by Jason Ross
“Well there’s the fox you been chasing, Sheriff.” The man took the stalk of hay out of his mouth and said, “Doesn’t look like much up-close, does he?”
“No, can’t say he looks like I thought he’d look. I imagined he’d be a special forces type or something.”
“You’ve been chasing this fox for three days?”
“Yup. Ever since we seen him cross at Minam. Hey, son,” the sheriff yelled. “Why don’tcha slide that rifle off and set it against that little pine for me?”
Sage complied, then continued toward the bridge. When he got there, the men looked him up and down.
“You got any more guns?” the sheriff asked.
“No.”
“Did Chambers send you?” the man in the cowboy hat asked.
The question knocked him off balance. He hesitated, then answered honestly. “Yes.”
“He wanted to know about the cattle?”
Sage gave up any idea of being clever. “Yes.”
Cowboy Hat man nodded and tossed away the stalk of hay. “Just a matter of time, right Tate?”
The sheriff nodded.
“How about this, then?” Cowboy Hat stood up from against his truck. “I’ll buy you a burger and answer all your questions. Maybe you can answer a few for me, too.”
“Yessir,” Sage replied.
“Put your ruck in the back of my truck,” Cowboy Hat said and walked around to the driver’s side. The sheriff leaned into his cruiser and called off the dogs over the radio.
Arresting people and feeding them a burger must be a thing in Northeastern Oregon, Sage concluded. The shame of capture had already begun to fade.
Visions of a hot burger, after three days of eating freeze dried, went a long way to salving his wounded pride.
“I’m Commissioner Pete, by the way,” the man reached a hand across the plastic table outside the “Blue Banana” diner in Lostine, Oregon.
They’d driven to the village in the center of the valley, between the towns of Wallowa and Enterprise. Townspeople had set up dozens of Costco-style plastic tables and chairs in the parking lot around Sage and the Commissioner. Sage gathered that the people of the town came to the parking lot of the tiny restaurant for group supper. Given the gray clouds massing over the ice-bound peaks, they’d need to move this daily routine under cover, soon. The snow on the hillsides hadn’t quite blanketed the south-facing fields yet, but after another storm or two, it would.
“So, let’s hear it. What does Captain Chambers want to know about us?”
“He asked me to figure out what was going on here. You haven’t let anyone through your road block.”
“I don’t see why he should have any questions. That’s his county. This is ours...never mind. It’s just old men and their politics. It doesn’t matter.”
“He wants to know about trade between the counties,” Sage offered.
“Ha!” the Commissioner barked. “As if we needed anything from the city.” Commissioner Pete sat back and thought a moment. “That’s the problem, see? We have plenty of cattle, feed and grain. We only have three thousand mouths to feed and there’s no need to complicate our lives with Chamber’s brand of nonsense. By hook or crook, everyone ends up working for him. Ain’t that true?”
Sage blanched. He didn’t know if it was true or not, but Captain Chambers certainly seemed like a man-with-a-plan. If there was someone else in charge, Sage hadn’t heard his name uttered.
“Um. I just got there—in Union County. I’m from Salt Lake City and I’m passing through on my way home. I only just met the captain a couple weeks ago.”
“Okay, then tell me: what kind of government do they have over there in Union County?”
Sage hadn’t seen or heard of any government other than the police department. He assumed there were elected guys, but Sage didn’t know their names. His confusion must’ve shown on his face, because Pete waved the question away.
“Don’t sweat it. Let me show you something—pick someone. Anyone.” He waved around at the people setting up supper tables. Sage pointed toward a middle-aged lady walking past.
“Joan,” Pete called out, stopping her. “What kind of government do we have here?”
She smiled, looked at Sage, recognized him as an outsider, and answered. “It’s a Constitutional thing. We elect you sweet-talking politicians and you tell us what to do.”
Pete laughed. “Then how come I feel like you’re always telling ME what to do?”
“Because that’s the natural order of things, Pete. You men run the show and we women run you.”
