“There were, actually,” I allowed. “I knew a few of them. Damn good ones, too. They paid a huge starting salary for new associates, so they had their pick of the cream of the crop coming out of law school.”
Winnie spoke up then, her voice low, and soothing to my ears after the rancorous exchange earlier. “Mac and Sharlyn came over from Metairie after New Orleans, well, you know. I doubt he saw those billboards you mentioned. Shawn has teased Mac about his name before, I’ve heard him do it, but I don’t think Mac believed it.”
“Look, I really am sorry about smirking at your name. I didn’t mean anything malicious about it, but I think it’s probably time for us to go.”
“Ya’ll can at least stay for lunch,” Shawn protested. “It’s just beans and cornbread, but I know Winnie made plenty.”
“That’s okay,” Wil replied easily, sensing the situation was defused with a bit of humor. ”I know these boys need to get back. Time for them to take over guard duty anyway. We’ve seen more groups moving on the roads lately, so…”
Shawn’s features twisted at this comment. “Yeah, they’re drifting into here as well. Some of them are just like Mac and lil’ sister there, just trying to find a safe place to hold up. But others, all they want to do is take and take. We have to stay on watch all the time as well.”
“At least we don’t have to watch the law around here so much any more,” Winnie added. “I swear, those thugs wearing badges were just as bad as any crackhead, and they had their badges to hide behind.”
“Well, we killed most…” Wil started, then stopped, red-faced. Damn, that was a slip of the tongue, and I hurried to fill in the gap when Wil slammed on the verbal brakes.
“What my friend was trying to say is we’ve buried our fair share of these raiders already. My brother Mike and I got into a tussle right there at the feedstore, ended up with half a dozen laid out there on the concrete.”
“Wait, that was you boys?” Shawn interjected excitedly. “I heard it was a farmer did the damage, and another Army vet. That you?”
I laughed. “Mike was in, Army. So was Pat here. Not me. I’m ‘ascared of guns.”
Now it was Pat’s turn to chuckle, further drawing the attention away from Wil’s gaffe.
“Don’t let him fool you, Shawn. Bryan’s a right decent shot, and the fool has no fear. I saw that the other night when four of us took on twelve. Wil said you were in, too. Army?”
“Tenth Mountain Division, out of Fort Drum,” Shawn responded with evident pride.
“Climb to Glory,” Pat murmured, and Shawn gave him a curious look.
“You were a Mountaineer, too?” The big man asked.
“No, but I worked with some of you guys, back when I was in,” Pat replied in an offhand manner.
“What unit?”
Pat wrinkled his brow, as if thinking hard. Gone was the usual mask he showed to the rest of the world.
“Was in Afghanistan,” he finally said, half to himself, as he narrowed down the memory. “When I worked with some of your guys, I was with the Third of the Seventy-Fifth.”
I exchanged a glance with Mac, both of us clueless. It was a thing guys in the same branch of the service did, trying to connect with some shared past memory. I’d seen my brother Mike do the same thing, bumping into another vet and trying to figure out if they’d ever shared a piece of ground in common. Mike described it as a way of forging a link in their common misery.
“What does that mean?” Mac inquired curiously, being drawn into the conversation.
“It means he was not only an Army Ranger, but he was then invited to serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment,” Shawn replied, filling in some blanks for his brother-in-law, but then he gave Pat another, measuring look. “That where you stayed?”
Pat gave him a nod, then added a short addendum. ”I was there until I qualified for Selection. Then I was 3rd Group until I got out.”
Shawn whistled under his breath. “Retired?”
“Naw,” Pat shook his head, a little sheepishly, I thought. “Wife gave me the news one day. She was tired of North Carolina, and I had kids I never saw. I was deployed more than I was home. You know the drill. So I got out, we moved back to Texas, and I went to school to be an EMT.”
“I was only in four years, did one deployment and that was enough,” Shawn replied, now openly staring at Pat. “What was your MOS?”
“18Delta,” Pat replied with a grin.
