“Shoot, you are correct. Well, that will make this easier, right?”
Amy and Shane agreed, with the teenaged boy looking a little green around the gills, Amy noted with some curiosity.
“Hey, Luke,” Amy called.
“Yes, dear?” Luke replied, his tone taking on a slightly playful edge.
“Try not to get any more blood on your clothes, okay? We’ll have to soak them in cold water first, and it is a real pain.”
“You got it, honey,” Luke replied to his fiancé before heading off to find David. She really is smarter than I am, Luke mused as he took up his ground-eating stride.
CHAPTER 13
The small hill offered a handy vantage to the neighboring Hillebrandt ranch, just over five hundred yards away. Pick something not too close, and not as obvious as other locations, Sam Messner had directed. With his father’s words in mind, Luke and Alex set up their observation post, with Luke grumbling lightly under his breath as he worked to erect their small hide. The four-man team had stashed their truck almost a mile away before making their way cross-country.
“Man, I’m with you,” Alex replied, not exactly understanding Luke’s words, but getting the idea. The tall African American teenager wanted to be down there with David and Angel, too. But that wasn’t the mission.
No, once they’d extracted all the information they could from the raider band’s leader, Sam Messner dispatched this team with some very specific directions to step off the next morning. Luke could participate in the reconnaissance, but only as an observer. He could select from a group of volunteers, plan the mission, and oversee the actions of his team, but only at a remove. He was the team leader, and that meant he needed to send men into harm’s way without getting in the middle of things. At least, they had communications by way of the small tactical radios, and everything was fine at David’s last check-in.
“Welcome to the world of grownups,” Sam explained, not unkindly. “This is what officers and senior enlisted men have contended with from the beginning. Sending men you care about into situations that could get them killed, and all you can do is watch.”
His father was still teaching Luke, and testing him, in ways that Luke could understand intellectually. The restrictions still left him with what his grandfather would call a ‘case of the red ass’.
David Metcalf had volunteered, as had his right-hand man, Angel Guzman. Luke didn’t know the whole story about Mr. Guzman or how he’d come to join up with David’s band of misfits, but he was damned competent as a fighter and moved through the piney woods like a ghost. Angel, despite the physical and age differences, reminded Luke of his friend and sometime teacher, Scott Keller. Luke realized the two men shared the same watchful eyes.
By now, David and Angel should be out of the woods and following a dry creek bed that snaked closer to the large, two-story house nestled in the bowl of the shallow valley. From this angle, Luke couldn’t see the barn, but he knew his two scouts had a better view of the surrounding outbuildings.
“I hate being out here,” Luke confessed. “Drives me crazy when I can’t see everything that’s going on.”
“You think he was telling the truth? About there only being four men left at the house?” Alex asked. There was no need to explain the ‘he’ in his question. The bandit leader had a name, Robert Rakers, but Luke hadn’t bothered committing it to memory. By now, that’s all he was anyway. A bad memory. Luke’s father turned the man over to Sheriff Henderson as soon as the convoy returned home, and the Shelby County Sheriff made a point of hanging murdering bandits at the earliest opportunity. Saved the county having to feed them.
He’d admitted to being part of the group of refugees who’d taken up residence at the Hillebrandt house, but claimed at first, to have found the ranch abandoned. A little gentle persuasion from David, not even a physical action, merely a well-placed threat, resulted in the man’s rapid admission of guilt. David, Luke knew, could do crazy better than most men he knew. Well, most sane men, anyway.
As the fat man related things, they’d come upon the house after wandering for days without food or water. When the homeowner had turned them away, they’d been driven by hunger and thirst to commit a violent assault. Only to protect their children, Robert insisted at first with an appeal for mercy.
Then, after more insistent questioning, David discovered the group of refugees consisted of over twenty men, and no women or children. None left alive, anyway.
