Scorched Earth (Book 1): Good Fences

by Craven III, Boyd

  I held back from cursing.

  “Want me to take the shot? It’s an easy one.” Ken asked.

  The cold way he asked me if I’d like him to kill them chilled me. I knew Ken was a badass dude, but he was also a warrior, something that I wasn’t. I tried to be more like a peacemaker.

  “No, let’s see how bad things are. Do you think we can get them down without having to kill them?” I asked.

  “Sure, it’ll be messy, but sure. You two cover me.” Ken said and handed Randy his AR as he pulled his .45 out.

  We crept closer, but not in line with Ken. We were more cover fire if things went south. He used every shadow to his advantage, and I only could keep track of him when I saw a flicker of movement. He was like a bug eyed ghost. A ghost who literally tore into the four of them like the Tasmanian Devil on PCP. I couldn’t make out who he was hitting, punching and kicking, but I could see him sweep the legs of the first man, using a knife edged swing with his fist, which hit the second in the temple. Both dropped and the other two turned to stare at their friends for the half a heart beat until Ken crushed one in the ribs with a knee and did a superman punch on the last guy.

  Two seconds. Damn!

  Randy and I broke into a run as soon as they all started falling and I made it there as the first one jumped back to his feet. I butt stroked him with my AR and watched him fall again, hoping I hadn’t crushed his skull. He dropped like a sack of shit and Randy and Ken took off their NVGs as the fire made them almost useless.

  “Looks like some fucked up trailer trash here,” Ken said, profane as always.

  I rolled the man I’d butt stroked over and saw Scott. His chest rose and fell, and blood was running out the side of his nose. I rolled another onto his side and made sure. Yup, tweedle dee, tweedle dumb and Toby. Great.

  “What do you want to do with them?” Randy asked.

  “You two keep an eye on them, I’m going to clear the house and make sure nobody else is around,” Ken said, kicking dirt over the fire.

  It went out in smoke, leaving me night blind for a few moments, but Randy and Ken put on the NVGs and started scanning. Ken was only gone a few minutes when he came back out and motioned for me to come with him. He pulled off his NVGs and held up a zippo and lit it. In the flickering light I could see the mess that had been made in Mr. Matthews’s house. Dishes were broken or piled in the sink dirty. Empty wrappers and boxes were everywhere.

  When I’d left the house, I hadn’t thought about taking anything right away, because in the country, I hadn’t thought anybody would do something like this. I was wrong. Gouges and holes had been made in the sheetrock, probably by a knife and, as we walked down the hallway, I could smell the stink of an unflushed toilet, long abused and left alone. He took me to Mr. Matthews’s bedroom and held the zippo up high.

  A nude woman was bound and gagged and her arms and legs were tied to the bed. The stench of decay was strong and Ken took a step closer and stumbled. He aimed his .45 at the floor and almost dropped the lighter. My eyes took it all in. The woman on the bed had had her throat slit. There was another body, and she was thrown on the ground beside the bed. Her skin had started to turn colors, and I could only guess she was once white when I saw the red hair. She’d been stabbed dozens and dozens of times. Sickly I realized they’d been raped, tortured and murdered.

  “Do you want to keep them alive now?” Ken asked.

  I started walking back to the front door, needing to clear my lungs, needing to get out of the house. I’d have to go back in at some point, and check on the footlocker in the basement that Mr. Matthews had thought so important. But later. I just made it outside when the overwhelming urge to puke hit me and I staggered off to the side. It was horrible and painful and, when I was done, I could barely make out the darkness, because of the stars floating in my vision. When I breathed more they faded, leaving me angry in a way I’d ever been angry before.

  “Are they awake?” I asked Randy, walking towards them.

  “Yeah, the dude you conked is almost out of it, the rest are up.” Randy said, noticing me holding my AR up, pointing at them.

  “Scott, on your knees.” I said kicking at his feet.

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  My next kick was between his legs and he rolled over, making gagging sounds.

