Over the course of ten minutes three more men switched sides, entirely bottling up Jacob, Jocko, and the final three men of the gang.
“Okay,” Sterling said, startling Harrison, since Sterling was crouched down just behind him. “You take the rest of these guys down to the Red Lion. I’ll keep Jocko and Jacob here until you can get food. How you handle the situation after that is up to you and the others.”
Harrison nodded and moved over to talk to the other four men, one after the other. The group of five started for the street. A rifle barrel came into view and Sterling fired three quick rounds at the corner behind which the shooter was hiding. Unlike most of the building, this add on was made of lumber. The powerful .308 rounds penetrated and the rifle fell out into the open, the body of the now dead man falling onto it a fraction of a second later.
The former gang members took off in a run to get out of range to avoid more shots aimed at them.
“Jacob!” Sterling called out after another few minutes of quickly exchanged shots. “Think about this! You really want to be on the outside looking in after this? You’ve only got two men now, and Jocko. And you’ve seen how much help Jocko is.”
The last statement brought a flurry of shots from Jocko. None were anywhere near where Sterling was.
“Only one!” came another voice and one of the two remaining gang members took off running, gun held at his side. “I’m trading for food!”
Sterling let him go. Even if he did try something at the food distribution, Sterling was sure that the group there would take care of him.
“Just the three of you now, Jacob!” Sterling called out.
“Two! Just two!” said the final man. He moved to head down the street, and this time, before Sterling could provide cover fire, Jocko popped around the corner and shot the man. The man went down, but was still alive. Three rounds from the M1A SM had Jocko diving for cover again, before he could finish the man off.
“He shot that man in the back, Jacob. You going to be next?” Sterling heard a flurry of shots and saw Jacob stagger out from behind the cover he and Jocko had been sharing. Then Jocko stepped out and put the barrel of his rifle against Jacob’s chest and pulled the trigger. It was the last thing he did.
Seeing the brutal act caused Sterling to miss the first shot that might have saved Jacob, but the second and third put an end to Jocko’s short tenure as a bandit gang leader. Cautious by nature, made more so by the recent experiences, Sterling waited for a long time before he moved. The man Jocko had shot had managed to climb to his feet, and using his rifle as a crutch, hobbled away.
Sterling finally went to check on Jacob. There was nothing he could do. Jacob was dead. With the toe of his boot, Sterling turned Jocko’s body over. Even without Sterling’s final two shots, Jocko would have died. He’d taken at least three bullets from Jacob’s rifle before Jacob went down.
Sterling shook his head, shouldered the M1A SM and headed for the Red Lion, slowing down to help the injured man.
The former gang members looked somewhat fearful when Sterling, half carrying the injured man, made his appearance. “Take care of your friend,” Sterling said, and half a dozen men stepped forward and picked up the injured man, disappearing inside the Red Lion with him.
“It’s over?” asked Holt, still handing out food and collecting barter slips promising labor at the ranch.
Jennie, working with some of the mothers and children, was watching Sterling. She paled as the implication of Jocko’s death was confirmed when Sterling said, “Jacob and Jocko turned on one another. Both are dead.” Sterling saw no need for Jennie to know that he’d put two bullets in what was going to be a dead man in a matter of a few minutes.
Jennie looked away, and then busied herself with the women and children again.
“Holt,” Sterling said, looking back at the man, “You’d better let your wife know things are okay. She wasn’t too happy being left behind on this shindig.”
“Yeah. Good point.”
Sterling took over the distribution of the food as Holt got on the CB radio. The snow began as Holt hung up the radio microphone.
Everyone looked up, fear showing on many faces. Sterling’s keychain radiation alarm was silent, and he told the crowd. “It’s not radioactive.”
There were some signs that the announcement had lessened the fear. But there was still some fear on most of the adult faces, despite the younger children running around catching snowflakes.
Sterling suddenly understood. He and his small group were well off. It would be a long, hard winter for everyone else, even with the food resource the ranch represented. Sterling suddenly wondered how many of the faces he was seeing now, he would see come spring.
With the food the Ranch produced, coupled with what other people that had food production capability provided, none of the population that took advantage of the situation died of hunger. That’s not to say there were no deaths that first winter. There were. Many of them. Freezing to death for lack of suitable heat sources, and minor medical problems that became major problems when the person couldn’t be transported to the hospital.
