Pilliars in the Fall

by Ian Daniels

  "Freezing. Didn’t you hear us drive up?" Danielle shivered and stepped inside.

  "I was working... pretty stupid way to get myself into trouble though. Hey shut the generator down would you?" I asked Clint who was standing closest to the little portable power generator out on the back patio.

  "You got it up and running huh?" he commented after turning the little machine off.

  I had gotten back to my place a little later then I had planned after a thankfully uneventful night. After sleeping in this morning I had dug out the little generator and got my tools fired up to get some work done.

  "Dude really, you’ve got that tractor out there, you might want to do something about the driveway if just anybody can come up here without you knowing it," Blake suggested.

  "Yeah, I had thought of it. With everything going on I just haven’t had time yet," I answered him put a big star next to that item on my mental checklist of stuff to do. "So what're you guys doing here? How's Kathy?"

  "That’s why were here," Clint grimaced. "She's at the clinic getting an IV."

  "Yikes, is it bad?" I sat down on a box to hear their story, clearing the Glock pistol I had scooped up and keeping it in my hand as I listened.

  "Well in a manner of speaking..." Clint trailed off.

  "We only had enough stuff to buy those vultures off for one round of IV antibiotics. They said she would need at least three full treatments," Danielle explained. It was clear that she wasn’t all that happy to be here.

  "And you just left her there?" I asked surprised.

  "After Blake was asked to leave they said they'd get started on another bag after the first one, should be another couple hours or so."

  "But you need something to trade them," I concluded.

  "I hate to ask," Clint started to say.

  "No, don’t think anything of it. Not a problem, what would work?"

  "Umm..." they all stalled.

  "Out with it, what is it?" I narrowed my eyes and swore I had read something like this in a book one time.

  "Well their propane generator is out of gas... so either a lot of propane... or a gas generator might do it," Clint finally fessed up. "I didn't think you really even had much of a use for one when you didn’t unpack it the other day, but if you're using it..."

  "Okay, I'm not saying no, but give me some more information. How bad off is she?"

  "What?" Danielle fixed me with an icy glare.

  "What meds are they giving her? I've got some stuff back in the freezer. Mostly just simple antibiotics, if we could treat her ourselves..."

  "I told you!" Danielle yelled at Blake, apparently picking up from where they had left off on a previous argument.

  "Hey I'll do everything I can but I think it's fair to not just blindside me here and give me the full story," I leveled with her.

  "Well you’ve got the full story. We need your help to save someone, which I know, it’s a lot different than what you're used to doing to people."

  What a bitch.

  "Fuc... hold on, just let me finish this tack and we'll load it up and it's yours."

  "Are you still monkeying around with that contraption?” Clint eyed the pile of parts and pieces of metal on my bench suspiciously. The nice auto loading saiga shotgun was still a fun work in progress for me.

  “Kind of. I got it broken in and it’s shooting beautifully. Just been putting off welding up this charging handle and getting the hinge block tacked in there a little better,” I pointed, happy for the change of subject.

  “What'd it measure out at?” Clint examined my weld and held the little level I had been using up to the butt stock.

  “I told you I want no part in that black magic crap. Measuring and shit, geeze wha'da you take me for?”

  “For the last time, a micrometer is not black magic! And you call us Neanderthals!”

  “Is that a growler? Where the hell did you get a jug of beer?” Blake pulled his face back a little, amazed at the giant brown jug I had balanced on top of a shop stool.

  “Beer? Naw man, that’s good and proper country made mead,” I informed him a little too late as he coughed and sputtered after taking too big of a chug. “That’ll put some hair on your nuggets huh?” I laughed and slapped him on the back.

  “Gawh!” was the most coherent thing that he could get to come out of his mouth.

  “Yeah they’re still working on getting the recipe right.”

  "Wait, why the generator. Don’t you have a bunch of propane here?" Blake asked after forcing the air back into his lungs.

