Firestorm: Walking in the Rain Book 5

by M. C. Allen

  When the hapless guard staggered to the door and stepped out of the barn, I followed on his heels and shot him in the spine at contact range. The suppressor touched his neck when I killed him. The spine shot flipped a switch, and his brain disconnected from his body. I pushed him away from the door, stepped back, and closed it again with me inside. His fall to earth sounded like he had stumbled again. I waited to see if anyone responded. The one figure awake came to the door and looked out the small panes of glass but didn’t see the still form lying in the grass. He died where he stood and flopped down on the bare concrete floor. I waited again to see if anyone stirred. I heard a snore stop, pause a second, and then resume chugging away.

  The rest of the job was really uneventful. One sleeping beauty woke up and asked me if it was time. I said it was indeed time. The guards did have their own personal captives for their amusement. The three women were tied up at the back of the barn in what looked like a horse stall. The door here was padlocked, so I had to go on a key expedition. Why don’t they put the keys on a nail in easy reach? I hate digging in dead guys’ pockets; they sometimes have needles in there.

  In my search, I also found two nice vehicles I wanted to keep. One was an old diesel farm truck. The other was what appeared to be a fully up-armored Hummer, or Humvee. A real one, not some military surplus stripped-down, worn out piece of crap. It had a small cargo section in the back that was loaded down, and a gun on the ring mount. I assumed it must have been the quick-reaction force. An armored car with a machine gun. The barrel of the mounted gun was long. Please be an M2! I promise I’ll eat all of my vegetables if that is a .50-caliber machine gun. I would be happy with another 240, but an M2 could chew up a lot of “armored” vehicles.

  I found the keys to the truck, and on that same ring, were smaller keys that might fit the padlock for the captives in the barn. I doubted that the keys would fit the pantry door inside, but I could at least try. Before I worried about that, I still had a sentry to neutralize.

  I stepped out of the barn and over the dead body just outside. I followed the same path as the guards I had watched earlier and made my way toward the gate. To my left, I could make out the outline of the small position for the gate guard. It looked like a hunting blind that had been reinforced with sandbags. It smelled of urine and body odor with a pungent smell of feces. Gross, they peed and pooped all around this spot. These guys were being punished, and they definitely lacked the same discipline as the guards around the large farmhouse. I cleared my throat to get the attention of the guard who jumped in surprise. He had been asleep.

  “Good lord—you scared me! Make more noise next time; I could have shot you.” His voice squeaked a little. I grunted a response, not wanting him to hear my voice. I unslung my rifle like I was getting ready to change spots with him. Instead, I smacked him with the rifle butt and secured his wrists behind his back. I didn’t bother to gag him. Everyone else on guard was dead. When I cleared him of all weapons, I started asking him questions.

  “Hey, buddy, not to be rude, but go ahead and tell me about yourself. I want to verify everything I have already been told. You are already slated to be punished for your actions, but you can save yourself by being honest with me.” It was a stretch, but I had to try. The man and woman back at the house might not give me anything. The man I had before me was short and petite for a male. He must have been bullied by the others. He admitted to abusing the girls back in the barn but had never gotten a chance with the girls in the house.

  They were for the private use of the woman, Noreen. Noreen Bachman had shown up with a supply run two weeks ago. She brought the radio equipment and antennas with her. The Humvee was hers as well. The man, Jessup Taylor, was a district attorney for a neighboring county. He had shown up over a month ago and set up the house. Jessup sent the men out to take over farms and collect supplies. They knew the men down the road were practicing cannibalism, but as long as they stayed loyal, they could keep doing their own thing. It kept them fed, according to Jessup. Damn, I wondered who had the inglorious job of cleaning out their slaughterhouse.

  When Noreen showed up, he was demoted. She ran the show, and Jessup was forced to play second fiddle. Mrs. Bachman could send messages as well as intercept radio transmissions in the area around the farm. I thanked Pervis Mitchell for verifying all of that information before I cut his throat. I would need to work on the edge of that blade as often as I had been using it. I also needed to talk to Noreen and see if Pervis was correct, or if he was just trying to deflect me from Jessup.

