They’re Swiss-made SIG 550’s. Light, durable, and deadly-accurate. It cost a pretty penny to get them here. There’s another twelve hundred rounds stored in that locked trunk over there.
The steel-framed military trunk sat on the floor in the back right corner. Silas then pointed to the back wall which was home to a perfectly aligned row of what appeared to be twenty black, sawed-off shotguns.
“Those are M79’s, more commonly known as a “Thumper” during the Vietnam War.”
The nickname meant nothing to Lu who still didn’t know what kind of guns they were.
“Shotguns?”
Silas shook his head.
“No – grenade launchers. Total range of nearly four hundred yards.”
The left side wall of the cave was perhaps the most impressive. Three floor to ceiling sized steel lockers stood side by side. The locker farthest right contained two hundred fully loaded, nine-millimeter, Glock 17 handguns. One of the middle lockers held twenty refurbished, Vietnam-era M-72 bazookas while the third locker was home to ten portable Stinger surface-to-air missile launchers.
Lu was visibly stunned and more than a little frightened by the array of weaponry before him.
“Why do you have all this, Mr. Toms?”
Silas straightened himself to his full height, towering over Lu as he placed both of his hands into the front pockets of his faded blue jeans and then shrugged.
“Same reason you made your way here – because Grace knew it was meant to be. This isn’t all of it though. There’s more and I want to show you in case something happens to me so you’ll know how this place works.”
Lu followed Silas back outside and watched as the great earthen door closed shut behind him. The in-ground lights remained on, marking the path back to the cabin. Silas paused to explain how when the lighting system was turned off they would retreat back into the ground much like a lawn’s sprinkling system. He then made his way to the back of the small cabin where a small but more recently-built shed was found.
“This is the pump house for the property’s water supply. The well goes down into a giant aquifer almost six hundred feet below. There’s enough water down there to supply a small town for a hundred years or more. There’s a main pump and a backup.”
Lu didn’t quite understand how well pumps worked, but he remained impressed nonetheless and soon was again struggling to keep up with Silas as the rancher began walking to the west as he followed yet another illuminated path toward a large collection of thick shrubs that stood nearly a hundred yards right of the cabin. Lu suddenly stopped as he watched Silas somehow disappear into the center of the thicket. Silas’s voice called out from inside the wall of shrubs.
“Just follow the path.”
Lu did as he was told as he proceeded slowly through an opening seconds earlier did not appear to exist. On the other side he found a large, clear-paneled greenhouse that appeared to have been constructed at the same time as the pump house. The structure was forty by forty, with a twelve-foot ceiling under which hung a series of low-light grow lamps and beneath those was an impressive collection of various vegetables in various stages of development.
Lu looked up as a large fan housed in the center of the ceiling came to life, pushing a blast of fresh air into his face.
“The lighting, the fan, everything runs on a battery-powered timer. The batteries are replenished by solar panels integrated into the ceiling. The solar panels also divert power to the pump house as well. This means even if there is no fuel left to run the generators we can continue to grow food in here and get water from the well.”
He’s preparing for some kind of siege.
“Who did all of this for you?”
Silas folded his long arms across his chest as his eyes hovered over the myriad of vegetables before him. Helping things to grow had always brought him a sense of peace and purpose.
“It was a fella from up north – Canadian. He was a consultant for various survivalist groups around the world. He brought everything in by chopper, spent almost a year carving out that space at the top of the hill. I’ll admit it seemed more than a little crazy to me, but Grace insisted. She kept saying I had to prepare for what was coming. So that’s what I did and now…here we are.”
Lu’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“Yeah, here we are. How’d you find out about the consultant?”
Silas Toms reached up to scratch the tangle of whiskers underneath his chin. It had long been a habit of his when he was trying to remember something.
“That was Grace again. She gave me a name. Said I needed to go find him and tell him what I was trying to do. She was losing the ability to recall things by then. Her mind was going so I figured she was sending me on some pointless journey for someone who didn’t even exist. I was wrong though – he did exist. I found him alongside a road about three hundred and fifty miles from here.”
“Who was he?”
Silas was smiling as he recalled his meeting with the old black man who was so proud of his little two-pump gas station four miles outside of Mobridge, South Dakota.
“His name was Moses.”
Lu’s eyes became stunned saucers, accompanied by a mouth that fell open.
“I know him!”
It was Silas’s turn to show his own surprise as his eyes widened as well.
“You do?”
Lu nodded his head in quick succession as he proceeded to explain.
“Yes! I was on my way here and riding a bike by his gas station. I heard him playing a guitar before I actually saw him. He was sitting outside in a rocking chair strumming. When I started to ride past him he stopped playing, looked at me and then smiled while pointing down the road in the same direction I was heading. He told me I was well on my way to being almost there.”
