by AJ Newman
The man lay on his side, so Karen loosened the man’s belt and worked his pants and underwear down. She saw the three bloody holes in the man’s butt and knew she had to remove the lead. She took a pair of tweezers from the first aid kit, dowsed them with alcohol, and then poured the rest of the small bottle over the three wounds. The man lurched and moaned before settling down again. She stuck the tweezers into a wound and found the slug was only about a half-inch deep. She clamped down on the pellet and removed it. The other two were a bit deeper, and he moved again while she probed for the lead shot.
Now, with the buckshot removed, she squirted antiseptic salve into each hole and placed a large Band-Aid over both wounds. She was out of the blood-clotting agent and kept the pressure on his wounds. She chuckled to herself when she realized she was hiding in a pile of downed trees with her hand on a man’s ass. It reminded her of her teenage years with the farm boys next door when they’d wanted to play doctor with her in the hayloft.
Karen fell asleep and didn’t hear the search team from the raiders come looking for them. The men slipped up on them and scoured the entire area before one had the bright idea to probe the tangled mess of tree limbs and leaves.
“Hey, I found a foot. There’s a man attached to it.”
“Remove those branches.”
The soldier’s head and shoulders were now uncovered, and the men were astounded to find a woman with her head resting on the man’s back. “This guy has been shot, and the woman treated his wound.”
Karen had woken up but was able to keep her composure and listen to the thugs discuss her and the soldier. The men thought she was unconscious and carried her and the soldier to their vehicle. The leader said, “Put them in the back of the truck. Norm, you drive them back to the base while Harvey watches them in case they wake up. We’ll keep searching the area.”
The men loaded the soldier onto the truck’s bed first and then picked Karen up and carried her to the bed. Their hands were roaming about her body, but she remained calm. She knew she’d slipped her knife under her shirt and would deal with these guys later. They pitched her next to the soldier knocking her head against the inside of the truck’s bed, which knocked her out. They drove southeast heading to Chattanooga.
Karen came to a few minutes later, and wanted to make sure they were far away from the other men before she dealt with the asshats in the truck. Her head pounded with pain from hitting the truck bed. She stayed calm and tried to stay awake as sleep taunted her when the truck rocked back and forth on the old dirt road. She screwed up and fell asleep.
***
We heard the battle raging up on the hillside, and I ordered the team to prepare for a fight. “That almost has to be our guys in that fight. Grab your guns, ammo, and backpacks. Prepare for a long fight.”
Ten minutes later, we drove our trucks across the farmland to the foothills. We were almost to the bottom of the hillside when I saw several people heading our way. I recognized Missy and Chrissy right away. Missy had bloody wounds, and we tended to her while Chrissy told them about the fight in the woods.
Chrissy told us her story while tears flowed down her cheeks. “We took Syd home, and on the way to the lake, we heard gunfire. There were soldiers under attack by a bunch of those raider guys. The soldiers were outnumbered, and Mom thought we could take out a bunch of the raiders before they knew what hit them. She was wrong. We killed about eight of them, but many more came from the woods and overwhelmed us. We had to retreat. Mom disappeared about the time we turned to run down the hill. I think she stayed back to give us covering fire.”
I asked, “Beth, did you see anything? What about Maggie?”
Beth joined Chrissy as tears flowed. “I saw Maggie get shot in the chest. The bullet came out her back. It was too much to take. I panicked and ran.”
“Kat, Billie, and…” I tried to say…
Maria interrupted. “Jason, let me go up the hill. You haven’t recovered from the lion attack, much less the bullet wound,” she said.
“Maria, I need you to lead the farm’s defenses. No argument, just go. Please!”
Maria rolled her eyes. “Okay, boss.”
“Now, Kat, Billie, Alex, Ross, and I’ll go up the hill to see what happened. I don’t intend to engage the enemy at this time. We’ll look for Karen and try to retrieve Maggie’s body. Maria, if the coast is clear, we’ll send for one of the trucks to go up the hill the long way.”
