THE TRASHMAN

by Terry McDonald

  I put my hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” I noticed as I spoke that a brighter light came on inside the building and knew a more powerful flashlight had been found.

  “I didn’t know they were blown up so bad.”

  “They got what they deserved. Besides what they’ve done to you and the ones with you, I know for a fact they murdered a young couple a few miles from here. They raped the woman first.”

  The man took a deep breath and stood, wiping spittle and vomit from his face with his shirt sleeve. “Were they black?”

  “No, they were white. This bunch is equal opportunity trash. Go join your friends. There’s food and water in the shed.”

  I went into the house. The man searching, saw me and came to hand over another flashlight he’d found. I took it and went outside to the generator shed. I examined the generator and then turned off the breakers and restarted the generator. The first breaker I flipped on, flashed, and killed the generator. I flipped it back to off, restarted the genny and tried another breaker. The floods came on, swamping the clearing with light so bright I was momentarily blinded.

  The floods revealed the condition of the captives. They were filthy, soiled with excrement, some bloody from being beaten. The clothing of the younger women was ripped and torn. A few had only panties for bottoms. Several of the men were shirtless, their shirts having been given to cover the abused women.

  The pastor was passing out water and cans of peanuts. The children had been taken care of first. They were seated on the ground in a group tended by an elderly woman. There were six who were preteen and another three in their early teens. I went to the pastor.

  “Pastor Watt’s, grab some water and come with me. I need to talk to you. Let someone else hand out the supplies.”

  I led him onto the porch and took a seat on a folding lawn chair, motioning for him to do the same.

  After he sat, he leaned toward me. “We need to make plans.”

  “Yes you do,” I replied. “My plans are already made. I have to follow a man I allowed to escape. This bunch here was only an outpost for an even larger group.”

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  “There’s a place you can go. I want you to get these people fed and watered as fast as you can and get out of here. Follow this road south, but do it in the woods and keep an ear for vehicles on the road. If the Clansmen find you, they’ll kill you.”

  “The KKK?”

  “Nope, the Bradford Clan. They’re claiming this section of the Smokies… Listen. Three days walking will put you out of their territory. A little farther on, you’ll come to a walking trail with a small gatehouse and a doublewide trailer. Behind the doublewide, you’ll find a van. In the van are weapons and other supplies. I’d appreciate it if you stack my supplies on the porch of the trailer and cover them with a tarp. I’d advise not opening the trailer. The caretakers of the trail are dead and the bodies rotting. They have an SUV parked in front of the trailer. It’ll be a tight fit, but use the SUV and my van to get away.”

  “And go where?”

  I told him how to get to William and Carl.

  “Do you believe we’ll be welcome there?”

  Half joking, I said, “If you’re not, I recon I’ll have to kill them when I return.”

  Pastor Watt’s thanked me and then broke down into tears. “Thirteen hundred members of my flock gathered together to suffer God’s trial. Oh Lord, please forgive me. I could not help the sick and dying. I did not give them grace. I stayed with my own, with my wife and child. I abandoned my people to tend to my own wife. These few are all that were spared.”

  “I’m sorry for your people and for the loss of your loved ones. We all have a load of pain to carry.” I stood and left him to his grief.

  It took another hour to help the group prepare to leave the area. They raided the house for clothing, blankets and anything else they thought they’d need for their trek.

  After they left, I assessed how the Bradford Clan would view the disaster at their outpost. I was sure the one I let escape would report that James blew them up. I could only hope that they assumed one of the captives had managed to pick the lock of the cage soon after the explosion.

  I went to the jeep the man hadn’t tried. It cranked and showed a full tank of gasoline. I turned on the headlamps and drove to the storage shed. I loaded the back floorboard with blocks of the C-4. I made another stop to turn off the generator and waited a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

  The hilly up-and-down trail under the high voltage wires, rutted from rain and constant use, was not made for speed. I settled into the chore of watching the trail and looking for any sign of lights indicating vehicles or a settlement.

  Hours later, before dawn, the trail ended at another paved road. I saw the huge pipe crossing this road, too. I stepped from the jeep to see if I could tell which way the jeep I was following had turned. The ground was rutted and used left and right leading to the pavement. I thought a set of tracks to the right looked newer, but I wasn’t positive.

  I drove onto the road and turned left. A few hundred feet down, I saw a place where I could drive into the woods and hide the jeep. I walked back to the road. The ground was hard and dry enough that I couldn’t see any tire tracks where I turned off, but I had flattened a few plants and shrubs. I straightened them as best I could and then walked back to the trail. I found a comfortable place behind a shield of brush to hunker down and wait.

  Covered with my tarp, tired, I soon nodded off. Two things woke me. The sun beating down on my tarp was cooking me, and the noise of approaching vehicles assailed my ears. They were close.

  I shifted to a spot where I could see the road. Moving at 30 mph or so, the vehicles came from the east. Two Toyota high-lift pickup trucks, with huge all-terrain tires, barely slowed to take the turn onto the electrical utility trail. There were two men in the cab and four armed men in the bed of each truck.

