Savage Rising

by C. Hoyt Caldwell

  “Yes, sir!”

  One of the senior officers stepped forward and corrected them. “Yes, sir, Master General!”

  The men quickly responded, “Yes, sir, Master General!”

  Harley turned to Tawny. “Pastor General, with God’s guidance I ask you to pair our new soldiers with their weapons.”

  Tawny smiled and stepped forward. “With God’s guidance, Master General.”

  Harley stepped to the side of the church while one by one Tawny called each man forward and pretended to carefully select a weapon from the crate before handing it over with a blessing.

  Cleve Pike, Harley’s nephew and highest ranking senior officer at the ceremony, joined his master general.

  “We all set?” Harley asked.

  Cleve held up a walkie-talkie. “The entertainment is gathered outside waiting for my signal.” He turned to watch as the newest members of the Gray Rise received their weapons. “You’re getting real good at that speech, Uncle.”

  Harley dug through his shirt pocket under his robe and pulled out a cigar. “Master General, Cleve.”

  Cleve looked at him, burying a chuckle. He knew his uncle’s true reputation, but with the Pike family in disarray after Bonnie’s sudden disappearance, he had no idea which of the siblings was going to rise to the top. He currently tied himself to Harley because the man had more guns than the other Pikes, including his own father. “Right, Master General.”

  Harley sucked life into his cigar with the help of a lighter custom-engraved with the Gray Rise emblem on it. “What about Vernon? He still tending to our problem?”

  Cleve nodded. “He is. Bitch won’t pose no more problems.”

  “Good,” Harley said. He watched as the new men, once broken and terrified, grinned from ear to ear, holding their new rifles. “You believe in what we’re doing, Cleve?”

  Harley’s nephew examined the same grinning men. “In what we’re doing? Hell, yeah.”

  The master general chewed on his cigar. “How come I get the sense you ain’t all bought in?”

  Cleve smiled. “’Cause I ain’t.”

  Harley stared his nephew down.

  “Hold on. It ain’t the ‘what’ that I got a problem with. It’s that we ain’t got to the ‘what’ yet.”

  Harley removed the cigar from his mouth and blew out a massive cloud of smoke. “We’re working on my timetable, boy. Don’t worry yourself about it. Things is planned and pieces are in place that are above your paygrade. Besides, we’re just now starting to elevate our personnel. We started out with inbred farm boys and hill-toppers. This group? This is our first batch with military bona fides. Three of these boys did a hitch in Iraq. Got another two that rolled through Afghanistan doing construction and the like.”

  “You also got a couple fuckers that got booted from the army during basic training. What they call ‘dishonorable discharges.’ ”

  “What exactly are they supposed to honor about fighting for this government?”

  Cleve shrugged.

  “Exactly. You just need to know that the planning is in the works. Has been in the works. Is continuing to be worked on. We got investors to consider, so we can’t half-ass nothing. We pull this off, they get rich, and we get the country. That’s the deal. You reckon you can live with that?”

  Cleve nodded. “I reckon, but if we ain’t gonna change up the way we recruit, then we’re always gonna be a class or two away.”

  “You got a better way to build our ranks?”

  “I’m just thinking we might want to get more creative is all.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I suggest we get modern.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We do what them fucking A-rabs do. Use the Internet.”

  Harley raised an eyebrow. “What the fuck do we know about the Internet?”

  “Nothing, but I know some boys. They’re into that shit. The can get us set up.”

  Harley considered his proposal. “Too risky.”

  “That’s what these boys are for. They know all that undercover, backdoor bullshit.”

  “But they ain’t into the cause…”

  “They’re into money, Uncle…Master General. They don’t give a fuck about nothing else.”

  Harley scanned the group of men celebrating their new status. “These boys, they can find us soldiers?”

  “Shit, yeah…”

  “I mean real soldiers. Scary high-speed types. special-ops fuckers.”

  “That are pissed off at the government?”

  “That are pissed off at the government.”

  Cleve laughed. “Shit. Are you kidding me? You’re gonna have to find a bigger church for these ceremonies with what these boys will find us.”

