Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 2 | The Farm

by Craven III, Boyd

  “That’s why this place got started, wasn’t it?” he asked, figuring curiosity on his part would be natural for a down on his luck guy looking to trade some muscle time for cabbages.

  “Exactly. I guess the Feds panicked when they heard the doctors here were sick with the Wuhan Flu, and tried to raid the place. Big Red stomped about five or six of them into the mud, and I heard an agent pointed a gun at Little Robert’s son!”

  That wasn’t exactly what had happened, but it was not too far off from the official report and body cam footage he had seen.

  “They sure got what was coming to them, huh?” he asked, giving her a gentle bump shoulder to shoulder.

  “I don’t know if they did or not, but I’d like to suddenly know why we have to go to lengths like this to make a living and eat. I don’t even know why the agents are doing what they are doing.”

  “I hear the government has been setting up quarantine areas for those infected and sick, then they have to do something with all the rioters and arsonists they’ve been arresting at the protests,” he said, figuring going for a little bit of the truth would be better than making something totally up from scratch.

  “I haven’t heard any of that,” Ella admitted. “Has it been on the news?” she asked.

  “My cousin called and told me about it; he got sick last week and is in a camp in the NW corner of the state, outside of Fort Smith.”

  “Oh my, I hope for his sake, he’s feeling better,” she said simply.

  “So far so good. I guess they have the best medications there, and supposedly they’re working on a vaccine and that should be out soon.”

  “Vaccine? I thought that’d be a couple of years away,” she said loudly, making the vendors who were setting up look over.

  “Just what I heard from my cousin,” Jake told her. “I guess there’s a volunteer program. If you get the vaccine and help in the quarantine units, you can get some food and a place to stay for a while.”

  “Who would be desperate enough to get the vaccine and then get infected? For food?” She seemed skeptical.

  “City folk,” Jake said, shaking his head, as if he wasn’t one normally. “Who knows. Maybe they’re more desperate than us country folk.”

  “Mayhap,” Ella said, almost lost in thought. “Go ahead and fill you up a grocery sack. I appreciate all your help. If you’re here later on, maybe we can work out a deal for tear down?”

  “Thank you,” Jake said. “How late is the market here open?”

  “About four o’clock or thereabouts, depends on the turnout. Only one time did it close earlier, but the owners of the land here let us stay open if there’s still a lot of people waiting to get in.”

  “Ok,” he said, taking the plastic bag. “Maybe I’ll see you later.”

  Jake filled the sack with celery, a bag of salad mix, some multi-colored carrots, and a small plastic container of small strawberries. He looked to make sure he was not taking too much, but Ella May just nodded and smiled at him. Jake had not planned on eating lunch out here, but he figured he had enough for a good snack and a salad for later on. That would not go in his report, as well as him even stopping in here.

  “Ella May, you’re set up already,” a feminine voice called from over his shoulder.

  He turned slowly. A petite woman in full battle gear was standing just a few feet behind him. She had a pistol on her belt in a cross draw with an AR on a drop sling hanging under her right arm. Magazine pouches and spare magazines covered her vest. A radio on her belt connected to a throat mic and earwig. Jake noted that she probably had at least as good, if not better, gear on than their tactical teams that had been working with Homeland.

  “Yes, Miss Angel,” she called. “This nice young man helped me set up. I guess he wanted to do some horse trading before things got crazy.”

  “Well I can’t say I blame you there,” she said, looking into his bag, more curiosity than anything.

  Jake tried not to make any sudden movements, because his heart was suddenly racing. He had heard about Angel, or Angelica Little. She was a local legend for her cussing and fighting. Her husband was supposed to be a giant of a—

  “There you went,” a big booming voice said from behind her.

  She turned and smiled, seeing Rob coming up behind her, two buckets of eggs in each hand. Jake saw he was kitted up just like her, but his gear was simply larger. His vest seemed to be custom made to fit over his broad chest. He smiled at the pretty blonde woman and came over, putting the eggs down, hugging her with one arm.

  “Where else would I be?” she said.

  “You’re so little, I turn around and worry I might step on you,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

  “Oh stop, or I’ll monkey stomp your ass before your piehole writes a check your white butt cheeks can’t cash.”

  “Here they go,” Ella said with a giggle, coming around the table to stand next to Jake.

  “You couldn’t stomp my ass, you ain’t got any more to you than a little mouse fart,” he told her, feeling it was worth the risk of riling her up.

  “You want to bet? I’d climb you like a spider monkey, knock you over, trip you up and make you my bitch,” she said. “Then when you’re sleeping, I’ll sew you into the sheets. You’ll wake up with me taking a broom handle to your thick skull.”

  “That sounds pretty well thought out. How about if I just do this?” he asked, then picked her up by the drag strap on her vest and held her out with one arm.

  A blue streak of cursing came out of her mouth and she began digging at his big arm. He chuckled, then pulled her in close and stopped her cursing with a kiss, wrapping his free hand around her. A cheer went up from the crowd, with more than a few catcalls as well, especially from a few more people who were coming through the back gate, who were as heavily armed as Rob and his wife. His eyes caught for a moment on a woman who he knew from his files to be Anna. She was more heavily armed than the others.

