“What is it?” Courtney asked, seeing it.
“Signal flare. Somebody’s letting other folks know we’re coming.”
“DHS or NATO?” Courtney asked, a hint of eagerness in her voice.
“Easy, killer, I doubt it. They’d probably be using the radios they have, and they sure wouldn’t have given themselves away like that.
"Then who the hell is sending up a flare?"
"There's no way of knowing," I said out loud, and slowed to a stop.
I got my binoculars out of my bag and started looking around. It was corn almost as far as I could see, but off in the distance I could see telltale signs of civilization, as a small streamer of smoke drifted up into the sky to the left of the highway. I couldn't tell if it was from a campfire or a burning city, and we were still too far away to even smell it, but it would’ve been easy to miss if we weren’t looking for it.
"Want me to get me to get the maps out and see where the nearest detour is?" Courtney asked me, getting her carbine ready from where she'd rested it against the door.
"Yeah, that would be a good idea–"
Another flare lit the sky from the same general direction as the first, but I started to get a sense of what was going on, and I didn't think it had anything to do with us.
"Dick? It looks like there's… There's more smoke coming from where that second flare landed."
That had been exactly what had caught my attention. They weren’t using the signal flares to signal at all. Someone was setting fire to something, probably the near dry corn. It'd been a dry summer, and there hadn't been any rain since I'd gotten to Nebraska. Unless it had happened when I was unconscious, and that was always possible, but no one had ever commented on it. I shut the Hummer off and opened the door, pulling my KSG out with me, just in case.
We were a good distance away from whatever was going on, but it never hurt to be safe.
"Dick, what you think…" Courtney started to say, but I waved her off with a hand and strained to listen.
The wind shifted, blowing the warm air back at my face, drying the sweat that had been building up on my forehead and hairline. What it also brought was the fragrance of smoke, and what sounded like two gunshots.
"Did you hear that?" I said to Courtney, across the hood of the Hummer.
"Yeah, gunfire. You think they’re trying to burn someone out?"
"Something's going on. Let's get the maps out and see if there's any way around this mess."
Courtney went back to her seat in the Hummer and started digging through her pack, pulling out the laminated map of Nebraska that Steve had given us. It showed in great detail where the Air Force Base was and where NATO and the DHS were falling back toward, so we could avoid it altogether.
"What mile marker are we at?"
I told her, and I walked around the hood of the Hummer, the engine making a slow ticking noise as it cooled. Using her finger to trace the route on the map, I could see we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
"I think we'd have to backtrack a good hour or more and then try some of the service roads, but that would put us right back at Steve's farm."
"Well, there is another route," I said smiling. "We could make our own."
"You mean, just driving straight through the corn, do a little Baja, some 4x4 action?"
Her smile was infectious, and I gave her a grin back. As much as I got involved in other people's business, I would like to be able to avoid a fight for once. The phrase came to my mind, and I don't even know where I’d heard it, "not my monkeys, not my mess". Unless something rather heinous was going on here, I was going to try to find an old two track, running through one of these fields. I knew the Hummer would be tough and rugged, but finding a spot to squeeze in without going over the guard rail would be interesting. I got back in and slammed the door shut.
“Probably something just like that,” I said.
But in the back of my mind, I wondered if I really could pull this off and detour before being dragged into the mess.
“Go slow for a while, I’ll look for something—”
That something didn’t happen fast enough. Before I could start the engine, I heard the far off hum of motors, and they were heading our way.
“Get ready,” I said, firing up the engine.
I didn’t have a lot of choices, other than to turn around and try to hide the Hummer amongst the stalled traffic, but with cornfields stretching as far as I could see, there weren’t many places to go. My best hope was pulling onto the far right of the breakdown lane, where a semi-truck had stalled and been abandoned.
“Can’t we go over the guard rails?” Courtney asked me, buckling in.
