Collapse Fiction: RACE WARS: SEASON SIX: Episodes 31-36: A Time For Choosing

by D. W. Ulsterman

  “I might be. Is that why you’re here, to ask about those tents?”

  Peter’s face grew solemn as his eyes moved toward the ground at his feet. His tone became more hushed, sad, with just a hint of fear.

  “No, it’s what we saw in Fortuna late yesterday. What I saw and then told the others about. I was then instructed to come here to see if the same thing had befallen you.”

  Silas felt a cold stirring from deep within himself.

  “What happened in Fortuna?”

  Peter cleared his throat and then looked up into Silas’s eyes.

  “There were strangers, men in a blue pickup truck. They spoke Spanish. Just three of them but they were armed. I saw them from a distance. They were shooting a gun into the air, lighting some of the buildings on fire, and dragging someone…an old man…they were dragging him through the street behind their truck. I am not completely certain but believe it was the body of the store owner…and I could hear the screams of an old woman.”

  Silas’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed as a flickering flame of fury threatened to grow into an uncontrollable inferno.

  “And this happened just yesterday?”

  Peter nodded but said nothing.

  Lu looked at both Silas and Peter.

  “We were just there two days ago. We left food and supplies at the General Store.”

  Peter glanced at Lu for the first time.

  “I am certain those men took those things for themselves. I am told it is happening elsewhere, even in places as remote as this. People are running out of food, fuel and they then seek to take from others that which they don’t have.”

  Without realizing he was doing so, Lu stepped away from the big rancher, sensing the darkening storm that was gathering within Silas. It was the first time Lu had seen someone so large appear so angry and it was a sight that left him instinctively uncomfortable.

  “You came here to let me know?”

  Peter nodded.

  “They are your people. We do not wish to become involved in these Race Wars. We only hope to protect our own but out of respect for the history between your family and mine I came here to tell you of what I saw.”

  Silas grunted.

  “Ok, then.”

  Lu watched the rancher whirl around and begin to make his way to the cabin while at the same time Peter began to jog back up the hill to the other Indians who waited for his return.

  “Silas, wait! What are you going to do?”

  Silas didn’t answer and he didn’t bother to slow down to make it any easier for Lu to keep up. He passed the cabin and then moved onto the narrow path Lu knew led to the barn.

  “You’re not thinking of going back to town are you?”

  Lu finally caught up to Silas and then purposely fell back, so frightened was he by the lust for revenge that had taken up residence in the rancher’s eyes.

  Upon reaching the barn Silas turned and held up his right hand just inches from Lu’s face.

  “Wait here.”

  Lu stood confused as he watched Silas not enter the barn but instead turn to the right onto yet another almost hidden path that dissected the middle of an especially large boulder some forty yards away. He opened his mouth to ask Silas where he was going but then quickly shut it, recalling the rancher’s tone when he instructed Lu to stay put.

  So that’s just what I’ll do.

  A minute turned to two and Lu grew impatient and began to make his way slowly toward the opening in the boulder when he froze following an eruption of mechanical noise further on down the path. It was an engine of some sort, but its source remained hidden from view.

  Lu turned around at the sound of something approaching him from behind. It was Silas sitting behind the wheel of a World War Two-era, olive-colored military jeep.

  “Are you staying or coming?”

  Lu moved forward, paused, and then decided he would accompany Silas on his journey back to Fortuna and whatever trouble might await them. He ran to the jeep’s passenger side and climbed up into the seat and then felt his head snap back as Silas slammed the vehicle into gear and pushed his booted foot down upon the accelerator. His long legs were bent and though the seat was pushed all the way back, his knees still rested against the green-metallic dashboard.

  It took no more than five minutes for the jeep to take them out of the valley and onto the hard-packed road leading to Fortuna with Silas Toms glaring at the road ahead looking as if he would kill the first thing that dared reveal itself to him. The wind whistled over the thin glass windshield and the almost non-existent suspension communicated every imperfection from the road, causing Lu to wince several times as he was lifted and then slammed back down onto the hard, white canvas-covered seats.

  Lu glanced over at the large, round odometer and noted they were approaching fifty miles an hour which only worsened the vibrations coming through the jeep’s metal frame.

  “Here, take this!”

  Silas had reached into the back cargo area and retrieved a military assault rifle which he then handed to Lu.

  “You be ready to use that!”

  Lu nodded, hoping he could in fact do his part if needed.

  He snuck another look at Silas’s fierce, wind-swept features. At that moment the rancher reminded him of some great, mythological god of war with his massive white and grey beard, matching, shoulder length hair, and grim determination.

  The jeep approached sixty miles an hour and felt as if might break apart. Silas ignored the danger and kept the accelerator mashed to the floor.

