“These men were outside the chicken barn when I got shot,” Rob said. “Got me right in the plate. Go me. Fucking sissies were shooting 9mms. Well, I got the drop on one about the same time I sicced the dogs on the other three. The dead one out there by the barn… he was stupid. He kept trying to shoot my dogs. I gave him the opportunity to drop his gun, but he drew on me. Unlike these butt boys, I do not shoot a 9mm. He got a 7.62. The one Andrea is trying to keep from biting off his own tongue is the asshole I put into the door jamb.”
“Is that it?” Sheriff Robertson asked.
Nobody spoke.
“Who has the warrant?” Sheriff Robertson asked the black clad agents in the room.
“I need to get looked at,” one of the men moaned, holding a blood-soaked pad against the base of his neck and shoulder.
“You aren’t the worst hurt,” Dante told him, “so shut the fuck up before I shut you up.”
“You can’t do—”
Two steps and Dante popped the man as hard as he could, right on the chin. The man flew over backwards from the bed, hitting the ground. That startled everybody for a second, and then the shouting match started between the Feds and everybody else. More lights and sirens pulled into the farm, the gates open now.
“Anybody but the guy having a seizure have any question about what we can and cannot legally do on our own property? We’ve been attacked and shot by government agents. As far as I know, none of them have a warrant, and none have shown me any paperwork that this was legal. Now they claim they are from the government, but I doubt they are. They’re probably—”
“Dante,” Steven said, walking into the medical center after the throng of people. “One of the dead ones was Agent Sullivan, the guy who came out here. I was just at the fence, closing the gap off the fuckers cut to get through.”
“Oh, well, they were warned,” Dante said, then pointed to one of the men Roscoe had chewed on. “Get your ass up here.”
“Doc has a great bedside manner,” Curt told Andrea, grinning.
“Look at him shake his hand. A surgeon should know better not to punch a guy in the face,” she told him.
“That’s what elbows and knees are for,” Angelica said. “Harry is laying down with Goldie by the way.”
“Thanks Hun,” Rob called, blowing her a kiss.
“STOP IT DAMMIT!” Sheriff Robertson screamed.
Everybody quieted again, even the agents.
“Do any of you have a warrant or any written orders pertaining to your operation tonight?” Sheriff Robertson yelled.
“Sullivan had it,” one agent remarked. “In our vehicles,” another said. “It’s not a warrant, written orders.” A third.
The sheriff radioed to one of the cars outside. They needed more men and a lot more transport than they had available.
The roosters in the barn were crowing by the time the three Suburbans the USDA’s FSIS agents had brought were driven back, two of them full of agents and deputies. Almost all of the gear and all of the firearms had been accounted for according to the sheriff. What had gone missing was a small assault pack that the agents swore Sullivan had kept on him. When the last of the cops and Feds had left, leaving just the crime scene techs, Lyle let out a big shuddering breath.
“Steff, go get me what I put in my saddle bags, would you baby?”
“Sure,” she said, and walked out of the medical center.
Everybody had gotten patched up or ridden out in an ambulance. Rob was laying down on his stomach, snoring softly with a towel draped over his back, cold packs on top of the towel. The trauma plate had saved him, but he would be sore and bruised. Leah had worried about swelling near the spine, but the big guy had insisted that he had been kicked harder by cows. He was absolutely exhausted after the pure adrenaline dump, and more than a little pissed that his favorite AR10 was confiscated as evidence for the investigation. Again, no charges were pending against the farm.
“What have you got?” Leah asked him, looking the way Steff had gone.
“I don’t know what an assault pack is,” Lyle said, “but I did find a small pack with some papers in the cow pasture where they killed my bull.”
“Why didn’t you hand them over to the sheriff?” Dante asked, suddenly curious.
“What I didn’t bring up to the sheriff, was they trespassed on my land, cut my fences, killed my bull and, through misadventure and felony murder, they died and got busted up. I have just as much right to press charges against them as anybody else. I didn’t, but I’m curious why they were here. I might just… find this later and turn it in. Maybe.”
“They wanted our livestock,” Andrea told him simply. “Tell him, Steven.”
“They came out with the sheriff a few days back. I told them I was sick, but they wanted to come in and inspect the farm. They made up some bullshit story that they had to do contact tracing on some new form of swine flu. It didn’t matter to them that we’re not selling hogs here currently. When agent Sullivan found out we were all sick, they became concerned for the animals’ welfare. I believe they wanted to confiscate and relocate them to a place where they could be better utilized. Something like that, I’m paraphrasing.”
“Figures. Those agents stopped by yesterday. I told them to stay out of the field next to yours, didn’t tell them why. They mostly wanted counts of animals. I told them what I had, more or less. It’s kind of the same info I fill out every year for grants, so I didn’t see any harm in it.”
“This it?” Steff asked, coming back in with a small black backpack.
“Yes dear,” he said, then motioned for her to give it to the group.
Angelica took it from her and unzipped it. She started reading, but then shrugged and handed it over to Steven. Steven started flipping pages, reading fast. His expression went from puzzlement to his jaw dropping.
