Fortress Farm Trilogy: Volumes 1, 2 & 3 (Fortress Farm Series)

by G. R. Carter

  Phil watched carefully as the soldiers approached the site of the former Mattoon National Guard armory. Previous Okaw salvage trips to town had yielded little there. Apparently the Grays had removed every useful piece of equipment and sent it back to their own headquarters

  “I thought if Julia told them we knew where the Ditchmen were hiding they’d go and flush them out for us. I figured they must be getting supplied from somewhere. Doesn’t explain where the attacks from our western areas are coming from. But it sure does explain where yours originate,” Phil had said to Coach Moseley.

  Moseley had become the default leader of the Old Main militia since the original nucleus of the defense group formed around his football team. He had grown and expanded the force to include every able-bodied man and woman capable of a medium-difficulty physical endurance test. Once you passed, you became part of the duty roster. Twenty of the force accompanied the coach today, the largest number he felt comfortable taking from the campus defenses. Phil intended for none of them to see action, but it was important for the Old Main psyche that they be doing something to avenge the awful crimes happening around them.

  “So you think if we get rid of these guys, the attacks will stop?” Moseley asked.

  “No. But at least there won’t be any organized efforts to hurt you. Just random starving savages,” Phil said with a sarcastic grin.

  “Great. Thanks for the pep talk. What’s our next step?”

  “We wait and see what the Grays do with these guys. Either they take them back to New America with them or they kill them all and burn the evidence,” Phil replied, continuing to scan the buildings ahead with the field glasses.

  Moseley shuddered. Phil and his Okaw SDC members seemed to be very comfortable with the violence going on, or at least resigned to the fact that more people were going to die in a very short time, either at the hands of the Grays or their own.

  “Showtime,” Phil said with a grin.

  Moseley raised his own binoculars in time to watch an argument between a tall well-uniformed soldier in gray fatigues and a tattooed figure in what had once been a policeman’s uniform. The argument was mostly one-sided, with the former cop doing most of the yelling and pointing and the soldier standing with one hand on his sidearm. Within moments, approximately twenty more tattered figures surrounded the soldier and three of his comrades now out of their Humvees with weapons drawn.

  “Amateurs,” Phil said. “He made the Ditchmen focus on the threat in front of them. I’m guessing Mr. America has a surprise planned for them.”

  Just as he finished the words, gunfire erupted from behind two burnt-out houses on either side of the armory. The soldiers lured all the Ditchmen out to support their leader instead of having to force their way into their well-fortified hideout. The four surrounded Grays quickly ducked to their Humvees, running for a quick getaway. Several Ditchmen fell clutching their damaged bodies. Others simply recoiled to the ground, motionless except for the occasional involuntary twitch of a mortal wound. The remaining bandits split up, half ducking their way back into the armory, the other half in a life-or-death sprint around to the back side of the armory.

  Phil lowered his binoculars from the scene for a moment, considering the next course of action. From this range, his regular sight could make out the Humvees circle back around to the front door of the armory joining the previously hidden soldiers as they trotted out from behind their cover. A brief discussion took place, and two of the gray-clad men went to the back of the lead Humvee to retrieve something.

  He raised his glasses to see flares being lit and carried to the broken windows of the once-proud building. Phil counted twenty, then another trip back and another twenty white-hot burning flares get tossed into every open window and door of the block and wood structure. As smoke began to billow out, Phil leapt up and turned to his waiting SDC officers.

  “Grays got this part covered, folks. But it looks like they’ve decided to let the others get away. I’m pretty sure that wannabe cop was one of the ones that escaped. I don’t want to let that happen. Get to your vehicles. I’ve got a hunch they’ll try to head out into the fields and keep going north for a while. We’ll take the old interstate a couple miles north and then head west. I bet we can catch them there,” he shouted as he ran to his vehicle.