Even when one was hospitalized there was no guarantee of not dying. Only two doctors, one dentist, and seven nurses had survived the war and the radiation. When the medications ran out shortly after the winter started, the area was down to one doctor, the dentist, and three nurses.
With the Flying J truck stop in town, and the other service stations, there was still fuel available. The problem was working vehicles. Sterling and two other mechanics that understood the problem, with the help of the auto parts store owners, put back into service several vehicles, including an ambulance and fire truck.
The problem then became the roads themselves. The snow continued to fall and the roads were soon impassible to anything but snowmobiles, snow cats, and in a few cases, custom trucks like Sterling’s.
Keeping the city water system and sewer system didn’t go as well. With the Humboldt River within walking distance of most of the city, water wasn’t the problem it could be. And there were plenty of back yards that could be used to bury human waste from chemical toilets for those that had them, and to build outhouses for the rest.
After spring came, finally, and most of the snow melted, Sterling, with Jennie’s help, got the gardens started. Though there were a few reluctant to honor their bartering agreements for labor in the gardens and help with the growing herds, all finally paid off their debt, with a few even building up some credit as time passed.
It so happened, that the first big bartering day of the summer, with most of the community at the parking lot of the grocery store, was the day the National Guard showed up, with absolutely no warning. Even the locals that were in the National Guard didn’t know what was going on. They’d done, primarily as individuals, all they could do to help the community.
When the first Humvee pulled up and stopped, with the rest of a short convoy lined out behind it, Sterling was one of the first to approach. He still continued to carry the M1A SM, but kept it slung over his back. But the P-14 was ready in the holster on his hip.
“Who am I addressing?” asked the National Guard Captain when he stepped out.
“I’m Sterling Walker. Jennie Craft and I own a ranch up in the mountains.”
“Well, Mr. Walker, I’m Captain Jamison, Nevada National Guard. Who would you say is the person in charge here in Winnemucca?”
“That’d be Jim Plimpton,” Sterling said. He turned around and pointed. “That’s him. We just started relying on him. He’s a good guy.”
“Thank you,” said the Captain, and headed over to talk to him.
A couple of the Guardsmen got out and were checking over the vehicles. Captain Jamison came back, motioned to the two men, who returned to their vehicles. Captain Jamison got back into the lead Humvee and the convoy took off again, much to Sterling’s, and everyone else’s surprise. Except for Jim.
He walked over to join Sterling, and Holt and Jennie, who h
ad come up to Sterling when the Captain was talking to Jim.
“What’s going on?” Sterling asked Jim.
“Not much, it appears. The Guard, according to Captain Jamison, is going town to town, checking on things. Helping where help is needed. Basic help. He seems to think we’re okay. Except for the need for medicines which seems to be a universal need. He’s going to request a standard medical delivery for this kind of situation.”
“This kind of situation?” Sterling asked. “They had a plan for this kind of situation?”
“Apparently so,” Jim replied. “I guess we’re some of the lucky ones. According to the Captain.”
“Yeah. Lucky,” Holt said. “Our good luck to have Sterling and Jennie show up when they did. We might have made it without their help, but certainly not as well.”
“I don’t know, we’ve only provided some food,” Sterling said.
“Yes,” Jim said, “but you also brought organization to us. Before that mess with Jacob, we were just milling around aimlessly.”
“Well,” Sterling said, “be that as it may, what do we do now?”
“We carry on,” Jennie said. “We carry on. For the next generation.” She rubbed the slight swell of her belly where Sterling’s baby was growing.
THE END
MEET THE AUTHOR
Jerry D Young was born at home, in Senath, Missouri July 3, 1953. At age 5 the family rented a small farm house on an active farm 40 miles southwest of St. Louis. While the family weren't farmers, they lived something of a homestead type life, raising a milk cow, sometimes two, and calves, a pig or two, chickens, and the occasional goat. Along with the stock, a large garden helped to feed Jerry's three brothers and two sisters for several years. Fishing and hunting contributed to the pantry, as did foraging the wild edibles on the property.
At the age of 14, the family, minus a brother and two sisters that were now adults and on their own, moved back to Senath. Having been encouraged from an early age to read, Jerry was a regular patron of the Senath Branch Library. A love of a good story was born within him, and shortly before graduating high school, for a lack of stories that he liked at the library, he began to write short vignettes, and started taking notes for stories that he wanted to tell. Jerry eventually began to write in earnest and now has more than 100 titles to his credit including Prep/PAW stories, Action/Adventure, and a few of the romance type stories that first got him started.
The Mechanic Page 7