Surviving Home

by Angery American

  Reggie shot a glance at him. “Them? How many are there?”

  “Four,” Doc said.

  The door swung open and Sarge stepped out with Ted and Mike in tow. For a moment no one said anything. The door was open and we could all see inside, see the men hanging up and one on the floor.

  “What’s the word?” Doc asked.

  Sarge scrunched his eyebrows and looked at the ground then crossed his arms. “Well, these boys, one of them anyway, is the one that shot at you guys the other day. He hit Reggie there, you Morg, an’ your little girl.”

  “Why’d they do it? We wasn’t botherin’ them. Doc said they was working’ for DHS?” Reggie said.

  “Yeah. They’re being used to push people into going to the camps, the FEMA camps. If an area isn’t down the with the idea of being relocated, these boys go in and try an’ scare ‘em. Most of the time it seems to work. Sometimes, like with you guys, it doesn’t and they get tougher. That’s what the shootin’ was about.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” Danny asked.

  “That’s up to y’all. I got what I needed from ‘em. I ain’t gonna do anything with em,” Sarge said.

  “What did you need from ‘em?” Reggie asked.

  “I needed a little info about the DHS operation and what was going on out there at the old bombing range.”

  “Right,” I said. “Reg, you care if I do it in your barn?”

  “Now hold on,” Sarge said. “If you boys are going to shoot ‘em, and believe me when I tell you they need shot, use ‘em to make a statement. Let the DHS goons know people aren’t going to take their shit,” Sarge said.

  “What do you suggest?” I asked.

  “Let’s leave ‘em where their buddies will find ‘em. Oh an’ that reminds me, they have more back at their little trailer park compound that will have to be dealt with,” Sarge said.

  “Sounds good to me. Morgan, let me have yer pistol.” Reggie said.

  Sarge put up a hand, “I know you want ta get even, but wait on killin’ ‘em.”

  “Why? Let’s get it over with,” Reggie fired back.

  “Simple: it’s easier to make em walk than it is to drag ‘em around. We get ‘em to where we want ‘em then do it, just less work.”

  I said, “Makes sense to me. Sarge, this here is Danny, Danny this Sarge, Ted, Mike and Doc.”

  Danny went around and shook hands with everyone, and when that was done he asked Sarge, “You said there were more of these guys somewhere. What are we going to do about them? They got to be close by.”

  “We’ll take care of them,” Mike said.

  “Need any help?” Danny asked.

  “We’ll work it out, but yeah, we could probably use the help if you want to.”

  We spent a little time going over what Sarge envisioned for the crew hanging from the rafters in the barn. I asked where they were planning on staying, mentioning there were plenty of empty houses around and they could probably take one of those. He said that it wasn’t a good idea for him and the guys to stay there as they would probably draw a bunch of unwanted attention. Which brought him around to our security situation. He was less than impressed.

  He liked the log barricades, if we were being attacked by Sherman tanks. He said the gabions were a really good idea, but they didn’t have anything in them. He pointed out, in his usual colorful manner, that they were far more effective when they were filled with dirt. His overall opinion was that the area we were in was nearly impossible for us to secure with the number of people we had. He said we either needed to consolidate to the back of the neighborhood or relocate entirely.

  None of us were very happy with the idea of having to leave our homes. Sarge made it pretty clear that he wasn’t saying to abandon our homes yet, but that it might come to that. He said he and the guys were here for a reason and we weren’t it, though they had enough mission latitude to include helping us out. He said that tomorrow he and the guys would start looking for a place to work out of, someplace out of the way and defensible.

  I said, “I know a place. Not far from here, about ten miles, there’s some cabins on the Alexander run coming out of Alexander Springs.”

  “That’s a good idea if they’re empty,” Danny said.

  “You’ll have to show us. I’d like to get a look at them soon,” Ted said.

  “How about tomorrow?” I asked.

  “That’ll work.”

  Ted and Mike said they needed to go do something and took Reggie with them. They headed back to my house to get their ride and I got with Doc. I wanted him to go look at old Don, it had been a while since I checked on him. There was just too damn much to do. Sarge and Danny went to take a look at the neighborhood to see what could be done to improve the security situation. Jeff headed for the barricade to check in on Thad. Doc, Jeff and I hopped into the Suburban and headed for the house.

  “You really going to off those guys?” Jeff asked.

  Doc looked back over the seat at him. “It’s a messy business, but what else can we do with them? They tried to kill you guys, weren’t you there?”

  “Yeah I was there, at the time I wanted to kill them, but now, after the fact it seems different.”

  I said, “I was there too, so was my little girl that took a bullet from one of those sons-of-bitches, they need to pay and there isn’t much else to do with them. They deserve what they’re going to get.”