  It was nearly twenty minutes later that the handful of buildings that made up Fortuna appeared in front of them. Silas slowed the jeep and then abruptly turned it to the left and headed off the main road, narrowly missing several large rocks as he did so. He glanced behind him to make certain he wasn’t making too big of a dust cloud and then decided to slow down further to minimize any evidence of his approach.

  Lu tightened his grip upon the assault rifle, ready for potential trouble. The jeep crept slowly toward the Fortuna General Store. Both Lu and Silas could smell smoke from a recent fire.

  Once he was directly at the back of the store, Silas turned off the ignition and jumped out of the jeep, his legs happy to be free of the cramped quarters. He motioned for Lu to follow behind him and then made his way up the store’s back steps and the door that was the entrance to Fred and Sadie Mortel’s private residence.

  Silas paused at the door to listen for any evidence of anyone inside. Hearing nothing, he proceeded to gently knock three times and then waited. When no-one answered, he knocked again. Then he tried the door handle and found it locked.

  “Let’s try the front, but keep your eyes peeled.”

  Lu nodded while also silently yelling for his hands to stop trembling.

  Silas crept along the side of the store holding in his right hand what appeared to Lu to be a 19th Century-era Colt six-shooter like he remembered seeing in the reruns of cowboy and Indian movies he would watch as a young boy fascinated by Hollywood portrayals of Old-West Americana.

  Soon Silas was peering from behind the store into the street and finding it completely devoid of life. He again tried to hear if anyone was in the store but found only more silence.

  With two long strides the rancher moved himself to the front of the store entrance and then onto the steps. He glanced inside as Lu kept watch for any trouble that might be near. An unusually bright sun illuminated the area with not a hint of wind.

  It was as if all of Fortuna was holding its breath and waiting to see what was going to happen next.

  Silas moved into the store and shook his head as he was greeted with the sight of destruction. The shelves had been torn apart, the cash register lay broken on the floor, and several holes punctured the smooth stucco walls. All of the supplies Silas had delivered just two days earlier had clearly been taken by force.

  “Fred, Sadie…it’s Silas Toms.”

  Silas held his gun out in front of him. T
he interior of the store remained disturbingly silent.

  Lu suddenly moved quickly into the store and then pointed outside as he whispered an urgent warning.

  “There’s a blue truck coming this way!”

  Silas peered from just inside the store entrance and confirmed what Lu saw. An old, rusted out pickup truck was slowly driving down the middle of Fortuna as its driver and two other men were laughing loudly at something they clearly found quite funny.

  Lu heard Silas inhale sharply as his lips pulled back into a savage snarl.

  “No…no…NO!”

  The big man moved far more quickly than Lu would have thought possible for a man of his age and size. Silas ran into the middle of the street and remained there like some defiant stone sculpture of a biblical force of nature come to earth in human form. He raised his pistol and aimed it at the truck which came to an abrupt halt some fifty yards from where Silas stood.

  That is when Lu saw for himself what had so enraged Silas Toms. The naked form of Sadie Mortel was tied to the back of the truck. Her unmoving body lay face down in the dirt of the street.

  Silas’s voice boomed his judgment upon the terrible atrocity.

  “I intend to kill each one of you today, right now. Get out of that truck.”

  When the three men remained inside what they believed to be the safe confines of the vehicle, Silas’s voice somehow managed to grow even louder.

  “I SAID GET OUT OF THAT TRUCK YOU MURDERING SONS OF BITCHES!”

  The men had no intention of complying. Instead, the driver put the pickup truck into gear and accelerated, aiming it directly for Silas Toms.

  Lu watched, frozen both by fear and fascination as Silas remained standing in the middle of the street seemingly unfazed by the threat of the quickly approaching mass of steel coming for him. The rancher fired all six of his bullets and still the truck propelled itself forward. Lu was certain he was about to watch the rancher be run over.

  With no more than a half-moment to spare, Silas lunged to his left, the truck missing him by no more than a few inches. He fell onto his back and then pointed to Lu and roared yet again.

  “SHOOT!”

  Lu shook himself from his stupor and aimed the military rifle at the departing truck and fired off several rounds and was rewarded with the sound of the vehicle’s back window breaking apart.

  Even as the truck veered to the right and then plunged into the remnants of a small storage shed that had been set on fire the day before, Silas was on his feet and making his way quickly toward the pickup truck and the three men who were still inside. The sight of Sadie’s broken and bloodied body not only reignited his rage, but expanded upon it like a gas-fueled inferno.

  Silas grabbed the passenger door and opened it with an enraged growl, nearly tearing it off its hinges. The smell of cheap alcohol permeated the truck’s interior. The man nearest the door was already bleeding badly from a bullet that had cut a deep groove into the left side of his neck. Silas was about to pull the man out of the truck when he caught the dull, metallic movement of a gun being pointed at him.

