The Ungovernable

by Franklin Horton

  When the mag ran dry, he awkwardly tugged it from the rifle, threw it over his back, and switched to another. He wasn’t proficient at this and had to smack it several times with his hand to seat it securely. Then it took him a moment to recall how to close the bolt on the fancy modern rifle. He’d expected to take fire during the reloading pause but they were probably having trouble figuring out where to shoot. He was pretty well-hidden.

  When he got his eye back on the optic, he found the men squatted down, trying both to care for their wounded and desperately trying to figure out where the gunfire was coming from. Lloyd was hit with another wave of pain and it took his breath. When he recovered, he targeted one of the crouched men and started to squeeze the trigger. Before he could fire, there was a massive BOOM and a new rifle entered the fight.

  “You were supposed to wait on my fire!” Bird said into the radio.

  Lloyd didn’t answer him, not wanting to spare the effort required to retrieve his radio. He watched the men scramble, trying to find cover in the middle of a vast, empty cattle pasture. There was none. When it was merely Lloyd’s rifle, the men seemed to think there remained a path forward. Taking fire from the front, they were less certain where to go. Mack Bird’s rifle cracked again and another man disappeared.

  Lloyd had heard before that Mack Bird was a proficient shooter. He used to compete in shooting competitions and was raising his children to do the same. The two little girls, armed with pink .22 caliber rifles, had no trouble dropping squirrels or rabbits with head shots. Lloyd didn't know what Bird was using but the report was as loud as a cannon, and with each shot a misty red cloud sprayed into the air.

  Knowing that he was not the dead-eye shooter Bird was, Lloyd realized his best path was to impede the invaders’ retreat and pin them down for Bird to surgically take out. When it seemed like the men were rallying for a coordinated retreat, Lloyd positioned his crosshair in the center of the cluster of men and started dumping rounds three at a time. He was never a good shot, more a student of the “spray and pray” school of marksmanship, but it served its purpose, making retreat no safer an option than advancing.

  Soon, only two men remained in the group of attackers, both hunkered down against a jutting chunk of limestone that pushed from the core of the mountain like exposed bone from a desiccated corpse. Every time one of the men tried to shoot back, they were pinned down either by Bird’s precision fire or the haphazard pounding laid down by Lloyd.

  Aware that they were at a standoff, the attackers accepted that the only remaining course of action was for them to surrender or to bolt for the woods higher up the mountain. They wasted no time. They broke and ran like the devil was handing out kisses.

  The runners must have thought that by launching their retreat as a pair it gave them a fifty-fifty chance of making it, apparently expecting Lloyd and Bird would be torn between which target to take, thereby increasing their chances of reaching the woods. That might have been true if Lloyd was the only shooter but he wasn’t. Bird had no problem with those odds. It was no more difficult than a double when shooting skeet.

  The lead runner must have already been hit once. He was running with his body at an odd angle that threw off Bird’s point of impact. Rather than hitting center mass or a headshot, whatever massive projectile Bird was sending caught the first runner in the side of his body between the waist and the ribs. For a moment it reminded Lloyd of the old comedian who used to smash watermelons with a sledgehammer. Blood and gore sprayed for twenty feet.

  The invader continued trying to run, holding in his guts as they poured forth, streaming behind him like an uncooperative water hose. Soon the blood loss and trauma took its toll and he dropped. Bird had been confident enough of this eventuality that he didn’t waste a second round on him.

  The second man kicked it into a higher gear. He began weaving back and forth as if that might make him harder to hit. It could have worked if his motions were erratic but they were not. He swung with the consistency of a pendulum, going ten feet to one side and then back ten feet to the other. All Bird had to do was wait for him in the center of his path. When the fleeing man crossed back from one extremity of his range to the other, Bird gave him the appropriate lead and sent another round.

  Even Lloyd, who had seen a lot of ugly shit in the last year, flinched at the result. The round center punched the body and for a brief moment Lloyd was certain he could see light shining through his middle like he was a sheet of dough and someone had just cut out a biscuit.