Pete belly laughed as Joan went back to work setting the silverware. “Ain’t that the truth?” he asked Sage. He seemed to realize he was talking to a young man—too young to know how the world really worked—and he looped back to his point. “We didn’t get creative here in Wallowa County when the outside world came crashing down. We pulled up the U.S. Constitution and clicked copy then paste.” Pete smiled. “Can’t say the same for our neighbors in Union County. They’ve got their own style of guv’ment, and Ron Chambers is up to his armpits in it.” He held up his hands in surrender. “But they can do whatever they want. Don’t get me wrong; Union County is Union County and if they want to run it like the Russian mafia, that’s none of our business.”
“It’s not like that,” Sage argued. “They’re doing what they have to do to survive the winter. They have a lot less food than you do and a lot more hungry people. I saw what it was like over the mountain into Washington—after the stores closed and the water turned off. Mister Commissioner, they were eating people. I swear they were.”
The Commissioner’s eyes widened. “I’d heard stories on the shortwave, but I didn’t know it’d gotten so bad, so fast. I’m sorry you had to see that. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Yes I am. Thousands are dead. Probably millions. Just over the Blue Mountains.” Sage didn’t know what point he was trying to make, but he kept talking because the Commissioner seemed to be listening. “I killed a couple guys. Mostly by accident. Guys from over in Elgin. They tried to rob me.” Sage’s throat tightened with emotion.
Commissioner Pete reached across the table and put a heavy, calloused hand on Sage’s shoulder. “It’s okay, son. It’s war over there and you did what you had to do. It’s okay. Just breathe. Oh, hey, here’s your burger.” He took the paper plate with a burger and fries on it from Joan as she passed by. She looked at both of their faces—Sage’s an emotional mess—and retreated to the kitchen.
“Did I mention I’ve got a daughter your age? And, a son a few years older. He was in Boise at the university when the crash happened. What are you, nineteen? Twenty?”
Sage wiped his nose with his sleeve. He hadn’t reached for his burger yet. “Seventeen.”
“Wow,” Pete remarked. “Have you been outside this whole time? More than two months?”
Sage nodded and stuck a fry in his mouth. The oily saltiness of it shocked his taste buds.
“It aged you. Turned you into a man too soon.” Pete glanced around at the crowd as though looking for his own son and daughter. “We’ve been blessed here. Very blessed...and we’re in no hurry to spit in God’s eye. We don’t want to screw this up, and mucking around with Ron Chambers is playing with fire. I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re trapped here. There’s no back door out of this valley. We either go out through Union County, or we go out over those mountains. This place is our first and last stand. Please ask Captain Chambers, politely, to sock all his ambition into saving Union County and leave us the hell alone. They’ve got nothing we want or need.”
Sage sighed and tucked into his burger. He felt bad about taking the man’s food, but he’d be a fool to pass up fresh beef.
He had a sinking feeling Union County wasn’t going to leave Wallowa County alone. After all his time in Union, Sage had only eaten beef three times, but the smell coming from the kitchen didn’t lie—the townsfolk would be enjoying something with meat in it, and tha
t was likely a daily deal.
Beef, it’s what’s for dinner - if you live in Wallowa.
If his guess was correct, there were at least ten cattle for every man, woman and child in this Valley. Chambers wouldn’t leave that alone. He had a lot of men, and a lot of mouths to feed.
Commissioner Pete appeared to enjoy watching Sage eat. He was proud of his little county, that much seemed clear to Sage.
After Sage wiped out the burger, the commissioner spoke. “Sheriff Tate will be coming by in a minute with your rifle. He’ll take you to the county line.” He got up from the table. “I wish you well, Sage Ross from Salt Lake City. Keep your eyes open, son. There’s more than one way to cannibalize people. I think we’ll see them all. Even here.”
12
Mat Best
McKenzie, Tennessee
Southwest HESCO Barrier
* * *
He should’ve fought harder to cut the Reedy Grove neighborhood outside the wall. Mat swore at himself for his moment of weakness, six weeks before. It’d cost them over a mile of HESCO barrier and they were way behind schedule on the south side of town. They were way behind schedule everywhere.
