by Jason Ross
Mat had their full attention.
“The depots belonged to FEMA before the economy collapsed. It’s where they stored the government reserve; supplies hidden away for local disasters. They’re in nondescript, heavily-secured warehouses, packed to the rafters with dry food, HAZMAT suits and medical supplies.”
Mat took a breath and forced his shoulders to relax. “Crazy story, right? Mule train supply depots still operational in the twenty-first century? I was skeptical myself.” He paused and let the drama build. “Three days ago, I checked out the depot in Sedalia with Rickers. It was there. Untouched. Dry food. Water purifiers. N95 masks.”
Mat paused to let it sink in. “We brought back all of the medical supplies for our town clinic. We have our own pig farms, so it’s not worth the exposure to make multiple trips with semi trucks to bring back the food. Plus, a lot of it’s expired.”
Dr. Hauser looked unconvinced. “If you can’t transport the food, what makes you think we can?”
Mat looked at each of them. They were good people. These were the rats who cooperated, which was why they were more likely to buy his story.
I’m killing them with a story. It’s slower than botulism, but I’m killing them just the same.
It was better than poisoning, and better than starvation, and he wasn’t lying about one thing: there was food there. Mat had gone to Sedalia and placed the food on the racks himself. Alongside the food he left maps, FEMA brochures and fake evidence that the next warehouse was twenty miles away. By the time the rats figured out the story was fiction, they’d be marooned fifty miles from McKenzie and too hungry to walk back.
“You can move your camp to Sedalia until you exhaust the warehouse. Your base of operations is mobile. Ours isn’t. But let me know by dusk if you’re going. If you’re not interested, I’ll pass the word to the Buford Woods camp.”
Mat struggled to read their faces. He closed his argument by adding, “Send scouts to the first depot. See for yourselves. I brought five gallons of gas so a couple guys can drive there, and maybe bring a truck load back for you to test.” Mat shook the red, plastic gas can that he’d brought with him.
The rats exchanged glances: their faces filled with trepidation and hope.
Hauser spoke. “Thank you, Sergeant Best. We’ll get back to you by nightfall.”
Candice stared at the bloody mess until her eyes got dry and sticky.
The rabbits in the glass cages were twisted into knots. The blood from their mouths and anuses striped their white, fluffy coats. Candice’s stepfather had left the dead rabbits in there, now going on three days. There was no reason to remove them, he explained. The fan loop was air-tight and the experiment had been successful. The mustard gas worked. The dead rabbits could rot in their cages forever.
Inside the HAZMAT suit, her stepfather couldn’t see her gnawing fear. She’d been trapped alone with him for forty-eight hours. They slept only in snatches, waking every two hours to climb back into the HAZMAT suits and start a new batch of poison.
They worked together to combine the sulfur dichloride with ethylene in a gentle heating process that required a two-hour ramp up to temperature. The sulfur came from the lumber yard, and her stepfather had the ethylene in barrels from his days pretending to cook meth.
As the solution warmed, the reddish-amber sulfur dichloride climbed up a spiral glass condenser and dripped into a bulbous flask of ethylene. Heated slowly enough, the two chemicals didn’t react. They combined gently into the yellow slurry that they poured onto cookie sheets in a plastic-sealed room Jensen had divided off from the rest of the basement. Several times a day, the pair suited up and scraped the dry mustard dust into glass jars.
They were both so exhausted, after the two day marathon of lab work, that Jensen didn’t even take time to put his hands down her pants. When the HAZMAT suits came off, they both went directly to sleep. For Candice, the terrifying, sweaty work inside the rubber suit was almost worth the reprieve.
It was a little before midnight and Mat stood in the front yard of his house speaking with Carlos Cabrera and a member of the perimeter team, Mary Tribble.
Before the collapse, Mary had shared mechanic duties with her husband at the town auto repair shop. Two days before the nuclear attack on Los Angeles, Mr. Tribble had taken their son to Atlanta on a father-son trip, with the intent of visiting parts suppliers to make the trip tax-deductible. When the bomb hit, they cut the trip short, but never arrived home. Her last contact had been a selfie of her husband and son, via text message at a service station outside of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She ended her story looking at the southeastern sky.
“Google said they’d be home in three hours. Just a little traffic, it said.”
Crack! Crack! Two gunshots echoed, almost on top of one another.
Mary started to say “Did you hear that?” But Mat had already keyed his radio.
"All checkpoints report in. Where did those shots come from?"
Eight checkpoints reported. The gunshots didn’t come from their locations. Each checkpoint offered a guess as to the direction of the gunshots. The consensus clarified. The shots came from the south end of town. Reedy Grove again.
Mat called up the QRF then ran inside for his kit.
“Where are you going?” William asked from the gloom of the living room. The boy always asked, as though by asking he could prevent Mat from leaving someday.
“Um. We’re headed to check out a couple gunshots on the south end of town. Did you hang out with Candice today?” Mat made conversation while kitting up.
“Nope,” William replied tersely. “She says she’s working on a lab project with her stepdad. She’s bailing on me too.”
