Pilliars in the Fall

by Ian Daniels

  “Me too,” I smiled and daintily picked up my beloved AK74 with just my thumb and forefinger.

  Chapter 12

  “So how far along was she?” Blake sprung on me, breaking the silence as we hiked.

  We had driven a little less than half the distance to the church, parked, then hidden the truck as best we could and were now hiking on foot. It had been a couple hours and we were trying to take it slow and easy to avoid working up a sweat and then getting chilled from it during the breaks like I had done earlier this morning. Activity when it was cold out was a weird counter intuitive balance of not sweating, drinking more water than you thought you needed, and eating more calories than we burned. Sleep was also at a premium.

  “So she told ya that one huh?” I asked him back.

  “Not really. It took a while but I finally put all the pieces together. Then Dani confirmed it.”

  “She was only ten weeks... it seemed like more,” I reminisced.

  “Did you even want... I mean, was it a good thing?” Blake asked.

  “Well, it wasn’t planned or anything, I guess the best answer is I didn’t know I wanted it until it was happening.”

  “Aw man I’m sorry.”

  “Hey so am I, but that’s life I guess.”

  I seemed to have a way of stopping conversations without trying to and at that we walked on again in silence until he again continued to bring up all the bullet points of my life for the last couple of years.

  "What ever happened to that chick you went with for a long time? What was her name? I always liked her."

  "Tiffany. Yeah, I miss her. We lost touch a little while ago when I heard she was dating some new guy."

  "Hmm. That’s too bad. Hey by the way, I know I wrote you about it but I wanted to tell you again that I’m sorry about your Ma and Pa.”

  “Thanks… but hey they were getting old anyway right?” I defaulted to my gallows humor.

  “Well shit man with everything that’s happened... your parents, Heather, a baby…”

  “Dude, lets just say I’m glad you’re home, okay?” I cut him off.

  “Is that why you're doing this?" he asked out of no where.

  "Doing this? You mean coming out here to check on some missing friends?"

  "Well... yeah," he finally admitted, maybe embarrassed that he was asking it at all.

  "No. Well maybe. Hell I don’t know man," I shook my head. "Look at it this way, the world is basically coming apart at the seams right?"

  "That’s a good way to put it," he agreed.

  "Well if that’s what is happening, then there are only a few people out there that I can think of that I would want around me, you guys being on the top of that list. Depending on how bad it gets, if it means that I have to go check up on the Parvish's, or do something to make sure that they can make it, then it makes sense to go do that, right?

  "Aw come on, it's us against the world... what the hell is that, a lawnmower?" Blake cocked his head to the side and then looked up into the air.

  We had just caught up to Clint and Danielle who were about a quarter of the way into an open field ringed by trees and Clint, being a little more practical, had his hands cupped to his ears to help zero in on the buzzing noise we could all hear.

  "Left side, three o'clock high," he informed us.

  It took us each a second or two to spot the source of the noise, then another second to make sure that we could believe what we were seeing.

  "Is that a helicopter?" Danielle asked to no one in particular.

  "He's a ways off if it is," Blake said, still trying to zero in on the distance. With the gray sky matching the flat and gray landscape, depth perception was not an easy thing to figure right now.

  "Noise is wrong for the distance... oh shit you know what that thing is? Its one of those mini drones. My buddy back in South Carolina had one he used to fly around on the base," Blake told us.

  "A toy? I don’t get it," Danielle sounded confused, not quite able to figure out just what it was.

  We all watched as the drone banked side to side in the air. Once at altitude, it slowly began swiveling and pivoting to spy on its surroundings. Thankfully its “back” was still to us.

  "A toy nothing," I answered, my senses notching up a peg. "If it's got a camera then someone is going to know we're here. Don’t they need some sort of wi-fi or something to remote through?" I asked Blake.

  "Uh, I guess. Shit I don’t know," he looked around, obviously not quite sure what to do.

  "What's the range of one of those things?" I asked him again quickly.

  "What?"

  "How close does the remote control have to be to get a signal to the drone?" I clarified.

  "I don’t know man... but look, were in a damn open field and I don’t see anybody," he said nervously.

  "Clint," I prodded with one word. The nose of the miniature helicopter had almost completely turned around now and we would be in view in moments.

  "On it," he confirmed and took off at a medium run to the nearest tree line.

  "Don’t just stand there, go give him some cover," I directed Blake who in turn took off running to catch up to his dad who was already out in the woods and beginning to stalk.

  "Dani, what do you say we do something about that... you wearing a bra?" I asked and stepped around behind her.

  "Yes," she answered right away without thinking, then realized what it was that I had asked. "Wait what? Why!" she demanded.

  "We need to keep whoever's running it distracted so they don’t see Clint and Blake, and I don’t want to just stand here and make a bunch of noise taking pot shots at this thing either. I can't hit it if it keeps moving around like that so we've got to get it to stop and hover in one spot... so you need to give them a show," I explained my plan, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

  "Oh this is really not dignifying..." she proclaimed after looking back and forth from side to side, apparently unable to find any better answer or solution because with a huff, she lifted the bottom of her shirt up to her head.