That seemed to set off the former teacher, and he’d set to the fat man with a vengeance after that lie came to light. After David lashed the man’s legs with a length of hydraulic hose, resulting in some truly pathetic squalling, the bandit confirmed the deaths of both Mr. and Mrs. Hillebrandt in the attack, as well as what the questioners had to assume was their son, Jason. As to the whereabouts of the daughter, Tina, the man would make no comment. Not even after David had cut off the man’s pants to deliver a particularly vicious blow to his shriveled pride and joy.
“I think so,” Luke replied absently. He set the binoculars aside and leaned into his scope, tracking movement inside the house.
His Leupold 3-9x40 scope was more than up for the task and Luke waited for a call for fire. Nothing he’d seen so far, indicated that David or Angel would call for any long-range shots, but at least he could be ready to provide that support. Still, his radio remained silent.
For what seemed like a miniature Ice Age, Luke waited patiently, but all he received were the periodic transmissions of “all clear” at fifteen-minute intervals. Even though he was not hearing contacts reported, he could clearly tell the duo were now deep inside the house.
Then Luke felt the wind shift, ever so slightly, and the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand on end. Grasping the barrel of the rifle with his left hand to hold the weapon horizontal, Luke shifted to the right and eased his hand down his side in a slow drift, using his body to shield the motion as he palmed the grip of his holstered pistol. The two young men lay in a prone position, and Luke was just about kicking himself for not directing Alex to watch their backs. Stupid kills, he mentally chided himself. Maybe he would be fast enough with the Glock, but he knew without looking, he could never get his rifle deployed in time.
“Freeze!” The command came from his left rear, harsh yet feminine, and Luke knew he would have to roll and fire at the same time, if he was going to get rounds on the target. Presuming the speaker was alone and slow off the mark. In other words, he was screwed.
“I’m frozen, ma’am. Alex, you stay still, too,” Luke directed. He had a hunch, but needed to be prepared, just in case he was wrong.
“Alex? What are you doing here?” the voice asked in shock. A young woman’s voice, and one that sounded slightly familiar to Luke.
“Uh, Tina? We came to see if you were okay and finish off the rest of the men who attacked your family,” Alex replied, risking a look back and raising his hands while he spoke. Luke could hear the warning in his friend’s voice, meant just for him. No crazy shit, Luke.
“Who is we? Wait, is that Mr. Messner’s grandson with you?”
Taking that as an invitation, Luke lifted his hands to show his good intentions. Risking a glance over his shoulder, Luke confirmed it was, indeed, Tina Hillebrandt. Like just about everyone Luke had seen since the lights went out, Tina looked like she’d missed quite a few meals, and she was dressed in a ragged pair of jeans and a layer of ratty long-sleeved men’s work shirts. Most importantly, he saw she was holding a carbine of some kind, the barrel pointed at the ground about midway between the two boys.
“Hey, Tina,” Luke responded, “First, we aren’t bandits, okay? Not here to steal anything. Short version is my father and some of our neighbors are working together with the Shelby County Sheriff and part of the Army National Guard. Trying to stabilize the area, if possible, and protect our people. Think of us as something like the British Home Guard in World War II. We were on a mission and bumped into the guys we think were holding th
e ranch.”
“They still are,” Tina mumbled to herself. Then louder, “There’s still four of them murdering bastards holding my house. Still, making an obscure historical reference to some British organization I’ve barely heard of does sound like the Lucas Messner I’ve heard about.”
“Actually, I imagine they are all dead by now,” Alex helpfully volunteered. “Our scouts are pretty good.”
Luke cringed at Alex’s words, but he heard Tina give a bitter laugh and he relaxed a bit.
“Hell, Alex, I could’ve gotten those four myself, if I had any ammo left for this damned thing,” Tina admitted. As the words left her mouth, Tina seemed to sag in on herself and she dropped the short-barreled carbine to her side.
“What? Is that a Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 ACP?” he asked, his voice sounding almost curious. “If that’s the case, I’ve got some rounds I can loan you,” Luke continued, and for some reason, his words seemed to tickle the young woman and she managed a real laugh this time.