  I had my direction to the main base. I waited until the roar of the truck engines faded to silence and then struck east, keeping to the woods as much as I could. The terrain in some places, because the road was bordered by a bluff on one side and steeply falling terrain on the other, forced me to use the roadbed. This two-lane highway, with its sharp curves weaving along a ridge top to save construction money, would be a motorcyclist’s dream.

  Within an hour, I smelled wood smoke. Thirty minutes later, I came to an area where I could see houses. They weren’t the source of the smoke, but I had to scout the homes. None of them were occupied so I continued east. A short trek from the homes, the road reached a point where it left the ridge to descend to a large relatively flat area. There was a sign that welcomed travelers to Fontana village. A half mile farther along, at the base of the descent, was a roadblock made with large concrete sections like the ones the highway departments used to divide lanes of traffic. There was a dump truck parked to block a gap in the sections that would allow entry. Behind the barricade was a guardhouse; I could see a man with a rifle sitting in a chair in front of it. Spread out in the valley before me was the homeland of the Bradford Clan.

  The large welcome sign had a map of the community painted on it, but to not be spotted by the guard, I left my exposed position and hurried to find an observation point. In the brief glimpse I had of the village, I saw enough homes and large buildings, and enough people, men, women and children, to realize the Bradford Clan could not be made up of just family members.

  From inside a thicket of Mountain Laurel, I made an opening in the branches to allow a view of the community. Using a small set of folding binoculars to observe the community, I removed my pad and pencil and made notes.

  My elevation above the village wasn’t more than thirty-five or forty feet, but it was sufficient to see that it was a small town and that the homes and buildings were spread out with large spaces between and around them.

  In a clear area, just past a subdivision of a few houses, I saw
a group of ten fuel tankers. Deeper into the village I could see other groupings of the gasoline trucks and also propane tankers. The presence of such a large amount of fuel explained the Clan’s mobility. They must’ve had crews scouring the highways for tankers. I doubt it mattered at all if the driver, assuming he was around, didn’t want to part with it. I had a feeling the Clan’s MO was to simply take what they wanted.

  Near a cluster of what appeared to be stores and other types of businesses, I saw many people walking or cycling the streets and sidewalks, but no moving motorized vehicles other than a couple of battery-powered golf carts. Bradford, if there was a Bradford, was smart enough to use his fuel where it was needed and not for frivolous driving.

  I did a quick count. Before their movement became too confusing, my count of people was up to sixty. I knew there were many more, but I lacked information to extrapolate a number from my observation.

  The men that I could see, and many of the women, too, were armed with rifles, most of them had a sidearm holstered as well.

  I remained where I was. I grew hungry and ate three nutrition bars washed down with water. My side began throbbing and I reached under my shirt to feel it. The area around my wound was warm to the touch; I could feel a slight swelling under the scab covering the entry hole. That really pissed me off, because Carl and I decided it was finally healing, and I’d stopped taking the Keflex. The medicine was back at the trail and campground where I left the van, or should’ve been, if Pastor Watts and his group unloaded my supplies as I asked them to do.

  Close to 4:00 in the afternoon, the two Toyotas returned and drove past me. I watched them drive into town. I lost them a few times as structures blocked my view. They drove almost to the far end of the village before pulling into a parking lot in front of a large, long building.

  Believing that building was probably the Clan’s headquarters, I would have changed my OP, but I’d already decided to remain where I was. As soon as it turned dark, I wanted a look at the village map on the welcome sign. Tired, and with nothing of immediate interest to keep me awake, I found a flat spot, laid out my tarp and sleeping bag, and went to sleep.

  *****

  I was awakened by the roar of a powerful engine on the road, and saw a big, stake-bed Dodge followed by a pickup with several men in the back, descending into the village. The Dodge was stacked high with cut sections of trees. The two trucks stopped beside a huge pile of similar wood. The men left the pickup and began unloading the stake-bed, tossing the sections onto the existing pile.

  I’d slept a good bit. The sun was low over the treetops and nightfall was close at hand. I set an MRE warming and packed my tarp and sleeping bag. I was going to have a look at the sign and then I’d be changing my location to one where I could watch the headquarters. Smoke was coming from several chimneys. I drew on my pad a rough map, indicating the location of those homes as best I could, because I knew for sure they were occupied.

  As night fell, the town lit up. This town had electrical power. I thought about the trail I’d followed and the heavy lines on the support towers, and surmised there had to be a dam on one of the lakes supplying hydroelectric power to the village.

  I waited and watched. Lights began shining from the windows of nearly all the homes and buildings. I could have saved myself some trouble. It would have been easier to make a map showing the few unoccupied places. The building I thought of as the headquarters was well lighted, both inside and out, but the amount of light visible at a complex of buildings behind it was astounding.

  I waited until midnight to leave my OP. Most of the homes were dark. The lights still on were illuminating streets and parking lots.

  At the sign, I located the headquarters building on the map. It was actually a recreation center. The well-lit complex behind it was the Fontana Village resort. In my mind, the recreation building might well be the headquarters, but the resort was where the leaders of the clan were living.