  “If you don’t get up on your knees, I’m going to kick some fucking sense into your thick skull.” I said, aiming a soft kick into the soft part of his side.

  Scott struggled, but he made it up on his knees, using his hands to brace himself.

  “What do you want?” he asked me.

  “Two answers. First question… why do you think you could break into this place and trash it the way you did?” I asked.

  “Nobody was living there, and after momma died we left the park to go find some food. There’s still plenty there,” he said as he felt the flash suppressor touch the back of his neck.

  “Question two, are you guys responsible for the dead women in the house?” I asked.

  He chuckled and Toby looked at me and smirked. I could barely make it out in the moonlight but I wanted to be sure.

  “Why?” I asked them.

  “Because we could,” he answered after a pause, and started laughing.

  Randy was looking at me and Ken in confusion, but I couldn’t spare the time because I pulled the trigger, almost literally blowing Scott’s head off. The two tweakers and Toby started running. A flash suppressor is good, but what flash there was ruined my sight for what seemed a heartbeat when Ken started firing. Four shots, three men face down, not moving.

  “What’s going on?” Randy asked.

  I knew I’d just killed a man in cold blood, in anger to boot. In my heart I knew it wasn’t murder, though I would pray for forgiveness. Instead, I looked at it like putting down a rabid dog. I know it would come back to me in my dreams, but I’d done what I thought and felt was right.

  “Go look in the bedroom, and watch the floor, don’t trip like I almost did.” Ken said, taking his AR back from a disturbed Randy.

  Ken slung his AR and put a new clip in for his .45. If I was blinded by my AR shot before, I was dizzy with the almost four foot of flame that the 1911 had shot out of its barrel in the darkness. I noticed the meadow and woods around us were silent, even more so than before.

  “We have to do some kind of cleanup if we’re planning on using this place.” Ken told me.

  “I know,” I said.

  “You want to do it tonight?”

  “Oh God, can I shoot them too?” Randy lurched out of the front door and vomited in almost the same spot I had.

  “No, not tonight,” I said over his retching sounds, “Tomorrow is good enough.”

  * * *

  In the sunlight, it was even more gruesome than at night. At night, you couldn’t see blood and brain matter sprayed across the grass. You couldn’t see the torn holes where the bullets had hit. I almost lost it again, but remembered what they had done. It seemed easier, but I don’t know if I could be the one to move the women. Somehow, they reminded me of Cathy’s accident, and that was hard.

  Two of the Sanderson boys and Ken and Randy walked over with me in the daylight. I took the key to the big barn and unlocked the padlock. A Krieg. I almost laughed when I noticed it wasn’t shot like mine. At least the fools had learned that much. I got it open and pushed the big doors to the side, letting light in, revealing a semi-truck and trailer, two bobcats, a backhoe and two combines, one shiny and new and the other a relic from the 70s. Brandon whistled.

  “Some inheritance, man.” He patted me on the shoulder.

  “I figure only a couple things will work in here, and we’re going to need that combine unless we get a ton of labor. There must be close to 80 or 90 acres of corn to harvest soon.” I said.

  Brandon was familiar with how to run a backhoe, which surprisingly started right up. He drove it out and started digging a hole not too far from where the bodies had fallen.


  “Ken and I will…” he motioned to the house and I nodded.

  “I want to check out the basement. He thought there was something important down there. Never finished his thought in the note.”

  I headed into the house, holding my breath until I reached the kitchen. The smell of rotted food and dirty dishes was strong, but it was nothing like the charnel house reek of the bedroom. To get to the basement, you had to go through the kitchen and into the back mud room where another door led down. I’d never been allowed down there as a kid; Mr. Matthews told me it was too dangerous down there.

  I opened the door and turned on a penlight I’d borrowed from Randy and almost fell when I encountered two sets of eyes staring at me from the bottom of the stairs. The basement walls were stacked rock, mortared in place, but hanging from the wooden floor beams and joists were half a dozen animals, obviously stuffed. I shone the light around the basement and whistled softly.

