2024

by H. Berkeley Rourke

  Though I knew it was time to get going myself I decided to make myself a bed in the cellar, leave the ironing board down as it had been, hope that no one found the door to the cellar and do some initial movement and scouting in the morning early. I didn't want to be trapped down there so I looked around carefully before bedding down and found another door that seemed to go outside. But it appeared to be locked from the outside. I went around the house, found the door and unlocked it. Then I went down into the cellar and made myself a comfortable spot, ate a can of kipper snacks and some crackers and went to sleep. When I awakened it was still dark. But someone was moving around in the house.

  I slowly and carefully scattered my bed area and waited. The scuffling seemed to stop. I could see that someone was using a flashlight by the light filtering under the door above the stairs. I decide I better get out of there. I gathered my stuff and climbed out the back door, opening it very slowly and watching with great care as I went out the door. There were two pick-up trucks alongside the house. They had back lights on in the beds of the trucks. I could see three men in the bed of one and two in the bed of the other. I figured there must be four more wandering into the house. I moved off into the woods thinking that since it was cold I should not leave tracks or they would be very faint. I moved slowly, watching, waiting a few beats and then moving.

  Yes, I had some training at this sort of thing. I followed in my dad's footsteps before school, was a Recon Marine as well. I had been in the Nam in the late stages when it started going all wrong for the ARVN Army. I was with ARVN Special Forces when they fought absolutely like tigers trying to save their comrades in the edges of Laos very late in the war. So yes, I know to move slowly, take my time, slide my feet slowly from one spot to another rather than stepping out and taking the chance of tripping. I am sure of one thing and that is the guys in the trucks never had any training or discipline applied to them at all. In the house they discovered nothing more than that they or someone else had left earlier. They lit it afire and left.

  After the fire burned down by itself I was still tired so I got into the back seat of the car and slept for a while longer. When the sun began to peek through over the horizon I awakened. It was time to make a move and get some distance between me and this place. I found my bearings, kept the sun at my back initially and began to move through the deepest part of the woods, up and down through cuts and even through some deep cuts with a little technical climbing involved. I never saw or heard another human being until late in the day. It was nearing five o' clock in the afternoon when I began to hear cars, a lot of noise and some shooting going on.

  The highway seemed to be closer than I had meant it to be so my guess was that I had unconsciously veered to the northwest slightly as the highway went in that direction. Again I began to move very carefully, maintaining cover at all times, but I decided I had to know roughly where I was.

  As I slithered to the edge of the woods and took a look at what was in front of me, I found that I had covered the distance to the turn off into Frenchtown with no trouble during the day. The exit to Frenchtown was right in front of me. And so were about thirty militiamen. And they were heavily armed, all of them. They had a couple out of a car. The man was already dead. The woman was everything but dead. They were still raping her. There was not one thing in the world I could do short of killing her to make her existence any better. I slithered back away from the road block and moved very slowly and very quietly toward the town. I knew I had to go a little east to get to the town and quite a bit east to get around it to head in the direction that would take me to dad's place.

  But it was too light, too easy for others to see. As I neared the town a bullet clipped the tree I was standing close to. It was nearing dark and I think that is the reason the guy missed me. But the shot alerted the entire militia group. Frenchtown is like a lot of small forest surrounded towns in that it has kind of a perimeter road around it. As I went back into the woods to try and escape I could see pick-up trucks coming around the perimeter road with spotlights on them. Shit. I found a small defile and walked in it for quite a while thinking that it would keep me from being seen. And apparently it did. But some of the locals knew it was there as well.

  I heard them well before I saw them. They had flashlights of course. They weren't smart enough to use night vision goggles. I knew that if they caught me they would kill me. I didn't want to get into a battle, but the whole day I had been preparing myself for the possibility I might run onto one or more of their kind and have to fight them. It could not be with a gun, at least not with the guns I had. I moved quietly toward them. They walked noisily down the wash away from me toward what? I didn't know for sure but I guessed that the road might join up with the wash. So I decided to move out of the wash. We were all deep enough into the trees now that the spotlights were of no use except to create shadow. Apparently one of them thought he saw my shadow. He unloaded a 30 round clip from what was evidently an AK-47 or AK-74 if it were the later model, but he was aiming a good two hundred yards in front of where I was located.

  I decided that if they separated at all I would do them quietly and one at a time. They separated. I killed the first one with a thrust of the K-bar into his kidney that paralyzed him and then cut his throat and held him still until he bled out. The other one got nervous and came back toward me. He was easy. I knocked him out with a blow from the AK his buddy had been carrying and then killed him and took off. This time I moved as quickly as I could. Both of them had been carrying nine millimeter Beretta pistols, both of the pistols were silenced. I took them, their knives and all the ammunition I could find on the two of them before I left. I covered them with rocks and leaves as quickly as I could and got out of there. I left their rifles but booby trapped them so they would blow up the next time they were fired if no one looked in the barrel.

