there and they’re bad people.”
John had heard just about everything he needed to make some rational short-term decisions. He walked back to the roadblock with Alex.
“Admiral Belt McKanty, I’d like you to meet Alex, Sebastian, Ethan, and Bailey,” John said.
“Admiral?” Sebastian questioned.
“Yes, he’s admiral of the United States Navy, and I’m General John James, commandant of the United States Marine Corps. This is Aaron, Gideon, and Michael,” he said, pointing to each of them.
“We were making our way west until we ran into this roadblock,” Belt said.
“If your plan is to keep heading west, you’re going to wish you hadn’t crossed our roadblock,” Ethan said.
“We’ll deal with that later. I need you guys to take us to your mayor.”
John walked over to the men’s rifles and handed them back. “We’re not here to hurt any of you. We can help each other, but only if you’re willing to let us pass.” he added.
The four men looked at each other and chose to send Bailey with them as escort.
“We have to stay here and watch the road. That’s our duty,” Alex said. “There’s another roadblock on the other side of town.”
Bailey led all five men through town and straight up to Arnie’s house. It was an older 1950s-style, two-story house that was mint green with paint chipping off the wood siding. The yard was grown over and unkept and had a peeling white picket fence around the property. In the backyard was a tall, unkept, wooden barn reminiscent of an old-style cattle barn, with an upper loft for storing straw.
Arnie walked out with a shotgun pointed at the tallest of the men, which happened to be Aaron, and said, “Bailey, is everyone okay?”
“Yes, these guys are important people and they need to pass thro
ugh. They asked to meet you.”
“Important people, huh? How important?” Arnie asked.
“I’m John James, commandant of the Marine Corps, and this is Belt McKanty, admiral of the Navy.”
“There is no US military. Try again!” Arnie barked.
“Would you calm down and lower that shotgun?” Aaron interrupted.
Arnie slightly lowered the shotgun, but started to probe them with questions. “If there’s no military, how is it I have the commandant and the admiral on my lawn?”
“You’re right, sir. We were formerly military commanders. That is, before we escaped the District.”
Arnie was in the Navy, so he thought he would check the validity of the claims that Belt was an admiral by testing his terminology.
“What’s old salt?” Arnie asked, looking at Belt.
“I’m an old salt. I’ve been in service for twenty-five years,” he answered.
“What’s a knee-knocker?”
Admiral McKanty reached down and raised his pant legs to reveal several scars on his shins. “I got every one of these at ports where I drank too much of the local brew.”
“C’mon in,” Arnie said. “It’s okay, Bailey; they’re my guests now.”
Arnie turned around and opened the squeaky screen door to his house and invited them in. They all entered to the smell of musty old mildew and body odor. It was common in these times to be greeted with these smells. Old houses in particular had leaky ceilings, and Arnie’s family had lived here for generations.
“Grab a seat, gentlemen,” Arnie said as he pulled a chair out from his kitchen table and sat in it. The table was covered in clutter and things that had nothing to do with food.
While everybody in the kitchen was making acquaintances and getting seated, Aaron looked down at the countertop and saw a man’s wallet that was open. In one of the sleeves, he saw a driver’s license with the picture of a man that he didn’t recognize. In the opposing sleeve, he saw a picture of a baby boy. Aaron wanted to ask about it, but he was a man of few words. When Arnie saw Aaron looking at it, he got up from the table, walked over to it, and slapped it shut, putting it in his back pocket.
“My son left his wallet here,” Arnie said to the group. “He left for the FEMA camp in Philadelphia. I told him he needed to stay here, at home with us, but he wouldn’t listen.”
John, sensing that the conversation was headed in another direction, tried to bring everybody back to the subject of the group up the road.
“Sir, if we could talk about this pack of troublemakers up the road.”
Arnie seemed hesitant to talk about the Pack. “I hope you excuse my mess, but I have no need for outdated customs of etiquette or table space. It just collects stuff, now. When I eat, it’s generally outside—fresh-picked vegetables, grubs, and game on the grill—but the growing season’s almost over and I have to store stuff to survive the winter.”
John perceived that Arnie was going to keep babbling. “Mr. Mayor, I understand you have a nuisance down the road?”
“Yeah, they call themselves the Pack, but they haven’t come here, yet.”
“They may if their resources drop out. We need to get through that roadblock and head in that direction.”
“I’m afraid we no longer have the equipment necessary to move those logs. We ran out of fuel months ago.”
“We have a bus that we can use to move enough to get us through. Do you have chains?”
“Yeah, we have some chains around here, somewhere. I can have someone track them down, but I’m afraid you might start more problems than you solve if you head that way. They’re going to know we let people through, and I’m assuming they’ve been counting on our security to keep their east side secure.”
“How many of them are there?” Belt asked.
“A few dozen, I reckon. I haven’t exactly tallied them.”
“Have you seen their camp?” John asked.
“Not since the grid went down.”
John looked at Aaron and said, “Aaron, you traverse through the woods quite well. Do you think you’d be able to sneak through them and bring back a report?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Great. I’ll need to know their size, what and when they’re doing it, the location of their equipment, people, weapons, etc. See if you can keep tabs on the times they move. I want to know if they have guards and when they change out.”