  He was halfway there when he remembered the militia from Old Main still stuck waiting. He turned and shouted, “Follow us in your trucks. I’ll tell one of the Turtles to bring up the rear.”

  Each Turtle’s engine roared to life as the drivers approached. Before they were even buckled into their harnessed seats, the clumsy vehicles lurched forward towards the open asphalt of a four-lane divided highway only partially reclaimed by nature. The movement caught the attention of pointing and shouting soldiers. Their officers watched in shock as one, two, three armor-plated trucks passed them just a couple of hundred yards away. Unable to process what they were seeing, no one thought to give the command to fire, and the SDC leader wasn’t in a mood to get into a firefight with a well-armed foe. They were bandit hunting now.

  The caravan made their way up the interstate until they came to what had once been a country road. The chip and oil lane still held, and slowly the lumbering Turtles made their way down the highway embankment to the field below. Each one then gunned their engines; no sense in trying to be quiet now. Cornfields still waiting for a harvest that would never come stood on both sides. Their stalks were half bent where wind and bugs had done their part to bring the plant down, but the cover was still good enough to hide a group of men, and the crop rows in central Illinois once went on for up to a mile.

  Each Turtle crew disembarked, and the Old Main militia followed close behind. Breaking up into teams of five, Phil left one group behind to guard the vehicles, his allies spread out to listen for any movement. The SDC commander suddenly felt silly for trying to find a handful of bad guys in what amounted to thousands of acres of overgrown fields.

  Hank Tripp, one of the ten veterans the SDC had recently rescued from the clutches of their crazed National Guard leader, appeared beside him.

  Seeming to sense Phil’s doubt, Tripp said quietly, “Look up over the fields.”

  Phil had been staring intently at the field in front of him, trying to spot movement somewhere that he could take his frustration out on. He glanced up and saw a cloud of thick smoke beginning to drift over their position. Tripp continued, “That’s the fire the Grays set. Looks like it’s spreading pretty fast. And based on the way the wind's blowing, I estimate it will be on top of this position in less than ten minutes.”

  Tripp said nothing else, allowing Phil to come to his own conclusion about the next course of action. “Back to the trucks! Everyone mount up and head back to the interstate ASAP! That will provide a firebreak for us!” Phil shouted. Faith in his orders overcame confusion from the men and everyone scrambled back to their respective vehicles.

  He kicked himself as he learned another lesson in armored vehicle warfare – never put your men in a position where they have to back up multiple vehicles down a narrow road with the threat of cooking to death bearing down on them. The Turtle drivers used every ounce of calm they possessed to keep from running over the truck in front of them as they slowly made the climb back up onto the concrete and asphalt strip above.

  The twenty-foot wall of flame inhaled the dried plant material and swept past their position like a tidal wave. As they watched Phil caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see the tattooed ex-cop standing a hundred yards away, both hands in the air with middle fingers extended. Phil reached for his 30-06, but before he could raise the rifle the man dropped down into a culvert below leading to the drainage ditches crossing underneath the road.

  “Well I guess we got most of them,” he muttered to himself, suddenly concerned that he had let a very dangerous predator slip through his fingers.

  Chapter Four– Shield of the Okaw

  Headquarters – Okaw Valley Self Def
ense Cooperative

  Six Months after the Great Reset

  Phil stood with Sherriff Olsen and Captain Fredericks staring at a local map taped up on the wall of the Courthouse conference room. Colored pins were pushed into different locations, each one reflecting a potential spot to spring an ambush on the Decatur National Guard.

  “How can we know this major will be there with the rest when they come after us,” Sheriff Olsen asked. Olsen usually insisted on calling the Guard unit a gang, in some way absolving his mind from the thought of potentially killing men he still considered to be American soldiers.

  “I’ve made contact with some soldiers still on base,” Captain Fredericks replied. “We’re working to provide intel to Major Stillman and their leadership that I’ll be there along with the rest of my group. This guy is a Grade-A nutcase. After what you did to him at the office park, and how I embarrassed him by deserting, he’s going to come at us with everything he has. Once we take him out, the real soldiers and civilians still left on the base will rise up against the guards when we arrive at the gate.”

