“Oh. Well why didn’t you just say that?”
I had gotten to like Summer and her sister, Lori, a good deal. Summer was a generally pleasant girl, smart as a whip, and fun to be around. She reminded me of my sister Paige a bit, except without my sister’s snarky remarks. I felt Amy was thinking of her as a younger sibling as well.
One night not long after I’d returned from the school in Bentonville, we were sitting around an outside fire-pit at the farm enjoying the flames even in the summer heat. Amy, her voice no more than a whisper in my ear, confided in me that as an only child growing up she’d been jealous of her classmates who had brothers and sisters. Since Amy was even more reluctant than I to speak of her family, or even her life generally before we met, I took her words as a good sign.
At seventeen, Lori was actually older than me, which came as a surprise. Her size fooled me. She was small and compact, but with dense muscles like a gymnast—or at least she was before her sudden crash diet. Chatting with her back at the farm, Amy and I found out the only reason she was at the cheerleading camp for the junior high crowd was to work as an unpaid assistant coach.
“Yeah, getting a cheerleading scholarship is really hard work, but I had a better shot there than with basketball. Not many five foot two inch guards get a full ride. Volunteering to help with the youngsters got me brownie points with the head coach.” She’d been very open about the fact her parents couldn’t afford to send her to school. Even with both parents working decent paying jobs, they could not afford to pay full tuition, books, and housing for three children.
What got Lori and Summer added to our itinerary was the cautious invitation extended by Lori after she’d had a little time to feel us out. Amy and I both got the same treatment, and no, not in a sexual sense. She simply asked seemingly innocuous questions and seemed to be weighing our responses. Amy just answered honestly, without hedging, and my answers, while vague, did amount to straight responses. From her questions, like my dealings with Ruth, I sort of figured out where she was headed.
In the end, Lori revealed that her parents worried about something like this happening and had taken precautions. In short, they were preppers; like the Kellers, but on a smaller scale. So, just before our scheduled departure from the Keller farm, we temporarily added two more to our group. Since Lori knew all of the girls from the cheerleading camp and, more importantly, had obtained the latest contact information from the girls, she was an obvious choice to head out early to help speed the process.
“Look,” I said, getting us back on point, “when we get to McAlester, I don’t know if… well, things might not be what you expected.”
We sat with our heads close together and when I paused to let my words soak in to Lori and Summer, I looked to Amy for support. Any other teenaged girl might have looked at the older, more mature Lori and mistook her as a potential rival for my affections. Though my devotion to Amy was unwavering, I could see the threat of conflict; even if only in the abstract. But Amy just winked at me, letting me know she was still on-board.
“What I mean is; if you need a place to go, we would be glad to have you come with us to my parent’s place in northeast Texas.”
Lori went still, studying first my face, then Amy’s. She addressed her response to Amy instead of me, which just went to show how smart Lori really was.
“And you’re okay with this? Seriously okay?”
“Yeah, Lori. Seriously okay. If Luke feels like his family can accept more of us strays showing up like cats at a milk bucket, who am I to say no?”
Amy reached out and touched Lori’s face, brushing back her short, spikey hair. The move was friendly, even affectionate, but not sexual as I have mentioned. Then she continued,
“Lori, Summer, I know both of you have seen some shit, but I’ve been working with Shay and Delilah almost since they came to the Farm. Talking them through the hard nights and holding their hands when the Doc needs to perform another exam. Did you know Doc Cass doesn’t think Delilah will ever be able to have kids of her own?”
I stared at Amy, wide-eyed. Not about helping the girls or Doc Cass, since I knew she was trying to soak up as much first aid training in as short a time as possible. No, it was the stark, raw pain in her words as she spoke.
“Delilah didn’t even understand what sex was before being raped that first time. Her idea of intercourse was hugging and kissing with boys, that was all. Now she is so damaged inside from the repeated rapes that she still has trouble walking at times.”
As Amy spoke, she began to shed tears. Not crying for herself, but mourning the lost innocence of those two girls and all the others like them.
“Are you sure you can talk about this?” Lori asked; her eyes wide with shock.
“No, I’m not. But you two will need a safe place to stay, no matter what, and I can’t stand the thought of the same thing happening to you as what those two little girls went through. Luke has been hell on rapists literally from the moment I met him, and all I can say is we need to keep weeding them out of the gene pool.”
With that, she wiped her eyes and tried to smile at me.
“And, that goes back to what Luke said before… cut him some slack. He’s only sixteen, which on the maturity scale for boys puts him slightly behind you, Summer. Even though we can take care of ourselves, he’s just worried about us, and rightly so.”
Leaning over, I gave her a little kiss on the cheek. I think we both managed without blushing.
“Honey, I know you can take care of yourself. But if the three of you stick together, none of you may have to use those pistols. I’d like to spare you—any of you—the pain of taking a human life for as long as I can.”
Lori looked at me curiously, but also with another expression I couldn’t place.
“When it comes time, I won’t hesitate, but I appreciate the concern.”
