by Steven Bird
“Who the hell is that?” she shouted aloud, wondering who the mysterious man in the SUV was.
~~~~
Stopping several houses away to gather his bearings and regroup, Jessie pressed the magazine release button on his AR-10, dropping the empty magazine to the ground, quickly replacing it with a fresh OD green twenty-round polymer PMAG. Bumping the bolt catch release with the palm of his left hand, Jessie double-checked that a round was in the chamber and took refuge behind an old backyard shed that had become surrounded by tall weeds from neglect.
Hearing several gunshots being fired into the vehicle he had just abandoned, Jessie thought, “Idiots,” as he patiently waited for them to round the corner of the home in pursuit.
After several moments, he heard the whispers of two of the men as they worked their way around the home. Seeing the light of their flashlights stop just short of rounding the corner of the house, Jessie readied his rifle, aiming it where he assumed they would appear next. Come on, damn it. Don’t make me wait on you all night, he thought as he heard movement coming from the house behind him. Crap!
Overhearing a faint radio communication coming from the direction of the two men who had stopped short of Jessie’s position, Jessie came to the realization that they would be boxing him in, closing in tight on his position. Being near the intersection of 3rd Street and Richards Street, Jessie knew that once his position was discovered, the men could easily call for backup, sending Peronne’s men driving right up on him, leaving him with little way out.
Slipping his sling around his shoulder, Jessie positioned his rifle across his back and crawled slowly and quietly to the edge of the fence behind the old shed. Damn it. Chain-link, he thought, realizing the easiest but most obvious way to get past the fence was to go over it.
Feeling around the bottom of the fence, Jessie could hear the men closing in on his position as they swept the surrounding houses in a very deliberate manner. They’re not gonna let this go. Their entire assault on the woman in the house is in jeopardy as long as I’m alive and on the loose, and they know it.
Lifting up on the bottom of the fence, Jessie realized there was just enough room to slide underneath. Reaching around and pulling his rifle around in front of him, Jessie slid it underneath the fence and began to crawl as low to the ground as he could under the metal mesh and through to the other side.
With his head and his right arm and shoulder underneath, he felt a snag on his clothing, stopping his advance while he maneuvered, trying to free himself. What, am I Peter Rabbit, now?
As he calmly and quietly tried to free himself, a vehicle came around the corner from Richards Street, shining its headlights onto 3rd Street, and right in front of Jessie. Quickly retreating back into the yard, Jessie’s shirt tore loose from the fence as the vehicle rounded the corner and began to work its way up 3rd.
Damn it! Jessie thought as his heart pounded in his chest, realizing that his rifle was still on the other side of the fence. Hearing a radio transmission from one of Peronne’s men on foot getting closer and closer to his position, and with the vehicle’s spotlight shining its way up the fence line, Jessie knew he had to abandon his beloved AR-10 and make his move before it was too late.
Quickly slipping across the home’s weed-filled, abandoned lawn, Jessie made it to the side of the home as the vehicle’s spotlight shone directly on his rifle as the vehicle came to a stop.
Making his move, Jessie ran around the corner of the house and ran straight into one of Peronne’s men, knocking both of them to the ground. With Jessie lying on top of the man with the officer’s AR-15 patrol rifle pinned between the two, he grabbed the officer’s hand as he reached for his sidearm, shoving downward, keeping the pistol securely holstered while the two men struggled.
With his left hand on the man’s gun, Jessie quickly grabbed the man’s windpipe with his right and began to squeeze as hard as he could, stopping the man’s call for help as he struggled to get his words past Jessie’s crushing grip. Digging his fingers deeper and deeper into the man’s throat, Jessie focused all of his rage on his task, resisting the man’s attempts to get his fingers underneath Jessie’s, in order to pry his hand free.
Feeling the man’s windpipe collapse, the struggle began to fade as the man’s eyes rolled back and his muscles relaxed, his life slipping away from him, taken from him with Jessie’s bare hand.
Hearing the man’s partner yell from the next yard over, “We found something,” as he began to run toward Jessie’s now illuminated rifle. Using this momentary distraction to his benefit, Jessie got off the slain officer, removed his rifle from its sling, unclipped his belt-mounted radio, and slipped off into the shadows of the night.
~~~~
Back in the elderly woman’s home, Leina knew she had to stay on the move inside the home to prevent Peronne’s men from carrying out an assault on her and the woman too easily. “The bathroom,” she thought, remembering the hidden compartment beneath the floor where the woman had kept her safe.
Frantically dragging the mattress off the woman, Leina pulled her up and into a fireman’s carry as she began to work her way through the house and down the stairs, carrying the rifle awkwardly with one hand while she held on to the woman with the other.
Reaching the downstairs bathroom, Leina nearly slipped and fell with the woman, slipping in the blood that had oozed underneath the door from the man she had disemboweled in such a gruesome fashion. Opening the door, Leina stepped over the man’s body and laid her rifle on the bathroom sink so that she could properly take care of the woman. With her other hand now free, she opened the closet door, knelt down on her right knee, and pulled the hidden opening to the side.