  “That’s an awful lot of moving parts,” Phil said, pulling on his graying beard, no one in the Okaw shaved anymore.

  “We have to do this soon, gentlemen. You know that this coward already sent a message to New America, telling him about my group escaping and the SDC helping. If Colonel Walsh really has gone off the deep end, he’ll relish the opportunity to try out his new Legions on all of us. Whether we want it to happen or not, he’s coming. Even if we win, we can’t afford for a single able-bodied man to get hurt. There’s already too much daily work to go around. Facing trained fighters could kill or maim hundreds of our guys. We have to get Decatur under our control now if we want to protect our farms,” Fredericks told them.

  Phil considered the professional soldier for a moment. In just a short time, Fredericks had adopted this collection of farms and little towns as his home. Phil and Sheriff Olsen both found themselves confiding in Fredericks their concerns and plans for the Okaw Valley SDC. The arrival of him and the nine veteran soldiers under his command – the Ten Vets, as they were known around the county – could have easily caused an unexpected conflict to arise. But no one in Shelby County blamed these refugees for the fight coming their way. Eventually trouble would have come their way. Okaw was fortunate to now include experienced soldiers when considering their defense, soldiers who had lived through tribal warfare in the Sandbox. From the stories of their service, those were lands ruled by strongmen and anarchy with little hope for anything but survival, which honestly didn't sound that different from their current surroundings.

  Phil spoke: “Captain, how is this Colonel Walsh supplying all these fighting men? We’re barely getting everyone fed, and we’ve been growing our own food around here for generations. Even with every man, woman and child working to exhaustion, it’s going to be tight for the first couple of years. Walsh and Stillman are able to field a dedicated fighting force, and neither of them seems too worried about getting some kind of crop in the ground. I understand they’re looting places they take over, but that seems like a diminishing prospect every week that goes by.”

  “Well, Walsh is trying to get his own food production going. Don’t lump Stillman in with the Colonel,” Fredericks replied, subconsciously defending the man he served under for so long. “New America’s main asset is a map of the old underground missile silos all over the country. Department of Homeland Security hid thousands of caches of food and supplies, sometimes right under your feet.”

  Stunned silence hung in the air. Olsen and Phil stared at Fredericks, wondering if he was pulling their leg.

  “What?” Fredericks asked with surprise. “Did you guys not know? Clark, you were a county sheriff, didn’t you get the Homeland Security bulletins every month?”

  “Nothing like that! I for sure would have remembered missile silos in our county!” Olsen exclaimed.

  “Most were decommissioned over the years, but the facilities were kept in good repair. The news always showed the public the big missile bases out in the western plains. Did you think they’d really show everyone where our nuclear assets actually were? Money from those hundred-dollar hammers the media always squawked about paid for secret projects like hidden weapons. Most Senators didn’t even know about them. When we cut back on the land-based nuclear arsenal, the silos were kept to be shelters for VIPs in some kind of collapse or disaster scenario,” Fredericks explained.

  “So are there people down in those shelters right now? This certainly seems to qualify as a disaster.”

  “I doubt it,” Fredericks told them. “Everything happened so fast, I think you would have had to receive advance information and get down the shafts before the computers went to sleep. Those silos had massive doors to protect them. I don’t know if there was a manual override, probably a hydraulic system run by electric motors.

  “I guess if the computer systems in the silos were isolated from the rest of the GRAPEVINE Network, maybe they could have kept the life support functioning. Then they just wait for the collapse to burn itself out. Sounds farfetched, but maybe all this wasn’t an accident,” Fredericks concluded nonchalantly to a still-stunned Phil and Olsen.