  He didn’t say anything in reply. I glanced at him in the mirror and he was looking out the window. I knew how the guy felt, Just a few weeks back, the police would have been called. An arrest would have been made and charges filed. The defense and prosecution would offer deals back and forth and then a compromise would be settled on. But things were different now. There was no law to call, no courts, and now men had to settle things amongst themselves. I understood that before everything fell apart, the “might makes right” argument didn’t hold water, but it was different now. It wasn’t that might made right these days, but if you didn’t have might, you had no chance of ensuring that right—justice—would be done. And there was no one else to do it for you.

  I knew Jeff hadn’t expected to land in the middle of our troubles when he decided to stay with us and he was kind of playing ethical catch-up. It was more satisfying for me to explain things in terms of vengeance in this case, but I knew that underneath my rage there was a larger moral issue. I told him, “Think about it this way: these guys didn’t give it a second thought when the DHS told them to shoot innocent folks and burn down their houses, right?”

  Jeff said, “Yeah, I get it: they’re bad guys. But still.”

  “I know. Judge, jury, executioner. I’m not comfortable with that either. I mean, I know I’m doing the right thing here, but sure, there are plenty of people who are gonna take that too far. But I don’t know what we can do about that right now. It’s a big issue, and the big stuff is gonna have to wait until we see if we can survive the shit coming at us day by day. But what I do know is this: if we don’t take care of these militia assholes, they’re gonna do the same thing to someone else’s family. So how do we sleep at night if we don’t end them and later we find out they shot someone else’s little girl? What I mean is that it’s not just revenge, we have an obligation to take care of this because we can. Yeah, it sucks, but we can’t just kick the can down the road. We have to finish this. If we don’t, good people will die, and like it or not, that’d be on us.”

  Jeff thought for a second and said, “You should have been a lawyer.”

  I snorted at that. “Thanks, asshole.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jeff walked up to the barricade from Don’s house while Doc and I went in to check on Don. His wife met us at the door.
She looked frail, gaunt, like it took all the effort she could muster just to open the door. She was gracious and kind, offering us coffee, though I doubt she had any. Doc and I both refused politely and asked about Don. She led us into the living room where we found him sitting in a recliner.

  From the looks of the chair and the debris piled around it, it looked as though he had been living in the chair. There were some plates and empty food cans. The most telling though, which was as much an assault on the eyes as it was the nose, were the bottles of piss and the bucket half full of shit. It was obvious that he could no longer make it to the toilet, not that it probably worked anyway. I looked over at Doc and could see in his face the situation was not good.

  Don’s chin was on his chest and it rocked back and forth in response to the old man’s breathing. Don’s wife came in behind us, shuffling across the carpet in an old pair of slippers.

  “Don, honey, Morgan’s here with a friend,” she said as she moved blankets from the sofa. She was obviously sleeping there as well.

  The old man roused in his chair, lifting his head. His eyes looked wet and bleary and at first he didn’t understand. It took a moment for him to come around, but he pushed himself up in the chair and a thin smile spread across this lips. He blinked a couple of times and then his voice croaked, “Morgan, how are you?”

  “Good, Don, how’s the leg?” I asked. I introduced Doc to them.

  Doc took off his pack and set it on the floor and knelt down to start inspecting the wound. The couple had long since run out of bandages and from the looks of things were not boiling the old ones and reusing them. Paper wrappers from Tampax pads littered the floor, along with used pads stained with blood and discharge. Soiled strips of bed sheets were mixed in with it that added to the foul mess around the chair.

  Don’s wife puttered around the room, fussing about the mess and ashamed that she hadn’t had a chance to clean up before we came. Once the leg was exposed, it was obvious that it was not good. The leg from the knee down was red, swollen and angry-looking. There were dark red streaks running up the leg past the knee. Doc pulled a large absorbent pad from his pack, unfolded it and gently lifted Don’s leg and spread it out on the footrest of the chair and laid the leg on it. He then went about cleaning the wound.

  I stood off to the side as Doc worked, not saying anything while Don’s wife sat silently on the sofa. Don grimaced and shuddered a couple of times as Doc scrubbed the raw wound with a Betadine-impregnated surgical scrub.

  “Mr. Don, does the leg hurt much?” Doc asked.

  Don mashed up his face. “Naw, not really, a little sometimes but not really.”

  His wife said, “Now, Don. It does, mister, he’s just too proud to say it. It hurts him plenty.”

  “Don, I’m gonna get a couple of things for you, just hang tight for me,” Doc said as he stood up and motioned for me to follow him.

  “Take yer time, Doc, I’m not going anywur.”

  I followed Doc outside. I shut the door as we went out, “What’s up?”

  “He’s not going to make it. It’s just a matter of time. All I can do is try and make him comfortable, sort of,” Doc said.

  “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

  “I don’t have enough painkillers to keep him sedated til he goes. I’m going to leave them enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “Morgan, you see how they’re living. He hasn’t been out of that chair in long time. When was the last time you were here?”

  “It’s been a few days I guess. I just got busy and forgot about him, honestly.” I felt bad. I was the one that should have been checking on him, and I knew no one else would.

  “It’s not your fault, Morg. You’re one man and can only do so much. These people are simply waiting for the end to come. That old man is going to die and then she will, one way or another.”