“Do any of you know what the FEMA districts are?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Rob said, no longer snoring. “There’s ten of them, but what’s the emergency?”
Steven hesitated a moment, re-reading a page, then handed the whole mess to Leah and Andrea who were sitting down at a small table.
“The districts have been activated,” Steven said. “It gives them and the local governments power to coordinate with the Feds if I understand what I read right. They are doing a massive round up of livestock and feed once they have an idea whether or not a district could be self sufficient. Then there’s talk of redistribution.”
“Redistribution of what?” Lyle asked, his throat dry.
“Livestock, food, people, land,” Steven said softly.
“They can’t do that,” Lyle said, softer.
“That’s the plan laid out,” Steven said. “And I could be reading it wrong, but all of this because of a virus?”
“Food processors have been shutting down,” Leah noted. “Maybe they know something that we don’t?”
“Oh damn,” Dante said, looking at his phone. “Good thing we started to cash out of the stock market.”
“Did it take another dive today?” Rob asked him.
“Remember the great depression? Not the first one, but the one under Bush and then Obama?”
“Yeah,” they all said.
“This is worse. They’re calling it a crash.”
“You mean, the government knew about this ahead of time, so they sent jack booted thugs to come steal our cows?” Anna asked.
“Cows, chickens, pigs, corn, soybeans, food in general. At a later point, probably the land, once we’re relocated for our own good.”
“That ain’t happening,” Rob said. “Not without a fight.”
“You ain’t fighting after getting shot in the back, dummy,” Angelica said with a sniff.
“It was a suppressed 9mm. It probably came from the guys trying to put down Big Red, so it lost a lot of velocity of an already slow round. It didn’t even crack my plate. I doubt it would have penetrated far.”
“You still would have been shot in your spi
ne. It doesn’t need to go far,” Angelica snapped at him.
“Ok, you win,” he said simply.
“Listen, we need to make copies of this, fast. If the Feds know we have this, we’re in a world of shit. It'd be even better if we can get a copy to the lawyers as insurance.” Steven tossed the pile of papers on the table between the doctors.
“It got worse?” Dante asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It seems the FEMA districts aren’t exactly asking the rest of the federal government for permission. They’ve been activated and they have their orders already set for a situation like this.”
“That’s a bunch of shi—”
“Turn on the TV,” Leah yelled.
There was a large flatscreen in the small area they used as a waiting room. They turned it on. They did not have to turn the channel, a broadcast from the White House was supposed to be carried live.
“I’d like to take a moment to talk about the stock market. As of this morning we’ve asked them to suspend trading for the day and possibly tomorrow while we analyze the situation. For a while now, America has been in a decline. I know this sounds scary, especially because I did more in 46 months than the Democratic Party did in the last 46 years, and the stock market was at record levels… But I’m being told that it was another manufactured bubble, and today that bubble popped.
“Our experts tell us that the causes of the stock market’s crash today is a hyper inflated petrol dollar as well as all of the shut down businesses and those out of work due to the virus. It’s not that something happened all at once, but apparently this has been happening slowly. I’ve called an emergency session of Congress, and I’ll be working with a bipartisan team over the next couple of days to see what we can fix legislatively like. We can get through this, and we will get through this. Our people are the best people on fixing issues like this, and I’m confident we will be able to resume trading in the weeks to come.
“Thank you.”
They all watched in stunned silence as the president got off the podium and walked off screen, back into the White House. He ignored the shouted questions from the press and was lost in the presence of more secret service agents than usually orbited around him.
“They didn’t say anything about FEMA districts,” Anna mumbled.
“Why would they? They activated them, knowing this was going to happen, and when things fall apart, they’re ready to roll. We’re all just sheep being led to the slaughter,” Steven spat out.
“Here’s the thing,” Curt said. “We all look at the collapse of America differently, and that’s why we’ve prepared. It’s why we wanted to buy a farm. Hell, it’s why we have our own meat locker. No matter how we look at things, the collapse has been happening for years. There probably won’t be one defining moment where you can say, ‘There it is,’ because it’s happening to us right now, in slow motion.”
“I don’t think those government agents are going to be the end of it,” Andrea told them. “They have a plan, and with the stock market down for a couple days to a couple of weeks…”
“Then we may see a defining moment, even though it’s happening in real time,” Dante finished.
“Bingo,” Angelica said. “Let’s go to the big house. If Grandma Goldie doesn’t have breakfast on, we can get some going.”
“One last thing,” Steven said. “Do we need to let the local health department know about those agents? We were breathing on them and some of us… oh shit, Lyle. Listen—”
“I coughed on them too,” he said with a grin.
Sixteen
The group expected what happened at the farm to make national news, but it did not. It was almost like the reporters were told to suppress it. An enforcement division of the USDA shows up to confiscate somebody's livestock, five are killed by a rampaging bull and one is killed when Rob defends himself and his son after being shot. It was so cheesy that Rob himself, who had been there in the action, could not believe it.