There were only a few hours of daylight left, and I wanted to be home by dark. The going was slow up the hillside because we had to watch out for ambushes and traps. A normal twenty-minute hike up the hillside became a two-hour ordeal. We were close to the ambush site when I halted the team and had them spread out before progressing closer.
Billie signaled that she had found something, and then held up a handful of spent brass. We’d arrived at the site of the battle. All of us found brass, broken limbs, and bodies. Yes, the raiders hadn’t gathered their dead. That surprised us. I whispered to Kat, “What kind of people are these. Leaving their dead to be eaten by coyotes and scavengers is barbaric.”
A few minutes later, Ross motioned for the rest of us to join him. Maggie’s body lay where she had fallen. A bullet had pierced her chest and snuffed out her young life. Not far from her, we found a brush and log pile that had been disturbed. Kat said, “Oh, my God, there’s blood on Karen’s hat. Wait; there were two people in here. There is a soldier’s hat and a combat knife. It’s not Karen’s. Someone used their handkerchief to stop a wound from bleeding.”
Billie called out. “Hey! Someone was dragged from here. There’s a bunch of footprints. Let’s follow them.”
I waved to get their attention and placed my finger over my lips. My signal for them to follow was seen by all, and we moved out. This was where MMax would come in handy, but he still needed time to recover from his wounds.
Yeah, I know I needed to recover from my wounds also, but we had to find Karen soon or forget her.
We followed the footprints to the driveway to Sydney’s house and stopped when we saw the footprints end and the tire tracks begin. Now tears came from my eyes as I remembered that Karen and I almost hooked up during the early days. I still thought of her as a great friend and mother to two wonderful young ladies. Now, I had to tell Missy and Chrissy we didn’t find their mother.
I sent Ross down the hill to bring a truck up to the driveway, and the rest of us searched the area for Karen. It was still light enough for me to see Sydney walking down the driveway toward us. She saw me and waved frantically. I said, “Kat, go see what she wants.”
Kat grinned and touched my arm as she passed me. Kat came back a few minutes later. “Sydney captured one of the raiders. He’s tied up on the front porch.”
The man had a gash on his head and struggled at his bindings when we walked up the steps to the porch. I asked, “Syd, how did you capture him?”
“He was wounded in the gunfight and a bit woozy. I brought him some water and tried to look at his head wound. Then when he tried to run his hand up my shirt, I hit him on the head. I had a flashlight to get a better look at his wound and slugged him with it. That’s how he received a broken nose.”
Kat laughed and held a 9 mm pistol out in front of her. “The bastard got what he deserved. Here, take this, Sydney. I have a spare. We won’t always be around to help you. I’ll take over his interrogation.”
She made the captured raider spill his guts. The tough guy wouldn’t speak until Kat cut his pants off him and ran her blade… You get the picture. The man didn’t want a sex change operation, so he squealed like a pig. After he was done talking, I took him into the woods and ended his miserable life. Yeah, I know it sounds barbaric, and I’ll have to answer to God one day, but for now, surviving was on my mind. The thug would have gone straight to his gang and made more trouble for us. I must add we did have a thirty-second trial for him before the execution.
The raiders were a conglomeration of biker gangs, drug
gangs, and crooked politicians. Yeah, they were the scum of the earth. The big difference in this group was the leaders were actually intelligent, and most had military experience. The only thing that held them back was they only had a small handful of men who’d actually fought in combat. The leaders were Army desk jockeys who knew strategy but couldn’t train their subordinates.
They controlled the area bounded by Atlanta, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. They were expanding every week into new territory as they took in smaller gangs, criminals, and weakling survivors. Their secondary leaders were based in each of the larger cities under their control. They ruled through fear with an iron fist. No one survived after challenging them.
