A car moving in the opposite direction sped up when they saw what had happened. After Zach watched them peel away, his attention was drawn to the cruiser. There might be weapons and ammo he could salvage. He removed the cop’s utility belt and tossed it in the Buick, then went into his pockets, where he found a keychain. He hadn’t taken more than two steps toward the cruiser when he spotted the figures slouched in the back seat. Hesitating, he carried on, approaching the vehicle cautiously, the hand cannon held out before him. If either of them had any funny business in mind, they’d have to deal with his friend Magnum.
Drawing up alongside the back window, Zach saw two men in their mid-twenties huddled in the backseat. They looked terrified, like two men who were about to meet their maker. Zach opened the door, making sure to keep the pistol trained on them.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said. “Can I see your license and registration?”
They shifted to show him their hands were cuffed behind their back. Zach sighed. They hadn’t gotten his joke.
“What’d he pick you boys up for?”
“B and E,” the first one said. Like him, both men had red rings around their eyes, which told him at once they had survived the flu.
The one further back sported a mullet that extended past the dirty undershirt he was wearing. “We were doing fine for ourselves till he came along.” The petty thief nudged his chin toward Officer Johnson.
Zach nodded, not entirely sure what to do with these two.
“You plan on killing us too?” the first one asked, but Zach didn’t answer. Instead, he used the officer’s keys to open the trunk, where he found a Benelli M4 tactical shotgun along with buckshot, rifled slugs and a box of .223 rounds. In the front seat was an AR-15 which he also took, carrying the spoils back to the Buick and dumping them into the trunk. Next, he removed the supplies from his backseat and put them there as well.
Zach supposed during the time it had taken him to strip the cruiser of anything useful, he’d also made up his mind. He returned and opened the door. “What’re your names?”
The one with the mullet and the round baby face answered first. “Daniel Phillips, sir.”
Sir, Zach thought. I like that.
The guy next to him was thin, with a shaved head and piercing blue eyes which darted around like a bird’s. “Brian Hall, sir.”
Sir again. Zach could get used to this kind of formality. He pointed to the first one. “From now on your name’s Dannyboy.” Then to the other: “And you’re Hawkeye.”
They looked confused for a moment, but nodded eagerly. At least it was better than death.
Zach undid both men’s cuffs, his pistol still handy in case they tried anything stupid.
“Y’all have a choice,” he told them. “You can stay here and probably get lynched for killing this cop, or you can come with me.” Zach stared off down the road and saw a Harley Davidson bike shop.
“We didn’t touch him,” Hawkeye protested.
“Maybe not,” Zach said. “But no one will care.”
“Where you headed?” Dannyboy asked, seeming to recognize that Zach wasn’t lying. In a lawless environment, there wasn’t time nor the will for due process. Things had reverted to the laws of the dusty trails a hundred and fifty years back. If they thought you’d done it then you were as good as dead.
“I’m heading home,” Zach told them. His eyes were drawn back to the bike shop. “But first, we need to make a quick stop.”
Chapter 23
Back on the homestead, the cleanup was taking longer than expected. The first order of business had been to make sure that everyone was armed. Nicole had hesitated at first, perhaps still in shock over the brutality of last night’s events. After Shane spoke with her, she agreed to at least keep a .22 Smith and Wesson on her, even if she swore she’d never use it. Dale didn’t bother telling her she’d change her tune once she was faced with someone intent on taking her life. That was the sort of epiphany some folks needed to arrive at on their own.
Next, they geared up with masks, rubber gloves and, in Brooke’s case, a yellow raincoat. The process of dragging the bodies and stacking them in the back of Dale’s pickup truck was the most difficult. The night before, they’d gotten the three in the kitchen as far as the garage before deciding that the rest would wait until first light. Even so, the stench that hit them the following morning when they reached the side entrance was difficult to take. Two of the bodies didn’t have heads anymore. They were the toughest and Dale and Shane had taken care of those.
Strictly speaking, Dale could have moved most of them himself, given that he’d done far more of the killing. But he felt it was important that they saw the true face of death and not the sterilized version so often peddled on television shows. Not that the TV producers were peddling much of anything these days, given how the grid was down in most parts of the country and possibly the world. It would be back, he told himself, only half believing it. And when it did, so would the rest of the soulless parts of that old world he’d been so happy to say goodbye to.
When that was done, the group moved onto mopping up the blood and other nasty bits.
Dale stood by the double doors which led from the kitchen to the sun room.
“I count five broken windows and two broken doors,” Brooke reported.
“What about the one in my room?” Dale said, wondering how they might fare against the next posse sent against them. Far from a fortress, the house resembled an elongated slab of Swiss cheese.
Brooke’s tongue slid out the side of her mouth, as it always did when she realized she’d forgotten something. “Make that six windows.”
“Seven,” Walter shouted.
Brooke released a pent-up bout of laughter and so did everyone else. The physical symptoms that came with surviving a terrifying and traumatic attack were only starting to manifest themselves.
“The one on the lawn got lucky and cracked out a few panes before I put him down.” Walter held up his fingers, curled and ageing. “Unfortunately, I’m not the marksman I used to be. Back in the old days, I could knock a dime from between your fingers at three hundred yards.”
