The second blast got a better response from the survivors, who kept their heads down and searched for cover.
And that gave Dave time to pull back and take a position behind a heavy oak tree in the neighbor’s yard.
The tree was forked at shoulder height and gave Dave an excellent place to rest the barrel of his rifle as he took aim at the front door.
As he’d expected, the drug-addled survivors couldn’t wait to leave the house that seemed to be blowing up around them. Even if it meant evacuating in the very direction the grenades had come from.
Tweakers high as a kite on crystal meth, who’d been up for several days, weren't the most logical thinkers around.
The first two came running out the door, bloody and confused.
Dave sent them both to hell with two shots each to their respective torsos.
Dave didn’t see that behind him, behind the cover of a solid steel and very heavy 1963 Chevy Impala, four men also raised their weapons in Dave’s direction.
The next one out the door was Dalton himself.
He wasn’t wounded, and had come stumbling down the stairs following the second blast.
Of course, Dave had never laid eyes on the man who’d ordered Tony’s murder. He didn’t have a clue who he was.
But he pulled the trigger anyway.
And the funniest thing happened.
Dalton wasn’t just hit once, by Dave’s bullet.
Dalton was torn apart by automatic weapons fire.
And not just by one automatic weapon.
He was cut down by several. It was the first time Dave had heard several weapons firing on full auto since he left Fallujah.
The fire came from behind him, between him and the tree he was using as cover.
He immediately went to the dirt. It was really the only option he had.
Dave wouldn’t even realize until later he’d peed his pants as he quickly low-crawled to the only shelter he had available to him: a low brick wall twenty yards away.
He covered the distance in record time, although from his point of view it seemed much farther than it really was. From his point of view it seemed like miles.
Chapter 62
Dave was in a tight spot and knew it.
He had no time to regroup. Combat didn’t allow one the pleasure of relaxing and thinking things through.
Luckily the United States Marine Corps was well aware of that fact, and trained their Marines constantly.
So they reacted to a situation without thinking much about it.
Dave had no idea what had just happened. Or, more to the point, what was still happening. For the automatic weapons fire continued in short bursts.
Not directed in Dave’s direction, something he was extremely grateful for.
But rather toward the Dalton house.
There were more hand grenades too. Whoever was in the process of assaulting the Dalton’s headquarters was extremely well armed.
He didn’t want to, and he knew full well he was risking getting his head blown off.
But he had to peek over the wall. He couldn’t afford to let himself get pinned down behind the wall against such firepower. He had to see where the shooters were so he could quickly egress without running headfirst into their midst.
What he saw were four men dressed in Army-issue desert cammies. They were now in the front yard of the Dalton house, spraying every part of it with short bursts of gunfire. Expending vast amounts of ammunition.
Whoever this bunch was, they apparently didn’t like the Daltons much.
But more importantly to Dave, they were temporarily distracted and had their backs to him.
Dave took the opportunity to skirt the wall and get the hell out of Dodge. He kept his head low and zig-zagged from one abandoned car to another until he was a full block away
As he got farther away he heard the unmistakable pop of an incendiary grenade. He imagined the house would be fully engulfed in flames in a matter of minutes, and much as he’d love to go back and roast marshmallows while the rest of the Daltons were incinerated, he needed very much to be somewhere else.
And he got there as quickly as possible.
The streets were eerily quiet, even though it was fully light now. He’d expected to see reinforcements running toward the sound of the gunfire.
He was expecting to come under fire himself, as he expected to be immediately identifiable as an outsider.
But he saw not a soul on his way out of the compound.
Well, no live souls, anyway. He did pass by the two men in the Silverado pickup he’d shot, and the two at the Town Car.
And as a bonus, he saw the body of a man lying in the road with his throat cut. The body was so fresh it still had bright red blood oozing from the wound.
Dave suspected he was killed by the same band of men who were still shooting up the Dalton house.
He’d never know where the strange men had come from or why they were there.
He didn’t know that word quickly got around to the other factions that the Daltons had murdered their neutral drug dealer.
And that the other factions were incensed about it.
Most of them grumbled and cursed about it, but didn’t plan any type of revenge. They were reluctant to go to war with the inhabitants of Crazy Town.
But there was one faction, the Aryan Brotherhood, who just could not accept such a personal affront.
Their military wing, made up of Army and Marine combat veterans, was asked to do something to send a strong message to the Daltons.
They’d actually gone in as emissaries. They were to stop at the gate to the compound and demand to see Dalton himself. And they were to demand reparations of Dalton, in the form of territory.
The Brotherhood bordered Crazy Town on the north side. They were to demand most of Dalton’s territory, in exchange for letting the Daltons continue to live.
Their thinking was that by reducing the Daltons’ territory to just a couple of square miles, the rogue group would be weakened and it would be easier to wipe them out when the time came.