“Went to school?” Shawn scoffed. “You should have been teaching the school, man.” Raising his voice, he looked over at his brother-in-law to explain. “These guys basically have to graduate from medical school before they’re done. Spent a lot of time at Fort Sam?”
“Yeah, but you have to remember, a lot of my training didn’t get transferred over to civvie street. I mean, it was supposed to, but you had to have the time to take the online classes, and I was busy…elsewhere.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Shawn commiserated. “I barely got the certs to qualify for my CDL, and that was mostly on my own dime.”
“But did you learn to ski when you were in? Or use snowshoes?” Pat shot back with a grin. “Don’t you get a Snowbunny merit badge?”
“Graduated from Camp Ethan Allen,” Shawn laughed before he replied proudly to Pat, then cut his eyes at the former Green Beret. “Thought I was going to freeze to death, but I finished that freaking mountain course. Not many mountains to climb around here, but I remember the training. You trying to say something?”
Pat shrugged, then pointed at me. “Brother-in-law is convinced we’re going to have a cold winter. Real cold. You might want to get ready for it.”
I accepted the conversational baton from Pat and joined the conversation. “Winter’s already started up north, Mr. Tyler. All these volcanoes, they are blocking the sunlight and cooling temperatures. We might get some greenhouse effect later, but right now, looks like a long nasty winter, and next summer likely to be cooler than usual.”
“You think this is going to cause another ice age?” Shawn asked softly, pitching his voice very low, suddenly serious. Yeah, this guy gets it, I thought.
“Could happen,” I allowed. “Smart to get ready if you can.”
Shawn snorted, then released the air with a sigh. “Mister, I would if I could. I had to quit a good job to come here and take care of family, and wages around here aren’t near what I was making in Houston. Then Momma passed just this summer, and I guess we were blessed we weren’t still in Houston when it happened.”
Shawn paused, running a hand over his face. He was clearly at wit’s end.
“Momma’s house was flooded, and most everything inside was ruined. We’re cooking out here because the kitchen is trashed from the flooding, and the kids are sleeping in the attic where at least the mold hasn’t gotten to the wood. I’m working my ass off driving a truck and Mac is here guarding our families, and I keep waking up in the middle of the night expecting the house to get overrun. We can barely buy food at the store, and I’m getting shot at more often than not when I make a run in my rig. What else exactly would you suggest we do?”
I know what I wanted to say, the invitation I wanted to extend, but the timing just wasn’t there yet. We still needed to take a look at the Fitts place and see if it was even viable as an option. I know Wade and Wil thought the house was solid, but that’d been years ago. We needed an inspection, and a chance to look over the property with an eye towards defense.
Instead, I changed the subject.
“You got anything besides that shotgun to defend yourselves with? I know Wil said he picked up a few things the other night.”
Wil chuckled at my comment, then hurried to speak up. I was thinking he was still embarrassed over his earlier aborted comment.
“Dude, it was like they used to say in the sandbox. Iraqi Police issue, dropped once and never been fired. Yeah, we have a few things that might help.”
Shawn deflated a bit. “I have an old Ruger Farm Rifle that belonged to my dad, and a pistol. Ma
c, there, he’s got some…issues with firearms, but he’s right handy with his compound bow.”
Mac, who’d wandered over close, looked down at the comment and studied the tops of his boots before speaking. Grudgingly, he admitted, “I picked up a felony conviction, right out of high school. Drugs. Can’t get caught with a gun now, so I do what I can with what I’ve got.”
Sherilyn, Shawn’s sister and Mac’s wife, reached out and patted her husband’s arm affectionately. “That’s all in the past, hun, and I feel safe when you’re here. We’ll be fine.”
“I can fix you up with more ammunition, Shawn, and we can drop off some more boomsticks later. Talk more then. You think William can pitch in?”
“He already is,” Shawn said with some pride in his voice. “He’s guarding the other kids right now. He’s got Winnie’s little Bersa in his pocket. Nothing but a .380, but it’s loud enough to get the rest of us to come running.”
