Lines in Shadow: Walking in the Rain

by William Allen

  Max gulped, then struggled to regain his equilibrium.

  “Let’s get to it then, shall we?”

  “We’re not going to ruin the smokehouse?”

  Max smirked at the question, a practical one that brought him back to the matter at hand.

  “No, not this building. Too small, so we built a larger one for Jeb over behind the house. We just use this for storage, now.”

  “Well, in that case, let’s go play ‘Operation’ with this fellow and see what he has to say.”

  “Jeez, is your girlfriend this bloodthirsty, too?”

  Scott stopped, his legs locking into place.

  “Please, don’t ever call her that when she’s around.”

  “What, bloodthirsty?”

  Scott shook his head. “Girlfriend. She was married before the lights went out. Lost her husband. Not my place to say, and I won’t tell her story, but bad things happened to her and her family. Her little girls. She’s touchy about certain things. So, just be careful there.”

  “Shit. So, she wasn’t bluffing about helping out?”

  “I might be over the edge myself, Max, but I don’t want to tempt her with that again. Not ever. Because, I really think if she ever did it, really tortured somebody, she might just decide she likes it a bit too much.”

  “That’s just…alright, duly noted. Fucked up, too.”

  “Max, my friend, if you haven’t noticed, the world is a fucked up place these days.”

  With that, Scott opened the door on the heavily-insulated, dimly-lit little building.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  He talked, eventually.

  Scott didn’t enjoy what he had to do, but he did what needed to be done with efficiency as he let Max do the talking. His camp, his people at risk. Scott just supplied the pain, in ever-increasing doses, until the prisoner began to talk.

  Much of it was bullshit, and Scott possessed enough of a cop ear to tell when the prisoner made up shit, and then he punished him, mercilessly. What started out as slaps to the head soon progressed to the use of a short length of weighted rubber hose that left pressure cuts and massive bruising whenever Scott employed the flexible club.

  Max, for his part, maintained a business-like demeanor, cold and exacting as he delved for the information he sought. He got the man’s name, probable location of the rest of his crew, and more details as the day wore on into evening.

  Scott took a break at one point, after Bennie, the Wolf, passed out for the third time. The man’s wound continued to seep blood through the bandages, and Max wisely advised Scott to avoid any more blunt force trauma. Well, time to break out the blowtorch to cauterize those wounds, Scott suggested.

  Once out of the tiny shack, Scott took a few minutes of deep breathing before heading back over to the big barn to locate Sarah and the Porters. He found them with a larger group, sitting on upended plastic buckets and gathered around a fifty-five-gallon drum cut longways and converted into a grill, country-style. Something was cooking, and Scott thought it was chicken. Whatever it was, smelled good.

  Before approaching the group, he slipped away to quietly wash up at a hand pump at one of the cattle troughs, using a gallon coffee can to collect enough water to rinse his hands. Dipping water from the trough, he scrubbed at getting the dried blood off his hands, then dumping it out for more with the same results. He noticed how the cool water in the bucket continued turning pink after several cycles, and he was deep in thought as he rubbed his hands together.

  “You can stop tiptoeing, Sarah,” he eventually said without looking up.

  “Dang, how did you know it was me?”

  “Because you were almost quiet enough, but you started too late on your approach. When I heard the footsteps fade but not disappear, I figured it had to be somebody with training.” He paused, then added, “Plus, I caught the color of your blouse from the corner of my eye.”

  “I really need to find time for more of that training,” she groused, then turned to the matter at hand.

  “So, are they with the Liberation Army?”

  “No,” Scott replied, now shaking his hands free of the last few water droplets. “But they have had contact, and they are planning to hit this place soon. Bennie was a little shaky on the details, but we are making progress.”

  “Do you need any help?”

  “No, we got this, but Max needs to come talk to his folks about what we’ve learned. How are you getting along with the neighbors?”

  Sarah laughed, a low but melodic chuckle.

