Whiskey Black Book Set: The Complete Tyrant Series (Box Set 1)

by L. Douglas Hogan

  Two men were down, so there couldn’t be more than five men chasing after her. She led them deeper into the forest and then backtracked to the cabin. Lunging into the room, she forgot about the dead man on the floor and tripped over him. The fall slid her into place where she had desired to go to begin with. The Remington was still there.

  “I bet she went back into the cabin.”

  “She’d be stupid enough to do that,” the man said. They weren’t whispering anymore. Calm and quiet tactics gave way to the adrenaline and excitement of the chase.

  The men came barging into a barrage of .22 long rifle rounds. The Remington model 597 had an extended magazine capacity set for fifteen rounds, and she had successfully fired off about seven rounds. The men in the back of the group heard the shots, but the front three men took the hits. One was shot in the throat and out of commission. He fell to the side and was using both of his hands to put pressure on his neck. The second man was hit three times in the upper chest and could no longer take deep breaths. He sat on the ground next to the first man. The third man to be shot dropped straight down; it was a head shot.

  The last two men ducked back outside of the cabin, closing the door behind them.

  “Where you going, boys? The party’s not winding down for you, is it?” Tori called out.

  The men were waiting close to the door on the outside on either side of the frame.

  “Why don’t you come out here, girl?” one of them said.

  Tori recognized the voice. It was the voice of the first man that had raped her and antagonized the others to follow suit.

  Tori didn’t speak. Instead, she went to the back window of the cabin and slowly opened it. The men continued their attempts to lure her outside.

  “If you come out, we’ll forget what you did here tonight. What do you say? You want to put this ugliness behind us?”

  When the man didn’t get a response, he looked at the man across from him and motioned with his head for him to open the door. The man shook his head and mouthed the words, You go. The first man clenched his teeth at the second, who conceded and finally attempted to push the door open. He did so and quickly ducked back behind the cover of the door frame.

  There was nothing but silence.

  The two men stepped into the cabin, but it was the man in the back that caught a tomahawk to the base of his skull. The first man heard the impact and swiftly turned about. Tori left the tomahawk in the man’s head and pulled the rifle up to her eye. She had the seventh man dead to rights. The second man was on the floor and in his waistband was Bubba, her shiny 1911 .45-caliber Smith & Wesson. With his spinal cord severed, he was useless to do anything but watch and listen to Tori’s revenge as the events unfolded.

  AN UNLIKELY FRIEND

  Tori had a lot of time to ponder life, her decisions, and where she was going as a person. She would like to think that the introspection she was able to do while she sat alone in the house that had been bequeathed to her was eye-opening, but it was anything but that. She was fairly confident that her motivations were in her bones. She’d had very few influences in her life, but those who made the cut were powerful influences. The people that impressed her the most were the people whose values she tended to take upon her own character.

  The long road back to Southern Illinois was a treacherous one. Along the way she had met some decent people, but none quite like her. She was very selective about who she let into her circle of trust. The last person she let in passed away in her arms. From that woman she had learned that killing was not necessarily evil. If they were trying to kill you or take things from you that affect your life, it was worth killing over.

  This was something Rory Price used to talk to her about. She had a tendency to tune Rory out because she felt she was being preached at. She didn’t like being told she was doing something wrong. Rory’s goals were always righteous, and he had a genuine interest in the salvation of her soul, but Tori had a way of clamming up when she felt the spotlight was on her. When Rory would start on his spiritual analogies, she would slowly tune him out and her mind would drift to another time and place. If they were outside and it came up, she would listen briefly then leave the area. She had a way of making it look natural and inoffensive, not that she cared too much about offending people—only people she cared about.

  The wind would normally blow through Tori’s hair, creating a nuisance, so she wore a red, white, and blue paisley bandana that widened across her forehead as she sped down the highway. Her hair was pulled back tightly and kept in a ponytail. When she had time to prepare for trouble, she would tuck her ponytail away into a hat that she kept on her belt loop. The last thing she wanted was for her hair to be grabbed. A ponytail would make an excellent handle.

  On occasion, she would see groups of people and roadblocks, but her motorcycle handled the off-road terrain just fine. They usually heard her coming long before they could see her. The bike was very loud, and Tori knew it could pose a tactical problem. They would take potshots at her and miss. For the most part, she traveled light and possessed very few items of value. Some ammunition, her pistol, a rifle, and of course, her motorcycle.

  She had been on the road for several hours and only stopped to sleep at night. Traveling by night was extremely dangerous, especially if she was roaring down the highway on a Harley-Davidson. She could be heard approaching for miles on a still, quiet night and have no idea what she would be driving into. She planned her trip in advance and was careful to use as much flat land as possible. Visibility meant life and death in the new world order.

  Tori had seen a FEMA camp a few miles back. They would generally be heavily guarded by federal security and UN troops. They were to be avoided at all costs; that was just the way it was. Even though there might have been a victory against the Tyrant, as Muhaimin came to be known, there were still tyrannical forces at work.

