Descent Into Darkness

by A J Newman

  Even though Joe was in the middle of an apocalypse, he took the time to look around him at the mountains. Mt. Ashland was breathtaking with its snowcapped peak and green skirt of trees. The city below was a major contrast to the beautiful mountains. Ashland had wonderful older homes, parks, and quaint shops before the lights went out. Many of the homes and businesses had been burned to the ground leaving only skeletons of their once glory.

  Joe found a heavy tarp in the garage at his home base, built a lean-to at the back of the property, and camouflaged it with limbs and branches. He would sleep in the lean-to during the day and prowl around the area searching for prey at night. He thought if someone tracked him back up the hill, they would try to search the house and set off the trip wires.

  One of his tasks was to find an auto garage or machine shop so he could fabricate the two suppressors. He slept until after the sun went down and walked down the hill to a large farm about halfway to town. There were several buildings and numerous pieces of farm equipment scattered about the farm. He was sure the farm did a lot of their own maintenance and that he would find a small shop.

  The farm was abandoned as most of the homes and businesses he checked out during his journey. Most people in the area had either died of starvation, lack of medicine or been killed by gangs, and the Islamic terrorists. Most farmers had enough food to survive the winter, but then most city folks assumed they did and came to take it away. The scene around the farm was very familiar to Joe. Half-eaten skeletons, windows shattered by bullets, and all buildings had been looted.

  Joe skipped the house and checked the barn and sheds for what he needed. The shop hadn’t been disturbed and had most of the equipment he expected from a small machine shop. His most significant problem was he couldn’t weld or use power tools. He found the rest of the items on the list to make the suppressors but had to improvise to adapt them and to put them together.

  The suppressor for the M4 was easy to make since his Grandpa had several nuts with the correct thread to match the threaded ends of most guns. He also had several Maglite flashlight bodies that would be used for the suppressor bodies and the washers with holes larger than the .223 bullet diameter for the baffles. Joe drilled a hole in the center of a car’s freeze plug that was the correct fit to the Maglite body and soldered the threaded nut over the hole. Then he inserted the freeze plug into the flashlight barrel and tapped it into place. He lined the two up as true as possible then he used an old hand drill to make three small holes equidistant around the flashlight barrel. He used small metal screws to hold the barrel to the freeze plug.

  Then it was only a matter of inserting the spring while inserting the washers every inch until the spring was fully inserted. Joe drilled a quarter inch hole in the flashlight screw cap, and he had made his first suppressor. He shined his flashlight down the end of the tube, and it looked okay to the eye. The real test would be firing the rifle.

  Joe placed the handgrip of the M4 in a vice, aimed the rifle at a bale of hay a few feet away, and pulled the trigger using a fifteen-foot-long piece of twine. The rifle fired with a sharp but considerably muffled report. Someone a hundred feet away would hear the noise but not immediately think it was a gunshot. It would do for his purposes. He tried it outside and zeroed the scope for two hundred yards. He could hit the paper plate every time, so the suppressor wasn’t hurting the gun’s accuracy.

  He manufactured a similar suppressor for the .22 pistol but had to make a metal tube that slipped over the Bull barrel that was held in place with a hose clamp. He was ready for action.

  He wondered if the BATF would get their panties in a wad for killing thugs with an illegal suppressor during an apocalypse. Then he thought who gives a crap what the government thinks. They aren’t here dealing with these outlaws.

  Joe covered several blocks of Ashland asking about Cobie without one person giving him any hope of finding her. He went back to his base and slept a few hours before spending a short time practicing shooting his bow. He was getting more accurate after each practice session. He could place four out of five arrows into a paper plate target at 100 feet and felt that would be good enough for the job at hand. His ribs still hurt, but the exercise seemed to be helping.

  Joe checked his guns and backpack until it was time to put his plans into action. His base camp was four miles from the center of Ashland, two miles from Talent, and seven from Medford with Phoenix between Talent and Medford. He would spend a night surveilling the towns, learn about their local gang, or drug lord’s habits, methods, and anything that would help him find Cobie. He would also capture and interrogate several gang members. Later he would use the information to start a war between the gangs.

