by Mark Goodwin
“You reckon this here plan will make us some leverage?” Lloyd glanced over to Kevin as he followed Tommy out the door.
Kevin laughed. “I sure hope so, Lloyd. We certainly need it.”
Once out of the barn, Everett walked close to Tommy. “The people living in the barn, did they all lose their homes in the fire?”
“Most of them. Some of them were already here; hiding out from the GR. My place has been one of the safe havens for folks who didn’t want to take the Mark.”
“So the GR never came out here?”
“Oh, they came. I just managed to get them to leave me alone. These GR peacekeepers don’t have any loyalty to Luz. They couldn’t care less who is signing their paychecks, as long as their belly is full.”
“You bribed them to look the other way.” Everett glanced over as he walked.
Tommy scowled. “I did. But it was somethin’ akin to feedin’ an ol’ stray cat. Once they learned where the vittles were, you can believe they came back for more.”
“It was always the same guys who came around?”
“Same commander. Once he figured out I had a steady stream of resources flowin’ through, he began comin’ round about twice a month. It was getting tough to make a livin’. I’m not sure if he survived the fire or not. He was an ornery cuss.” Tommy walked up onto the front porch. “Y’all will have to excuse the clutter. Lloyd, Devin, and some of my wife’s family are all staying with us. It’s tight quarters.”
Everett and the others removed their ponchos and hung them on the rail of the covered porch to avoid dripping water in the house.
Tommy led the way to the master bedroom and knocked. “Daisy, you decent? We’ve got company.”
“Come on in.” A soft southern voice called.
Tommy introduced the team to his wife. Daisy had flowing blonde hair, deep blue eyes and an hour glass figure which was accented by a tight yellow sun dress.
“Tommy don’t bring too many ladies to the house. It’s a pleasant treat to have some female company.” Daisy smiled at Courtney and Sarah as she shook their hands.
Tommy pulled her hair back and kissed her neck. “Don’t need to bring no girls around. I done got the prettiest one in Virginia.”
Lloyd came in with the cord and plugged in the computer and the printer.
Courtney and Everett sat down at the small desk and powered on the computer.
“What do we want to say?” Courtney opened a new document.
Everett let Courtney do the typing. “Let’s state the obvious. The Global Republic knew the fires were coming. This is evidenced by the precautions they took to protect the buildings where the peacekeepers are staying. They made no effort to warn the citizens of Winchester.”
Courtney pecked away on the keyboard. “Okay, that’s a good start. How about this. Now they are holed up with provisions while the few survivors in town starve to death.”
Kevin stood behind her. “And we need a call to action.”
“Okay.” Courtney continued typing. “Rally at the Global Republic compound at 5:00 PM. Bring weapons, and let’s take back what is rightfully ours!”
Lloyd added, “Abrams Creek runs right by the college. It ain't exactly clean, but it ain't all
bloody no more either. Ain’t been no power nor water since the fire. Folks might come just to get a drink.”
“Excellent.” Courtney included the information about the creek.
“It looks good.” Sarah looked over Courtney’s shoulder. “Let’s address it to the citizens of Winchester.”
“How much paper do you have?” Everett turned to look at Tommy.
Tommy opened the bottom drawer of the desk. “Whatever is in the printer, plus that.”
Everett put his hand on Courtney’s leg. “Maybe we should copy and paste the message two times. If we can get three messages on one piece of paper, we can cut them apart and reach more people.”
“Good idea.” Courtney completed her task and clicked Print.
Preacher walked into the room and introduced Stewart to the group. Tommy filled them in on the plan.
“What will we be doing while the riot is going on?” Preacher asked.
Everett raised his eyebrows. “Assuming we’re successful at inciting a riot, we’ll sit back and wait for an opportunity to present itself. If the peacekeepers come out to fire on the crowd, we’ll have snipers positioned to take them out. If they try to run, we’ll cut them down. If they effectively disperse the crowd and give chase, we’ll have ambush locations set up. Unfortunately, when your plan is to create chaos, it’s a little hard to predict how everything will play out.”
“Where will we go to hand out the papers?” Stewart inquired.
Lloyd held up his hand. “I seen a bunch of folks scroungin’ around in the ashes of the Walmart on Pleasant Valley. We could give them a paper.”
“Good thinkin’, Lloyd.” Tommy patted him on the back. “I bet folks are doing the same thing at the other distribution points. Probably over by the warehouse, too.”
Everett said, “We should get a move on then. We need to figure out a staging area. Then get these handbills passed out.”
“The military calls it an Objective Rally Point or ORP,” Kevin said.
“What do you propose for an ORP?” Tommy asked.
Everett pointed to Kevin. “I’ll let our tactical coordinator take that one.”
“Thanks.” Kevin smiled and looked over the model. “These buildings on the north side of the campus, are they all burned out?”
Preacher pointed to several buildings. “All of these are multiple story brick buildings. They have structural issues with the roof, but the lower floors just have heavy smoke damage.”
“Then I say we try to make our way there and lay low until the fun starts.” Kevin looked up at Tommy.
