Breaking the Beast

by Steven Bird

  As Miguel fell in front of me, I immediately discharged several well-placed hammer pairs into the suspect, ending the situation.

  I quickly turned my attention to my friend and was forced to watch him drown in his own blood as he gurgled and coughed, struggling to breathe. I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t a simple case of CPR or a pressure application.

  The officers making an entry in the front of the building quickly brushed me aside and began every attempt possible to save Miguel’s life, but it was too late. He was dead before the building was adequately cleared to allow for the entry of the EMTs.

  I was interviewed by the department’s counselors and was briefed on the different stages of remorse I would likely feel for taking someone’s life, but it never came. I actually was glad the man who shot Miguel was dead. He was clearly a threat to the community as a whole, and now that threat had been removed. I often wondered if something was wrong with me because I didn’t experience the textbook reactions that I was told to expect. Was I just that cold-blooded and callous? Or was I satisfied with the feeling of revenge for killing the man who had killed my friend? I never really figured that one out.

  This was totally different, though. The young girl wasn’t some gang-banger wannabe out trying to compensate for a bad childhood or something by terrorizing the neighborhood. She was a young girl, caught up in a horrible situation—a situation created by those I served up until the day before.

  I’d imagine that as the world fell apart and people began to become hungry and desperate, many people who would have once been your beloved next-door neighbors, who you’d gladly have over for a backyard barbeque or birthday parties, had now become predators out of sheer desperation. If your children were hungry, and I mean painfully hungry and weak, you’d likely do just about anything to provide for them. Add to that the pain and mental anguish you may have already suffered by watching others in your family die. If you were down to one surviving family member, whether it was your parent or child, would you not do anything you could to provide for them? That’s probably what had become of this girl and her father.

  I’m not making excuses for what they did. They did, after all, kill my friend and partner, Ronnie. They chose to attempt to take from us to provide for themselves. I’m not sure I’d have been any different if I was outside the zones when it all went down. I’d like to think I would, but none of us could say that for sure.

  Chapter Nine

  After Ronnie’s death, I kept my movements limited to the cover of darkness. I would sleep during the day and travel at night, using the thermal monocular after each bound of movement to clear the way in front of me of any threats. If I saw a heat signature that could have been seen as a threat, I simply altered my course. I chose not to encounter or engage anyone if I could help it.

  Having learned a valuable lesson from Ronnie’s death, I also didn’t give the information gathered from the thermal imager as much credit as I would have previously. I used it as a tool but knew there were objects, as well as tactical methods, that could block or reduce a heat signature, especially for those who were intentionally trying to defeat such a technology. Let’s face it. There were a lot of people out there these days that didn’t want to be found, and they’d had time to get good at it.

  It also seemed as if I wasn’t the only one who had learned to travel under cover of darkness. Not only did I pick up signatures with the imager of people on the move at night, but I also noticed more drone activity in the skies during the night. The OWA clearly had picked up on this trend of nocturnal behavior as well. And luckily for me, as long as I could avoid the others, they helped me to blend in with the myriad heat signatures the drones were no doubt observing from overhead.

  It had been almost three weeks since Ronnie had died. Steady travel had taken me all the way to the outskirts of Chattanooga, Tennessee. My daily goal had been to travel at least twelve hours per day, on a Trek hardtail mountain bike I had picked up in an abandoned neighborhood in the Charlottesville area.

  I traveled in a southwesterly direction for several reasons. First, it was almost November now, and the nights seemed to be getting cooler by the day. The last thing I wanted to happen was to freeze to death, ending my journey in a not-so-glorious manner. Tracking in a southerly direction while continuing to make westerly progress would help to mitigate that risk, as well as getting me more into the areas where I had heard of increased insurgent activity. The greater the likelihood I would encounter some sort of organized insurgency, the greater my chance of finding the people I needed to complete my mission. I was flying blind. I had a very vague, poorly defined game plan, with a clearly defined mission objective. It was like throwing a dart, blindfolded, needing to hit the bullseye, with the only certainty being that the dartboard is somewhere on the wall in front of you, but not knowing exactly where. But hey, play the hand you’re dealt, right?

  Why didn’t I hotwire some abandoned car or truck you might ask? Well, I was on my own now. And without someone else to help keep an eye on the situation, I feared it would be far too easy for me to drive right into a trap or to be spotted by an OWA drone. There just weren’t too many people driving motorized vehicles these days. I had seen a few, and each time they had piqued my interest and provoked me to observe them closely. I didn’t want to be drawing that same level of attention. Besides, I really wasn’t that far from D.C., and stealth would be crucial in successfully evading the beast that close to its lair.

  The mountain bike also came in handy by allowing me to avoid roads at times. It was a lightweight model with an alloy frame that made it easy to pack or push when the terrain wasn’t bicycle friendly. I had rigged both of our gear packs as a set of saddlebags, while keeping the refrigerated Symbex pack on my person at all times.

  Near where I had found the bike, I found a kid’s backyard playset that had a green canvas sunshade over what was a clubhouse at the top of the plastic slide. I removed the canvas material, rolled it up into a tube and tied the black nylon cord that used to secure it to the playset around it to form a fabric tube that would serve as a makeshift scabbard for the Garand.