“Oh, boys, you two are priceless. Here I am, threatening you with an empty weapon, and you’re offering to lend me some ammo? And you, Alex, bragging about the fighting ability of the men you have in your group. Whatever happened to enticing a girl with flowers or chocolate?” Tina managed to sound almost normal, but Luke was watching the young woman, and he saw the exhaustion and hunger warring with hope in her expression.
“We change with the times,” Alex replied. “And this is a legit deal. We’ve already picked up eleven of your horses yesterday and transported them to the Messner ranch.”
“You have my horses?” Tina asked, her voice atremble. “All I was able to recover was Cissy, and that was only because I was riding her when they attacked. As it is, I’ve barely been able to keep her fed.”
“Uh, except for the one that got shot, and the three we left with the Feely’s,” Alex explained. “Without their help, I don’t know if we could have taken those guys by ourselves.”
“Oh, my gosh!” Tina exclaimed, then flinched when she let her voice rise. “I can’t believe it. Somebody came looking for us after all this time.”
That last bit came out as a sob, and Luke looked away, pretending to be studying the surrounding landscape while the young woman’s emotions finally boiled up. He nodded to Alex to take over and he turned his attention back to the two men he still had in the field.
“Yeah,” Alex replied to the relieved young woman, his own tone much more subdued. “We’re a regular bunch of knights in shining armor. Except when we have to kill a whole mess of starving refugees who are looking to overrun our farms.”
Tina jerked back at Alex’s blunt admission. She just couldn’t imagine a nice guy like Alex, with his sweet smile and polite demeanor, doing such a thing.
“But why? Why would you do something like that, Alex?”
Luke, seeing his friend about to blow it with his own self-inflicted sense of guilt, finally rejoined the conversation.
“Alex is still upset over the last large-scale attack on the ranch. They were starving, and when we tried to turn them back, they attacked. Just like those assholes who killed your parents,” Luke explained. “But there were women and children mixed in the group, you see.”
Tina stood frozen, wondering if she’d made the right call after all. Luke just admitted they’d killed women and children, and here she was preparing to, in effect, join herself to them. The story sounded dismal, and Luke’s words offered no excuse.
“Wasn’t there…couldn’t you have done something else?” Tina asked, tentatively, as if she were feeling the treacherous bottom of a fast-flowing creek.
“Could have fed them,” Luke admitted. After a long pause for emphasis, he continued. “Then we would have run out of food for ourselves. Have our own women and children starving before the winter was started good. I didn’t like that equation. I have done too much, lost too many people, hell, I’ve killed too many people, to just lay down and let anybody come and take what is mine.”
Thinking about it, Tina realized her parents had died for making the same call. Her parents died, along with her brother, because they’d known the food in the house would never see them through the cold months.
“If you will accept me into your community, provide me food and shelter, I will share not only what you can see here, but what you might miss as well.”
Looking around, Luke scanned the part of the farm he could see. Sturdy outbuildings, a possibly inhabitable farmhouse, and a creek flowing only about a hundred feet from the back door.
“Okay, I give. What are you talking about?” Luke asked.
Tina offered a tight grin to the two young men before she stood tall and pointed to an area that looked to be overgrown with weeds. Looking closer, Alex and Luke saw the area indicated was a small hummock of ground, a patch of fading green in the side yard of the house.
“Potatoes,” Tina explained with a sad sigh. “My daddy might look all stern, but Momma…” Tina paused as she caught her sob, “was the real disciplinarian. She would punish me and my brother in different and creative ways for whatever foolishness we were caught doing.”
“For my brother Jason, when he got caught drunk at a party with some college kids over in Jacksonville, well, Momma made him plow and plant a whole five-acre patch of potatoes. She said she wasn’t going to raise a no-account, shiftless drunk for a son. Since he wasn’t interested in learning a useful trade, she was going to give him a start.”
Luke slapped his forehead as Tina spoke. He should have known, since he’d salvaged quite a few overlooked potatoes from gardens on the way from Chicago.
