by A. American
Whatever it was rolled off the roof, spilling flames out onto the shingles as it did. When it hit the ground, the man stepped off the four-wheeler and bent over to pick it up; when he straightened and went to throw it again, there was a thunderous explosion to my right. I instinctively ducked but realized quickly it was Danny shooting. By the time I had my wits together enough to look back, the guy was down, the little flame lying in the grass beside him. The four-wheeler was turning to head for the gate. Danny was firing at it and I joined him. After three or four shots, the rider fell off and the ATV continued until it hit the fence.
“Look!” Danny shouted, pointing down the road where more men could be seen in the yard of another house. There was a large wash of flames running down the side of the house. Another man took a running start at the house and heaved a Molotov cocktail through the front window of the living room and the flames lit up the inside of the house. Danny and I both started to fire at them, though they were probably three hundred yards away and it was dark. Our fire drew their attention. I saw one of them point then shout at some of the others.
Suddenly there were three ATVs racing toward us. The passengers on each were firing wildly. We fired a couple of shots at them and turned to find some cover in the pine trees in front of Danny’s house. As I slid in behind a tree, the first ATV raced through the gate. I thought we had closed it, but it was open. Danny started to fire at it, I joined him and the two men both hit the dirt. The second and third ATVs had already come through the gate.
I tried to angle myself to get a shot at one that was moving toward the front of the house. The passenger was standing up, one hand on the rider’s shoulder, a Molotov in the other. They were going to try to run up to the house and throw it. I flipped over on my back and started firing and then there was an explosion. The Molotov turned into a fireball, consuming the men and their machine. They fell off and writhed on the ground, rolling around trying to put the flames out. I turned my attention to the third machine.
It was suddenly quiet. There was still some shooting, but it was a little farther away. We could see the one house burning and the glow from what had to be two more. The sound of the third ATV caught my attention; it was behind the house.
“It’s around back!” I yelled to Danny.
As we ran past the porch, I wondered where Jeff and Thad were. As we rounded the house, we saw the four-wheeler sitting in front of the screen door to the back porch. Danny hit the Surefire on his carbine to light it up. One of the men was lying on the ground behind it and the second was lying on the stairs to the porch. Thad and Jeff were standing there. Thad had a bucket in his hands and water dripped onto a black scorch that still smoked where the stairs met the porch. Jeff was holding one of his Glocks, a tendril of smoke rising from the end of the stubby suppressor.
“We got ’em,” Jeff said
We could still hear some ATVs running around along with some sporadic gunfire. Whoever this was, they were well equipped. “I need to go check on my house,” I said.
“I’ll go with you,” Thad said.
We ran out to the Suburban and jumped in without saying a word. Thad had his old coach gun at the ready as I went through the gate and started down the road. The house next to Mark’s was burning and I saw Mark out in his yard as we went by. I kept my eyes open for four-wheelers but didn’t see any. My gate it was open, and I knew we had closed it. I turned into the drive, fishtailing the old truck and slinging rocks and dirt.
I floored it and took the drive to the backyard, planning to come at the house from the rear. As we passed through the gate in the split fence, I looked over at the shop. I had modified the door on it with a half-inch-thick piece of flat bar that I secured with two padlocks. It was a typical metal shed-style building and the door was nothing more than Styrofoam sandwiched between two thin veneers of metal. This with the bars on the inside of the windows was the best I could do to secure the building.
Two men were at work on the lower half of the door with an axe. There was already a sizable hole in the lower half and it wouldn’t be long before they could get in. I swung the truck to face the shop and the headlights swept across it to light up one of the raiders, axe raised over his head for another strike. At the same time, Thad opened his door, the momentum of the turn flinging it open, and he stepped out while the truck was still moving. He raised his shotgun as the second man at the shop raised his rifle, an AK variant of some type, and fired as he backpedaled around the shop. His partner quickly followed him. Thad’s shotgun went off as I jumped out of the truck. We ran to the shop, going wide to get as much of a view around the building as we could. The two men were running for the back fence. It was so dark we couldn’t see them, but could we clearly hear their feet slam into the ground as they ran. Thad let loose another shot from the old coach gun.
We weren’t about to chase them in the dark and went back to look at the shop door. They had done a hell of a job on it. Chunks of foam were scattered all around the front of the building along with torn pieces of the sheet metal cover. I was relieved to see that they hadn’t made it in the shop.
“Don’t look like they got in,” Thad said.
“No, I don’t think they did, but how did they know to hit my shop, of all the buildings out here? That’s what worries me.”
“You think they been watching us?”
I thought about it for a minute. “They had to be. I don’t know if the attack on the back of the neighborhood was just a diversion or what, but it seems too well coordinated, don’t you think?”
Thad said, “You’re prolly right. I’ll stay here. You go back down to Danny’s and check on your girls.”
“Thanks, I’ll be back in a bit. If anything happens, just start shooting and we’ll come a-runnin’.”
“Don’t worry ’bout me, go on.”
