by W. J. Lundy
Bill pointed at it. “Do you have a tactical channel?”
Nodding, she unclipped it from her belt and began clicking until one came to life with screams. They listened in real time as the fight ahead played out.
“We just took an IED strike! We’re stuck. I can’t move. We’re stuck!”
“Gunner is down.”
“Hold tight, we’ll push you out.”
“I see them, targets up on the ridge, taking fire, right side … right side.”
“We’re dismounting. We got them pinned. Come on, boys, give us cover.”
“RPG front!”
There was a loud explosion and the rapid firing of machine guns and several more explosions. More gunfire, and then the fighting stopped. Bill moved closer to Dawson’s side; they could see three more columns of black smoke rise into the air. Ahead, men were screaming in the woods. The pair watched as they came running back, carrying their wounded. Bill kept his eyes locked ahead. “It’s going to take a lot more than this to get them out of there.”
“Yeah I know,” Dawson answered back with no emotion.
She took the radio and flipped back to the command net. “Get those trucks up here. We need to get the wounded out now. Shut down the other search sites, get everyone we can muster to this location now.”
Chapter Ten
Back underground, John was in a corner of the cavern at a reloading table, filling magazines. Gregory and the new guy, who John just learned was Paul Hanson from down state but recently moved to Sherman, were both bringing supplies through the hatch. John used a speed loader to top off his last thirty-round magazine with green-tip ammo and slid it back into the pocket of his vest. He turned and grabbed one of the large canvas bags that was just dropped through the hatch.
Gregory saw him and pointed to an area next to the dome tents. “You can set my gear over there.”
John hefted the heavy bag as another rolled down the ramp. “This is a lot of gear. Are you moving in for good?”
The bearded man dropped his bag then looked at John. “So how much has Bobby told you?”
“He hasn’t told me nearly enough.” John pointed toward the hatch. “Should I get back out there? That stunt we pulled will slow them down, but it’s really going to piss them off.”
Gregory shrugged. “Let them come; every shot fired up here is one they can’t fire at someone else.”
“Let them come?” John said with shock in his voice. “You serious? You know they’ll come back with the military.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Shaking his head, Gregory laughed and stepped around the pack he’d just dropped and sat on it. “Have a seat, kid.”
John kept his feet, feeling too anxious to sit, and not really digging being called kid. “I’m all right. I’ll stand for a bit.”
“Okay.” Gregory pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket and put it in his mouth. He looked at John and smirked. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to light it up and give away our position.”
Shifting his feet nervously John looked left and right and said, “Seriously, what the hell is going on? Is there a plan to all of this, or do I need to be planning my escape to Canada?”
“Canada.” Gregory laughed. “Yeah, they would love your militant ass up there.”
“I’ve never been a militant,” John said.
“Son, you are retired military. You can’t get much more militant.” Gregory laughed again. “They hate you for that, you know. They hate that guys like you sit here in their Occupied States and collect military pensions. They hate that you look down on them and reject their corporate rules and promises of an easier life.”
“I don’t look down on anyone,” John said.
“Did you sign onto the corporation when it was offered? Did you take the contract?”
John shook his head. “Of course not. But only because—”
Interrupting, Gregory said, “Save it, son. We all have good reasons for not joining them, but all the corporation sees is rejection. They want every state in full compliance. And guys like us—showing we can live our lives without them, that we can survive without their handouts and would rather go without, no matter how hard it might be—well, it just pisses them off, to be honest.”
John looked down and shook his head. “I just wanted to be left alone.”
There was a thunk, and John turned to see Paul dropping in and sealing the hatch behind him. Bobby had finished the reloading and helped the man move his gear to another bare spot on the floor. Scanning, John could see there were spaces marked for tents, spaces he hadn’t noticed before. “Holy shit, you all have been preparing to move into this place for some time.”
Gregory nodded. “We’ve been prepping, that’s a fact. Not for this, specifically. Aaron and I have been prepping up here since we were kids. His father got him into it just like mine did. Our time in the war cemented us in the reality that we might rely on this place for more than hunting one day.”
“What’s with the empty spots?” John asked. He really wanted to scream, but he needed information before he could formulate a plan. There was still a chance he could slip away if the opportunity presented itself.
“Family member tents,” Gregory said. “But this ain’t that kind of outing. When Aaron and I got serious about turning this into a shelter, we always thought it would be for the usual stuff: plague, apocalypse, or, hell, even zombies. But over the last ten years, the realities of life began shifting. We figured war or social breakdown would be more likely. Financial collapse, grid failure, all that shit people write about. There are still plans to get the grandkids up here if needed.” He looked at John hard. “But tell me, do you think this is a place for kids right now?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” John said back as an answer. “I don’t even want to be here.”
“Well, son, then I have some bad news for you,” Gregory said.
John shook his head and watched Paul walk off toward the A-frame mess tent, which got him thinking about the Wild Turkey in there on the table. He felt his hand shake and put it in his pocket to hide it. “Yesterday you handed me a pack and said you would get to us and help. Can you tell me how you plan to do that?”