Mat hated it when the boy played the victim card. He had every right to paint himself as a victim, but it wouldn’t serve him well as a man. Not in this brave, new world.
“Hmpf.” Mat knew what Candice must be doing. She and Jensen were making poison gas. The days when teenagers were spared hard, dangerous work had vanished in the rearview mirror like the blank side of a sign. “It’s true—what she told you. She and her dad are working on something important for the town. Give her a couple days. She’ll come up for air soon.”
The poison gas drew Mat’s thoughts back to town security and the gunshots.
Mat rattled his plate carrier vest in the dark. “Gotta run.”
“Okay,” William muttered.
Six minutes later, Mat jogged into the parking lot of the Walgreens. Eight men from the QRF arrived a minute later on foot, and a minute after that, two deputies on horseback. Sheriff Morgan had converted the empty lot next to the sheriff’s department into stables.
“Why only two horses?” Mat asked one of the deputies.
“Only these two have been re-shoed for paved roads.”
“Alright,” said Mat, while motioning the mounted deputies over. “There’ve been no additional shots. It might’ve been a negligent discharge or someone killing a possum.” People weren’t supposed to discharge firearms in town, not because of gun safety concerns, but because it forced town security to mount a “where’d it come from” poodle circus every time someone torched off a round.
Even with the outer town consolidating inside the HESCO line, a lot of homes in McKenzie were vacant. People had combined households with kin or friends for mutual protection; they preferred to share resources, security and heat. Having your “own place” wasn’t the advantage it’d once been. Privacy was a luxury nobody could afford.
In their downtime, the QRF went around town and tied yellow ribbons outside occupied homes, but they hadn’t been particularly systematic about the process. This side of town hadn’t yet been marked. They’d have to check every house’s front and rear yard, knock, then enter if there was no response.
After clearing just three homes, Mat decided to wake up the rest of the QRF. It was going to be a long night.
Before he could call it in, his team radio barked. “Sarge, we found ‘em. 421 Wh
ittle Lane.”
Found them he’d said. That wasn’t good. “Do we need the medics?” asked Mat.
“No survivors.”
“Fuck,” Mat swore. “On our way.” Mat’s team of four broke into a jog toward Whittle Lane.
421 Whittle Lane was at the end a cul de sac. One of the QRF and two deputies stood outside with the horses.
“How many dead? Do we know who lives here?” Mat asked Deputy Wiggin who stood outside holding the reins of his horse.
“Five dead. Monroe and Davis families were here together, but…” The deputy went silent as Juan Cabrera’s QRF team exited the house. They stormed down the porch, gripping their ARs like pitchforks.
“Raiders,” Juan Cabrera seethed.
“Have you cleared the neighborhood?” Mat asked, business before fury.
“Yes. Only one other family—at the far end of the street.” Cabrera pointed.
“Who’s inside? Five dead?”
“Seven dead, actually. Kids too.” Cabrera agitated in the spare light of the overcast night. The “battle rattle” of his plate carrier jostled with pent-up ferocity. The heat of vengeance radiated off him like a pulsar. He had kids of his own.
Cabrera described four dead adults and three dead children. The bodies lay where they were killed. Two of the adults were in bed, and all the children were in bedrolls on the floor. Dan Monroe was the only victim found out of his bed. The fourth adult corpse was filthy, and it gave off a corrupt odor, more than blood and the stink of bowels and bladder—one of the murderers.
There was one missing adult from the dead family. In old America, an investigator’s first thought would be that any missing adults would be prime suspects for the murders. But the house had been ransacked. It’d clearly been raided from the outside; murder by strangers, not a family member on a domestic violence rampage. Somewhere in McKenzie there was a man or a woman working at a clinic, or helping a friend repair a water pipe and that person had just lost their entire family. They didn’t even know it yet.
Mat went inside and surveyed the scene. “This guy’s a rat,” Mat said as he kicked the reeking man over. “Looks like the raiding party bludgeoned the family in their sleep. Mr. Monroe got to his gun. He killed this one and another rat shot him. I guess they were hoping to kill them all quietly, then take their time looting the house.”
“QRF Four to Sarge,” the radios growled.
“Go for Sarge.”
“The other three houses on the street are empty except, well, we’re at 427 Whittle. It’s the Simms. It’s bad.” Mat knew Marjorie Simms from security committee.
One of the QRF inside the Simms place inadvertently “stepped on” his push-to-talk button. Everyone on the channel heard his ragged inhale and a shuddering exhale. It sent a chill down Mat’s spine. Then the guy continued.“They killed them all. All of them, even the baby.”
With the coming of the wet, steel-sky morning, word of the murder of the Simms, Monroe and Davis families flushed throughout the town. Around nine a.m., an agitated crowd gathered outside of the McKenzie Sheriff’s office. News traveled even without cell phones and internet; the small town “wireless” had hummed for a hundred years before electronics, and murder most foul sent neighbors scurrying to their mutual defense.
Mat Best stood next to Sheriff Morgan on the front steps of the station, looking out on two hundred angry citizens.
“They want blood. We need to come up with a response, or one of these hotheads is going to lead a mob against the Brashear Camp.”
