Randall also thought about how he could do nothing and just wait for Gale to move on. Perhaps that would be the wisest move. In fact, it would be the wisest, he knew!
But there was also an anger burning inside of him for Gale. There was anger for the fact that Gale was wearing his trusty leather gun belt with his knife and gun. There was anger for the fact that the Compound had conquered his grandparents’ cabin and that he had no idea where his family was as a result. And most of all, there was anger for the fact that he knew there was at least one member of his family who was dead, and that it might have been Gale who had fired the fatal shot.
In that moment, Randall decided that he would not show Gale mercy by letting him pass, even if it meant risking his own life and limb.
Without another moment of hesitation, he rose from his position and charged Gale head on, around fifteen yards away from his position.
Gale saw the incoming blur that was Randall out of the corner of his eye and swung around the .45 to respond, but it was too late.
Randall crashed his body hard into Gale’s and both men went tumbling down the ravine towards the bank of the creek. Gale lost his grip on the gun and it landed in the mud.
Randall regained his footing first and wasted absolutely no time in continuing his relentless attack.
Grasping Gale by his jacket collar, he lifted him up off the ground and then flung him hard against a nearby large cedar tree.
THUMPH!
Stunned by the force of the blow that directly impacted his back and head, causing immense amounts of pain, the dazed Gale saw multiple Randall’s coming for him.
Randall pinned Gale against the cedar with his left arm while his right instinctively reached for the KA-BAR knife that was sheathed on the left side of the gun belt.
Gale struggled, but Randall managed to free the 7-inch blade from its sheath, and the moment he did, he plunged it deep into Gale’s gut!
Gale hollered as the frigid pain shot throughout his entire body, but Randall muffled the noise by placing his hand over his mouth.
“This is mine, by the way!” Randall sneered.
He unbuckled his gun belt from Gale’s waist, and it dropped to the ground.
“Who was killed in the attack?!” Randall asked. “Who was it?! Who did you kill?!”
He slowly released his hand from Gale’s mouth to allow him the chance to speak. Half of the knife blade was still embedded in Gale’s abdomen and Randall’s fist was tightly locked over the grip.
Gale groaned in pain and refused to say a word.
“WHO?!” Randall pressed again, pushing the blade in a little further.
“Robert, Robert!” Gale finally cried out as the pain grew more intense. “It was Robert!”
It hit Randall like a stone brick. He gritted his teeth as he mercilessly twisted around the blade in Gale’s abdomen. Gale cried out and Randall muffled his mouth again.
“Who did it?!” Randall continued. “Who?! Answer quickly if you value your life!”
Gale grinned and coughed up blood. Despite the fact that the knife that had pierced his torso was sucking the life right out of him, it gave him cruel amusement to see how evident it was that the news of Robert’s death had clearly affected Randall.
“I did,” Gale taunted as he coughed up more blood that sprayed across Randall’s face. “I killed him.”
“NO!” Randall screamed impulsively!
He pulled the large knife out of Gale’s gut and then plunged it in again. And then again. And again and again. All in a rage as he imagined nothing in his mind but all the things that he, Thomas, and Robert had done when the three of them had grown up together. The memorable camping trips they had gone on, the strenuous and yet exhilarating mountain hikes, the thrilling ATV and motorcycle rides, the trips to the shooting range, and the serene summer evenings fishing for perch and bass outside of the cabin. Randall had always treated Robert as if he were his older brother.
Blood drained out of Gale’s body and he crumpled to his knees before Randall. Randall looked at his knife in his hand, the black blade dripping in blood. He couldn’t believe what he had just done in his fit of fury. Who had he become?!
His face perspiring and pale as death, Gale’s eyes rolled up to meet Randall’s one last time.
“I…lost…a brother too,” Gale managed to say in between deep, wheezing breaths and more coughs of blood. “Now you know how it feels.”
Randall looked down at the dying Gale on the ground, instantly feeling immense regret for what he had done to him, when he heard the calls of the militia members in the near distance.
Without hesitation, Randall recovered his gun belt, 1911, and AK-47 from the ground. He ascended the top of the slope and disappeared right over the edge just when Mitchum and his militia members appeared around the bend in the creek.
* * *
Butler and his group of militia members sweated hard as their legs carried them through the woods towards the direction of Mitchum’s calling voice.
“Lewis, get up here now! Lewis, over here now!”
Butler’s heart was accelerating not from his running pace but from his worst fear that his gut was telling him was about to come true.
Rounding the same bend in the creek, Butler looked ahead and spotted Mitchum and around fifteen other militia members standing in a circle around something or someone next to the water.