“On your way to being almost there?”
Lu nodded again, the excitement in his voice becoming even more evident.
“Yes, that’s exactly what he said. I stopped pedaling and stood there wondering what he meant. He put his guitar down, stood up and started to walk toward me. It took him a while. He has to be the oldest person I’ve ever seen. I waited there wondering what he wanted. When he reached me he held out his hand and I shook it. I remember his skin felt paper-thin, like it might just rub off. He introduced himself as Moses and then repeated that I was well on my way to being almost there.”
“How did he know where you were going?”
Lu bit down softly on his lower lip as his brow furrowed for a moment while he recalled thinking that very question during his brief meeting with Moses.
“I asked him that. He just smiled and said it was clear I was going to where I needed to be. Then he pointed up the road again and said to keep on going until I get there - said the same lady talking to me had been talking to him too.”
Silas knew the lady mentioned was Grace even as Lu continued to tell his story.
“He told me to keep heading north and then go west to Fortuna. Once I got there I was to ask for Mr. Silas Toms. I already knew your name though. She told me…your Grace told me in my dreams. That’s when I realized Grace had been coming to Moses in his dreams too – that somehow we were connected in that way. So I listened. I did what Moses told me to do. I made my way to Fortuna.”
Silas hadn’t been to Fortuna in nearly a year.
“Who’d you talk to in town?”
Town was hardly applicable to Fortuna. It was more of an outpost with but a handful of families who still called it home. Lu was quick to respond to the rancher’s question.
“I stopped at the Fortuna General Store. I was walking by then. The rear tire on my bike blew out several miles back. An older man named---“
Silas interrupted.
“Fred Mortel - you spoke with Fred.”
Lu nodded.
“Yeah, that was his name - older guy with a bad lisp. I’m pretty sure he had a gun behind the counter. He was looking at me pretty hard when I walked in. I remember wondering what
he was doing there because the store was almost completely empty. No food, not much of anything. I asked him where I could find a Mr. Silas Toms.”
Silas chuckled.
“I imagine old Fred wasn’t too keen on telling you where I was.”
Lu recalled how Fred Mortel glared at him and then demanded to know why he wanted to go around bothering good people.
“You got that right. He didn’t like me asking, that’s for sure. I told him I was there to help. He said Silas Toms never needed help from anyone, especially someone like me.”
Silas’s twinkling eyes conveyed his amusement as he imagined the notoriously ill-tempered and suspicious of strangers store owner giving Lu what locals long ago took to calling the Mortel treatment.
“Old Fred is good people, but slow to warm up to those he doesn’t know. Fact is we’re all like that to some degree out here. So how’d you convince him to tell you how to find me?”
“I didn’t. A woman walked out from the back of the store and told Fred to stop being so ornery. She was the one who told me. She said it was long overdue you come into town and let people know you were still living above ground and stop acting like some fool hermit.”
Silas was gently stroking his beard again.
“That would be Fred’s wife, Sadie. She might just be the only one around here who can keep him in line. So it was Sadie who told you how to find me?”
Lu nodded.
“Yes, she told me how many miles north you were and how to find the long drive that led to your cabin. I recall thinking how she seemed worried. I don’t know if it was worry over you, or something else. There was a strain in her eyes, like something was bothering her.”
That description of the normally confident and outspoken Sadie Mortel troubled Silas. Sadie had seen plenty of hard times in her long life. He couldn’t help but wonder what would make her appear so concerned to a complete stranger like Lu.
“You said there was hardly anything left in the store?”
Lu nodded again.
“That’s right, the shelves were almost completely empty and none of what was left were food items.”
Silas’s concern whispered more strongly to him. He felt guilty, thinking he should have made the journey into Fortuna sooner. He hadn’t even bothered to tell anyone of Grace’s death.
I’ve been too caught up in my own grief I’ve neglected to consider what might be happening to others around here.
“First thing tomorrow, I’m going into town. I want to make sure everyone is doing ok.”
The tone of Lu’s voice rose much higher than he intended it to.
“What!?”
Silas was already moving toward the greenhouse exit when he responded.
“You heard me. I’ll be heading out shortly after sunrise.”
Lu scrambled to catch up to the big rancher.
“I’m coming too, right?”
Silas stopped and turned around to look down at the man he had so recently come to consider a friend.
“If you want to, sure. You might not care for the mode of transportation though.”
Lu was once again struggling to keep up with Silas.
“What do you mean? What transportation?”
Though he couldn’t see his face, Lu sensed Silas was smiling again.