  Lloyd dropped his rifle and dug frantically for the radio. He brought it to his mouth, holding it with both hands. "Bird! Bird! We got them!"

  A second later Bird piped in. "I think you're right. They're all down. I want to check the bodies but let's wait for backup first. We need to do this right."

  Jim and Hugh were at that very moment tearing across fields and farms, riding beyond their abilities to find where the gunshots originated. They’d missed all the previous radio traffic, the hills laying in such a way that they could communicate with Jim’s home but not with people more distant. They didn’t know what was taking place with Lloyd, Mack, and the rest of their people.

  “Ellen, I’m coming by the house,” Jim said as he neared his own property. “I want Pete to take a radio and get to his old outpost. No shooting. There’re too many people running around. Just keep an eye on things.”

  “I’m here,” came a response.

  “Randi?” Jim asked.

  “Yeah. Men slipped by Lloyd. The gunfire is him and Mack Bird dealing with it. I figured they were headed for your house so I came this way in case anyone got past them.”

  “Thank you!” Jim said. “We’re going to go down the valley then, toward Bird’s place.”

  “Be careful,” Randi cautioned. “I’m with Ellen and we got this.”

  The distant gunfire became more sporadic, with multiple rifles involved now. Jim could hear what sounded like 5.56 interspersed with the massive boom of something high caliber.

  Then he heard Lloyd's voice on the radio. He was talking to Bird and sounded certain that they had neutralized the threat.

  "What's the fuck is going on?" Jim barked into his radio.

  "Nearly a dozen men," Lloyd said. “Caught them coming around me.”

  "Why didn't you call for us on the radio?" Jim asked.

  "I did, dammit!” Lloyd snapped. "Several times."

  "I'm sorry," Jim said. "I guess I was out of range.”

  “How convenient. Leaving the heavy work to me.”

  “Just tell me where you are, Lloyd.”

  Lloyd gave their location and then Bird came on the radio.

  "We haven’t checked all the bodies. We’ll wait on you guys. I want some cover while we make sure they’re dead.”

  21

  None of the attackers were alive by the time Mack, Jim, and Hugh approached. They checked and double-checked to make sure no one had any fight left in them. With no prisoners to deal with, they set about recovering any usable weapons and gear from the dead.

  There was nothing special about the attackers’ gear. They had a mixture of rifles from all over the spectrum—different calibers, different makes. There were low-end ARs and high-end hunting rifles. The couple of handguns they found ranged from decent to junk. There was no extraordinary quantity of ammunition. Each man carried enough to defend himself but not to fight a protracted battle.

  With the chips falling as they had, the extra ammunition hadn't helped the men at all. It wasn’t their supplies that let them down, but their planning. Had they chosen a better route, one less visible, they might have succeeded in reaching Jim's house unnoticed. With no survivors, folks in the valley would never know why they did things the way they did.

  While nothing about the men's gear merited extraordinary attention, a hand-drawn map Hugh found in one man's pocket set Jim reeling. After Jim had a moment to study it, he began stomping around and muttering, making threats against any and all who would
enter their valley unbidden.

  "This would take them right to my house," Jim spat, waving the map around.

  The crude map had enough significant landmarks to get someone from town into the valley, and just like with a treasure map, the final destination was marked with an X. That X was Jim's house.

  "It has to be that bastard Fred Wimmer," Jim growled. "He’s pissed at me over what happened at that meeting. He's ratting us all out. He’s going to get someone killed unless I get to him first."

  "I don't particularly like the guy either," Bird said, "but that doesn't necessarily mean he’s behind this. Anyone could have gotten this information from tax maps at the courthouse. They could have got it from the power company. Hell, they could have got it from a newspaper delivery guy, a meter reader, or some old man who happens to know where you live. Like I said, I got nothing for the guy but if you zoom in too close on him you may miss something else important.”