Butler caught up and forcefully pushed his way through the crowd, shoving a couple of people to the ground, when he saw what they had gathered around.
Gale was dead. His eyes were glazed over in death and his mouth left gaping open in horror. He was laying in a muddy puddle of his own blood. There were at least five punctures in his jacket through which the blood was seeping from the stab wounds.
Butler’s didn’t breathe. He didn’t blink. He didn’t move a muscle. He just stood there and looked, as if he knew long ago this would happen.
George and his group of militia arrived next, splashing their way through the creek.
“Dad, what is it?” George asked.
Butler turned his head to face his son with a solemn and yet serious look on his face. It was a look George had only seen twice before…once when his mother had passed away, and once more when they had first received the news that Gerald had been killed.
“What is it?!” George’s voice wavered as he began to push his way through the circle of militia.
Upon seeing his older brother lifelessly sprawled out on the muddy and gory ground, George immediately screamed at the top of his lungs.
Randall listened to the echoes as he continued running through the woods.
TO BE CONTINUED
Separated
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
EPILOGUE
Chapter 1
“Cover,” Bill Chandler said, slowing down and starting to go for the brush beside the trail.
He and his wife, Sally, did their best to get out of sight without making any of the kinds of sudden moves that would attract attention.
They got a little bit off the trail into some brush but didn’t dare go any farther in lest the two gunmen coming up the trail heard them or saw the d
isturbed greenery in their wake.
Bill drew his pistol and pulled back the slide to chamber a round. Sally took the cue and pulled her own piece out of its hidden pocket in her purse and readied it.
They watched as the two men walked along chatting at each other, hoping they’d just keep moving along. Neither of them even dared breathe, and Bill wished that his bug-out bag had included light-weight subdued clothing in it.
They kept camouflage pullovers in the rucks, but the day was way too hot for those. The red polo shirt he was wearing, and Sally’s yellow t-shirt and day-glow running shoes were the wrong things to be wearing while trying to keep a low profile.
As if to confirm Bill’s thought process, just before the two men got past their impromptu hiding position one of them looked right at him.
“Hey!” the guy said.
He went to unsling his rifle, but Bill was instantly up and in a clean firing stance, with his wife shadowing him smoothly.
“Don’t you dare,” Bill growled, as he and Sally covered the two gunmen.
“Alright, alright,” the first man surrendered, putting one hand up.
The second man hadn’t had a chance to start unslinging before he found himself confronted by two drawn pistols held by people that looked like they knew what they were doing with them.
“What are you two up to on this trail?” Bill asked.
“Keeping strangers off it,” the first man said.
“We got property up this way, so we aren’t strangers in these parts. We were in town shopping when whatever happened, and we just want to get back to our cabin.”
The second man gave a derisive snort.
Some of the folks that owned property up in the area were in the McMansion set, buying up the good lakefront land, driving around in immaculately detailed luxury SUVs, and generally complaining about the lack of good lattes and fashionable wines available in the area. They were probably a good part of the confused gaggle that was making a mess of Eureka, About ninety minutes down the trail behind Bill and Sally.
Bill didn’t have time to explain that he and his wife had honest jobs and they weren’t big money intruding on the wild lands.
He needed to find some way to get himself and his wife back on their way without anybody pulling a trigger.
“Look, we’re prepared for the long haul up here, if we can just get back across the lake to our cabin. We go on our way, you go on your way, everything’s good, right?”
The problem was everything wasn’t good. The two strangers had, wisely, gone straight for their guns when they sighted a couple people trying to hide out in the brush.
While Bill and Sandy had been able to seize the advantage, the fact was that loaded guns were out. It was real hard to simply walk away once things had gotten to that point.
Besides that, Bill knew that their pistols would be no match at all for the men’s rifles once they got fifty yards’ distance between them. Their sidearms were meant to be easily concealed, always available and ready in case violence came upon them up close and personal.
While they were solid 9mm guns with good short-range stopping power, they were not terribly accurate for much farther than they could be thrown.
“We ducked off the trail because we didn’t want to cause any trouble. We were just hoping you’d pass on by and we’d be on our way,” Sally said. She tried to strike a balance between being firm and conciliatory. “So, let’s work something out here, shall we?”
Bill could see the two men reaching the same conclusion on the long range accuracy of their respective weapons that he already had.
He didn’t think the two were cold-blooded killers, but the whole world had just gone very strange all at once, and the two men in front of him had just been humiliated by a couple of people that they probably still assumed to be well-off vacationers.
Let’s all have a good laugh about it and go on our own ways, just wasn’t an option at the moment.