  From the map and my observations, the village was a mile long and a half-mile wide. It was surrounded by high ground on both the sides and at the ends.

  The situation was a sniper’s paradise. My Enfield was back where I’d parked the van. Soon, I meant to have it again. For now, I would observe and plan my attack on the Clan.

  I went back to my spot, removed my boots, setting them and my smelly socks downwind, and crawled into my bag. Tomorrow I’d have to find a place to wash my clothing and my body.

  The following morning, I followed the ridgeline I was on. It led me north. The ridge ran parallel with the western limits of the village. I paused at the point that gave a direct, face-on view of the recreation center. It was easily two hundred feet long and was topped by a shorter, second story cupola. The center was on a slight rise. A wide set of stone steps led up the incline to a front porch running the length of the front.

  Several men sitting in wooden chairs were gathered in a circle on the porch. Even with my binoculars I couldn’t make out facial features, but could see, with one exception, they were dressed in BDUs. The exception was a man in tan clothing who occasionally stood to gesture as though to emphasize a point. I assumed he was Bradford.

  From what I could see of the largest building behind the Recreation Center, it was truly a resort. Two stories tall, it had a magnificent entranceway constructed of stone and glass. From my angle of view, I could just make out the pool and cabana.

  Closer to the base of the ridge were tennis courts with several men and women actively playing. I could see another swimming pool with a fountain spraying a circle of water, that from my aerial viewpoint, took the shape of a shiny mushroom. It was too cold for swimmers, but come summer, I could imagine children frolicking beneath the fountain while their parents lay on recliners sunning themselves.

  I got to thinking that possibly some of the citizens might not be bad people in a normal world, but they had to know how the Bradford Clan was making their indolent safety possible. They had to know innocent blood was being taken to safeguard and supply their privileged lifestyle. These were my thoughts. I could’ve been wrong and perhaps many of the people in the village didn’t know. I had to find out before I began the killing and culling.

  I moved farther along the ridgeline. At the northern limit of the village, the ridge dropped off gradually to where a road from the village dead-ended at a junction with another road. To the left, this new road continued in a northerly direction with a swiftly rising grade between two steep-sided ridges. To the right, the road went east, rising gently to fade over the top of a hill. The entry to the village at this point was barricaded, but only from the easterly direction. I found that puzzling, and decided to investigate to see where the road led north.

  Because of the season and the scarcity of underbrush, I had to travel deeper in the forest in order not to be seen by possible travelers. Walking transverse on the sloping terrain was a tough go. Luckily, I didn’t have to suffer the discomfort very long.

  The road led to a bridge crossing a wide body of water. From my vantage point, I could see a guard post on this side of the bridge, a duplicate of the barricade I’d seen at the other entrance to the village.

  The lake reminded me of my stinky socks. Staying in the shelter of the forest, I moved a mile south of the bridge and went to the shore. It took a bit of time to find a place to access the shore, but I found a section with a narrow gravel and sand beach.

  I stripped, grabbed a small bottle of shampoo from my pack, and waded into the freezing cold water. Dipping my head was something I had to steel myself for. No sooner had I worked my hair into a good lather I heard a buzzing sound that grew in volume. A boat was on the lake, coming in my direction.

  Leaving the water naked, suds from my head running into my eyes, blinding me, I grabbed my clothing from the beach and ran barefoot into the woods. Just in time, too. The speedboat, with several armed men in it, raced past. I stood where I was until my heart slowed down, chiding myself for not considering the Clan would patrol the
lake too.

  I went back to the shore and finished washing, keeping my eyes and ears focused for any sign of the boat’s return. An hour later, I was in the forest hanging my washed clothing on a length of paracord strung between two trees. I decided from that point on, I would be avoiding the lake.

  I spent the rest of that day, and most of the next, reconnoitering the village from all directions. During this time, I noted that a patrol was leaving from the recreation center on a regular schedule to run the route of the crew I’d blown up. I also noted that the guard shifts at the barricades were changed thrice daily, midnight, 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. The only vehicles that left or returned irregularly were carrying hunting parties.

  Besides having three distinct areas for parking eighteen-wheeled fuel and propane carriers, there was an area devoted to over-the-road freight haulers. I saw trucks belonging to several well-known grocery chains.

  I had all the information I needed. Although it was a rough count, there were at least a hundred men, fifty or sixty women, and maybe twenty children under ten. From the distance of my observation points, it was difficult to distinguish teenagers from adults, but I guardedly put eleven into that category.

  I’d spent a good deal of time watching the Resort. It was obvious that the village was no utopian society. As a pig might say, “Some are more equal than others.” The men and women lived like royalty and even had slaves to serve them. I counted twenty, very pretty young women whose only duty was to wait on the residents of the resort. They wore uniforms that were previously worn by the paid staff. I saw none of them mistreated, but I’m sure any resistance was trained out of them. The men groped and fondled the women at will.

  The strangest info I’d noted on my pad was the only guards posted, other than those at the barricades, were at the resort building. The Bradford Clan was nothing but a gang of thugs.