  Bird was right. Jim was prone to holding a grudge and it could influence his judgment. He definitely didn't need to be wearing blinders and miss something important because he was pissed off at Fred Wimmer. He needed to keep an open mind.

  Hugh stared at the line of dead men and shook his head. "They shouldn’t have gotten this far. We need to rework this whole system of observation posts. Right after the disaster people stuck to the roads because that's what they knew. They’re adapting. They’re changing their tactics and realizing the roads are too exposed. We need to put people at clear vantage points where they can see more of the valley, not just down the road ahead of them."

  "Like Outpost Pete," Jim said. "The boy had the right idea while I was gone. Get up high where you can see everything."

  "You doing okay over there, Lloyd?" Bird asked.

  "I thought you had medical on the way," Lloyd groaned. “Any longer and I’m more likely to need an undertaker.”

  Jim couldn't tell if the distress in Lloyd’s voice was real or just his regular drama. “We got Randi on the way. She's old and it takes her a while."

  "I'll make sure and pass that on," Lloyd said. “It would be a shame for you to survive this attack only to be killed by your own medic because you couldn’t stop running that mouth.”

  For a brief, terrifying moment they thought Lloyd might've been hit by one of the few rounds that the attackers managed to get off in his direction. When Jim and Hugh arrived, they converged on the bodies with Bird, taking a moment to confirm there were no survivors. They’d expected Lloyd to join them there but he didn’t show up. They put out a call on the radio and he responded. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell them anything about his condition but confirmed he needed help. They ran to him while Bird continued to search the bodies.

  It turned out that when the gunfight was over Lloyd released his weapon from his cramping fingers and laid his head down in the grass. Unable to keep himself positioned at the lip of the draw, he slid a few feet downhill in the damp grass, racked with pain and scared to move. When his friends arrived at his side, they made a quick search for any blood or wounds. They found neither.

  "I wasn't hit," Lloyd protested. "I don't know what happened. I think it’s a stroke or a heart attack.”

  Hugh probed Lloyd's muscles with the tips of his fingers and did indeed find them contracted. "Stick out your tongue."

  "What?"

  "Stick out your tongue, Lloyd," Hugh repeated. "One of the signs of stroke is that your tongue may deviate to the side when extended."

  Lloyd did as he was told, an apprehensive look on his face. "Hair does it rook?" Lloyd asked, finding it difficult to speak with his tongue jutting out.

  "Pickled by liquor but otherwise normal," Jim said. “Kind of reminds me of the worm at the bottom of a bottle of Mezcal.”

  Hugh and Jim assisted Lloyd to where the bodies lay stretched out. Hugh spread a poncho on the ground and Lloyd laid on it while they finished searching the bodies. While the men proceeded with the morbid work, Lloyd distracted himself by taking jabs at his old friend.

  "Do I have to do everything myself? I tried to get you on the radio several times and you completely ignored me. I can tell you how much regard you have for your oldest friend that you sent him out alone to defend your valley. You ain’t that likeable a person. You’d do well to better protect the friends you have."

  "I was helping Hugh," Jim said.

  "You weren't alone, Lloyd," Bird added. “I was helping you.”

  “I’m sure you were probably stretched out on a hammock somewhere, taking a leisurely nap. Maybe you were out there dipping your lily while I was in a life or death struggle for the fate of this valley.”

  "I was not stretched out in a hammock and I don’t even know what the hell ‘dipping your lily’ means. You know I manned this outpost until after midnight when you came and took over for me. I was in bed this morning when Hugh called me on the radio and said he had men approaching his observation post."

  That there had been visitors at Hugh’s position was news to both Lloyd and Bird, whose locations prevented them from receiving Hugh’s earlier radio transmissions.

  "So what happened there?" Bird asked. "I heard shots but I assumed they were part of this attack."

  "I got the drop on them," Hugh said. "They never got a shot off. I held them until Jim got there. When you guys started shooting they admitted they were a diversionary force, distracting us to improve the odds of this team."

  "They sounded a little too pleased about it too," Jim groused.

  "Any casualties down there?" Bird asked.