The Brotherhood had made a brilliant strategic move in the early days of the blackout when they raided the National Guard Armory. They had many things the other factions thirsted for but would never get. Things like automatic weapons, grenades, smoke and incendiary bombs and even land mines.
And about half a ton, by weight, of ammunition.
And as great as that was, perhaps one of the more useful things they obtained from the armory was a brand new set of radios, protected from electromagnetic pulse damage, complete with spare batteries, chargers and a base station.
The Brotherhood didn’t realize how valuable the radios were until the four emissaries happened upon the Town Car and the two dead sentries.
They didn’t know who’d assaulted the compound ahead of them or why. But the bodies were fresh and there was a good chance the incursion was still in progress.
They’d called in for guidance.
The Aryan Council conferred for only a couple of minutes before responding:
“We’re going to get blamed for it anyway. Go in. Do them as much damage as you possibly can.”
At the Dalton house, the four spotted Dave long before he saw them. They could have taken him out in a flash, but were intrigued by him. He was assaulting the house ahead of them.
They didn’t know who he was or what faction he belonged to. But they viewed him as an ally.
And that saved Dave’s life. That was why they passed him by and let him live to fight another day.
Dave made it back to the Polaris and high-tailed it away from the highway and to the safety of open ground.
He was immensely confused as to what transpired.
But he’d escaped with his ass intact when he should have been dead.
In the grand scheme of things, the cross bow he left behind seemed like a very small sacrifice to make.
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Thank you for reading
ALONE, Part 6: On Desert Sands
Please enjoy this preview of
ALONE, Part 7: Payback
*************************
Dave almost never lost control. But on those rare occasions he did, it all went out the window: his sense of fairness, his sense of right or wrong.
And mostly, unfortunately, his empathy for another human being.
Sal managed to break free from Dave’s grasp, but didn’t get far. Dave threw a wild right hook that knocked the old man into the grass.
If Sal had been smarter he’d have stayed there.
Instead he tried to crawl away, and Dave was back on him in a flash.
Pummeling him, one blow after another.
Dave was in a blind rage. He had little control over his own body. And even less control over his mind.
He was not the kind of man who’d beat another when the other was down.
Nor the kind of man who’d beat senseless a man twice his age.
But he wasn’t himself. The rage had turned him into a monster.
He saw only one thing. Knew only one truth:
This… this was the sadistic animal who took his little girl. This was the beast who turned her into a slave.
This was the bastard who may well have raped his child, or allowed others to do so.
This man must pay, and pay dearly, for what he did.
The man beneath him finally went limp. He was mercifully unconscious.
Dave didn’t care. He wrapped both hands around Sal’s throat and started to squeeze.
Sal’s face turned blue. His eyelids were open, the eyeballs rolled back into their sockets.
Dave still didn’t care.
He’d have kept squeezing. Kept it up until he could no longer feel the man’s pulse. Kept it up until he finally felt satisfied that justice was done. That the man was duly punished.
That the man was on a fast train headed straight for the pits of hell.
Except…
Except for the plaintive cries of a little girl.
A little girl called Beth by most, Becky by others.
A little girl Dave hadn’t seen in well over a year, yelling, “Daddy! Daddy! Stop it! You’re killing him!”
It was only then that the glassiness left Dave’s eyes. That he returned to the world of the living. That he became human again.
“Beth?”
He turned to look at his young daughter, now running at breakneck speed toward him.
He dropped Sal’s head into the sand and stood up, then ran across the yard to meet her.
Old Sal, back from the brink where he’d been mere seconds from death, began to cough and to wheeze. Then he rolled to his right side and began to puke.
He was beaten bloody. But he’d survive.
Dave picked up the child and held her tight while blubbering like a baby.
He couldn’t say a single word, but Beth filled the silence.
“You have it all wrong, Daddy. He wasn’t mean to me. He took me, but it wasn’t his fault. Sanchez told him I had no mommy or daddy. They thought they were adopting me.
“They were good to me, Daddy. They fed me and protected me and never made me do anything I didn’t want to do.
“He’s a good man, Daddy. He’s grumpy sometimes, and I didn’t used to like him much. But now he’s my friend. Please don’t hurt him anymore.”
Now she was in tears too.
Dave was at a loss. For one of the few times in his life, he honestly didn’t know what to do. He turned to look toward Sal, afraid it was too late. That he might already be dead.
He was relieved to see the old man sitting up.
He looked back to his daughter and asked, “Are you sure, honey?”
He hadn’t felt the warmth of his daughter’s embrace in a very long time. The last thing he wanted to do was to put her down.
But he was back. He was no longer just a lonely nobody wandering the highways of Southern California looking for his baby.
He, by God in heaven, was a father again.
And he needed to act like it.
