Lobo looked thoughtful. “Hmm. Paying a toll to pass through our land is an interesting idea. But, then again, if people have enough goods on them to pay a toll, we could just take it from them and then take whatever else they have. We ain’t toll takers, Turo.”
Arturo turned so that he could see his boss’ eyes. He wanted to be sure that Lobo’s insanity wasn’t peeking through before he answered. “I get what you’re saying, Jefe, and I agree with you. But, every time we try to do something like that, we take the risk of it erupting into a fight. We have a pretty good number of soldiers, Boss, but if we try to take on one of the groups involved in that firefight today, we’re gonna lose people even if we win the fight. As you know, Lobo, every fighter we lose makes us weaker.”
“And just what does my number two think we should do about it?” Lobo raised his eyebrows and looked amused by Arturo’s observations.
Arturo had been waiting for an invitation such as this so he could offer up his idea for the Mojados. “We need bodies, Jefe. We have a lot of room here with the hangar and the barracks. We can offer people food, clean water and a safe place to sleep at night. These days, those things are invaluable. This base is a commodity that we can leverage into building a stronger gang.”
He stopped talking and looked at his leader, wondering if he had gone too far. Lobo raised one index finger and twirled it to signal Arturo to continue with his ideas. “Think about it,” the big man urged, “You’re out there by yourself, maybe with a wife and kids, and someone comes along and offers your family a safe place with adequate food, beds, and clean sheets. Wouldn’t you agree to fight for the people who gave that to your family?”
“Commodity? Leverage?” Lobo grinned, but Arturo caught a hint of suspicion in the expression. “Ya’ know, Turo, sometimes I think you’re a lot smarter than you let on.” The suspicion fell away, and Lobo pushed his chair back from the table so he could stand. “But I like your idea. You know the troops will have to have their asses kicked a little, so they know that the people we bring in are off limits, right? I mean, we bring in a man with a smokin’ hot old lady, they have to keep their hands off.” He grinned widely. “But, hey…that’s why I have my enforcer, right? Yeah, I like your idea, Turo, we really need some extra bodies, and your plan is logical. Make it happen.” He turned to walk away but stopped after a few steps and turned to look back at his Segundo. “Commodity and leverage? My man, Turo.” He laughed and shook his head as he walked out.
✽✽✽
Pepper helped me down the stairs the next morning. I had slept late, and everyone had already eaten. I was going to chow down on the left-overs when Pepper told me Pops, the Major and Buck had just headed downstairs to talk to the girl we had caught yesterday. I felt conflicted by what she had been a part of and the emotion she had shown after being captured, and I wanted to be there to make sure no one mistreated her. Under normal circumstances, Pops would never allow anyone to brutalize the youth, but the Major insisted that the information she possessed could be crucial to our survival.
Buck had locked the girl into a clothing storage locker on the second sub-level. There was nothing inside for her to use to escape or hurt herself and the door was monitored from our surveillance room. She was given a plastic bucket to use as a toilet. The Major explained that he wanted her aware that anything she wanted or needed would have to come from him.
Pepper and I got to the clinic level just as they were bringing her upstairs and into one of the empty sleeping quarters. They had already positioned a hard plastic chair for her to sit on and several softer and more comfortable chairs in a half-circle around it.
Pops looked up as we walked in and gave me a frown. I couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t want me to be going up and down the stairs or because he didn’t think it was a good idea for Pepper and I to be a part of this. He looked over to the Major who looked at us for a moment then nodded his head.
The girl was still scared, her lower lip trembled, and her eyes had dark circles around them. I looked at her hands, and they were shaking. Pepper’s face showed pity for her, and I suspect mine did too.
The major pulled his chair up close to her. He was right in her face, violating her personal space. Her eyes flitted left and right as she changed her focus from one of his eyes to the other. Buck sat to his left and Pops to his right. Buck was delivering one of his scowls.