  Hugh chuckled. "You know that old expression about not killing the messenger?"

  Bird nodded.

  "Jim kills the messenger," Hugh said.

  "Good to know," Bird replied. "If I’ve got bad news, I'm sending Lloyd."

  "Way to ease the spirits of a dying man," Lloyd groused. "I thought those present at the deathbed of an expiring warrior were supposed to tell them how brave they were and assure them they would rise to fight again.”

  "You're not going to die," Jim said.

  "Unless you give Jim bad news," Bird stated. “Remember, he kills the messenger.”

  “You’re not going to die,” Randi pronounced over Lloyd’s moans.

  He insisted on holding Randi’s hand. “I don’t want to die alone.”

  “It’s a cramp, Lloyd.”

  “But it’s everything. Feet to neck. It has to be a stroke.”

  “It’s a full body cramp,” Randi explained. “They’re not uncommon in certain situations.”

  “What kinds of situations?” Jim asked.

  “Like when an out-of-shape, middle-aged man who prefers liquor over water tries to perform a strenuous physical activity.”

  Lloyd sputtered, offended. “I’m in fine form.”

  “Sure,” said Jim, “if your form is a loaf of soggy French bread.”

  “Fuck you,” Lloyd spat. He tried to give Jim the finger but the hand curled in a spasm and he couldn’t extend the finger. He looked at Randi in desperation. “What can I do?”

  “Let’s get some water in you for now,” Randi said. “Then, if you can get on a horse, I’ll let you ride double with me to my house. We’ll make you an electrolyte solution and try to get your chemistry back where it should be.”

  Hugh and Jim helped get Lloyd on a horse and Randi rode off toward her house.

  “What do we do with these bodies?” Bird asked.

  “I’ve got too much on my plate to dig ten graves,” Jim said. “I suggest we drag them to a shallow sinkhole and shovel dirt over them.”

  Bird shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

  “Got a better option?”

  “No, but I don’t like it.”

  “I have a hard time showing proper respect to men who were on their way to attack my house,” Jim said. “If it was just me, I’d leave them for the buzzards. They’d be gone in a week.”

  They used a horse and rope to drag each man to a nearby sinkhole. The valley was
full of them, ranging from those large enough to conceal a mobile home to others no bigger than earthen hot tubs. Once they had the men stacked neatly, Bird left to fetch shovels from his place.

  Hugh and Jim waited nearby, not wanting to sit in the presence of the bodies.

  “What’s your plan, Jim?”

  “I’ve got a million ideas flying through my brain and no idea what to do with any of them,” Jim answered. “It’s two weeks from the 4th of July. Is this what every day is going to be like? Am I going to be fighting for my life on a daily basis?”

  “Not just your life,” Hugh said. “Everyone in your group is at risk.”

  “Thanks a lot, Hugh. As if I didn’t feel guilty enough.”

  Hugh shrugged. “Not trying to make you feel guilty, man. Just stating facts. Anyone who gets between you and the men who want you is in danger.”

  “We’re going to have to tighten shit up. I never planned on having to bug out but it’s entirely possible I could be driven from my home. We all could.”

  “We’re well armed but there could be thousands of people contending for this bounty,” Hugh noted. “Though we’ve only seen folks from town, if they distributed the flyers regionally there could be other groups on their way here.”

  Jim stared off at his beautiful valley. He’d never seen it from this particular vantage point before. “That makes me sick, Hugh. How do I fix this? How does it end?”

  “No idea, brother.”

  “I would pick my family up and move right now if I had a way to do so. We can’t take all our supplies though, and we can’t just wander around. Being nomadic is not sustainable.”

  “All we can do is increase our defenses and, like you said, make provisions for bugging out if it comes to that. It’s going to make it hard to raise crops though. Everything is coming up now. People are already eating squash and peas. The whole business of preserving food hasn’t even begun yet. I don’t know how we’re going to do it all. Raising food takes labor, guarding the valley takes labor, and we only have so many people.”