  Flying in its little orbit, the drone simply swiveled in its path so the nose camera could stay locked on to us, probably giving the operator a chance to zoom in during its flight, but it still hadn’t deviated from its random path just yet.

  "Shake 'em a little bit or something, I need him to stop... wait never mind, here we go."

  Taking a knee I lined up on the little toy as it finally paused in mid air. The red dot of my sight no more than splashed onto the outline of the little helicopter before my finger finished its rearward travel. The suppressed shot barked out and sent a high speed bullet on its way, the impact flipping the drone over onto its side in mid air. Afraid it might recover, I readied a second shot. Just before I fired again though, the thing finally rolled all the way over and crashed to the ground.

  "Was that really necessary?" Danielle asked me moodily as she rearranged the layers of her clothing back into place, trying to regain some of the body heat, and self-respect, that she had just lost to the exposed air.

  "Well it would've been easier if you had‘ve just brought the shotgun," I instigated.

  "You're an asshole."

  "Yeah I know, grab your stuff," I said getting back to business and heading off to retrieve the drone.

  "Shouldn’t we meet back up with the guys?" Danielle anxiously asked after catching up to where I was now stopped, examining the wreck.

  I knew next to nothing about electronics but I could see it had been modified, considering the exposed control box with extra wires soldered on and an antenna that looked like it had been hot glued into place.

  "I guess that’s how they were flying it without a cell connection," I pointed at the rat's nest of wiring. Then after pausing to look around, I spoke again, this time into my handheld radio. "Anything?"

  "Couple foot paths through the trees. We went east, so go in at the same spot and head west. We'll keep circling the clearing till we link up on the other side," Cli
nt radioed back to me.

  "Copy."

  I quickly cut a couple of random wires to make sure the thing was truly dead, then strapped the miniature helicopter onto my backpack and we took off for the other side of the field.

  Danielle and I no more than made it past the tree line and started our search when the distinct sound of 4 wheeler motors ignited, revved and then drove off. Their high pitched winding echoes making it hard to pinpoint a location and direction.

  We had each knelt down when the noise of the first kick start had alerted us that we were not alone, as if we didn’t already know, and we stayed close to the ground for several moments until the noise passed away.

  "What've you got?" Clint's voice asked over the radio.

  "Multiple quads; came from the west a couple hundred yards away. We must've spooked ‘em and they took off," I replied.

  "Continue with the link up... wait one... scratch that, we’ve got a camp. Hustle over to us and keep your eyes up in case they left somebody behind or come back this way."

  "Copy," I radioed again.

  A minute later we were surprised again, this time by the sound of a low menacing growl coming from an ugly and mean looking mutt of a dog tied to a tree that was doing his best at keeping Blake away from the area.

  "Hmm, hush puppy," I looked at the silencer on my AK and half joked to Clint who was standing a few feet away. He was busy surveying a pile of stuff under a camouflaged tarp that had been strung up between a couple trees.

  “You still don't like dogs?” Blake looked up at me from his crouched stance.

  “Too needy,” I answered quickly

  “Ha, it's no wonder you don't...” but the words stuck in this throat too late and he smiled lamely as an apology.

  “Go ahead, I know, it's why I don't have a girlfriend. I told you no kid gloves shit. I can take a joke,” I laughed and turned to check out the rest of the camp.

  Besides the two small tents on either side of a campfire ring, both covered from overhead by a camouflaged net, there was a cache of various military surplus gear like Viet Nam era ALICE backpacks, gray foam sleeping mats, wool blankets, a beat up metal 5 gallon gas can and even two pairs of snowshoes. I also caught sight of a case of MREs and a small tackle box that was askew with gun cleaning rods, patches and oil. More to my interest was the small solar panel and two heavy car sized batteries sitting next to a field desk with a cord running to a small antenna. Some more cords and wires sat unplugged on the makeshift desktop where very recently there had probably been a laptop computer.

  “Is it weird that there are guys camped out here with all this stuff, but they ran off so quickly, even leaving their dog?” Danielle wondered out loud.

  Blake just shrugged and tried offering the dog a piece of jerky by tossing it at his feet. The dog ignored the treat and kept on growling.

  “You aren’t going to waste that are you?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Do you want to eat it?” Danielle eyed me, not sure if I was joking about eating something that had been tossed on the ground near a frothing and pacing animal.

  “Are you kidding?” Blake laughed. “I saw him eat a squirrel once that was pissing him off, Dirt jerky? Yeah, he’d eat that.”

  “That little prick had it coming and you know it,” I proclaimed.

  Finally giving up trying to make friends with the mutt guard dog, Blake walked over to look at the pile of assorted gear, ducking under the tarp to rifle through it.

  On the outside I was laughing, but on the inside I was thinking hard on the idea that Danielle had brought up. Why would these guys just run off from all their stuff unless they saw that they were outnumbered, or they figured they had something up their sleeves that we didn't know about.

  “Everybody watch your step. Wires, fresh dirt mounds... don't just pick up or move anything. Clint?” I got back into the serious mode of things.