Dale grinned, appreciating the way his belly felt after a good laugh.
“Colton still upstairs?” he asked no one in particular.
Nearby, Ann was emptying shards of glass she’d swept up into a small cardboard box. “Walter and I made him a nice lookout post by the window in our room. Figured, until he gets his full mobility back, he might as well keep watch.”
Dale moved up between the old couple and draped an arm around each of them. “I wasn’t sure at first how this arrangement was going to work, but I can say without reservation both of you have been a great addition.”
“What are we?” Shane asked. “Chopped liver?”
Dale chuckled, flashing a set of mostly straight teeth. His brother was a different story. God had been Shane’s orthodontist, setting each tooth at a nearly perfect angle. Seemed Dale had somehow leached out most of the imperfections.
“Listen, you all did well. I’m just glad no one was hurt. The situation could have been a lot worse.”
“I’m not one to second-guess,” Walter said, “but charging outside like that with snipers positioned around the house—well, I’ll just say I wouldn’t recommend you try that again.”
Dale nodded without saying a word. In the heat of the moment, he had followed his gut. That was what mattered.
The muffled sounds of the dog whining caught his ear. “Duke,” he called out.
“I put him in the basement,” Nicole said, on all fours cleaning the floor. She held up a crimson rag. “He was trying to lick the blood.”
“Oh, gross,” Brooke said, her beautiful facial features squished into a mask of disgust.
Scanning the room, Dale’s eye studied the partitioning wall, riddled with bullet holes. There were more above the stove and a giant one on the floor, made by his shotgun. He’d been trying to keep up a positive di
sposition, negate the dark cloud he felt simmering behind everyone’s eyes. They were in trouble, big trouble and here they were laughing over a blood-soaked and bullet-riddled house. He supposed it was all they could do under the circumstances. Perhaps it was simply the way people dealt with life when the fear of being snuffed out at any second got to be too much.
But Dale was ready to put the happy mask away. He was about to send Sheriff Gaines a message, one he intended to make loud and clear.
Chapter 24
Dale’s pickup truck thundered down Santa Rosa going nearly seventy miles an hour. Stacked in the back like cordwood were the six bodies of the men who had tried to kill his family.
Most of the properties along the way appeared abandoned, but it was impossible to tell for sure without going in. There wasn’t much cause for people to be outside these days unless they were foraging or hunting for something to drink, a move which was usually an invitation to get yourself shot.
It was clear from his conversation with Sandy that both Mayor Reid and Sheriff Gaines were far more corrupt than Dale had given them credit for. With him they had tried to play the nice guy at first, asking for what they wanted, but when that hadn’t worked they had tried taking it by force. If Dale was angry before, he was furious now, the festering sensation boiling up through the very pores in his skin.
He came to a four-way stop and swung right. A few minutes later, he reached the outskirts of town. Although he’d taken his shotgun with him, the purpose of this particular mission wasn’t to engage in a firefight with men he knew deserved to die for what they had done. The purpose was to send a message to Randy and his boss that Dale was on to them and that if they didn’t stop he would be back to finish it.
In the distance, he spotted the sheriff’s office, an adobe-style building with a red roof and a flag out front. On the right-facing wall was a mural with an image of the early Arizona settlers carving out a life in the unforgiving landscape. Kind of ironic, he thought, given the lengths to which the sheriff and mayor had gone to undo his own homestead.
Dale drove the pickup onto the front lawn, hopped out and opened the tail gate. One by one, he dragged the bodies out, dropping them into a grotesque pile. On top of that he placed a note written in red marker, facing out onto the street. It was a message he wanted anyone passing by to see loud and clear.
Next time do your dirty work yourself.
And with that, he jumped back in his truck and peeled away.
When he arrived home, Walter, Shane and Colton were busy working on the barbed-wire fence, while Nicole, Ann and Brooke were tending to the garden and the livestock. Each of them was carrying weapons, some more than one.
“Are you sure you’re okay to be helping?” Dale asked Colton.
Colton lifted his right arm into the air and winced. “Whenever I do that it hurts like heck, but otherwise I’m feeling much better.”
Dale’s attention turned to Walter. “You mind if I have a word with you for a moment?”
Walter had been digging a hole for one of the posts. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a hanky and ran it across his forehead before handing the shovel to Shane. “You boys carry on without me. Just be sure to keep the line straight across the front of the property. I shouldn’t be long.”
The two men walked back toward the driveway, somewhere between the men out front and the women in back.
“Something on your mind?” Walter asked.
“We got lucky last night,” Dale said. “I don’t need you to tell me. I already know. I understood we had the deck stacked against us, but I never imagined they would go this far.”
Walter glared up at him, his eyes narrowing against the sun’s glare. “Desperate men are easily driven to immoral acts. But power-hungry men can be so much more dangerous. You’re right, we did get lucky. Don’t expect it to last.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk with you. You have military experience, even if it was sixty years in the past. You got an eye for terrain and tactics that I don’t, and I’d be foolish to let that go to waste.”
“What do you need?”
