The Ranch

by Sean Liscom

  “I…. I don’t know. I was pissed that he took the shot on the President. I was pissed because he shot me. I was pissed because Isabella’s arm was broken. I was pissed because of all the dead we’d already encountered....” she held up her hand again.

  “So, it’s safe to say you let your emotions rule your actions?”

  “I guess, yes.”

  “Babe,” she softened her tone a little, “That’s a pattern of behavior you need to get under control, soon. I don’t even know if you know this but you just bit Dan’s head off over legitimate concerns. Your emotions are running your mouth and that’s gotta stop! You hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This isn’t anything new with you either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve never told you this; after Marvin’s attack on the ranch, I spent days, weeks, going over all of the surveillance footage. I watched nearly everything you did. As soon as the front gate exploded, you became this one-man-band. You never called for help; you didn’t use your radio at all....”

  “There wasn’t time!” I interjected.

  “There was, but you couldn’t see it because you were blinded by your rage, your anger. Now, when Judge made his play for the ranch, you decided you needed to deviate from the plan. You included Melissa but you left me out....”

  “That was necessary because I knew you could take this ranch back....”

  “Hold on. I didn’t say you were totally wrong in what you did. Not even close. You could have trusted me to be in on the plan, hon. you can trust me, your brother, your sisters and every man and woman inside these walls. But you don’t. You feel that if the jobs going to get done, you have to be the one leading the charge,” she stared at me for a moment before continuing.

  “If it were just me and you, I’d hate it, but I could live with it. It’s not just the two of us anymore, babe. That’s something you’re forgetting. You wanted to retire because you wanted to raise a family, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That was your choice. If you decide to come out of retirement, take the bull by the horns and lead us out of this crisis, I’ll be right there by your side, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “While everyone here counts on you, you now have two kids and another on the way who are counting on you too. I’d be destroyed if I lost you, but Luke and Tara can’t lose another parent to violence. It would be too much for them.”

  “You want me to turn it back over to Dan?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t. I want you to do the job. Do what has to be done but stop being the only hero of this story. Allow the others to have their moment. Remember that EVERYONE here is counting on you living a long life. Stop stepping in front of bullets, okay?”

  “I’ll be more careful.”

  “Be more careful but please, think before you jump into the fray. I understand that things can happen very quickly, just take a moment to think first, okay?” she scooted forward and slid the body armor back into the other chair.

  “I will and thank you for the reality check.”

  “Somebody’s got to look out for ya,” she smiled and stood. Taking two steps towards me, she put one hand on either arm of the chair and leaned close to my face.

  “This brings back memories,” I smiled.

  “Yeah? Good memories, I hope.”

  “Very good memories.”

  “Jason, I want a lifetime of these memories, not just a couple of years’ worth. I want us to grow old with each other, not because of each other. You hear me mister?” her face was slowly inching toward mine.

  “Loud and clear....” I was cut short by her passionate kiss on my lips.

  CHAPTER 21

  Tuesday, September 5th, 2017

  The ARK.

  Melissa was sitting in one of the office chairs, absentmindedly fingering the pendants around her neck. Jack had left to go up to the first level a few minutes earlier to check on the progress of Captain Boone and his men. He had encouraged her to go with him, but she declined. Instead, she just wanted some time to think about everything she had learned since being here.

  Something still didn’t feel right and she was having a hard time putting her finger on it. Was Jack telling her the truth about everything? She’d decided that he was more than likely lying, but she wasn’t willing to bet the farm on it just yet. He had this way of masterfully blending enough truth with fiction as to make it believable. What was truth and what was made up? That’s what she was trying to figure out.

  “Think, girl. Think.” she grumbled to herself. She stood, stretched, and began to walk the room. “If I were the head honcho of an evil organization, wouldn’t I have a back-up plan?” she began to think out loud. “Okay, let’s walk through this. Jack set off the EMP early so that he could close and lock the doors. He wanted as many people stuck outside of the ARK’s as possible. So, he bumps the timeline by a few hours?”

  “Wait, he said he didn’t set it off, he could only change the time it went off……” she sat on the corner of one of the desks and continued to play with the pendants. “So, what? Did he give the ships new orders?” she started walking again. “Okay, he gave the ships new orders to fire before the original time. Then he slipped out before he could be sealed in here.... No, that can’t be right. What was it he said about the pendants? All five were needed to conduct the fire order, right?”

  “So, if Jack had already left the ARK and was back in Costa Rica when the missiles were fired…. How the hell did that work if he had the fifth pendant with him?” she asked herself. “How did that work if Blair, Jerrod and Nigel had been locked out? Ashton had the only pendant inside the ARK....” she continued to walk around the room. When she passed by the double doors, she nearly tripped on the dead guard’s boot.

  Stopping, she looked down at basically a dehydrated corpse. Staring at the body, her eyes settled on the silver chain around his neck. She knelt and slipped it from its resting place. Comparing it to one that was around her neck, they appeared identical. That’s when she started to form a plan. If Jack could play games, so could she.

