Savage Rising

by C. Hoyt Caldwell

  She was still holding on to her badge when she stepped the elevator onto the second floor with Spivey. If asked why, she would have been surprised to discover it was still in her hand.

  Randle met her coming up the hallway. “She’s in recovery. They pulled three out of her.” He saw Spivey moving in behind her. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Spivey ignored his attitude. “I’m the driver.”

  “Three?” Dani said. “Three what?”

  Randle was perplexed by her question. “What do you mean three what? Slugs, .223’s. She took one in the shoulder, arm, and liver.”

  “How many rounds total?” Spivey asked. “At the scene?”

  “Who the fuck are you again?”

  “The driver.”

  “Then fuck off, driver.”

  “Who’s processing the scene?” Spivey asked, knowing it would draw more of Randle’s venom.

  “Fuck you, that’s who.” Randle turned his attention to Dani. “Listen, I got a good idea who done this.”

  “Who?” Dani asked, sounding more engaged than she had since she first got the news.

  “Rucker.”

  She immediately saw the image of the disgraced former sheriff waving at her from his truck in front of Sarah’s school.

  “Plausible,” Spivey said.

  “Why do you keep saying shit?” Randle asked. “I don’t know you. Go away from me.”

  “So there was one shooter?”

  “No…” Randle started. “I don’t know. The only conscious witness is too scared shitless to talk.”

  “The girl?”

  “Seriously. You’ve gotta shut the fuck up…”

  Dani stepped away from them as their conversation got heated. She reached an intersection with another hallway and peered around the corner. Otis was sitting on a bench and the mommas were leading Sarah down the hallway to a waiting room. When they were out of sight, Dani took the bold move to step out into clear view.

  Otis sensed her movement in his peripheral vision. When he saw his niece walking toward him, he buried his face in his hands and wept.

  Chapter 26

  Cleve’s geek division had come through. In a matter of a few days, they had taken the Gray Rise from backwoods shits to online militia darlings. They created a fake “secret” archive that extended the group’s history by ten years. Their patriotic exploits were legendary in the most meaningless sense of the word. None of it was real. It was a vat of virtual horseshit, which made it real enough for today’s world.

  The master general was a Second Amendment god. The profile the geeks put together on him was a little bit Jesus, a little bit Elvis, and a whole lot John fucking Wayne. Legend had it that he’d spent a clip in jail for slapping a liberal piece-of-shit politician running for president in 2000. The name of the politician had long been forgotten, but Harley’s deed would never be forgotten, especially since the rumor was he marched past two members of the Secret Service to deliver the slap.

  The Gray Rise set up a modest booth at the Tennessee Tri-State Gun Show to recruit new members. Not just any new members. Members the geeks had culled and targeted. They were special-ops guys that had left a messy trail of anti-government rhetoric on a half dozen social media sites. A lot of their most inflammatory rhetoric had been spread via private messaging, but what they didn’t realize was that “private” was just a word used to pretty up a claim these days. The fierier the antigovernment rhetoric, the less private it was. The good news for these new recruits was that the geeks could scrub online fingerprints and take them off of the Internet grid.

  Eight of the men showed, and two dozen other passersby showed real interest in joining the Gray Rise. Harley would have dismissed them out of hand, but the geek division did background checks on the two dozen drop-ins and discovered four had real potential, to not only buy in to the bullshit, but do professional-grade damage when the time came.

  Harley used his contacts to arrange special access for the twelve highly valued recruits to what was commonly known as the Dark Rooms at Gun Shows, an area where top-secret military-grade firearms were on display for VIPs with deep pockets. Harley’s backers provided him with something even better. He, the Gray Rise, and the recruits were bussed to a farm in the exact middle of Bumfuck, Egypt, and they were allowed to take target practice. Just to make it fun, the targets were aged-out livestock that no longer served a purpose on their commercial farms.