“No, these were made to try to slow semis whose drivers fall asleep. Speaking of which, I’m going to try to wedge us in,” I said, creeping up on the semi. “Over there…”
The truck was half into the breakdown lane, stopped where it had rolled into another car that had died when the EMP had gone off. There was a tangled mess of metal and glass, but pulling up behind it, I thought if it wasn’t too tight we could probably fit.
“Going to scrape the paint if you get any closer to the guardrail.”
I knew that, but hearing her say it made me wonder if this was really a good choice or not. The Hummer we were in, even without the DHS signs painted on it, stuck out like a sore thumb. Out here in the land of Lincoln, it looked like everyone drove Chevy and Ford trucks, with small Japanese compacts being the norm for cars. This stretch seemed to have a lot more trucks, though. I hoped the driver of the car that the semi hit had made it out ok, but I doubted it, judging by the mess. Slowly, with a slight sound of metal on metal, I got most of the Hummer behind and beside the semi.
With any luck, they would keep rolling north, and miss seeing us in their rearview mirror.
“It’s a truck,” Courtney told me, looking forward while I worked on not tearing off my mirrors.
“Ok, I’ve got eyes on it, too,” I said. “When they get close, make sure you aren’t silhouetted. Duck if you need to.”
“Yup,” she said, scooting lower in the seat.
I did the same, just enough so I could keep my head above the dash and watch the truck coming. It swerved side to side, in both the north and south bound lanes. The driving was erratic, as if the person behind the wheel was drunk. It was painful to watch, and as bad as the driving was, I started to relax, hoping that they were so intoxicated that they would pass us right by without noticing… until the truck tried jumping the median again, clipping a stalled car with its bumper. The back end kicked out, and instead of steering into the slide, the driver panicked and hit the tail lights as the rear end spun to face us.
“Oh no…” was all Courtney had time to say as the truck rolled.
I watched in horror as it rolled twice and slid to a stop, its mangled sheet metal coming to a stop, the truck resting on the cab.
“Come on!” Courtney screamed, and she tried getting the door open on her side.
“We’re up against the guardrail, stop hammering the door!”
“It wasn’t an adult driving!” she screamed.
“Oh shit,” I put the vehicle in reverse.
This time, I left sparks as I hurried the Hummer in reverse till I cleared the back of the semi. I punched the gas, shooting the heavy vehicle forward. I hadn’t even stopped when Courtney was jumping out of the door. I pulled the parking brake and followed, my eyes scanning the distance to see what the truck had been running from.
“Dick, he’s alive, hurry. I don’t know what to do, DICK!”
I ran for the truck and crouched down to where the driver’s side window was shattered out. A boy hung there limply, blood dripping off his head from some scalp wounds. Thankfully, he wasn’t a big kid, maybe seven or eight, and when the truck had come to rest on the cab, he hadn’t been crushed. Still, he was unconscious and still belted in. Knowing there were no hospitals, ambulances or right way to do things in an imperfect world, I toss
ed my KSG to Courtney and laid down on my back, scooting my upper body into the window opening until my head and arms were inside.
I could see the rise and fall of the boy’s chest; it was shallow but there. I tried to avoid the blood dripping into my eyes, but it was almost impossible. I had to push his arms out of the way, but after a few tries and a lot of stress, I was able to push the button on his seat belt with one hand, and cushion his fall onto me as much as I could.
“Dick, I’ve got your legs,” Courtney told me as I felt her hands wrap around my ankles, “You ready for me to pull?”
This was going to hurt.
“Yeah,” I said and was surprised when I started sliding out.
My plate carrier scraped against the safety glass, crumpled metal and then the concrete, as the small woman pulled close to three hundred pounds of limp weight backwards and I tried to keep the kid from any more head or neck injuries.
“Oh shit, you’re cut,” she said, kneeling down.
“It’s not mine,” I told her.
She stopped and looked, and then knelt down, one hand going into her pocket. She pulled out a clean handkerchief. I took it gratefully and turned, starting wiping the blood off the boy’s face. What it showed was I’d probably guessed too old, when I’d thought he was seven. I marveled that he could even reach the pedals, especially having been buckled in.