  I went back up to the barn and opened the pen where the three ladies were all hog tied and left to wallow in their own filth. It definitely smelled like a barn in there. Once I got the generator back up, I would offer them a chance to clean up in the bathroom of the house.

  “Ladies, I’m here to help. I’ve taken out all of the guards, but I need some assistance getting information out of the two people I have tied up in the house. Can you help?”

  Two of the ladies were unresponsive. They looked at me, and they were breathing, but they looked catatonic. The third woman whispered, “Are you here to hurt us?”

  “No, I really am here to release you. I have a group of friends and family coming tomorrow. They are mostly young people, but there are a few old people like me. Can you all wait here for a little bit? I need to go deal with Noreen and Jessup.” I was getting angry just looking at these broken people.

  One of the unresponsive ladies finally said something in a soft voice, “Noreen is a monster.” Well that was something I could get behind.

  “All right, I’ll go deal with her, and you just hang tight here. I’ll come get you in a bit. I can leave the gate unlocked, but I’m going to close it behind me. Please stay here until I get back. I’ll try to get you some food, water, and something to wear.” I couldn’t see them very well, but Pervis told me that the ladies were not allowed clothes so they couldn’t hide any weapons.

  I could feel my anger rising within me. I was losing my cool. Noreen was going to tell me everything.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  She was tougher to crack. I didn’t treat her gently because she was a woman in her mid-forties. I did try to let her think that I wasn’t really going to cause her permanent harm, and she fell for it. Under torture, people will tell you anything to avoid the pain, but once you started taking away fingers and toes with no chance of getting them back, they lose hope and think they will die anyway. I let her think she was just being roughly interrogated.

  My knowledge of radios included which button to push to talk, and to change the channel every few days to avoid detection. We also tried to keep conversations short and cryptic to confuse the enemy. Noreen was an expert at signal interception. She had heard most of my radio chatter the last few days before I had gone silent. Joseph had only used his radio recently to connect with the other radio we had at the guard outpost. Based on that information, Noreen had figured out that we were a small force.

  The assault on the farm the day before had been her attempt to prove her theory. We didn’t cooperate, so she was in trouble with her higher authority over her failure. The fact that she had a command structure floored me. They were organized, but their goal was to keep things destabilized as long as possible. She didn’t know why, but her orders were to continue with the carnage and death that the pulse had started. It was outrageous. People were dying of starvation, but they had working farms here that were blocked from sharing their food with anyone not part of Noreen’s group. Well, that was not going to work for the farms I had freed yesterday. They would fight to stay free after seeing what happens to them otherwise.

  Noreen said that their messages were all coded, so the radio would be useless to me. Which really meant that the radios were quite valuable, and if I could find her codebook, I might be able to listen to them instead. I stopped with Noreen and went to Jessup. He was being pig headed so I started taking him apart until he begged for me to take his life
. When I refused, he started giving me good information. The codebook was a thick green book with the codes for the next few months. It was hidden in the couch cushions where Noreen had been sleeping; duh, I should have checked there first.

  The keys to the pantry door were in Noreen’s pocket. Jessup was not allowed to touch these women. They were the personal “property” of Noreen. I went to the pantry to confirm that from the victims. There were four young ladies packed in there naked. I asked for them to wait a minute while I found them some clothes. Noreen wasn’t helpful, so I asked Jessup nicely. He told me their clothes were in the closet of the master bedroom where I had found the ropes. I found a jumble of outfits on the floor of the closet, and I hoped these were the right ones. I brought the pile back to the pantry and knocked.

  “Ladies, I have some clothes with me. I’m going to open the door and leave them there for you. I’ll leave a candle out here so you can see what you are doing. When you feel like you are ready, come talk to me in the kitchen. Noreen has some things to answer for, I think.”

