The Ungovernable

by Franklin Horton

  “Then you go on about your life. No one in command knows about this mission or about your crew’s involvement. To be honest, I'd rather die out in the field than spend another five years in that office coaching the quarterbacks who are out there doing the real work. I’m not cut out for a desk job.”

  Gordon sucked in a deep lungful of smoke and exhaled through his nose. "I appreciate you being straight with me. I need to talk to my guys but I'm fairly sure they’ll be in agreement with me. They tend to trust my gut.”

  "What’s your gut telling you?"

  Gordon flipped the smoldering butt into the gravels. "My gut says we can take care of what you’re asking of us. As far as your end of the mission, that’s all on you." He gestured back to where the rest of his buddies were. "Can I offer you beer? If those assholes haven’t drained it, it’s pretty good."

  Boss shook his head. "No thanks. I appreciate it but I've got four more hours in the gym ahead of me. I'm going to need everything I’ve got."

  24

  “Get some shoes on that you can wear in the garden,” Ellen told Ariel.

  “I’m painting,” Ariel said. “Can’t I keep painting? I don’t want to garden.”

  Ellen was upset, angry and frustrated over everything that had happened. Over the flyer, the attack on her valley, and over having to be scared again.

  “No, you can’t keep painting. I need help in the garden. Everyone has a job to do and this is one of yours.”

  “Why can’t my job be painting?”

  “Because we need gardeners more than we need painters right now.”

  Ariel gave a dramatic sigh and wilted, as if death by gardening was imminent. She slogged off to her room to search for shoes.

  “And you better not take too long,” Ellen warned, shouldering her rifle and heading out the door.

  By the time the screen door clacked shut she was already at the bottom of the steps and headed for the garden at a determined pace. She normally enjoyed gardening–it was her happy place. Today, however, there were no happy places anywhere. She was angry at the world. For reasons she couldn’t fully explain, she was also angry at Jim.

  This wasn’t his fault. He’d done nothing but try to keep them safe and comfortable at a time when those things were at a premium. If anything, she should be trying to support him, especially since he was the one in the crosshairs. That was part of what made her mad though. By putting himself in the crosshairs, his family was forced to be there also.

  But had he put himself there?

  He had indeed. The whole mission to destroy the power plant hadn’t been necessary. It was revenge for the government stealing power from local people. It was a statement against forcing people to disarm to receive aid. How had Jim gotten to the point of doing something like that? How had he gone from being a hermit who simply wanted to be left alone to being someone taking action against the government on behalf of his community?

  She had the sudden realization that if she was angry with him over this, she needed to be angry at herself. She was partly to blame. She was the one who’d pushed him to accept the mantle of leadership that he kept dodging. If left to his own devices, he’d probably have continued acting under his isolationist strategy. He’d only done what he did because he thought he was responsible for everyone and she was part of the reason he felt that way.

  It made her want to cry. She was partly to blame for everything that had happened and everything that was yet to happen.

  “What do you want me to do?” Ariel asked, startling her mother.

  “Take this hoe and clear the weeds around those tomatoes,” Ellen said, distracted and thinking about her role in everything. Should she have just left him alone to make his own decisions?

  “You didn’t say please,” Ariel said. “That’s the magic word.” She skipped away, giggling.

  Ellen took another hoe and was preparing to take up the weeds around the potato hills. Noise at the house drew her attention and she saw Jim setting a blue plastic barrel on the porch before returning to the barn to get another. She decided she couldn’t offer him any more advice ever again. It carried too much of a burden. Too much responsibility.

  The familiarity of those words took her back to previous conversations she and Jim had, particularly the conversations about him not wanting to take care of the other people in the valley. He didn’t want the responsibility, didn’t want the burden. When every action potentially carried drastic and irreversible consequences, what did one do? Hide out and avoid it? Pass the buck? Or did one try to make the best decision they could under the circumstances, accepting that they would have to live with the consequences?

