“You know that for certain, Captain?”
He gave me a feral, dark grin before answering.
“When they started the mortar attack, we already had teams outside the wire angling for a counterattack. We didn’t know about the mortars, but Sergeant Jenkins here led a squad that took out the tubes before they got off a third salvo.” He looked at the sergeant, who nodded back.
“They were wearing that same shitty camo like the ones you killed up on I-40. We killed six in that team, and there were more scattered in amongst the gang members, operating the machine guns.”
I rocked back on my heels. That was a huge escalation. This wasn’t some hit-and-run harassing bullshit, but open war.
“So you still think they’re trying to destabilize the state response to this disaster?” I said, and saw the captain and his young lieutenant go wide-eyed at my statement. Jenkins just chuckled.
“I told you he was sharp, Cap. Yeah, Luke, that’s still all we can figure out. Hell, all the president has to do is nationalize the Guard and technically all of us would be under his control. I don’t get why they are trying to screw with us this way.”
I sighed. Technically. That was the key. How many NG units would have answered the call if issued right after the lights went out? Probably a lot; the majority, anyway. But after a few weeks, forget it. Local concerns took over and I’d seen that even with the ANG, which seemed be a little better organized on the state level than here in Oklahoma. Not the fault of the troops, but the political decisions cost them in lives and irreplaceable equipment. And that reminded me…
“My best guess? Somebody in power—maybe the president, maybe not—doesn’t want the various National Guard entities, and probably the states they support, to survive this event intact. Like I said yesterday, or was it a hundred years ago, the Die Off isn’t going to plan here so they sure don’t want to cooperate with other states or coordinate your efforts.
“Look, no matter what you do, I mean, what the Guard does, there is massive starvation going on right now in this country. Thousands are dying, and millions may already be dead. The federal troops are being held back until the numbers drop to a pre-determined level, and at that point, the real war might start.”
At this stage, all three were looking at me like I’d grown a third eye. Or a unicorn horn. My exhaustion let my mouth outrun my brain again. This kind of discussion was not unusual, in theoretical terms, for some of the websites and blogs my family routinely read. For the uninitiated, though, my words might give the impression I knew what the hell I was talking about.
“For what will they be fighting?” Captain Bisley finally asked.
“They will be fighting for the same things you will be. Food. Clean drinking water. I’ve heard the federal enclaves were ordered to hold in place, but to bring in their families. Either as hostages or to prevent desertion, the end result is the same. If they have your family, you will fight and die to protect them,” I said sadly. Heck, since I started sharing I decided to give them my true thoughts on the topic.
The young lieutenant was still looking at me, her eyes suddenly flinty.
“How the hell do you know all this? Bullshit, you’re just a kid, and this isn’t some video game.”
“Because I read, Lieutenant. I read the 2008 Congressional Report on EMP and related catastrophes. I can’t quote the figures now, and I can’t recall the proper title at the moment, but I seem to recall the numbers of deaths predicted were staggering; 80-90% death rates under certain circumstances. I was planning to study electrical engineering in college, and this was an area of great interest to me. So I studied.”
“Annapolis or West Point?” Captain Bisley asked, allowing a smile to peek out for the first time.
“Annapolis, if I could get the appointment. Moot point now though. And I’m sorry I got you tangled up in a wild goose chase. Obviously, the armory was their target, not the ammo plant,” I said softly, looking down.
Captain Bisley chuckled, which caught me completely off guard.
“Hell, Luke, it was the target. This was the diversion. Between the men already there and the twenty we sent to bolster the defenses, those fuckers walked into a buzz saw; especially when the Bradleys opened up on them. Lt. Nelson figures they got at least fifty of the assault team, maybe more.”
Well, that made me feel better all of a sudden. Still the attack here looked pretty serious.
“How bad was it, Captain? Here, I mean. Please tell me you got all those people out of the tents in time.”
“We lost some folks,” he admitted. “Nine dead, a bunch more wounded. They got the guard shack over by the motor pool in the first few minutes. You really did hold off a breakthrough there. And now we need to put it all back together.”
That was bad, but I’d thought the butcher’s bill would be higher; all things considered. I took the captain’s last statement as a dismissal and said my goodbyes. We would clean up, eat something, and get back over to the Thompson neighborhood this morning. That was my thought, anyway.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When I got back to the parking lot, I found Lori on guard duty while Amy and Summer sat with their backs against the front driver’s side tire and worked on cleaning their rifles. Amy had a considering look on her face and I could tell something was bothering her. It was the crease between her brows and the way she held her jaw that tipped me off. I might be clueless about girls in some respects but I was becoming adept at reading this girl’s tells.
Plopping down on the ground next to Amy, I reached over and gently touched her cheek, careful not to leave any dirt or cordite dust on her skin. My hands were filthy, I noticed, so I used the edge of my hand.
“You want to take a walk?” I asked.
“That would be nice,” she murmured, and slid the bolt carrier back into place with a practiced touch. She reassembled her M4 with nimble fingers and seated a fresh magazine but didn’t chamber a round. I stood and looked down at Summer, still working away.
