by Steven Smith
As the night's customers arrived, they were escorted to the gymnasium where relatives and friends of the women were reunited with them and men who were not friends or relatives were escorted to a classroom and held under guard. After a couple of hours, Jim felt that most of the night's customers had arrived, and had the men being held in the classroom brought to the gymnasium where they were ordered to kneel behind Barnes' men. He then mounted the stage.
Looking out over the crowd of people, he thought about the torment and misery some of them had inflicted on the others. The victims and their families would carry the mental and emotional scars for the rest of their lives, some of them never fully recovering. Justice for this would be impossible, but punishment was not.
He waited until everyone saw him standing on the stage and quieted down, then spoke. "Men from outside the area came into your community, took women and girls from their families, raped, enslaved, beat, tortured and starved them, and set up this house of horrors where these girls had once gone to school. They did so because they were evil and had the power to do it. Justice for this is impossible, since no amount of punishment would have the same lasting effect on these animals as their brutal and sadistic actions have had, and will continue to have, on their immediate victims and the secondary victims of their families. However, punishment is within our ability to deliver."
He stepped over to Barnes and gave him a light kick in the head, bringing a low grunt from the now crumbling gang leader. His purpose was not to inflict pain or punishment, though he didn't care if he did, but to mentally reinforce the new order of things to everyone in the room.
He spoke a bit more somberly. "Before we continue, I want to ask if anyone here was looking for a friend or relative named Stacie." No one spoke up, but he waited a minute before continuing.
"Several nights ago, this piece of shit," he kicked Barnes in the head again, this time harder, "had Stacie tied to a dog kennel and whipped her with a chain until she passed out. She soon died of those injuries. Your wives, daughters, sisters and friends were kept in dog kennels in the basement when they weren't being used up here. All local men who came here to visit, whether as friends, relatives or customers, get on your feet. You're going to take a tour. Ladies, please stay here until we get back."
All the local men got slowly to their feet, obviously nervous or afraid of what they were going to see.
"While you are down there, I want you to imagine what these women went through. Imagine their fear, their despondency, being kept in the dark, in cages like animals, waiting and terrified of when they would be taken out to be used again and wondering why nobody was coming to help them." He pointed to the door with his rifle. "Get going."
The men slowly shuffled out the door, led and herded by the scouts. As they passed through the lobby, one of the men who was not a friend or relative made a break for the main door but was caught by a scout, zip-tied and returned to the group with a lump on his head. When the group reached the bottom of the stairs the scouts switched on their flashlights and directed the men to enter the basement room and stand among the cages. As the men looked around the room, some showed looks of horror while others tried not to see.
Jim came up from behind the group. "Listen to me carefully. Do exactly as I say, when I say it, or you will be shot. I won't repeat myself. All those who did not come here as a friend or relative of one of the women upstairs, step into a cage."
One man started to say something, but Jim drew his pistol and the man entered a cage, followed by the others. After all the men were in the kennels, the scouts secured the cage doors with padlocks and stepped back.
"Those girls upstairs were kept in these cages because you paid to have them kept here for your entertainment. You bear blame for their treatment."
"It wasn't our fault," said one of the men in the cages. "They were keeping them anyway. We just came to drink and have a good time. It wasn't our fault they kept those girls here."
Jim looked at the man. How often had he heard similar excuses over the years? "I'm sure you won't understand this, any of you, but that excuse would not have been acceptable forty years ago. It would have been correctly judged as a quibling excuse from someone too cowardly to accept responsibility for his own actions. The fact that it became common place, and acceptable to so many, is an indication of how far our society fell from what it used to be and should be. Well, it's time to start over."
Jim turned from the men in the cages and shined his flashlight on the friends and family members of the girls. "You are the fathers, brothers, husbands and friends of the women upstairs. Is that right?"
The men nodded and a few mumbled in the affirmative.
"Then why are you still alive?"
The men looked confused. Then, one in front asked, "What do you mean?"
Jim moved his flashlight from face to face as he spoke. "What I mean is that people you claim to love were being held here against their will and abused daily. Why didn't you get them out or die trying, instead of bringing their captors little presents every day?"
Some of the men mumbled while others just stood there hanging their heads. Finally, one of the men spoke up. "What were we supposed to do? They had guns. We couldn't do anything."
Jim looked at the man. "You all don't have guns? I'll bet some of you have guns. And if you don't, why the hell don't you? Are you some of those who expected strangers to always protect you and had that ridiculous attitude that guns were bad and you wanted nothing to do with them?"
"We were afraid they would hurt the girls if we tried something," said another man.
"We couldn't come up with a plan," said a third.
