by A. American
“What’re you gonna do?” he asked.
“Get ready for a barbecue,” I said.
Taking one of the cans of gas from the back of the shed and a roll of duct tape, I ran over to the truck. Rummaging around in the pack, I found one of the MRE accessory packs and took the book of matches from it, along with a hank of paracord. Taking the matchbook, I pulled it apart, taking one of the two pieces of matches and folded it back on itself in thirds. Then I took the cover and laid the striking surface on the stem of the matches, folded it around them, and taped it down. I pulled out a piece of paracord from the hank about eight feet long and cut it off and then pulled all the inner strands out; two of these went with me. I pulled four pieces of duct tape about six inches long off the roll and stuck them on my sleeve. I headed to the building that pathetic sack of shit pointed to. The house was small, cypress sided like the others, with a wraparound porch.
Slipping up on the porch, I eased up to the front door; a screen door hung from squeaky hinges. Kneeling down, I poked a hole in the screen at the bottom right corner. Gently opening the door a crack, I stuck one piece of the inner strand through it and tied it off. Cutting it off about eighteen inches, I tied the other end to the match stems sticking out of the book. Feeling my way along the bottom board of cypress siding, I found a crack. Tying a knot in the second strand, I slipped it behind the crack and pulled it tight, tugging on it to make sure it wouldn’t come out. Stretching the strand back out, I cut it off, leaving enough to tie the free end to the match cover, folded it over the string, and wrapped it with duct tape.
Making sure everything was set, I opened the can and started pouring the gas on the plywood floor of the porch, quietly going all the way around and coming back to the front door, where I laid the can on its side, gas still running out of it. Stepping off the porch, I ran back to the shed. Thad was still there. The man lying on the ground was weeping. Thad had opened some cans of ravioli and gave them to the girls, who were eating it with their bare hands, bottles of water at their feet.
“Okay, I’m going to go out behind that tree in front of Bill’s house. When I give you the signal, fire a couple of rounds into the air. When Bill comes out, I’ll drop him. Anyone you see with a gun, drop them. There are two of his culprits at the roadblock. They may or may not come up here.” I was looking around; this felt like it was all taking way too long.
“Sounds good to me. I’m ready. What about him?” Thad nudged the man with his boot, who flinched at the touch.
“Leave him, unless he gets involved. He’s got to live with what he’s done. Maybe he’ll think about it every time he looks at his daughter,” I replied. The man was looking up at us, completely impotent.
I ran over to the tree and got prone. I looked over at Thad and gave him a little wave. He drew his Glock and fired two rounds and then three more. Just as I suspected, a light came on in both Bill’s house and the one next to his. Bill’s cronies were a little faster than he was. I heard the front door open, and then the screen door flew open. The matchbook initiator was pulled rapidly apart, igniting the matches, in turn igniting the pool of gas on the floor. The gas went up with a whoosh; the poor bastard standing in it went up with it. The flames ran around the house, and the dry, oiled cypress caught easily. The screams of the flaming body writhing in front of the house were horrible. The other two men inside were screaming, trying to find a way out.
Bill came out on his porch, shotgun in one hand, the other thumbing a suspender over his naked shoulder. He looked over at the flaming house and stopped in his tracks. I centered the peep on his temple, dropped the front sight into view, and squeezed the trigger. The little rifle barked, and he collapsed in a heap. A scream ripped through the night, and glass crashed with a shrill sound. One of the two guys in the second house had jumped out through a window. I quickly put two rounds in him from the little carbine. Standing up, I walked toward the burning house, a now-motionless smoking corpse lying in front of it; small flames still flickered from pieces of the clothes. Another shriek tore through the night. I spun to my right and saw a short, fat woman, Mary, in a long nightgown standing on the porch beside Bill’s body. She raised a huge revolver at me. Boom! Boom! She tumbled back into the house. I looked over, and the barrels of Thad’s thunder stick were smoking.