  Her vest had a pistol on the left side over her heart, and one in a drop holster on her right leg. The rifle she carried looked like a hunting rifle and an AR had had a love baby, and the relationship had not been a happy one. The bore on that looked huge to Jake’s eyes. His staring caught her attention, and her walking shifted, heading his way.

  “I told you I could distract her long enough until she wasn’t mad at me,” Rob yelled to the group walking up.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Jake said to Ella suddenly. “I have to go. Have a good afternoon, and maybe I’ll see you later!”

  “Oh ok,” she said, giving him a smile and a small wave.

  Jake slid out of the gate, earning a curious stare from Kerry, who had not remembered seeing him before, let alone go inside the gates today. She mentally shrugged and would talk to him if he came back the next time. Something thumped under her card table, nearly sending it crashing down to the ground with everything on top.

  “Roscoe, settle down boy,” Kerry said, holding back from cursing the beast out.

  Roscoe had walked out with his big alpha. Nobody seemed to pay him any attention, which sometimes surprised him and saddened him at the same time. He thought he should be used to it, but there it was. So. Much. Going. On. He had to watch, otherwise he would fall asleep in boredom. But watching hairless monkeys is tiresome work for a serious working dog like Roscoe.

  The little alpha female started barking furiously at the big alpha, but he laughed and showed her why there’s a pecking order and held her away from his body until she was nearly worn out, then licking her until she was content. Roscoe was not a complicated dog, but he also knew he could be more than he was. He noted that trick for later, but he had never really had any challenges in his leadership before and did not think any would be coming any time soon.

  That is why, when he caught scent of someone who smelled like the oil of the bang sticks his humans carried, he followed the scent. A little human, skinny, and poorly fed, was filling a bag at the old human’s table. Roscoe t
hought for a moment about getting under the table while he pondered what the new person meant, but decided not to. The old human never gave him treats and asked him to move along.

  While he was watching, the rest of his pack showed up. It was about time because the scent… he needed to tell them about the scent. Then his humans all started barking at each other and cheering. That hurt his ears, so he went and got under the table of his human’s old pack so he could watch the coming and goings. He knew that scent would pass by him one more time, but all this walking was just wearing him out.

  THE SCENT! Roscoe woke himself up with a snore, banging his head on the bottom of the table, nearly upending it. He wanted to bark and howl, but between the big alpha and Ranger, he was learning sometimes it is best to wait to let prey know you are coming. Take a deer for instance. Sometimes the fear freezes them, giving you time to pounce on them, using strong jaws to snap little bones. The hot salty taste of their blood is almost as good as the great chunks of sweet tasting flesh.

  The scent! It had not been a dream, he could smell it again. Roscoe came out under the table while the one human scolded him. He could smell the scent, but it was on the other side of the fence. Ignoring the human, he walked, searching for the source of the smell. Just as he was able to pick out which human it was, it got in a loud thing and drove away, making the gravel road crunch, sending fragrant clouds of dust up.

  Deciding to ponder it some more, Roscoe padded slowly back to the stall Leah had set up while he was gone and crawled into the back of the UTV. The seat provided nice shade and a place to think. Roscoe fell asleep almost immediately.

  Thirty-Two

  “Are you fucking kidding me, Kendricks?” one of the supervisors asked. “You know we’re supposed to stay away from there.”

  He looked down at the ground a moment. “Sir, I didn’t want to come back empty handed. So, I went in plainclothes and slipped in. That market alone deals in produce and food enough to feed the camp for a day. At least.” His voice was confident, he didn’t work for this fool, he was barely in a chain of command.

  “And when we go in there, nobody will come back, and we have no clue where they’re stashing the food any more. So, in the long run, we lose. Oh, and did I mention, we have direct fucking orders not to do anything with that specific farm?”

  “Not really sir, we were told it was to be avoided—”

  “What happened made the national news. The longer our group is able to stay under the president’s radar the better. After the elections it won’t matter any more.”

  “After? Sir? What do you mean?” the agent asked.

  “Oh, never mind. Just stay the fuck away from the Langtry farm, otherwise I’m sending you to bumfuck Alaska to harpoon seals. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes sir,” he said. “But sir…” His words trailed off as a sly smile covered his face; he wasn’t afraid of the consequences like this guy was.

  “WHAT?!” The supervisor shrieked, making several from his group turn their heads and stare at him.

  “What if we identify who the vendors are at the market, and then follow them back, getting their supplies for redistribution. Make it all happen at once, so nobody has time to warn the others?”

  “We already know who most of them are, but it’s a good idea,” the supervisor said in a quieter voice. “They keep moving their supplies around. I think one of them is using a big refrigerated truck to keep the supplies between markets. I just can’t find it.”

  “Do we know for a fact or…?”

  “Speculation. If I get something actionable, I’ll give your team a shot at it.”

  “What if I find it?” he asked, a curious note in his tone.

  “Why do you want to find it so bad?” the supervisor asked, curious.

