Silent Interruption (Book 4): Of Tragedy and Triumph

by Russell, Trent

  Of Tragedy And Triumph

  Silent Interruption Book 4

  Trent Russelll

  Copyright © 2018 by Trent Russelll

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter One

  It’s raining. It’s raining all over the forest.

  As Alicia Farrell watched the water fall on the ground all around her, she thought back to a few months ago when she and her husband were on a hunting trip in the woods. Their adventure hit an unexpected snag when it started raining cats and dogs. Alicia groused that they should have checked the weather reports before heading out to hunt. Their quest for a deer had turned into a scramble through the woods to get back to their truck.

  Right now, the rain made Alicia feel normal again. Rain was rain. It didn’t matter what else happened in the world. The events of the past week might as well never have happened. The raindrops felt as regular as any other rainstorm.

  Beside her, Lorenzo adjusted his hat, tilting down the brim a little. The hat, plus the nearby tree, helped shield them from some of the constant raindrops. Alicia and Lorenzo Farrell were dressed in hunting gear that included well-insulated jackets and boots. A hastily erected tent behind them housed a mother and her child, more members of their motley group. Sadly, one of their members was dead, two had been captured by a band of domestic terrorists, and the rest had set out to rescue them.

  The rain might be as normal as ever, but this day was the most abnormal in Alicia’s life. It was as if she suddenly had been thrust into the plot of an action adventure movie. Well, more like a survival flick coupled with an action adventure movie. The sudden loss of all electrical power and the ensuing loss of authority and order had a funny way of changing a mundane world into an intense, frightening, and horrific one.

  Alicia wondered if anyone saw the catastrophe coming. She was riding in Lorenzo’s truck when suddenly the radio, which had been tuned into a local talk show, conked out without warning. Their vehicle then grinded to a halt. With no way to restart it, Lorenzo and Alicia disembarked to seek aid and answers. Fortunately, they still were within an outer suburb at the time their truck stopped, so they found some assistance in a nearby shopping mall. However, the answers were slow in coming. Some speculated that an electromagnetic pulse had struck the Earth’s atmosphere and fried the world’s power grids. The pulse also had rendered all electronics, at least the ones that were not shielded, worthless.

  That meant the world Alicia and Lorenzo lived in was a world without running cars, electric lights, air conditioners, or any working stores or other businesses. It also meant the governing authorities were out of commission. And no viable authorities meant that the seedier, destructive, evil elements of society were suddenly free to ravage the country as they wished.

  It had become so bad that a nearby army base had been raided by a band of these men. Alicia and her friends were forced to flee into these woods. Now those friends were determined to turn the tables on their pursuers, but Alicia and Lorenzo could not be a part of that rescue. They had to remain here with Ricardo and his mother, Maria. Carl Mathers wished it so. Ricardo was a lanky, high-spirited boy and his mother was a small lady with a pleasant smile. Neither one of them had strong self-defense skills, so somebody had to stay to protect them. Carl would not risk more abductions…or more deaths.

  Footsteps drew the Farrells’ attention. Someone was coming. The couple drew their guns while approaching close to a large tree trunk. It would provide cover in case that was a hostile approaching. With the falling rain, though, it would not be clear who it was until the intruder was very close.

  Alicia silently prayed it was Carl, followed by the other members of their party they had sent out on the rescue mission.

  But instead it was a smaller figure, not a man, who approached. A boy, almost teenage age, was dragging a man along behind him. Alicia recognized the young face even in the rain.

  “Thomas!” Alicia let out a sigh of relief. But who was the boy bringing closer?

  Alicia and Lorenzo joined Thomas, who stopped and let the body drop. The Farrells saw the man wasn’t one of their own, but rather one of the marauders who had attacked the base and kidnapped two of their friends. Lorenzo aimed his gun at the man’s head.

  “He’s unconscious!” the boy said. Alicia almost smiled at Thomas’s sophisticated manner of talk. He was the son of Harold Bosworth, an experienced outdoorsman. His two boys were stoic lads who often times acted older than they were, yet Alicia could detect the childlike curiosity that lurked under their countenances. “We can tie him up and gag him before he wakes up.”

  Lorenzo put his weapon back in its holster. “Well, if we do, it’s not going to be close to camp.” He reached down and grabbed the man, who was thankfully light enough for Lorenzo to carry.

  “I disarmed him,” Thomas quickly added, showing off a handgun tucked under his belt. “Dad, Michael, Carl, they’re all moving in on the house. I need to hurry back and help.”

  Alicia rubbed Thomas’s head, nearly pushing off the hat that shielded Thomas from the rain. She quickly readjusted it. “Thanks for the news. We’ll keep an eye on our friend here.”

  Thomas curled his hand into a thumbs-up before turning to flee into the rain. Alicia’s smile faded as she thought of how unjust it was for children to have to fight like this.

  Lorenzo just had finished securing the unconscious man to the tree. “He can’t get out of that,” he said as he backed up toward Alicia. They had picked a spot facing away from their camp that also was obscured slightly by low-hanging branches and some tall plants that remained partially standing amid the pounding rain. The overhanging branches helped keep some of the rain off the man’s head.