  Joe’s first night in Ashland was very productive but scared the crap out of him. He wore solid black with his face covered in soot, which enabled him to get very close to the gang’s base of operation and their guards. He was worried about guard dogs but never saw a single dog. This perplexed him until he heard a guard taunting a young woman that she could eat beef instead of dog meat if she joined them. This gagged him and almost caused him to be found.

  His first kill was a gangbanger who he saw slapping an older woman when she ran into the man for killing her husband. Joe’s hands shook as he placed the crosshair on the man’s chest. He tried to pull the trigger three times until he steeled his nerves and shot the man. The woman looked up and loudly praised God for the help.

  The man lay on the porch dying as Joe questioned him. “Have you seen a short dark haired woman named Cobie? One of your friends might have captured her,” Joe asked.

  “I don’t know any woman named Connie,” the dying man replied.

  “It’s Cobie dumbass. Have you seen any captive women?”

  “Hell, yes. Everyone has one or two. The bosses have a dozen each. Help me, and I’ll take you to the Boss.”

  Joe knew the man was trying to trick him, so he cut the man’s throat to put him out of his misery. Killing got easier for Joe with each pull of the trigger or knife to the neck.

  He snuck into Talent, Phoenix, and then Medford over the next four nights. No one knew anything about Cobie. He captured several gang members and received zero information about his loved one. He did gain valuable intelligence on the gangs and set four women free. He was losing what little faith he had that Cobie was still alive.

  He learned the Ashland gang was out of California and controlled all of Ashland and Talent. A group that drifted down from Portland controlled Medford. Phoenix was a no man’s land and a buffer between the gangs. They had an agreement not to poach on each other’s territory after several bloody fights that neither won.

  He searched every gun store, police station, and gun club for weapons and ammo but only found a few hundred rounds of good ammunition. They were all stripped clean, but he did lay in a supply of pellet rifles and hundreds of tins full of pellets. He also found more medical supplies including a case of Wound Seal from the rubble that was once Cobb’s Sporting Goods store.

  After finishing his surveillance trips, he went back to the shop and made a suppressor for one of the .22 caliber CO2 pellet rifles. Now he had a genuinely silent weapon that at close range could undoubtedly kill small game but men also with well-placed shots. He was ready for his second round of attacks.

  Joe had several narrow escapes when locals or thugs spotted him, but most assumed he was with the gang and didn’t bother him. Any thug that got close to him was quickly dispatched with a .22 slug to the brain after he questioned them.

  Joe had begun taking the Lortabs again to relieve the pain and to be able to function. He switched to Aleve several days into his mission to get off the opioids when he noticed he had the urge to take more and more Lortabs.

  “Damn, you dumb son of a bitch. You are going to town to kill gangbangers and drug addicts, and you are two pills from becoming one yourself,” Joe chastised himself and then added, “Well, are you going to answer me?”

  He waited for a minute th
en said, “Well, I’m not answering myself, yet. I’m still sane and need to read several of Grandma’s letters to cheer myself up.”

  He read one letter and felt much better. His Grandma’s letters were just what he needed.

  Dear Joe:

  I am in good spirits today. We went over to Bandon, sat on the beach for a while, and then went crabbing at the pier. I caught three keepers, and Alfred caught two. We ate our catch at Tony’s Crab Shack, and I had two Watermelon Beers. I don’t know what I would have done without Alfred’s love and companionship over the years. Too bad, he didn’t like the woods. Have a great day.

  Love Grandma.

  Next, Joe went to Medford, stopped on the south end of the city, and climbed to the roof of a building about 150 yards from one of the gang’s lookouts. He waited until there was no activity and took aim at the man who had a small fire in a bucket to keep warm. Joe aimed for his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The man was thrown back by the impact of the bullet. He lay on the ground for an hour unconscious before he began screaming for his friends to help him.