Tommy nodded. “Lloyd, you go tell Devin to get ready. Preacher, you and Stew head over to the barn and have the men gear up. And get me a list of names of all the hunters. Especially anyone with a good long-range rifle. We’ll set them up as snipers.”
Kevin said, “If your men can handle passing out the information papers, we’ll get on over to the University. I’d like to get a feel for the layout so I can plan where to station our various contingencies.”
“That’d be fine with me,” Tommy kissed Daisy before walking out the door with the others. “I’ll send Preacher and Stew with you. Me, Devin, and Lloyd will have the rest of the boys at the ORP by four o’clock. Anything, in particular, you want us to bring?”
“Food, ammo, and Band-Aids,” Kevin replied.
“It was so nice to meet you, Daisy.” Courtney waved.
“You too. Y’all will have to come back when I can be a better hostess.” She walked with them out of the room.
“We’ll do that. See you soon.” Sarah smiled.
When they returned, the rain had stopped, but the sky was still cloudy. Preacher pointed to the vehicle in the drive. “That’s my old red Chevy with the topper on it. It’s a crew cab, but we’ll still have to put some folks in the bed of the truck to fit everybody.”
Stewart looked at Kevin. “You probably want to ride shotgun. I can ride in the bed of the truck.”
“I’ll ride with Stewart.” Elijah put his hand in the air.
Kevin patted Elijah on the back. “Thanks. Everett, Sarah, and Courtney should all fit in the back seat.”
Kevin called out the seating arrangements as the team loaded up into Preacher’s truck. “Sarah, you’re on the door behind me. Courtney, you’re in the middle and Everett is on the driver’s side back door. Everyone, have your weapons ready to go in case we hit trouble. Preacher, if we run into a situation, stick the truck at an angle with the passenger’s side toward the greatest concentration of hostiles. Sarah and I have the most experience with this sort of thing.”
“Yes, sir.” Preacher started the vehicle.
Kevin turned around in his seat. “Courtney, can you open that back sliding wi
ndow? I need to ask Stewart a question before we move out.”
“Sure.” She slid the glass to the side.
“Stewart,” Kevin called.
“Yes?”
“I’m assuming you’re Tommy’s comms guy. How are you guys set for handhelds?”
“We’ve got three UHF/VHF handhelds. Maybe eight walkie-talkies. Less than stellar, better than nothing. Everyone is set to channel three on the walkies. We have the three ham handhelds set to 462.6125 which is the same frequency as channel three on the FRS/GMRS walkies.”
Everett removed his radio from his vest and scrolled through to find the frequency. “It won’t tune to that. It scrolls straight from 462.600 to 462.625.”
“Just punch the frequency in manually. And if your radio only displays three digits past the decimal, it will most likely add the 5 on the end if you program it to 462.612.”
“Got it.” Everett successfully entered the frequency on his radio.
“My team, let’s all get our radios on that frequency and do a quick comms check.” Kevin removed his radio and made the necessary adjustments.
Courtney and Sarah did likewise, then each of them took turns speaking into their radio.
“Good.” Kevin switched his radio off and called toward the back of the truck. “Elijah, you’ll always be with Everett and Courtney, so you’ll be able to communicate with one of their radios if you need to.”
“Yes, yes. That will be fine.” The old man waved through the rear window.
As the truck pulled off of Tommy’s property, Kevin turned to Preacher. “If it’s possible, let’s try to come in from the north. And let me know when we’re getting close. I’d like to find a good fallback position in case we have to retreat. It should be somewhere we can safely park the majority of the vehicles.”
“We can do that. There’s a middle school about a mile and a half north of the university.”
“Good. Let’s drive by there on the way. What’s in between the two?”
“Public park. Swimming pool, soccer field, baseball field, that sort of thing.”
Everett looked out the window at the scorched landscape. “And no trees. So lots of open area to cross with no cover.”
Preacher replied, “A few maintenance buildings are scattered about; one for the pool and a couple over by the ball fields, but you’re right. There’s not much cover.”
Tommy’s farm was roughly eight miles from the university. It took them over a half an hour to reach the middle school, due to the poor condition of the roads.
Kevin grunted as he peered out the window. “It is wide open. That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
Sarah added, “Especially if someone is injured or if we are transporting a casualty.”
Courtney pointed ahead in the direction of the university. “What about that neighborhood?”
“Not much of a neighborhood anymore, but we can take a drive through the streets if you want.” Preacher turned left onto Cork Street. “The neighborhood up on our right cuts straight through to the university. There used to be a lot of brick homes back through there. I doubt they have roofs, but they might be good for cover in a tactical situation.”
“Some of the homes could still have people living in them,” Everett said.
Kevin nodded. “So let’s proceed with caution. If we see any signs of inhabitants, turn around. The last thing we want to do is engage with people who are just trying to defend their homes.”
Preacher slowly turned onto Opequon Avenue.
Everett estimated that roughly one in ten of the houses were brick. The other lots were marked only by the concrete footers, stairs, and driveways. A few solitary brick walls stood, the remainder of wood frame houses that had been dressed with a brick façade on the front of the home. “How many streets deep is this neighborhood?”
“Probably about four, but all the streets don’t cut through,” Preacher continued down the road.