“I’ll come back by, say, day after tomorrow. Maybe the next day?” Wil offered. “I’ll bring some more ammunition and a few rifles we don’t need.”
“If I can get loose, I’ll join you,” Pat added, then gave Shawn a small grin. “Depends on what my wife has me doing.”
After handshakes were handed out all around, Shawn escorted us back to our truck, and I could see several windows flutter as curtains were disturbed in the neighboring houses. Now that I paid better attention, I could see that almost all of them showed similar signs of flood damage to their exterior wood shingle walls.
“What did you think?” Wil said.
“Seems solid,” I replied idly as I guided the truck out of the neighborhood. Again, I clocked watchers, mostly behind concealment, taking note of our passing.
“I like the family,” Pat admitted. “Shawn’s adapting to the situation, and I think Mac could be an asset. Pretty soon, that felony won’t be a thing, and he will be fine carrying around the house, anyway. We’ll need to see if the son is trainable. Nice bonus that Shawn was trained in winter survival.”
“So if the Fitts place pans out, you thinking about making an offer?” I asked Wil, who gave me a curious look.
“Bryan, that’s your family’s money, not mine. Even with our cut from what we took from Landshire, we couldn’t pay what that property’s worth.”
Huh. I’d somehow forgotten, or more correctly, overlooked, the piles of greenbacks and gold we’d seized and later split. Our shares were squirreled away. Some in the Deep Freeze, and more stashed at the fall back position. Out of sight, out of mind, I realized.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Pat interjected. “We don’t know where old Bernie got that money, so we need to be careful where and how we spend it.”
“What do you mean?”
Wil’s question made me wonder if Pat’s explanation might be too late, but Wil waved off the concern. He had plans for his portion of the spoils, but fortunately he had not acted on them yet.
“Look, the loose bills are probably fine. But the bundles of cash, those with the bank bands, make me think those funds might have been from some kind of robbery. Maybe they hit a vault, or possibly an armored car,” Pat explained. “Those serial numbers might be recorded somewhere. We just need to be careful.”
That was fine for us. Mike and I had already thought about that possibility, and those bills were safely stowed away in our hidey holes. Our cut, I thought, amounted to about forty-five thousand dollars in banded bundles. Roughly the same in loose bills. Given the numbers who’d participated on that raid, we’d split the cash, gold, guns and pharmaceuticals right down the middle. If the economy continued to slide, we would need to dispose of them at some point before they lost any more buying power, but that was a concern for another day.
“Damn, Pat, someday you need to tell me exactly what you did during the war,” Wil all but exclaimed. “I mean, shit, never even thought about that kind of thing.”
Pat smirked, something he rarely did, before explaining. “Blame it on my wife. She used to work for a bank, and it was the first thing she thought when she saw those bands. Banks of America might want their money back at some point, so we just need to be careful.”
“Black market purchases,” I suggested. “Done well away from our area. That might obscure the trail some. Maybe we can visit a pawn shop somewhere off the beaten track. Which reminds me. How was Buddy doing? I hardly had a chance to exchange two words with the man.”
“He’s doing fine,” Pat said. “Actually, I think he likes working for Bastrop. The guy’s a real cop, and not some politician with a badge. Buddy says he’s sharp, and he’s working his ass off. He also said he led the contingent of deputies over to check out our lead on the that gang’s truck stop hideout.”
“I take it they were gone already?” I asked, losing my joking tone from earlier.
“Yeah. Found three dead inside. Locals. He said they got prints off the crime scene, though. Already confirmed the IDs we got off those mooks we turned in from the other night. Bunch of hardcore drug thugs, just like you reported. They’re still looking, but Bud thinks they likely moved on.”
I nodded. “Let’s go take a look at the Fitts place, and then see what the Sheriff gifted us with.”
“Spoiler alert,” Pat chimed in, “we’re going to have to wire up some new radios, so I’ll get Mike when he gets back and we can use the garage. But I have to ask. Why did thinking about a pawn shop remind you to ask about Buddy?”