  Tawny’s magical plane full of working girls from Vegas arrived on the second day of the gun show, and they took the new recruits under their wings and between their legs. The men who weren’t married had the time of their lives. The men who were married had an even better time.

  When the last clip of ammo was ferreted out of the gun show and the doors were padlocked shut, Harley had twelve of the most lethally trained and highly jaded former high-speed soldiers to do his bidding. The Gray Rise had quickly risen up the ranks of the militia groups and would soon do their part to crumble the pillars of the so-called superpower.

  Chapter 27

  Dani had left the hospital hours ago. She assured Randle that she was going home to get some sleep, but she had no intention of doing such a thing. She was amped up to the nth degree and needed her uniform and sidearm in order to feel useful. And once she was dressed, she realized it was silly to dress like a cop if all she was going to do was hang around the house, so she left the house, climbed into her cruiser, and soon found herself driving through Baptist Flats looking for Rucker’s truck. She couldn’t even recall the make and model, and she was a bit fuzzy on the color, but she told herself she’d know it when she found it.

  Her driving soon turned to stopping at various businesses around town to question folks about a stranger by the name of Rucker. To her surprise, a good number of the townsfolk knew the man. He’d introduced himself to about three out of every five people Dani questioned. It seemed a bit too neighborly for the man Dani knew Rucker to be.

  At Son’s she learned Rucker had paid fifty dollars for a twenty-dollar bottle of whiskey. He drank himself a little off-kilter and then started pressing the flesh with drunk after drunk, stopping on Tilda Jackson, a heavy woman with a pretty face and sharp tongue. Rucker seemed to take to her sassy attitude and did his best to encourage her to join him in his truck for a little private time. She declined and came close to punching his lights out when he wouldn’t take no for an answer. When it became clear that he was going to have to work to knock Tilda’s boots back, he gave up and exited the bar. That was the man Dani knew Rucker to be.

  Dani stepped out of Son’s and planned her next move. Her mind was muddled and racing so she decided to walk to Rafe’s and do some thinking over a cup of coffee. She never drank the putrid elixir. She just thought over it. The evening provided a slight breeze that went unnoticed by the deputy as she stacked, rearranged, and restacked her thoughts.

  She blindly entered Rafe’s and walked to her spot at the counter. She didn’t take the time to notice who was in the diner.

  She plopped onto the stool and was about to ask Ruby for a cup of coffee when one was placed in front of her. “What’s this?”

  “The coffee you ordered,” Ruby answered with a chuckle.

  Dani tried to recall ordering it. “I ordered coffee?”

  Ruby placed her hand on Dani’s. “Sweetie, you ought not be working. You need to be home getting some rest.”

  Dani was about to assure Ruby she was all right when she heard a hard guffaw come from the other end of the counter. She turned to see Rucker pushing his fork through a piece of apple pie.

  “This ain’t no time to rest, Miss Ruby,” Rucker said. “A terrible crime has been committed, and the little deputy here needs to be on the job so she can take down the bad guys. Ain’t that right, Deputy Savage?”

  Dani narrowed her gaze. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Eating pie. Delicious apple pie. My compliments to the chef, Mr. Rafe!”

  Rafe peered over his kitchen w
indow. “Pies ain’t made here. They’re sent in from the bakery at the IGA.”

  “Well, then my compliments to the IGA…”

  “I mean what the fuck are you doing in Baptist Flats?”

  Everyone turned in Dani’s direction. She’d never sounded so sharp.

  Rucker chuckled. “I’m looking to resettle. Ain’t you heard?”

  She pictured herself drawing her firearm and pulling the trigger without so much as a single thought, but she didn’t allow herself to actually do it. “I thought I made it clear to you at my aunt’s funeral that you ain’t welcome here.”

  Ruby’s indifference to the man turned cold. If Dani didn’t like him, he wasn’t worth liking. She ripped his bill off of her order pad and slapped it onto the table in front of him. “You’ll be wanting to pay up and leave now.”