  “What the hell are we going to do with him?” Lorenzo asked through gritted teeth.

  “We’re not going to stick around here forever,” Alicia said. “We’ll probably untie him once we haul butt to somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere else?” Lorenzo looked around the rainy forest. “Where the hell is that going to be? Everywhere we go, we run into danger and God knows what else. I’m starting to think the safest place for us is inside a cave.”

  “Go back to being cavemen, huh?” Alicia chuckled. “I guess that makes us the Flintstones.”

  Lorenzo didn’t smile. Not even an Alicia joke could get him to snap out of his funk. Alicia couldn’t blame him. They had been horrified by everything they had discovered since they had set out from the mall, from a nice country house that held the horror of a slaughtered family, to Camp Jefferson beyond the woods, where U.S. servicemen and women were killed fighting off a band of marauders led by a man named Ben. Where could they go that wouldn’t present such terrors?

  Before Alicia could say anything more, a loud bang shook her to her feet. It came from behind them, from the direction of the house where Ben was h
olding their friends.

  “My God.” Alicia walked away from the prisoner and closer to the house lay. Lorenzo caught her.

  “It’s starting,” he said.

  “I want to help them,” Alicia said quietly.

  “I know. So do I. But we have to let this play out,” Lorenzo said. “But we won’t wait long.”

  Alicia gripped Lorenzo’s arm. “Thanks, Baby.”

  As soon as the explosion went off, Harold knew there was no turning back. He trained his gun on the house’s front door, awaiting the stream of men who were sure to flee from the small rancher. The explosion had gone off on the other side of the house. Carl had shot his gun into a set of fuel tanks on the side of the house. They wondered if the tank could ignite properly in the midst of this rain. It turned out their fears were for naught.

  However, Harold had to deal with a second fear—having his two boys train their weapons on living men. He did not fear their competence. Those two had grown up learning about and experiencing the outdoors. They knew how to handle a firearm. That was no problem.

  Harold just wished his two boys didn’t have to kill. Tom was thirteen approaching fourteen, Matt was barely twelve. Couldn’t the world have spared them a few more years before they had to take a life?

  So, when the initial round of men emerged from the house, Harold quickly fired on them before they dashed into range of his boys. They all were young men -- or at least younger than middle age -- wearing khakis, camo clothing and dark clothing. When they first attacked Carl and his friends, they covered their faces with camo masks, but as they fled the burning house, their faces were exposed. They appeared less like faceless monsters and more like desperate human beings trying to escape a calamity.

  But that didn’t change the scope of their crimes, nor would it alter the fact that they would kill Harold and his sons if they could. That is why Harold did not hesitate to put them down as they exposed themselves. There were no police around to jail these people. The world had changed. Everyone was their own policeman. Everyone was a judge, a jury, and an executioner.

  So, it hurt Harold when one of the men suddenly was taken out by Matt. Harold cursed himself for not nailing the latest man who had emerged.

  He was not supposed to be doing this alone with his sons. Carl should have arrived by now. As a fifth man scrambled out the door, his back on fire, Harold took him out, first to the legs to drop him and then two more to the back to end the man’s agony. But when he leveled his weapon to the door again, nobody showed up. Ben’s men had stopped fleeing from the doorway.

  That was what, five? There were at least ten in that bunch, including two men who they had taken down outside the house. There was also no sign of Ben. Perhaps the explosion had taken him out along with the others, but there was no way to be sure unless Harold went inside.

  Finally, he decided he couldn’t wait any longer. He would head inside and confirm if Carl had made it inside the house, as well as those of their friends being held captive. In the process, he would keep an eye out for Ben himself.

  He took one step forward.

  “Hold it right there.”

  Harold froze. Out of the corner of his eye, a dark figure loomed behind Matt. Even though the rain obscured much of the stranger’s features, Harold knew a gun when he saw it—and it was pointed down at Matt’s head.

  Carl Mathers was staring death in the face. Not his death, though, his friend’s. Preston Wilson lay unconscious, in the grip of a man who was pure evil. Carl was sure that if he pulled the trigger on his handgun, the man with the breathing mask quickly would slay Preston on the spot.

  Shit, Carl thought. He had saved Tara and Shyanne. He knew it. His plan had liberated his two friends. Why was it falling apart like this? How could Ben, the man who held Preston in his vice-like grip, have gotten the drop on Preston? And where was Michael? Both Preston and Michael had barged into the home to retrieve Tara and Shyanne.

  “Well, look at you, Marine,” Ben said, his voice somewhat muffled and made hollow by the mask, while still sounding sinister to Carl’s ears. “What’s the matter? You look like you didn’t expect this.”

  “Put him down,” Carl said.

  Ben laughed. “I like how you said that. You could have said ‘let him go’ and then I’d plug him in the head, and then I’d tell you, ‘Sure, I let him go. You just didn’t say how.’ But don’t worry. I don’t have to do anything. The smoke in this place will kill him soon enough.”