  “Marge and Jed are just plain old country folks, salt of the Earth and nice as can be. Their son seems to have retained a lot of that attitude, just under a protective coating. He hooked up with Max and his crew after he came back from his last tour in Iraq. Did you know most of them are vets?”

  “Yeah, actually I did. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to recruit Max and the rest of the Copperheads. None of them…gave you any trouble, did they?”

  Again, Sarah treated Scott to her laugh before replying.

  “No, nothing like that. Most of them have their wives or girlfriends here. They seem all scary and tribal at first, but really not that much different than what we have going back home. They’ve formed a clan here, just like we have. I mean, at the farm, you know?”

  “Home, Sarah. Yours, and all of ours. For as long as you want or need.”

  “Yeah, I guess you are right. Not like I could get those girls of mine to leave any time soon.”

  Scott nodded, getting what she meant. At the farm, Shay and Delilah had all the friends, and protection, they would ever need. The young teen girls Luke rescued from the school in South Bentonville doted on them, and included the two pre-teens in whatever silly shenanigans then were engaged in at the moment. A lot involved pranking the boys, since the girls outnumbered the males in their age range by a factor of ten. So, when the young males saw the young females on the prowl with their slingshots or bb guns, the smart young males of the species ran and hid. For that matter, so did Scott.

  Along that same line, Scott’s niece, Ruth, was like a second mom to the Trimble girls. Or big sister, given the disparity in ages. Which was much the same relationship she had with Scott’s own daughter. Thinking about Ruthie for a second, Scott decided he needed to find some way to show her his appreciation for all she did.

  “Yeah, like that for me, too. I grew up in that house, and even when I bought my own place in town, I was out there every other weekend or so. Some weeks, depending on my work schedule, Isabella saw more of Hazel that she did me.”

  Sarah waited, sensing their conversation had gone awry. She could tell something was churning through his brain. Some plan or strategy, perhaps spawned from something this Bennie character had mentioned.

  “Alright. I’ll see if Max can come and fill his people in shortly. In the meantime, I need to check with Jeb…” Scott was saying, but trailed off when he saw Thad Porter, Jeb’s son, emerge from around the side of the barn and begin to approach the water trough. Close enough, Scott thought.

  “Hey, Thad!”

  “Hey, Mr. Keller,” he replied, “I thought I saw you coming out of the old smokehouse. Do you need anything?”

  Thad was a good-looking kid, young man, in his twenties, with sandy blonde hair that already showed signs of receding. He walked with a slight limp, the only sign his left leg was titanium and polymer from just below the knee, but the steps were sure and even over the rutted dirt track running in a circle around the front of the farm buildings.

  Scott looked down, studying the pink-tinged water still slowly swirling in the metal can.

  “Well, I think we need a blowtorch if you can round one up. That wound is bleeding pretty good, so we’ll have to cauterize it. Safety first, you know. Then, Max will need to brief you all on what we’ve discovered.”

  “How bad?”

  Scott didn’t have to ask for clarification.

  “Pretty bad, Thad. But we still have some time. These
kinds of filth like to attack under cover of darkness.”

  “Yeah,” Thad agreed with a sad shake of his head. “You know, if they were just hungry, they could come to the gate. Pisses off Max some, but my folks would be the first to help them as best they could.”

  Scott nodded his understanding.

  “Like I told you dad the other day, we don’t have a lot to spare at our place either, but there’s the corn crop still to harvest. I see you guys have the same thing going. Corn might get old after a while, but it beats starving.”

  Scott didn’t mention the hogs or the steers they still had to butcher at their farm. He could see the Porters had managed to hang on to at least some of their livestock as well. Nobody was having ham sandwiches or porterhouse steaks any time soon. That protein would be doled out to fortify soups, he calculated, and would be delivered up to the kitchens with exacting instructions on how to stretch the protein for everybody.

  “How much longer do you think you and Max will need? I mean, should I go ahead and start gathering folks up now, or give it awhile? Don’t want to drag anybody way from their chores.”