  Joe scampered down from the roof and made his way quickly to the north end of Phoenix, which was two miles southeast. He saw two thugs shaking down an older couple for something in a bag. He shot the first one in the chest killing him instantly and the other in the upper thigh. He then fired his 9mm into the ground so it would be heard. He laughed to himself as he walked on southeast around Phoenix to the far end of Talent. He repeated his tactics after waiting an hour for a gang member to rear his ugly head. He felt this would surely start a war between the gangs.

  The man was carrying drugs from the main base to be sold in his territory. Joe slipped up on him and shot him in the eye with the pellet rifle. The man had no usable information about Cobie, so Joe shot him in the other eye. He spray painted the other gang's tag on a wall and dropped a gang jacket from the rival gang. He then headed to Ashland where he killed two more gang members from that group.

  By staying in the dark, only moving at night, and never hitting the same area twice he was able to not only remain undetected but had the gangs killing each other again. The bow was deadly and silent. He used it often to wound gang members then question them for info on their gangs before killing them.

  He had his best night three days later when the gangs began a firefight on the outskirts of Ashland with dozens of men from each side in the battle. He found a spot overlooking the fight that was 300 yards away and sniped at both sides for twenty minutes. He continued until one of the Medford gang saw his flash and shot a pistol at Joe. The shot fell short, but the next shots were too close for comfort, so he moved out and made tracks for his base. The gang member just thought it was another of the California group shooting at him and was just happy the shooting stopped. Joe had shot thirty-three times and hit twenty-two gang members.

  Later, Joe walked on the southwest side of Ashland when he came across an older man, young woman, and two kids. The woman’s husband had been caught in the crossfire, and they were leaving town to head toward California and hide in the woods.

  “Hey, don’t shoot,” Joe, said as he approached them.

  “Mr., please don’t kill us. We don’t have anything,” the man said after hiding his pushcart loaded with their possessions.

  “I’m not going to harm you. Where are you going this time of night,” Joe asked.

  “That gang just killed my son, and we’re getting out of here. We’re going to hide in the woods,” the young woman said as she shielded her kids from Joe’s view.

  “I’m down here trying to find my wife, Cobie. She has black hair and is about five feet four inches tall,” Joe said.

  “I haven’t seen her, but two women were searching for two missing women the other day. It was very dark, and they had hats on so I can’t be sure. The older one had a mean look in her eye. They were looking for women named Gail and Lyn. They are based south of Ashland in a subdivision,” the man said.

  “Those are the ones stirring up the gang. They are very sloppy, and the gang will kill them. I don’t know anything about them. I’m also hunting thugs, gang members, and criminals. You are right about getting out of here but go to the last overpass on Highway 5 southeast of here and walk about two miles down Highway 66. Then head east up into the hills about three to four miles. There are abandoned cabins and plenty of game to keep you alive,” Joe offered.

  “Thanks, Mister we’ll do that. We don’t have any way to catch or kill game, but it beats Ashland,” the man said.

  Joe took a roll of string, a knife, and a tin containing 500 pellets from his backpack and gave them to the man. He then told him how to make a rabbit snare.

  “What do I do with the pellets,” the man asked.

  Joe removed the suppressor from his pellet gun, gave it to the man, and said, “I just oiled it. You have 500 pellets and 5 CO2 cartridges. Don’t waste them because each one will kill a rabbit or squirrel. You might run into some good people up on the mountain. Be nice to them, say hi to Cloe, and tell her I’ll be back if you see her. I gotta go.”

  “How can we repay you?”

  “Stay alive and help me one day.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Joe.”

  Joe went on about his mission not knowing that it was Cobie and Emily that the old man had seen.

  ***

  The old man led his family to southeast Ashland as Joe had instructed, and they were deep in the woods before making camp just before daylight. The next day they walked on up the hillside and walked between Dan's cabin and Joes cabin before finding the cabin Cobie and Cloe had stayed in for a while. They set up housekeeping and began trapping rabbits and fishing in the creek nearby.