Tina paused again, her light brown cheeks still a touch of scarlet when she’d talked about her family.
“Momma said she got the idea when she read an article that talked about how potatoes were a staple crop and she wanted Jason to be able to feed himself. Then, of course, she’d make some comment about how nice a job he would do, working in the prison garden.”
Luke had to crack a smile at that admonishment. His mom never said that, but she was just as skilled at playing the emotional blackmail game.
“Shoot, that’s harsh. Did she keep him on task?”
Tina nodded absently, looking down at the overgrown pastures and weed-infested garden.
“You can’t tell now, but he did. When those looters took over, they slaughtered all our cattle, wasted a bunch of the meat too, and cleaned out the garden. But none of them must have been real country folk because none of them recognized the potato hill.” Tina let a little humor creep into her words after that. “Well, maybe also because my brother couldn’t run the rototiller in a straight line, so all his rows were crooked. Momma was so mad when she saw, but he’d already dropped the eyes in the ground. She said his mess made her carefully-lined garden look shabby. Shabby, she said!”
“You’ve been slipping in at night and harvesting the potatoes?” Alex guessed.
“Yep,” Tina agreed. “Still got over four acres there left to harvest, if you boys are interested in doing some digging…”
“Miss Hillebrandt, I am very sorry about your loss,” Luke began, trying to practice his skills as a diplomat, “and we would be happy to help you take care of your family today. The potatoes are yours, but I know there are plenty of hungry folks back at the ranch who would appreciate your generosity.”
Tina looked over at Alex, her expression telegraphing her words.
“Is he for real?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve heard some folks call Luke ‘the Boy Scout of the Apocalypse’. He’s pretty much just what you think he is. Teacher’s pet.”
“Hey, I’m right here, you know?” Luke complained. He didn’t mean it, though. He would much prefer Tina Hillebrandt to think of him as a Dudley Do-Right, instead of the truth, because otherwise she might be a little scared to be riding in the same truck as a monster.
He might be a well-intentioned monster, but in the end, Luke knew his own nature. For the sake of his family, and hi
s community, there really was no limit to how many people Luke would kill to make them safe. He worried just how often he would need to prove that this dying winter.
CHAPTER 14
By noon, they had the barn stripped of every useful piece of tack, leather and blankets, Alex and Tina could find. While Alex kept Tina busy, Luke and Angel quickly dug three shallow graves for the collection of bones Angel found laying discarded in the backyard. The four dead raiders, on the other hand, were pulled out of the house and stripped of anything useful, then left for the wild hogs to eat.
Once the raiders were removed, David insisted on maintaining a watch from the top of the old haybarn while the others proceeded with their activities, and Luke agreed without question. This was no time to let down their guard.
They used black garbage bags, making sure each bag contained a skull, matching mandible and a credible collection of the gnawed and disturbed bones. The wild dogs and other scavengers hadn’t left much after six weeks, but the two men worked in the chill afternoon air to make sure the plastic bulged. Even if the wrong bone ended up in the wrong bag, well, they were family, and Luke reasoned the dead didn’t care anyway.
After Luke summoned Alex via a radio call, the four men and the tiny, young woman met in the shade of an old weeping willow down by the creek for the short service. All four men removed their hats, and David drifted back to continue his overwatch. David, while anxious to get a move on, couldn’t complain about giving Tina her chance for closure.
Tina Hillebrandt spoke about her love for her family to a group of mourners made up of four near strangers, and not a man amongst them managed to escape without wiping away a tear. Tina might not have been a professional speaker, but her words were from the heart, and filled with longing and loss. Luke thought about all those he’d miss, and of the funeral where he’d said goodbye to his uncle. That also made him think about Wes Clardy, and he resolved to spend more time with the widow and child his friend had left behind. He noticed David looked particularly distraught when Tina bowed her head in prayer, and he remembered hearing a whispered comment about David’s missing wife, Kate.
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