  “A good friend of mine died out there as a result of these people. It just so happens that my job would coincide with something I want to do, and something they would hate.”

  “Oh? Who was your friend?”

  “Former ADA Winters, from out east.”

  “The lady who got the police department sued and the upper staff largely disbanded?”

  “That’s her. Andrea Mallory, MD.” He said the last part as if he had bitten into something nasty.

  “Ahh, yeah, I see now,” he said quietly. “We’ve been ordered to stay way from them. If you did anything, it’d have to be… on your own.”

  “Sir, you guys looked the other way when the sheriff had his heart attack; why not do that with this?”

  “I don’t think I know what you’re talking about,” the supervisor whispered. “I didn’t sanction your team to take out the sheriff.”

  “I got the call from Senator Phillimore,” he said softly. “The sheriff was going to shut us down and get the governor involved.”

  “I don’t know why he didn’t just—”

  “Plausible deniability.”

  The supervisor sighed and nodded. “If you get yourself in over your head because of a personal vendetta, there won’t be much I can do to save your career.”

  “Yes sir,” Hendricks said, snapping off a half-hearted salute and walking out of their mobile command center.

  He wasn’t worried about his career, he wanted the group hurting. He wanted to jam them up. He prayed he could get Andrea on some sort of charges. Jake would love nothing more than to put those podunk, redneck, hillbilly doctors and their spouses in one of the camps. He just had to figure out a plan of attack.

  “I’m starting to hate Arkansas,” he said, scratching his arm.

  They were set up in an old school’s parking lot on the outskirts of Fort Smith. They had tied into the power here. With an odd assortment of RVs, campers, and the mobile command of their tactical units, tasked with securing food, they had their own small compound. Fuel tankers, drone operators, extra generators. Jake thought that was going to be enough, but he did not think they’d been utilizing their resources all that well.

  Walking to a reefer truck, Jake got himself out a package of steak to have for his dinner. He tucked it under his arm and went into a different one. It was not freezing, but it was definitely cooler than the outside air. The walk-in trailer had the temperature cranked to just above freezing. He selected two potatoes and then headed out, passing half a dozen agents who came here to do the same.

  Their food selections in their RVs weren't fantastic, and if some food they had re-appropriated went missing, or in the stomachs of those who did the work to get it, nobody was looking too hard at them. With the election just months away, they had to keep their heads down. His supervisor was right about that. After the election was stolen, all this food they had been re-appropriating would be needed to feed people who thought like them, worked for them, and served them. The right-wing terrorists? Not so much.

  “Aw man, they still have steaks next door?” an agent asked Jake.

  “Yeah, you snooze, you lose,” Jake said with a grin. “But I think there’s a ton in the brown box, third shelf, halfway down on your right.”

  “Oh man, thanks!”

  Thirty-Three

  Kerry wished her new boyfriend would get in touch with her more often. He had been working nonstop. He’d had to pull double shifts, sometimes way out of his area, hours away. He had not been happy about the roadblocks and having to turn people around, or to let them keep traveling. The civil unrest was almost as scary as the uptick in the cases of the virus. It still chafed at everyone that, for the greater good, civil liberties and privileges were just put on hold, often with little thought to what that meant in the long term.

  She had swung by the market to check on the building when her phone rang. She ignored it at first, trying to get things locked back up, but then locked the doors and fished her phone out of her pocket, answering it.

  “Hello?” she said, not recognizing the number.

  “Hi, I’m trying to find Sgt. Daniels, is he by chance with you?”

  “I haven’t seen him in a few days honestly.
Can I get your name so I can pass the info along? I should be seeing him later on.”

  “It’s... I’d rather remain anonymous,” the young sounding man said from the other line.

  “You know your phone number comes up on the caller ID?” she asked, sort of amused and curious who this was and how he knew how to get a hold of her.

  “I know, but this is a burner phone. I just need to speak to him. It’s important.”

  “Ok,” Kerry said. “Do you have his cell phone number?”

  “Yes, but he’s not answering.”

  “Ok, well let me give him a call really quick. Can he call you back at that number if I can get him to answer?”

  “Yes, but please hurry. I have to dump this phone soon, or they’ll find me.”

  “Who will find you?” Kerry asked.

  “I’m one of the people who works for Homeland who doesn’t like what’s happening and what’s about to happen.”

  That sent goosebumps up and down Kerry’s flesh. Suddenly the amusement was gone from the conversation.

  “I’m calling him right now,” she said.

  “Thank you,” the voice said and then hung up.

  Immediately Kerry dialed her boyfriend.

  “Hey Kerry, how have you been? I thought you didn’t like me any more.”

  “I’m good, listen, I just got a strange phone call. Somebody was looking for you and thought I might know how to get a hold of you.”

  “Oh yeah? So, this is all work and not about us?”

  Kerry ignored the jab. “They said they were with Homeland and weren’t happy with what’s been happening and what is about to happen.”

  “Well, the world is crazy right now,” he said, ignoring the frantic note in her tone now.

  “Why would somebody from Homeland ask for you specifically, and outside of normal channels?” she asked him. “That seems more than just the regular crazy that we’ve had going on.”