The Survivalist (National Treasure)

by Arthur T. Bradley

  “Sit tight,” he said, rising up to get a quick look inside the truck.

  The floorboard was covered in beer cans and food wrappers, and the seats were stained with dark shadows. Satisfied that no one was hiding inside, he shuffled sideways and peered around the front bumper. Two of the men were now standing at the front door, and the third was presumably around back, out of sight.

  Deciding that two was always better than three, Tanner stepped around the truck and started toward the men. He moved at a steady pace, not fast enough to trigger fight-or-flight reflexes, more like a homeowner coming to chastise unwanted solicitors.

  One of them spotted him almost immediately and motioned to his cohort. They were an odd couple to be sure. Oscar was fat and dumpy, and wore a sweat-stained yellow shirt with the words “Gas Bag Inside.” Felix, on the other hand, was as skinny as a coat rack and had a grizzled look to his gaunt face, like a sailor who had been out at sea for too long.

  As Tanner approached, the men drew together until they were standing shoulder to shoulder. Oscar worked his knuckles as if preparing to hit the heavy bag, and Felix’s mouth moved side to side, like a sheep chewing cud. Both men were sweating, and there was a desperate look in their eyes that Tanner had seen before.

  Junkies in need of a fix.

  “You boys lock yourselves out?”

  “Yeah,” snickered Felix. “How’d you guess?”

  “You check under the mat? Lots of keys under mats.”

  The two looked at one another as if suddenly realizing that there might be an easier way into the home besides bashing in the door or climbing through a broken window.

  Oscar took a step back and squatted down in front of the door, never taking his eyes off Tanner. He lifted the old worn mat with the words “God Bless This Home” printed on its surface.

  Nothing. No key underneath.

  “How about above the door?” Tanner said with a friendly smile. “Seen folks hide ’em there too.”

  As Oscar turned and reached up to check, Tanner stepped forward and punched him in the base of the skull. It was an ugly blow that would have killed a smaller man. Even with Oscar’s size, the powerful mastoid strike buckled his legs. As he dropped to his knees, Tanner drove both palms forward, smashing his face into the door’s thick oak frame.

  “Get off him!” Felix shouted, pulling at Tanner’s arm.

  Despite his bony frame, the man’s grip was surprisingly strong, and his fingers dug into Tanner’s flesh with a painful bite. Rather than pull away, he shuffled closer, bumping the man with his meaty shoulder. It was enough to send him stumbling back, and Tanner used the opportunity to deliver a powerful knife-hand strike to the side of his neck. Once again, legs buckled and eyes began to roll back. A grab of his hair and a quick knee strike to the face was enough to seal the deal.

  Tanner looked down at the men and shook his head. Beating up junkies was about as much fun as babysitting a busload of children—something that he had done once and swore he would never do again.

  The fourth man appeared from around the side of the house, no doubt coming to investigate the commotion. He had a tall, athletic build, but like the others seemed to be experiencing withdrawals. His shirt was stained with food and drink, and his eyes were hollow and dark. At one time, he had been a good-looking athlete with the charisma of a young Tiger Woods. Now he looked more like a college student coming off a three-day binge in Fort Lauderdale.

  “You gonna get a beatin’ for that,” he drawled, bringing his hands up into tight fists.

  Tanner played through it in his mind. A quick feint with the left, followed by a right cross. Probably break the poor man’s jaw, but he had always believed that when you hit someone, you hit them hard. That way there was no misunderstanding.

  As he brought up his hands, he heard Samantha hurrying up behind him.

  “Wait!” she called.

  He stepped away and let his hands fall back to his side. Woods also seemed put off balance by the sudden arrival of a twelve-year-old girl.

  “Don’t kill him,” she said, breathing heavily.

  “I wasn’t going to kill him,” said Tanner. “Just give him a little kiss goodnight, that’s all.”

  “First of all, you need to look up the meaning of a goodnight kiss. And second, there’s no need for it.” She looked to Woods. “There isn’t, right?”

  Woods’ fists remained clenched, but he made no move toward them. Instead, his eyes kept glancing over at the bloody streak running down the doorframe from where Oscar had done his face plant.

