Without Law 3

by Eric Vall

  The bridge crossed a small but rapid river ten feet below it. The embankments on either side of the river would not be impossible to ride on, but the current was swift enough to make crossing the eight foot stretch of water questionable. However, it would be foolish of me not to plan for a few of them to slip across that way.

  Overall the bridge was about twenty feet long, and forest surrounded the road on either end. It would be easy enough to hide in the woods on our side of the bridge and wait for our enemy.

  “This bridge will work really well,” I said as I walked over to where the girls had gathered.

  “Anything we should know?” Paige asked as she raised an eyebrow.

  “This is a solid place to start our defense,” I said. “Our spike strips are almost perfect for the narrow bridge.”

  “Won’t the guys see the strip while they are riding up?” Tara asked.

  “Maybe, but we can use some leaves and crap to hide it,” I said. “Plus, I am thinking of creating a barricade to force the bikers to cross the bridge in an even smaller area.”

  “And where will we be set?” Bailey asked.

  “We’ll use the trees for cover,” I said as I pointed to the thickly forested areas on either side of the road. “We will setup little shooting spots so you have a stable, well-hidden, and entrenched position to set up in,”

  “Man, I never thought I would be doing something like this,” Anna said as she stood there with her hands on her hips.

  “I don’t think any of us did,” Bailey said.

  “Yeah, none of my future plans involved ambushing people on mountain roads,” Tara said. “Weirdly though I think this might be more fun than anything I had planned for my future.”

  “Would be nice to have indoor plumbing, music, and electricity again though,” Paige said.

  “You guys have really impressed me with how little you have complained about all you have lost,” I said.

  “I think we just learned to appreciate the simple things like not dying of thirst,” Anna joked.

  “Fair point,” I chuckled.

  “I like our plan, but how are we going to know when the bikers head in our direction?” Bailey asked as she looked around the bridge. “We don’t have to take turns waiting here or anything do we?”

  “They will probably burn the city as they loot, but we do need to set up some sort of alarm.” I looked around the bridge area. There were several cars on the road, and I still had a couple grenades in my backpack from my raid on the bikers camp. “Let’s move some of the cars on the Lanceton side of the bridge in place so that we can make a barricade.”

  “That doesn’t seem like it will do much but slow them down,” Paige said.

  “That’s why we will rig the vehicles with explosives,” I explained as I pulled my backpack off. I grabbed the three grenades from inside, and slung it back on. “When they try to move the cars, the grenades will trip, and then we’ll hear the explosion. It will also a kill a bunch of them. So win-win.”

  “Shit, I forgot we still have those,” Anna said.

  “Will we be able to hear those explode from campus?” Bailey asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, “but if we put them close to some of the gas tanks, and load some other explosive stuff in the trunks of the cars, it will probably create a plume of smoke that we’ll see.”

  “Hell, maybe we can get all the cars to explode,” Paige said.

  “Exactly,” I said with a grin. “All we really need is some twine and maybe some duct tape.”

  “We have both of those things,” Tara said.

  “Good, then let’s head back down the road a ways,” I suggested. “We don’t want to set this up too close to the bridge or we won’t know they are coming until it’s too late.”

  We headed a half mile down the road, and found two sedans and a hatchback sitting along the side of the road. Each of them had keys inside, and it was pretty simple to push them across the road to form a blocking wall. The only way to slip through the vehicular barricade would be to climb over or squeeze through what little gaps we left, but there was no way a motorcycle or car could slide by.

  “Alright, who’s got the duct tape?” I asked.

  “Right here,” Anna said as tossed me a roll.

  “Got some string here,” Bailey said as she offered me a small bundle of twine.

  I nodded and then got to work securing the explosives to the cars. I located the fuel tanks and taped the grenades to them first. There was no guarantee that the fuel inside would ignite, but my hope was that enough of the gas had evaporated out to allow for a decent sized explosion. Then, once all of the grenades were in place, I tied the string to the pins, and then ran the string along so that if the car was moved it would tug on the string and pull out the pin. Then I opened up some of the trunks and shoved a few pipe bombs inside.

  “All done?” Paige asked as I pulled my head out from under the hatchback door.

  “Yep, got them all rigged up,” I said.

  “So then we just listen for the distant sounds of explosions while we go about our daily lives now?” Anna asked.

  “Yeah, we gotta be vigilant,” I said.

  “Easy enough,” the redhead replied with a nod.

  “My hope is that the bikers torch Lanceton before they make their way towards the campus,” I explained. “They think we are in Lanceton so burning the place down would be the easiest way for them to get rid of us. Once they realize we aren’t there then I expect they will head our way.”

  “Well now we have an alarm in place in case they don’t do that,” Tara said.

  “Yep,” I said. “I think we’re done here though. Let’s get back to campus, and get some food in us.”

  “Hell yeah,” Tara said. “I got hurt today, I deserve some alcohol.”

  “Load up, ladies,” I shouted as I jogged back towards the bridge. “Let’s get Tara some alcohol.”