“Mom…” his voice was thick and phlegmy, and he started talking before his eyes even opened.
They fluttered and he opened them as I was wiping the blood out of the way.
“Get the first aid kit,” I said, but Courtney already had it in her hands and was ripping packages of stuff open.
“Hey kid, you’re going to be all right. Just relax a second and let me check you out.”
“I want my mom,” he said, his eyes welling up with tears.
“I’ll fix you up and we’ll go find her,” I told him, taking an alcohol wipe and gently wiping at the cut over his left eye, the worst of the bleeders.
“Are you like a policeman?” he asked after a moment.
“I used to be something like that,” I told him. “Other than the cuts, anything else hurt?”
“My head,” he said, coughing and rolling to the side.
He vomited, and I held him on his side so he wouldn’t choke. I’d seen his pupils; one was wildly dilated, whereas the other wasn’t. Concussion. When he was done, I gave him the handkerchief, the clean side, and watched as he spat and then wiped his mouth and chin before dropping it on the pavement next to him.
“Let me see you move your other arm, then your legs and toes.”
We went through the whole process, and while I was cleaning him up, Courtney was as white as a sheet. She kept grabbing more and more supplies, using butterfly bandages on all of the cuts. Some of them could have probably used a bandage, but I wasn’t going to stop her. I was near panicked myself. Where had he come from, and why was he driving a truck?
“What’s your name, buddy?” I asked him.
“Ricky,” he said, pulling both hands to cover his eyes.
He moaned and rolled to the side again and dry heaved. There hadn’t been much in his stomach to start with, by the look of it. Still, as he retched, I noticed he wasn’t overly thin from hunger, nor did he have the telltale signs of scurvy, something I’d run across overseas when people only had one choice of food and not enough fruits.
“I’m Courtney,” she told him, breaking the silence. “Where’s your momma and papa?”
The words sounded funny coming out of her mouth, but he rolled onto his back again and stared at her for a long moment, focusing on her face.
“Back at the farm. They shot my daddy and Momma told me to run. I tried to get my sister to come, but she hid in the barn. I took the farm truck, Daddy always said I could use it at the farm, but I was so scared, I jumped in and… they shot my daddy.” He broke down in tears.
Half of me wanted to go to pieces and break in half, the other wanted to fly into a mindless rage. I didn’t know anything though, didn’t know anything.
“I think he’s got a concussion,” Courtney told me.
For a moment I was angry, I wanted to scream that it was obvious, but then I realized that it was like every other battle I’d been in. Anger let the reason seep out of me, until I questioned my own actions after the firefight was over. I needed information, and I needed a plan.
“Let me talk to him really quick, Dick,” Courtney said, pulling out some more alcohol wipes and handing them to me. “Clean yourself up a bit.”
“These are my damned monkeys now,” I growled.
“What? Dick, you’re… Seriously, clean up. I need to see if you got tore up when I dragged you out. I’ll talk to Ricky.”
I didn’t know why she was talking to me like that until I saw her eyes shift from me, to the boy, and back to me. I looked down, and my fists were clenched so tight that blood was welling out of one hand where my nails had broken the skin of my left palm. I unclenched them and took the handful of wipes. I shot the kid a look and saw he was still scared, and probably scared of me. I walked back toward the Hummer, taking the KSG off the ground where Courtney had left it. I wanted the map.
45
I felt like I had been walking for hours, but in reality, it was probably five minutes or less. The farm was about two miles up the road. It didn’t have a driveway off the highway, rather, there was a gate across their fencing so that large farm equipment could be moved between fields. The boy had crashed the truck through the gate and had made his journey north to where we’d found him. His dad (Robert) had been in the barn with Ricky, working on a John Deere, when they’d heard the rumble of a truck’s engine.