  "I've got some but I could probably make more use of it then I could the gen set. How much propane did they want?"

  "We asked the same thing and when his answer was, ‘how much you got?’ things started to get a little... heated. They're going to keep Kathy there but won’t treat her anymore unless we show back up tonight. So what do you think?” Clint put down the hinge piece to the shotgun and asked me slowly. He was clearly worried and stressed out.

  "Well," I said slowly and intently studied the hollow point bullet in my hand that I had ejected form my Glock, "I don't like being blackmailed," I answered him noncommittally. "Blake?"

  "Why ask me? Ya'll think I'm going nuts anyway," he brought up the elephant in the room, making it sound a little more dramatic than necessary.

  "Don't gimme that shit," I squinted at him. "This is your mom man, what's on your mind?"

  "Really?" he picked his head up.

  "Really."

  "Fine, I agree with you. I don't like being blackmailed and I’m thinking we should look at coming at this thing from a different angle."

  "What do you mean?" Danielle asked for all of us.

  "This doctor... do we know who he is? I mean his name, maybe where he lives?"

  "What? Blake!" she condemned.

  "I'm just saying, the way I see it he’s got all the leverage. If we had something that he wanted... or wanted to get back, then he isn't the one holding all the cards anymore."

  Now it was Danielle's turn to look stressed and scared. Clint had a thoughtful look on his face and turned to wordlessly ask me my opinion on that train of thought.

  I sat silently weighing it out in my mind. Finally the sound of the slide of my Glock noisily closing as I hit the release was loud enough for everyone to know where I stood.

  No one seemingly wanted to be the one to speak the next words or suggest the next course of action as a thoughtful silence hung in the air. The CB radio, now running off of a recharged battery, was thankfully less subjective. A beep and jumble of static broke us out of our reprise.

  I got up to shut the power off when it squawked again.

  “Kilo Inda Three Niner this is Charlie Alpha One Five calling in the blind. You out there? Over.”

  “Hey, that’s Henry!” I recognized his HAM radio call sign that he was using on the CB bands.

  “One Five where the heck have you guys been?” I scooped up the microphone and asked.

  “Please confirm this is Kilo India Three Niner. Over.”

  How the hell was I supposed to do that? We never had a challenge and password or any codewords to authenticate before, but with them being displaced from their house, I guess I could see the need.

  “Kilo India authenticates dust up at whiskey church when I went looking for your butts and got shot at for my trouble. Are you okay?” not exactly a cool, calm and collected approach, but it got the point across that I knew what was going on.

  “Copy, be advised Ten-Twelve.”

  “Clint?” I asked the radio expert to decode the irritating radio slang that I never had gotten a good grasp of.

  “Ten Twelve... visitors present or others listening,” he confirmed for me.

  “Others meaning hostiles, or others meaning don't scare the family?” I pondered out loud.

  “Don't know. I’d say just play it cool either way,” he suggested.

  Blake and Danielle just stared at me expectantly.

  “Charlie Alp
ha One Five, requesting your...” I put my hand over the mike and looked at Clint.

  “Ten Twenty,” he supplied.

  “Requesting your ten-twenty, over.”

  “We pulled into the safe house a couple hours ago. Ten Seven Seven, Over.”

  All this coded talk was starting to really piss me off.

  “Negative contact,” Clint helped again.

  “Copy, standby,” I radioed back to Henry.

  “Okay so if I’m not totally lost yet, it sounds like they got to their little bug out location safe and sound,” I relayed to the others.

  “Kilo India, be advised we just got off the horn with friends near home base. It sounds like you stirred up a hornets nest out there, plus there’s talk of some big rally in town tonight. Over.”

  “Hornets nest, yeah no shi...” I lifted my thumb from the transmit button to cut off that last little bit.

  Well at least they were in better contact with some of their networked friends still out near Wrangle who knew what was going on. Too bad no one thought to give us the heads up before we made the fateful and useless trip out there ourselves.