To the girl’s right-hand side was a small folding table. There were several objects on it which were covered by a cloth. I found that odd. Then I noticed that the girl was casting glances at it and I understood the game the Major was playing. He wanted her to imagine implements of torture under the rag.
“All right,” the Major said in a strong voice. “Let’s get started. This won’t take long. Either you voluntarily give me the information I want or you won’t.” He flicked his gaze over to the table, and the girl did the same. “Tell me your name.”
She tried to speak but seemed to have a hard time with it.
“She needs water,” Pepper blurted out.
The Major glared at Pepper, but he put his hand out to Buck who pulled out a plastic bottle half full of water and handed it over. The Major gave it to the girl who drained it quickly. She continued to hold the empty bottle as she looked back at the Major.
“Now, once again, your name.”
She cleared her throat. “Ramona. Ramona Teal. People call me Mona.”
The Major scooted his chair up even closer. Mona had to put her legs to either side of the seat to allow him to have his knees touching her chair.
His face was almost touching hers now. “Mona, why were you trying to kill my friends yesterday?” His tone was casual.
Mona shot a look around the room, searching for a friendly face. Her gaze seemed to linger on Pepper and me. She turned back to the Major. “I just did what I was told to do.”
The Major nodded slowly and looked as if he were pondering her answer. “I see. Someone told you to kill people whom you had never even met, and you said ‘Sure, why not’?”
Her lip trembled some more, and she swallowed hard. “It’s not like that. I never wanted to kill anyone, but when they tell you to do something, you do it. You do it, or they cast you out…or worse.”
The Major nodded. “Okay. And who is ‘they’?”
“The soldiers.” Her voice took on a pleading tone. “They travel around taking whatever they want. When they find you, you either join them, or they kill you.” She examined the Major’s expression to see if there was any hint of whether he believed her or not. “I lived outside of Sacramento with my brother, Zeke. They came through my neighborhood last week, and we came out of hiding because they looked like they were from the government. We had been hiding with a few others for months, and we thought we had been saved.” Her face fell. “They took everything we had, food, guns…everything. Some of the girls were pulled away from their husbands into a bus. When one of the husbands tried to fight them, they shot him. After that, they told the rest of the men they had the choice of joining their army or being shot. It was an easy choice.”
Mona looked at the Major. The fear she had been experiencing seemed to fall away. I caught a hint of defiance replacing it. Her eyes brimmed with tears but they didn’t overflow. “Some of the men wanted to take me but, Arlo…he’s the leader… he told them I was his. They put me with six other girls my age, some of them younger. The girls told me we belonged to Arlo and he would come by now and then and chose one of us for the night.” Her eyes searched out everyone in the room. “He never took me, but the last time he chose one of the other girls he pointed at me and said I would be next.”
Her words sobered everyone in the room except for the Major. He snapped his fingers in front of her face to get her attention again. “Listen to me. No one wants to hear your sob stories. You want sympathy? Come clean. Tell me about this group of soldiers. Why did you think they were from the government?”
Mona squirmed in her seat looking unco
mfortable. Finally, she asked the Major, “Can I go to the bathroom, please? I need to go real bad.”
The Major gave an exasperated sigh. He looked back at Pepper and raised his eyebrows. Pepper nodded and gestured for the girl to follow her. The two went three doors down to one of the six restrooms on this level.
“What do you think, Major?”
“She seems genuine but she could just be full of it and saying what she thinks will get her some sympathy. Remember, she was out there with a rifle yesterday shooting at us.”
I piped up. “I believe the girl, so far. I don’t know about these guys being soldiers, I mean, those Mojado idiots all wear military clothes, too. That could all be for the purpose of getting unsuspecting people to trust them, come out of hiding like she said.”
Pops nodded. “The actions that she was describing fit with what we would expect from a large collection of people who have abandoned the restrictions of civilization. They take what they want, be that food, guns or people. They induct people into their group, feed them, offer safety and grow their numbers.” He shrugged.
We discussed it back and forth. Pretty soon we noticed Pepper and Mona had been in the restroom for a long time. Buck went down the hall and banged on the door. Pepper shouted that they were okay and would be out soon.