• • •
Driving back down to Danny’s, there were people all over the road. I saw Mark and his Mule racing around the houses, with Rick and his four-wheeler checking on others. As I was passing the side road to Reggie’s house, I saw headlights coming down the road and stopped, unclipped the quick-release buckle on the sling of my rifle and switched it to my left hand in case I needed to fire out the passenger window. Reggie came sliding to a stop beside the truck.
“I got one of ’em tied up at the house. What do we want to do with ’em?” Reggie said.
“Where’d you get him?”
“He was running past my place heading for the woods. I was out in the barn trying to keep an eye on my place when I heard him coming. I hit him across the chest with a shovel as he rounded the corner. He’s tied up in the barn.”
Remembering what had happened to the last guy I saw tied up in Reggie’s barn, I said, “Well, let’s get him out of there. I’ll follow you down to your place and we’ll load him up in here and take him to Mark and see what he wants to do with him.”
“Take him to Mark? You still beatin’ that horse?”
“Shit, man, I don’t know. Maybe this’ll wake him up.”
Reggie said, “Yeah, okay,” and took off down the road with me behind him. We pulled up in front of the barn and found the guy tied up, in the same chair the kid had been tied to. What surprised me the most about the guy was how clean and well fed he looked. His clothes looked new, he was shaved and didn’t look like he had been missing too many meals. And he didn’t look scared either, which kind of freaked me out.
“Here’s what he had on him,” Reggie said, nudging a pile of gear on the floor by the door.
There was an AK variant, a pistol in some kind of tactical-looking holster, a chest rig with mags and a pack, the three-day assault style. The pack was black and didn’t scream tactical until you really looked at it. He was wearing jeans and a camo jacket of some kind, definitely not military, but not Joe Civilian either.
Reggie had the guy’s hands secured with tie wraps behin
d his back, and several wraps of rope secured him to the chair. I said, “We’re going to take you out of the chair. I have no problem shooting you, so just walk out to the truck and we won’t have any trouble. You fuck around and I’ll drop you.”
He never acknowledged I was speaking, but we got him out of the chair and into the truck without incident. Reggie threw his gear into the back and sat beside him in the rear seat with his well-worn Para Ordnance .45 stuck in the man’s ribs.
We found Mark in the road in front of his house and showed him what we had. Reggie relayed the story of how he had caught him. Mark looked into the back seat at the man. “What the hell do we do with him now?” he asked.
“You tell us; you’re the law,” I said.
“I don’t know what to do with him. Where can we put him?”
“How ’bout the stocks we built?” I said.
“You actually built that thing?”
“Yeah, Danny and me did.”
“Go put him in there, I guess, but someone needs to stay there and keep an eye on him. I have to finish going through the neighborhood. We have seven dead so far.”
“Seven?” Reggie said.
Mark looked over at him and nodded. “A couple of those are just assumed at the moment. Some of the fires are still burning, and we can’t get in to look yet.”
“Jesus, how many houses did they burn?” I asked.
“Four are totaled, three others were hit with fire bombs, but they either didn’t catch or got put out.”
“We took one out next door to Danny. They threw it on the roof but it didn’t break, just rolled off, spilling fire the whole way, then Danny shot that dude. You know, this sure seemed awful coordinated. Where did they get all these damn ATVs?”
Mark shook his head and said, “I don’t know,” then looked into the back of the truck. “But we’re going to find out.”
Reggie and I took our prisoner over to the stocks and deposited him in them. Reggie had an idea and disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust on his four-wheeler, returning shortly after with a five-gallon bucket strapped to the back. He brought out a logging chain and a couple of padlocks. We wrapped the chain around the guy’s waist and secured him to the four-by-four posts. Even if he got his head and neck out, he wasn’t going anywhere. The strangest part of the entire thing was the fact that our new captive never said a word, never offered any resistance. It was like he was resigned to his fate and just went along with the plan.
Jeff was at the gate to Danny’s when I pulled up. He was carrying the old SKS he had bought for a song from a guy he worked with. He opened the gate and I pulled through, stopping beside him. “You really need to start carrying that peasant rifle of yours,” I said.
“I got your peasant right here,” he said with a grin. “From now on I’ll have it with me. How were things at your place?”
“Two guys were trying to axe their way into the shop, but they ran off when we showed up. Thad stayed behind to keep an eye on things.”
“Sounds like we’ve been under surveillance.”
“I was thinking the same thing. We need to get together with everyone and work out some better security. They knew not to come in the front door, and the back door was wide-ass open.”
Jeff said he would keep an eye out on the front of the house.
Danny was behind the house, where the two had been killed by the steps. By the time I got there he already had dragged them out to his shop to get them away from the house, where the girls couldn’t see them. He had a hose in his hand and was washing the blood off the steps when he saw me.
“We need to get the two from out front,” he said as he ran the hose back and forth on the steps.
“How bad are they burned?”
He looked sideways at me. “Bad enough.”
The two men were in pretty rough shape. Whatever they had used for fuel in those bottles had burned hot and long. The front yard smelled of burned cotton, plastic and rubber. Added to this was the sickly sweet smell of burned flesh and the rank odor of charred hair. One of them had been wearing some sort of a synthetic jacket, and it had melted to his skin and hardened into hunks of plastic in surreal forms. Their skin was mottled black and gray, with pink and white showing where blisters had formed and ruptured or where the heat simply split them open like overcooked hot dogs.
