Breaking the Beast

by Steven Bird

  Tearing into my meal, I asked, “What did you get?”

  “Spaghetti with beef sauce,” she replied. “But hey, at least I get the powdered cocoa drink.”

  Huffing like a spoiled child, I muttered, “I got the vegetarian meal, veggie crumbles with pasta.”

  “I’ll trade you if you want,” she said mockingly.

  “Pffft! Heck, no. You’re not getting my French vanilla cappuccino-flavored drink powder. I can see right through your plan.”

  “At least you’re not eating your last meal at an OWA detention facility,” she rebutted.

  I laughed, and confessed, “You’re giving them too much credit if you think they’d feed a condemned prisoner. No, you’d be lucky if they didn’t conduct some sort of sick, twisted, sub-human scientific experiment on you before you died. Your comfort certainly wouldn’t be worth the value of a meal. There’s no such thing as the Geneva Conventions or other such rules of civilized behavior when there is no formidable foe to negotiate with. Rules like that are hammered out when you actually fear being caught by the other side. No, the OWA thinks they have it in the bag.”

  With her interest in my past piqued, she asked, “So, as a lieutenant, you must have been privy to private conversations and such?”

  “That’s what turned me,” I explained. “There’s only so much truth one can bear and still retain his soul. I was sort of just drifting along, waiting for something, but didn’t know what. When Ronnie approached me with his well thought out plan, I knew that was what I was put there for.”

  “So, you believe in God?” she reluctantly asked.

  “Well, it’s not that I don’t,” I stuttered.

  Laughing, she said, “But if you stumble over the question of whether or not you believe in a higher power, how could you say you were ‘put there’ for that? Or is that just a casual, meaningless phrase to you?”

  “I… well, I guess… I,” I muttered in an unintelligible fashion.

  Laughing, she said, “It’s okay. Don’t strain your brain trying to explain why you felt you had a purpose you were meant to fulfill. The fact you openly acknowledged that you felt something bigger than yourself had called upon you is all I needed to hear.”

  I knew right then I should never play poker with Tamara. She could read me like a book. I still wasn’t sure if it was a good book, though, or just a collection of dime-store novel drivel printed on cheap paper. Either way, for the time being, I was just glad she was reading.

  After dinner, we pulled the thermal barrier from over the tree branch and placed it over us like a blanket.

  “Do you think we should take shifts?” I asked.

  “Shifts?” she repeated as if my question was nonsensical.

  “You know,” I attempted to explain. “To keep watch.”

  “Well, unless you’re planning on exposing yourself to thermal-imaging sensors and standing guard as a sentry, I don’t see the use of it. If you’re telling me you’re gonna lie here next to me, essentially cuddled up under a blanket, when you’re tired, at night, and that you won’t fall asleep, well, I call B.S. on that. Let’s just get a good night’s sleep and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow,” she said with a yawn.

  It felt irresponsible to me not to post a watch, knowing that we were wanted fugitives, but she was right. It was hard enough staying awake as a sentry at 0-dark-thirty when you’ve been on patrol all day, but add to that lying down for the night, and well, that just wasn’t reasonable.

  Acquiescing to her reality check, I lay there, listening to the sounds of the nocturnal creatures, hoping to see the light of day once again.