  Once we got back to our vehicles we loaded up and rode through the winding mountain road in a tight pack. It didn’t take us long to complete the trip back home. As we pulled up the top of the hill, our old handyman was nowhere in sight, but a nice fire blazed across the courtyard in our firepit.

  “Rolly, it’s us,” I said as I turned off the jeep and stepped out.

  “What should we do first, Tav?” Tara asked as she jumped from the Jeep.

  “Grab the wolves, skin them, and get them in either the smoker or the salt shack,” I said. “

  “Got it,” the platinum blonde said with a nod.

  I headed off towards the fire as Rolly appeared from the middle building.

  “Welcome back,” he called to me as he waved. “Bring back anything good?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “We bagged a few wolves. The girls are taking care of them right now. Come on, I can show you what I got while we unload.”

  “Lead the way,” Rolly said as he jogged over to me.

  I turned around and headed back for the vehicles with the handyman in tow. The girls were already hard at work skinning the wolves in the courtyard as the old man and I passed.

  “Welcome back, ladies,” Rolly said as we passed.

  “Keep out of trouble while we were gone?” Bailey asked.

  “Well it sounds like I had a much less interesting day than you guys did,” he chuckled.

  “What, you mean the wolves?” Paige teased. “They were nothing we couldn’t handle.”

  “Tara did take a hit though,” Anna said.

  “Are you okay, Tara?” Rolly asked with a frown.

  “Yeah,” Tara said with a nod. “It was my own fault, but Paige patched me up.”

  “It will heal up nicely,” Paige said. “Shouldn’t even leave a scar.”

  “Thank God for that,” Tara said.

  “Yeah, fighting is one thing, but I am not sure I am ready for scars,” Anna said.

  “Well then we better make sure we don’t get hit,” I said.

  “Is it ever that easy?” Bailey
asked.

  “Sometimes it is,” I said. “That’s why I try so hard to control when, where, and how we fight. The more we can control the engagement the better off we are.”

  “That makes a lot of sense,” Anna said. “Every time you have gotten hurt it has been in unexpected combat situations.”

  “True,” Paige said. “I mean you took out, what, forty guys without getting hurt?”

  “Something like that.” I nudged Rolly along as I continued to talk. “None of that’s important right now, though. Unless something unexpected happened while we were gone we should be safe for the night.”

  “It was all quiet here,” Rolly said. “I saw nothing but birds while you were away.”

  “That’s good,” I said with a nod. “Aside from the wolves there was nothing unexpected in Lanceton. In fact, it looked like nothing had changed since I was last there.”

  “Damn, this is a lot of stuff,” Rolly said as he started to pick through the contents of the truck.

  “We went a little wild,” I said.

  “Obviously,” Rolly chuckled.

  “We have the space so I saw no reason not to fill it up,” I said.

  “We like it when Tav fills us up with his--” Tara called over.

  “Shush you,” I interrupted with a mock commanding tone, and the blonde model stuck out her tongue at me before she went back to work.

  “Come on, let me show you the best pickup from this run,” I said to the handyman as I moved to the trailer. I unstrapped the load, removed the lumber, and started to unbury the spike strips.

  “That’s some pretty nice wood,” Rolly said as he watched me set the boards aside.

  “That’s what she said,” Anna exclaimed.

  “Really, of all the things you could say there you went with a ‘that’s what she said’ joke?” Tara groaned.

  “Looks, this stuff doesn’t come natural to me like it does for you,” The redhead replied.

  “Hey, at least you tried,” Paige said.

  “Thank you, at least someone sees this for the moment it is,” Anna laughed.

  “I really should have seen that one coming,” Rolly chuckled.

  “Probably,” I said with a grin. “Though I didn’t bring you over here to show you my wood.”

  The old man groaned at my joke.

  I rummaged around a moment longer and came out with one of our collapsed spike strips. I tossed it on the ground, janked one end, and it shot out to its full ten foot extension.

  Rolly whistled and put his hands on his hips as he studied the blank metal device.

  “We got two of these,” I said. “I figure we toss one on the bridge and use the other on the road that leads up to the campus.”

  “You think two of these things will be enough?” Rolly asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “You think we could make up a couple more of these things if we needed?”

  “Well, we can’t exactly use a welder, but we have enough spare wood that we could fill with big nails.”

  “They wouldn’t be quite as effective, but I’ll let you know,” I replied. “We still need to build some traps, and there are enough abandoned cars to force the bikers right where we want them.”

  “That’s true, I hadn’t thought about using the cars like that,” he said.

  “Could we setup any of the cars to explode or anything?” Paige asked as she approached with a naked wolf in her arms. “I don’t know what all we have that can go boom, but I know makeshift explosives are frighteningly easy to make.”

  “It could be a good use of some of our gasoline,” I said. “We won’t be able to use all of what we have before it goes bad so using it as a weapon is a good idea.”

  “Thanks,” the brunette said with a grin before she bounced off towards the smoker.

  “We also picked up a fair amount of propane today,” I said. “We could use some of that as well,” I muttered, more to myself than any of the girls.