  Harley smiled from ear to ear with the cigar between his teeth. “Cleve, you just talked yourself into a new responsibility. You are our fucking envoy in charge of recruiting.”

  “What the fuck’s an envoy?”

  “It means you’re in charge of finding pissed-off motherfuckers that can bring skilled levels of pain to whoever gets in our way.”

  Cleve let out a hoot-yell. “Hell yeah, I am!”

  Harley answered with his own hoot-yell and then shouted, “Bring on the entertainment!”

  His nephew brought the walkie-talkie to his mouth and clicked the button. “Let loose the spoils of war, boys!”

  Music exploded from speakers hung from the rafters of the church. The heavy beat at first startled the unsuspecting men, but they soon started leaping into the air and hollering with unbridled excitement.

  Harley stepped back up onto the altar and strained to yell above the music. “Now is your time to take, gentlemen! Gray Rise!”

  “Gray Rise!”

  “Gray Rise!”

  “Gray Rise!”

  The doors to the church opened and women in trench coats filed in, strutting to the beat of the music. They had rehearsed this. They had worked for hours synchronizing every swing and every gyration. They had been paid well for their efforts, and they had been promised bonuses for every measure they went above and beyond, dancing for America’s last hope. None of the women were local. They were flown in from Vegas. Tawny had arranged it, as he had done for the previous classes. By Harley’s instructions, there were to be two men for every woman present. The imbalance caused tension that started off low-key, but as the booze and various other stimulants distorted the men’s behavior, fights broke out among the men, and animals emerged. Harley reveled in watching the transformation. The women were there for the men’s entertainment, but everyone was there for Harley’s.

  As the men roared, the women ripped off their trench coats, revealing attire that consisted of high heels and smiles. The roars turned into barbaric thunder, and Harley’s night of entertainment began.

  Chapter 7

  The mommas’ house was immaculately kept, a fact that would surprise no one, with so many mothers living under one roof. They were women of various ages, each had lost her only child, a daughter, to abduction. Their tragedy ran them head-on into encounter after encounter of misplaced hope. If not for Dani and Otis, they would have never again set their sights on anything that remotely resembled a hopeful thought. The deputy and the sheriff helped them find the one thing they thought lost to them: a daughter.

  She wasn’t their child, true. But, she was their kin through circumstance. She had suffered in ways similar to what their own children had suffered. She had shared their fears; she had asked the same questions in the darkness, slowly losing faith that anyone, God or person, would listen. She was a spiritual identical twin to each of their lost daughters. She was a second chance.

  It was Laura Farrow who devised the path they were currently on. She had started making regular visits to Dani and Otis to look in on their ward, Sarah. Those visits turned into the occasional overnight stay while the deputy and sheriff worked long hours keeping the law in Baptist Flats.

  One of the other mothers eventually inquired ab
out Sarah, and Laura invited her to accompany her on her next visit. Another mother called and asked if she could attend, and then another. The group of four became an accidental but cohesive mothering unit that soon started to talk as if they were raising the child.

  When Laura had spotted a house near Otis’s for sale, she approached the others about making it a permanent arrangement. They would give up the lives they no longer wanted to help give Sarah the life she deserved, and in doing so, find a connection with the daughters they’d lost.

  Supper at the mommas’ house was a regular event, and Otis’s expanding midsection was a testament to just how good the food was. Being Southerners, each woman was a master at deep-frying just about anything that was meant to be eaten, and the things they could do with elbow macaroni were simply otherworldly. One of the mommas had even found a way to combine deep frying with the bent tubes of pasta in what she called “Sarah’s Fried Mac and Cheese Balls.”

  The women had one rule for Dani and Otis: if they were off duty, neither of the lawmen were allowed to wear their uniforms or talk shop in their house. They wanted one place in the world where Sarah could get away from the ugliness or any reminders of the meanness of the world. She needed a place to go where it was just love and sunshine, 24/7.