  In one corner, there was a rodent-eaten pile of animal furs, a work bench and some hand tools I’d never seen before. I looked around for a foot locker, but didn’t see one. I took another few steps in and looked around the dark, cobwebby space. Another bench full of tools caught my attention. They were hand tools, not the unusual bladed ones. Underneath it was more of a large trunk than a footlocker, with another Krieg padlock. I unlocked it and set it up on the bench but found I couldn’t open the trunk under the bench.

  I found two handles and pulled it out. I was confused by what I was seeing at first; rusty metal traps, some spring loaded, but a bunch of them square, varying in size. In the back were two books sitting on top of everything, with a raccoon pelt protecting them from the metal. One was leather-bound and the other was an old book on trapping. Suddenly the unusual contents of the basement made sense to me.

  I’d heard the stories Mr. Matthews used to tell my dad about running his own trap line when he was a kid, but I didn’t think he did that anymore. Was this his treasure trove from his childhood? I decided it probably was, according to the look of age and cobwebs. I spent some time going around and looking at all the tools. When I was done I looked at the furs and realized most of them were old and falling apart, so yes, this was likely his old stash.

  “Everything ok down there?” I heard Ken yelling from the top of the stairs.

  “Yeah,” I yelled back.

  We had to take these traps back. I wasn’t going into the fur business, but I knew now how I could help out the neighbors with these traps. They were re-useable and would cost little to no effort to use them. I was sort of ashamed I hadn’t thought of it sooner. In Boy’s Life magazine’s I used to read as a kid, they’d talk about animal traps, snares and stuff. It would definitely be a great help.

  If I could let Ruby and one of the younger sows breed, I’d be able to increase my hog population but I’d need to find a way to feed them…

  Then it hit me. They could eat all the leftover or spoiled food. They could forage for themselves in the fenced in pens and, most importantly, I could go gather wild fruits and nuts in the state land to feed them in the dead of winter. I’d keep breeding stock and kill off what I didn’t have enough to keep alive for the winter and then preserve or barter the meat off. I’d seen calculations on how much food a person needed for a year, and if I didn’t have to dig into my preps for more than rounding out a meal I’d be happy.

  “We’re going to need the truck,” I yelled up the stairs, knowing I’d also have to unload half of the stuff before two people could carry it upstairs.

  * * *

  Brandon had already filled in the hole and was driving the backhoe to the barn. I was excitedly telling the guys about my find and what I was thinking in regards to adding to the meat and helping out the neighbors. Randy grudgingly agreed and when the barn was locked up, we headed home. Randy and Ken were mostly silent, having to bear the brunt of burying the women. They would probably have similar nightmares to my own, but for now, we walked in peace.

  “Does anybody here know how to trap?” Brandon asked.

  None of us did, but I held up the leather bound journal.

  “I think I’m going to do a bunch of reading. Maybe my dad has some books on it?” I said.

  It was a somber party that returned to the farm, and we let ourselves in the gate and waved to our sentry and headed back to the main house to wash up and grab a quick bite to eat. I checked on the fire, added more wood chips and went to the barn where I could hear two excited feminine voices. I walked in to the funniest sight ever! One of the Sanderson boys had made some sort of platform with a ramp leading up to it, about 3’ tall. There were three pieces of wood at the end of the ramp, shaped in a V. One of my mother goats had her head stuck through the V, and a fourth piece kept her from pulling her head back through.

  The goat didn’t worry though, she was happily trying to lick some sweet feed off of Brenda’s hand and Lucy was sitting with her head almost in the goat’s butt, trying to milk it. I snickered. It would have been even funnier if she was trying to milk a buck, but I didn’t say that out loud.

  “I think you should probably do that from the side,” I said, coming up behind her and wrapping her in my arms.

  I’d moved into the big bedroom with her, letting Spencer have my old room. It had been an easy transition to becoming a couple after that first night alone together, and neither one of us had one damned regret.

  “You know how to do this?” Brenda asked in an accusatory tone.

  “When I was a kid I my dad did. I watched him. We only had goats for two years though, they always got out or climbed on my dad’s tractor.” I told them.

