The Abandon Series | Book 2 | These Times of Retribution

by Schow, Ryan

  “Yeah?” Colt asked, surprised.

  “I told them not to go starting fights around town.”

  “And?”

  “They broke my windshield and ran me off.”

  Shaking his head, Colt said, “They got you fit to be tied, don’t they?”

  Garrity adjusted himself in his chair. “Sheriffs are elected by the people, police are hired on and answer to the politicians.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I don’t care what’s politically correct. I answer to the people, and the people don’t feel safe with filth like this in town.”

  “Turn the wrong corner, piss off the wrong people, and you’ll get doxxed. Politically correct is the way they force you to behave.”

  “I’ve been doxxed before.”

  “Tensions are greater than ever. You said so yourself.”

  “I’m tired of being pushed around by these lunatics,” he said. “So if a mob of angry citizens shows up and tries to burn my house down, they do. I’m armed and ready for anything.”

  “You are until you realize you’re not.”

  “I served, too, Colt. Besides, this isn’t the big city.”

  “It isn’t, but it doesn’t need to be.”

  “I know.”

  “So, where do I file a formal complaint?” Colt asked, circling back around to where he started.

  “I’ll do it here.”

  “According to his girlfriend, Keaton Dodd should be home later today. Maybe first thing tomorrow. If you need me to be there…”

  “You’ll just make matters worse. I’ll bring my deputy.”

  “Derek, not Marilyn.”

  He sat up and fired his friend’s little brother a look. “You don’t have to tell me my job, Colt. I can do it just fine.”

  “I know, it’s just…I may not have the luxury of waiting for you to finish your paperwork.”

  Now he understood. “I’ll file it now.”

  Colt said, “If you call me ahead of time, let me know you’re headed out there, I can be on my porch long enough to provide you with cover.”

  “Your brother’s M82?”

  “My M82 now.”

  “Do you even remember how to shoot that thing?”

  “I’ve been up to Gator’s a few times.”

  “And?”

  With a grin, Colt said, “I can castrate a mouse from eight-hundred yards.”

  “Some of those mice have huge balls.”

  “Eight-hundred yards.”

  Garrity gave a conciliatory laugh. “I’ll call you.”

  After Colt left, he asked Laura to write up the complaint. After Laura had completed the form and just before Colt left the office, the woman with the silver Honda Pilot came walking in, causing him to stop in his tracks. He felt a smile brighten his face.

  The woman was composed this time, her makeup done, no crying baby to drown out her words or wear on his or her patience. She saw him, smiled, and said, “Just the man I wanted to see.” With that, she handed him a pie, which he stood and took. “It’s freshly baked,” she beamed. “I just took it out of the oven.”

  “Wow,” he said, taken aback. He leaned forward, smelled the warm berries, felt that smile growing even wider if that was even possible.

  “It’s blackberry, my specialty.”

  He sat it on his desk. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I was in a bad way and you helped me keep my head,” she said. “This is my way of saying thanks.”

  He was about to say something nice when she cut him off.

  “If I didn’t have to get going, I would sit down and enjoy a slice with you, so maybe I’ll take a rain check?”

  “A rain check?” he asked.

  “That sounds good,” she smiled. “Have a good day, Sheriff.”

  She left the office and he stood there, dumbstruck.

  Behind him, Laura said, “You know she just got you to ask her out on a date, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure I didn’t,” he said, thinking she’d blown through there like a tornado.

  Laura lowered her glasses and glared at him before shaking her head in dismay. “It’s a wonder the people ever elected you for this when you couldn’t even see that.”

  Reclining in his chair, he said, “So, it looks like I have a date.”

  “I believe you do, Sheriff Garrity,” she said. A moment later, the printer whirled to life, spat out a page, then powered down. She stood and handed it to him. “The complaint you asked for.”

  He took it, looked it over. “That was quick.”

  “It’s a stock form which means it’s just fill-in-the-blanks now.”