  She slipped the pendant in her pocket and went out into the hallway. Once she’d collected a total of four, she removed the ones from her neck and replaced them with the ones she’d picked up. She placed the originals in her pants pocket and headed for the elevator. Inside, she pressed the button to take her to Level 1.

  When the doors opened, she stepped out into a gigantic cavern. At both ends, two massive rollup doors stood closed. Taking in her surroundings, she counted eight crew-cab, four-wheel drive pickups that had their beds filled beyond capacity with crates. Behind each truck was an enclosed trailer that had to be 20 feet long.

  She watched as Captain Boone’s men loaded crate after crate into each of them. She spotted Boone and Jack on the far side of the room having an animated conversation. Both seemed oblivious to anything going on around them. She began to walk toward them, slowly so she could read some of the markings on the crates.

  Each crate was about four feet square and the only marking on the outside was Kit #1 thru 4. All of them appeared to be heavy as they were being loaded with hand carts and stacked inside the trailer by two men. As she drew nearer to Jack and the Captain, she could pick out pieces of their conversation.

  “They ain’t our enemy, Jack!” Captain Boone said loudly pointing toward the roll-up doors.

  “Make no mistake, Nate, they will fire on you as soon as you open those doors! If you refuse to shoot your way out, that’s on you!” Jack fired back. “I’ve fulfilled my end of the deal; the rest is up to you!”

  “A shoot-out with US Special Forces was never a part of the deal, and you know it!”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Nate. You’ve got 36 hours to figure out how you’re going to get those trucks and your men out of here. You better come up with something!” Jack turned and started to walk away. He caught sight of Melissa who was now less than ten feet away.

&n
bsp; “Problem?” she asked.

  “Not mine,” Jack grumbled and pushed past her. She looked at Captain Boone who had his hands in the air.

  “Bastard,” Boone muttered and turned away. She hurried to catch up to Jack.

  “What was all that about?” she asked, falling in next to him.

  “It would seem my boys decoded the last journal a bit faster than I expected and called in the Special Forces.”

  “They’re outside?”

  “Yeah and Boone is afraid he won’t make it out of here when the time comes,” he pressed the call button for the elevator.

  “Sounds like a legitimate fear to me,” she remarked and stepped through the open doors of the elevator.

  “It’s not my problem, it’s his,” he hit the button for level 7 and the doors slid closed.

  “Sounds like it’s my problem too.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re going to take the case of vaccine and go out the way you came in. You’re not going out the garage entrance,” the doors slid open and Jack headed for the control room. The gears in her mind were turning again.

  “How much vaccine is stored here?” she asked as they went through the double doors.

  “Probably half a million doses or so. I don’t know. Why?”

  “How much are you sending me out of here with?” she ignored his question.

  “You’ll get enough for everyone at the ranch. You got a problem with that?” he sat heavily in an office chair.

  “This biological agent, as you call it, how fast does it act once it’s been delivered?” again, she ignored his question.

  “It’s all on your laptop, Mel. Why don’t you look there for your answers instead of pestering me?” she walked to the desk and picked up the laptop he had given her.

  “Everything I want to know is on here?” she questioned.

  “Yeah. I’m gonna take a nap,” he spun abruptly and left the room. Melissa sat in the nearest chair and opened the laptop.

  Tuesday, September 5th, 2017

  The Ranch.

  I stood in front of the entire population of the ranch for the second time in as many days. I had finished delivering my speech and stood rigidly in front of my stunned people. I was waiting for the onslaught of questions that never came. The only sound that could be heard was the occasional neighing of horses from the corrals. I was nearly ready to break the uneasy silence when a hand finally shot into the air.

  “Yes?” I pointed to Cory Rockwell, Kari’s second-in-command.

  “Beg your pardon, sir. I have a question that I’m sure many of us have.”

  “Go on.”

  “Even with all of the supplies you plan on laying in, even with all of the contingency plans you’ve laid out, I see one glaring hole,” he stepped forward to stand next to Kari. “You have too many people here.”

  “We’ll figure it out. Yes, there are a lot of people here, but we’ll make it work,” I tried to reassure him and the others.

  “No disrespect, sir. If I’m out of line, say so and I’ll shut my trap. It’s just that it seems to me that you’ve put all of your eggs in one basket and that basket is overflowing. Some eggs are bound to get broken....” his voice trailed off.

  “If you have a suggestion, please, put it out there so we can take a look at it.”

  “Send some of us north,” he said bluntly. “Some of us were going to the ranch in North Dakota, let us finish that trip. It will ease the load here and give you a second outpost if this is as bad as you think it’ll be,” I looked at him for a moment. I was dumbfounded that none of us had even given that a thought. It wasn’t just the idea of sending people north, it was the idea of having other outposts. I began to pace back and forth as I considered his proposal.

  “That’s actually not a bad idea, Cory,” I continued to pace. “I’ll tell you what; no matter what we do, we still have a lot to get done in a very short amount of time. I want you to hang back and talk to me more about your idea, okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied and stepped back to his place.