  “You didn’t have no call to do that,” he said.

  “He’s sorry, aren’t you, Tanner?” she said, looking up at him.

  “I most certainly am not.”

  “Tanner!”

  “Well I’m not. I wouldn’t have hit them if I was going to apologize later. I have a policy about such things.”

  “You have a policy about hitting people and not apologizing?”

  “More like an unwritten set of rules.”

  “And I suppose it starts with you hitting whoever you want, whenever you want.”

  Tanner said nothing.

  Exasperated, she said, “It does, doesn’t it?”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the front door swinging open. An old woman stood in the doorway with a thick Bowie knife hanging across her chest and a Henry lever-action Mare’s Leg clutched in both hands. The Mare’s Leg was a cut-down repeating rifle that could be holstered like a pistol but fired with the speed of a lever-action rifle. Trimmed in tarnished brass, and sporting a twelve-inch octagonal barrel, it was a weapon taken right out of the Old West.

  Outdated or not, Tanner had no doubt that it would make a mess of any poor bastard unfortunate enough to be caught in its sights.

  “What the hell you people doin’ on my property?” The old woman’s voice was as scraggly as her matted gray hair.

  Everyone looked to one another for a moment. There was more than one story to tell, and no one seemed certain of who should go first.

  Samantha finally said, “Ma’am, we didn’t mean to trespass. We saw people trying to get into your home and thought we might be able to help.”

  “Get!” she said, waving the Mare’s Leg. “All of you!”

  “Now, how am I s’posed to do that?” Woods pointed an accusing finger at Tanner as he looked down at Felix and Oscar. “Look at what he done.”

  “A spell better ’n what I’d a done if you’d a come through my window.” She swung the weapon back in his direction. “I ain’t gonna say it again.”

  Uncertain of what to do, Woods looked at Tanner and then over to Samantha. He was in a bit of a pickle.

  Samantha said, “Tanner will help you load them into the truck.”

  “I will do no such thing!”

  “Yes, you will. You caused this mess, and it’s only right that you help clean it up.”

  “Somebody best get to movin’,” warned the old woman.

  Tanner growled and squatted down to get a hold of Felix’s arms.

  “Grab his feet, knucklehead.”

  Woods seemed ready to protest, but when the old woman stiffened with the Mare’s Leg, he quickly bent over and helped to pick up his fallen friend. Together, he and Tanner carried Felix to the truck and dumped him in the bed like a bag of wheat. Only then did Woods see Doherty, hogtied, with a sock stuffed in his mouth. He had come to and was rolling around on the ground, trying to free himself.

  Woods hurried over and untied his friend.

  “Are you all right?”

  Instead of answering, Doherty leaped to his feet and charged toward Tanner, a man set on evening the score. That proved to be a mistake. He ended up running face first into an oversized forearm and was out for a second time in as many minutes.

  “You’re a mean bastard!” snarled Woods.

  “You have no idea.” Tanner started back toward the house. “Come on before I change my mind and snap all your necks.”

&
nbsp; Woods followed Tanner back to the house, and together they carried Oscar to the truck. He was the worst off of the three, with a broken nose and a baseball-sized hematoma on his forehead. Even so, he would live.

  After placing him and Jimmy next to Felix, Woods climbed into the cab of the truck. He cast one final glare in Tanner’s direction.

  “This ain’t over. Not by a longshot, it ain’t.”

  Tanner stepped closer, and Woods scrambled to get the key into the ignition.

  Leaning in through the open window, Tanner said, “I want you to know that this is the nicest I’ve been to anyone in a long time. Remember that when you think about coming back for more.”

  Tanner stepped back and watched as Woods popped the truck into gear and screeched off with his three friends flopping around in the bed. Despite the man’s threats, he seriously doubted that he would ever see any of them again. When they finally disappeared onto the main road, he turned around and walked back to the house.

  To his surprise, Samantha and the old woman were gone.

  The door to the old woman’s house remained slightly ajar, a clue that even someone with Tanner’s limited deductive reasoning could follow.

  He nudged it open with his foot.

  “Sam?”

  “In here,” she called, leaning around and waving from a barstool in the kitchen. “Gran’s fixing us something to drink.”