  It was a rule that Dani and Otis abided by on most visits. Dani in particular didn’t care for the uniform rule, but she understood the sentiment. She wore the same thing every visit, her one pair of jeans and a T-shirt she’d snagged out of the lost and found that had a black-and-white sketch of Johnny Cash holding up his middle finger. The mommas had protested at first, but the more they stared at the gesture, the more they appreciated it.

  With Parnell’s lineage on her mind, Dani nibbled on a fried chicken breast. It was not her normal eating mode. She was known for tearing her food apart like a tiger tears open the belly of a fresh kill. The deputy’s mind was elsewhere, and she didn’t dare say anything about where it was while sitting at the mommas’ dining room table. Even if they were to give her permission to break their rule about discussing police work in their house, she wouldn’t have done it. Otis had made his feelings known about her propensity for running into bad luck whenever she stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. While, strictly speaking, finding out Parnell was a Pike wasn’t Dani’s doing, she still felt responsible for the information. If she did, she was pretty sure Otis would, too.

  Dani was snapped out of her trance when a knock came at the front door. Momma Elizabeth, the oldest and widest of the mommas, stood. “Interrupt supper?” she grumbled. “Family time? It’s this social Facebook nonsense. Don’t nobody put any thought into family time no more. It’s heads down on the phone screens finding out who likes snapshots of your private parts.” She spouted off her dissertation on the fall of polite society the whole way to the front door.

  She pulled it open and stared at the round fellow with the carefully crafted arch in the bill of his baseball cap. “Good Lord,” Momma Elizabeth said with a smile.

  Kenny Fable smiled back at her. “Miss Elizabeth.”

  Momma Elizabeth wrapped him in a hug and let loose with the waterworks. “Kenny, Kenny, Kenny. Our knight. Our sweet angel.”

  Kenny laughed. “Now don’t stick no title on me I’ll get struck down for. God just as soon stay far out of my business.”

  Releasing him from her embrace, Momma Elizabeth said, “God is with you, boy. He’s got a keen interest in your work. I can feel it from the bottom of my broken heart.”

  Back at the table, Sarah stopped mid-chew when she heard the voice of the visitor at the door. Her eyes drifted open wide as she made the connection in her head. She pushed her chair back and sped around the table, screaming in pure joy. “Kenny!”

  The mommas nearly broke out in tears seeing her so happy. She was normally a sullen child who could go days without cracking a smile.

  Dani dropped her piece of fried chicken to the plate and was on Sarah’s heels, running to the front door. The small girl leapt through the air and landed in Kenny’s arms, then joined Momma Elizabeth in a joyous cry.

  Dani stood back and wrestled with her own urge to break out in tears at the sight of the round closeout king.

  “I ain’t seen this many people this happy to see me before in my life,” Kenny said. “Y’all need to be careful, now, or you won’t never get leave of me.”

  The rest of the household filed in behind Dani as they all lined up to give him a hug. Even Otis managed to give him a hybrid between a hug and a vise-gripped handshake with his unimpaired hand.

  “What in the world, Kenny?” Dani said, trying to hide the shaky timbre of her voice. “Word was you were in Seattle.”

  “That’d be the last place I was. Indeed, it was, Deputy. That there is a gloomy destination. Let me tell you. They got a lot of interesting things to see and the people are a bit off; they were fun to get to know, but if they get sun there, I couldn’t tell you. They got gray clouds in the sky like we got grass on the ground. We were up there running down a lead on some shipping company, and I swear it must have rained…”

  Laura held up her hand to cut him off. “Now, Kenny, we don’t talk leads or suspects or anything of that nature in this house.” She surreptitiously motioned her head in Sarah’s direction, hoping Kenny would honor their rule without a fuss.

  Kenny stood dazed at first, but quickly came around when Sarah grabbed his hand. “Yes, ma’am, that is a fine policy. A fine one.” He turned and looked back out the door. “You got any objections to such talk on the front porch?”

  Laura looked at Otis and gave him a raise of her eyebrow, indicating he needed to take control of Kenny. Dani couldn’t explain it, but she was bothered by that look. It was like the two of them had their own silent language. It was much more intimate than the flirting she had witnessed between them at the station.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Otis said to Kenny. “You, me, and Dani.”