  “You’re going to give them an out, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. If you can take her in, then do it. But if you can’t … he’s not gonna make it, and maybe they’d like to go together.”

  We went back in the house and Doc talked to Don and his wife as he took out a small hard box. He took out a small vial of morphine and showed them how to use it. Doc used an alcohol wipe to clean Don’s leg and stabbed the small needle in and squeezed the light amber liquid in. Don immediately went to sleep. Doc left the small bottle and a couple of syringes with her, stressing to her how much was too much, making sure she understood it.

  Doc redressed the wound, using some of the Tampax pads from a box beside the chair. I assumed he didn’t want to waste good dressings on the old man. Every decision we made any more was a kind of triage. Once the leg was wrapped, Doc pulled some MREs out of his pack and left them with her. I asked about her water situation and told her that I would bring some over. We left the house, closing the door behind us. I didn’t have much to say and told Doc I would see him later. I wanted to go home. He nodded his head and we parted ways, me going through the hole I had cut in the fence and he out through Don’s gate.

  Taylor was sitting on the porch playing on Jeff’s iPad as I came up to the porch. She smiled as I stepped up on the porch. I took off my rifle and laid it on the handrail, took off the vest and dropped it on the floor. She was sitting on the bench with her feet up. She sat up a bit and I sat down and she laid her head in my lap. I sat there rubbing her hair while she played some kind of game on the tablet and I looked out across the yard. It looked so normal. After a bit, she asked, “You alright?”

  “Yeah kiddo, I’m good, just wanted to hang out with you for a bit. It feels like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  “Yeah, you’re gone a lot. Is everything okay?”

  “So long as we’re together it is, don’t you think?”

  Mel came out on the porch and smiled when she saw me sitting there with Taylor. “Well, look at you two. You want some lunch?”

  “I’d love some, if you two will eat with me.”

  “Lee Anne and Ashley are at the table,” Mel said.

  “Well come on kiddo, let’s eat,” I said to Taylor.

  We went in and had lunch as a family. Mel had made a black bean soup from some of the freeze-dried stuff we had. Black beans, onion, green pepper, carrots and some spices of some kind, a simple dish, but it was damn good. I talked with the girls, told jokes and tried to pretend that it was any normal day and they had just come home from school. When we finished lunch, the girls cleaned the table off and worked together to wash the dishes. I went into the living room and sat on the couch. Mel brought me a glass of tea and we sat for a while, just sitting.

  It didn’t last long, though. Meathead started barking and a knock on the door soon followed. Thad was at the door with his big smile when I opened it.

  “What smells so good?” he said.

  “Black bean soup, you want some?” Mel asked.

  Thad smiled and patted his belly. “I don’t turn down good groceries ma’am,” he said.

  “I don’t know how good it is, but I’ll get you a bowl.”

  “Don’t let her fool you, it is good,” I said as I waved him in.

  “Thank you, Miss Mel. Can you put it in a cup so I can take it with? We need to go.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Sarge wants to get this done,” Thad said.

  Mel walked up with one of those oversized coffee cup bowl things and handed it to Thad. “Get what done?”

  I told her, “We’re gonna take care of the guys who shot Lee Ann. Don’t wait up, okay?”

  Mel nodded and said, “Good. Just be careful.”

  I kissed her and followed Thad out.

  When we got to Reggie’s, he, Danny, Jeff and Sarge’s guys were waiting. />
  “Now that yer all here, let’s get down to business,” Sarge said. “I know you fellas have had a couple of scrapes up to this point, but things are about to go to a whole new level and if any of you want out, just say the word. No one will think any less of you.”

  “No disrespect meant, but we don’t need the speech,” Danny said. I’d known him for a long time, but his determination there showed a different side of him.

  “Alrighty then. Ted, Mike and Reggie are going to hit the rest of these douche bags at their place and take them out. The rest of us are going to take out this trash, leave them where their DHS buddies are sure to find them,” Sarge said.

  “How are we going to do that?” I asked.

  “I figured we’d take ‘em down towards the range and leave ‘em in the road. That way their patrols would find ‘em,” Sarge said.

  “How are we going to take ‘em out? If we just shoot at ‘em they’ll be all over us.” Reggie said.

  Sarge looked over at Reggie. “That’s a good question and shows yer thinkin’. Mike and Ted are going to use suppressed weapons when they hit those guys. You’ll be outside to take out any runners.”

  Reggie stood up from the table. “I can take care of myself. I can go in there with ‘em.”

  “I’m not saying you can’t, but this is how this kind of operation is done. Someone has to be outside to take out anyone that gets past the first team. These guys have experience in this business, when was the last time you kicked in a door?”

  “Since never. I got you,” Reggie said.

  “What about us?” I said.

  “I’m coming along with you guys. We’ll get the prisoners tied up and load ‘em into to my buggy. Danny, I want you to drive it. Morgan, you and Thad ride ATVs, one in front and one behind, got it?”

  “What about me?” Jeff asked.