The End of the Beginning

by Mark H Culbertson

  Chapter 7

  It didn’t take the rabbits long to cook and a couple of the boys had returned with tubers that turned out to be sweet potatoes that they had put into the fire. Things were a little quiet during dinner. None of us had tasted sweet potatoes or any wild game in over twenty years and we were relishing every bit of it. Russ was a little hesitant at first, but it wasn’t long before I spotted him licking the grease from his fingers as he ate the roasted rabbit. Charlie had started to make a pot of what passed for coffee, when Mike spoke up and said, “I think that we have something better for our guests.” I knew what she meant and unzipped my pack to pull out the can of coffee that we had found in the hanger. You could see Thomas’ eyes light up when he say that red container. You could hear the vacuum as I broke the seal. We put the coffee on to boil just like they had done before the time of percolators and automatic drip machines.

  As the coffee boiled, I had pulled the open pack of cigarettes from my pack and handed them around the fire. Thomas said nothing as he pulled one out of the pack and then held it under his nose while he sat there with his eyes shut. He looked at and said, “you know after twenty years, you wouldn’t think that I would miss tobacco as much as I do. But the smell of a cigarette or cigar reminds me of easier days.”

  I barely hesitated. There was one cigar in my pack, I reached in and pulled it out and offered it to Thomas. His eyes were wide and he said “I didn’t think that those were allowed on the stations!” I didn’t say a word as he gently took it out of my hand. It was old and dry but I was sure that it was going to be the best cigar that Thomas had ever smoked. He sat there looking it over for a few minutes and then started to hand it back.

  “Go ahead, you’re more deserving of it than I am, it yours.” I thought that he was going to cry. I reached out to the fire and pulled out a small branch with a flaming end while he was un-wrapping it. He closed his eyes as he lit up, not even bothering to clip the end. Not that it was a good cigar, but I guess that after twenty years, any cigar is a good cigar.

  We sat there enjoying the coffee as I explained to Thomas about the aircraft hangers and finding the coffee, cigarettes, cigars and the Tennessee Whiskey. I left out the part about the 357 mag, I thought that may be something best kept to myself. When I spoke of the attack at the hanger, the fact that the attack seemed coordinated and that the animals seemed very large compared to the type of dogs that we had seen when we were last earthside, Thomas nodded appreciatively and said “that brings me to the story that I owe you, if you would give me a few minutes to answer the call of nature, then I will begin.”

  He rose and as he did Robert rose with him. I gathered that they didn’t let Thomas get too far out of their site. Mike looked at me and said “We needn’t set a watch tonight. Those kids are better at it than we are anyway. Let’s all get comfortable and then you can pull out your friend Mr. Daniels so that we can share him with Thomas. I know you’ve been dying to do that anyway.” I just grinned as I got up to take a piss. I noticed that each of us had a shadow as we got up and moved away from the fire and filed that away for future reference.

  We settled back in as I gathered up coffee cups and started to portion out the Whiskey. When I looked at Thomas, he just grinned and nodded. That smile on his face said it all. He was like a kid in a candy store. I’m not sure when the last time it had been that he had seen such luxuries, but it had been awhile.

  He took a sip of the whiskey and then started to talk. “The phones went dead within two days of the bombs being dropped, the electricity the day after that. That’s when we started keeping guard. About a week later we started seeing refuges come out of the city. They were the smart ones. Some we took in, some we sent on their way. A lot depended on the gut feeling of whoever was in charge of the guard when they came by. We were loosely organized but with no one really in charge, kind of running things by committee. If they had skills or resources that we needed we offered them shelter. If not, we offered them fresh water, food if we could spare it and then asked them to move on.”

  He paused to take a sip of the Jack, “About two weeks after the bombs had dropped, a sheriff’s department car pulled up to the front gate. The man in the car was in uniform and demanded that we open the gate, said that we had resources needed by the community. The guard on the gate hesitated and tried to stall them until he could speak with one of us, the people he considered his leaders. He died for it. The man in the car shot him and then tried to ram the gate, but we had been smarter than he expected. It would take more than a Crown Victoria to take out the gate to our little enclave. It started as ornamental steel, but we reinforced it with two inch solid steel rods as well as some I-beams from a couple of the warehouses in town. The men in the guard house killed the deputy as he was trying to back away from the gate for a second attempt.”

  The pain in his eyes was obvious as he told us about that time. You could tell that this was a story that he had relived many times in his mind, wondering if there wasn’t a better way to have handled it. If there wasn’t something that he could have done differently to change the outcome of that day. He paused to take a long pull off the cigar and a sip of the Jack.

  “I don’t know if he was really a deputy or not, but I do know that everything was different from that day on. We formed our own government. We elected council members and a mayor. My first official act as mayor was to form a militia. Every person above the age of thirteen was taught to use a gun. We sent out scouting parties to bring back information and goods from the local stores that hadn’t already been looted. We were fortunate that most of the looters were interested in the stupid stuff. There was a lot of looting at the electronics stores and car lots. No one thought to hit the sporting goods stores. Things like weapons were a dime a dozen in the city before the bombs were dropped. Everyone thought that the government would step in and that it would be a lot easier to get rid of a stolen DVD player than a stolen twelve gauge shot gun with a serial number on it. That’s what we went after. We stocked up weapons, ammunition, and any other survival gear that we could lay our hands on. We found out later that we weren’t the only local group doing that.”