  Thad gave Scott a measuring look then, as if asking how the older man was holding up to inflicting intentional suffering on his fellow human being.

  “Give us another half hour. Bennie’s been right talkative lately, but I’m sure we’ll want to go over his statement one more time,” Scott replied drily.

  “Statement? Like talking to the police or something like that?”

  “Yeah,” Scott agreed, “Something like that.”

  Thad walked back towards the barn but Scott, distracted, didn’t seem to notice. He was looking down, watching the water he’d spilled flow across the dirt and grass at his feet. Even now, he imagined he could still see the traces of blood that tinted the water ever so delicately, and he felt the idea forming in the back of his head.

  Yes, he had an idea. One that would take work and require some risk on his part, but he would be willing to give it a try.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “You want to do what?”

  Jeb’s response was the right one, Scott thought. For the before, prior to the pulse, the idea was criminal. Evil. Now though…

  “What you plannin’ on using?” Max asked, accepting the idea with aplomb.

  “Well, I guess I could go down to Pine Bluff and ask those soldiers if I could borrow a cup of Sarin, or VX. Don’t think that will work, though.”

  That comment, at least, got a laugh out of the small room. They were meeting in the Porter’s kitchen, with Scott, Sarah, Max, Jeb, Marge, Thad, Lem Brewster, and a hard-eyed newcomer that Max vouched for named Aaron. Eight seats made for a tight fit, but no one complained.

  “Nope, not going to happen,” Aaron commented. “I heard they got reinforcements from the Regulars. From the 1st Battalion of the 509th, and those boys don’t play.”

  “Do tell,” Max prompted and Aaron colored a bit before he spoke next.

  “That’s the OPFER unit the Army uses at Fort Polk, and they are a dirty fighting bunch. Airborne Infantry outfit. Ran into them when I was there for training before heading off to the ‘Stan the first time. As the Brits would say, they’re right bastards.”

  Scott chuckled, and nodded. “I was just kidding, anyway. My NBC training is about twenty-five years out of date, and wasn’t very good even then. No, when my group was scouting the camp, we noticed they only have two water sources. One, the little creek that runs about two hundred yards from the west side fence. About ten feet wide and only a foot or two deep and not the cleanest flow, either.

  “The second source is the target, though. A ten-thousand-gallon above-ground water tank. Somebody got a generator running, and they pump water into the tank for use, but it is only for the higher-ups. The skinnies and the lower ranks all have to trek outside the fence for their water.”

  “I’m guessing that tank is well-guarded, so you’re going to need some men,” Thad said, looking around and catching his father’s eye. Jeb might not like the idea, but Thad was more wired into the current state of the country. The prosthetic leg didn’t preclude him from manning a fighting position or even engaging in a little scrounging, after all.

  Max swore they’d done no out-and-out raiding, and Scott, with his cop sense fully extended, didn’t doubt the man. They might have operated outside the law before the pulse, but Scott had the feeling these men were seeing themselves in a new light after the world fell apart. They had their families here, after all, in addition to many of Jeb’s neighbors, and the setup was more designed for defense in depth than Mongol horde-style raiding.

  “I was more thinking a stealthy approach and a water-soluble toxin,” Scott explained. “Use rat poison, maybe. I’ll bet we can find a ton if we hit the stores around here. Not exactly a highly sought after survival item, after all.”

  Lem, for the first time, stuck his oar in the water.

  “Nah, that’s no good. They don’t use the same old stuff anymore, you know. Gone to warfarin. Makes ‘em bleed out, but takes days to affect a human. No, you want something a little faster acting, I’d bet.”

  “Yeah,” Scott’s reply was a little bewildered. “You got something in mind?”

  “Arsenic pentoxide,” the old man announced, like he’d just pronounced the lottery winning numbers. “That will get the ball rolling in hours after ingestion, not days. Still fatal, but even a little dose will have them running from both ends.” Then pausing a second, he looked around to Marge and Sarah, “begging your pardon, ladies.”

