by A. American
• • •
Sarge and Ted made it back to the cabin without seeing another person. Ted was securing a line to a cleat on the little dock when Sarge jumped off and started down the little boardwalk. Ted met him on his way back. He was carrying his M1A and a pack. “Where you going?” Ted asked.
“Hunting,” Sarge replied as he jumped into the boat. “Keep an eye on things here, I’ll be back later.”
“You going to keep an eye on Don and see who shows up?”
“Yep.”
Sarge backed the boat down the creek and motored down toward its mouth. He nosed the boat into the back behind a couple of cypress trees and tied it off. He found a suitable hide under a couple of downed trees not far away. Climbing under them, he started to make the hide comfortable for his stay. He cut some limbs out of his way and put down the foam mat. Once he had his hide ready he took the suppressor from the pack and screwed it on the M1A. Laying the pack in front of him, he laid the rifle across it and put some camo cream on his face. Once he had his face painted up, he got comfortable and waited.
He had his thermos of coffee with him and he passed the time sipping on it. Using his NVGs, he scanned the river from time to time but didn’t see anything. As dawn approached and the sky began to lighten, he began to hear boats on the river and saw them soon after: mostly canoes and rowboats.
It was one of the canoes that spotted the body floating in the river. There were three people in the canoe and they carried on a conversation amongst themselves. Eventually the person in the middle held onto Don’s shirt and the other two paddled the canoe to the other side of the river and pushed the body against some snags to keep it in place. The spot where they hung the body was at Sarge’s two o’clock and about three hundred yards away.
Now that he had a target distance, Sarge made a couple of adjustments to his scope and settled down again. The canoe started down the river and soon disappeared from Sarge’s line of sight. Now it was a waiting game. Sarge was screwing the cup back on the thermos when he first heard the sound of someone in the swamp behind him. Now he wished he had brought his carbine with him.
Drawing his .45, he rolled over so he could look behind him and waited. After a moment a low whistle came out of the swamp. Sarge shook his head and whistled back. In a moment, Mike’s face appeared under the logs. He had a big goofy smile on his face, all the more goofy because of the wound to his jaw.
Sarge was shaking his head. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I had to get out of there. I’m going stir-crazy.”
“Well, get your ass in here before someone sees you.”
Mike wiggled his way into the hide, elbowing Sarge in the ribs in the process. Sarge rolled onto his side, put a boot against Mike’s hip and shoved him over, both of them cussing. Adding Mike to the small hide was bad enough, but he had also brought the SAW with him and they had to make room for that as well. Mike took a few minutes to cut away some limbs to give him an unobstructed field of fire. Eventually they were both settled into the little hide and they got as comfortable as they could.
They laid there talking in low whispers, Sarge asked how his jaw was and Mike told him it was getting better. Doc was pretty anal about the dressings being changed and made sure he took the antibiotics. After an hour, Mike elbowed Sarge and nodded his head downriver. Sarge looked up to see a boat coming slowly upriver from the direction of Suwannee.
Lowering his head to the scope, he looked at the boat. There were two men in black uniforms, and while he couldn’t read the patches on their shoulders, he could see enough to know they were DHS patches. There were also two other people on the boat in civilian clothes, and one of them for sure was from the canoe. Without lifting his head, he told Mike to keep an eye on the river for any other boats. The boat eased up to the body at the direction of the civilians. While one of the DHS goons controlled the boat, the other three men leaned over the side of the boat to where the body was snagged on the logs.
As the three men were trying to pull the body back into the boat, Sarge settled the cross hairs on the side of the boat driver’s head. As the body was clearing the gunwale, Sarge let out a slow breath and squeezed the trigger. The driver fell into the boat and the other looked back. Sarge already had the cross hairs lined up on the second uniformed figure, and when he turned to look back, Sarge squeezed the trigger again. The black-clad figure fell over the side, taking Don’s body with it; the two civilians ducked down.
Sarge watched them as they crawled around. A bloody hand reached up and pulled the boat into reverse, then took hold of the steering wheel and started backing it out into the river. Once the boat was out in the channel, one of the civilians stood up and opened the throttle and headed downriver. As soon as the boat was out of sight, Mike and Sarge immediately started to clean out the hide. They took everything with them, leaving as little trace as they could.
Chapter 17
I left Danny and Bobbie to once again marvel at the miracle that is indoor plumbing. Mark was out in the yard at his shed when I went by, so I pulled up to his gate and let myself in. He was going through the boxes we had gotten from the county labeled HUMANITARIAN AID. He had several of them laid out in front of the little shed.
“What’cha doing?” I asked.
“Looking at these. Check this out.”
I looked at the boxes scattered around the door to the shed. Inside was an odd assortment of items. There were boxes of water, flour, salt and sugar. There was also a box of multivitamins. The most interesting thing was that all the packages had labels in several languages. It looked like the kind of stuff the US usually gave to starving people around the globe, not here. Some of the boxes also had things like baby formula, lentils and something like Cream of Wheat, but it wasn’t Cream of Wheat.
