by TW Gallier
I blew my breath out, but couldn't see it. There was a little disappointment it wasn't as cold as it felt. I listened to the songs of frogs and crickets. I recalled reading once that you could tell the temperature by the sound of the crickets. Or did I dream that?
I'm losing my mind. I hate standing guard.
Movement to my left, in the dark woods, drew my attention. Nothing was there when I looked straight at the spot. It was so freaky. From the first minute on the job I was seeing boogie bears at the edge of my vision. That was the main reason I hated pulling guard at night.
This could be our life if we can't get into the US or Canada. I looked all around, and then up at the cloudy sky that made everything so damned dark. It's going to suck if I have to stand guard duty every night for the rest of my life.
I pulled Fred's wristwatch out of my pocket. 12:40 AM, so almost time to wake Vince. In five minutes I could wake him up to get ready. Just thinking about relief and going back to sleep made me feel all warm inside. I felt a flash of jealousy. Roger, Sean, Terrel, and Fred didn't have to pull a shift because they were driving.
I can drive as well as any of them.
I froze when I heard a snapping sound. Looking left and right, squinting into the darkness while I held my breath to listen, I tried to determine what caused it. Another deer? Wolf? A bad guy? There were a god-awful number of rabbits around.
Moving away from the house, I looked around and saw nothing. There were no other sounds or movement, either. Of course, it was hard to hear anything over that whipping wind. Who knew trees made so much noise in the wind? And the frogs and crickets reached a hundred decibels at times, though at the moment they were relatively quiet.
Moving back to my original spot, which was close to the house to block the wind, I dug out the watch. 12:44 AM. Close enough. So after bracing myself to face the wind coming off the lake, I headed for the door on the other side of the house. I got two steps and a man stepped out and faced me.
I froze.
Our eyes locked, and he started leering.
I opened my mouth to scream the warning, and a hand clamped down over it. Another arm went around me and pulled me backwards. The first guy rushed us, and then snatched away my rifle. He tossed it aside, and pulled his fist back to punch out my lights. I knew I only had seconds, so lifted both feet and kicked him in the chest.
The force of that kick caused my captor to drop back a step, distracting him just enough for me to get a hand around his pinky finger, and snap it straight back.
"Mother fucker," he growled.
I twisted that finger, watching the other guy coming at us with blood in his eyes. I tried to kick him away again, but he slapped my feet aside and slammed a fist into the side of my head. I think he hit his partner's brutalized hand, because he pulled it away from my mouth.
"HELP! HELP!" A fist pounded into my belly. "Oooff!"
He punched me in the belly again, before pushing his face in close. He stank to the high heavens, and his breath was worse.
"I'm going to cut off your head, and shit down your – "
I head-butted him in the nose. That shut him up. Then I heard shouts and running feet. Then multiple engines revved up in the middle distance. There were more of them?
I kicked up between the first man's legs, which dropped him, and then went totally crazy on the man holding me. I threw elbows back into him, tried to gouge his eyes. And when he tried to put his hand over my mouth again, I bit his thumb.
He let go as the dark shapes of people came running around the corner.
"Bitch, you're going to die first!" he snarled, pushing me against the wall.
I turned to find him aiming a rifle at my head. Finger on the trigger.
Chapter 49
Roger
I started awake. Jenny wasn't next to me.
She's still on guard?
"Help! Help!" Jenny screamed outside.
"We're under attack!" I shouted, grabbing my rifle and racing toward the door.
Men and women were coming to their feet, grabbing weapons even as they looked around wild-eyed. Being awakened like that was always discombobulating.
A man cried out as I exited the door. Just above the wind I heard car engines starting. But they were off in the distance, so not anything to worry about right then. I slipped and almost fell rounding the corner, the grass cold and wet under my bare feet.
My finger touched the trigger as I rounded the corner. Jenny was backed against the wall, hands up. The dark shape of a man held a gun on her. I shot from the hip, hitting him three times before others coming around the other side and opened fire on him.