  Rucker gave the comment a brief thought and then decided it wasn’t worth making a scene so he could finish a shitty piece of IGA pie. He pulled a ten from his wallet and placed it on the counter, not realizing a card fell from the wallet to the floor in the process.

  “Where were you about five today?” Dani asked with her eye on the card that had tumbled from his wallet.

  Rucker snickered and stared at her for a beat before saying, “I was signing the closing papers on my new house.”

  She returned the stare.

  “Place on Edge Road. Little tobacco farm.”

  Dani’s cheeks flushed, and she buried a scream in a sneer. “Looks like they didn’t waste no time kicking your hide out of Rock Hollow.”

  He smirked. “I figure Baptist Flats may be ready for a new sheriff. The one y’all got has a habit of getting his office shot up.” He turned to exit and then stopped. “How’s little Sarah Campbell doing, Deputy?”

  Dani growled. “You’re gonna wanna step lightly, Rucker.”

  “She’s sprouted a good bit since I saw her last.” He scratched his chin. “She was just a tiny thing back then.”

  Dani moved off of her stool and approached him. “I knocked your ass out once before, I’ll do it again.”

  It was his turn to growl. He did so and stepped toward the door. The reflection of something on the floor caught his eye, and he turned back around. It was the card that fell from his wallet. He motioned toward it, but Dani scooped it up before he could take another step.

  She was astonished by the logo on it. It was an assault rifle sitting horizontal on the card, with and the letter G above it and the letter R below it. The Confederate flag was perched on the barrel of the gun. It matched the doodle in Parnell’s diary perfectly. Rucker’s name was on the card with the declaration that he was a member in good standing.

  Rucker reached for it, but she pulled it away. “What is this?”

  “It’s mine is what it is. Give it here.”

  “Says you’re a member. Member of what?”

  He ripped it out of her hand. “A member of fuck off, little deputy.”

  She locked her grip around his wrist. “Fine. You don’t wanna tell me? Don’t tell me.”

  He tried unsuccessfully to free himself.

  “I find out you had anything to do with Laura, I ain’t coming after you with a badge. You understand what I’m saying?”

  He wrestled his arm free. “I’m gonna enjoy putting you out of a job, little deputy,” he said as he backed toward the door and pushed it open with his ass. “I’ll see all y’all fine folks on the campaign trail. Y’all remember the name. Stan ‘The Lawman’ Rucker.” He gave one last smirk before exiting the diner.

  Dani felt her heart beat itself black and blue against her rib cage as the adrenaline drained from her body.

  Chapter 28

  Spivey thought it still plausible that Rucker was behind the hit at the Baptist Flats Sheriff’s Office, but he had another suspect in mind, too, or suspects, rather. He couldn’t ignore the possibility that the Pikes could be involved. The timing seemed a little too convenient. Not more than an hour after roughing up Vinton Pike, the shots were fired. It was clear that Vinton had bad intentions when it came to Dani. The shit probably put in a call to the Pike cartel before he turned the ignition on in his El Camino.

  Once he saw a portly deputy lock up the station and exit the premises, Spivey sucked down his last drop of coffee, tossed the cup into the back of his Accord, and climbed out of the car. He surveyed the darkness for signs of anyone else, and when he was satisfied he was alone, he crossed the street and started picking the crime scene apart, making mental notes of everything he saw.

  It was no surprise that the deputies had done a shitty job of processing the evidence. They didn’t exactly exude law-enforcement competence. Dani had potential, but the other two were as useless as porn to a eunuch. Spivey had a good idea Dani was hunting down Rucker, and he even suspected she’d kill him if she found him. Spivey couldn’t care less if she did. As far as he was concerned, Rucker was doing nothing but taking up space and air anyway.