Yet the farm went on. Motion sensors were added at other points of the farm, and Lyle’s crew did end up getting sick. Leah drove over there and checked on everyone. The Wuhan Flu passed quickly between people, faster than when it had first come out, but time had brought some better knowledge and treatment. One of the effects seemed to be the later mutations of the virus either left it a lot less lethal than when it’d first been found and diagnosed, or increased availability of tests and contact tracing found some of the asymptomatic people that had been falling through the cracks.
“What supplies do you have to take care of this?” Leah asked Steff who was up and around the most.
“We’re all taking a multivitamin, those elderberry gummies, and we’ve got inhalers and even a nebulizer to do our own breathing treatments,” she answered while being examined at the kitchen table.
“You have plenty of things to knock the fevers back?” Leah asked.
“Yeah, but Lyle won’t take any of it unless his fever goes over 101. The man hates being sick, but he hates medicine more,” she admitted.
“If any of you develop difficulty breathing, give us a call. Also, with most of you guys down, do you need a hand at the ranch here?”
“Unless some of the cows break fences, we have a lot of things automated. If we need to…” a coughing fit caused her to pause, “if we need help, we’ll give you a call for sure.”
Leah said her goodbyes and left in her Suburban. As she was leaving the ranch and turning right to head back to her place, she saw several blacked-out government vehicles pass her going in the other direction. She gritted her teeth and debated calling the group or Lyle’s group, but saw the vehicles keep going down the roadway, instead of turning off. So she made a different call.
“Sheriff Robertson please,” she said, having dialed his office.
“He’s actually out in the field right now,” his secretary said. “Do you have his cell?”
“I do, thank you,” she said, hanging up and almost coming to a stop on the empty and dusty dirt road. It was the highest point in the area, and she could see the road in two directions. A rooster tail of dust followed the government SUVs, but she couldn’t see them herself.
“Sheriff Robertson,” he said, answering his phone.
“Sheriff, this is Leah Weaver. I hate to be calling, but we just had two blacked out SUVs like the ones those agents used a few days back rolling down our road.”
“Did you get the license plate numbers?” he asked.
“No, sorry.”
“I’ll roll out that way. The governor himself called me about what happened at the farm and he seemed appalled. He’s asked DHS and the USDA to make a report in person but that hasn’t happened yet, apparently.”
“Probably because they’re preparing for a massive redistribution,” Leah said, then cringed, remembering they hadn’t read the sheriff in on that yet.
“Food, animals, people, land. I’ve heard those rumors myself. The boys we locked up and charged were sprung by their own people, so we really didn’t get a chance to question them beyond them saying they were under orders. If that damned bull hadn’t killed the agent in charge…”
“I know. Listen, I don’t want to put the farm on High Alert, but if you hear anything, will you call one of us back?”
“I can sure do that,” Sheriff Robertson said to her, “and maybe it wouldn’t be a horrible idea to see who else in the area got a visit from these boys…”
“Talk to Kerry at the market, I bet she has everybody on speed dial. It might save you a ton of time.”
“That sounds like a good idea to me. If you see those SUVs again, get a plate number for me, and I can see who they’re working for. Got to run.”
“Bye Sheriff,” Leah said, hanging up.
Checking the road behind her and then in front of her, only then did Leah head back to the farm.
Goldie had been washing and sanitizing some of the empty jars from the basement. Her order of lids and rings had come in finally and she was abo
ut to do some storing of her own. She had a project in mind now that everybody was in between harvests and they were not taking animals to market. She hoped a day or two of solid canning would help them get their family a little ahead of the curve. The entire table and most of the counter was full of cleaned jars.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Rob asked, seeing her working in a frenzy.
“That nice man, Mr. Luis, is going to butcher a pig for me today and—”
“We have several butchered already Mom, they’re in the big cold storage.”
“I know, we’re taking one of those that was hanging for a week and putting it in a smoker that Luis is going to build. The one we are processing is to replace that one. Anyways, that’s what we’re doing.”
“What’s with the jars, Mom?” Rob asked.
“Don’t you give me that tone, I’ll pop you,” she said.
“The jars? You’re putting smoked pork in the jars?” he asked.
“I’m making some breakfast sausage to can. I think you kids are relying on newer technology too much. Jars have worked wonders forever and now I have these new tattle tale lids…”
“And you say we are focused on too much new technology. Reusable jar lids? Who ever would have thought it?”
“If you aren’t out there getting me some smoked pork, you need to get out of my kitchen,” Goldie waved a wooden spoon around, making him scatter.
“Damn kids,” she muttered, then went back to washing jars. “Damn, I forgot to have them rearrange the basement before running him off.”
Andrea had gotten off the phone with her attorney. The city had come through with an offer to settle. With ADA Winters dead, the mess of blame went her way. There had even been rumors that she had been behind stirring up problems for them at the farm, but it was speculation. Since she was dead and her devices needed her fingerprint to open, they left them alone and let the blame fall on her. She was going to be getting her public apology, which is all she really wanted.
Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 2 | The Farm Page 10