  “I’ll be back later this afternoon,” he said. He made the drive to Vitaliy Sidirov’s place, dreading every single minute of it.

  He cruised by the place at first. All he saw was the Jeep, the one that ran the Honda Pilot off the road and damaged his cruiser. It didn’t appear as though Keaton and his turd brigade had come home. According to Colt, Trixie was the only one there.

  Parked up the street with nothing to do, he contacted dispatch and asked Laura if anything was pressing.

  “No, sir,” she said. “Nothing over the wire.”

  He checked his watch. “I’m going to call it a day, maybe make up my time in the morning.”

  “Whatever you want, Lance,” she said. “Just keep the line open in case something changes.”

  “Sure thing.”

  The next morning, he drove back out to Keaton’s house, saw the Jeep sitting there just as it was yesterday. He cruised by, headed a quarter-mile up the road, then turned the car around and parked on the side of the road. He tried to keep his distance from the house, but if he went any farther, he’d need binoculars to see it.

  He radioed into dispatch. “Laura, this is Lance, you there?”

  “Roger that,” she said. “Morning, Sheriff.”

  “I’m at Watts Mill Road, trying to serve this stupid complaint.”

  “I figured.”

  “Anything this morning?”

  “All’s well that starts well,” she said. “Hot coffee’s gonna be ready when you get here. But if you take too long, it’s gonna be cold coffee.”

  “Thanks, Laura. Let me know if anything comes up.”

  “It’s what I live for.”

  He sat on Keaton’s place for half an hour, thought about calling Colt to let him know he was there, but then he thought otherwise. A few moments later, he saw a fleet of cars roll into Vitaliy’s rented house. He started the car, crept up the road, then pulled into the driveway behind the lot of them.

  A group of six or seven men was headed inside. They stopped when they heard him pull into the driveway. He got out of the car, saw the asshole Colt described, Keaton.

  “You’re on private property, Sheriff,” he said.

  “So were you when you destroyed the McDaniel’s garden earlier,” Garrity replied.

  A few of them laughed; Keaton was not one of them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You left the hat behind. It was the same hat you took from Colt McDaniel at the Kroger. That puts you at the scenes of four separate crimes.”

  Now he smiled. “And what would those be?”

  “Battery, theft of personal property, trespassing, destruction of property.”

  He turned, faced Garrity, bowed up. “You got a warrant for me, Barney Fife?”

  “Right now I have a criminal complaint. You can treat it as a warning, or as a precursor for bad things to come.”

  “That it right there?” he asked, pointing to the paper.

  “It is,” Garrity said.

  He stepped forward, but instead of being civil, Keaton snatched it roughly out of his hands. Garrity held his position, even though the guys had all but circled him.

  Keaton read the complaint, then looked up at the sheriff and grinned. His eyes were soulless, cruel. He balled the paper up and threw it in Garrity’s face. It hit his eye flush, causing him
to step back and wince.

  Before he even got himself right, three of Keaton’s guys took him down. Landing on his back, the wind knocked out of him, he knew he should have called Colt. But that was secondary to a larger problem. The punches were raining fast and hard. He turtled up, but the fists were getting through. A clean shot to his temple got through, causing him to see stars. Subsequent punches pummeled his body. Frantically pushing himself backward in the dirt, he fought for every inch he could get while fending off the flurry of violence.

  Somehow he’d weathered the storm enough to get to his feet. Fists up and out of breath, he assessed the situation and realized he was screwed. He squinted his left eye, then wiped a streak of blood off the lid. Standing on wobbly legs with a punched head and hammered muscles, he sized everyone up and didn’t like the odds.

  “Get him!” Keaton said, clapping his hands like his boys were dogs just waiting to break free of that leash.

  Garrity backed up two steps only to be tackled again. He landed sideways and the abuse continued. He tried putting his hands up, but it did little good. Someone started stomping on his stomach, the tops of his thighs, and then his head. Turtling up tighter, rolling sideways to avoid direct attack, he fought to protect his face, and to defend his stomach.