  “Well, you better hope that doesn’t happen. Because if he dies, I won’t spare anything to tear you limb from limb.” Despite Carl’s threat, Carl knew Ben was right. He had just minutes, if that, to get Preston away from this place. As he exhaled a loud cough, he realized that even he should not stay here much longer. Then he stretched his shirt collar over his nose in an attempt to mask his face from the smoke.

  “Too bad you don’t have one of these babies. You can thank your late friends on the base for gifting it to me. They were quite generous.”

  Carl’s blood boiled again. Ben had been aided at Camp Jefferson by a soldier named Nichols. After the EMP shut down all communications from the base to the higher-ups in Washington D.C., Nichols decided to take advantage of the situation by allowing Ben and his band to enter the base and raid it for guns and supplies. In the process, many soldiers on the base were killed. Carl had partially avenged the dead servicemen by taking down Nichols, but he still had to make Ben pay for his part in the assault that cost those men and women their lives.

  The smoke cover grew, making it harder to see Ben and Preston. If Ben so chose, he could shoot Carl and Carl might not even see him aim the gun.

  Carl coughed. He had to think fast! Wasn’t there a way to turn this smoke to his advantage? Maybe Ben couldn’t see very well through that mask. It appeared to be built for breathing, not for visual sensitivity. Maybe if he suddenly rushed Ben, he would not be able to respond in time.

  But Carl didn’t exactly feel up to his peak. It also didn’t help that Ben wasn’t a very big man, aiding the smoke in hiding his profile. If Carl rushed Ben, he easily could miss his target. Perhaps this plan was too risky to try.

  That didn’t mean he couldn’t use this smoke to fool Ben, though He thought of a plan.

  Suddenly, Carl turned his head. “Holy shit!” he cried out, “Looks like you got some backup, Ben.”

  “What?” Ben shuffled his stance to look past Carl. “Who’s there? Terry? Bernard? Speak up!”

  Carl quickly aimed his gun into the smoky mass while crying, “Get back!”

  “You assholes! Don’t shoot him yet!” Ben cried as he stepped forward while dragging Preston. “You want to make yourself useful, come hold this guy while I deal with Soldier Boy here.”

  It’s working, Carl thought. He thinks some of his flunkies are coming to help. But he can’t tell through this smoke.

  “Damn!” Carl aimed his trigger into the smoke. “These guys won’t take no for an answer!” He hated to waste shots like this, but the distraction would be worth it if he could get Preston free. He squeezed the trigger twice.

  Ben let out a vile profanity before topping it with, “Shitheads!”

  Now was Carl’s chance. He charged Ben with all his might. He caught Ben in the stomach, knocking Preston loose in the process. Preston flopped onto the floor. Now Carl was free to deal with Ben as he wished.

  He slammed Ben into the back wall, nearly missing a piece of wreckage on the floor. “Now, where’s my other friends?” Carl roared. “What did you do with them?”

  Ben grabbed onto Carl’s arm and struggled backward. “Maybe my boys took care of them. Maybe they’re all dead!” Ben laughed loudly. “Or maybe they’re still around hiding somewhere. Either way, you got no chance of finding them!”

  Ben then kicked Carl in the shin. Ordinarily, Carl could handle a blow like that, but now it was just enough to force Carl to release Ben. Ben then raised his weapon.

  Carl had no choice but to flee into the
smoke.

  Ben fired the weapon.

  Chapter Two

  One of Ben’s men was holding a gun to Harold’s son. Harold had two choices—show weakness or put on a display that would hammer into this bastard’s head that he wouldn’t be intimidated by him taking a hostage, even if it was his own son.

  So, Harold quickly raised his gun to the man who was holding his boy.

  The man behind the camo mask twitched. Harold could spot the gesture even in this pouring rain. Perhaps the man didn’t know what he had gotten himself into.

  “What’s the deal, man? This is your boy, right? You’re going to pull that gun on me anyway? I already stuffed my cheating whore of a wife in the closet of her boyfriend’s apartment. I can sure as hell plug a brat!”

  This guy sounded like Kale. Carl had discussed several of Ben’s men during the walk to Ben’s house. One of them, Kale, had killed his ex-wife after she cheated on him and took his money. No doubt this guy was dangerous. Harold almost wanted to lower his weapon to appease the brute.

  “Damn you, I’m talking to you!” Kale shouted. “Put the gun down on the ground!”

  “Shoot his ass, Dad!” cried Thomas. “Shoot him now!”

  “Quiet!” Kale shouted, “or I’ll shut your trap for good!”

  “If you kill him, then what will stop me from dropping your worthless sack of shit ass into the dirt?” Harold asked. “You have any idea how many times I’ve fired a gun? I bet you never even touched a firearm until Ben put one in your worthless hand. Even with these raindrops, I can plant a chunk of metal between your eyes into that empty skull of yours. I doubt your bullet would even reach me if you tried. You might want to rethink this.”