“You missed a spot,” I said helpfully, and Summer looked up, sticking out her tongue. I chuckled and held out one of my dirty paws to help Amy rise. She took my hand and held it tight.
“I guess we need to go check on the Thompsons this morning,” Amy started, but I could tell that wasn’t what was on her mind.
We walked away from the Suburban after waving at Lori and went to lean against the side of a wrecked Buick a few slots down from our own spot. Someone had ventilated the hood and windshield with a spray of automatic fire last night, though from the lack of blood the vehicle appeared to have been unoccupied.
“We could… after you tell me what you are thinking about,” I finally replied.
She looked up at me, her big blue eyes threatening tears.
“I think, no, I know I killed somebody last night; maybe more than a few. I saw the soldiers out this morning, loading up the bodies on a cart. They were all chewed up from where I shot them.”
I nodded. I’d seen as much. I knew I’d killed at least a dozen from what I could see in the morning light. Some of the bodies, all tangled up in the wire, looked like scarecrows standing in a field of blown down manikins. Except they had all been people once.
“Yes, and if you hadn’t, sweetheart, they would have killed us. You did the right thing when there was just no other choice. Captain Bisley said they were some of the same crew that attacked at the prison, and that the government folks like those that killed Private Grady and Sergeant Halloran were helping them. That’s where they got the mortars.”
Amy wrinkled her nose prettily as she thought about that. We’d spoken before about the toll taking a human life can have on you, especially that first time. These men, these… assholes, had attacked a camp full of women and children in the middle of the night. Maybe for the gang members it was about avenging their dead at the prison. For the others, I guess they could use the old ‘just following orders’ bit.
“You liked him, didn’t you? Jay, I mean.”
“Yeah, I guess I did. Barely got to know him, but he seemed like a good person,” I replied honestly, sensing Amy was leading somewhere.
“But you didn’t seem all that upset when we got back. He was too new to be considered a friend maybe, but still a person you might have considered a friend at some point. If he had lived.”
“Yeah, well, I have gotten accustomed to not letting people get too close. Or thinking about certain things, you know?”
Amy understood. That was the way of the world. But I could tell Amy had something else on her mind this morning.
“What happened to you, Luke? I know things have changed for everybody these last three months, God, almost four now, I guess. But you are different, almost like you were already…”
And there it was. Amy had a right to know, more right than anybody else in the world. She’d seen the signs, and knew I didn’t react the way a typical kid should, even one who’d survived on his own for months in this brutal new world.
“You remember when I told you about my friend, the one from school who was raped a few years ago?”
“Yes?” Amy’s let the word stretch out, as if afraid of where the story was going to lead.
“Well, she wasn’t my girlfriend, just a friend. I’d known her since my family moved out to the farm. Her family owned a place not far down the road. We used to ride the school bus together. But I had hopes, you know, of maybe someday asking her out.”
My voice was getting a little ragged as I spoke, but I decided to push on and tell her all of it.
“After what happened to her, she wouldn’t talk; not to anybody. Her parents took her to the police as soon as her sister brought her home and she spent some time in the hospital. The cops arrested some of the ones from the party right after that, but… things only seemed to get worse after for Dana. That was her name… Dana.”
“Oh, no, Luke…”
“She got ahold of some of her mom’s sleeping pills and washed them down with a bottle of Scotch. See, the boys she accused had connections; money and power. One of the boys, if you can call someone twenty two years old a boy, was the son of a congressman; our local congressman, at that.
“There were some videos that just flat disappeared from the police evidence locker, and the DNA evidence was somehow contaminated. The local judge was furious, especially after their lawyers got the case moved on a change of venue. Anyway, long story short, the little fuckers got away with it. None of them were ever convicted. And here was this fourteen year old girl that was being drug through the dirt because she made one mistake and went with her sister to a party.”
“And you were in love with her,” Amy said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Maybe. What the heck did I know? I was fourteen. You said it yourself the other day, boys mature slower than girls. I did know that what happened wasn’t right, and those fuckers got away with what they did because they had money and power.”
The pause that came next lasted almost a minute, but I did not move a muscle.
“You went after them, didn’t you?”
I looked down, staring at my scuffed boots, and sighed.
“That’s what I was really doing in Chicago, Amy. I mean, I was there for a science competition and trying to get a scholarship in case I couldn’t get into the Naval Academy, but… Bryce Andrews transferred to Valparaiso. That’s just across the border in Indiana. He was one of them. I was… was going to slip out that night, catch a bus, and pay my new friend Bryce a visit. And then the lights went out.”
“Luke, that’s crazy. How would you even know where to go… or what to do?”
“Well, as for where to go, that was easy. I’d set up a phony Facebook account, using a proxy server routed through a few different scrubber programs I’d acquired. The guy lived his life online. I knew where he was going drinking that night. It simply would have looked like a mugging gone bad.”
She looked at me then, but now I couldn’t read her expression.
“Your fight with Gary at the farm? You seemed to know what you were doing there, even though you said you didn’t have any training. Was that something you learned for this?”