  “Nothing to apologize for, Mr. Brewster,” Sarah’s matter-of-fact reply made Scott want to grin.

  “Now,” Sarah continued, “Where would we look to secure a suitable supply of this arsenic compound you mentioned?”

  “And how do you know this stuff, Lem?” Jeb asked, more curious than alarmed, it seemed.

  “Same answer. Jeb, you know I used to work at Pine Products over in Decatur, right?” When Jeb nodded, the talkative older man continued.

  “Well, I was safety coordinator there for these last ten years. The wood preservation industry ‘voluntarily’ stopped the use of arsenic a while back. Had to make the President and his band of eco-freaks happy, but we still kept a few drums of the good stuff stuck in a back warehouse. Couldn’t send it back to the supplier, after all.”

  “And you can get your hands on those drums?” Scott asked carefully.

  “And the safety gear you’ll need for handling it,” Lem confirmed. “Like you said, not exactly a highly-sought survival item.”

  “Isn’t all this premature,” Marge asked, her face tight with worry over the earlier news Max delivered. “We’ve got enemies knocking on the door right now.”

  “Ten guys stuffed into a pair of International Farmalls, mom? We’ve faced worse and come out on top. Plus, Max seems pretty sure they won’t even miss this scouting party until tomorrow afternoon, anyway. That gives us enough time to come up with a plan.” Thad explained gently to his mother. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Either ambush them on the route in, or hit them at their base before they can even get on the road. At least, that’s what my old platoon sergeant would strongly suggest to the lieutenant.”

  Max cleared his throat, looking around the room and gauging his audience, then his eyes met Scott’s.

  “Well, there is one detail I left out of the general briefing. We’re going to have to hit them before they get here. It relates to what Scott told us about earlier, and Bennie didn’t want to give it up.”

  Scott sighed, remembering the feeling of the man’s ear separating from his head as the Marine used a dull knife to peel at the flesh. No, Bennie didn’t want to give up the information at all.

  “In addition to their raiding, these fellows have taken to doing a little slaving as well. Kill the men and boys, as well as the older women, and seizing the young women and girls. For sale to a group set up to the west of here.”

  Sarah got it first.

&nb
sp; “Oh, Lord, not to those animals at Lowell?”

  Max looked away, embarrassed by the actions of these others. Scott could read the expression of horror there, at the actions of these men who lacked even a shred of compassion for their fellow humankind.

  “No, I don’t think so, anyway. Like Max said, Bennie didn’t want to talk about what they did with their prisoners, but he was very insistent they had no dealings with Lowell at all. Max was very thorough in his questions, and you know how I feel about these kinds of things.”

  Scott and Sarah shared a look, and some of the others sitting around the table knew they shared some secret hurt that neither would reveal. Max and Aaron got it, and strangely enough, so did Marge. None of these virtual strangers knew more about Sarah’s background than what little warning Scott had given Max, but these were no dummies.

  “So what’s the deal?” Sarah finally asked.

  “Bennie says there’s a camp in War Eagle, where they’ll take all the girls they can supply. Not just Bennie, but other scumbags like them, too.”

  “There’s nothing in War Eagle, Scott,” Thad exclaimed. “That’s just a wide spot in the road. He must be playing with you.”

  Scott looked at Max and they nodded in unison before Scott continued.

  “No, I don’t think so. Bennie claims there’s a tent city set up there, and recently. Something like a FEMA camp, he called it. And housing what he described as an army. At least, a bunch of soldiers, trucks, and maybe a few tanks. And nobody gets in or out without permission.”

  “You think…?” Sarah began, then stopped, looking around at the others with a concerned expression.

  “Yes, I do. I think it is the second camp, the one with the military force necessary to take out Parmeyer Farm and the rest of us, if we let them.”

  “Jeez Louise,” Marge whispered. “Ya’ll might be right about taking out this local group, Bennie’s people, but what makes you think you can take on an army?”