“Maybe we should let ‘em,” Mat said, deadpan. Anger was the only thing keeping him standing. He’d been awake for sixty hours. “Me and my boys could use the break.”
The sheriff didn’t bother to reply. They both knew Mat wasn’t going to allow pissed-off vigilantes to do his job. Half of them would accidentally shoot the other half in the confusion of battle.
The closest camp, and the most likely culprit, was squirreled away in the middle of the Brashear woods, a quarter mile beyond the south edge of town. Mat didn’t think there was any question what they should do. His QRF was gearing up for an assault. “We have to hit them—if for no other reason than to show the refugees what happens when they murder our people. They have to know that hunger is better than bringing down our wrath.”
“Wrath?” The sheriff tucked in the front of his shirt. “I don’t condone revenge missions.”
“Whatever you want to call it, the rats need to know we’re pissed. The HESCO’s only one-third done. We can’t protect the town from night raids. We gotta show them that we hit back hard. We’re Israel and they’re Palestine. We’re screwed if they don’t fear us. Deputy Stamets traced the raiders back to Brashear Drive and that’s where we should strike.”
“What if Stamets is wrong? What if we shoot up a bunch of families that had nothing to do with the killings?” Sheriff Morgan countered.
“We’ll never know, and the message will still be sent.” Mat shrugged. “Intel is never ironclad.” Mat knew it was his exhaustion talking, and his anger.
But fuck it. War and anger went together like pizza and beer. There was a yawning gulf between law enforcement and war—the difference between violence dolloped out like castor oil medicine and violence heaped upon your enemy to make them rue the day they picked up arms against you. The defense of the town was never going to be a law enforcement gig. It was always going to be war.
“What are your rules of engagement?” the sheriff asked with resignation in his voice.
“We’ll kill whoever passes for leadership in the camp. We determine who’s responsible for the raid and cut them down where they stand. This won’t be investigate-arrest-convict.”
“And the rest of the Brashear wood refugees?”
“It would be nice if the bad guys wore name tags, but this is war. We’ll try to limit the mission to leadership, or what passes for leadership. But lines blur and the enemy gets a vote as to how things go down. What I know: we have to put the fear of God in them. That’s a given.”
Sheriff Morgan looked out over the crowd. It had swelled to three hundred, and more streamed down the streets toward the station.
“The fear of God,” Morgan said in a low voice. “I wonder who will learn that lesson.” He took a deep breath and held it for a second, then released it with a sigh. His sad, jowly face hardened as he turned to Mat.
“Okay. But help me preserve the heart of this town.”
“The inner town?” Mat asked.
“Not the center of town. The heart of the town. We will not survive if we become frightened, vicious animals. We’re trying to preserve civilization here, not just our lives.”
Mat hadn’t been hired to preserve civilization. He’d been hired to keep citizens alive and to protect assets. Part of him knew the old lawman was right—the part of Mat’s mind that noticed the women in battle and saw imaginary, colored shawls and windswept burkas where none existed. But Mat had no idea how to accomplish the two opposing goals: preserving civility and crushing aggression. He settled for soothing Morgan’s concerns.
“I hear you sheriff. We’ll make our statement, eighty-six the murderers and get back to town.”
The sheriff nodded. “I’m coming too. Stick me with a team—low man on the totem pole.” The sheriff turned and vanished into the station, probably to gather his fighting gear.
Two hours later Mat stood in the Walmart parking lot in front of fifty men and one woman. Gladys Carter was the only woman to volunteer for the strike mission. Mat had declined over a hundred men from town, and opted instead for a smaller fighting force with more control and experience.
Mat split his force into two with a simple plan. They were too tired for L-ambushes or complex flanking maneuvers. They’d come at the camp from two fronts, set at forty-five degrees from each other, and they’d become a single firing line when they hit the edges of the camp. He couldn’t afford much of a blocking force. If their blood got up, a blocking force would shoot the
ir own guys coming through the trees. It was better to flush the camp like a pheasant hunt.
Mat posted two of the town’s best marksmen with scoped hunting rifles overlooking the highway. They would take down armed targets that attempted to cross. Those had been Mat’s orders: “Shoot refugees who look like they probably attacked the town.”
Mat’s forces had yellow caution tape tied to their hats and around their necks. It looked patently uncool, but would look cooler than a bunch of body bags from friendly fire incidents.
They entered the woods from Hansen Lane at two o’clock in the afternoon. Fifty yards into the forest, one of his men slipped and fell.
“Damn rats don’t even bury their shit.”
“Quiet,” Mat ordered.
The “go signal” would be the bullhorn. Team One, led by Juan Cabrera, radioed that they’d reached the fringe of the camp. Mat signaled the man on his team with the bullhorn to get ready. The two flush lines met in the middle and everyone came on-line for the final assault.
“All stations, this is Mat. Execute, execute, execute.”
The bullhorn blared, “This is punishment for last night's attack on town. Stay away from town.”
Even before they reached the tumbledown camp, the snipers over the highway boomed. The rats must’ve heard them coming—had probably expected the reprisal. The overwatch hunters called out their hits over the radio with precision.
“Overwatch one. One target down.”