At least he and Sally still had the advantage. They were the ones with guns out and at the ready.
“What you got there?” the second man asked, motioning towards Bill and Sandy’s rucks.
“The bug-out bags we keep in the truck,” Bill said. “The usual stuff prepared people keep handy for emergencies just like this.”
Bill was disappointed to see that neither of the men made any reaction at all to his second pointed mention of being prepared for an SHTF scenario. He’d hoped that might earn him some respect.
Honest preppers would likely have recognized kindred spirits and agreed to move on, each to their own place. Leave us be, we’ll leave you be and all that.
These two, if they had gone straight out onto the Pacific Northwest Trail looking to shake down hikers at the first sign of trouble, were not honest brokers.
Bill would be damned if he was going to buy his way out of harm from a couple guys like that.
He also decided against mentioning that he had kids that needed the supplies he and Sally were carrying. He was a combat veteran and understood OPSEC.
He wasn’t going to give them any information they might be able to use in any manner. He also couldn’t waste any more time on the two men. He and Sally were burning daylight, and had a long way to go yet.
“Look,” Sandy said. “If we wanted to hurt you, you’d be down by now. We’re just looking to get home where we can ride this all out, and let you two get on.“
“Well, we’ve got to look after ourselves in times like this,” the first man said, indicating Bill and Sandy’s packs.
It was pretty clear to Bill that they were betting on him and Sally not being the kind that would easily shoot someone. It was a dangerous game for them to play, though.
Bill had spent time in the Corps in the mountains of Afghanistan. If the two men in front of him pushed hard enough, Bill knew he could take care of business. He’d rather not, and he really didn’t want to attract the kind of attention that gunfire would, but he could do it if they insisted.
“Here’s how we’re going to handle this,” Bill finally said, deciding to give them one last chance to back away. “We’re not going to take anything from you, but we’ve got to look after ourselves, too. So one at a time, starting with you,” Bill pointed at the first man. “You’re going to real slow drop your magazine, clear the chamber, and set your rifle on the ground. Your buddy here’s going to do the same. And then, real careful, you’re going to open your shirts and drop your trousers so we can make sure you’re not packing anything else. We’re going to take the firing pins with us up the way, and as long as you’re still right here and haven’t followed us, we’ll drop them at the top of that hill up there. Alright? This way we get on our way with our gear, and we don’t take your guns. Nobody walks out of this exchange with less than they started with.”
* * *
Less than three hours earlier, Bill and Sandy had been in Eureka, Montana.
“Hold up, hun,” Sally said, stopping in the middle of an aisle in the drug store. “Are these the gummy candies that Cole really likes?”
“No…” Bill said. “These ones. The little peach rings.”
“Right,” she said, taking a bag off the shelf. “And some cinnamon bears for Jenny.”
They picked up a few other odds and ends as they made their way up to the cash register: a pair of sunglasses to replace the ones Bill had dropped into the lake the day before while they were out fishing with their children, another box of bandages and some antibiotic ointment to restock their first aid kit out at the cabin, a birthday card for Bill’s brother, and some mothballs.
“Now remember, they only get the sweets if we know they stayed out of the water while we were gone,” Sally said, after they’d paid for their items and were walking out to their car.
It was late August, and they were enjoying their last week up at their summer cabin between the west shore of Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai National Forest.
The kids would be going back to school the following we
ek. Normally, their last trip up for the year would be Labor Day weekend, but this year they were spending it with Sally’s family celebrating her parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, so they needed to close the cabin down for the winter over the next few days.
Because it was their last time out for the year, they’d also decided to let Cole and Jenny stay out at the cabin, riding their mountain bikes, instead of bringing them into Eureka when they came into town to refill Bill’s prescription for his cholesterol meds.
It was the third time they’d left the kids alone at the cabin over the summer. They’d always made noises that once Jenny was twelve, she and Cole would no longer need a sitter if their parents were going to be away for more than a few hours. And now that she was twelve, it was time for them to back it up.
Leaving them at the cabin while they made the twenty-five mile trek back to Eureka was a lot different to Bill and Sandy than leaving them for a few hours at home, though.
Their cabin, on a hillside over Dodge Creek, was a cell phone dead zone, and wasn’t on a land line or the electrical grid either. It was a big leap of faith for them to leave the kids out there, knowing they had no reliable way to get in touch with each other, unless one of the kids made a run up onto high ground and managed to catch a bit of signal.
Still, Bill and Sally prided themselves on not being helicopter parents raising a couple of meek milk-baggers on a steady diet of safe spaces and participation trophies.
Dawn of Destruction Page 45
