John and Tom both slumped over onto the pile halfway through the movie, and Tim almost made it to the end before passing out.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The horse trailer wouldn’t be the most comfortable conveyance, Rusty thought as he surveyed the hastily-repurposed interior, but it would do in a pinch. Set up to carry up to six full-sized horses, the metal-sided trailer now boasted three rows of salvaged school bus seats bolted to the thick wooden floor. A similarly arranged trailer, attached to the other heavy truck, waited just a few feet away. Where refugees would hopefully be riding in just a few minutes, now rested an array of boxes and crates to be delivered as cargo.
They’d pulled up a half mile short of the farmhouse, emptying out of the cabs with rifles at the ready. Vince moved at a deliberate pace, but proved game enough when he took a knee and turned his gaze to the cluster of buildings in the distance.
“I hope we are in time,” Vince whispered to himself.
***
The drive in had been another kidney puncher when the two heavy farm trucks towed the trailers over rutted logging trails and dusty fire roads. The four men kept their heads on a swivel the entire trip, with Rusty and Bill spending most of their time on guard while Tim and Vince guided the trucks over the rough terrain. All four men kept their eyes scanning, with no thought to the fierce debate from the night prior that had led to the mission’s current composition.
Nathan, of course, had wanted to go. It was his house, after all, and his initial plan to extend the invitation. Rusty had put his foot down, with an emphatic “Hell, no,” thrown in to boot. After the previous, near-disastrous trip, Rusty feared letting Nathan get within fifty miles of the house and acreage.
Finally, Rusty had pulled what he knew was the ultimate trump card, which was effective because it was also true.
“Nathan, you know Bill and I have to go. But if we’re going to do this, then I need to make sure our families are protected. Aiden’s pissed too, but we can’t spare the guards here, and I trust you to watch out for Libby and the boys.”
“Rusty…” Nathan whined.
“Stay here just this once, Nathan, and protect the families. Hell, I know you’re itching to get over to Jeremey’s place to inventory his armory. Why don’t you do that while Libby and the rest of the girls get the place ready for habitation.”
Nathan started grinning when Rusty finished his pitch.
“I’ll be sure and tell Greg and Lanny you’re lumping them in with the ladies,” Nathan taunted, but Rusty didn’t mind.
“They can kiss my ass,” Rusty retorted. “Until they start busting caps like Amanda does, they can bitch all they want.”
“She is something, isn’t she?” Nathan replied, a father’s pride in his voice. Rusty heard it, and he understood Jasmine’s insistence that Nathan had somehow managed to birth that girl all by his lonesome.
***
“What’s going on, Rusty?”
Deputy Mike Patterson was one of the more senior deputies, and he’d had a bit of a beer belly going on before the world went to shit. Rusty hadn’t spotted Mike in his previous visit, but from what Rusty could see now, the forty-something deputy was down below two bills and needed some new pants.
“Sheriff home today or out on patrol?” Rusty replied, giving Mike a flat stare while the other deputy maintained his crouch behind the stack of railroad ties being used as an improvised fighting position.
“He’s in the house,” Mike finally said. “Sorry I missed you boys when you came by before. You really got a fortress up in the mountains?”
“Can’t call it a fortress, Mike. Decent setup, though.” Rusty didn’t feel comfortable talking about the retreat, but he knew some information needed to be shared for the good of the mission. “Best thing going for the location though, is the place is far from here. And any towns, for that matter.”
While Rusty talked, Mike was up and slinging his rifle, unbolting the heavy crosspiece holding the gate in place. Rusty couldn’t see the other deputy on post across the driveway, but he knew someone was there from the rifle barrel he could make out. Not pointed in his direction, not yet, but that could change in a moment’s notice.
“Who else you got in the trucks, Rusty?” Mike queried. The gate was unlatched, but the deputy held the metal braced in one hand.
“We only brought a small group, Mike. Just me, Bill, and Tim from the department. Also carrying Dr. Vincent O’Keefe. He’s sort of the president of our little Homeowners Association,” Rusty offered, simplifying Vince’s position, rather than taking the time to explain the way the group operated. “He insisted on coming with us to explain the offer being made.”