Gregory pointed to the mess tent. “You boys should eat while we talk. It’s going to be a long night.”
The bearded man reached out a hand. John grimaced, took his hand, and pulled him to his feet. Together, they walked to the mess tent. When John lifted the flap and stepped inside, he could see that Paul had a leather knapsack spread out on the counter of the field kitchen. He was removing bread, meat, cheese, and other items. Then he lit a gas stove and dropped on a cast iron frying pan. Gregory pointed to one of the chairs around the mess table.
John moved closer. He placed his rifle in a rack and shrugged out of his body armor. “You sure we got time for this?”
Nodding, Gregory looked at the table and lifted the tablet. He pressed a button and flipped off the screen of black-and-white camera views and opened a new one. He showed it to John. The screen was filled with twenty-three circles. Over half the circles were green, with the rest painted grey. “You know what this is?” Gregory asked.
John dipped his chin. He reached across the table for the whiskey and poured some into his mug from that morning. “Bobby told me about the cameras and the microphones.”
“Ahh, but he didn’t tell you about the circles,” Gregory said.
Bobby turned from where he had been replacing filled magazines in a locker and then moved to the mess table, taking a seat. “There was no reason to show him that earlier,” Bobby said. “There was nobody in the pass last night.”
“Wait, those circles are people?” John said.
Gregory grinned. “Not people. Teams.” He held the tablet closer so John could see. “The green circles are teams that have checked in. The grey are the ones still to come, red, which we hope not to see, are teams lost or confirmed and not coming.” Gregory put the tablet back on the table.
&nbs
p; “Then won’t the feds know?” John asked.
He shook his head and pulled a smart phone from his pocket, placing it on the table. “All phones are shut off once we enter the pass. All communications are managed offsite. Just before arrival, the teams sent a text to a controller then turned off their phones.” Gregory pointed at the tablet again. “Nothing sends out from here, only receives. It’s all passive and can’t be tracked back. There is no GPS, nothing to ping the cell towers or be triangulated on. This image you see now is loaded from offsite into a camera’s memory card that is broadcasting it out in real time.
“We are like hackers stealing a signal. If our controllers want to send us a message, they drop the image in the camera’s memory card, and we can see it. If for some reason, homeland finds the camera, we just switch to a different one. We have them all over the valley in the tops of trees.”
“Then they can see it too,” John said.
Gregory laughed, and held up the tablet again. “So, they can see a black box filled with green and grey circles, so what?” The man flipped to another screen. It showed a rabbit sitting in the grass. He held it up to John. “And what about this?”
John looked at it sideways. “What?”
“This was just sent to us; it tells us they are pulled back and doing nothing. We have a dozen photos like this. I wish I could give you a cheat sheet, but it was all ordered to memory. No code has ever been written down. But I will give you this tip—bunnies and deer are good. If a coyote or wolf pops up, hold on to your hat. You see a bear, get your ass off this mountain.”
“How do you know?” John asked. “How do you know what they are doing?”
Gregory looked at Paul, who shrugged, then he looked back at John. “We have people down there in their camp at the trailhead. People that we knew they would call when the balloons went up on Emmerson’s Pass,” Gregory said. “We’re being covert right now because they don’t know much about us. They have no idea of the numbers we have up here, and we don’t want them to know. Once things become known and we are in the fight, we can fire up the radios.”
“They’ll jam them,” John said.
Gregory nodded. “We’re expecting that. Don’t worry, we have multiple communications options.”
Bobby handed out plates, and Paul walked around, dropping equal servings on each of them. Paul took the bottle of Wild Turkey from the table and corked it, shaking his head. He went back to the knapsack and removed a bottle of red wine. “Heathens,” he said, pouring glasses around the table.
Gregory held a glass for a toast. “Well, here’s to us, and those like us.”
“And the damn few left of us,” Paul added.
Gregory dipped his chin and took a drink. Then he continued. “Now, you asked how we can help you. I know you don’t have TV in here, but that’s where the help is coming. The nation is taking notice as to what happened, and we have beat Homeland to the punch on spreading the message of what took place down there in Sherman.
“This state is at a decision point. The big cities have already flipped to corporate control. But there is still a lot of country in between that wants to stay independent. Unlike the East and West Coast, we haven’t signed away the State Constitution yet. There is still a chance we could reject the corporations and remain a Free State.”
“You think the governor will just reject all of it?” John shook his head. “It’s too late for all of that.”
“No it’s not,” Gregory said. “That’s what I have been doing the last twenty-four hours. On top of spreading the word about what happened to you boys, I have been getting the word to lawyers that are now petitioning for you. Even state senators pushing back against Homeland arrests, demanding all their prisoners be released. More states considering changing their status, rejecting corporate enforcement. Free media is running this story around the clock.”
John shook his head. “A lot of good that will do after what we just did down on that road. That’ll sort of defeat the self-defense case. Makes us look more like domestic terrorists.”