  “Show me,” Lucy demanded.

  I walked over and grabbed a bucket to sit on and made sure the stainless crock pot was under the goat and started to slowly feel her udder. She was still full of milk, and the girls probably had been going at it awhile so she might be a bit sore. Usually he would milk in the mornings and Mom would manage the rest. To say I was a bad milker would be an understatement though. I started up high on a teat and used my fingers in a circle to gently pull down, trying to remember of it was more pressure at the top or more pressure at the bottom.

  The goat bleated at me, pissed, but I got a few drops out. I changed up my technique and more came out a couple times later.

  “Let me try,” Lucy said, using her hip to almost knock me off the bucket and into the dirt.

  I let that go, but I’d have to pin her down and tickle her for it later on. That usually led to good times, so I saved my revenge. Brenda smiled and got another handful of feed and the goat lost interest in what we were doing. I watched for five minutes and Lucy had gotten the hang of it rather quickly. She finished and showed me the pan of goats’ milk and I had to smile. Something she could do on her own, something she could be proud of. I even remembered my mom buying books on soap and cheese making when they were thinking of expanding their goat enterprise. Hopefully they were still on the bookshelves.

  “You go girl,” I teased and bumped her back, almost causing her to spill it.

  “Stop! This will be the first milk we’ve had in a while!” Lucy sniped.

  “Well, I didn’t know you wanted some. We’ve got dried milk in storage,” I told her and got the look of death.

  Ooops! “Ok, I’ll be back later.”

  19

  As summer turned into fall, we started tuning in to Rebel Radio more and more. Blake and Patty were a wealth of information. I found out that the set Randy bought was quite a bit more powerful than my dad’s unit; Randy said it was something to do with the crystals. We moved the set out into the living room where the kids had been doing coloring books and puzzles on an old writing desk. Randy and I would sit and listen for hours and both of us were surprised when I asked about trapping that it was Patty and not Blake who first answered.

  Her and her late man named Neal had become somewhat experienced trappers and she told me what they’d learned in a short period of time. I used her experiences as well a
s what I read in the two books from Mr. Matthews to start trapping my own game. The first raccoon I killed was a fat old male and I was walking proudly down the western fence line when I stopped. I really didn’t need the meat.

  I was passing the lawyer’s house when a thin woman, barely five foot tall and clearly malnourished came out. Her dress wasn’t immaculate, but she’d taken great efforts to look presentable.

  “Mr. Cartwright?” She called.

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “Can I… I mean, I’d like to barter for that there food I can get,” she said.

  I was willing to give it away, but I was curious. Where was her husband?

  “Ok, uh, what do you have to trade?” I asked her.

  She pulled up her dress, showing me her bare body beneath. My eyes popped open and my jaw dropped. Had it really come to that?

  “Don’t, you don’t need to do that.” I told her, and she thankfully pulled her dress down.

  “It’s been how I’m keeping my husband and I alive. Don’t you… you don’t want me?” She asked, starting to cry.

  Shit, I’d read about things like that, but I’d never seen it happen before. I was thunderstruck. She was prostituting herself out - with her husband’s knowledge, apparently.

  “Here,” I said, pushing the raccoon through the wire, the barbs snagging small tufts of fur, “I don’t know how to cook him, but I imagine if you’re hungry you’ll find a good way,” I said.

  “Oh um… Thank…” she started crying, but she took the animal. “This doesn’t feel like charity, you’ll want something else from me later on, won’t you?” The tears still fell.

  “No, I’m really not all that bad of a guy. I’m going to start trapping small game for us and to see if I can help you guys out. I can’t promise to feed everyone this way, but I will do what I can, when I can.”

  “Why didn’t you earlier?” she asked, wiping her eyes.

  “Because half of you were trying to get me thrown off my own land when I was here first. Because I prepared and you didn’t. Because George is an asshole and I painted you all with the same broad brush strokes. You weren’t there for the gate confrontation, were you?” I asked her.