We waited a while longer, talking about what we were going to do with Mona once we had the information we needed. No one wanted to kill her or anything like that. Buck suggested we take her far away and dump her like an unwanted dog. Pops just shook his head at that suggestion. The Major said he hoped she could eventually be convinced to switch her allegiance to us. Her knowledge of these new people would be invaluable. We needed to know everything about them in case we had to go toe-to-toe with them again.
The girls finally came out. Pepper had her arm around Mona when they came back into the room. It was evident that the girl had been crying again. She sat back down, and Pepper dragged a chair over closer so that she could sit beside her and hold her hand.
“Mona will tell you everything about her captors,” Pepper said. “Whatever you want to know, just ask her.”
Mona looked at the Major and nodded.
“Start from the beginning,” he urged.
And she did, telling us everything that had happened to her. The marauders bragged about being former U.S. Army members. After they took Mona and her brother, the siblings had rarely been able to speak with each other. She would see him sometimes through the windows of the bus where they held her, and they encountered each other infrequently when she was allowed to use the bathroom during meals. The last time she saw Zeke, he was walking around with a rifle. He seemed proud of his new status, and he told her he was now a soldier. She observed several members of her former group also carrying guns, even ones who had watched their wives or girlfriends being taken away to serve the other soldiers. One man had used his new status to try and liberate his wife. He shot two of the soldiers, but the others killed him before he even reached the bus where they kept his wife. His death increased the sense of resignation among the others.
Mona said there were some two hundred people in Arlo’s group and most of them were fighters. The attack on Marcus’ people on the previous day was the first time they trusted her with a rifle. They gave her instructions on how to operate the firearm and told her that, if she tried to escape, her brother would suffer the consequences.
Arlo’s people had three school buses, ten Humvees and about twenty or thirty pickup trucks and SUVs. Mona didn’t know much about the weapons she had viewed there, but the girl reported seeing numerous big guns which she suspected were machine guns. She also noted glimpsing long tubes with pistol grips attached to them. That information invoked a meaningful glance between Buck and the Major.
When Mona was describing Arlo, the Major stopped her.
“Is this a big black guy? Shoulders like a weightlifter? Really dark skin?”
She nodded energetically. “You can tell it’s Arlo because he always wears an army cap that has a single silver bar pinned to it.”
The Major looked at us. “I saw that guy. In fact, I may have killed him. He was in the back of a truck that I hit with a grenade. The last I saw of him he was on fire.”
That grabbed Mona’s attention. “You think he’s dead?”
“I don’t know for sure. He was blown out of the bed of the truck he was riding in. I hit the vehicle with an incendiary grenade. If it had been a high explosive round, there would be no doubt.”
Hope shown in the girl’s eyes. “If Arlo’s dead, do you think his army will break up? My brother might be able to leave.”
Buck held up his hands. “Slow down. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have more questions.”
Mona went on to answer all of our questions. The soldiers-turned-marauders had entered the town of Clovis two days previously and taken over a large motel. She didn’t know the names of the streets upon which it was located, but she readily agreed to take a ride and point it out to the Major.
She said the Arlo character had split his forces in two on the day of the attack against Marcus’ people. He sent one segment to attack Marcus’ people and the other to a fuel storage facility in Visalia, a little town about forty miles south of Clovis and Fresno. That group had been assigned to find and bring back two tanker trailers full of fuel, one with gasoline and the other with diesel.
Arlo had a habit of sending out scouts whenever he came into a new area. The scouts looked for abandoned food facilities and other needed supplies. They also kept an eye out for pockets of survivors because they usually had food, guns, and ammunition stored. When the scouts found such places, the operating procedure was to come riding in, portraying themselves as the U.S. Army, claiming they were the vanguard of the government which was being restored. By the time unsuspecting enclaves of survivors figured out they were simple thieves, it was too late.