  Russ asked “What about the government? Didn’t they try to do anything?”

  Thomas shook his head, “The government was pretty well nonexistent. The President was visiting Bejing on the day the bombs dropped and the VP was touring the San Diego Naval Base. Both were dead in the first five minutes. That left the Speaker of the House in charge. He didn’t have bomb codes and decided that his best bet was to shut up and disappear. Our leadership was in hiding. We heard from some of the refugees that Fort Leonard Wood had established itself as center of government for the Midwest and an open refugee center for any who wanted shelter. We did make ham radio contact with them early on and they promised help, but I think that they were overwhelmed with refugees. They were set up for one hundred thousand people and ended up with over four hundred thousand camped outside the gates in addition to the ones inside. I really don’t know for sure how the rest of the country faired after that. We didn’t try too hard to make contact with any other areas. Our real concern was staying quiet and unnoticed.”

  He paused to drink and then looked at his cup, after a quick look at Mike, I said “here, let me refill that” and hit us with another round. Our refill was a bit smaller than his, I wanted to keep my head clear enough that I would be ready if anything came up that his boys couldn’t handle.

  He continued, “We started hearing stories about an encampment to the south of us. It seemed to be some sort of a paramilitary outfit that was taking in any one who wanted in, as long as they were white. They were calling themselves New America and they were organizing raids into the city to stop the blacks and Hispanics from taking the resources that were rightfully theirs, at least in their words. It was a New American who put that crossbow bolt into your backpack yesterday. Robert made sure that he couldn’t report what he had seen.”

  That made me wonder
exactly how tough these “men” were and Mike and I exchanged looks, looks that didn’t go unnoticed by Thomas.

  “Oh yes, we’ve learned to kill to protect ourselves, along with others that we think need protecting. Without Robert’s intervention your night last night may have been a bit more eventful than it actually was, but enough of that, there are other things you need to hear.”

  With that he took another sip of the whiskey and continued, “The New Americans were set up on I-44 interchange at Valley Park. They had taken over the hotels and several of the industrial buildings in the area. Based on what we can tell there are several thousand people there now. They’ve sent messengers up several times asking us to join them, but our group is pretty racially diverse, and they only wanted the whites.”

  He paused to look at the smoke coming from the end of the cigar and then dipped the wet end into his cup. When he looked up he said “they started using police dogs to patrol their borders early on. Evidently, someone down there knows something about breeding, because they’ve been getting bigger and smarter since they started. I’ve wondered if the dogs are still under their control or just operating in symbiosis with them, but I’ve never been sure.”

  “Initially, they only raided with a member of the New American police force but later they started hunting on their own”, he continued, “We haven’t had any outright attacks on our community, but they have been closer to our perimeter than we care to see them and our hunting parties have had to kill a few of them in recent years. We rarely have individuals hunting alone, with the exception of David, Robert and a few others who seem to have an individual stubborn streak in them.”

  “How many have you lost without knowing what happened”, Mike asked quietly.

  “That’s the question that we’ve all been avoiding,” Thomas replied with a deep breath, “It was four years before our first member disappeared. It could have been an accident while hunting or the hunter may have become the hunted, we never knew for sure. After that it was sporadic but it continued. We’ve lost thirty six souls in unexplained disappearances so far. We’ve never found any remains or traces except for one time.”

  “When my son disappeared we were finally able to prove that the New American’s were behind what was going on.” Thomas hesitated for a minute before continuing, “It was about six years ago, wintertime and James was trapping on Howell Island, just a little way south of here on the Missouri River. He had been doing quite well. He would be out two days and then back in for one and had been doing that for several weeks. He had set up a smoke house and was drying meat and bringing it back dried and prepared. He left one day and did not come back on the third day as normal. Nor on the 4th, on the morning of the fifth day David and I, along with two other men set out for the island. We kept a pretty good pace, but still it was dark by the time that we arrived. We crossed over the land bridge at Etherton Road and although none of us had been to the island with James, we all were looking for higher ground with relatively good cover. James would have placed the smoke shed there so as to not spook the wildlife.”

  “David found them first. We counted seventeen dead dogs. James was in the fork of a tree about thirty feet from the smoke shed. Lying in the door of the smoke shed was a man with a sheriff’s department’s uniform on.”

  Thomas’s voice caught on the last and he paused to take a drink.

  “I think that he was trying to hide hoping that they would go away without spotting him. Once the man had spotted him he probably thought that he could talk around the situation. There were 3 empty cartridges in the man’s gun, James had two bullet wounds and there was a single crossbow bolt in the man’s throat. Once the man died the dogs must have went wild trying to get to James. We found bite marks in the tree limb at his feet, with claw marks all over the base of the tree. All seventeen of the dogs died from a crossbow bolt.”