  I was on the other side of Frenchtown and found the road to my dad's place by the time dawn came around. And I don't think anyone discovered the bodies until well after dawn. I found a kind of deadfall of several trees after I started to move toward my dad's place. It was ten miles deep into the forest. I hoped no one in Frenchtown even knew the place existed. But I was sure there were some who must know about it.

  Before going to sleep in the day I made a leafy bed under the deadfall, placed a few rocks in what looked like a haphazard arrangement around the bed I had made to create a defensive position and went to sleep. It was a fitful sleep, not really very restful at all, but it was needed and the time passed. And soon enough it was late afternoon again. I was a hunted man now. There were vehicles going up and down every road in every direction imaginable. I saw them, heard them, watched them shooting at shadows in the dusk, watched them drinking, screaming that they were going to kill me. They had found their brethren and they were mad as hell.

  As soon as it was full dark I began to move again. I had eaten some canned vegetables, wished that I had some chicken or a good cut of prime rib of beef, something meaty and solid. But I might never be able to have that again except and unless it was deer or elk. As I went through the woods I found several small streams and filled a couple of bottles with water.

  I had some purifying tablets that I always had with me if I had my K-Bar. They were in the handle, along with matches, a flint and needle and thread. So hydration was not my problem. I just wanted a good, hot, filling meal for a change. If I got to my dad's maybe that could happen. He would be sure to have stockpiled food enough for all of us I imagined.

  As I paralleled the road toward my dad's place I wondered if the militiamen had found it. If they had it would have taken a lot more than four of them to get him down. The trail, if it could be called that, which went toward his home was an up and down affair, all dirt, and as a result of the traffic on the road there was a lot of dirt in the air. It made traveling in the forest even more difficult than normally.

  And of course as soon as it was full dark the searchers had their spotlights on, their headlights
on their special K.C. Hi-lighters on as well. I moved even more slowly then, moved even further back away from the faint trail and almost fell off a cliff at one point as a result of the overall miasma that was created by the pick-up trucks, the dust and their lights. At one point I was not entirely sure of what was going on or where I was. It was a total mess. But somehow I kept going, kept getting further away from the town, kept on walking slowly, making progress, seeing less of the pick-up trucks, hearing less of the voices and shooting.

  It became evident they had no idea where my dad lived as I got further into the forest. Of course the track of the trail, which I felt more comfortable in staying close to as the traffic decreased to nothing, was little more than an animal trail. He must have another way in and out I thought. And knowing my dad it had to be, I had to be right, there had to be another way. It was his way to see to it that he had escape avenues that no one would know about.

  The dawn came and I began to look for a shelter in which I could hide. I found a copse of trees, rocks and rubble that nature had deposited in one or more of its torrential downpours. There were felled trees here and there and I was able to gather enough pine needles and pine boughs to make a fairly comfortable bed once my coat was laid over the top of the natural material. I was asleep in no time.

  The daytime belonged to the militiamen. They were a bunch of incompetents when it came to finding someone that didn't want to be found. In terms of noise discipline they were totally incompetent. They made a lot of noise and woke me up a couple of times. I looked around carefully and saw nothing, listened and heard them at a long distance. They had lost the thread of the trail that existed at all. They had no training and no one to track me apparently. There was no way for them to use dogs because dogs need some kind of scent to work from. The earth is full of scents. If dogs can pick one out they can track anything. If they do not have one scent to trail then they cannot trail well at all.

  So I slept. And I awakened again late in the afternoon when the lighting in my makeshift bedroom changed from bright to gray. There was no movement around me, there were no trucks running around through the trees with men shooting at anything. Nonetheless I waited until it was nearly full dark before I picked up my stuff, rearranged my pack and went on my way. The only thing I really had to worry about now was whether they had set any deadfalls or other forms of traps for me including perhaps the larger steel jawed traps used for large forest animals such as bears, wolves, etc.

  But since the track seemed clear of traffic now I decided to stay several yards inside the trees and just off the beaten path, what little beaten path there was. It was a smart move on my part for at one place I spotted a deadfall in the middle of the road. In another place I spotted a trap that would have impaled me on a tree like those that the Vietcong had used in South Vietnam. That one, I thought, probably was put there by my father. And that made me even more alert which caused me to spot the glint of wire in the little moonlight there was and to avoid the trip wire that would have put me into a net. At that point I thought I must be getting close to my dad's place. And lo and behold, less than half an hour later I heard a man say to me in a gruff, marine voice, “What the hell took you so long? I heard you comin at least for the last two miles!”

  I had to laugh. He did too. We embraced, laughed a little and he asked what all the noise was with the pick-ups running around in the trees. I said they were looking for me. He asked why and I said “Well a couple of nights ago I had to kill two of theirs.”