  “Alright, if there’s nothing else, we need to get to work. If you, ANY of you have suggestions, please pull either me or one of the staff aside and put it out there for us. We don’t have all the answers, so your input is greatly appreciated,” I swept the crowd with my eyes. “That’s all for now, we’ll keep you posted if we learn anything new. DISMISSED!”

  The group quickly dispersed, moving like they had a mission. Cory exchanged a few words with Kari before he made his way toward me. I caught sight of Dan and called him over.

  “Yes, sir?” he questioned as he stood in front of me.

  “First, I owe you an apology, Dan. I was in a shitty mood this morning and I took it out on you. That was wrong of me and I had no right to speak to you that way,” I held up my hand to stop Cory’s approach. He got the message and stayed where he was. “You are a valued member of this staff and I value your opinion, even if I don’t always agree with it. I overstepped my bounds. You are the Operations Manager of this ranch and I need you,” he seemed to relax a little.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Second thing,” I started with a smile. “Drop the sir crap,” he returned the smile and extended his hand. I took it and gave him a firm handshake. “We good?” I asked.

  “We’re good.”

  “You know what you have to get done today, do it the right way. That’s all I ask,” I said.

  “I will,” he replied and headed for the parking lot. I waved Cory over and opened the door of the shack for him. Once inside, I sat behind the desk, he sat opposite of me.

  “So,” I began. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “It’s simple, really. We were never supposed to stop here, or at least stay here. Right now, you don’t have enough beds and I’m sure that with the extra mouths to feed, the food won’t last all that long. Am I right?” he asked.

  “It’s certainly a question to be asked, but let me ask you this; what makes you think the ranch in Ambrose exists or that they would have our people?”

  “It’s nothing more than hearsay, but Jack spent a lot of time talking about the place. I’m sure he was convinced they had survived after the pulse. Either way, it doesn’t really matter.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Let’s say that it was abandoned after the pulse. The basic foundation of the place is still there. We could put a bit of work into it and get it up and running. With enough hard work, we could make it comparable to this place. If it wasn’t abandoned, Jack said that there was only a skeleton crew manning it....”

  “So, you would have us just move in and take over?” I interrupted. “You’d have me send people north with a question hanging over their head as to whether the place was viable or not?”

  “Of course not. Kari and I talked about this before all this went down. You know who’s in charge in that neck of the woods, Tyler Banks. You have the HAM radio equipment to reach out to him and see what’s going on, see if he needs some extra hands. We wouldn’t be going in blind nor unwelcomed.”

  “What if he tells us to piss off? What then?” my mind was running at full speed and I already knew what I was going to do. I just wanted him to confirm the conclusion I’d already come to.

  “Then we set up shop somewhere else. There are a million and one small towns between here and there. Some of those towns have been abandoned. With our share of supplies, at least enough to get through winter, we could camp out and set up another outpost.”

  “I like the way you think, Cory. I just have one problem,” I sat up straight in the chair. “Let’s say this biological threat is real and it happens. If one person at these outpost’s your talking about falls ill, the rest of you will be at risk. You won’t have defensible walls to keep sick people out, so you’ll be at greater risk. It’s true that even with our walls, it could happen here. Either way, there would be a significant risk involved....”

  “Sir, it’s a risk I think all o
f us would be willing to take. Not just those of us who came here from Fortuna, but all of us. We’d rather have a fighting chance over sitting here, penned in, waiting for the worst to happen. No offense.”

  “None taken, Cory. I appreciate your candor and you’ve given me a lot to think about. In fact, I’m exempting you from the mission to Elko in favor of you putting together an operational plan. Get me a list of supplies and equipment you would need to start from scratch, one of these outposts. I want that list to include people you’d want with you. Set it up so that there are multiple outposts. I want everything from locations to manpower. Can you get that to me by the end of the day?”

  “Yes, sir. I might miss a few things, but I can get you a pretty complete list by chow time,” he said confidently.

  “Alright, get moving on it and, Cory, thanks for speaking up!” I stood and offered him my hand. He took it and shook it vigorously.

  “I won’t disappoint you, sir,” he released my hand and took his leave. Once the door had closed. I sat back down and spun the chair to put me in front of the radio microphone. I was working my way to the contact frequency for Colonel Tyler Banks when I heard the door open behind me. I turned slightly to see Bill closing the door.

  “We got a problem,” he announced as he took the chair Cory had just vacated.

  “Just one problem? Must be a slow day at the Sterling ranch,” I said flippantly.

  “I got the word out to the government in Austin, as you asked,” he ignored my remark.

  “And?”

  “They are withdrawing all of their troops in an effort to keep the peace down there and consolidate their forces. They’ve already sent the orders down the chain.”

  “Major Jackson too?”

  “Everyone! That includes the troops they sent to the ARK. They’re already panicking and trying to get everything back to Texas. They still have control of four aircraft carriers, and they’ve ordered them and their battle groups to put to sea and see if they can hunt down those cargo ships. Idiots don’t seem to realize they are hunting for a needle in a field of haystacks! They act like we have weeks, not days!”