“What are you going to do with this stuff?”
Mark was on his knees on the ground, one of the open boxes in front of him. His hands were on either side of the box and his head dropped down to his chest. “We’re out of the food we got from the county; I need to do something for these people.”
“From the looks of it, they aren’t going to be very grateful. I think you should put that stuff away for a while. When they’re really desperate, they’ll appreciate it more.”
Mark looked up at me, and the expression on his face disturbed me. “You’re one to talk. It’s easy to talk shit about food when you’re not hungry.”
That caught me off guard; it was definitely no longer a friendly conversation. “Just a thought,” I said. I thought we had settled at least some of this the other night, but now it was sounding like Mark was even more in the “let’s take Morgan’s stuff” camp. I filed that away.
I told him about the tracks we had found at Miss Janice’s house and what we did to the trail. He told me to keep an eye on it and let him know if there were any further tracks. I told him I would and said good-bye. We didn’t shake hands. Mark went back to digging around in his boxes and I headed for the gate. His comments about the food really bothered me, and that was something to worry about.
• • •
Back at the house, the big girls were busy hanging laundry out on the line and Little Bit was climbing a tree with a piece of 550 cord. Mel was in the kitchen washing some dishes. I came up behind her, wrapped my arms around her and kissed her neck.
“Nope,” she said without pausing from her washing.
“What?”
She looked over her shoulder. “Maybe later.”
I smiled and kissed her again. “How’s it going?”
“Just trying to get some stuff done around here. How did your trip go?”
“Good. We dropped off the food and she was really happy to get it. I don’t know what she’s going to do when it’s gone.”
“You did what you could. We can’t feed the entire neighborhood.”
“That’s an
other thing. Tonight we need to move some of our food and bury it in drums. Even Mark is starting to get a little weird.”
She stopped her washing and turned to look at me. “You really think he would come here after it?”
I thought about that for a minute and said, “He might, and that’s too close for me.”
“Where are you going to put it?”
I had been thinking about this on the way home. “I think I’m going to take it down to Danny’s. We can bury it out in the woods behind his place.”
“Well, if you think it’s coming to that, then let’s do it. I’m not going to let the girls suffer because other people didn’t prepare for themselves.”
“I agree, but people don’t think that way. They’re getting hungry and desperate.”
“Should we just share it all, let everyone know what we have, and distribute it?”
I looked at her for a minute before speaking. I had thought about this very thing. It might bring us closer to our neighbors, create a little more community in our little world. But I said, “No, if we did that they would just come back when whatever we gave them ran out. We would never be able to convince them all that we didn’t have more. Right now they just think we have it; if they knew we did we wouldn’t be able to fight ’em off.”
She turned back to the sink and said, “Do what you have to. You know we’re depending on you. No else is going to look out for us.”
I thought about what Mel said as I went out the sliding glass door. I was going to go out to the shop and start trying to figure what and how to cache. The girls were still hanging up clothes on the line and I stopped to look at them. Lee Ann saw me and waved, a big smile on her face. My girls were not living the reality of most on our block. They were fairly removed from the suffering all around us. There was one reason for that, and it was that I had taken the time when things were good to prepare. I had no way of knowing that this was in our future. Even in my worst imaginings, this had never even made the list.
Sure, I had thought of an EMP, but the totality of it didn’t even come close to what I imagined. Not having transportation or water were things I thought of, but you really can’t get a feel for it until you’re there. We had always had power and running water, and even during the worst hurricanes we could go to town for some ice or other supplies we needed. Maybe the folks that lived through Katrina had a better idea of what it took, but I damn sure hadn’t.
I was surprised at how much was still on the supply shelves: everything from canned food and toothpaste to lamp oil and feminine hygiene stuff. There was shampoo and soap, first aid stuff, rice and bags of beans and lots more. I wondered where to start and what to take. For many years I had been buying ten-pound bags of rice and beans and storing them in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, then placing the bags in five-gallon buckets. There are a dozen buckets I can see, plus the ones under the bottom shelf. While not the most appetizing combination in the world, it will keep you alive. Thankfully I thought to store a lot of salt as well.
My pack was lying on the bench and I went over to it and opened it up. I hadn’t really messed with it since I had gotten home. There wasn’t much left in it: just MREs, my mess kit and my sleeping bag. I pulled the sleeping bag out to hang up and let it air out for a while and I saw the envelope in the bottom of the pocket. I opened it and found a note and a thumb drive.
I remembered Sarge had said something about putting it in there. He had asked if I had a computer. I had my old laptop in the shop, but the battery would need to be charged before I could use it. I was walking across the shop to get it when I heard the bell at the barricade: three rings, then three more. It caught me off guard.
I was standing there looking out the door of the shop when the bell started to ring continuously. Running outside, I yelled at the girls to get in the house. I was still yelling at them and waving them toward the house when the first shot rang out. It started as a couple of pops, but it turned into a fusillade of continuous cracks. The girls ran for the back door and I ran in behind them. Picking up my carbine, I headed for the door. Mel yelled at me, “Where are you going?”