  The violence ceased for a moment, but then one of them kicked him in the head so hard he snapped out of the world. He felt the vast nothingness, but then he was quickly birthed back into the waking world. How long was he out? Long enough for someone to go for his gun. This sent him to a very different, very dark place.

  Rolling over, he broke free of the hands now grabbing at him, started rapping his knuckles on the backs of a pair of grabbing hands. When the hands let go, he jerked the weapon free. Bodies jumped on him, but he flailed around hard enough to push one of them off and kick another a few feet away. The one who kept kicking his back did so to a chorus of cheering. At that moment, he saw his window of opportunity. The second it opened up, Garrity fired two rounds into the closest guy’s chest.

  The kid’s body buckled, his eyes shooting wide open. Stumbling backward, holding himself, he caught his heel and fell down. He landed hard, then turned over and groaned. Garrity fired on his buddy as he tried to run away. He put one round in the man’s upper back, and one round punched a hole in the top of his skull. He then turned and fired on the guy who’d kicked the absolute hell out of his back, but the son of a bitch ducked behind the house undeterred.

  Scrambling to his feet—half falling, half fighting for balance—he stopped thinking about taking chase and instead grabbed a tree and tried not to fall over. A moment later, he pushed off the tree, then lurched and swayed his way toward his cruiser. He all but fell into the cabin, locking the door behind him.

  Garrity looked out the front windshield, saw the dead bodies in the driveway, tried to wrap his mind around everything that had just happened. That’s when Keaton rounded the corner of the house with a pistol in hand. He opened fire. Garrity ducked as bullets pierced the windshield and slammed into the seatback mere inches away. Bent down, hiding, he started the car, slapped the transmission into reverse, then smashed the gas.

  Spinning his tires, cranking the wheel, he burst through a wall of overgrown shrubbery, dragged ass over a man-made pile of rocks, then bounced up onto Watts Mill Road. He turned on the windshield wipers to clear the fallen leaves now blocking his view, then he put the transmission in drive, righted the wheel, and stomped on the gas once more. He didn’t even bother looking up at the McDaniel house as he roared off.

  A quarter-mile up the road, he glanced in his rearview mirror, making sure he wasn’t being followed. That’s when he saw his eyes. He didn’t even recognize them. Adjusting his height to see his face, he saw a split-open eyebrow, a busted lip, and a growing knot on his forehead. Worse than that, however, was the mania lying naked in his eyes. He’d never been this scared before, not even in Iraq. But this was a different place, and these were different times.

  He could no longer keep his promise to his mother. With no other way to blow off steam, he broke into a fit of swearing which devolved into him pounding the wheel with the heel of his hand. Not only did he break protocol by not bringing backup, he’d just killed two people. Shaking his head, moaning to himself, he knew he had to call someone, issue an arrest warrant, do something.

  He checked his rearview mirror again, saw open roads behind him, then tried to clear his mind. There was no protocol for this, was there? He knew there was. He just couldn’t recall what it was.

  Should he radio dispatch?

  He couldn’t.

  Thinking about what he’d just done, trying to comprehend the sheer weight of it, he realized he was glad those guys were dead. He was even happier that he had been the one to put them down. If they really were Hayseed Rebellion, then they were the same scumbags who killed Walker.

  His thoughts darkened, taking him to a different place. Could he ride this out? Wait for Keaton to counter-punch? Some of these change-agent pansies railed against the cops then called for help when the tide turned on them. Keaton wouldn’t do that. Not after he tried to kill Garrity in his own driveway.

  Instead of heading back to the office, Garrity called Laura and said, “I’ve been hit with a touch of something.”

  “You okay?”

  “I think I need to get to a bathroom.”

  “Which end is giving you the most grief?” she asked with some humor in her voice.

  “Can I text you later with the details?”

  She started laughing. “Please don’t.”