Jim switched his flashlight into the faces of the men who had just spoken. Revulsion rose within him, mixing with the anger and the sadness he already felt. He started to speak, but his disgust choked him silent as he looked around at the men. This is what had happened to society. People had become so isolated from their own responsibilities, so used to the government protecting them and providing basic services to them, they had forgotten that the real obligation to provide for and protect their families rested in their own hands. A nation of tough men and women who had built a country had devolved into millions of people who preferred watching others play sports, dance with a star or play act that they were surviving on an island. Finally, a calm came over him, and with it a certainty of what he must do.
He shined his flashlight into the faces of the men as he spoke. "Those women had a right to expect you to protect them, to fight to keep them safe or get them back. Instead, you hid behind excuses and the cover of consensus. You did this just as you excused politicians you liked, athletes and sports teams you rooted for like idiots, and friends without standards. You have no core values and no moral strength. You're all flash and no substance. You blow in the wind and think you're right because every other imbecile you know is blowing in the same direction. You blew down flat when a bunch of morons with guns threatened you and you're lucky I don't cut you down to stubble, as worthless as you are.”
He paused for a moment to make sure all of them were listening. "The only reason you won't share the fate of these others is that you may be of some small use to those you let down. Now get back upstairs and try to do your job as men. Maybe you can earn back some of the respect you've lost."
23
Barnes and his men were hung in the school yard three days later after spending those days and nights in the cages guarded by the friends and family members of the women they had held there. They were buried in a common grave formed by shoveling dirt over their bodies in a ditch a short distance from the school, the labor being done by the former customers who had spent the previous three days moving boxes and doing other manual labor while being guarded by the scouts and supervised by the women. The role reversal had a marked effect on the attitude and demeanor of both the women and the laborers in the newly formed work details, and a new sense of comparative worth was beginning to develop.
&nbs
p; An inventory of the boxes stacked throughout the building yielded a wide variety of merchandise from clothing to housewares to canned food, in addition to the various items brought in for admission, and everything was being stored and recorded in an organized way in various rooms so it could be easily found and accessed when it was needed. When they weren't needed to move the boxes, the former customers were tasked with cleaning and disinfecting the entire building, including the gymnasium, while guarded by the women. Over a period of days, they were broken into smaller and smaller work groups until each man was working alone while being guarded by one of the women and a scout. At night, they were returned to the cages in the basement where strict discipline against talking was enforced.
After a week, scout teams of four, accompanied by the women and their family members, took the customers back to their homes where their families were told about their visits to the school and their recent punishment. In cases where there were children, and the man's admission donations had created a hardship for the family, double restitution was made to the family from the merchandise found at the school and the man was returned to the school for additional incarceration and forced labor for jeopardizing his family's welfare. The leader of each scout team explained that the area was now under the protection of Stonemont, and the men would be returned to their homes in another month, after which, weekly checks would be made on the family by Stonemont scouts to ensure their welfare and the man's adherence to his familial responsibilities.
The reintegration of the women back to their families was mixed, with some returning smoothly and without any apparent recriminations while some carried various degrees of anger, disappointment and resentment that their male family members had not done more to rescue them.
A woman from a third category now stood in the doorway to the office where Christian sat behind the desk looking over the recent inventories.
Christian looked up at the sound of her knock. The woman was striking. The sand colored t-shirt and faded jeans she was wearing showed a strong, though not overly large musculature, either from years of hard work or working out, and from her hands and several faint scars on her arms he figured it was from hard work. Her dark hair was pulled back into a long pony tail, which, in addition to her deep tan, gave her a native look.
"Do you have a minute?" she asked in a strong but quiet voice, her dark eyes steady as she looked at him.
Christian nodded. "Come in."
She walked to his desk and looked at a chair in front of it. "May I?"
Christian nodded again. "Of course. How can I help you?"
The woman took a seat and looked at Christian. "Gymnastics, ballet and rodeo."
Christian looked at her quizzically. "Excuse me?"
"You were watching the way I walked. I took gymnastics and ballet, and I raced barrels."
Christian raised an eyebrow. It was true he had been watching how she moved. He had never been accused of turning a blind eye to good looking women, and the grace and controlled strength of her movements was hard to miss.
"You also didn't look where and how most men look, and since I sat down you haven't looked below my face. I think you are a man who looks at the important things about a person."
Christian continued looking into the woman's eyes, trying to discern her purpose. "You seem to pick up a lot quickly, miss ...?"
The woman smiled and nodded slightly, her eyes softening a bit. "Naomi Moore."
"And what can I do for you, Miss Moore?"
"I won't say the usual 'please call me Naomi', but it's fine if you want to. As to what you can do for me, nothing really. But you can do a lot for the people around here."
"And what's that?"
"Take over."
Christian leaned back in his chair. "Take over?"
"Yes." She paused for a moment, looking out the window behind him. "Most of the people around here are good people. They work hard and do the best they can. They thought they had made it through the tough times and were beginning to rebuild. Then Barnes showed up and they weren't ready, physically or mentally." She looked back at him. "They need someone to take control. They are angry and humiliated right now, and more fractured than before, doubting themselves. But they can be reformed with the right leadership and this area could be stabilized with a strong community able to defend itself."