“To the barricade! You hear that? Get the M1 and stay inside!” I shouted as I ran out the front door.
The bell had stopped and the crackle of gunfire had slowed. I was running down the driveway when a figure ran in front of my gate, a man in dirty clothes. He had a short beard and wore a Ford hat on his head. He stopped and looked right at me. He was breathing hard and his eyes were huge. He held a rifle at his waist and turned toward me as he brought it to his shoulder.
I dove to the ground and shouldered my AR while prone, and he fired before the rifle got to his shoulder. I brought the sights up and started to fire at him. My first couple of rounds missed, but the third hit him in the left thigh and he spun in the road. He was sideways to me when I finally got a good sight picture and put two quick rounds in his ribs. He fell like a sack of meat. The sound of gunfire started to rise again. It sounded like it was coming from down the road, farther into the neighborhood.
I slowly got to my feet and in a crouch moved toward the gate. The sound of guns going off and the crack of the rounds as they passed grew louder. As I got closer to the gate, I was able to see up the road a little. There were several people in the road, standing upright and firing at something. One of them was the guy who had talked to Danny and me at the gate when we gave the group heading into the forest water. He had a rifle to his shoulder and looked back and yelled at someone. I knelt on one knee and lined him up in the sights. Two quick rounds and he went down.
In my peripheral vision, I caught some movement to my right and swung the carbine around. Mark was in a crouch, firing his carbine and moving toward the barricade. I moved to the gate and called to him. He didn’t look up, so I checked the road and saw two men running for the barricade. One of them fell and the second turned to shoot back and was met with a hail of fire from Mark, me and Rick, who was behind Mark. He went down just inside the barricade. The three of us spread out and started up the road, looking for anyone else. Once we made it to the barricade, Mark and Rick checked the road to see if there were any others out there. The road was empty of the living, but there was one body lying in it.
With the area secure, we started to look for the two guys that should have been on the barricade. My gut tightened when I saw two bodies laying on the right side of the road. One of them was face down, his rifle lying under him. The other was laying back, his legs folded under him as if he had been on his knees when shot and he fell back. From where I was I could see the wound was to his face, and I didn’t want to get closer to see who it was.
• • •
Thad had about a six-mile ride to the post office. He could have gone through the nearby neighborhood but decided instead to go down to 41 and straight into town. There were a couple of reasons for his decision. First, if he went through the neighborhoods he ran a much higher risk of encountering people. A big black man on a bike riding through a predominately white neighborhood under the current circumstances would surely not be warmly received. Second, he wanted to see what things looked like on the highway; if there was anything organized going on, it would be out there.
Thad rode down Pump Station Road past the water treatment plant, and the smell coming from it was awful. Past the plant he turned onto Ten Cent Road and continued on it as it turned into Ehren Cutoff Road. At the split in the road where Caliente Way went off to the right, Thad stayed on Ehren. That way wouldn’t take him through neighborhoods. Up ahead he would pass the entry to a couple of the preplanned communities Florida was notorious for.
Approaching the first of these, he could see some men standing around the ornamental wall entry. When one of them noticed him coming, he slapped another man on the shoulder and pointed. They both went back just inside the entry to take cover behind a car that had been pushed up to block it. Thad moved to the opposite
side of the road away from them and tried to look as casual as he could. He kept his eyes fixed on the road in front of him, using his peripheral vision to see what they were doing.
He wasn’t sure, but it looked like they were pointing rifles at him. Thad just kept on pedaling and passed them without incident. He passed three more little miracles of modern housing with names like Magnolia Point and Caliente Casita Village. These others were likewise manned, but no one made any trouble. After the last neighborhood, the post office was only a mile or so down the road.
Thad stopped the bike on the far side of the ball field across from the post office, where there was good tree cover. He took a canteen out of his pack and took a drink, then replaced it in the pack and took out a small pair of binos. After hanging the pack by a strap from the handlebars, he used the binos to glass the building across the street.
There were several vehicles there, mail trucks and others. One thing that caught his eye was the flagpole. The US flag that typically flew there was missing; in its place was a FEMA flag. Thad just shook his head as he went back to looking at the building. The driveway was blocked and manned. There was a Humvee sitting at the barricade and four armed men in black uniforms loitering about.
The one thing Thad had was time. He sat down under the big oak with his canteen and waited. From time to time he would raise the binos and take a look at the building, but most of the time he just sat there. Late in the afternoon a group of men came out the front door. Three were in postal uniforms and two in the black tactical-looking ones. Thad raised the binos and watched as they all fished packs of cigarettes out of various pockets and lit up. He chuckled to himself at the thought that even under the current circumstances, they still couldn’t smoke in the building.
His big head rocked back and forth with a big smile on his face at that thought, and then the smile faded and he became rigid as a board. He would never forget the man’s face, and there he was. Thad moved the binos away for a moment, then looked through them again. It was him, no doubt about it. He watched as the man walked over to one of the mail trucks parked in front of the building. He leaned in for a moment, then returned to his friends. Now Thad knew which truck was his as well.