  That was the road Jim had taken and she’d been partly responsible for him going that route. If she felt strongly enough that it was the right course, then she had to accept that it was probably the right course. He’d done what he thought was right. She couldn’t fault him for it. Maybe in the end they’d fail to save the valley and the people in it. Perhaps they’d all have to go their own separate ways and concede this valley to scavengers, rogues, and wildlife. If that was what it took to save her family, she’d have to do it, even if it meant losing the house and the elaborate preparations Jim had made.

  “Mommy, I see something,” Ariel said.

  Ellen snapped to attention. “Where?”

  Ariel pointed but Ellen saw nothing. She went to the garden fence and traded her hoe for the rifle. She raised the scope to her eye and scanned the woods where Ariel had pointed but saw nothing.

  “It could have been a deer,” Ellen said.

  “I think it was a Bigfoot,” Ariel said, excited.

  Ellen returned to the fence, ready to trade the rifle for the hoe, and paused. She glanced back to the dense forest that Ariel had pointed to. It was a maze of hardwoods with a few cedars interspersed. It was a jumble of tall standing timber and fallen trees, with a mix of brightly lit pockets and regions of deep black shadow. Unless you caught something moving there was no way you’d find anything there.

  Ariel had grown up here; she didn’t imagine things. Was something out there? Were they being watched? Was there somebody ready to shoot them or take them prisoner to manipulate Jim into surrendering? They were in the open. Someone with a scoped rifle could be watching them right now.

  Ellen watched her daughter. Her snarky, smart-aleck, intelligent, sweet daughter had gone back to work chopping at weeds with her hoe. Occasionally, she cut a sideways glance back at the woods. She had seen something, or at least thought she had. It wasn’t an act, nor a diversion to get out of work.

  Ellen slung her rifle back over her shoulder and waved to Ariel. “We can do that later, honey. Let’s go back to the house now and get your dad to check the woods.”

  Ariel propped her hoe against the fence and ran past her mother, through the gate, and toward the house. She made no comments about how she hadn’t wanted to work in the garden anyway. Jim always said you had to trust your gut and this was one of those cases. Ellen’s gut said it was better to play it safe.

  She backed out of the garden and shut the gate, keeping her eyes on the woods, watching for movement as she headed toward the house. Her heart was racing. She’d never experienced an anxiety attack in her life but she thought that was what was happening. She was short of breath and felt lightheaded.

  Nearly at the house, still backing up, she tripped over the raised root of a flowering cherry tree and sat down hard.

  “Are you okay, Mommy?” Ariel asked, running toward her mother.

  “Ellen!” Jim was between the barn and the house with another blue barrel on his shoulder. He set it down and ran toward his wife.

  “I’m fine,” she said, getting to her feet and brushing her pants off.

  “Mommy fell, Daddy,” Ariel said.

  “I saw that,” Jim said, taking Ellen’s arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes,” Ellen said, though her eyes told a different story.

  “You don’t seem o
kay,” Jim said. He could see the fear, the panic that threatened to overwhelm her at any moment.

  “Ariel saw some movement in the woods,” Ellen said, her voice quavering. “It could have been a deer. We don’t know.”

  Jim looked toward the woods. “Let’s get you inside and then I’ll go check it out.”

  She pulled away from him. “I’m fine. You go check it out. Ariel and I will wait for you on the porch.”

  “Okay.” Jim was as concerned about Ellen at that moment as he was about anything in the woods. He’d never seen her like that, so consumed with fear. He went to the porch and picked up his rifle, chambering a round. He was already wearing his tac vest and sidearm. “I’ll be back in a minute. You guys lock the door and keep an eye out.”

  Ellen nodded but said nothing.

  “We will, Daddy,” Ariel said, tugging at her mother’s arm.

  25

  “Pete! It’s Dad. Can you hear me?” Jim said into his radio.

  “I got you, Dad. What’s up?”