  Yawning, I could hear Tamara whispering a near silent prayer. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but I could tell it was deliberate, to the point, and above all, sincere. She oozed confidence with everything she did and said, and this was no exception. She was truly one of a kind, and I was blessed to have hitched my horse to her wagon.

  ~~~~

  In the midst of a dream, the nature of which I can’t to this day remember, I was awakened by the snapping of a twig. If you’ve ever heard a sound—a single sound—that seemed to tell a tale all its own, this was one of those moments. A mid-level cloud layer had moved in, obscuring the moon, and leaving the woods dark and featureless to the human eye.

  With that one solitary sound, I could picture in my mind’s eye a boot, frozen in place, with its wearer knowing they may have just given away their position and alerted us to their presence.

  I was silent. Dead silent. It was as if even the insects and nighttime critters had been alerted to a potential threat. My own breathing seemed loud to me in the silence of the moment.

  Was that a whisper? I thought? Or was I just being paranoid? My heart was pounding in my chest. I wanted to wake Tamara, but I was afraid she would make a sudden movement or sound if I did. Surely, I couldn’t wake her and explain the situation to her in complete silence.

  Just then, I felt her hand grasp mine tightly. She had heard it too. I didn't just imagine it. Something, or most probably, someone, was nearby.

  I heard what I was now positive was a voice. Tamara squeezed my hand two times. In radio terms, two mic clicks were an affirmative or a roger reply. I assumed that was what she was transmitting to me, that she had heard what I feared I had as well.

  I knew the reality of the situation. They hadn’t just happened upon us. If they were close enough for us to hear while trying to operate stealthily, and no doubt with night vision or thermal, they knew exactly where we were and they were moving into position to overtake us.

  Lying there and doing nothing did not seem to be a viable option, but how could I convey any alternate plan to her in our current state of silence and total darkness?

  Just then, I heard machine gun fire erupt from a position opposite from the direction I had heard the voices, or thought I’d heard the voices. The machine gun’s report was rhythmic and intense. By the sound and cadence of it, it was a belt-fed, as any box-mag-fed gun would’ve run dry after the number of rounds it had spewed.

  Small arms fire erupted from the other side, mostly in bursts from what seemed to be various positions. None of them were shooting at us but were shooting over us. The machine gun was trading fire with several shooters, most likely the ones I had heard creeping up on us in the darkness.

  Pulling on my hand, Tamara was urging me to go. I grabbed the Symbex pack, and we belly crawled, being careful to avoid the barrage of rounds that were zinging over our heads. It felt as if we were in the center of a beehive, knowing that if noticed in our retreat, we’d likely feel the sting of many bees.

  One by one the report of the small arms weapons were silenced, though the machine gun never relented in its onslaught against them. With a few final bursts from the belt-fed, the exchange seemed to be finished, with the victor being the first to draw blood.

  We stood and began to run as a voice shouted through the darkness, “No! This way! More are coming!”

  “Who are you?” Tamara shouted, unable to see the source of the deep, gravelly man’s voice.

  “Trust me, I’m a friend. The OSS just inserted others. They’ll be here soon if a drone doesn’t beat them to it!”

  Not having many viable options, I pulled Tamara by the hand to get her attention in the darkness, “I think we should take him at his word,” I insisted.

  “Okay,” she replied, pulling me in the direction of the voice.

  Suddenly, a red light appeared in front of us, and a man, dressed in all brown with a floppy, large-brimmed hat, the same man we had seen on the horse, illuminated himself and stood before us. “Come with me,” he said as he extinguished the light.

  Following him through the thick, dark woods, we worked our way down the spine of the ridge until reaching his horse. “Climb up, Miss,” he insisted.

  “What?” Tamara said in protest.

  “You’re hurt. Get on,” the man said. “He and I will run along ahead of you. Link will follow.”

&n
bsp; “Link?” she questioned.

  “The horse. That’s his name. Now, quit wastin’ time and get on!” the man insisted as he reached down for her foot and helped her slide her left boot in the left stirrup in the dark.

  Once Tamara was seated in the saddle, the man said, “C’mon,” and began jogging through the woods, working his way off the ridge and into the valley below.