Dale motioned toward the house. “I need you to help turn our home into a fortress. I need to make sure that no one can simply crack a window and crawl inside the way those men did last night. I want anyone setting foot on this property who doesn’t belong to know that only death awaits them here. You think we can do that?”
“What about the fence?”
“That’s on the list of things to do, but it won’t stop anyone from getting close.”
Walter cracked his knuckles, making a hollow popping sound. “For starters, we’ll need to set up some booby-traps. Keep anyone approaching the house off balance. Make them easy prey for snipers. We’ll also need some reinforced shooting positions with clear fields of fire. Some of the bushes and pinion trees around here make it tough to spot enemies hiding in the brush. Those’ll need to be pared down.”
Walter was absolutely right. How easy would it be for a half-dozen men to set up around the house picking them off one by one as they came out?
Walter glanced back at the house and grimaced. “There’s something else that I think we should do. It may hurt the resale value of your home, but I think it’ll go a long way toward keeping us safe.”
Dale grinned. “I’m all ears.”
“Give me a little bit a time to put something together,” Walter said. “I’ve got to see what you have on the property first to know if it’s even possible.”
Dale held out his hand and the two men shook. “It’s a deal. Just keep in mind we don’t have a lot of time.”
Chapter 25
About an hour later, an alert from Duke signaled the approach of a figure with a cart at the end of the driveway. Dale was helping Shane and Colton with the fence, while Duke had been panting under the shade of a nearby tree. The dog bolted forward, placing himself between Dale and the unknown threat.
At first glance, the stranger didn’t appear intent on harming them, but given the recent course of events, it was hard to say with any certainty. Unslinging the shotgun from around his shoulder, Dale cautiously approached with the other two men.
Duke continued to bark and Dale ordered him back. Walter, Brooke and Nicole watched from the pumphouse. Dale held out a hand, warning them to stay put until the situation was clear.
“I don’t mean any harm,” the man said. He was wearing faded jeans with dirty knees.
“What do you want?” Dale asked, worried that he already knew.
“It’s Billy Forest,” he said. “For gosh’s sakes, Dale, don’t you recognize me?” His voice sounded hoarse and the flesh around his face looked like wax paper. The red rings around his eyes indicated he’d survived a bout with the flu, although the man’s thin frame spoke of being severely malnourished.
Billy and his family lived half a mile away on a ten-acre patch of land. Before the scourge, they’d kept mostly to themselves, growing vegetables and milking their dairy cows. Every once in a while the two men would bump into each other in town, at the bank or running an errand. Dale hadn’t heard anything from him since the virus. Fact, Dale had even driven by Billy’s house earlier today and assumed he and the wife were gone.
“How’s Christine?” Dale asked, his shotgun still in a low ready position. Billy was a neighbor and on some level one might even say a friend, but if the sheriff had put him up to no good, Dale wouldn’t hesitate to drop him.
Silent tears formed in Billy’s eyes and it was all the answer Dale needed.
“I’m sorry,” Dale said. “We’ve all lost someone. What can I do for you, Billy?”
His neighbor pointed to his throat. “I was hoping you’d have something to drink.”
Dale felt a surge of disappointment. “What about the well on your own property, Billy?”
Billy shook his head. “The new sheriff came by with a handful of Mexican fellas and took it from me. Wasn’t a big well, you know that, but it was all I had left to
grow my vegetables with. They brought in a truck and pretty much drained it. I still got my rain collector.” Billy stopped, his gaze tracing up toward the sky as he held a hand up. “But you know as well as I we ain’t had a drop for weeks.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Billy. You’re not the first to come asking for water and it wouldn’t be fair to those I already turned away.”
“I ain’t here begging,” Billy said, a touch of indignation in his voice. “I came to trade.”
Dale hadn’t expected that. “Trade? What do you have?”
Billy waved a hand in front of him. “Can I come forward without that dog of yours tearing me to shreds?”
Behind him, Colton let out a sharp burst of laughter.
“Duke’ll leave you be,” Dale said. “So long as you behave.”
“We’ve known each other for years,” Billy protested, still not getting that things were different now. When the loose threads of civilization began to unravel, friends and sometimes even family could turn on you in a flash.
Undaunted, Billy came forward, pulling the cart behind him. Dale handed his shotgun to Shane and patted Billy down for any weapons and found none.
“Don’t take this personally, Billy. But I have no intention of letting the sheriff and his men do to me what they did to you.”
“If I’d known those crooks would take every last drop, I woulda shot them myself.”
“They’d have overwhelmed you. There’s strength in numbers.”
Billy looked like he was thinking about Christine again. “Don’t remind me.” His eyes flicked back to his wares. “See anything here you need?”
Dale studied the items on the cart. A few boxes of rounds, mostly .22s, .308s and 9mms. Next to those were a few nubby-looking carrots and beetroots. He also had single wrapped rolls of toilet paper, the kind you saw in hotels, and a handful of sample-sized shampoo bottles. The others soon approached and picked over Billy’s items.
“So I guess pillaging hotel rooms whenever you and the wife went down to Cancún wasn’t such a bad idea after all,” Dale said, grinning.
Defiance (The Defending Home Series Book 1) Page 9