He placed her gently back onto her feet and turned back toward Sal.
Sal saw him coming and wanted to run.
But he was too badly bruised. He was just barely conscious and feeling ready to pass out at any moment.
He did the only thing he was physically capable of doing.
He used his arms to cover his face and head and begged, “Please… please, don’t hit me any more.”
Dave went to one knee beside the old man and tenderly placed a hand upon his shoulder.
“I am so sorry, sir. Please forgive me for what I’ve done to you.”
*************************
ALONE, Part 7:
Payback
will be available worldwide on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in April, 2017
*************************
*************************
Please enjoy this preview of
Darrell Maloney’s new series
The Yellowstone Event, Book 1:
FIRE IN THE SKY
The Yellowstone Event series will premier
in January, 2017.
*************************
“Come on! What do you have to lose?” she cried gleefully as she dragged Tony by his arm through the midway.
“Um… how about ten bucks?”
“I’ll give you a kiss.”
“I’d rather keep the ten bucks.”
“Excuse me, mister?”
He stopped and held her, then laughed.
“I’ll tell you what. You give me just one good reason why I should throw away good money on a fortune teller. If you can give me just one good reason, I’ll give in to your silly demands. But it’ll still cost you a kiss.”
“And what if I don’t have a good reason? What if I’m just a silly girl who wants to find out once and for all whether you’ve been telling me the truth about marrying me someday?”
“Oh, so that’s what this is all about. You’re gonna make me pay ten of my hard-earned dollars just to hear some old gypsy fortune teller say what I’ve been telling you all along? That hurts. It really does.”
“What hurts?”
“It hurts that you don’t trust me. That you’d believe some crazy old fortune teller but you won’t believe me.”
“The fortune teller has nothing to gain by lying to me.”
“And I do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Maybe? Just what the heck does that mean, maybe?”
“It just means that you’ve been trying very hard to get to third base with me lately. And you wouldn’t be the first guy who promised marriage to get the honeymoon first. That’s all.”
Tony smiled.
“Third base? Heck, baby. I don’t want third base. I want a home run.”
The smile left her face, replaced by something akin to a little girl’s pout.
“You’re not helping your case any.”
He brushed the long brown hair from her face and kissed her on the tip of the nose. Then square on the lips.
“What if she’s a fraud? Most of them are, you know. They just say whatever pops into their minds. They can no more tell the future than you or I can.”
“I’ll be able to tell if she’s a fraud. If she is, I’ll let you off the hook. But if she’s genuine, I’ll know that too.”
“Oh, so now you’re an expert on gypsy frauds?”
Her smile returned and she coyly replied, “Maybe.”
“Oh, geez,” he said as he stomped toward the purple tent. “The things I do to make you happy…”
“I know, honey. That’s why I love you so very much.”
She wasn’t quite what he expected, when she sat them at the table. For one thing, she looked… normal. She wasn’t the hideous witch he’d expected to find. She didn’t have hair growing from weird warts on her nose and huge silver hoop earrings. There weren’t bat
s flying around her head and the smell of cheap incense permeating everything in the tent.
She looked as normal as Tony and Hannah.
That sealed it in Tony’s mind. That proved she was a fraud. She didn’t even know enough to dress the part of a cartoonish gypsy. She didn’t even put out that much effort. How much effort would she put into reading Hannah’s emotions and verifying that yes, this guy sitting next to her was truly her one and only?
Now Tony could tell his own future. In about five minutes or so Hannah was going to go storming out of the tent and straight to the car. She’d insist that he take her home immediately. And once there she’d let herself out, slam the car door, and stomp her way up the steps to her house.
He’d be left in the car, his head still spinning, with absolutely no chance of getting lucky on this particular night.
“Good evening, Hannah. Good evening, Anthony. I’ve been wondering when you two were coming to call.”
Hannah didn’t catch it. She was too mesmerized by the woman’s eyes. They were pools of blackness, devoid of emotion.
But Tony caught it. He’d always been good at that. At noticing subtle things others missed.
“How… how did you know our names?”
It was more of a demand than a question.
“Oh, I know more about you than that, young man. Stella knows everything about you. Your past, your present, your future. I know what’s in your heart and what evil lurks hidden in your soul. I know the good in you. The bad. The secrets you keep. Now then, young man, the only question is, which things should I tell to Hannah and which ones do I keep to myself?”
His head told him she was bluffing, that she knew nothing about him. That maybe someone who knew them saw them coming and tipped her off to their names. Or that there was some other reasonable explanation.
His heart, it wasn’t so sure.
“Relax, Anthony. You need not worry, for I know what’s in your heart. This girl loves you. She wants to know if you love her as well. She wants to know if you’ll marry her someday. It is a reasonable request. And I will share with her your true intentions.”
On Desert Sands: Alone: Book 6 Page 18