Again, everything seemed to slow down. Thad was there, slight tendrils of smoke drifting from the barrels of the coach gun still held to his shoulder. Light from the flames danced off the trees, and screams from the man still inside the house echoed under the canopy of oaks. Then in a surreal moment, Johnny Cash’s voice came into my head. It started low and grew louder until I realized what he was singing: “I fell into a burning ring of fire; I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher.”
The poor bastard in the house finally crashed through what was left of the front door; his clothes were a flaming mess. He fell down the steps into the yard, writhing in pain. Three rapid pops ended his misery. I looked to my right and saw Jim standing there, with trembling hands holding the pistol I had given to Jess, orange light from the flames reflecting off the slide. He dropped the pistol and fell to his knees; Beth and Jess ran out to him. Others were coming out of the darkness.
I walked over to where they were huddled around him; he was convulsing in sobs. “How could you allow this to happen?” I asked.
With red, swollen eyes he looked up at me and said, “You just don’t understand; you couldn’t understand.” Thad walked up as Jim began to tell of their quick slide into the innermost circle of Dante’s Inferno.
He told us Bill was a pedophile, a registered sex offender. He knew of Bill’s past but always treated him with detached respect, neither condemning nor approving of what he had done. Jim was a Christian man and believed it was up to God to pass judgment. In his dealings, Bill was a trustworthy individual that would offer a hand to fell a tree or carry you to town for that forgotten part at NAPA.
When things changed, so did Bill. He had always struggled with his inner demons. When the yoke of civilization was lifted from him, he reverted to what he really was. In the past, he had been a master at what he did; he easily gained the trust of his intended victim’s family. But this was different; they were coming to him. All he had to do was show them a little kindness. He offered them food, water, shelter, and safety.
In the beginning, that was all he had to do to get what he was looking for. But, as with every addict, over time it takes more to achieve the same high. Before long simply molesting the kids wasn’t enough. He turned to humiliation. This worked for a while as well, and then that wasn’t enough. Then he went to pure brutality. That was what we found in the shed.
Others had come around us; all listened in silence as Jim laid the despicable acts out for all. “Why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t any of you stop him?” I asked.
“How could we? Him and his men had the guns. No one here has any guns. Plus, if you interfered, he would withhold food,” Jim said.
“Or threaten our kids,” a voice from somewhere in the dark crowd said.
Thad looked over at Mark. “You had a gun when we got here. Why didn’t you do anything?”
“One of Bill’s boys was there. My gun and anyone else’s that wasn’t part of their little group wasn’t chambered. The guns were kept at the roadblock. We never carried them around. They made us keep the chamber empty so they would have a chance at us if we tried anything,” Mark replied.
“I know it sounds unbelievable, but we all had to come to terms with this in our own way. Some were protecting their kids. Some of us did it to stay warm, safe, and dry. It’s cowardly, I know, and I will have to live with that for the rest of my days.” Jim lowered his head and began to cry again.
Beth looked over at me. “If it wasn’t for Jim, Bill and his gang of monsters would have done far worse. They did some horrible things to people around here that knew about him and had mistreated hi
m. Bill held real resentment against some of those folks. And when he got the chance, he loosed his malice upon them in truly horrible ways.” She wrapped her arms around her husband.
“Where are the families of those girls?” I asked.
“They are the daughters of one of the locals that truly despised Bill for what he had done. Bill had his men go and get him. They killed him here under these trees; only they did it really slowly. Then they took his wife. I will hear the screams from the two of them for the rest of my life. He had owned a liquor store and wouldn’t sell to Bill. When they took him, his house was full of liquor. They all got real drunk and then did what they did. Bill said the girls were his; the others weren’t allowed to touch them. He said he was owed,” Jim said, his face in his palms.