“You’ll see. I suggest you get your rest.”
--------------------
Four hours later, Silas Toms sat up in bed drenched in his own sweat. His right hand covered his mouth as he struggled to stifle a scream.
He closed his eyes as tightly as he could and forced the dream’s images farther back into his subconscious even as his heart pounded with such force he feared it would explode from his chest.
So much death, so much pain! Why would God allow such a thing?
Even as he posed the question Silas Toms knew God had nothing to do with what had befallen the country. America had done this to itself. Its people had grown fat, lazy, and indifferent to the almost daily atrocities disguised as entertainment and political correctness where phony absolution was delivered to the masses via terms like inclusion, fair share, and entitlement.
It had all gone so horribly wrong.
The valley had been on fire again, much like it had the previous few nights. This time though it wasn’t just the earth beneath that was scorched, but the bodies of living human beings whose horrific screams filled Silas’s ears. He could both smell and taste the burning flesh. The valley floor was a writhing mass of men, women and children, a macabre image more suited to the hellish pages of Dante’s Inferno than the quiet and desolate North Dakota landscape that had been the only home Silas Toms had ever known.
Prepare, husband. The Beast draws near…
Silas let out a muffled cry as his head whirled toward the sound of Grace’s voice. He reached out with a trembling left hand toward her side of the bed and found it empty as it had been since the night he took her body from the cabin and buried her atop the hill overlooking their home.
Silas rose from the bed and took a long, deep breath followed by another, and then another. His madly beating heart slowed, his body relaxed, and his mind cleared.
He peered out through the bedroom’s only window and estimated there to be a few more hours until daylight returned. Silas knew he would be unable to go back to sleep so instead he lit a candle and proceeded to dress himself in the same jeans, shirt and jacket he had worn yesterday, slipped on the bruised and battered pair of leather cowboy boots he had worn over his feet for the last two decades, and then found himself staring at his own image in the small mirror that framed the top of the handcrafted wooden dresser Grace had used since the day they were married.
Grace’s brush remained on the top of the dresser and still contained the remnants of her blonde and then silver-grey hair within it. Silas looked down at the brush and then his eyes returned to staring at the mirror as he marveled at how deep the crevice-like lines of his face had become in recent years. He found it surreal to stare into the face of an old man and then have to admit that the old man was in fact, him.
Silas watched as his eyes grew hard, reflecting a powerful, unyielding determination. He straightened his shoulders, sensed the great strength that yet remained within him, and swept aside any doubts and insecurities over his ability to do what his dream version of Grace thought him still capable of doing – whatever that might be.
Silas Toms was fully prepared to die so that others might live.
--------------------
EPISODE TWENTY-FIVE:
Thirty-two miles northwest of the Pentagon…
General John Meyers found himself inexplicably staring at the barely recognizable face of a living dead man.
“You’re not supposed to be here. In fact, you’re not supposed to be anywhere.”
General Reg Thompson tried to smile but found it too much effort. He knew he had but a few seconds to determine if his hunch was correct and that Meyers was a man to be trusted.
“Are you alone?”
General Meyers tried to maintain the appearance of a relaxed posture as he remained seated at the small oak desk that overlooked the lake some eighty yards from the fishing cabin that had been in his wife’s family since the 1960’s. Its décor had changed little since that time. The floors were covered in a thick, light green shag carpet accented by the dark wood paneling over all of the walls. The air was thick with the odor of dust and mildew.
“Yes.”
Both of Thompson’s hands remained shoved into the front pockets of the ill-fitting, dark blue hooded sweatshirt he wore. Meyers knew the other military general likely had a weapon hidden within one of those pockets.
“Why?”
The question caused General Meyers’ brow to furrow slightly as he considered its implications. Like Thompson, Meyer was wondering if the suddenly arrived former Joint Chiefs Chairman could be trusted.
“What do you mean? I figured they’d be safer away from me. It’s only a matter of time
before they pay me a visit. In fact, if you’re on the run, you shouldn’t have come here, General. They could have someone out there watching us right now.”
Thompson removed both of his hands, neither of which was holding a gun.
“I don’t think so. I might be the only one outside of your own family who knows of this place, and even then I had to think long and hard trying to remember where it was. It took several days wandering around out there before I did.”
Meyers realized then just how tired his former Pentagon counterpart was. Thompson’s eyes were sunken inside of a too-lean face partially covered by a week’s growth of a salt and pepper beard. Several scabs covered the tops of his hands and both the sweatshirt and olive-colored military slacks he wore were covered in various shades of grime.
American Survivalist: RACE WARS OMNIBUS: Seasons 1-5 Of An American Survivalist Series... Page 30