“Nobody will come looking for a handout from Memphis,” the longstanding residents promised. “Memphis people are better than that.” Mat didn’t know Memphis people from Martian people, but he knew even a noble race like the Afghans—mountain warriors all—would tear the throats out of a troop of Girl Scouts if their families were starving and it meant feeding them. People from Memphis, it turned out, were not better humans than Afghans.
The first wave of the mob came straight up Highway 79 from the direction of Memphis. Who knew if they actually came from the city or if they’d circled around from one of the “less reputable” cities like Louisville or St. Louis? They were a mob, and hunger was their birthplace.
The first wave of a thousand rushed up the highway and into the HESCO barrier. They were repulsed by a few shotguns and the ram rods. That’s when the perimeter guards called Mat and the quick reaction force for help.
The QRF were a group of twenty pipe-hitters—high school and college boys with more grit than good sense. Mat trained them a few hours a day. His well-fed twenty could hold off a mob of a hundred; from behind a HESCO, maybe three times that many.
Up to that point, the rats were too uncoordinated to attack the town all-at-once from multiple points of the compass. Mat could hold his best guys in reserve, in the center of town, on a two minute alert. When a push came—and they came every couple of days now—the QRF rushed to the hotspot and hit them with the town’s best guns, best shooters and the strongest hand-to-hand fighters. The QRF all ran AR-15s from the sheriff’s gun locker, wore soft body armor and trained daily on radio communications. Radio waves were free. Bullets were irreplaceable.
The town of McKenzie had more food than firearms, given the partnership with the town of Henry. They had more hogs than people, with more piglets born every day. They traded dried pork at the highway barricades for guns and ammo, but that added to their stock of bullets and forced them to use them. Handing out pork led to arguments, theft and riots. Riots always turned against the town. That was exactly what’d happened at the 79 South gate; they’d been trading dried pork for bullets and a fight broke out in the refugee camp up against the HESCO wall.
Mat and the QRF arrived just in time to see the mob overflow into the flooded hay fields, and churn toward the Reedy Grove neighborhood. Construction on the wall hadn’t made it that far. It was still only a quarter-mile long on that side of town— inching across the Bartlett’s hayfield from the Hilltop trailer park toward the cluster of suburban homes called “Reedy Grove.”
Mat argued as hard as he dared at the security committee back when they’d decided the boundaries of the wall. He wanted the wall tucked up against Hopper Lane—which would’ve saved them over a mile of HESCO. It would’ve also required the mayor’s brother to move his family to a shitty, abandoned home in town instead of his pretty Reedy Creek rambler.
The mayor didn’t get much for his trouble, serving as mayor. He was considered an empty smile and a free handshake, particularly when compared to the larger-than-life personality of Sheriff Morgan. This time, the mayor had thrown down: the Reedy Grove subdivision would be wrapped snugly inside the HESCO barrier “or his name wasn’t Bradford P. Caldwell.” Mat relented and the line on the map became yet another political boondoggle.
Now a thousand pissed off vagabonds trudged around the unfinished wall and straight toward the mayor’s brother’s home.
“Your brother’s shitting in his Levis now, Mister Mayor,” Mat said under his breath. He clicked the push-to-talk button on his radio. “QRF. This is Mat. Move out to Reedy Grove Road. Let’s flex our muscle.”
The QRF made a series of turns in their off-road vehicles and got them pointing back toward town. The fight wasn’t going to be at the HESCO this time. They’d be fighting between swing sets and trampolines—exactly what Mat had hoped to avoid.
By the time they looped back south into Reedy Grove, the opportunity to rake the mob with gunfire while they slogged through the muddy field had elapsed. The front wave of incursion had already reached the trees and the backyards of Reedy Grove.
Mat and his fire teams poured around the five homes that bordered the hayfield. Rifle fire crackled. It sounded like 5.56 from his boys, but Mat listened hard for handguns or shotguns. The rats would have firearms. Hopefully, not more than a few.