“That’s it!” Sarah leaned over the seat and pointed to the right.
Kevin followed the direction of her finger. “Five brick houses in a row.”
Everett looked left. “That whole street is brick. Parkview, where does it lead?”
“It comes out right on the campus.” Preacher rolled to a stop.
“This is our fallback position. Right behind these houses. Preacher, can you take us on over to the north side of the campus?”
“Yes, sir.” Preacher turned the vehicle around and cut through a church parking lot. From there, it was only another 400 yards to the building Kevin had designated as the ORP.
“Where should I park?”
“Pull into that loading dock.” Kevin pointed toward the ramp which was obscured from view by the corner of the student center building.
The team exited the vehicle being very gentle as they closed the doors of the truck. Everett walked along the side of the building, peering through the windows around the corner from the loading dock. “It looks empty from here.”
Kevin cupped his hands over his eyes to reduce the glare as he took a peek in the window. “Okay. Let’s get inside.” Using the butt of his folding blade knife which had a glass breaker, Kevin tapped the center of the pane. The glass shattered, and he repeated the process for the other lower panes in the window.
Everett used the stock of his AR to take out the thin metal frame between the panes. He swept the remaining glass out of the bottom frame with his glove then carefully crawled through. “I’ll walk around and open those fire doors.”
The room he entered was a back office. The desk, computer, and floor were caked in black soot from the fire. The door knob was also black from the fire. Everett opened the door cautiously and scanned the hallway outside before proceeding. As he made his way to the fire doors, he noticed the heavy imprint of his boot on the soot-stained floor. He pushed the bar on the door, and it swung open to the team.
He pointed at his footprints. “If anyone else has been in here since the fire, we’ll know.”
Courtney walked through the door. “And if the peacekeepers come in after us, we’ll be easy to track.”
“Unless we pace around the entire building aimlessly,” Elijah suggested.
“Actually, that’s not a bad idea. If we end up having some time to kill, we can do that. It would be good to know what’s in the building anyway.” Sarah opened the doors and inspected the offices as they walked through the hallway.
The team reached the front entryway of the student center. A large domed atrium overlooked the street out front.
Everett stared through the smoky windows. “Preacher, Stewart, do either of you guys know what that tower is?”
Stewart looked out the window. “I’m not sure, but that’s the direction of the building the peacekeepers are using. Preacher, do you know what it is?”
“No. It’s the tallest building on the campus, though.”
Kevin gazed at the square brick tower with a pyramid roof top. “I’m sure the GR troops have control of that. They’d be stupid not to.”
“Or lazy.” Preacher slung his AR-15 over his shoulder as he and Stewart did not have the same single point slings that Everett’s team used.
Everett retrieved the small field glasses from his assault pack to get a closer look. “I can’t see much. I’m going to need to look at it from a better angle.”
Kevin nodded. “Sarah, you’re tactical commander while we’re gone. It’ll be just me and Everett. We need to keep the lowest profile possible until we can figure out where they have watches set up. Keep your radio on, but don’t make any calls unless it’s absolutely necessary. They probably have a scanner, and we don’t want to let them know we’re in the area until we have to.
“You ready to move?”
Everett hung the binoculars around his neck and held his rifle at a low-ready position. “Roger that.”
“Be safe Everett!” Courtney’s eyes were filled with concern.
“I will.”
“I love you,” sh
e said.
“You too.” He gave her a wink as he followed Kevin.
“Let’s move. Stay low, quiet, and close.” Kevin led the way back out the fire doors.
As they moved around the corner of the building toward the tower, Everett spotted a four-foot-high metal sign with a map of the campus encased behind a sheet of Plexiglass. “That’s just what we need.”
Kevin walked over and wiped the soot and ash from the glass. “Hmm. The recon model in Tommy’s barn was pretty accurate. This series of buildings must be where the peacekeepers are staying. And this is the building with the tower.”
Everett read the label of the tower building out loud. “Health and Life Sciences Building. They must have had a significant amount of nursing and medical programs.” Of course, his observation had no bearing on their present predicament. Nothing like that mattered anymore. Yet Everett couldn’t help himself from looking back on the past. As he gazed across the ruins of a lost empire, he felt like an archeologist trying to decipher the artifacts of an ancient civilization.
Kevin interrupted his daydream. “There’s a building in between, Henkel Hall. If they do have watchmen up in that building, they’re exposed going from building to building. We could set up a sniper over here and take them out when they change guards.”
“If they change guards. We’re just a few hours away from zero hour.” Everett grunted.
“If they’re in that tower, we have to find a way to eliminate the threat. They can pin down this whole campus with four shooters from up there.”
“Or we can take it. Use snipers to keep reinforcements from crossing from the Allen Dining Hall to the Life Sciences Building.”
“Yeah. We’ll lose some people doing that, but we might have to,” Kevin said. “Let’s keep moving for now. We need to find a spot where we can get up high and see what type of activity is going on over there.”
“What about the theater building? It’s across from Life Sciences. It will give us some cover, and let us get close enough to see how many people they have on watch.”
“Good, let’s do it.” Kevin led the way around University Drive to the back of the Bryant Theater Building.