Christian leaned back in his chair, impressed with the woman's poise and her thought processes. "You seem to have given this a lot of thought."
Naomi nodded. "I'll give you the short version to answer most of the questions I'm sure you have. I was up here staying with my aunt and uncle while doing some graduate work at Haskell when everything went to hell."
"Haskell? You're Native American?"
She gave a small derisive laugh. "Yeah, according to all the lib activists and guilt-ridden politically correct folks. But, in reality, so are you and everyone else who was born here. We say Indian, and I'm only enough to squeak in on a special program with some fancy talk anyway."
Christian smiled. He was starting to like this girl. "My great, great, grandmother was Cherokee. A lot of us have a bit in us."
"You just missed being a squeaker by a generation. At least your part is from one of the so-called civilized tribes. My great grandmother was Comanche, the tribe even the other Indians hated. My dad says that's where I get the abrasive part of my personality."
Christian chuckled, but said nothing.
"Anyway," Naomi continued, "I was staying up here with my aunt and uncle, getting ready to try to make it home, when a couple of the assholes you just hung and buried came to our place. My uncle tried to talk with them. He taught communications and political science at the community college and thought everything could be talked out. They knocked him around a little for fun, and he just kept holding up his hands and saying it didn't have to be like this, that we would give them what they wanted if they just left us alone. When they started grabbing my niece, he tried to pull her away and they started beating him. Carol, that's my aunt, jumped on them, trying to pull them off. I ran into the house to get my gun and when I came out they were done with Jerry and starting on Carol so I killed them."
"You killed them?"
"Uh huh."
Such matter of fact reports were normal to Christian, but not from a woman. He watched her eyes closely. "How were you able to do that?"
Naomi's eyes never wavered as she answered. "They were busy with Carol. They never saw me till I started shooting."
"Where did you shoot them?"
"The first one in the ass and then the head. The second one in the right side, then the head."
"You're lucky you didn't hit your aunt."
Naomi shook her head. "I hit what I aim at. Those were the targets I could acquire without hitting Carol."
Christian thought for a moment. "What kind of gun did you use?"
"1911 from Wilson Combat."
Christian raised his eyebrows and let out a low whistle. "That's a professional's gun. You don't find those just floating around. No offense, but how is it that you have one?"
"My dad gave it to me. He's a Ranger in Texas. Lawman, not ballplayer. He taught me to shoot when I was little."
Christian nodded his head slowly, watching the girl and thinking. She certainly had confidence, and if everything she said was true, she was an exceptional woman, an exceptional person. Finally, he reached a decision. "Do you have plans for dinner?"
Naomi raised her eyebrows. "Why? Are you asking me out?"
Christian chuckled again. "Not exactly. I think you should meet my uncle."
Jim took a long drink from his glass of sweet tea. It had taken Christian and his team a couple of hours to wrap things up for the day at the school, another hour to get back to Stonemont, then an additional hour to get ready for the dinner they were now sharing with their new guest. Jim had been paying close attention to her and was impressed with the easy, confident manner that made Naomi fit in almost seamlessly with the Stonem
ont core. Her statements and questions were direct and guileless, a pleasant change from the overly offensive or defensive manner of most new contacts, and she seemed to be completely comfortable eating and talking with the group she had known for only a few hours. Still, the statement she had just made out of the blue was why he had extended his intended sip to a long drink. Finally, he set his glass down and looked at her with feigned confusion. "Excuse me?"
"I know who you are," she repeated, taking another bite of Kelly's apple pie.
"You do?" He wasn't sure whether this was headed in a good direction or not. He looked straight at her. "Who am I?"
"You used to teach defensive tactics and combatives. My dad read all your stuff and passed copies out to his guys. He's a big fan of yours."
It had been a long time since Jim had crossed paths with someone who knew about that part of his life. He didn't consciously hide it, but didn't feel the need to share it with anyone who hadn't known him then. That was in the past, and he preferred to live in the present while planning for the future. He gave a small smile. "That's nice to hear. Who were his guys?"
"My dad was the commanding major of Ranger Company C in Lubbock. Still is, actually. He said you were one who knew and taught real stuff, not the watered-down politically-correct magic-dojo crap that became so prevalent." She raised an eyebrow in an amused smirk. "He said you sounded like an old hard-ass, just like him."
Jim chuckled. "Well, if he's a Ranger, I'm a big fan of his too. I've only met a few, but every one of them was a straight up man I'd be happy to side or have siding me. How do you think things are going down there?"
Naomi stopped her fork full of pie halfway to her mouth and thought for a moment. "I think things are probably okay. My dad wasn't as prepared as you, but I never saw a situation that scared or confused him. He'll have organized his Rangers and the other LEOs around Lubbock to make sure everything is stable. West Texans are pretty self-sufficient people."