  The driver, a middle-aged Hispanic man with a thick paunch, long, unwashed black hair, and face that was home to at least a few chins, prepared to put a bullet into Silas’s face but instead heard the unmistakable click from an empty weapon. Silas decided then it was time he make good on his promise.

  He set out to deliver quick and unforgiving justice to the three men who had brought such terror to two good and simple people the rancher had known the entirety of his own life. Fred and Sadie deserved better and Silas Toms was more than willing to send to hell those who had brought them such terrible pain.

  He grabbed the first man by the front of his dirt-covered denim jacket and threw him onto the ground. The man was a decade younger than the driver, with medium length brown hair and the beginnings of a dark beard covering a lean, wolfish face.

  “Please, we were just going to leave!”

  The man scrambled into a half-crouch. His right hand covered the wound to his neck while his left hand was held out in front of him as he begged for the mercy Silas had no intention of giving him.

  The rancher’s right boot crashed into the man’s chest sending him sprawling backwards and cracking two of his ribs. Silas then moved forward and brought the same boot down upon the man’s face, dislocating his jaw and breaking his nose.

  The man’s mouth attempted to open but was unable. This time both his hands flew upward as he tried to prevent the boot from descending upon him for a third time. The sound of his skull fracturing was loud enough Lu heard it from across the street.

  “Silas, watch out!”

  Both of the remaining two men inside of the truck had scrambled out the drivers side and were preparing to launch themselves at Silas. Lu attempted to aim his rifle at the men but their proximity to Silas made it just as likely he would hit the rancher and not his attackers.

  Silas turned just as the driver of the truck plunged a six-inch blade into his left shoulder. The man wanted to strike at the rancher’s neck but Silas’s considerable height prevented him from doing so.

  The second man dove into Silas’s waist, hoping to push the bigger man down onto the ground where the men thought they could then overpower him.

  Silas made no sound as he tore himself free from both men’s grasp with the hilt-deep knife jutting out from his shoulder. So great was his fury he hardly felt the wound. At that moment all his energy was devoted to ending the lives of the remaining two men. The truck’s driver, though overweight, was a more than capable fighter, having spent much of his life in and out of detention centers and prisons where toughness was a prerequisite to survival. The other was younger, leaner, and stronger. The two remained confident that despite Silas’s great size, he would be no match for the both of them.

  The driver’s Spanish accent was thick as he licked his lips and prepared to attack.

  “That knife looks good in you, old man. Bet it feels good, don’t it? We’re gonna make you hurt. Gonna make you hurt real bad.”

  Lu watched as the two men suddenly moved as one, their eyes shining with the light of their own blood lust.

  Silas reached out and caught each man by the throat in a powerful, vice-like grip and then unleashed a terrible roar as he pushed both of them backwards until they slammed into the side of the pickup truck. His hands continued to tighten further even as the men’s mouths fell open and they gurgled and gasped for any remnant of oxygen they could somehow force into their starving lungs.

  The rancher pulled the men toward him and then violently slammed their bodies back into the truck again and again and again with such force it rocked the vehicle to the side and left several indentions in the metal frame. Shoulders were dislocated, skulls fractured, and finally, necks were broken from the trauma delivered to them by an incensed Silas Toms.

  He flung the bodies to the ground and then slowly backed away, slightly disgusted by the violence he had so willingly allowed himself to embrace. He looked to his shoulder and saw the dark handle of the knife still imbedded deep in his flesh. Diminished adrenalin was then replaced by increased pain, so much that it caused Silas’s legs to buckle beneath him.

  Lu moved quickly to provide the rancher as much support as his lesser strength could.

  “You need to sit down, Silas. That knife…”

  Lu looked away from the wound. Seeing it made his stomach churn. Silas lowered himself slowly down onto the steps of the Fortuna General Store, grasped the blade’s handle, took a deep breath, and then abruptly pulled it out with little more than a soft grunt as he did so.

  He gave the blood-soaked weapon a disgusted look that lasted but a few seconds and then flung it into the dirt. He could feel his own blood oozing from the opening in his flesh.

  “In the back of the jeep there’s a med kit. Bring it here.”

  Lu ran as fast as he could, located the small square-tinned military medical kit, and made his way back to Silas who had by then
removed his jacket and pushed the fabric of his white t-shirt over his shoulder to reveal the knife wound. Lu was relieved to see the bleeding had already diminished to a slow trickle.

  Silas pointed to the medical kit.

  “Take the small bottle of saline and wash the wound. There’s some butterfly bandages in there. Put a couple over it to close it up and we should be good to go.”

  Lu found the saline and proceeded to squirt it into the one-inch gash. When he stopped, Silas urged him to continue.

  “We don’t want infection to set in. Clean it out.”

  Lu did as he was told and then applied two small butterfly bandages to the wound. Silas looked down at the nearly closed gash and nodded.