  “Your sister thinks she saw something in the woods. It’s probably nothing but I’m going to check it out. Your mom is a little freaked out.”

  “Got it. Charlie’s up here with me. We’ll keep an eye on you.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “No prob, Dad,” Pete replied.

  Jim tucked the radio back in its pocket on his vest and started jogging. He was already past the garden but it was a good distance to the woods. He stopped to go through a gate, closed it behind him, then started jogging. The pasture was covered in low, lush grass with occasional bright green tufts the cattle had somehow missed. At the small creek he stopped to cross a log bridge. He could have jumped the entire creek but last time he tried his feet slipped out from under him and he went down hard. No use taking risks when he couldn’t run into town for an X-ray.

  Beyond the creek Jim crossed a flat spot that had been used as a landing for a logging operation in the months before the world changed. It was where the skidders dragged the logs and piled them until the trucks showed up with their knuckle-boom loaders. The area was littered with stumps, culled logs, and piles of sawdust. There was a pile containing the ends of logs that had been cut off to get them down to marketable size. That pile had provided a lot of firewood for Jim’s family.

  He crossed the rutted expanse, the ground baked into a brown brick of mud and sawdust. He slowed to step over a dead electric fence, then continued walking up a rutted logging road. He watched for snakes, a lifelong habit, though he’d never run across anything on his farm but harmless varieties.

  He paused to get his bearings. He was starting up a series of isolated hills that were not part of the larger mountain range. They were surrounded on all sides by farmland. It was a pocket of woods about seventy to eighty acres in size. Deer and turkey were plentiful there, as were the squirrels that the boys brought in from their snares nearly every day.

  To his left was the area where Ariel indicated she’d seen movement. It was on a steep, wooded slope with no cross trails. He decided that he’d rather follow the easier route of the logging road and approach the area in question from above. Then he could cut straight down through it, confirm nothing was amiss, and exit into the pasture at the bottom of the woods. He pulled his radio from his pocket.

  “Pete, you got eyes on me?”

  “Roger, Dad.”

  “I’m going to follow this logging road to the top of the hill then come back down through the woods. You may lose sight of me after I get around the next bend. If you draw a line from the garden to the top of this hill, that’s where I’ll be coming back down. If you see someone, don’t shoot, because it might be me. Got it?”

  “Got it, Dad. Be careful.”

  “Be careful, Jim.” It was Ellen. She sounded better now, her panic subsiding, though concerned for him.

  The road got steeper. It had been carved into the mountain with a bulldozer. It was made for skidders with four wheel drive and massive five-foot tall tires weighing a thousand pounds each. It didn’t observe the standards of roads designed for cars. It climbed sharply and Jim was soon chugging away like an engine, taking short, controlled breaths. He tried to look at his body as a machine, maximizing his stride and finding his most efficient pace. Move fast but don’t bonk was the rule.

  When the road leveled off near the peak of the hill, he stopped to listen. The mountain was littered with leaves, weeds, and branches. It was a hard place to navigate in total silence. He heard nothing but birds and a distant dog. It was exactly what he wanted to hear. He brought his rifle up to low ready and confirmed the glint of brass in the chamber. He flicked the safety off, that single sound louder than he expected.

  He began to work on his own noise signature. He paused long enough to let his breathing slow, watching his steps to avoid rocks and branches. He dodged blackberry vines, aware that they generated their own sound as they ripped and tore at clothing. He took a step at a time, finding his next foot placement before he stepped again. He didn’t expect to find anyone up there but caution was the rule anymore.

  He searched for signs that others had been moving around there. Pete and Charlie had snares in these woods and he’d committed their boot prints to memory for just such occasions as this. If he saw those familiar prints, he could eliminate them.

  Jim crept along, watching and listening. The crest of the hill was a tangled scrub of chest-high weeds and briars. Last year's logging had removed the tall hardwoods that sheltered the area and weeds were the first to stake their claim as nature retook the ground. The terrain was uneven. There were piles of spoils created by the dozer as it made roads and switchbacks, thick roots protruding from the dirt piles like outstretched arms, and slash piles of limbs. Occasionally there would be a complete tree that had been cut down before revealing a fatal flaw that destroyed its market value.