“Well, I was originally thinking about trying to hit a police supply store with some of that cash, but realized it was a bad idea. That’s what made me think of Buddy. Then I remembered that pawn shops are careful about what they take in, but maybe not so careful about tracking their cash transactions. Maybe I’ll lend a hand with the radios.”
That elicited a laugh from both men, and I pretended to be hurt by their humor.
“Hey, I can help.” I protested, but both men just continued chuckling. Yes, might help would probably be limited to reading the directions. Even Wil had learned that when it came to anything involving complex electrical systems, I was pretty much useless.
We continued to chat about our plans and upcoming events, and though we sounded upbeat, I could sense the quiet desperation that hung over our discussion. Going into town and seeing all the uncollected debris and dangling power lines was a reminder that despite all the effort, the conditions in New Albany continued to decline.
Thinking of the sad state of the county seat and the people suffering allowed me to connect a few dots in the quiet of the truck cab. Nancy had been coming home depressed lately, and I resolved to spend more time with her this evening after all the other priority tasks were completed. No doubt she was being affected by what she was seeing in town. The Co-Op was doing what they could to restore service, but like her hours being cut, so too where the options of the power company. Each storm that came through chipped away at the infrastructure, downing more trees and destroying more transformers and the like that were no longer being manufactured. Like so many other utilities out there, our local outfit was making bricks without straw, and soon they would be trying to make bricks without clay.
Thinking more on the subject, I decided to rearrange my thinking. I couldn’t set Nancy’s needs aside, or determine their relative merit compared to other pressing needs. That was the old, bachelor mindset. My loner mentality taking precedent. I would make Nancy a priority. She deserved it, and I resolved to give her what she needed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Are you sure Wade’s family didn’t build this house?” I asked cautiously as we pulled up the winding drive and approached the graveled circle path in front of the looming brick edifice.
“Nope. Just did some remodel work on it. I helped out on the project when I was a kid. Why do you ask?”
“Because he’s trying to be polite,” Pat offered. “This place looks a bit…”
“Spooky?” I volunteered, and Pat rolled his eyes.
“I was going to
say austere,” Pat countered primly.
The house in question was a rectangular brick box, with a small front porch that was obviously a later addition. The house lacked any stylistic features, and it reminded me of pictures I’d seen of apartment buildings built in Russia during the long Soviet era. Not very visually appealing, but the place looked solid.
“How did Sergeant Bailey get Byron out of this brick palace? The place looks like an old bank.”
Wil’s question struck a chord and I snapped my fingers.
“That’s what I was trying to place. This does look like a bank, or a post office built back during the Great Depression.”
I thought about the rest of my neighbor’s question and winced before replying.
“As to how they got Byron out, well, that was pretty bad. Maddy said Bailey and his two henchmen waylaid Wally just outside of town. Pulled him over with their lights and siren, handcuffed him and threw him in the back seat with her. Got Wally’s key to the front gate and let themselves in,” I pointed at Pat, who held up the ring of keys given to me by the Judge. He’d used the first of those keys to open the massive wrought-iron gate out at the road.
“That explains Wally, but how did they get Byron to come out?”
“Tortured Wally until they got his father outside, Maddy said, then tortured Byron until he told them where to find his collection of gold coins.” I paused, then grimaced as I continued. “I didn’t see the bodies, but Maddy said it was horrible, and they made her watch. Figured it would keep her in line, but that’s what convinced her to beg for our help.”
“Sometimes, killing just doesn’t seem like enough punishment,” Wil muttered, but Pat shook his head before he spoke.
“You know better, Marine. Just kill them and be done with it. If you start torturing for the sake of torture, then it will start messing with your head.”
“Yeah, I know,” Wil complained, “I just hate hearing about something like that happening to a friend. Hell, I’ve known them, father and son, my whole life. Don’t seem right is all. Now I feel like we’re going to take advantage of their deaths if we buy this place.”
Tertiary Effects Series | Book 3 | Bite of Frost Page 13