“To the contrary,” Gregory said. “Homeland has blocked all media from coming to the scene, so once again, we control the messaging. More and more people are taking notice of your resistance, and we hope others will take a stand of their own.” The bearded man looked at John and could see that he wasn’t buying it. “You know there are only forty thousand Homeland agents in the entire country? This state alone had seven hundred thousand hunters before it was banned. That’s a lot of woodsmen.
“What do you think would happen if we convince all of them to not only say enough, but what if we all say enough, and we are not going to let you do it to my neighbor either? Sort of like you did in Sherman yesterday.” Gregory lifted his glass and drained it. “It’s time, John. It’s time all of us decided we’ve had enough, and not only here but everywhere. We need to stand up and put them on notice. We need to let the corporations and the governor know that this is a Free State.”
John put down his fork and looked across the table. “A lot of people will die if you go through with this. Homeland won’t stop.”
“We know that,” Gregory said. “We didn’t have to be here; we came here for you.” He held up the tablet and showed the green dots, all of which were now populated but three. “They are here for you, John.”
“Bullshit. I’m not even in your Legion. You’re not here for me, you’re here because you want to start a war.”
Gregory smiled, showing his teeth. “Aaron Newsome pitched you for membership the day you moved back to town. He said you were a leader and a fighter, and when you declined your subsistence contract, he knew you were Legion material. But you’re a patriot. You’re too fresh off active duty, and that concerned us. We weren’t sure which America you would fight for.
“Aaron knew that you had loyalties to your nation, but he also knew your family. He knew you had a breaking point just like everyone else. Aaron knew you wouldn’t join us until your own freedom was risked and the choice to decline was taken away.”
“Who are you? Why are you really here?” John asked.
Gregory smiled. “Who am I? You’ve been my neighbor for almost two years, and you don’t know me?”
John shook his head. “I don’t know anything about you, but you seem to know an awful lot about me.”
“I knew your father; would you be surprised to know we served in Vietnam at the same time? Not together, but we were drafted at the same time. He went to the Army, I went to the Marines.” Gregory shrugged and took another sip from his glass.
“He never mentioned you, not once,” John said.
“Never hung out or even spoke with your father. Like you, he was quiet and kept to himself. I regret that now. I should have reached out to you when your parents passed. I apologize for that.”
“I don’t know you; why would I care if you reached out?”
“Fair enough,” Gregory said. “You asked who I am, why I am here. Well, like almost everyone else, I’m here because something was taken from me.”
“Guns?” John said.
“Guns? This isn’t about guns. That’s what they want you to think it’s about. It’s never been about guns. It’s about liberty, and that’s what they took from me,” Gregory answered quickly. “I had a big place outside of town. When the corporate contracts rolled out, they took my state pension. They decided that my home was too big for a pair of retired folks. They told us we had to move to an apartment in the city, but I was lucky to have a sister that owned a small house in Sherman.” The bearded man laughed. “I went from being a man that did everything right to plan for his golden years to a man living in his sister’s house.” Gregory said, “I lost everything. That’s why I am here, because I have nothing else to lose.”
Before John could speak, Paul cleared his throat and said, “My story is about the same. I lost my business under the Mainstreet Reconstruction Acts, and I refused to become a subcontractor to the big corporate box stores. The city came
in and forced me to take a buyout. They gave me a check and tore down the family store and put in a parking lot. I took what money I got out of it, bought a small house up here in Sherman. Thought it might be better away from the big city.”
John laughed. “How did that work out?”
“It didn’t,” Paul said. “That City Manager Nohrs is a real piece of shit. He made sure I couldn’t restart my business up here. With no work, I had nothing left to do but live off my savings and hang out with assholes like Gregory and Aaron. They brought me into the Legion. I’m not a soldier, but I know the technology and supply side.”
Gregory chuckled. “Well, like they say, us assholes need to stick together.” The man lifted a napkin and wiped his hands then reached out for a handshake. “We’ve been waiting for you. And outside of a jail cell or the gallows, I don’t think you have a choice. What do you say, Captain Warren? You ready to join the Legion? Are you ready to renew your oath?”
John looked at him. He bit his lower lip. He had been in this position before when negotiating with tribal warlords. There was no gain in declining acceptance. He shook his head then extended his hand. “I’m already in it, and like you said, I don’t have a choice. That was taken from me, like everything was taken from you.”
Chapter Eleven
The lot was busy with activity, the gravel road filled with vehicles going into the distance. Lights flashed over ambulances. Bill walked to the lot, where men earlier had been gathered and receiving briefings. The group of people were now gone, replaced by a pickup truck with the tailgate down. In the back were two body bags. Sheriff Ransom walked to the truck and put his hands on the rails. He looked down at the dead and shook his head.
He’d been given a break but found it impossible to sleep. Instead, he found a park bench near a radio truck and put his head back. He’d heard reports coming in, mostly from the ambush site. Recovery teams had moved in and failed. The men were still holding the approach road. He watched as men reported and loaded weapons from the trunks of their cars. They formed up for briefings and organized into teams. The men were eager to get out and hunt. Bill frowned at the eagerness of each conversation, knowing they had no idea what they were getting into. He investigated the truck. If they keep this up, it’ll be full by morning.