“What… does it feel like?” Summer asked; her question out almost before her sister’s words hit my ear. “Killing somebody, I mean?”
I just shook my head; not in refusal, but because I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t remember exactly how it felt the first time. I don’t mean the emotions, those remained crystal clear. If I closed my eyes I could still feel the clenching fear and disgust, all bound up with a nearly overpowering rage. My life changed forever in that rest-stop and I still could see the bodies.
But, how did it physically feel to slash a throat that first time? To ram nearly two feet of steel into someone’s gut and brace your foot against their chest to pull the blade free? Hell, I still couldn’t remember how many I killed in the frenzy to win my freedom. What I don’t remember, ever, was feeling any remorse or regret for what I had done. Plus, I feared that part of my soul had become too calloused to the act since then. Finally, I decided Summer deserved some kind of answer, a reward for mustering up her courage to ask the question.
“I just don’t want killing to become too easy for any of you. Don’t confuse that with your willingness to defend yourselves. In the moment, with your life on the line, do not hesitate. Do. Not. Hesitate.”
“I’m not sure I understand the difference,” Summer replied meekly.
“Fair enough. Someone is pulling a weapon on you. What do you do?”
“Draw and fire,” she said immediately.
“Someone is pointing a weapon at your sister. Is it okay to shoot?”
“Yes,” she replied instantly.
“Someone calls your sister fat and ugly. Shoot?”
“What? What the heck? No, of course not.” Summer gave me a little glare and I had to fight laughing because this wasn’t a joke.
“There was a gunfighter in Texas, made a name for himself back in the late 1880s. Guy’s name was John Wesley Hardin. He killed a bunch of people. I think the total most agreed to was forty-four men. Some might have had it coming, others probably didn’t. All I have to go on is what I read in the history books. The thing is… he was infamous for shooting a man who was staying at the same hotel
he was in. I don’t remember the details but the bottom line was that someone accused him of shooting the man for snoring.”
“And what…?” I could see the confusion in Summer’s eyes and caught a curious glance from Lori as well, wondering where I was going.
“When he killed his first man, Summer, I’ll bet John Wesley Hardin never thought in a million years he might be capable of killing a man for snoring. For what it’s worth, I think his father was a preacher, too, and by all accounts he was well educated for the times. But trust me; after you do it enough times, pulling the trigger gets to be a lot easier. You just have to make sure killing never becomes too easy or becomes a reflex. And most importantly, not something you do for fun.”
Amy nodded. “Anybody who gets to that stage is not really human anymore.”
We’d had this discussion already. I’d confided in Amy a little about what happened to me sometimes. The berserker. The conversation was uncomfortable on my part, but she needed to know. Know what kind of man to which she was committing herself. Amy took the news in stride, having already figured out some of it from my fight with Gary Keller, and what others let slip about the shootouts at Saw Creek.
As I went to sleep wrapped around Amy that night, I wondered how much of my humanity remained.
Then I awoke in the dark with my finger tightening on the trigger, preparing to squeeze a round into the melon of Lori as she jumped down from her bunk to visit the latrine. I didn’t fire, drawing back at the last possible second. So I must have a little bit of myself left in the tank for the time being.
Good thing Amy didn’t snore, though.
CHAPTER THREE
Every morning, our little group made use of the old bathroom facilities we shared with a growing crowd of people, and then headed out to join the volunteer labor pool after a quick breakfast in the small dining hall. The base had several housing facilities scattered about the main complex and I heard some of the barracks dated back to the Second World War. The same source, a talkative younger teen who sat near us in the breakfast service, explained that Fort Chaffee used to be a major Army base. The military reservation used to train thousands of soldiers before being turned over to the Arkansas National Guard and the Army Reserve.
We were picked for different projects each day, all somehow related to maintaining the base or bringing unused sections back into service. I learned that the base was actually a military reservation covering over 65,000 acres, so what we saw was only one small part. Much of the infrastructure and many of the service facilities had been mothballed by the Arkansas National Guard, but now Colonel Hotchkins wanted to see what could be salvaged. As I saw it, the man wanted options.
The ladies split their time between working in the kitchens and assisting the supply personnel, apparently helping to inventory old, unused warehouses. Summer and Lori seemed to prefer kitchen duty but I could tell Amy enjoyed working with the supply people. I couldn’t tell if it was because she liked counting things, or if she enjoyed hunting for treasure. I guessed just about anything could be buried in on those old concrete bunker-style storage buildings. Maybe she liked both.
Nothing was said, but I knew they were sticking close together, including those times when they trekked off for their restroom breaks. The base was full of unfamiliar faces, and newcomers continued to arrive every day. They’d all three had enough of dangerous strangers.
I usually ended up volunteering for the motor pool, mostly helping resurrect old trucks referred to as ‘five tons’ by the more knowledgeable mechanics. These trucks appeared to have been mothballed, and early tests showed the older vehicles were very resistant to the EMP-like effects of the pulse. Not much was computerized on trucks that were last used by the U.S. Army at the end of the Vietnam War.