  Cloe and Cole were out deer hunting with the bow and saw two kids playing by the creek.

  “Hey, where did you come from,” Cole asked.

  The kids were silent, but a woman’s voice said, “We’re the Smiths, and we moved up here from Ashland.”

  “That’s Joe’s cabin, and he won’t want you to live there,” Cloe snarled.

  A man’s voice said, “Do you know Joe? He sent us up here. He probably saved our lives. Do you know someone named Cloe? He told us to say hello to her and that he will be back soon.”

  “That’s me, and that was my Joe. Did he find my mom? Where did you see him? Is he okay,” Cloe asked.

  “He asked if we’d seen your mom, but we didn’t think we had at the time. Girl, he was armed to the teeth and said he was on a mission to kill thugs, gangs, and criminals. We saw him kill two before he found us. He is a scary but good man,” the man said.

  Cloe laughed and said, “Joe isn’t scary.”

  “Joe wasn’t the only one looking for someone. We did run into two women who were armed and searching for women named Gail and Lyn. These two were as scary as Joe was. They killed a man who tried to fondle the younger girl,” the man said.

  “What did the women look like?” Cloe asked.

  “It was dark when we saw them, but the older of the two was short and had dark eyebrows. The young one was taller and was a blond. We couldn’t see them very well, and we wanted to get far away from them and everyone else in Ashland.”

  “Damn, those are the same names as Mal’s friends. That could have been my mom hunting for them. But it can’t be because mom would have returned to me,” Cloe said.

  ☆

  Chapter 6

  The sun had gone down but left an orange glow over the mountains. They moved to the more remote shelter for the night. Cobie took the first watch as Emily snored in the sleeping bag. Not much happened during Cobie’s watch except for a few stray dogs and cats trying to mooch food. Cobie felt sorry for them but had to run the animals off. Food was too dear to share with animals that would need to learn to hunt or die.

  Cobie woke Emily up and then snuggled deep into the sleeping bag. She tried to think about Joe making love to her, but every time Joe came into her mind, other thoughts came flooding back. S
nippets of her life flashed through her mind from seeing her baby for the first time to waking up in a sweat because she remembered being shot in the back. The pain felt so real she reached over her shoulder and felt for blood. She felt the scar and knew it wasn’t just a dream but actual memories coming back to her. She was deep into memories about killing the man who had the woman chained in the kitchen, when Emily woke her.

  “Connie, Connie. I hope you are having a nightmare because if not your man needs lessons on making love,” Emily said.

  “What? Why did you say that?” Cobie asked.

  “Because you were talking in your sleep and groaning in pain. You said something about being shot. You kept rubbing your shoulder,” Emily said.

  Cobie used her small flashlight to check her right arm. There was a small scar on the back and a much larger scar with a scab in the center on the front. The wound had not totally healed. She had felt the wounds several times before but didn’t know what had caused them. This explained why Cobie’s arm and shoulder hurt all of the time.

  “That looks like a bullet wound. It went in from the back and came out the front. That looks cool,” Emily said.

  “Well, it doesn’t feel cool. I need some Aleve.”

  Cobie’s mind kept teasing her with bits and pieces of her past all night long. She couldn’t sleep so she didn’t wake Emily for her next turn at guard duty. The moon gave just enough light for Cobie to check her gear and perform an inventory of their food. They only had enough for three or four days so finding food was their number one priority. Cobie had found a box with pool shock at the Inn and filled a pint bottle with water and the foul-smelling chemical. The bottle full of the chemical would disinfect more water than they needed.

  The air was much warmer now during the daytime, but the night wind still had a bite. The air had the usual smell of pine trees and smoke from the fires, but the wind changed directions, and Cobie caught a hint of a putrid smell. At first, she passed it off as a rotting animal corpse, but the scent became almost unbearable as the wind shifted again. Cobie walked toward where the smell originated. She saw a dump truck parked in some trees and walked over to investigate.