  “James either survived long enough to finish them off or else we made it to him before they had a chance to return with reinforcements. We decided that the best thing we could do would be to try to make it look like we hadn’t been there. It took us the rest of the night, but we scattered the dog bodies around the island, removing the cross bow bolts and knowing that the wild animals would take care of most of what we needed done. The man, we dismembered, dumping parts that were unidentifiable as human into the river and scattering the other parts across the island. It was gruesome work, but we didn’t hesitate. We knew that they would come looking for him and that they probably knew where he went last. The key was to try to make sure that they didn’t know that we were behind it. We emptied the smoke shed and then tore it back down to the limbs and reeds that made it up, scattering these as best we could so that the casual observer would not know what had been done.”

  “We immediately headed back to home by a round about route. We were carrying James’ body. None of us wanted to leave him, we all wanted to give him a proper burial. We crossed the Missouri in the water so as to not leave a trail back to our community. Again, I knew that they would eventually figure it out, but we didn’t want to make it too obvious. When we got out of the water we headed to the old Union Pacific Railroad line and followed it all the way to Long Road near the Airport. From there we headed on home.”

  The cigar had burned down to almost nothing and he took one long last pull from it before putting it out and placing the rest in a little pouch of leather from his pocket. He looked down at his cup and I passed him the rest of the bottle without even looking at Mike. He grinned, poured another small drink and said “I really was not a fan of Mister Daniels, but I don’t think that single malt scotch will be a part of my future anytime soon.”

  I took a second to look around and noticed that none of the kids were within sight of the fire. They had disappeared without me seeing them. I wasn’t sure if Mike had noticed them, but I was pretty sure that Russ and Charlie didn’t see anything. They had been paying closer attention to Thomas than I had. I caught a look at Mike out of the corner of my eye and saw that she noticed it also. Thomas didn’t even look up from his cup, but he said “oh, don’t worry. They’re out there. Some of them have heard parts of this story before, but never all of it and never from me. But they know that it’s the things that we don’t always hear that kill us and they’ll fill each other in on the parts they miss in the morning.”

  Mike looked at him and said “You’ve done a fine job with these young men. Even as well armed as we are, I wouldn’t want to take this crew on in combat. I’m not sure that we could take them.”

  Thomas looked up, “I hope that the New American’s feel the same way, but it’s my fear that they will be attacking us before the end of the year and that brings me to the rest of my story.”

  “The New American’s have been making more and more forays into our area. The dogs are getting more and more aggressive. Our group kills four to five every month, that’s almost sixty dogs a year. I don’t know what their breeding program is but I do know that they are very intelligent, maybe as intelligent as we are but without the fear of death. If we are going to defend ourselves against them, we will have to come up with better weapons than we use now. Slingshots and arrows will only hold them off for so long.”

  I heard a slight sound in the darkness and Thomas stopped briefly before looking around at the rest of us with his hand held out flat, palm down at his side, he said “I think that is probably the end of the story for tonight. We all need a good night’s rest before beginning the refitting your transportation in the morning.” As he rose a form darted out of the shadows directly toward him, he was pulling his knife, ducking and spinning in the same motion, Mike and I were both reaching for our handguns at the same time, but it was needless. A crossbow bolt came from nowhere just as Thomas threw his knife. It was impossible to tell which hit first, the crossbow bolt or the knife.

  The dog hit the ground, rolled and lay still. Mike and I were already on our feet, but neither of us had a chance to clear our holsters. No more than hal
f a second had passed since Thomas had stopped his story.

  I slowly walked over to the dog that was lying there on the ground. It’s eyes were open and I’m pretty sure that there were still shallow breaths coming from the mouth, but he wasn’t going anywhere. That became pretty obvious by the angle of the neck when you got closer. The shaft of that crossbow bolt had snapped his neck and pierced his spinal column. If that wasn’t enough, the haft of Thomas’ knife was all that was sticking out of that dog’s chest. I made a mental note to think twice before pissing any of these kids or Thomas, off.

  David stood from the shadows and said “He’s the only one sir. I think that he was just a scout that saw a chance to take you out.”

  I had to think about that for a second, but Mike was a bit quicker than I, she looked up and said “do you mean specifically take Thomas out?” David replied with “there are much more to these animals than my grandfather will admit. He believes that they are just intelligent animals, but most believe they are demons.”

  Thomas shook his head and said “David, I have taught you better than that. You know that demons do not walk the earth and that these animals are just highly trained dogs.”

  David looked down, but still spoke in a strong voice “Grandfather don’t you think these people deserve to know?”

  I stole a glance at Mike, who was staring daggers at Thomas. Her voice was firm as she spoke up “what is it that we deserve to know?”

  Chapter 8

  Thomas looked at us in silence for a second, sat back down and said “I try to convince myself it’s not true, but the fact of the matter is that patrols and hunting parties of which I am a part account for almost three times as many attacks as any other groups. I cannot venture forth without at least one attack and one time there was even an attack of almost forty of these beasts at the front gate as I was returning from a scavenging mission with a patrol.”