"Watch out," she called, pointing at another man on his knees.
I turned on him, lashed out with a foot to the head, before I pumped two rounds into him. And then I stopped to look around for more threats.
"That's all," Jenny said. She pointed toward the road. "But more coming."
I looked up the hill just in time to see three sets of headlights turn off the road and come racing down at us. Dropping to one knee, I opened fire on them. Jenny ran past me to snatch a rifle off the ground, before she dropped to her belly and started shooting. People starting shooting out of the windows behind me, and Terrel climbed up behind one of the M60s.
"Die, you son of bitches!" Terrel shouted, and opened fire on the middle truck.
They were almost upon us. It just registered the attacking vehicles were two old Jeeps and an even older pickup in the middle. The attackers all had automatic weapons, which sounded like AK-47s.
The pickup veered off to the right. Men starting jumping out of the bed. It continued past us to splash loudly into the lake. I heard someone run over there and fire into it, though I figured anyone still in the pickup was dead.
The two Jeeps stopped while their gunners sprayed us with intense fire. Terrel quickly killed both gunners, but they were immediately replaced. Then Charlie got behind the other M60, and he and Terrel concentrated their fire upon the Jeeps, scattering all the men inside them, including the new gunners.
"There's a shit load of them," Sean called. "Everyone, keep low and shoot anything that moves!"
Our attackers concentrated their fire on the two M60 gunners, forcing them to abandon their weapons. I low-crawled up beside Jenny.
"Fall back. I'll cover you."
"You fall back," she said, and took careful aim. She fired once, and I heard a man grunt. "Take that, you bastard."
"Are you all right?"
"No. They beat me up," she said, her voice strained. "I hurt all over."
My blood ran cold. I felt like I would explode as my hands tightened around the rifle. The whole world had gone mad and turned into savages. We went from civilized to savages in nothing flat, and totally skipped being barbarians on the way down.
"We're gonna kill you all if you don't surrender," Walt shouted.
"Fuck you," Sean shouted back.
"We'll kill your kids," Walt replied. "Is that what you want?"
I stiffened. That was all I needed to hear. There was no way we could surrender to them. They were worse than savages. They were monsters capable of any atrocity. And if they got their hands on us, then atrocities would be committed.
"Keep talking," Jenny whispered. "Keep talking shit until I figure out where you are."
She was sighting down her rifle a little to our left. I swung my rifle in that direction, ears perking up to try and zero in on Walt.
"Keep him talking," I whispered loudly to Sean.
"Are you out of your mind?" Sean called. "We can't trust you. If we surrendered, you might kill the kids anyway just to spite us."
"Aw, man, you got us wrong," Walt said. "We're professionals. We don't let our personal feelings interfere with our jobs."
"Is he one of those three guys between the two trees?" Jenny whispered.
"I think so," I replied. "Let's find out."
As one, we opened fire on those three men. We emptied our magazine
s with three round bursts, and when we stopped to reload two of the three men jumped up and ran into the woods.
"Hey, Walt, are you still alive?" I shouted. "Because if you are, I'm going to hunt your stinking ass down and kill you!"
"Fuck you," Walt called. "I'm going to kill you, after making you watch us rape and kill your wife. And then kill your kids!"
Jenny put a hand on my arm. Good thing, because I almost leapt to my feet and charged him. Instead, we opened fire toward the sound of his voice.
"Come and get me!" Jenny shouted. "You limp dick coward!"
I gawked at her. Jenny slanted a bemused look at me and shrugged. "Civilians can be vulgar, too."
One of the Jeeps started up and started backing away. We all shot at it, but then the other Jeep started. It headed straight at us, forcing Jenny and I to run in different directions. It followed me, but veered away when my friends began shooting at him.
Other men started running toward the woods, so most of us turned our weapons on them. Which meant they all got away. I don't think we hit a single one of them during that exchange.