  The new world order was carefully orchestrated by US and UN leaders over the course of several years. The RFID implants made it possible for people to easily buy, sell, and trade. Of course, the only places these systems were established were in the FEMA/UN-controlled areas, primarily FEMA camps. The way the system was set up, you would work to earn credits that would be deposited into your transactions account. Every account was maintained and strictly monitored by the government. Unauthorized transactions would result in immediate action.

  Very few people had escaped the FEMA programs, so the exact details of the programs were relatively unknown. It was assumed that illegal activities were a thing of the past because there simply was no longer a right to privacy. If you wanted to eat, drink, and own property, you had to work for it and pay with credits earned through labors. There was no way known to man to bypass the security codes and monitoring capabilities of the program.

  The local law enforcement groups that spread across the nation were fractured. Through the winter and into spring, scattered UN-controlled zones were still in operation, and the commanders of those zones gave direct orders to the law enforcement officers. In most cases, they were not receiving any instruction from the United Nations. By and large, the law enforcement groups were autonomous. They maintained their status through intimidation, threats, and on occasion, brutality. These zones were almost always stocked with high roll call numbers to preserve their own lives. There wasn’t enough of them to filter the remnants of the resistance through the broken system, so they just maintained themselves and the status quo.

  Tori had decided to put to rest the reason for Stephen Gill’s absence at Gorham after the Flip. Nobody knew what had happened to him, only that he was a no-show. His last known residence was in Murphysboro, Illinois, but before she could ascertain his absence, she needed to find out what his address was. To do that, she decided to return to Gorham, Illinois, the homestead where the Southern Illinois Home Guard members were supposed to meet after the Flip. She had not been back to Gorham since her initial arrival after she had killed the arsonist who ultimately had murdered her h
usband, Richard, and youngest of two daughters. She first arrived looking for Nathan, Denny, and Stephen. They were the three prominent members of the group.

  Tori was surprised to find that people were still living in Gorham. They had heard her coming from a mile away and set up their roadblocks. It was their long-standing policy to challenge any person or group that was attempting to enter their territory.

  Tori remembered discussing the policy at one of the many meetings she attended before the Flip. Most of what became of Gorham and the Southern Illinois Home Guard was because of collective input from the most faithful group members; Tori was one of them.

  She kept her distance and sat patiently on her Harley-Davidson. She knew she had been spotted only because it would have been impossible to get as close as she was without alerting the tower guard and perimeter security.

  Several yards away, at the roadblock

  Two young men were manning the position at the roadblock. One of them was named Chad, and the other was Jack—both of them were veterans in their mid-twenties.

  Jack was wearing US Army-issued camouflaged BDUs, and Chad was wearing an older set of UN-issued BDUs. They were black and covered in utility pockets. They hadn’t been issued since the early days of the Flip.

  Jack was looking through a pair of binoculars and studying the lady on the motorcycle.

  “What do you see?” Chad asked.

  “A hot chick on a bike … and I do mean hot,” Jack replied.

  “Let me look, fool.”

  “Hold on, I’m checking to see if she has any friends,” Jack quipped.

  “Yeah, right. How old does she look?”

  “She looks too old for either of us.”

  “Old like, older, or old like old old?”

  “Older, but women these days are hard to come by, so what does age matter?”

  “It doesn’t, I guess.”

  Jack handed the binoculars to Chad. “Here’s the binos. Try to stay tactical.”

  “Nothing but pro, you know me.”

  “Yeah, I do. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Jack had a walkie-talkie and used it to call the guard shack.

  Tori had been waiting about fifteen minutes when she saw two men approaching her from the roadblock. They were still several yards away, so she took the opportunity to double-check her pistol, Bubba, for ammunition and to pull a Nosler M48 from her saddle straps. The Nosler was chambered in a .308 and was a chance acquisition for Tori. This particular model was a bolt action with no magazine option. She had one shot at closer ranges, so she had to make sure it was a good one.

  She pointed it in the direction of the men to use the scope for a better view. They were close enough to see the move, and it startled one of the men. The other wasn’t fazed—he just kept walking without hesitation.

  “That’s close enough,” Tori called out.

  Tori had her Nosler pointed at the man who failed to flinch when she pointed it at them.

  Both of the men put their hands in the air.

  “Don’t shoot. I’m Arthur Watson, and this here’s Sean Parry. We’re members of the Southern Illinois Home Guard,” the man she was pointing the rifle at said. She had guessed at which one of them was in charge; she had guessed correctly.

  “Southern Illinois Home Guard, huh?” Tori asked. She intended to challenge them. Any group of people surviving in Gorham under the guise of Nathan Roeh’s legacy not only should be challenged, but required it. She knew Nathan like no other, excluding Denny Ackers, Nathan’s best friend.

  “Tell me who’s running the show here,” Tori asked.

  “You are,” the man replied.

  Tori liked the answer. It narrowed down the field of options on what this man could represent. By his answer, she knew he wasn’t a narcissistic dictator type. So that left either a humble man or an incredibly smart one. Now she had to find out if he was a good guy or a tyrant.