  “That couldn't have been any challenge,” he responded. “Those bastards are totally incompetent. They have some kind of encampment down near town. It is just off the circular drive that runs around town. Did you see that?”

  “Yeah. I ran onto their roadblock out on Hwy. 93. They had a couple of pilgrims out there. One they had already killed. The woman they were dallying with before killing her. I found a little gully kind of a deal that ran away from the town. A couple of them guessed I might take it and came along with rifles, flashlights, what have you. They were trying to stay in the dark and got a little ways apart. I killed one and then the other. I took their gear except for the rifles. I already had this one so I just took the pistols and their ammo for the pistols. I think they found them two mornings ago. Since then I have been moving very slowly in your direction.”

  “It's good to see you, son. Why didn't you just drive up here?”

  “Dad, I got stopped at a roadblock out near Idaho Falls. They warned me there might be militia groups. After I got some gas in Missoula and ate something, the most expensive hamburgers I ever had I think, I started out of town and as I was coming to 93 something made me pull off the road. I found a house where I thought I might be able to talk to someone about what was going on in the area. I found a couple that had been tortured and shot. He was an ex-cop from San Diego I think.”

  My dad shook his head and said “Yeah, he and his wife were really nice people. His name was Charley and she was Berneice.”

  “They had been dead at least a day or so. I put them into their shed. I found some food and some clothes and then found a little private storage place he had for his rifle and shotgun. I got those out of there, found his .45 pistol and some spare ammunition. I packed up what food I could find and put together enough stuff to be able to get here on foot. Then I ran onto the roadblock but I was on foot and they didn't see me there. One of them apparently saw me just before dark near Frenchtown. He took a shot at me and missed by about a foot.”

  “Careless, son, careless. You know better than that. Your sergeants and officers trained you better than that. So did I.”

  “I know, dad. Have you been watching T.V. at all?”

  “Not since after Ruthie and the kids arrived, Will. We have been having so much fun we didn't need a television. It was good to have it off in fact. I didn't miss it a damn bit. Both the boys have been doing some plinking with a .22 rifle of mine but in the basement where it could not be heard. Once I saw the spotlights and heard all the crap down on the roads I thought something bad had to be going on. But hell no we have not seen the T.V. in over a week.”

  “Then you don't know.”

  “Don't know what?”

  “We are at war, dad. We have been at war with Russia and maybe some others now for over a week. There have been some nuclear exchanges. The eastern part of Montana, the Dakotas got hit, as did Omaha. I was told that Omaha was obliterated. I don't know about the east coast but the west coast was not involved the last I heard. Do you have electric power?”

  “War? How can that be? What happened? Yes, son, we have electrical power from our own generator. That is all we have ever had. And we have a satellite dish. We can take a look at what is going on with that if anything is being broadcast.”

  “Well we might be able to get something from the west coast. Again I don't know about the east coast. And I don't know about Colorado either. What I do know is that civil order has broken down here in Montana and in Idaho. The militias have taken over, dad. The cops won't even go outside compounds in the night. And the side roads like 93 are being patrolled only by militias. One more thing. The cops told me down near Idaho Falls that if I tried to go beyond Missoula to Kellogg, for instance, they wouldn't allow me to do that. I don't know what that has to do with anything. But I think if we are all going to go to the west coast we will have to walk for a long distance.”

  “Well, son, maybe we ought to eliminate some of the enemy, make it a bit easier to take the roads. I see you have gathered a couple of silenced weapons. As you know I have been putting together weapons and ammunition for a long time. One of those weapons is a Heckler & Koch MP-5 machine rifle that will fire bursts, single shot or full automatic. And it has a silencer on it as well. Do you think it's possible for us to get close to that roadblock?”

  “It's quite a ways back there, dad.”

  “Not the way we would go.”

  “And how would that be?”

  “I have a car here. We c
an drive most of the way without any fear of being detected. But hell we wouldn't need to do that. I have plenty of gasoline and I would love to put a little fear in those bastards that think they can ride roughshod over the public in general. I was a military man for a lot of years, son. And I put those years in for one reason. I believed in our system of government. I still do. Those bastards are trying to end our way of government and our way of life and establish some kind of military rule in this area. I don't think I want that to happen. Are you with me, son?”

  Now how in the hell could I ever have said no to my father after a speech like that? As we walked up to the door of the house I said “Sure, dad, but let's see if we can do this with a minimum of chance they will understand who is doing it and how to get at us.”

  “Exactly what I have in mind son, exactly what I have in mind. But of course we won't mention this to the women, will we?”

  Again I had no answer but yes. Ah but you might thing we are crazy. Who are we, my father and I, to take on a large group of militia people? After the Marine Corps my father stayed in excellent physical condition. His weight was almost exactly what it had been when he was twenty except that it was less. He was as lean and tough as any man alive in his age bracket. And his age bracket, though typical of “senior citizens” could easily have been thirty to forty years of age. He is a formidable man indeed.