  Tara and Anna picked up their nicely skinned wolves and followed Paige. Bailey’s knife work was fine, but she still appeared to struggle with the act of cutting up a wild creature.

  “Give me a minute,” I whispered to Rolly.

  He looked to the blonde hippie, then back to me and nodded.

  Bailey sat on the grass, knife in hand, and stared at the half skinned wolf in front of her. She let out a small sigh as I approached and didn’t look up to meet my gaze.

  “You okay?” I asked as I crouched down in front of her.

  “I don’t know,” she muttered before she wiped her knife on the grass. “Killing deer, and rabbits I get. We need the food, and it is the whole circle of life thing, but killing wolves feels wrong.”

  “I’m not happy about it either,” I said.

  “I just feel we could have tried harder to drive them off,” she said.

  I sighed, sat down beside her, and took her skinning knife. Then I started to finish what she had started. “Sadly, I don’t think that was possible. They didn’t care about gunfire, and they even came back after we took out the first couple.”

  “I know,” Bailey grumbled. “They are just such majestic creatures, and they are an important part of any healthy ecosystem.”

  “I understand that it must have been hard for you, but what you did today helped keep us safe,” I said. “You personally took out at least two of these wolves. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks, that means a lot,” she sighed. “But, my whole goal in life has always been to help make the world a better place for the animals and the environment.”

  “You know how you can do that right?” I asked

  “No, how?” Bailey asked as she looked up at me for the first time this conversation.

  “By being a good steward of your environment,” I explained. “This is your chance to make sure that, this time, things are done right.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Bailey admitted.

  “That doesn’t just mean protecting the animals that need protection though,” I added. “It also means hunting to keep down the number on invasive species and doing stuff like taking out a pack of wolves if they get too aggressive.”

  “But I thought nature would just sort itself out if we didn’t interfere,” the blonde hippie said.

  “Maybe in a perfect world, but as it stands us humans play a vital role in the world around us,” I said.

  “I guess I had never thought about it like that,” she said. Then she looked up to me, smiled, and stretched out her hand. “Thanks, Tav. I think I can finish up here.”

  I returned her smile, nodded, and handed the knife back. “Then I’m gonna go check on the others.” I stood, wiped my blood-covered hands off on my pants, and headed for the firepit.

  “What do you want me to do about the stuff in the trailer?” Rolly called after me.

  “Leave it for now,” I replied. “Let’s eat some dinner. It looks like it is doing to be a clear night, and we can worry about unloading everything in the morning.”

  Tara and Anna sat around the firepit chatting as I approached.

  “Get your wolves taken care of?” I asked

  “Yeah, we threw ours in the smoker,” the redhead replied.

  “Paige is salting hers as we speak,” Tara added.

  “Good,” I said as I took a seat beside her. “Is there any more room in the smoker or will Bailey have to salt hers as well?”

  “It’s totes full in there,” Tara said.

  “Yeah, between our wolves and the deer you took out this morning we aren't getting anything else in that smoker for at least a few hours,” Anna agreed.

  “Sounds like maybe we should cut up some fresh wolf for dinner then,” I said.

  “Yeah, sorry that I didn’t have anything waiting,” Rolly said as he came up behind us. “Wasn’t sure when you would be back and didn’t want to waste anything.”

  “It’s alright, old timer, come and take a seat,” Anna said as she patted an empty spot on
the bench beside her.

  Rolly groaned as he lowered himself down onto the handmade wooden seat and let out a yawn as he shifted until he was comfortable.

  “Who wants to make dinner then?” I asked.

  “I’ll do it,” Bailey said as she walked into our circle. “I just need someone to tell me what I am cooking.”

  “We were thinking of eating some wolf,” Tara said. “It seems only right, what with the injury and all.”

  “Maybe you can gain back the strength you lost by consuming that which hurt you, or something like that anyway,” Anna said with a shrug.

  “Ummmm... sure,” Tara said as she eyed her friend with a raised eyebrow.

  “Yeah, that was a bit much, even for me, and I’m a nature loving hippie,” Bailey said.

  “Man, I can’t win today,” Anna muttered to herself as she shook her head.

  Paige was wiping the blood from her hands as she walked around the corner. “What’d I miss?”

  “Anna was being weird again,” Tara teased.

  The athletic redhead rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Paige looked at her friend, raised an eyebrow, and took a seat.

  Meanwhile Bailey had started to butcher up her wolf for dinner. She cut off some flank, then the backstrap, and then threw them on the grate over the fire.

  “I’ll go grab some plates, and a couple bottles of alcohol,” Anna said as she pushed herself to her feet. “Anyone have any requests or need anything from the kitchen while I’m there.”

  “Can you grab me some garlic salt, pepper, and basil?” Bailey asked.

  “Sure,” Anna nodded. “What about the rest of you?”

  “Nah, I got what I need right here,” Rolly said before he pulled out what was left of his bottle of Bulleit Bourbon.

  “Man, you have really nursed that bottle,” I said.

  “I just want to enjoy it while it lasts,” he replied. “I don’t know when I am going to see another one.”

  “What about the rest of you?” Anna asked the girls.