Kat and I met with Missy and Chrissy to tell them about their mother. It was an ugly situation. We did our best to explain that we had no way to know where they had taken her and would only get more people killed, sending teams fanning out over the area. Missy calmed down, but Chrissy had a meltdown and had to be sedated. Father James and Sister Grace stayed with the girls for the next few days.
I doubled our guards and posted lookouts on the roads around the farm. We now had enough trained folks to increase our little army and security guards. We needed about twenty more trained fighters to make me feel safe. We also needed some more firepower. I desperately wanted some mortars and frag grenades.
☆
Chapter 17
Southeast of Beechgrove, Tennessee
The old truck rattled along the narrow road with the rear fenders flapping and blue smoke rolling from the exhaust. Old Highway 41 wasn’t in great shape before the shit hit the fan, and now, the road had one pothole after another. The left side tires hit a rather deep hole, causing the rear tire to blow out. The truck swerved off the road, the driver almost gained control, but he overcorrected and whipped the truck off the road and into a copse of small saplings. Dirt and dust filled the air just before the truck slammed into the trees. Trunks shattered, and limbs fell from the canopy above before the vehicle abruptly stopped.
The guard was thrown screaming over the cab, and his body had wrapped around a small tree trunk. The driver didn’t have a seatbelt. He’d been shredded as he shattered the windshield with his head. He lay half in the cab, bleeding out on the hood of the truck.
Karen and the soldier were in the bed of the 1949 Chevy pickup and were tossed about like bingo balls. Neither of the two received any serious injuries but were battered. Karen woke first and checked the soldier’s pulse. He was alive, so she moved on to the raiders. The windshield guy had bled out, but the other one moaned for help. Karen walked over to him and snickered. “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m wrapped around this tree, and I think my arms and back are broke. Help me?”
Karen used her toe to push against the man’s bloody arm. She saw the bone sticking out and pushed just above the break. The man cried out. “Stop! You’re killing me!”
“No, the crash killed you. You’re just a dead man who doesn’t know he’s dead. You’ll live another hour or so in horrible pain.”
“Aren’t you going to help me?”
“No, I was going to kill you, but your friend and that truck did me a favor. I’m taking your gun belt and Sig. I hope this doesn’t hurt too much.”
Karen unfastened his belt buckle and yanked the belt from under him. He screamed out in pain, waking the soldier. Karen found a bottle of water in the cab and gave the soldier a drink. He was groggy and a bit disorientated. “Where am I? Who are you? I don’t know you and could never forget your face.”
Karen said, “Slow down. I’m Karen, and I was captured with you. We tried to run the raiders off who attacked you. They had many more men than we’d thought, and they shot my team to pieces. They had to retreat. I was separated and tended to you. I thought we’d escape, but more of them came back and found us.”
The soldier said, “Now, your turn to slow up. I’m John, and I’m glad to meet you. Thanks for trying to save me. My ass feels like I’ve been shot.”
Karen laughed. “You had three 00 buckshot pellets in your butt. I removed them and stopped the bleeding.”
“So, I was knocked out when a beautiful lady had her hands on my butt. That’s bad luck.”
Karen smiled. “A good looking man like you shouldn’t have any trouble with getting ladies to place their hands on your butt.”
Karen realized what she had just said and covered her face. “I meant…”
John said, “I hope you meant exactly what you said,” and then held her hand in his.
Karen’s face betrayed her when it turned crimson. “I’m not interested in a relationship right now. My boyfriend was killed by a madman several weeks back.”
“But you’re not attached, and you are flirting with me. I would never tempt a woman in a committed relationship, but a beautiful lady who’s out fighting the bad guys deserves my attention.”
Karen dropped his hand. “We need to gather their weapons and get the heck out of here before someone comes looking for these guys.”
A broad smile crept across John’s face. “So when the fighting’s done for a while, you won’t mind me coming to see you?”
“We’ll see.”
John said, “Help me up.”
Karen tugged on his arms and assisted him while he pushed against the truck. They struggled, but got him to his feet. That’s when Karen saw the other side of his face for the first time. He had a horrible gash that had healed with jagged edges. She almost gasped but held back.