Some of the newer vehicles still worked, but it was random that way. Since, as the stories suggested, the National Guard units did receive the Regular Army’s castoff—or at least, outdated—equipment, the mechanics were proud to say their stuff might be old, but more of it still worked than what might be found at a Regular Army base.
However, with the brisk operations tempo—a phrase I learned from Master Sergeant Warnecke—the Guard was also saddled with newer, cooler systems that just did not work now.
“I thought this stuff was supposed to be hardened against Electromagnetic Pulse,” I complained to the master sergeant. We were sweating buckets in the confined spaces of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Warnecke grunted and used a pair of needle nosed pliers to remove a fused circuit board from the open control panel. I couldn’t be certain whether the damage was related to the pulse or not, but the carbon singed chunk of electronics looked barely suitable to serve as a paperweight.
“Yeah, well, there’s protected… and then there’s really protected. I’ve seen this same relay on other Brads working just fine. The damage is actually more trouble that way. We have to check everything because of that. Add this to the list. We’ll strip one out of the boneyard and see if it works.”
Truthfully, I think the master sergeant was still gathering data on what absolutely had to be replaced every time, and what was just a random breakdown. I jotted down the part number as Warnecke recited it from memory. He seemed to know the ins and outs of these massive tracked vehicles like he’d written the book on maintaining and repairing them. Maybe he had.
This time when I volunteered to work in the motor pool, Warnecke asked for me by name, and I figured it would be more work on the transport trucks, since I’d been getting trained on them. I’d tinkered enough with my dad back home repairing diesel engines on tractors so I knew a bit, at least enough to qualify as a helper or gopher to the actual mechanics.
Instead, Warnecke led me over to the three monsters hibernating in one of the maintenance buildings, one each nestled in what I later learned were dedicated repair bays. Working in the bowels of these Bradley Fighting Vehicles turned out to be an education… a sweaty, filthy education.
At first, I couldn’t figure out the reason or logic behind our work as Warnecke dug into the dead-lined armored vehicles, and the master sergeant ignored my questions. After a while, his plan became clear.
The savvy mechanic focused first of identifying and then, if possible, repairing mobility issues with the Bradleys. Ignoring the peripheral systems for the time being, he directed our labors towards bringing the engines and drive trains back to life. He finally gave a partial explanation when he commented in an off-hand manner that an armored vehicle that couldn’t move was just a pillbox, after all —then I got it.
After the master sergeant taught me this lesson, we continued to talk as we worked. Well, I’d been talking and asking questions all along, but now Warnecke would respond, or not, as we continued. I learned the master sergeant was married with two teenaged kids, a boy and a girl. His wife and the two youngsters worked in the gardens; or rather fields that were planted in cleared tracts in the fenced areas around the base.
The planting went in late, of course, but already I could make out the green shoots poking up through the freshly turned earth. This was the colonel’s doing, Warnecke declared. Not the actual clearing and planting, but Colonel Hotchkins had gotten the men and women working on the project immediately.
Fortunately, the Guard attracted plenty of recruits from rural backgrounds, and enough of them knew about growing crops that the deed was done. I joked about the Humvees being attached to plows must have been a sight. With a sniff, Warnecke went on to explain tractors were the first thing Colonel Hotchkins had his mechanics working on after the Humvees. Warnecke didn’t know where they got the seed or fertilizer but there were plenty of sources available in the area.
“That man, he’s a thinker. Heard he was an up and comer in the regular Army, but went for the Guard for the sake of his family.”
“Why would he do that? No offense. The Guard does a lot of good. Even before the lights went out, I mean.” I asked while using the moment to grab my canteen for a sip of lukewarm water. Th
e temperature had to be well over a hundred degrees in the metal clad building. Dehydration was a real concern. Personally, I was still enjoying the clean water that came out of the taps in the barracks; another project of the colonel’s, no doubt. He’d managed to get a cobbled-together power network up and running as well, but usage was carefully controlled.
“His boy has leukemia is what I heard through the grapevine. His wife was trying to do it all by herself, but they had two other kids as well. She was working herself to death, I imagine. The colonel—he was a major back then—stepped up and made the move over to the Guard. This let them be closer to family, and Fayetteville had a pretty good medical center back then.”
That little tidbit kept me thinking as we continued to work. If anybody would know the colonel it would be Warnecke. He was permanent cadre, like Hotchkins, which meant the National Guard was his fulltime job and Warnecke was proud of the fact he’d spent nearly twenty years in the Arkansas National Guard after doing a stint in the Army. He’d been to just about every school the military had when it came to repairing and servicing armor and armored vehicles.
Warnecke seemed to be well tied in to the rumor mill too. For instance, he knew who I was and even knew some of the details about what went down at the school in South Bentonville. Not direct knowledge, but he’d heard the talk. After a while, he proved willing to ask questions to fill in the blanks too.
I was initially confused by this apparent change in the sergeant’s demeanor, but then I realized this morning had been all about getting a feel for me. He was doing his own evaluation of me while I was sizing him up. I almost laughed at the realization.
Hard Rain Falling (Walking in the Rain Book 3) Page 2