  I followed as closely as I could, with the horse pounding away directly behind us. In addition to fearing being shot by the OSS while we fled, I now had to contend with the concern that the big horse would step on me in the darkness, and trample me in the confusion of the situation. Heck, I had barely wrapped my head around what was going on, so surely the horse didn’t have it all figured out.

  Then again, he seemed to have it all nailed down tight. Maybe it was just me who was playing mental catch-up.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Reaching the bottom of the hill and entering an overgrown pasture beside an abandoned commercial chicken farm with four of those long, narrow buildings that would each house thousands of chickens being raised for slaughter, the man stopped and took Link by the reins.

  Looking up at Tamara, he asked, “Can you ride?”

  “Yes. Yes, I can,” she replied.

  “Do you know how to neck rein? Because that’s all he knows.”

  “Yeah. I’m good.”

  “My lucky day,” the man said as he turned and ran into the open end of one of the chicken houses, only to quickly reappear with two more horses, leading them straight to me.

  “I assume you can ride, too?” he asked, looking directly at me.

  “Enough,” I said, probably overplaying my hand, since my experience was based solely on Tamara’s and my quick trip up the mountain to recover the Symbex pack. I had somehow managed to stay on the horse, so I guess that meant I could ride. Though that was more than likely a testament to the horse’s abilities and not mine.

  Handing me the reins to the smaller of the two, the man said, “Just follow me. We’ve gotta put some miles between them and us.”

  As I attempted to mount the horse, it began to walk away before I had swung my other leg across. The man took hold of the horse’s bridle and held him still while he grumbled, “Damn it, son. Get on!”

  Once in the saddle, the man released the reins, mounted the third horse, and then began riding across the pasture with Tamara following closely behind him.

  I couldn’t help but hope the horse could see in the dark better than me, because I couldn’t see a thing and expected to smack into a fence at any moment at the rate of speed we were traveling.

  I opted to refrain from giving the horse too much input, assuming he’d follow his friends easily enough, and it seemed to be working for the time being.

  Exiting the pasture, the man led us onto a gravel road and then onto GA 136. Turning west, he ran his horse hard, with Tamara following closely behind him and with me doing the best I could not to fall off as the horse’s metal shoes clanked on the paved road, now running at full gallop.

  When we reached an intersection with what appeared to be a general store directly across from us and a gas station and several other closed businesses clustered around what I assumed was the remains of the small town of Villanow, we turned left onto Armuchee Road, continuing to ride at what felt to me to be a frantic pace.

  As the man began to slow, Tamara and I rode up close to him and heard him say, “We’re taking a dirt road to the left and then exiting onto a trail through the woods. Stay close and watch out for low-hanging trees.”

  Doing as the man said, we followed closely behind and worked our way down the trail for what felt like a mile or so before arriving at a small, dilapidated shack.

  The shack appeared to have been either built a hundred years ago or with reclaimed barn wood from that age. The weeds and vegetation were virtually taking over, with a tree branch pushing its way through a gap between two of the hardwood planks. The place was perfectly and naturally camouflaged, which I was sure was why he had brought us there.

  As everyone dismounted, he led all three horses into the shack and said, “C’mon!” as he motioned us in.

  Once inside, he turned on a small, inflatable solar-powered lantern and used its ample light to remove the halters and saddles from the horses. Once they were all free of their tack, he opened the door, and smacked one of them on the rump, sending them running outside.

  “Won’t they get away?” Tamara asked.

  “I sure as hell hope they do,” he huffed.

  He then locked the door and led us to a corner of the shack, where he kicked some loose dirt around with his feet to reveal an old metal handle. Pulling on the handle revealed a hidden door built into the floor.

  “C’mon,” he said, holding the door open with one hand while holding the inflatable lantern in the other. “Grab the saddles and halters and toss them down. We don’t want to make things too obvious.”

  Once all of the tack had been dropped down into the space below, he said, “Okay, head on down, but be careful not to trip over the saddles at the bottom of the ladder.”