We used Danny’s four-wheeler to drag them to the back. The ATV they had been on had suffered bad damage to all the plastic body sections. The seat was gone, two of the tires had burned pretty badly and most of the wiring was scorched. It would be useless except as parts. Danny was inspecting it, then looked up to where the one that we shot the two riders off of had stopped when it ran into the fence.
“Hey, man, these are all the same model. The colors are different on these two, but they’re the same.”
I looked over to the one tangled in the fence, then at the other one. Even with the fire damage on the one in front of us, it was obvious they were the same. I said, “That’s weird. Maybe they hit a dealer or something and stole all of them.”
“Maybe, but there isn’t a dealer anywhere around here. They would have had to come from Leesburg or Ocala, or farther,” Danny said.
“I guess you’re right, but now I have a four-wheeler. I’m going to go get that one,” I said, and pointed over to the fence.
As I started to walk away, Danny called out, “How much gas do you have at your place?”
I said, “I have a drum with some, don’t know for sure, but with this many new machines around we’re going to need more. Maybe tomorrow we should go up to the Kangaroo and see if we can trade for some gas.”
Danny said, “Sounds good to me. You take that machine, we’ll give this one to Jeff and Thad and I’ll keep the burned one for spare parts. It’s got the same motor that mine has.”
The four-wheeler was still in gear and running sitting against the fence. I saw some blood on the seat. Swinging the light back across the pasture toward the house, I didn’t see a body. I sure thought we had shot the guy off the thing as he was trying to run. I drove it toward the house. There was a body there. Back at Danny’s, we talked about the bodies and agreed to deal with them in the morning. We went inside to check on everyone.
The girls were all a little frightened, and Little Bit was crying. The fire had scared Mel and Bobbie. They asked what was going on and we told them that the best we could figure some raiders had hit the neighborhood.
“What about our house?” Mel asked.
“Two guys were trying to break into the shop,” I said.
“Did they get in?” Mel asked, worried.
“No, Thad and I got there before they could. He’s down there now.”
Danny said he wanted to take a quick ride around the neighborhood. The girls were all against that idea. Taylor and Lee Ann were scared and didn’t want us to leave. I assured them Jeff was out front and no one would get in without some trouble from him. This did little to reassure them, but Danny and I went out and got our ATVs, heading for the gate. We told Jeff what we were going to do. He didn’t have a problem staying to keep watch. Danny told him about the other ATV, that he and Thad could take it. “Thanks. It’ll be nice to have something to get around here on,” Jeff said.
There were still a bunch of people out, running here and there, shouting, crying. The houses that had been hit were still burning, casting orange light on nearby houses and creating dancing demons in the trees. We found Mark sitting in his Mule in the road down from Danny’s with a group of people around him. He was being bombarded with questions, requests and accusations. He sat there staring into the flames of the house, taking no notice of the verbal assault.
We pulled alongside him, the crowd parting as we did. “What do you think?” I asked Mark as we eased to a stop.
His gaze never shifted. “Looks like we were hit by raiders.”
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“What are you going to do about it?” someone from the crowd shouted.
Still looking into the flames, Mark said, “Just what do you think I can do about it?”
“You’re the police; you’re supposed to protect us!” came the shouted reply.
Mark turned to the crowd, and his face was expressionless. “You fucking people deserve to die.”
Everyone, including Danny and me, was speechless. Mark started his Mule and pulled away into the dark. I looked at Danny and he just shrugged. The crowd started to talk amongst themselves. When they started to look toward us, I started up my ATV and drove off to where we had left Reggie. He was still there at the stocks, sitting on the five-gallon bucket he had brought the chain in. As we pulled up and shut off the machines, I heard him say, “Then piss your fucking pants, asshole.”
I looked at him with a little curiosity. “He’s bitchin’ he’s gotta piss,” he said with a jerk of his head.
I looked over at the guy. He didn’t look particularly comfortable but wasn’t showing any signs of stress yet. I asked Reggie if he wanted to be relieved. He said Rick told him he would do it later and he was good for now. We told him we’d get with him tomorrow; there would be some bodies to bury. Reggie said he would bring his tractor to make it easier.
Jeff was still at Danny’s gate. He hadn’t seen anyone or anything, but it was getting a little chilly and he asked for something hot to drink. Danny told him to come on back to the house. With all of us there again, there wasn’t any reason for him to hang out. We went back to the house and I told Mel I didn’t want to leave our place empty. If she wanted to stay with the girls, she could, but I had to go back.
Danny, Jeff and I talked about it and came up with a plan. Jeff would stay there with them and I would go home and ask Thad to stay over at the house. Like Jeff said, there really wasn’t anything at their house that they were too worried about. After a round of kisses for the girls and a good-night grope with Mel, I headed out for the house. Most of the people that had been in the road had gone home. I saw Mark’s Mule at his place as I went by and some lights on inside, and I worried about what had happened earlier.