“Dr. O’Keefe? Didn’t he run the Family Practice group over at the Kootenai Health Center?”
“He did. Now he’s head of our clinic,” Rusty explained.
“And what’s this about an offer? You guys want to take over here?” Mike blurted out, reflexively defensive at the idea.
“Didn’t the sheriff explain? When we got back to our fallback location, Nathan placed a motion before the board to offer sanctuary to the women and children you’ve taken in here. I know at least some of them are family to our people who’ve fallen, so we wanted to help.”
“How you figure they’re our people, Rusty? You kinda walked out on us, after all,” Mike asked, his voice rising as his agitation increased. “I’m surprised you got the balls to show up here now. You and that asshole Engvist, after deserting your post.”
“Really? I don’t recall my patrol area included Nathan’s house, asshole,” Rusty retorted through gritted teeth. “You’re squatting here on Nathan’s property because you got nowhere else to go. This ain’t no satellite office, Mike, and you had plenty of opportunities to join our little group if you’d just made the commitment. But, I think you called us a ‘pussy panic party’, if I recall correctly.” Rusty’s voice rose as his years of frustration boiled up in the heat of the moment. “That’s what you thought of us when I raised the subject, remember? We wanted to do something to help the sheriff’s department to actually do the fucking job of protecting the county, but now look where you are. Hiding out in the basement of a man you despised because he was a better deputy as a part-timer than you were as a full-timer.”
“Whoa, Rusty! No reason to get personal,” came the voice of Vinnie Esterhaus, and Rusty took a step back, literally and figuratively when he heard his old friend. “We all wish we could’ve done things different, but that’s hindsight. So, you really did come back after all?”
“Said we would,” Rusty mumbled, slightly embarrassed at his outburst, especially since Vinnie must have heard at least part of it. “But there’s more. Shit, there’s lots more. That’s why I asked about the sheriff. Plus, you really should get that gate open, so we can bring in those trailers.”
“Why’s that?” Vinnie asked, willing to take the bait offered.
“Because we brought presents.”
“What kind of presents?” Mike asked grudgingly, and Rusty responded with forced good cheer.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, but here’s a hint. If you were looking for a size, I’d look in the section marked 5.56x45mm.”
“Hot damn!” Vinnie exclaimed with a laugh.
***
“Hot damn!” Nathan exclaimed with a laugh. He quickly glanced around like a guilty child at his outburst, but the sight of all that beauty concentrated in one place just seemed overwhelming.
“That get your motor running, honey?” Jasmine asked with forced innocence, unable to wipe the smirk off her face as she studied Nathan’s glazed features.
“I think he’s got more ammo than me,” Nathan managed to say. “That’s why he had this berm built. It’s a powder room.”
After spending the morning going through and inventorying Jeremey and Vickie’s armory, Nathan was still shocked at the amount of ammunition the duo had squirreled away at their retreat. Maybe I shouldn’t be, Nathan though
t suddenly, when he remembered the sheer number of racked and ready M4s, M16s, M110s, and other civilian versions of military rifles. All perfectly legal and also, stored appropriately. Then Nathan got a small chill up his spine when he thought about the whole row of even bigger rifles, still cased and already scoped. Nathan had many of the same rifles, but the numbers meant, in Nathan’s mind, Jeremey and Vickie were really wealthy individuals.
“Uh, we’ve got one of those too, Nathan,” Jasmine said, not sure she’d heard correctly. “Downstairs, other side of the kitchen by the mudroom.”
Nathan laughed again, his grin so wide it made Jasmine’s cheeks hurt, while he explained.
“No, sorry, honey. ‘Powder room’ is an old term my daddy used. It goes back to the old black powder magazine days, or the storage area where mining companies stored their explosives. Like this. Thick walls, often underground, and isolated away from the rest of the compound.” Nathan stepped inside and glanced around rapidly, scanning the row upon row of shrink-wrapped pallets. He saw the familiar yellow warning tags stuck to the sides of the boxes and peered closer to get a better look at the labelling for the contents.