  Spivey found a couple of shell casings on the edge of the parking lot. The way they lined up painted a picture of the vehicle’s path as it sped down the road. There were no tire marks on the pavement, so that told Spivey whoever drove was cool under pressure. This asshole was able to drive at a steady pace and in a straight line. A first-timer would speed up at the first sound of gunfire, even if he was expecting it. The nervous system would just take over and provoke a panic response. The fact that hadn’t happened meant the hit had come from someone with experience in this sort of thing. That didn’t line up with his Pike theory. The hickbilly clan didn’t seem like the cool-under-pressure, steady-hand type. He imagined if they’d done the hit, they would have done it with a bellyful of liquor and a lot less discipline.

  The bullet holes in the building formed two fairly straight lines. One at about four feet off the ground and the other at about two. The only deviations occurred in the area where Laura would have been standing and where the cruiser must have been parked. Given the number of holes, Spivey guessed there were four shooters. Two shooting high. Two shooting low. All of them had the training to shoot straight from the back of what Spivey assumed was a truck. This wasn’t a bunch of shitkickers raining hell down on the sheriff’s department for one-too-many speeding tickets. This was an organized hit by highly trained personnel.

  Spivey’s attention was drawn away from the artistry of the hit when a clanging noise came from his left. He took notice of it without looking in that direction. Someone was watching him, and he wanted them to keep watching. Whoever it was had a limited line of sight on him. He moved casually to the door of the station and pressed his back up against it, just beyond a small outcropping of bricks that framed the entrance.

  The light from the full moon was working with him. He spotted the shadow of the unexpected observer as he slowly stepped out to try and find Spivey.

  Spivey waited and waited and waited until he could hear his stalker’s breathing. When he heard the grime on the pavement scrape beneath his stalker’s feet, Spivey lunged forward and swooped downward to grab the uninvited guest around the knee and jerk up, sending him crashing to the ground.

  But it didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, Spivey got a punch to the back of the neck that staggered him. In a daze, he stood up straight, ready to throw a fist, but he caught two quick jabs, one to the chin, the other to right eye.

  The assailant was a blur who grabbed Spivey’s wrist and attempted to twist his hand inward and immobilize his arm, but Spivey saw it coming. He twirled with the twist and slammed a fist into his assailant’s kidney.

  A woman groaned.

  Spivey let her go and stepped back in a defensive position. “What the fuck?”

  “C’mon, mutha-fucker! C’mon!” The statuesque black woman was huffing and puffing.

  “Why the hell did you jump me?”

  “Jump you? You fucking jumped out at me!”

  “What do you expect? You’re sneaking around the parking lot at night! Who the fuck are you?”


  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Jack,” he said, rubbing the soreness in his neck. “Jack Spivey. I’m…working with the sheriff’s department.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “Why would you wait until deputy dumpling locked up to leave your shitty Accord and start your investigation?”

  He looked at his car, realizing she’d been watching him for a while. With a smile he said, “What makes you think I’m investigating?”

  “I know what I see. I just don’t know why I’m seeing it.”

  He shrugged. “Call it curiosity. Quid pro quo. What are you doing here?”

  She grinned back. “Curiosity.”

  “You a cop?”

  “Ish. You?”

  “Same.” He studied her face. “So?”

  “So what?”

  “What do you got? What has your investigation uncovered?”

  She hesitated because she didn’t want to reveal what she had learned, but she also knew he was challenging her. He wanted to know just how good she was. “Three, maybe four shooters.”

  He nodded. “It’s four.”

  She pointed to the rows of bullet holes. “High-low pattern. Torso to femur target. Organ or bone. You’re immobilized either way. Automatic weapons. Placement is tight.”

  “So, what’s that tell you?”

  “These weren’t drunk hillbillies with scatterguns. They were highly trained.” She was about to say, “Military most likely,” but the words got stuck in her throat. Once a marine, always a marine. She wouldn’t turn on her brothers in uniform.

  “I’m guessing they were military,” Spivey said for her. “And they aren’t the only ones.”

  She glared at him.

  He motioned toward her arm, and she looked down at her tattoo. “You?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  She waited for him to elaborate, but he never did.

  “You never told me your name.”

  “Nope.”

  “It wouldn’t be Nola, would it?”