  “Yeah I'm thinking the same thing. The dog is tied up so I’m guessing booby tap. The high tech stuff makes me nervous though, hoping its not a command det. IED. They cleared out to get some distance either way. If they like the dog, then they’re probably just headed to a hide spot already set up to snipe at us. We should probably move out,” he summarized.

  “All that from these guys? What's the point? I mean why are they set up out here? What are they guarding?” Blake didn't hide the speculation in his voice.

  I noticed at the mention the Iraqi buzzword of “IED,” that Danielle was trying to hide her involuntary fidgety and nervous body language.

  Blake looked at the still growling dog again and then back at us, clearly not believing things were as bad as we were making them sound. All the same, he humored us and came along as we backtracked out of the camp and went through the woods, putting a quick three quarters of a mile of distance between us and the camp. When we stopped for a quick break to check the map, Blake came over to look at the little contraption I had forgotten was still strapped to my backpack.

  "So you shot that thing out of mid air?" he actually sounded impressed.

  "Well we didn’t dazzle them with our wits," I laughed at my own joke and saw Danielle give me an evil look out of the corner of my eye. "What'd you make of it?" I turned to Clint.

  He flicked the little drone in the nose with his finger and shrugged. "I'd say were not alone out here."

  "Well we knew that," Danielle huffed moodily.

  "Yeah but now they know that we know," Clint explained. "I don’t know what a couple guys think they're doing camping out here like this but I don’t like playing hide and go seek with anyone, especially if they’ve got some gear besides the second hand stuff we saw. There’s the drone, plus I saw some five five six brass on the ground... I'm glad they took off."

  He said it more to me than to the others, and I couldn’t agree more.

  "Oh come on, they're probably just meth heads, you know, guarding their lab or something," Blake said it as if it was nothing.

  "Then we should have gotten out of there that much sooner. And we should maybe rethink where we're headed," I told him.

  "Rethink where we're headed?" Blake challenged me. "This is your deal man, and we've already come this far... shit, what just turn around now because you scarred up a couple of rabbits and their pet?"

  I understood his frustration, maybe not his anger, but the frustration at the idea of calling this off.

  "We're doing this for a good reason, might as well keep on going,” Clint spoke up in a rare expression of words. “I know we shouldn’t have gone straight through that field and stuck to the trees instead. I thought we'd be safe enough out here. It might just be an unlucky coincidence that we tripped over those guys."

  What I didn’t add was a big IF. As in, IF the drone guys were just some wannabe weirdos out here. And IF they weren’t the ones who shot us up on the drive back to my place a few days ago. And IF they were the only ones like them out here. That was a lot of unknowns and I didn't like the idea of there being a bunch of people or even a bunch of different groups of people, all out in the woods doing god knows what, while we were just trying to pass on through.

  The look on Clint's face told me he knew exactly what it was that I was thinking. Blake and Danielle were new to this, even though they were not complete novices having spent some time in battle hardened war zones. Danielle seemed like she was nervous and didn’t like having to be thinking about these things while not on foreign soil. And Blake, well I didn’t have a clue as to what he was really thinking anymore. I only knew what he was saying was not what I was wanting to hear.

  "Ah what's the big deal? It was just a couple dumbasses with a toy. The Hajis hid from us with all our modern gear, we just have to turn the tables and so the same thing," Blake ventured. "If they can do it, we can too."

  "Not quite the same thing dude. If these guys even had motion detectors, we'd never know what hit us out here. It’s a different landscape, a different fight," I told him.

  "Does anyone remember how we’
re not trying to get into a fight?" Danielle reminded us, but I had seemingly pissed Blake off... again.

  "What's that supposed to mean? Look who elected you to lead us here anyway? I've been to war, you think those towel heads are better than us at fighting?" his anger and diatribe was as out of place as it was unjustified, but I wasn’t one to just get yelled at either.

  "Yes, you went to a war zone," I metered my words carefully, trying to contain my rising anger in turn. "And you stayed in the camp the whole time. We've been living in a war zone since you left. You're the one that told me how your group had five thousand soldiers at that camp and only maybe a thousand of them ever left the wire, and you weren’t one of ‘em."

  "We've been living with no wire for years now. You want to talk war zone, you go look at the houses of friends we used to sleep over at that are now burnt down. Or the ones with blood stains. Or the real fun ones are where the bodies of people we used to know are still in the houses and all anyone did was lock the front door on their way out after robbing, raping and murdering them all. Been to a war zone? Well welcome home to hell! You want to survive this then you'd better get on our level pretty fucking fast," my words were coming a little faster than my brain could stop them.

  "And hey if you want the lead then take it! You're the best one for it anyway. We both know he is unbeatable in the deep woods," I nodded at Clint who was passively listening as he looked around us all, seemingly uninterested in our pissing match, "but you're the war zone expert. You know as well as I do that there is no leader here, but if you think someone needs to be in charge then you would think that person would want to listen to the guys that know the situation we’re in."

  God I was tired. Tired of fighting with everyone and... Blake's fist caught me in the jaw and I went down to one knee, consciously stifling the automatic reflexes to defend myself. Spitting the copper taste of blood out of my mouth I cracked my neck and looked up at him, now completely disinterested in fighting with him or anyone else.