“Amy, I’d been training for over a year; once I saw what was going to happen and after Dana died. What they did… I had to do something. I couldn’t bring her back, but I had to make sure they didn’t do it again. So I started training. My dad never figured it out, I don’t think. I just started working out harder, spent more time on the range, and took some extra training. Some of it was easy to pick up; like advanced combat shooting courses, pistol and rifle. I started doing more competitions then too; IDPA, three-gun, and some long range shooting.
“For the hand-to-hand stuff, that wasn’t hard either. I spent last summer working out with my Uncle Billy. He’s my dad’s younger brother and he used to fight. Professionally. Mixed martial arts. He was really good until his knees just couldn’t take it anymore. After he retired, he bought a gym in Dallas. He had a good reputation and taught up and coming fighters there, as well as some self-defense courses for the public. I was supposed to be there to sweep up, mop the floors, that sort of thing.
“Uncle Billy thought I had the bug to fight, so he started teaching me some things. I think he might have caught on that I was planning to do something because I got him to teach me the stuff you aren’t supposed to do. The dirty tricks that would get a fighter disqualified in a sanctioned match.”
“Like the choke you used on Mr. Keller,” Amy supplied helpfully.
“Yeah, like that. He also knew a little about knives; mainly if somebody comes at me with a knife to get a big stick and beat the hell out of them with it, but other stuff too.”
“And you were just planning on traveling around the country killing these men who drove your love to her death?”
“Ah, yes?”
“And that’s the big secret you’ve been keeping? Not about your parents and who they are, I mean. I get that. If they really are preppers like Mr. Darwin, then any kind of totalitarian government would want to squash them and their type first.”
I looked at Amy and couldn’t understand what she was getting at with her statements.
“Shit, Luke, I thought you were some kind of government assassin or your dad was a secret agent of some kind. Maybe worked for the drug cartels or something.”
She stopped, and then looked back up at me.
“Did you get any of them before the lights went out?”
“No. And that other stuff is just… unlikely isn’t it? No, Bryce was the one farthest away, so I picked him first. Then the freaking lights went out and I was stuck. No buses running to Indiana, and I had no clue where that slime ball might be.
“See, nobody would even know, or make the connection back to me. I never told anybody, not even Dana, how I felt about her. Somebody might have made a connection when these guys started dying, but not to me.”
I paused. Letting it all sink in for Amy. Whether she was angry or not, or disgusted with me, I couldn’t say. But, it did feel good to finally say those things out loud.
“So you’re not mad?” I finally forced the words out.
“Luke, you know I’m a simple country girl. The way you described it, they were as guilty as sin; used their mommies and daddies to get them out of one more little problem. As long as you don’t hurt anybody innocent, why would I be upset about a little hillbilly justice?”
Her tentative smile made my heart hurt.
“Well, now you know. Your fiancé was a serial killer in training before the lights went out.”
“Now you’re just a man, and I love you for what you do now. And hey, you might not have been able to reach Dana’s attackers, but you have been hell on the rapists since then.”
“That’s true. And now you know all my secrets.”
“I love you, Luke Messner. My man of mystery.”
“I love you, Amy Landon, my beautiful fiancée. My heart.”
We kissed, and I could feel th
e concerns and pain melting from Amy as our souls tried to mend the hurt we each carried inside. She was a gentle, sweet girl, but as her responses proved, buried inside this seemingly fragile girl was a hard core of grit and determination. She might look delicate, but my girl had proven she could do the hard jobs now and not shy away. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a compliment to the love of my life, but I was pretty practical myself.
She can cook, she can fight, and she can kiss. What wasn’t there for a country boy to love?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We ate breakfast from the MREs I’d picked up from the dead DHS agents. Pretty much tasteless as usual, but none of us used the food as anything more than to fuel our bodies with the calories. Our stomachs, still shrunken from months of short rations, were also sensitive to anything that pretended to be spicy. So we ate small portions of bland food and were happy to get it. Afterwards, I spent some time topping off our ammunition stores from the cases stacked in the back of the truck, reloading all my magazines and checking the loads.
Unlike my usual practice, I didn’t try to search the dead or claim salvage rights earlier from those we gunned down. With the armory and the Guard having suffered so many casualties and after being an asshole about the Suburban, I was willing to pass up the pickings. Plus, we had way more firearms than people already; enough so that I asked the girls to make up multiple ammo rigs for the different weapons. For the girls, it was between the M4s or the UMP45 submachine guns. The ARs I’d gifted each with went into storage. For me, it was the CETME or M4. Technically one of the UMP45s was mine, but I never carried it.
We rolled out a little after 9am, and were carrying a pair of unexpected passengers. Mr. Parker and his grandson had stayed the night in the armory and thus were present for the attack. The two had joined a group of other civilians manning a stretch of trenches but didn’t see any actual fighting, Toby complained. Mr. Parker said a couple of the mortar rounds landed close enough to send shrapnel their way, but no one in their group was hit.
“Well, that was terrifying, and we were much further away,” I admitted, and Toby, sitting next to his grandfather in the middle room of seats, gave me an astonished look.
Hard Rain Falling (Walking in the Rain Book 3) Page 13