  “Tell me about this place and how you know Nathan Roeh.”

  The two men looked surprised that she had mentioned Nathan.

  “You’re Tori Cunningham, aren’t you?” Arthur asked.

  His response caught her off guard. She just wasn’t expecting to hear her name come from the mouths of either of these two men. Tori maintained her composure.

  “Answer the question,” she demanded.

  “Nathan Roeh founded this group years before the Flip. We stand for liberty and have bylaws that govern our actions. We believe in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, without government interference. It was Nathan’s ambition to restore American trade and patriotism without tyrannical and high-minded vain men.”

  Tori recognized everything he was saying as true to Nathan’s vision, but she still hadn’t received the full answer to her question.

  “I asked how do you know Nathan Roeh?”

  The two men looked at each other. Arthur looked back at Tori and said, “We only know him through reputation. He used to live here with a mutual friend.”

  “A mutual friend?”

  “Denny Ackers—you know Denny, don’t you, Tori?”

  “Yeah, I know Denny,” she replied. Her rifle came down from her shoulder. “Put your guns down and take fifteen steps toward me.”

  The men gently set their weapons on the road and walked toward Tori.

  Sean kept his eyes on Tori as they walked forward. He couldn’t help but think about how precarious of a situation they had found themselves in.

  “Geesh, I hope you’re right about this lady,” Sean said.

  “It’s her, I know it is,” Arthur said, trying to reassure his friend. When they reached fifteen steps, they stopped.

  They were now up close and personal. By the time they got to Tori’s position, she had already pulled out Bubba. Both men saw the shiny 1911.

  “See, I told you it was Tori,” Arthur said.

  “How do you know my name?” Tori asked, overhearing Arthur’s words.

  “You’re a legend in these parts. I suppose you’ll be a legend wherever your story is told.”

  “I’m no legend. You mentioned Ackers, where’s he at?”

  Tori was super excited to find out he was still alive.

  “He’s a busy man these days. He does a lot of travelling.”

  “Traveling for what?”

  “He seems to have taken a liking to diplomacy. He meets with other communities and sets up networks for trade and relations. We have mutual aid agreements with several locations in the vicinity—all thanks to Denny.”

  “Where’s Nathan?” she asked.

  “Nobody knows,” Sean asked. Arthur looked downward, giving away a hint of information to Tori. “Denny never talks about it.

  “Look,” she said as she put Bubba away, “I’m trying to find out what happened to another mutual friend. His name was Stephen Gill.”

  “I heard you were headstrong and full of resolve,” Arthur said. “If you feel you can trust us, I’d like to get our weapons back. I’ll take you to our records building. Stephen’s name is in some early ledgers. It’s the best I can do.”

  “I’ll take it,” Tori said. “Go get your weapons. A girl can’t be too safe these days.”

  “Couldn’t agree more.”

  The three of them headed back to the records building, where Tori was given full access to historical records and ledgers.

  She found what she had come for—Stephen’s last known address.

  Stephen Gill’s house, Murphysboro, Illinois

  The house was riddled with bullets and the area was swarming with security forces. Tori had to hide the Harley on the outskirts of town and walk in on foot. Once inside, it was apparent this house had been attacked and was at the epicenter of some kind of shoot-out.

  With her pistol drawn, Tori went from room to room until she found the master bedroom and the body of Stephen Gill. He was badly decomposed and covered in cobwebs and dust. She took one step toward him and heard a loud crunching sound as she stepped
on a spent cartridge casing from a 5.56mm bullet. There were dozens of them lying on the floor. Stephen appeared to be unarmed, with nothing more in his possession than a yellow Minion doll.

  “Hello, little fella,” Tori said aloud as she looked at the doll. “I wonder what stories you could tell.”

  She walked over to his body and lifted the doll from his grasp.

  It doesn’t make sense that he’d be shot and killed like this, she thought.

  As she stood next to him, she attempted to place herself in his shoes. For a moment, she looked around the room and saw less than a handful of rounds had been shot into the walls from his position. She looked down and saw .223 casings, different from the ones on the floor in the doorway.

  So he was being shot and was shooting back, she thought. He must have been looted of his weapons.

  Tori spent a few minutes walking around his house. There were pictures of his wife, Sammie, and daughter, Evan, but there was no trace of their bodies.

  Where did they go?

  The questions kept mounting for Tori. It would be hard to track them down, but at least she knew why her old friend Steve, like her, never arrived at the Gorham rally point.

  “Did you know Stephen?” a voice came from the opened window. The question startled Tori, who was in deep thought when it was suddenly upon her. She whipped Bubba out of the back of her waistband and pointed it at the man in the window.

  He put his hands in the air. “I’m not here to cause problems, just asking. I used to know Steve. I live next door.”

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  The man was about Tori’s age and had curly brown hair. His eyes were sad looking and his complexion was pale.

  “He was shot and killed by an extraction group of some kind. I saw them breach and enter his home. He was wanted before they ever entered. I’m not sure what he did, exactly. But the Beacon ran an article and accused him of resisting the government.”