Working her way into the compartment first, Leina carefully laid the woman inside, pushed her hair out of the way, and said in a soft and gentle whisper, “I’ll come back for you. I promise. But if I don’t, may God keep you safe and grant you the ability to get yourself out of here and to safety.”
Climbing back up and out of the underfloor compartment, she reinstalled the false floor and scattered towels and other bathroom items around to mask the entrance.
As she reached for the old .30-06 hunting rifle, Leina was startled by the sound of a transmission coming through the dead officer’s radio. Through gritted teeth, she heard an ominous, static filled transmission:
What’s the matter, boys? Can’t find me? How many of you have to die tonight before you realize you’re following a dead man? That’s right. Peronne, as well as all who follow him, will die tonight. You’re all guilty of the worst of all betrayals. You aren’t just guilty of betraying your fellow man, you’re guilty of betraying your entire community. You’ve killed for him. You’ve watched the innocent suffer. You’ve kept a tyrant and a madman in power, betraying every single person in this town. Your uniforms are supposed to represent service to the people with whom you share the town. Instead, you’ve turned your badge into a symbol of dishonor. You’ve betrayed your oath. You’ve betrayed your duty. You’ve betrayed everything that badge is supposed to represent. You don’t serve the people. You serve a tyrant, and tonight, you will lie in the same pool of blood as him. Tonight, justice will finally be served upon you for all of the injustices you’ve perpetrated on your fellow man.
As silence once again fell upon the radio, the thoughts of what may be going on began to swirl through Leina’s mind. As she tried to piece it all together, she heard Peronne’s familiar, angry voice scream through the radio:
Who are you, you son-of-a-bitch? You’re the one that’s gonna be lying in a pool of blood tonight, but you won’t die right away. My men will kill you slowly. You’ll feel the pain as I remove every finger from your hand, every toe from your feet, and every tooth from your mouth. I will disassemble your entire body until you die from the pain of it all. How dare you come into my town and threaten me. How dare you, you son-of-a-bitch! You’re gonna die, I tell you! Gonna die!
Leina couldn’t help but smile at how a man
who liked to seem so in control, so calm, and so collected, was coming apart over the radio. That psychotic coward is shaking in his boots, she thought. You can hear the trembling in his voice, disguised as rage.
Hearing Peronne’s angry voice once again, she heard him shout over the radio:
Show yourself, you coward. Come out here and fight me like a man.
Is it manly to kill the innocent? the strange man who had attacked Peronne and his men replied. Is it manly to surround a house with overwhelming force to attack a woman? A woman, who you kidnapped, killing all of her friends and taking her children? Does that make you a man? All it makes you is a tyrant and a coward, and for that, you will pay and pay dearly. As for the rest of you, drop your weapons and walk away. It’s your only chance.
In an increasingly frustrated and angry tone, Peronne responded, If you want to defend that woman, you’ll die with that woman. I’ll kill her in front of you, you son-of-a-bitch! I’ll give you a front row seat. I may even make you kill her yourself.
I think your men need an example to follow, the voice said in a bone-chilling manner.
The only example they need is to watch how I kill you with my bare hands! Peronne shouted.
Mustache... the strange voice said, followed by the supersonic crack of a rifle as one of Peronne’s officers in the perceived safety of their offensive position against the house violently fell forward onto the hood of his own SUV, as his forehead exploded from being shot squarely in the back of the head.
As Peronne’s men began to scatter, Leina ran to the living room of the home and opened fire on them as they broke cover, realizing that the offending shot had come from directly behind them. Striking one of them in the side, dropping him to the ground, the man began flopping around like a wounded animal while screaming in agony. Leina cycled the bolt, chambering another round, this time aiming through the glass of one of the patrol vehicles. Taking the shot, her bullet struck a man squarely in the back as he tried to get a fix on the unknown shooter.
As return fire began shattering the ground-floor windows of the home, Leina dove to the floor, taking cover behind the old, leather sofa while she covered her head with her arms, shielding herself from the flying glass and debris that now filled the room.
As the gunfire subsided, Peronne’s voice once again came over the radio in a fit of rage, now bordering on madness:
Damn you, you son-of-a-bitch! Tell me your name so that I can mark your grave when I bury what’s left of you. I would feed you to the animals, but I need a gravestone with your name on it to piss on every day when I think about how much fun I had killing you!
In a calm and collected voice, Leina heard the strange man reply:
I’m just a simple shepherd who lost everything I held dear because of the betrayal of men like you. And as a shepherd, one thing my life revolved around was killing any predators that threatened my flock. Killing you will be no different. You’re just a predator, preying on your fellow citizens. Nothing more, nothing less.
Taking advantage of the lull in the fight while Peronne’s men regrouped, Leina slipped out the back door of the home under the cover of darkness. Working her way around the block, she set out in an attempt to try to gather any intel she could on the current positions and the state of Peronne’s men, considering the recent turn of events. She had no idea who the mysterious man wreaking havoc on Peronne and his men was, but she knew the chaos he was causing was an opportunity for her to inflict as much damage as she could, as well.