  Though I had my reservations about entering the space ahead of him due to the fact he would be holding the door above us, I swallowed my sense of paranoia and put blind trust in the man. Carrying both my rifle and the pack, I followed Tamara down into what appeared to be a cellar below.

  The man then followed us down into the cellar with the lantern, securing the door overhead with a sliding bolt mechanism.

  “We need to talk,” insisted Tamara, but the man walked quickly across the cellar, seeming to ignore her demands.

  “In a minute,” he said as he felt around against the back wall behind a rack of shelves containing canned vegetables and meats that appeared to have been there for a very long time, the contents having degraded to an unrecognizable mush.

  I could see that Tamara was flustered by his dismissal of her demands, but her attitude was tempered by her curiosity about what the man would pull out of his sleeve next.

  Hearing a clunk, the man said, “There we go,” and began pulling on the shelves, revealing a hidden doorway. “This thing gets full of dust and cobwebs at times and is finicky to open.”

  Again, the man urged us to follow, saying simply, “C’mon.”

  Following him into a passageway behind the dusty old shelf, we entered a tunnel that was finished with cobblestones from the ceiling to the floor. The tunnel was maybe five feet high at the top of the arched ceiling. Hunched over, we trailed behind the man as he led us for what seemed like a hundred yards or so, though it could have been more.

  Reaching an old, iron door at the end of the tunnel, the man said, “Here, give me a hand,” as he placed the lantern on the floor and began pulling on a large, hinged-loop handle.

  With the three of us pulling, the door creaked open and cool, damp air flowed out of the room sending chills up my spine. He then led us into the room, and said, “Okay, now help me get her closed,” as he once again struggled to move the massive door.

  Once we had it closed and the sliding bolt locked in place, the man walked to a table in the center of the room, which appeared to be a ten-foot by twenty-foot oval, with the same type of stones that lined the passageway making up the floor, walls, and the arched ceiling.

  Placing the lantern on the table, he lit several candles and then extinguished his inflatable solar lantern. “We need to save that thing for our way out. It’s anyone’s guess as to how long we’ll have to be down here, but don’t worry. We’ve got plenty food and water,” he said, pointing to some old wooden barrels that lined the walls all the way around the room which were barely illuminated by the faint flicker of the candles.

  “Please, sit down and relax,” he said as he pulled an old wooden chair back from the table and took a seat.

  As Tamara and I each took a seat across the table from him, with me leaning my rifle against the chair next to me and placing the Symbex pack in the chair. I was a
bout to explode with curiosity-driven questions when Tamara said, “Okay, who the hell are you, and what happened back there?”

  “My name is Robert Casey. I’m part of a group that, well… keeps an eye on things.”

  “Keeps an eye on things? For who?” Tamara asked.

  “Before we get into that…”

  Slapping her hand on the table, Tamara demanded, “No! Answer me! We followed you here on hope and faith alone. And quite frankly, because it seemed to be our only option. Now, dignify my simple question with an answer, or we’re leaving!”

  “You’re right!” the man barked. “It was your only option; now, be thankful I presented you with that option and sit back and relax while I explain things to you. I’m not here for my own benefit, so stop your barking at me!”

  I could see that Tamara was about to come unglued, but somehow remained calm enough for me to butt in and say, “Look, we don’t mean to be rude. We’ve just had a very rough week, and we have something very important we have to do and a limited amount of time to do it in.”

  Leaning back in his chair, the man said, “Oh, trust me. I understand what it feels like to have a limited amount of time. But if I may continue, I’ll explain.”

  “Yes, please do,” I respectfully replied.

  “Now,” he continued, “like I was saying. My name is Robert Casey, but my friends call me Bud. I’m with a group that keeps an eye on things and relays certain bits of information to those who may find it useful. It is a rare event when we must step outside of our observer role and become an active participant, but your situation merited that.”

  “Our situation?” I asked.

  “Well, yours,” he replied. “But I suppose it’s her situation now, too.”

  I could feel my blood pressure begin to rise. I couldn’t tell if he was truly here to help, or if this was some sort of an elaborate, covert interrogation scheme. “Please tell me exactly what our situation is?” I asked.