He rounded an air conditioning unit to catch a cluster of bat-wielding rats bursting from the trees and onto the dead grass of a family’s backyard. Mat lit them up, one-at-a-time. The last figure was a woman in a bright, green wrap. The tasseled edges were painted in mud.
They’re forcing me to slaughter them, Mat screamed inside. They were literally on the porch of that house. The family was probably inside, scared half-to-death. No choice but to shoot the intruders. No choice!
Three more rats sprinted from the trees for the house. Mat shot a man’s knee out the side of his leg. He pitched into a stone fire pit, full of rainwater. Mat didn’t wait to see if he’d drown. He placed controlled bursts into the other two. One turned back, maybe wounded.
The rest was a blur. Mat noticed each mag change, but his gaze danced across the enemy.
Trigger, trigger, trigger—scan for threats—trigger, trigger, trigger. Lull in the fight. Tactical reload. Scan again. Shift to new cover.
For some reason, the mag changes always stuck out in his mind. After four mag changes, the rats stopped appearing from the tree line. The flow must’ve turned back toward the highway. The rattle of rifle fire had done its job and convinced the marauding thousands of the futility to run toward death.
The mayor’s brother stumbled up and thanked Mat personally. He even said, “I’m the mayor’s brother,” as though it was a thing people said when surrounded by stinking, shitting, dying people.
The mayor’s brother carried a big, Dirty Harry revolver. Now that the gunfire had stopped, more town folk poured out of the homes. Every adult had a gun of some kind, but they hung back from the killing fields. They’d stayed in their homes while Mat and the QRF did the work of death.
Mat understood the logic: stay inside as a last line of defense if the rats break in. Stand between their family and the threat.
But, still, he hated them for making he and his boys take life. If only the families had moved inside town, this could’ve been avoided. The HESCO barrier wasn’t a magical force field, by any means, but it gave the rats a serious reality check. Without it, the rats drifted in and out of no-man’s-land, catching bullets for their trouble. A ramrod to the solar plexus meant a few days of bruising. A bullet hole, pretty much anywhere, was a death sentence in the refugee camps.
Mat needed to get the fuck out of this town. He’d been forced to shoot people who, just three months before, might’ve served him his bacon and eggs at the Pancake House.
It’d be one thing if the
town of McKenzie would follow his advice to-the-letter. Mat might be able to live with the killing if it was always absolutely necessary. But this shit here in Reedy Grove—this was lethal stupidity. Those lives were wasted in the name of hayseed politics.
Who had Mat been kidding? No town—no group of Americans—was going to set aside their compulsive opinion-making and bow to Mat’s expertise. It was not something Americans did. Not then. Not now. For every six Americans who followed good advice, three more would pitch a hissy fit when told what to do.
If he stayed in McKenzie, Mat would be forced to kill, with ever-greater prejudice, in the name of local-yokel, municipal theater. The good folk of McKenzie would have their big opinions, and Mat would be forced to do the killing.
Mat cleared his rifle and caught the spinning brass as it catapulted out of the breach. He turned his back on the killing fields as he watched the neighbors collect in conversational knots in the street. The townies did their best to act like carrying a gun came easy.
Mat slipped the loose round back into the mag and stared down the stack of brass. He couldn’t remember if he’d depleted this mag or not. He looked into the dark space around the bullets in the AR-15 magazine, and it felt like gazing into the pit of his own soul. Time skipped a beat.
Mat keyed his radio. “QRF. This is Mat. Let’s get the hell back to town.”
Mat made his rounds to the check points—perhaps more quickly than usual, but with no skipped steps. Then he checked in with Carter at her home, as usual. This time, he asked her if she’d take William when Mat left town.
“Are you absolutely sure that’s what you want?” she asked.
“It’s not so much about what I want as what William needs. He’s lost everyone he loves: his father, mother and sister. He needs a home and a family. That’s not something he’s going to get with me. Caroline would want it this way.”