He said, “Damn, my head is pounding, and my ass hurts. I can barely lift my leg.”
Karen said, “And all you can think about is flirting with me.”
John answered in his best romantic voice. “Dear, you are special. I knew it when I first saw you killing one of those bastards.”
Karen ignored his last words. “Sorry, but I had to use a pair of tweezers to probe the holes in your butt to find the 00 buckshot. We didn’t have any painkillers. Wait!”
She propped him up against the back of the truck. She went to the front of the truck and searched the cab for any painkillers. She found a first aid kit under the seat. “Look here, there’s some Ibuprofen. You’re in luck. This will dull the pain a bit.”
He took two of the pills and washed them down with a swig of water. Karen placed an M4 over his shoulder and strapped a gun belt to his waist. She didn’t want to lose her AR15, so she put it alongside the M4 on her shoulder. She tucked the extra Sig 9 mm into her waistband. Now, she had to help John. She placed his arm over her shoulder and walked north along Old Highway 41.
John had seen her wince when she’d seen his whole face. He was used to it by now, but her reaction still hurt him to the bone.
They arrived on the outskirts of Beech Grove as the sun rose for the day. Karen overcame John’s objections, and they found an empty house to hold up in until dark. Karen knew the raiders would find the crashed truck and search for them. Moving during daylight, with a man who could hardly walk, was a sure way to be found.
Karen helped John to bed, and he slept most of the day while Karen kept watching for the raiders. She searched the house for food and only found a few cans of pork and beans on the back of a top shelf. She placed them in a pillowcase and looked out the window to the house next door. She had observed the neighborhood from the windows and hadn’t seen any people stirring around. She snuck out the back door while John slept and entered the next-door house.
The house was an older four-bedroom two-story with a detached garage in the back yard. She searched the home and found some clothes that fit her. She checked the hot water tank and drained some clean water to use for washing. She took a sponge bath and then changed clothes. The bathroom mirror showed her hair looked like a haystack, so she rinsed a comb she’d found and combed her locks. She smiled in the mirror when she saw how much better she looked.
There was no food to be found in the house. She walked outside to the garage and forced the man door open. She exclaimed, “Dam
n, what a beautiful car!” Before her eyes was a 1932 Ford two-window coupe. It was bright orange with shiny chrome wheels. The engine overflowed from the small engine compartment and had the words 429 Cobrajet on the valve covers. She hoped it would start so they could drive home. She found the keys in a mechanic’s tool chest and then tried to start the car. The battery was dead.
Next to the Ford was an old Dodge truck with the head off the old flathead engine. She saw a new looking battery in the engine compartment and the key in the ignition. She turned the key, and the old six-cylinder cranked over. The half-inch open end wrench she needed was in the toolbox, and she took the cables from the battery. Karen placed her hands on the battery strap, gritted her teeth, and lifted the battery about an inch. “Shit, that’s heavy.”
Karen surveyed the situation and realized she was trying to lift a fifty-pound battery that was two feet away from her chest. The battery had to be raised about ten inches before it would move to her. She cursed a string of obscenities and then saw the engine lift off in a corner. It had a greasy engine hanging from a chain. Karen inspected the small crane and found the hydraulic valve that lowered the crane. She turned the valve, and the engine fell to the ground and almost crushed her foot. She jumped away when the engine dropped, saving her foot.
The small crane was easy to roll over to the truck. She lowered the boom down to a few inches from the battery and fixed the chain hook on the battery strap. She jacked the lift’s handle up and down, lifting the battery out of the truck. She clapped her hands and then rolled the battery over to the hot rod. She soon had the batteries swapped and crossed her fingers before twisting the key.
The engine cranked slowly, sputtered, and then roared to life with a loud rumble that shook the garage and area nearby. She quickly shut the engine off and ran back to the house, just in case she had woken John up