Thad walked up onto the porch where Bill lay; he found the keys to the locks holding the girls. Coming back down, he reached out and took Beth’s hand and placed the keys into it. “Go make it right,” he said as he pushed the keys into her palm. She and the other women went to the shed, where they set to the task of freeing the girls, doing their best to comfort them.
I walked away from all the others. I needed a minute to think; this was simply overwhelming. The rancid smell of burnt hair, cotton, and flesh hung in the air like a putrid cloak. You simply could not escape it. “I went down, down, down, and flames went higher.”
A diesel engine cranking and coughing to life brought me around. I turned toward Jim, still in the arms of his wife. “What the hell is that?” The engine began to growl, getting louder.
“It’s that big truck, back there.” He pointed into the woods behind the houses. I walked toward the back of the house. Thad came up alongside me. He had the barrels open and was dropping two fresh shells in. It sounded as if the truck was coming right at us, crashing and crushing its way through the brush.
Jim picked up the pistol and stood up. Everyone was staring off into the dark bush, marking the location of the thundering truck with their eyes. The old deuce and a half smashed out of the brush to the left of the houses. Whoever was driving it was running blacked out. The huge old truck strained to gain speed. Jim raised the pistol and began shooting. The pop, pop, pop from the 9 mm barked in rapid succession. Thad and I both just stood there as the truck hit the paved road in front of the houses, turned west, and headed for the overpass. Jim stood there holding the now empty pistol, its slide locked to the rear. “That was the other two. Why didn’t you guys shoot?” he asked.
I looked over at him. “I’m getting a little weary of all the killing,” I said.
Thad followed with, “Amen.”
Now that the last of their oppressors were gone, the folks in the little hammock began to relax a little. The girls had been released from their restraints; others were distributing the food that was stored in there as well. A couple of the men went into Bill’s house, looking for weapons. “We ain’t gonna let this happen to us again,” they said as they came out with a couple of rifles, one of them stuffing the pistol Mary had been holding into his pants.
I noticed that the man that picked up the pistol was the one wanting a ride. He looked over at me. I stared back at him; he knelt down and continued rifling through Bill’s pockets. I sure hoped he didn’t try anything stupid.
Jess came over to where Thad and I were standing. “Hey, I’m so sorry for all this. My dad wanted to tell you guys about it, but he was afraid; that’s why we haven’t been around. He is so ashamed. But they were all so scared. You guys brought me home, and then you did this. I don’t know what to say. I wanted to get home so bad—this isn’t home; this is hell, or it was. If it wasn’t for you two, who knows what would have happened after you left?”
“We did what had to be done, nothing more. I really don’t feel for anyone here but those girls. Everyone else just stood by and let it happen,” Thad said.
“They were all so afraid, and those guys had all the guns. What do you think they could have done?” Jess replied.
“There’s an old quote; I don’t remember it exactly, but it’s something like, All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. There is always an option. I just hope the girls will be all right someday,” I said as I walked toward the truck. Jess stood there, Thad followed along.
We both sat on the tailgate of the truck. The fire had died down somewhat; it was still a big fire, just not the inferno it had been. Both of us sat there for a bit, neither of us talking. After a little while, Thad said, “What now? I want to get home an’ soon, and I damn sure don’t want to stay around here.”
“Me neither, you should just take the truck and get on the interstate. It’s right there. I need to go south and east from here; you need to go southwest, and you have a hell of a lot farther to go than I do.” At the moment, I didn’t really care what happened. I felt deflated; I just didn’t give a shit. Two weeks and people were already doing this, only two weeks! What was it going to be like in two months?
“You sure?” Thad tilted his head toward me as he asked.
“Yeah, man, it’s been the plan the whole time. I’m not real far from home now. Once I get around Ocala, I’ll be in the forest the rest of the way and shouldn’t have any trouble at all,” I answered. “When are we gonna head out?”
He sat there for a minute in silence. “I feel like I’m running out on you.”