“How many?”
Nathan did a quick count of the stacked pallets, then multiplied by the number of rounds per case. “I can’t see what’s on that back wall, or under the benches there, but at least three hundred thousand rounds. But that’s not what I meant. There’re five more rooms, and I want to check each one before I give a final tally.”
“Well, tell me quick,” Jasmine joked. “I need to get back in the house before those women think we’re out here playing ‘hide the salami’.”
“Wait, are they out of lunchmeat? We’ve got some back at the house,” Nathan replied, his grin remaining in place.
Jasmine beamed, happy to see Nathan’s sense of humor bouncing back after what he’d seen on his last mission.
“I’ll tell you what, stud,” Jasmine popped off in reply, her voice taking on that sultry tone she knew got Nathan’s motor running. “Why don’t you stick around for a bit, and I’ll see about taking care of that baloney pony.”
“Well then, little lady, Yippee Kai-yay!”
***
“Any way Nathan could have been mistaken?” Sheriff Hargrove temporized, reeling from the news delivered by Rusty Bertram. Frank Hargrove trusted Rusty, but he didn’t want to accept news of this nature. Civilization may have fallen apart, but the sheriff couldn’t wrap his head around the implications of what Rusty reported. Not second hand, and not from what the sheriff wanted to believe was an unreliable source. Clearing his throat, Sheriff Hargrove spoke again, aware of the eyes on him when he did so.
“I mean, it could have been a raccoon, right?”
The gathering took place in the living room of the old farmhouse, and with the deputies not on duty, their spouses, and the six unattached women in the house all on hand, as well as Rusty’s contingent, the cluttered space was nearly standing room only. The children, as per the standard operating procedure, waited in the basement, shepherded by the teenagers. At least, they would be spared word of this latest atrocity.
Before Rusty could respond to the sheriff’s plea, Tim interrupted with a torrent of emotion.
“Wasn’t no fucking raccoon, Sheriff. Not a squirrel or a fucking chipmunk. It was a fucking baby, roasted alive over the fire pit!” he roared, his voice cracking with the strain. “He was alive, goddammit! Alive when they wired his little arms to that pole, and I can still hear his screams in my sleep.”
“Oh, shit,” whispered one of the deputies, and sounds of gagging could be heard from more than one of the women present.
“Nathan was there, and he saw maybe thirty seconds of what was going on,” Tim continued, his voice low and pained. “I was on overwatch, and I had to sit and observe for nearly ten-fucking-minutes. I had to sit there, and I couldn’t do a God-Damned-Thing about it, or Nathan and John were dead too.”
Tim turned away at this point, overcome by emotion, and the hard silence that stretched on for several seconds, failed to cover the sound of the young man’s sobs. Several of the civilians present seemed on the verge of their own breakdowns.
When Rusty looked over at Vince, he gave a nod to the doctor, who stepped in to claim the floor.
“Sheriff, based on the circumstances and in consideration of your precarious position here, our community is willing to lend a helping hand. As part of that assistance, I’m here to extend an invitation to some of you here, for a place of refuge at our retreat site.”
That announcement, as expected, unleashed a storm of questions, demands, and comments from the gathered group. The sheriff, anticipating something of the sort based on what Nathan had said before, stepped forward quickly to quell the noise, despite his own lingering shock at Tim’s outburst.
“Hold on, hold on, people!” Sheriff Hargrove shouted, his deep, authoritarian voice overriding the shouted questions for the time being. Knowing there had to be a catch, he asked what to himself, were the most important questions first.
“What do you want in exchange? And how many can you take?”
Vince expected these questions, so he was able to answer quickly.