  Delbert, one of the leaders of the Wizards Engineering Corps, broke their silence as he entered the conference room. “Glad I could find the brain trust here,” the crusty old retired engineer said with a smirk. “Makes me feel much better to know such dedicated geniuses are on the case.” Even men Delbert respected weren’t safe from a good-natured jab. The rhetoric seemed to ratchet up with the pressure.

  “We’d all feel a lot better if you could get us some more Turtles built, Delbert. My men guarding your shop tell me you’ve been busy trying to recreate TV instead. Something about a breakthrough in using the old coaxial cable strung throughout the county. I imagine you’re trying to get your soap operas back on. We all know how you older folk like your stories,” Sherriff Olsen replied with a grunt.

  “The coaxial cable is being used for a countywide phone system, though I like the idea of catching up on my soaps,” Delbert replied with mock contemplation. “Naw, I got something better than that for you, Sheriff.”

  Delbert unrolled the plans he held in his hands. “Behold the Mark 2 fighting vehicle. We’ve been trying to come up with a catchy name like ‘Snapping Turtle,’ but we figured we’d leave that to the Founding Farmer here. He likes to put labels on things,” Delbert nodded to Phil.

  Phil laughed back at him, “Delbert, you showed us these plans awhile back. Is something new in the design?”

  “No, Mr. Farmer, what’s new is that there are now three completed at the shop, and another three will be done tomorrow. How do you like that?”

  Fredericks glanced at the plans spread out in front, then looked at the other men in amazement. “You’ve got tanks?” he asked, incredulous at the notion. The tables had turned, now the Captain was shocked at what had been a well-kept secret.

  “Did our esteemed leaders not brief you on this, Captain? They’re not exactly tanks, more like armored bulldozers with guns attached. But I guess you can call them tanks if it suits your military self,” Delbert rasped.

  “We’ve been busy with the here and now, we didn’t have time to get to the theoretical yet,” Olsen said defensively. “We had no idea you were this close to having a working prototype.”

  “No prototype about it. These are ready to be put in the field. In fact, I’d take one out myself, but of course I don’t want to miss my TV shows,” Delbert quipped.

  “What type of weaponry is attached?” Fredericks asked.

  “Well, that part’s not 100% settled yet,” Delbert admitted. “We’ve got .30 caliber machine guns donated by some outstanding citizens of the County, and one .50 caliber that Clark’s deputies got from a meth bust last year. Then the rest of these beasts will have our new 20-millimeter cannon attached. Sheriff Olsen’s wife helped us find the plans for that design in one of the books at the Ar
chives. Who knew there was such great info in those places?” Libraries were one of the first stops that each salvage team made when entering a new town. That was something Phil and the Wizards insisted on. After bringing back thousands of volumes on topics ranging from gardening to engineering, the public library plus a group of four downtown buildings and the basement of the courthouse jammed to the rafters with books, magazines and documents. And all under the organization and watchful eye of Maryanne Olsen.

  Fredericks was still shaking his head in disbelief as he turned to Hamilton and Olsen. “Gentlemen, I know just how to use these Mark 2s. I think our task just got a lot less costly, and our chance at total victory just got a lot better.”

  *****

  Major Terrance Ely Stillman, US Army, was having a bad day. The sight of his ragtag vehicle yard caused him a heavy sigh. How am I supposed to keep control of a city this big with this misfit collection of men and machines?

  A mix of old trucks and modern Humvees sat in the gravel parking lot awaiting the command to start engines and move out. Manned by troops ranging from combat veterans recently back from the Sandbox to raw recruits whose only combat experience was playing video games, the eerie quiet told him there were nervous soldiers here. None of these men knew for certain what awaited. Today seemed different than the last couple of weeks of patrolling and drills on storming fortified structures.

  This was the best of what he could put together. Loyalty to their country probably wasn’t the driving factor for most of them; more like the fact that their families would remain safe behind the fences of the National Guard base they were sitting in right now. The ability to get three meals a day from the base warehouses certainly didn’t hurt their motivation, either.