"Start the trucks," I said. "Get the kids and grab all of your shit. We're bugging out right now."
Sean ordered the gunners to get their stuff first, while the rest of us stood guard. Once they were in the beds of the pickups, behind their weapons, Sean sent half of us in to grab our stuff and children. I had Jenny, the kids, Jake, and Haley in my pickup right away, all of our packs, food, and bedding in back.
That might've been the fastest we've ever packed up and gotten out of town. Well, we didn't really pack up. We just picked up all of our bedding, food, and packs and threw them in the beds of the trucks.
Walt and gang returned just before we pulled out. The gunners opened fire, even as others fired out windows. Terrel took off first, and I followed. Then Fred and Sean in the rear. When Terrel slowed at the road to engage the Jeeps, I hit the gas and passed him. He followed me.
"They're following us," Jenny said.
"Who? Terrel, or Walt?"
"Walt."
Harlan was sitting between us, so I held my tongue. In my head, I wasn't so restrained. The road was narrow and nothing but turns and curves through the woods. The trees pressed in close to the blacktop, too. I turned on my headlights.
"They can see us," Jenny shouted.
"I'm right here," I said. "And I know they can see my lights, but they're right behind us anyway."
There was a lot of shooting going down. At that speed, and the way I was forced to turn this way and that every few seconds, I didn't think anyone was hitting anything. Unfortunately, we were becoming stretched out so much I couldn't see Sean anymore.
I eased up on the gas. We couldn't leave Sean alone against them.
"Houses," Jenny said. "It's a little town."
Our road went straight as an arrow through it. There were so many abandoned cars and trucks, including a long-haul tractor-trailer and a tanker truck so close together I had to leave the road and drive in the ditch to get past them.
"Pull over! Pull over!" Jenny cried, bouncing in her seat.
I stopped in the middle of the road. Jenny bailed out immediately, and waved the other three pickups past us. Then she sighted on the tanker truck with her M203. I looked at the tanker. It was dark, so I couldn't be a hundred percent sure, but it could be full of gasoline.
Poof.
I heard Walt's two Jeeps slowing down on the other side of the tanker.
Ka-boom!
Jenny's shot was perfect. The tanker erupted, and then exploded fire everywhere. I couldn't tell if Walt and his men were killed, or escaped the fire. I suspected the latter.
"Well done," I said. "But you should've waited until they were in the ditch."
She looked at me a second, and then back at the blazing inferno she'd created. Jenny shrugged and got back into the truck. We tore out of there, because if they weren't dead, they'd find a way around it pretty quickly.
Chapter 50
Walt
I slowed to a crawl, and then turned off the highway. We'd just passed Sioux Falls. Quinn said the GPS showed Sean's gang only a little ways ahead of us. I drove up the embankment to reach the overpass. Garret followed in the other CJ7.
I stopped directly above I-90 and stood up in my seat. It took a second, but I found our stolen pickups speeding up the highway to the west, almost over the horizon. They had to be doing 80 MPH. There wasn't much in the way of abandoned cars on the road to slow them down.
"We best gas up, Walt," Quinn said. "They spent so long in Sioux Falls I can't image they didn't fill up their tanks, and probably got themselves some extra gas cans, too."
I looked at my little brother until he looked away. He'd already suggested giving up and turning around. There were probably a few others who wanted to do the same. Several of them were nursing wounds, and we left seven of our brothers dead back at that lake.
Going back to bury them would be a lot easier after I killed those motherfuckers running away from us. My boys didn't know it yet, but I planned to kill every damn one of them. Men, women, and even the children. They were going to pay hell for what they'd done to me and mine.
"I think he's right," Garret said. "We need to fill up before going after them. I don't have confidence there will be any cars available to scrounge gas off of when we need it."
I lifted the binoculars and looked west. They'd vanished down the road.