Noticing that Peronne had divided his men up into two distinct formations, one facing the home that she and the woman occupied, while the other covered their rear and flanking positions in an attempt to counter the strange man’s harassing fire.
They’re not gonna be able to make an aggressive move on me so easily with their attention divided like this. All we need now is for dissension in his ranks to create even more chaos, she thought as she looked back toward the home.
To her horror, Leina saw glowing orange flickers of light that appeared to be growing rapidly from within the first-floor living room of the house. She then saw a burning object being hurled into one of the shot-out front windows, intensifying the brightness almost immediately upon impact.
Her heart racing as thoughts of the woman in the hidden underfloor compartment flashed through her mind, Leina began to sprint back toward the home, no longer attempting to remain unseen by Peronne and his men. As gunfire erupted around her, she ran directly into the side door of the home, which was now engulfed in flames. The intense heat and overpowering fumes forced her to the floor, where she crawled in an attempt to reach the bathroom where she had left the woman beneath the floor.
Pulling her shirt up over her face, Leina tried her best not to inhale the noxious fumes as she began coughing uncontrollably. With only feet to go to reach the bathroom, Leina could see the growing flames flickering as a reflection in the drying pool of blood on the floor, blood that had been flowing out beneath the bathroom door.
Feeling her strength begin to fade, Leina started to lose all control as her coughing intensified and her eyes burned from the smoke and fumes. Screaming, “Noooooo!” as the fire grew around her, Leina’s world faded to darkness as the smoke and fumes overtook her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Coughing herself awake, Leina awoke in a panic, her last memory being that of the light of flames from within the bathroom she had so desperately tried to reach in time. Frantically looking around the room, she heard the familiar voice of the man on the radio, who said, “Shhhh. It’s okay. You’re safe. Peronne doesn’t know where we are at the moment, though they are searching house to house, so it may only be a matter of time.”
Coughing and attempting to clear her throat to speak, he handed her a glass of water, saying, “Here, drink this. Your throat is probably quite irritated from the smoke.”
Swallowing a drink of water, she struggled to speak, saying only, “Who...?
“My name is Jessie. Jessie Townsend,” he stated in a calm and reassuring voice.
Speaking softly, she replied, “The radio... You’re the man from the radio.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As memories of the night began to flood back into her mind, her heart raced as she thought of the woman. “The woman!” she shouted. “Where is she?”
“Woman? What woman? You’re the only person I could get to in the home. You were trying to get to the bathroom, which was fully engulfed in flames.”
As tears began to roll down her cheeks, Leina sobbed and said, “She helped me. She was a total stranger and helped me when I was on the run. Peronne’s men killed her son and beat her severely while trying to find me. She had hidden me in a secret underfloor compartment in that bathroom. That’s where I had left her during the fighting. She was too weak and injured to get away, so I had resolved to stay with her until the end, helping her as she had helped me.”
“I... I’m sorry,” Jessie replied as he bowed his head for a moment to give her time to take it all in.
After a few moments, Leina asked, “Why? I mean, what brought you into my fight?”
Sitting on the bed next to her, he said, “This should be everyone’s fight, not just yours. That’s the problem. That’s why men like Peronne are able to take control of an entire population of people who could and should be able to stand up and take their town back. Everyone is just afraid to be the first one killed, or they’re afraid to be the only one in the crowd who stands up. It’s easy to be a patriot when the battle lines are formed. It’s not so easy to be the first to make the call to arms.”
“Is this your town?” she asked, still confused.
“No, ma’am,” he replied. “Before everything went down and the world quickly spiraled out of control, I was the sheriff of Montezuma County, Colorado. Before it got ugly, I moved onto a mountain homestead with my family to hide from it all. That worked for a while, and we had a great life, but eventually, the evil in the world will find you.
You can’t avoid it forever. Choosing to sit something out simply doesn’t work, at least not in the long run.”
Bending and unwinding a paperclip he had found lying on the floor in a nervous fashion, Jessie tossed it aside, and continued, “To make a long and painful story short, my family was killed, and everything I held dear in this world was taken from me, even my horse. After I had set out on a mission to find my sister, whom I haven’t seen or heard from since long before this all started, I swore to never sit something out again. As I traveled east, just north of here, I heard a barrage of gunfire one evening as I made camp a safe distance from town. The next morning, I investigated and found what appeared to be an ambush site. There were signs of children, so I simply couldn’t keep going without looking into it further.”
Pausing, noticing that his observations were bringing Leina’s memories back to the forefront of her mind, he said, “So, anyway, once I started surveillance of the town, I encountered one of Peronne’s men who had slipped away in the middle of the night to escape the goings on in Fort Sumner. He wanted nothing to do with it, yet after speaking to him long and hard about it, he realized that he couldn’t just run away, either. He knew it would eat at him for the rest of his life if he didn’t try to right his wrongs.”
In an attempt to break her trance-like state, he asked, “Were you held by Peronne and his men at his home?” he asked.
Pausing for a moment before replying, Leina said, “Yes. Yes, I was. How did you know?”
“Did you encounter a woman of Hispanic descent, named Rosa?”
“Uh... yes, yes I did. How did you know that?” Leina asked inquisitively.