“We want to offer a safer place for your dependents, especially the orphans and widows you’ve taken in. Nathan didn’t stay long enough last time to get an accurate count, but we have seating in the trailers for approximately sixteen. Perhaps twenty, but that is the limit to what we can feed, house, and clothe.” Only pausing to take a breath, Vince continued in the same tone as before. “As for what we want, the only thing we ask is that you and your men continue to do what you can here to protect the community, and to keep us informed via HAM radio, if you have any news you need to pass on to us.”
“I’ve heard the occupying forces are cracking down on anybody they catch broadcasting,” Deputy Esterhaus stated, giving Vince a hard look. “Plus, we don’t have any radios with that kind of capacity anymore.”
“Oh, we brought one for you to use, and it includes a solar charger and a way you can set it up to transmit remotely,” Vince explained. “You record your message, set it with a time delay, and haul it miles from here before it will transmit.”
“Why don’t you just take all of us? You should take everybody.”
This was from Deputy Tate, and Rusty gave him a glare that didn’t seem to register on the man. Tate was a slob and a slacker at the best of times, and his dismissive statements toward Rusty and his condescending attitude regarding Amanda, meant the man wouldn’t be welcome at their new home in the mountains any time soon.
Before Rusty or Bill could light up the deputy, Vince stepped in to defuse the situation once again.
“As I said, we have enough supplies to stretch, but not enough for everybody. Maybe after the harvest, we’ll have some extra to share, but we can’t commit to that just yet.”
“After the harvest? You expect this to go on that long? You don’t think the government will have these invaders out of our country before that?”
The question from one of the wives caught Vince flatfooted, and he openly gaped at the clueless woman. Bill, who recognized the young lady as the wife of Deputy Gary Dawkins, finally spoke up.
“Sheryl, it was the federal government who invited them in,” he said as softly as he could manage. “The lights going out? They knew it was coming, and somebody in Washington decided to take advantage of the situation to remove as many undesirables as possible.”
“But the President would never do something like that,” Sheryl replied, her tone certain. “He’s a good man, and he cares about the little people.”
Bill shrugged, giving Deputy Dawkins a pitying look as he responded, “If he didn’t, then somebody high up in the administration sure did. Patriot groups are the ones fighting the Chinese, not the soldiers still loyal to the Beltway bandits.”
“Look, we can debate the issue later,” Rusty added, glancing around the room and meeting the eyes of several of his lo
ng-time peers. “Vince can give you the lowdown, but we are only taking volunteers, and only those who will agree to live under our rules.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound scary at all,” quipped one of the women Rusty didn’t recognize. She looked to be in her early thirties, but might have been younger. She had the same gaunt, starved, cast-to appearance that Rusty saw in all the faces here. They had some food set back, or more likely, scavenged from somewhere, but not enough to go around. Rusty knew Nathan’s garden had to be producing some of what these people were eating, but it was clearly insufficient for these numbers.
“Ma’am,” Vince interjected, raising his voice. “The rules are very simple. If you don’t work, you don’t eat,” he explained, his answer perhaps more blunt than he might have otherwise responded. “There are plenty of things to do around our retreat, some more difficult than others, but the bottom line is, we have the jobs, if you are willing to do them. We are offering some of you a chance to survive, if you are willing to work for it.”
Vince’s words, though straight- forward, seemed to trigger an avalanche of increasingly strident questions.
“But what about the children?”
“Who’ll make sure you men don’t enforce a patriarchal society on us, once you have us under your control?”
“Oh, brother,” Bill whispered just loud enough for Rusty to hear. “Can’t we just unload the ammo, call it a gift, and get the heck out of here?”
Tim, overhearing the comment, lifted his head and looked around the room. He was tired and emotionally wrecked. While he wanted to help, Tim wasn’t willing to waste much more time here.
“If you want your children to be eaten by cannibals, then keep it up,” he growled, glaring at the assembly. “We are offering a place that’s not perfect, but a damned sight more secure than this house. We all have wives back home who’ll gladly take in the orphans you have here, but if you don’t like the idea of contributing to our community, then keep your asses right here and continue to be a drain on the sheriff and his men. Now, anybody got any intelligent questions?”
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