They’d had so few visitors at the farm since the EMP, and they had hoped it was their cousins coming to see them. His little sister, Rebecca, had been playing in the dirt with some of Ricky’s old matchbox cars, in the drive between the house and barn when a strange-looking truck with the back loaded with men had pulled up. Robert had told his daughter to get in the barn and hide when he saw that everyone holding a rifle. Ricky remembered that his dad had put his pistol down on the workbench, so when the shooting had started, he had been the first to fall.
“Run, Ricky, get your sister and run,” their mother had called from somewhere near the house.
Ricky had run toward the barn, where his sister was hiding. He’d remembered to grab the keys to the farm truck off the big nail his dad kept them on. It was an old thing, no good for road driving because it had a bad “tied rod and busted hubs”, according to the kid. He’d tried to convince his sister to come out of hiding, but she hadn’t. Men had burst into the barn, running from the hay storage on one end, to the stalls, screaming and shouting. One had fired at Ricky and he’d ducked, starting the truck and shifting it into drive.
“I didn’t want to leave Becky,” he said over and over, crying in Courtney’s arms.
“How many?” I asked Courtney.
She probably told me already, but I couldn’t hear very well with the blood pounding in my ears.
“He says, he thinks six or seven,” she said without looking up.
“How old is Becky?” I asked.
“She’s four,” he said, a cough almost turning into a gag. When he got it under control, “I’m six though, so I’m the oldest. Miss Courtney, can you and your dad help me?”
That got me in more ways than one. Of course I was going to help him, but I wasn’t going to correct him about Courtney. I didn’t have time. I’d seen what assholes did to women and children, when there was nobody coming to arrest them. I thought I’d left most of that behind in the flames of Chicago. Apparently I was wrong, and it was time to find his family and see if any were left alive.
“We can’t move him right away, Dick. His concussion… and someone needs to stay with him…”
I pulled her gear out of the Hummer and started stacking it on the side the guardrail was on. It would have to be enough… but I cou
ldn’t leave them in the middle of the road. Or could I? I dug into my pack and found the old camo netting. It would stand out some if people were up close, but with the corn and weeds on either side of the highway… from a distance it might just blend in. Courtney saw what I had and nodded.
“I’ll need your canteen,” she told me, and I gave it to her without asking what or why.
“I left you one of the handheld radios. I’ll check in on channel three. Steve said all these were programmed the same. Give me two or three hours before my first check in. I’m going to creep up close and walk in.”
“Just like before,” Courtney said, nodding at me.
“I just pray there’s nobody with anti-tank missiles this time.”
“Probably some rednecks.” She stood and then walked over to me, kissing me on the cheek. “Be careful, dad.”
I gave her a slight shove at that and she snickered, before returning to where the gear and kid were. I unrolled the netting and threw one side over her, letting her shade the kid. He’d propped himself off the hot asphalt and onto some of the packs, so I was hopeful that the concussion wouldn’t have long lasting effects. If he could move himself a few feet… Shit, I wasn’t a doctor, but I knew a little more than most people when it came to first aid.
Such as how to perform an emergency tracheotomy, coupled with how to slit throats silently.
“I’ll be safe, kiddo,” I said to Courtney and the snickers stopped.
I almost missed the gate. I’d expected it to be much closer to the farm, but when I saw it off its hinges, I backed up and pulled the Hummer into the tall grass, and then pushed a new hole into the corn where I turned it off. I hoped the hot exhaust wouldn’t start a fire, but anybody who tried to track the kid would find the Hummer. I was hoping to be in the middle of the field, so hiding it shouldn’t have been necessary, but old habits die hard.
I considered my plan. I had no plan. I pulled my pack close and grabbed the extra dump pouch and clipped it onto my vest. My KSG had a loadout of 00 buckshot and slugs. I reloaded it with all slugs, putting buckshot in one pouch, the slugs in another. I left my bag and started moving out slowly. Daytime operations were not what I wanted to play in, but I hadn’t set the chess pieces up here. Ricky said his father had been shot, but had he actually died? Played dead? So much I didn’t know.
The Devil Dog Trilogy: Out Of The Dark Page 50