"Fine," I said. "But only because those idiots haven't figured out how we're tracking them." I glanced back at Sioux Falls, now a big-ass ghost town. "We'll find a pharmacy for medical supplies, and maybe a liquor store."
"And food," Garret said. "We need food to maintain our strength."
I stared off down the road a little bit longer. "Garret, who do you think it was that killed Hutch? The man or the woman?"
We didn't get there fast enough. Hutch had been my best friend for as long as I could remember, and I failed him.
"Did anyone see who it was that killed Hutch?" I demanded.
They all shook their heads. So that meant I was going to take my time killing every damned one of them. My soul burned when I thought about them bastards.
South Dakota was about four hundred miles across, and it was still a ways into Wyoming before they reached the Rockies. And a big surprise.
I grinned. They obviously didn't understand how jealously the Army was defending the passes through the mountains. The idiots thought they'd be accepted with open arms, but would find themselves staring down the business end of a whole lot of rifle barrels. Our former government didn't want us anymore. We were their greatest enemy.
Sean's gang was between the Rocky Mountain defenses and our hard asses.
"I think I figured out a way to get ahead of them," Quinn said.
I cut him a sharp look. It was a straight shot down I-90 to Wyoming. There was no way we could get ahead of them. But he spread out the map and indicated Rapid City.
"The Interstate goes up and around the Black Hills National Forest, but if we went south of the forest we could cut them off at either Sundance or Moorcroft."
I studied the map. He had a point. As long as they continued on the highway to Sturgis and Sundance, we could turn at Rapid City and go down through Custer and Newcastle. Considering we'd have to travel further, and on smaller roads, then Sundance was not doable. But I was sure we could make it to Moorcroft before them.
And then BAM.
Dropping back into my seat, I cranked it up and put her in first. "I don't want nobody fucking off. We go find gas and medical supplies and get back on the road. We're gonna have to drive balls to the walls to pull this off. And this time, we're gonna fuck them up big time."
Chapter 51
Roger
"Devil's Tower National Monument," Jenny read the road sign aloud. "There's a monument there?"
"I think they mean the actual Devil's Tower mountain."
"That's not what it says. Besides, under t
he circumstances I don't want to be anywhere near anything named after the Devil."
We'd driven the entire way across South Dakota on I-90 and were coming up to Sundance, Wyoming. My eyes were so tired. Everything ached, especially my hands.
"Black Hills National Forest Recreation Access," Jenny read the next sign.
I looked to the left and right. Everything was grassy, gentle hills. Except from a few forested bigger hills scattered around. Hardly worthy of being called a forest. I could tell by the look on her face she was thinking the same thing.
"Great Plains forests aren't exactly the same as Georgia forests," Jenny said. "I'd call that a couple trees on a hill."
"We need to stop and get gas here in Sundance," I said. We'd only stopped for gas twice in South Dakota, and neither time found enough gas to fill our tanks. "Keep your eyes open for some good prospects."
I preferred to stop near several abandoned vehicles to siphon gas, so we only had to stop once. Cars and trucks were scarce all of the way through South Dakota, so it was a damned good thing we stopped to refuel in Sioux Falls. At the moment I was below half a tank.
I could see a few houses and other buildings to either side of the road, but the lay of the land was such we couldn't see much to our right. The most prominent features proved to be the large wooded hills. The Black Hills?
"I've always heard so much about Sundance and its film festival, so I was expecting more," Haley said. "That biker town Sturgis was more impressive."
I looked at Jenny. She shook her head. There was no reason to tell Haley that the Sundance Film Festival was held in Utah, though I thought her statement was funny.
My attention returned to the road. I didn't see any business district or even city streets crossing the highway. But we were still driving through the pass. And then we passed the last, rather steep hill on our left.
I hit the brakes.
"What the hell? Did we pass through Sundance?"
There were a scattering of roadside businesses ahead of us, an overpass, and back to long stretches of road through grassy nothingness. I looked at Jenny. She shrugged.