  With the batteries in my ODF-issued weapons having been depleted the week before, I had discarded them, now being armed with the Glock pistols and the relic M1 Garand rifle.

  One of the Glocks resided at all times in my waistband, and I kept the other in the refrigerated pack. After all, you can’t reveal all the cards in your hand at once. That, and I reasoned if I ever had to leave anything behind in a hurry, it wouldn’t be that pack. It literally never left my back or my hands. Too much was riding on the contents of it to take any chances of being separated from it.

  Chattanooga had been a milestone goal of mine. Reaching Chattanooga would put me on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains, giving my route of travel more flexibility. The mountains created several choke points if one were to travel by road that would make it far too easy to become trapped. Traveling by foot and with the mountain bike gave me the ability to travel overland, avoiding those choke points.

  The Trek had served me well, but based on the time it had already taken to get that far, I was ready for a change. I was ready for something that would allow me to log a few more miles each day, and also allow me to get a little much-needed rest while doing so.

  Chattanooga sits just west of the Nantahala and Chattahoochee National Forests, marking the end of most of the difficult terrain. There was ridgeline between Chattanooga and me, though. It was located right around Collegedale. It wasn’t really part of the mountain range but was a remnant of plate tectonic from long ago that created them. The ridge would serve me well as a position of elevation, allowing me to observe the city for a while before proceeding.

  I decided to set up camp under a cluster of trees near the top of the ridge. The location provided adequate elevation for my observational purposes, while also providing visual cover from above, in particular, drones with optical sensors. My heat signature would still be obs
ervable to the drones, but I hoped the trees would diffuse my heat signature enough to at least mask the fact that I was a human, even if my presence could still be detected by those technological demons. It’s funny, all that weapons technology development seemed like a good idea back when we thought it would only be used against others.

  Every time I would set up camp, I treated my precious cargo of Symbex like a backpacker in grizzly country handles their food. The first and most important thing is to keep it as far away from you as possible during the night. Bears have a great sense of smell, and that packet of tuna in your bag is going to send them your way. At night, while you’re asleep, you don’t want to be cuddled up in your tent with your tuna.

  Many hikers would either use a bear can, which is a bear-proof container to put their food inside and stash it a reasonable distance from their camp, or use a bear bag, which is essentially running your food up and over a tree branch with a length of rope or chord.

  Now, I wasn’t hiding from bears, mind you, so I didn’t really need to run it up a tree like a flagpole, but I wanted the Symbex in a safe place should I be stumbled across while I slept. I wanted to be able to potentially talk myself out of a situation if that were to occur, and having one of the most precious items on earth with me at the time would surely make that hard to do. A lot of good people would do bad things to get their hands on that stuff, and I wasn’t about to take any chances.

  After I had selected my campsite, I would scout the general area for a good place to conceal the Symbex pack. I would hide it, cover my tracks, and then take the extra solar charger and battery pack back to camp with me to charge while I slept during the day. If anyone who happened to cross my path enquired about that, I would simply clump it together with my other devices, such as the thermal, as an explanation. If they stole the thermal, so be it, but I couldn’t let them take the Symbex at any cost.

  Once I had settled in for the day, I began to glass the area west of my position looking for movement. Though not a large city by NYC or LA standards, Chattanooga had been a bustling town before the collapse, and I assumed that surely some sliver of humanity had remained.