  The terrain was a tactical nightmare. He couldn’t see a thing. The same features that made moving around difficult also presented countless places for a person to hide. Jim keyed his microphone. "You there, Pete?"

  "I got you, Dad."

  "I'm on top of the hill. I’m going to circle around, then start down the hill directly toward our garden."

  "Got it."

  Thirty feet ahead of Jim was a pile of logs jumbled together, their butt ends jutting in all directions. It was culled and odd-lengths pushed into a pile with a dozer. When his eye roamed in that direction Jim thought he saw a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision.

  He snapped his rifle from low ready to high. Wherever his eyes went, the rifle followed. He started at the top right corner of the pile and visually traced it in a grid pattern. He'd yet to find the source of the movement that had drawn his attention. He was about to write it off to being a bird or chipmunk when a figure in Realtree camo popped up from the base of a low log. He was on his knees, a rifle pointed in Jim's direction.

  "Freeze!" he shouted.

  When Jim's head jerked in the direction of the voice, his rifle came with him. The glowing red circle and dot reticle of his optic stopped on the man's chest. Jim didn’t hesitate. Two quick flicks of the trigger sent the attacker sprawling backward.

  Before he could even process what had taken place there was movement on several fronts. Jim was uncertain if the attack was launched off the man's command for him to freeze or if it was triggered by his own gunshots but it was on. Fifty yards to his right a man screamed like a banshee as he barreled through the underbrush. Jim swung toward him. If the yell was an attempt to intimidate him, it didn’t work. All it did was give him advance warning of who needed to be killed next.

  Jim was ready to oblige him when the running man ducked like a linebacker charging a line but continued to run, parting the weeds like a water buffalo in the tall grass of Africa. Jim couldn’t see any part of him but aimed ahead of his wake and sent rounds flying.

  The first two missed but the third brought a cry of pain and halted his progress. Jim didn't
want to leave him alive—that was against his personal rules of engagement—but it was suicide to run into those weeds after him. He stood there frozen, trying to figure out his next move. His breathing was fast and shallow, his eyes scanning with a mechanical efficiency.

  In the stillness, he noticed the chorus of voices on his radio. He’d turned the volume down earlier so it wouldn’t give him away. He dropped a hand from his rifle and cranked it back up. There was Pete demanding to know if he was okay, the same from Ellen. There were other voices stepping on top of each other, people from elsewhere in the valley wanting to know where the shots were coming from.

  Jim stood wide-eyed and terrified. He was in the open, alone, separated from any backup. Then he heard crackling; branches underfoot. Under several sets of feet. He jerked his head from one direction to the other, watching for whoever might be coming. Although there was no one visible the sound was growing louder.

  Closer.

  Heads popped up in the thick brush. They were several of them, forty to fifty yards away, branches snapping beneath their feet as they charged through the obstacle course of limbs, weeds, and logs. Part of Jim understood that these men had intended to take him alive at one point. Now that he’d shot two of them, he could no longer trust that was the case. Vengeance could overrule hunger. He turned and fled.

  While his pursuers were slowed by the terrain and underbrush, Jim was on the cleared logging trail. He needed to put distance between him and these men before they reached the cleared trail. Clutching his rifle tightly in both hands he beat feet for all he was worth.

  The men fired in his direction, their rounds whistling around him, snapping as they punched leaves and small branches. While nothing was close enough to indicate that their master plan of taking him alive had been abandoned he wasn’t going to wait around and ask them.

  Not wanting to run blindly, he flitted his eyes between the terrain at his feet and any potential threats ahead of him. Logging roads weren’t exactly maintained like driveways. There were deep ruts and loose rocks the size of grapefruits. One misplaced step and he might go down in a tumble.