On the day of the battle, Arlo had gone into Marcus’ stronghold with three men to make his pitch about being representatives of the government who were there to offer assistance. A young man (probably Marcus from Mona’s description) had rejected Arlo’s claim and stated they needed no assistance. When Arlo then dropped his façade and demanded food and ammunition as tribute, Marcus had told them to pound salt.
At about the point where Mona had told us everything she knew, Sharon peeked her head in the door.
“Major, I need to change that dressing on your ribs. I also need to examine that young girl and see if she has any injuries.”
The Major sighed. “Well, I guess we’re about done here, anyway.” He looked at Pepper. Can you stay here with her until I can send Emma down to keep watch on her?”
“Of course I can,” Pepper nodded.
The Major walked a few doors down to the clinic, and I waited for the room to clear before kissing Pepper goodbye. We just got finished when Emma came in. The Major wanted his capable wife around to keep an eye on Mona until we could get a better read on her.
I was limping down the hall with my cane and almost made my escape to the stairs when I heard Sharon’s voice calling out to me from the clinic.
“Don’t go anywhere, Virgil, I have to change your bandages too.”
Buck walked by as she said this. “Be ready to drop them drawers again, Virgil.” He walked off laughing.
✽✽✽
After the interrogation of Mona, we all sat down at the big dining room table for a lunch of chili prepared by Kent and Toni Johnson, Pepper’s parents. The food was so spicy it cleared up my sinuses by the third bite. Along with crackers and cold iced tea, it was delicious.
We were in the middle of the meal when Dr. Tashnizi walked in. He had a look of irritation on his face as he walked up to Pops’ chair.
“The liquor pantry is locked,” he said accusingly.
Pops was still chewing when he nodded. He swallowed and spoke. “It is, and it will remain so.” He held up a ring of keys. “Let’s go somewhere and talk, Doctor.�
��
Tashnizi shook his head, and his face reddened. “We can talk here and now. By what right are you dictating what people can drink and how much? I have as much right to our stores as anyone else here.”
Pops stared at the Doctor for a long minute, then nodded slowly. “Okay, I was going to do this behind closed doors out of respect for your privacy but, since you insist, let’s talk about it now.” He pushed his bowl away and turned in his chair so that he could look directly at him. “You’re a drunk, Doctor. You were invited to live here because the group would need medical treatment, but your addiction to alcohol has rendered you worthless. You are a draw on our resources without giving anything back. You refuse to stand watch or do any of the work that is required to keep this place up and running.”
Tashnizi drew himself up, and his face got even redder. “I have always been available to treat anyone who required it.” He shot a scowl at Sharon. “Just because you have allowed this woman to seduce…”
Pops stood up quickly and stepped closer to the man, cutting his tirade short. “Be careful, Doctor. You are dangerously close to causing a situation that you don’t want to happen.”
With Pops standing two inches from his face, Tashnizi realized he had pushed too far. His Adam’s apple slid up and down several times, and his chin quivered.
“I…I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I didn’t mean to suggest anything improper was going on. I just mean that, since Doctor Beeker arrived, she has taken over my clinic. Your boy and the Major were both injured yesterday yet you wouldn’t allow me to treat either of them.” He pointed to Sharon, who was sitting quietly at the table with her eyes on her bowl. “No, you opted to have her treat them both when I was standing right there ready to render aid.”
Pops stepped back to get out of his face. “Yes, Doctor you were there, and you were blind, stinking drunk. I could smell the liquor on you from across the hall. You were in no condition to treat anyone, medically.”
Pops folded both arms across his chest. “You have a big drinking problem, Doctor. Now I know you are so dependent upon alcohol right now that cutting you off cold turkey could be harmful to you.” He turned to nod in Sharon’s direction. “Sharon is a medical doctor, same as you. She will be devising a plan to wean you off of liquor over a period of time that she deems to be safe.” Pops’ tone softened a bit, and he reached out to put a hand on Tashnizi’s shoulder. “I know this sounds like a cliché, but it’s for your own good.”
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