  After several hours of steady observation, and having seen no activity, I decided to rest my eyes for a while and take a nap. Lying face down, I simply placed the binoculars off to the side, rested my head on my arm, and my consciousness quickly gave way to fatigue and absolute exhaustion.

  ~~~~

  Awakened by the sudden, harsh jab in my back, I attempted to reach for my pistol as a boot landed on my wrist, with another immediately pinning my head to the ground.

  I knew better than to struggle or fight. I was outnumbered by at least a few men who had gotten the drop on me as I slept.

  With what I could only assume was a rifle barrel being jammed into my back, I relaxed and awaited the instructions of my captors. The boot on the back of my head began to ease up once someone had reached down and picked up my Glock, removing it from my view. Once my weapon was gone, he reached down and grasped my wrist, twisting my arm around and behind my back, where he began zip-tying my wrists together. As he pulled the plastic tie painfully tight, another man knelt beside me, and asked, “What are you looking for?”

  Spitting dirt out of my mouth, I said, “I’m just making sure it’s safe to travel through the area. That’s all.”

  With skepticism in his voice, he observed, “You’ve been watching for a while. You seem a little more interested than just some random guy making sure the area is safe.”

  That statement hit me like a brick wall. All I could think of was just how long were they watching? Had they observed me when I first arrived? Did they observe me hiding the Symbex? How could I have been so careless that I let this happen?

  Not knowing what else to say, I muttered, “I’m just paranoid is all. You know how things can be these days.”

  I could hear others in the area rifling through my belongings, and quite frankly, I was confused. My mind raced. I wondered if my captors were the OSS. I mean, they had to be. Anyone without a steady supply of Symbex would have either sniped me from a distance or scared me off if they wanted me gone. They’d have to assume I was a carrier of the Sembé virus, yet here they were, scrounging through my stuff, touching everything I owned, and getting down close to me.

  “Drone!” one of them shouted as they all scurried for positions of cover under the trees.

  Two of them immediately grabbed me by the boots and dragged me into the thickest part of the trees, raking my face through the dirt like a plow.

  Now that’s telling, I thought. The OWA owned the skies as well as the electromagnetic spectrum. The OSS wouldn’t have an airborne threat to scurry and hide from.

  As the possibilities of what was going on around me raced through my mind, I heard the ominous buzz of a Scheibel S-100 rotary-wing drone in the distance as my captors immediately began pulling camouflaged thermal-imager-defeating, quick-deploying shelters from their packs, draping them over themselves.

  The two men that had dragged me deep into the brush and trees covered me as well, before covering themselves.

  I couldn’t see a thing as the sound of the drone grew near. To say I felt vulnerable in that moment would be the understatement of the century. I was hogtied and blind with a threat looming overhead while simultaneously being held captive by an unknown foe.

  After a few minutes of hearing the buzzing sounds of the rotary wing drone loitering in the area, it appeared to move on, with the sound of its rotors becoming more and more distant until it was gone.

  No one moved. Not one of my captors said a word for what seemed like several minutes, before one of them finally whispered, “Let’s move.”

  I could hear the thermal-imaging barriers being whisked off of them, followed by the one covering me being hastily pulled from over me, giving me the relief of fresh air and visibility.

  Turning my head to the left, I could see what appeared to be a rag-tag group of militia-type individuals, all wearing a mixed array of camouflage and carrying older generation, primer-fired weapons. Most of them seemed to carry the venerable old AR15, while one carried an AK variant and another had what appeared to be a bolt-action hunting rifle. Is he their Designated Marksman? I thought. Or was it simply the only weapon available?

  As the person carrying the bolt-action rifle pulled the camouflage facemask down from his or her face, long, reddish-brown hair fell into view, revealing the face of a woman in her mid-thirties. She appeared very healthy, which was surprising to me as most of the others I had encountered during my journey had seemed severely weathered, emaciated, and often times, showing signs of the sickness.

  “Tamara,” one of the men said calmly, “We’ll get some distance between us and the path of the drone. You and Raymond stay back a bit and make sure they aren’t following. Just because the drone left, doesn’t mean it didn’t pick us up.”

  “Will do,” she said, propping her rifle, which I could now make out to be a Remington Model 700 on her thigh with the butt of the stock.

  No sooner did those words leave her lips than two individuals, I assumed to be men based on their size and grip, picked me up under each arm, yanking me to my feet. One of them leaned in and whispered, “We’re not going to cover your eyes just yet because we want you to move fast. If you don’t move fast, or if you show any signs of resistance, we’ll just shoot you and leave you for the coyotes. You got a problem with that?”

  “No. Understood,” I assured them.

  The group quickly began moving and at a rapid pace. I had a hard time keeping up with my hands tied, tripping, and falling several times from the awkwardness of my hands being behind my back while trying to keep up the pace. I’m not sure if you’ve ever fallen forward with your hands bound behind you, but trust me, it isn’t any fun. I’m pretty sure one of my front teeth was loosened by one of the resulting impacts.

  After what seemed like several miles, the group halted as one of them approached me from behind an
d two others held my arms. The one approaching me from behind reached around and held a damp cloth with a sweet, ether-like smell on my face. He held the cloth firmly as I struggled. The world around me began to fade away…

  Chapter Ten

  Feeling a nudge and hearing some unintelligible mumbling in the background, I was startled awake. I reacted with such a sudden jerk from the fear of my unknown situation that I felt as if I nearly dislocated my shoulder since my hands were still tied behind my back.

  Feeling a nudge from a boot against my side, I heard a voice grumble, but my foggy mind couldn’t quite make out what it said.

  “Settle down, I said,” the voice muttered, this time becoming intelligible in my somewhat coherent state.

  As my eyes began to regain their focus, I looked around to see that I was inside some sort of a room. It was a long, narrow space, with what appeared to be metal walls covered in several layers of hastily applied paint. Small LED lights hung from the ceiling, giving the place just enough light. One of the lights flickered as if the unit was failing, giving the room that textbook Hollywood interrogation-scene feel.

  Since they had me lying on my side with my hands tied securely behind my back, I couldn’t see what was behind me, which was the direction from which the voice and the tip of the boot came.

  “Who are you? What’s your name?” the voice asked.

  “Hank,” I hastily replied. For some reason, the image of Hank Williams, Jr. flashed before me as I quickly scanned through my mind for a suitable alias.

  “Hank, who?” the voice asked, prodding me once again with the tip of his boot.

  “Hank Johnson,” I muttered, almost cracking a smile as I thought of the former Congressmen who went by that name, who during a congressional hearing, expressed his concerns that Guam would capsize if too many people occupied the island.