  I dropped the pile on the floor and went to talk to Noreen. She was noticeably upset. I must be taking away her play toys. I asked her, “Why are you like this? Normal people are out here helping each other to survive. Why are you doing this?”

  Noreen snorted and laughed. “Do you think you can really change what has already been set in motion? Millions are dying each day, and you are worried about a few women who are not strong enough to defend themselves? Their boyfriends and husbands tried to save them, and they all died for their troubles.”

  “So just because they didn’t know how to fight back, you get to abuse them? Tell you what, I’ll make sure they are never victims again.” One of the ladies walked in dressed in loose jeans and a torn t-shirt. She looked at Noreen tied to the chair and spit in her face. It was a good one full of phlegm. She must have some major chest congestion for that thick wad of yellowed mucus. I asked her to verify some things that Noreen had told me. She was not present for everything, but agreed that most sounded truthful.

  “Okay, well, that was helpful. Noreen, thank you for being so enlightening.” I untwisted the wire holding her to the chair and helped her stand. Her feet and hands must have been numb from lack of blood circulation. “Noreen, we are going to go out to the barn, and I’m going to confine you to one of the stalls there until you can be tried for your crimes. I’m not your judge.”

  The newly freed lady protested. “That bitch doesn’t deserve to live. She stood there while her men killed my husband in front of me. She is a damn monster!” She was fired up at this point since she really did think Noreen would survive the trip to the barn.

  “Come with me, please, and help me with her? I want to make sure she is comfortable.” That got me cursed at, but she followed me out the back door and on to the porch. We stepped down and started walking toward the barn, when I stabbed Noreen in the lower back and watched her writhe on my blade. I turned to the now shocked survivor and calmly asked, “Would you like to make her more comfortable? Now is your opportunity.” I pulled the blade free. The stab was not instantly fatal. I had made sure to miss the kidney. It had to hurt like hell.

  The woman took the knife and started stabbing indiscriminately. She was screaming and wailing as she jammed the blade into Noreen. She was going to need some better training. I sighed and tapped the flailing woman on the shoulder to get her attention. “Ma’am? You are doing it wrong. Do you want me to help?” She stopped and looked at me like I was the crazy one.

  “What do you suggest?” she asked with a feral expression on her face.

  “Just cut her throat? I like that knife and you keep dinging the point on her facial and cranial bones. You are going to ruin my knife.” She looked at what she had done to Noreen, who was a screaming pile of bloody ruin, and roughly cut her throat. She made a mess of it but got the job done. I took my knife back before she had any other wild ideas.

  “Can you hold a flashlight for me so I can fix the generator? We need it so we can all get cleaned up before our friends arrive.”

  I showed her where the flashlight lay on the floor of the shed. Since I knew where I had damaged the line, the repair went quicker than the attempt by the two hapless guards earlier. I wrapped the line with duct tape and refilled the fuel tank with the gas cans right outside the shed. It took some effort to get it running again, but when it caught, it ran along like a champ. The water pump started up and we got it flowing to the house. The sun was coming up when we led the ladies from the barn to the house. The water was cold, but it was clean. I scrounged soap and shampoo from the house and set the ladies to scrubbing.

  I finished talking to Jessup and learned all I could about their operation of death and destruction. These clowns had friends I didn’t want to tangle with at this time. They had connections to Homeland Security.

  Shit, we were indeed in it now.

  I took Jessup outside and let his blood mix with Noreen’s in the yard. I needed to bring the tractor over to get them all buried before they started to stink. I had an idea. I went to the large green box in the living room with the dials and speaker and changed the settings to match the frequency of the radios we had been collecting off the dead bandits. They all seemed to be set to the same frequency. I took the microphone, pressed the button, and let the amber light on the radio come on and listened to the cooling fan spool up before speaking.

  “This is David. Is Doris or Barbara listening in? I need to talk to Joseph if you are.” I waited for a few seconds for a response. It was a shot in the dark, but it would be worth it if it worked.