“Not a problem,” Aaron said. “What kind of a time frame do I have?”
“See if you can watch for twenty-four hours and then report back.” John gave him a pencil and a scratch pad.
“Good luck, boy,” Arnie said.
“I’m gonna need it.” Aaron double-checked his rifle and headed for the woods.
Gideon was deep in thought when he realized his mother and father were still back at the bus. “I’m going to head back to the bus for Mom and Dad.”
“That won’t be necessary, boy. I’ll send a couple guys back out that way to make sure they’re safe.” Arnie stood up and stepped outside for a couple minutes.
When Belt saw that Arnie was outside for a minute, he leaned over the table and said to John, “I don’t like this. Something’s not right here. I keep getting an odd feeling.”
“Yeah, me too, but we need to buy some time to find out more about the Pack.”
Sothern Illinois, southwest Murphysboro
Nathan, Jess, Denny, Ash, Warren and the other twelve members of the Posse had been traveling by horse all morning. They had approached the outskirts of Murphysboro and dismounted. They tied the horses to trees in a valley within the forest, taking precautions to make sure they were out of sight.
Nathan led the seventeen of them to the area where he had heard the loudspeakers before. He noticed the military corpses were no longer hanging from street signs and poles.
“They cut them down,” Nathan whispered. “Guys, this can get bad in a hurry, so check yourselves for op readiness. We don’t need anything dangling from your uniform or making sounds. This is an information-gathering operation only. At no time are we to engage these clowns! We don’t know anything about them. That’s why we’re here.”
“Boss,” Denny said, “can we split into two teams for more visual?”
“Yeah, but use extreme caution. Stay within contact distance at all times and rally up here at thirteen hundred hours.”
“Roger that,” Denny said, grabbing the seven closest men to him, which included Warren, Blake, Jack, Freddy, Andy, Byron, and Ian. They scooted off the ridgeline and went around the berm they were lying on and disappeared in the forest.
Nathan took Jess, Ash, Max, Jordan, Gil, Steve, Morgan, and Adam.
“We’re going to maintain visual from here,” Nathan said.
“I didn’t leave this way on my last visit,” Jess whispered. “I ended up on that side of town before I turned due west and headed for the tracks.”
“Man, I wish you would have caught a glimpse of the guy that runs this place,” Nathan said.
Jess nodded to him and then went back to watching.
There wasn’t that much activity. They could hear an occasional gunshot in the distance, but it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. The buildings in the town had a way of muffling every sound in it.
Denny and his group were within the perimeter of the town itself. He knew that if Nathan found out he was this close, he would object. He was using caution as he led the men through the yards and along the fence lines. At one point, Denny had a good view of a major roadway that ran north and south. He saw what appeared to be an empty house. Denny figured the house would provide both cover and concealment while providing an excellent view of the roadway.
“This is where we’re going to set up, guys,” Denny said, pointing to the house.
“Do you think it’s clear?” Blake asked.
“It looks clear,” Jack added.
“Just sit here a mike and listen for sounds,” Denny said.
&nb
sp; After a few minutes, the men lined up on Denny as he approached the back deck. They walked up the stairs as a unit, and Denny softly grabbed the back-door handle. He pulled it open with one hand and kept his rifle trained ahead of him with the other.
They snuck into the two-story house and all was quiet. Denny, Warren, Blake, and Jack cleared the downstairs area while Freddy, Andy, Byron, and Ian went upstairs.
Denny and the guys that were downstairs started to unload their gear and prop everything against the wall. That’s when they heard men walking clumsily down the stairs.
Denny and the guys turned to look at the staircase and saw them walking backwards. He noticed their attention was on something up the stairs that was scaring them. Denny grabbed his rifle and pointed it the stairs. He didn’t want to shoot unless he absolutely had to. Shooting off his rifle now would spark an incident that would compromise the entire mission.
There was a man walking down the stairs that had the others at gunpoint. He was leading them backwards down the stairs.
“Easy,” Denny said. “We’re not here to cause any problems.”
“Who are you, and why are you in my home?” the stranger asked.
Denny was an awful liar and wasn’t sure if honesty was the best idea at this point, but didn’t want to instigate any further problems. “My name is Denny, and these are my friends,” he answered. He was hoping to avoid answering the second part of the question.
“Why are you in my home?” the man asked again.
“We’re looking for supplies, sir,” Jack said to the stranger.
Denny was glad he answered that way. At least it was believable.
“I don’t recognize any of you. Where are you from?”
“We’re from an area west of here,” Denny answered. “We didn’t mean to intrude. We’ll be on our way.”
“Don’t be grabbing for that bag, mister,” the stranger said with a serious and commanding voice.
“Sir—” Jack started to say something, but was interrupted by the stranger.
“Where, exactly, are you from?” the stranger demanded.
Denny didn’t want to reveal the location of their camp for fear of another raid, but felt he didn’t have any other cards to play at this point. “In all honesty, we’re not looking for supplies. We were attacked by a group of people from this area, and now we’re here to gather as much information as we can about the group.”
TYRANT: The Rise Page 17