  “Alright then,” he replied, still shaken. “Call me if things get out of control.”

  “Roger that, boss. And take some Pepcid AC or something.”

  “I’ve got Pepto Bismol, a lot of toilet paper, and a Bible. I think I’m all set.”

  He headed home and looked around. It was dark, too quiet, too closed in. He couldn’t just lay there on the couch doing nothing, so he headed out to the I Don’t Care Bar & Grill, sidled up to the bar, and ordered a drink. One drink became five or six drinks as the day wore on. Around three o’clock, he paid his tab, staggered out of the bar, then drove drunk all the way home.

  When he pulled into his driveway, he was slow to brake, running the bumper into the wooden porch. He stumbled out of the car, nearly fell over trying to assess the damage, then realized it wasn’t as bad as he feared.

  The world officially started spinning. He reached out for stability on every step. But then he toppled over sideways, landed on the corner of the steps, and cried out a little bit as the impact damn near broke his wrist. Worse than his wrist, however, was his bowels. They just let go. As the mudslide pushed its way through his underwear into his pants, he closed his eyes and tried not to cry.

  I’ve found rock bottom, he thought.

  When his colon was emptied out and nature had taken whatever course she wanted to take, he grabbed the railing and pulled himself up, hoping to get inside before anyone saw him. But the sudden movement triggered a new event. A righteous convulsing in his gut had him taking a knee. Moments later, everything he had put in his stomach that morning came roaring from his mouth at once. Right then, he knew it was time to revise his earlier thoughts.

  It’s official…this is me hitting rock bottom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Colt McDaniel

  Day of the event… He had been watching the news as well as the weather. He’d also had an eye on the road below, and on the property behind it. He’d heard more gunshots this morning as he tried teaching Roscoe how to sit.

  “Here they go again,” Faith said, coming in to see him. She ruffled his hair and said, “Were you able to save anything in the garden?”

  “About a quarter of it if we’re lucky.”

  “How’s Roscoe doing?”

  Looking at the hound dog as he sat there staring up at them, he said, “Well, what do you think, Roscoe?”

  The hound dog gave a low whine in the back of
his throat.

  “What?” Colt asked the dog.

  More gunfire, rapid this time, so much so that he realized he’d have to see Sheriff Garrity again. This time with a noise complaint.

  “I think we should call Leighton,” Faith said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Tornado warnings.”

  “Here or up there?” he asked.

  “Up there.”

  “Did you check and see what things are like in Highland Heights? When the last tornado hit?”

  She smiled like she couldn’t believe he was asking her this. Of course, she checked. “They have hail issues, but tornado issues? Not so much.”

  “I miss her,” he said, scratching Roscoe’s back.

  “I miss her, too,” she replied. She handed him his cell phone. “Call her before she gets to class.”

  He warmed to the idea of talking to her. But then he thought of everything that had gone wrong since she went back to NKU—Walker being killed, getting beat up in Kroger, the garden being destroyed, Roscoe—and he got really sad.

  “What’s wrong?” Faith asked.

  Outside, he heard one of those idiots burning rubber. “I’m just baffled at everything going on,” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty outrageous.”

  He finally dialed her number, waited for it to ring, then smiled when Leighton picked up.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Leighton,” he said with a smile.

  In the background, he heard a man’s voice say, “That’s not polite, just interrupting me like that.”

  “Dad,” she said, “hang on a second.”

  “Are you okay, Leighton?” he asked.

  She didn’t respond.

  Did she even hear him?

  A moment later, she said, “Sorry about that, what’s going on?”

  “I’m calling about the weather.”

  After he hung up with Leighton, he stood and stretched, then he decided he needed to talk to Faith about their future food supply. He hadn’t ordered storable foods in a while, but he was pretty sure it was time to do so again, just in case. But then a heavy knocking on the front door startled him. Roscoe started barking, a mere hint of the deep tone he’d have when he reached full maturity.