  “Reports that your new friends and our new house guests split up to scrounge supplies. Guessing fuel for the genny. Over.”

  “Fuel... didn't you say their generator ran off of propane?” Blake asked, following the conversation and putting the pieces together better and faster than I was.

  “Man what is it with propane? You would think the stuff was gold,” Danielle shook her head.

  “It is. Well it’s better than gold. It’s better than regular gas too if you are set up to use it right,” I expounded.

  “Well shit, finally some good luck, this might just work out in our favor,” Blake spoke up again.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If those militia guys are going for a supply run, then we do like you told them with hunters. We wait for them to do the hard work and heavy lifting and then we set up and ambush them on their way back,” he game planned.

  I had to admit, the idea had merit.

  “Too many variables,” Clint shot the plan down. “There are too many roads. If they're already on their way, without more time we won’t be able to figure out which way in and out they’re going. We wouldn’t know where to set up.”

  “Wait you're actually considering...” Danielle started to accuse us and drifted off.

  “Well what would you have us do?” I asked her angrily, then immediately cooled off. “Sorry, I know were all stressed and tired, it doesn’t hurt to explore all the options.”

  “Robbing is an option now?” Danielle fired back.

  “No. Hell I don't know,” I sighed.

  “Is robbing a robber wrong?” Blake mused. “Honey, I know what you’re saying but I think the last few days have made it pretty clear that the laws, the rules, they’ve all changed,” he rubbed his wife’s arm. “I just want to help Mom.”

  One by one everyone fell silent so I took the time to trade a few more bits of news and plans with Henry over the radio then signed off. The sun was now going down and we were nowhere closer to having a plan of action on how to help Kathy, or ourselves.

  “Can she make it without the doctor, IVs, and all that?” I asked again, hoping it wouldn't set Danielle off again.

  “I don’t think so, not at this point,” Clint frowned.

  “Well we’re not going to just do nothing!” Blake angrily blurted out.

  "So what next then?" Clint asked, looking for a direction to go.

  "Well we’re back to either pressing the Doc, or we giving him the goods that we don’t really have to spare," I conjured.

  "We are not going to hold hostage the one guy that can help us," Danielle stated firmly.

  "No one said hostage, we just, you know, tax him a little," Blake absentmindedly waved.

  "Why don’t we just give him what he wants? It’s a fair trade," she implored.

  "It’s a fair trade if we have what he wants, and I don’t have very much propane," I leveled with her.

  "We might need to look at this another way. I'm not too keen on holding up the Doc but we're kind of getting backed into a corner here," Clint began, only to be cut off by his son.

  “Guy's, if you don't want to press that asshole of a doctor then this is real simple," he turned to me and his face lit up. "You know where there is a ton of propane, in tanks, ready to be moved, and you know how we can get to it without causing a fuss. Remember?”

  “Huh,” I nodded. “I didn't even think of that. But dude, first we don’t know if its there, plus we haven’t been down there in years. They could have been gated or walled up or worse, people might be living down there these days,” I reminded him.

  “Down where? What are you guys talking about?” Danielle interjected.

  “So we take a sledge hammer and some bolt cutters,” he continued, temporarily ignoring the fact that no one else but him and I knew exactly what it was that we were talking about.

  “Still we don’t know if the tanks are still kept there or if someone has already gotten to them before us,” I said again.

  “You told me the other day...”

  “A lot has happened since then,” I interrupted.

  “Only one way to find out,” he retorted eagerly.

  “Okay, hold it! Can you two please shut up and start over? What do you know that we don’t?” Danielle admonished us. She sounded angry but also had the knowing look that she was witnessing the way two friends that were closer than brothers communicated with each other.

  “We know where there might be some propane,” I finally admitted.

  “A lot of propane. And we know how to get to it without any issues. No main roads and we'd never be seen,” Blake completed my statement.