  A voice came back over the speaker. “David, you’re alive! This is Barbara. I’ll go get Joseph.” The radio went silent. Well, I did doubt I would survive this long. I said that to myself every time I left the kids to hunt for bandits. I had gotten good at sneaking up on them and taking them out since we had to run for our lives out of Arlington. This was not my first rodeo.

  A happy sounding voice interrupted my thoughts. “David, where the hell are you? Are you close to us?” I needed to keep this short.

  “Nope, our transmissions are being listened to. Meet you in a few minutes at the ambush spot. Can you bring the tractor? I’m going to need it to clean up this mess. Bring some people; we are going to have plenty of room, and tell my kids they get to ride with me.”

  “Sure, see you soon.” Joseph knew not to waste time talking over the air. There had to be others out there trying to listen in on us. I’d keep most communications over our pitiful little handheld radios in the future unless I needed to spread some disinformation.

  I could hear the ladies still getting cleaned up in the three bathrooms. I called out to the house, “Hey, don’t freak out, but I’m about to head down the road to pick up my kids. Everybody just hang tight for a little bit. I don’t expect any trouble, but can one of you keep watch on the driveway?”

  A head popped out of the bathroom down the hallway. “I can keep watch. What do you need me to do if something happens?”

  “Run and hide in the forest behind the farm. Don’t even try to fight it out yet. I need to get you all trained on your new weapons. Just leave them alone for right now. I will be bringing friends and family and some equipment to get this place cleaned up. I left a lot of bodies lying around, and I can’t spend all of my time digging holes.”

  The face nodded and went back into the bathroom and shut the door. I walked past the door on my way out the back, and I could hear voices urging the others to hurry up. Company was coming. That made me think. Here in the south, “company coming” was a happy occasion. I hoped this went well. I stopped to get my M-14 and my magazines. I needed to make a choice soon. Either keep changing out the magazines each time I switched weapons, or pick one and stick with it.

  I was torn. So I split the difference. I loaded my M-14 magazines back into the plate carrier on my body and grabbed a vest off of one of the guys under the porch. This way I only had to switch vests instea
d of dumping magazines each time. I carried my two rifles and the accompanying vest with me to the barn.

  The barn doors were not locked, and the armored Hummer was right there. Why not? I never had a chance to operate the armored version of this vehicle back in the service, but like most military vehicles, it was idiot proof. I turned the ignition switch and waited a second for the glow plugs to work, and then I fired up the engine. It wasn’t cold enough to worry, but I wanted to go through all of my old training.

  The lights were on the wonky, green, oblong-shaped module, and the parking brake was near my right thigh. The seat was tight as always. I never fit in these things with a vest and my gear, and the small steering wheel did not tilt. The gear selector was right where I expected it to be as well. Good, now to check out my mounted gun.

  I let the engine idle as I got back out and entered the rear passenger seat. I moved to the center section and stood up in the cupola. To my front were the spade grips of an M2 Browning. I checked the weapon by pulling the charging handle to the rear, and I pressed the center bolt release button with my thumb. I was satisfied when an unfired round dropped out of the bottom of the beast. It was fully cocked and ready to fire. I held the center button down again and rotated the retainer around to hold it in place. The weapon was now ready to fire fully automatic. I checked the ammunition hopper and noticed it was loaded with about one hundred rounds. Minus the one I had ejected. I checked to unlock the ring mount, and swung the gun to point toward the rear before reapplying the lock. I didn’t need it swinging around or going off during the short trip back. I ducked down and checked the storage area for extra ammunition.

  I found four large, green cans that held extra belts of goodness. I just needed someone to man the gun while I drove. I couldn’t do both. Time for Kofi to get his license, or maybe Alex. Heck, I’ll teach them both to operate the gun too. This model had a handle on the barrel for removal and a flash suppressor, so it was an updated version of the one I used years before. According to some internet surfing a few years back, this model had a permanent headspace set up. Nice.