  “No!” Sarah gripped Kenny’s hand tighter. “He stays!”

  “Sarah honey,” Laura said, stepping forward. “Kenny needs to talk some business with Otis and Dani. He ain’t leaving. He’ll be back.”

  Kenny knelt down. “Ms. Sarah, I wouldn’t come in and run off like that. No, ma’am, I wouldn’t. I come all this way to see you and hear about your school and such. I just got one quick bit of news I gotta share with Otis and Dani, and then I’ll be back.”

  Sarah couldn’t bring herself to let go of his hand. Kenny was her savior. The man who’d carried her out of that horrible bunker. The man who’d nearly died helping to save her life.

  Kenny tilted his head back and sniffed the air. “Now, I smell me some fried chicken and…” He sniffed in deeper, making a big show of it. “And Lord help me, I’m thinking you got a pie mixed in there, too. Apple?”

  “Rhubarb-apple,” Momma Elizabeth replied with her chin held high. “Not a crumb of it come out of can or box.”

  Kenny rubbed his sizable belly. “Well, I can promise you a considerable portion of it is gonna end up right here in this basket.” He stepped back on the porch and winked at Sarah. “See you in a bit, Ms. Sarah.”

  Sarah gave him one last pleading look and then skulked back into the dining room with the help of her team of mommas.

  Kenny, Dani, and Otis moved down the front porch steps and reached the sidewalk before they started talking.

  “What’s on your mind?” Otis asked.

  “Trouble’s on my mind, and y’all got a mess of it heading your way.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Dani asked.

  “Rucker.”

  It was a name neither Otis nor Dani had heard in a while, but it still made their stomachs turn.

  “What about Rucker?” Otis asked, leaning in out of concern that their voices would carry through the walls of the house.

  “Boy got himself into trouble. Money went missing from the county coffers in Rock Hollow. Don’t know all the particulars, but rumor is he’d been playing fast and lo
ose with his sheriffin’ budget for a great while now. Always had Bonnie to bail him out if he needed it. He ain’t got Bonnie no more.”

  “Good. He needs to be found out,” Dani said. “Man’s an embarrassment to law enforcement.”

  “He’s been found out all right. Step and me got a call from a boy that used to work with Boss. He says folks in Rock Hollow called for what they say is a special election to bounce Rucker out on his ass. In about two days’ time, he’s gonna be out of a job. It’s a guarantee.”

  “So,” Dani said, “you come all this way to deliver the good news?”

  Otis groaned. “It ain’t good.”

  “Not altogether,” Kenny said, “it ain’t, no.”

  “What the hell are you two talking about? A crooked cop ain’t gonna be able to prey on the people he’s supposed to serve no more. How come that ain’t good?”

  “Because without the law to keep,” Kenny said, “there ain’t a law Rucker won’t break to get even with those folks that cost him his job.”

  “And we are those folks,” Otis said.

  “That you are,” Kenny said. “And while he ain’t got Bonnie to call upon no more, you can bet he’s trying to work a deal with one of the Pikes somewheres to bring some trouble your way. I can’t say which one because don’t nobody know what’s what with the Pikes these days.”

  Otis considered Kenny’s news. “It’s a mess. I’ll give you that, but without a badge, Rucker’s lost his value to whichever Pike he tries to cuddle up with.”

  Kenny agreed and then added, “But you need to keep in mind that Rucker is in a position that makes him particularly dangerous.”

  “And that is?” Otis asked.

  “Sheriffin’ was the last thing he had that he cared about. When he loses that there special election, he won’t have nothing. A man with nothing is a man that’ll do anything.”

  “Kenny’s right, Otis,” Dani said. “We need to get out in front of this thing—”

  “Out in front of this thing? Otis cut her off. How do you propose we do that, little deputy?”

  She struggled to not visibly cringe at his use of the term “little deputy.” She was a grown-ass woman who was big enough to bring down the hickbilly mafia. What’s little about that? She let the slight pass. “We can’t just sit around and wait for him to do whatever he’s gonna do.”