  “I’ve got that much, but how?” she again prompted, this time with a hand rubbing her temples in frustration.

  Blake and I looked at each other and he ushered me forward.

  “Steam tunnels.”

  “Steam tunnels?” she repeated.

  “You guys know about those?” Clint asked.

  “Yeah, we might have gone in them a couple times,” Blake confessed.

  “Guys…” Danielle was growing more impatient now that Clint had joined in our discussion that to her, still sounded like a bunch of rambling.

  “The college and most of the old buildings in town at one time or another were heated by the steam plant on campus. They are all connected by these old steam and utility tunnels. Next door to the plant, hell in the same parking lot, are the Facilities and Maintenance buildings. And out back of that, in a big concrete enclosure is a propane tank holding area where they kept all the tanks for Dining Services and barbecues and forklifts and stuff. The one time I saw it up close there had to be over fifty of the five gallon tanks there, and they were all full,” Blake detailed.

  “And how long ago was that?” It was clear Danielle didn’t have a whole lot of faith in this new idea, but apparently she did prefer the thought of robbery over hostage taking I noticed.

  "Dude?" Blake turned to me for the answer.

  “The place was still packed about a month ago from what I could see at the time,” I relented.

  “You've scouted it?” Clint wouldn’t say it, but I could tell he had mixed emotions of both disappointment and encouragement in having a possible answer to our problems.

  “Kind of unintentionally, yes,” I admitted.

  “Okay and the tunnels?” Danielle’s tone was changing and it revealed her curiosity as the idea started to take shape into one with merit.

  “You still have the map?” Blake again looked at me.

  “Yeah," I paused, "let me dig it out.”

  “You have a map of the steam tunnels?” Clint had the tone of a parent finding something out about his child years after he had committed the violation.

  "There were always rumors of them and it didn’t take much peaking around to find a couple of the entrances,” I walked over to a
box with some binders and random collected papers in it, followed closely by Blake.

  “Okay, but how do you have a map?”

  “Well…”

  “Oh this is the best part!” Blake elbowed me in the ribs.

  “I might have found a binder in a cop car one night that had a few interesting things in it.”

  “Oh for the love of…” Danielle rolled her eyes.

  “In a cop car?” Clint prodded, not exactly smiling at the situation.

  “Well, on the hood actually. Anyway, besides the daily reports, there was the map. The map and some interesting phone numbers, a do-all key card to every dorm on campus…”

  “And you took it, as in stole it?” Danielle accused.

  “And he made copies,” Blake happily supplied.

  “Alright, so let’s take a look at this map,” Clint said, getting us back on track.

  “Hold on, are you guys saying you’re okay with basically stealing these things?” Danielle finally remembered her perceived morals and ethics.

  “Well basically, yes,” Blake answered flatly.

  “If we only wanted them that would be one thing, but for Kathy... plus we’re going to need power from the generator to make it through this. With propane for the lanterns and stove, we can save the gas to pump water, use the radio, cook without burning a fire... No, obviously I don’t like it and it is wrong, but like the man said, we’re in a tight spot here,” Clint resigned.

  "Do you guys remember everything we’ve had to do in just the last week? Look around, there is no clear cut right or wrong and if we can use it for good instead of someone like those militia douches using it to scam people, then why not us?" Blake was a master at situational ethics. I knew as much because unfortunately he had picked up a lot of it from me.

  "But this is wrong," Danielle continued to protest although she was visibly losing steam.

  “Come on, it's up for grabs. The college abandoned all that stuff when they closed up shop and just left it there. Isn't that right?” Blake asked me excitedly.

  “Well yeah, I mean they fired everyone and the skeleton staff they left to maintain and finish the shut down all took off probably three months ago. I don't know if that means its exactly up for grabs,” I tried to weigh both sides of the issue. “Anything they left they either forgot, didn't think was worth a profit, or worth the effort to take it themselves. So in this case I'm guessing they didn't know about it.”