“Dude, don’t worry about it. You have a long way to go. To be honest, I’m glad it’s not me. You’re gonna have a hard time, so be careful, and take care of yourself.” I slapped him on the back as I said it.
“Well, then, I’m leaving now, if you don’t care,” he said.
I hopped off the tailgate. “Good, get your big ass outta here. I don’t even like you anyway,” I said, finishing with a big, cheesy grin.
He stood up. “Feeling’s mutual; now get your shit outta my truck.” We both laughed, and he helped me gather my stuff from the bed. I went through the cab to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind.
Once all my gear was stacked and accounted for, we said good-bye. “Be careful; check the notebook and call in. I’ll be on too, so we will know where each other is. You have my address; in the weird-ass event you ever get over my way, stop by.”
“Yeah, I’ll ride my horse over to your house,” Thad chuckled as he said it. “You be careful too. You’re on foot, so take your time and stay outta sight.”
“Oh, I will. Now that Jess isn’t here, maybe I won’t get shot again.” I started to laugh, and he joined in. “Don’t get on the radio until about six tonight. Sarge and the boys won’t be on till then,” I said.
“All right.” He walked around to the driver’s door and opened it. We shook hands; he climbed in and started the old truck up. As he put it in gear, he looked out the window at me and gave a nod with that huge head of his; then he pulled out onto the road, turned toward the overpass, and drove off. I gave a wave to the back of the truck as it moved away. I sure hoped I see him again.
It was almost five thirty by my watch. The sun would be up soon, and I didn’t particularly want to stay around here. I just wanted to go someplace and sleep. I was so damn tired. As it was still dark, and no one was around for the moment, I stowed all my loose gear in my pack and shouldered it. I secured the NVGs on my head and slung the carbine over my shoulder and headed toward the road. The sound of rapid footsteps behind me caused me to turn, unslinging the carbine and bringing it up at the same time. Jess stopped short and raised her hands. “Don’t shoot,” she said.
I lowered the carbine and looked around behind her. “What’s up?” I asked.
“You leaving? Were you at least going to say good-bye? I saw the truck leave and figured it was Thad. I didn’t expect you to just walk away without a good-bye.” She looked hurt. I’m sure she also wished that Thad had given her a minute.
“Yeah, I was heading out. Sorry, I wasn’t really thinking. I just wan
ted to get the hell out of here,” I replied, looking over her shoulder at the flames still jumping in the ruins of the house.
“Why don’t you stay here tonight, get some rest, and leave tomorrow? We were really hoping you would stick around a couple of days and help to get things in order around here,” she said.
“I know, an’ I’m sorry. But I really want to get on the road.” I set my pack down, fished around in the Devildog for the notebook I had, and scribbled out my address. Tearing out the sheet, I handed it to her. “Look, if anything happens, and you guys end up down my way, drop in. You’re always welcome.” I gave her a little smile.
She immediately started to tear up. With the folded piece of waterproof paper in her hand, she took a small step toward me, looking at the ground. I stepped toward her and wrapped my arms around her. “I’m just glad we got you home. I’m glad you’re safe now.” I gave her shoulders a hard squeeze.
With her head buried in my shoulder, she sniffled. “Thank you, Morgan.” She stepped back and looked at me. “I would never, ever, have made that trip on my own.” She looked down at the ground for a moment. “I mean, I was totally unprepared for it. Remember you asked me if I knew what I was getting into?”
I thought back for a moment and chuckled. “Yeah, all I wanted was rid of your ass,” I said with a smile.
She let out a little laugh. “Yeah, but you took me anyway.”
“No, I didn’t. I told you it was still a free world, and I couldn’t stop you from walking down the road, as I remember.” I gave a little smile, and she seemed to warm to it a bit, laughing.
“Yeah, well, thanks anyway. If anything happens, and you need to come back, you are always welcome here,” she said with a smile.
We stood there for another minute, and then she came up and gave me another hug. “You be careful, Morgan Carter. Get home to your wife and kids.”