  “Gran?” He stepped inside and looked around the living room. Everything was old and worn.

  “That’s what she told me to call her.” Samantha cupped her hands around her mouth and lowered her voice. “I think she might be a little crazy.”

  “I most certainly am not,” Gran snapped, stepping into view and setting a glass of purple liquid on the counter. “I was born Carol Gran, and no matter that I married one of them Campbell boys, that’s the way I’ll stay. A woman’s got a right to be called by her rightful name, don’t she?”

  “Of course,” Samantha said, raising the glass and giving it a quick sniff. Her eyes grew wide. “No way! Grape Kool-Aid? Really?” She spun to face Tanner. “Gran’s got grape Kool-Aid!”

  “Oh goodie,” he said, stepping into the kitchen.

  Gran eyed him. “You want some or not?”

  The thought of drinking the sugar-infused water was only slightly more appealing than dying of thirst. He spotted a jug of water on the counter.

  “Just water, if you don’t mind.”

  Mumbling under her breath about being put out, she poured him a glass of water and then went over and sat at a small breakfast table overlooking the backyard.

  “Your daughter tol’ me what you done.” She offered a curt nod. “Didn’t ask you to do it, so don’t think I owe you no favors.”

  “I think I did them a favor,” he said, eyeing the lever-action pistol lying on the table.

  She placed a hand on the weapon.

  “I wouldn’t have shot ’em ’less I had to.”

  “Four men breaking into an old woman’s home—nothing good was going to come of that.”

  “Maybe. But it ain’t their fault. Not really, it ain’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s the drugs makin’ ’em do what they doin’.” Her face wrinkled up as if reliving a painful memory. “Drugs can make a man do all kinda crazy things.”

  “You’ve had problems like this before?”

  “For a good spell now.”

  That surprised him. Drugs weren’t easy to come by in the post-pandemic world.

  “They raid a hospital or something?”

  “Don’t rightly know. Don’t care none, neither.”

  Tanner looked past her through the back window.

  “Where are we, exactly?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “How’s someone come about not knowin’ where they at?”

  “We sort of crashed in a helicopter,” explained Samantha.

  “A heleecopter?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We were flying over to Fort Knox.”

  Gran picked some strands of tobacco from her teeth.

  “Well, you made it ’bout fifteen miles south of Louisville.”

  “That puts us, what, maybe twenty miles east of Fort Knox?” said Tanner.

  “Mo’ less.”

  Tanner’s stomach growled, and everyone in the room heard it. Despite the noise, Gran made no move to offer anything to eat.

  “Ma’am,” said Samantha, “I don’t suppose you might have a little food to spare? We haven’t had anything to eat since very early this morning.”

  “I ain’t runnin’ no charity.”

  “No, ma’am. We understand that. It’s just that, well, you see, we sort of lost everything in the crash.”

  Gran looked up, her brow wrinkled.

  “How’d you crash, anyway?”

  “Our pilot got sick.”

  “If that’s true, then how’d you two survive without so much as a scratch?”

  “We sort of… jumped out of the helicopter.”

  Gran cracked a smile. “Sure you did, child.”

  “All right, you got me,” Samantha confessed. “Tanner threw us out.”

  Gran studied her, looking for some sign of a lie. When there wasn’t one, she looked over at him.

  “What she sayin’ true? You really throw your own daughter out of a heleecopter?”

  “Didn’t have much choice.”

  She nodded. “You sound like a man who can do things others can’t.”

  Before he could answer, Samantha said, “Oh, he is. Tanner’s done all kinds of hard things. Blowing up bridges, fighting armies. Truth is, I don’t think he’s afraid of anything. Other than sharks, of course.”

  “Who said I’m afraid of sharks?”

  She scoffed. “Everyone’s afraid of sharks.”

  Gran nibbled at her lower lip, her glance shifting back and forth between the two. Apparently, it helped her to find her humanity, because when she next spoke, there was a friendlier tone to her voice.

  “Let me fetch you two somethin’ to eat. Least I can do, given your situation an’ all.”

  Gran disappeared through a door, and they could hear her hobble down a flight of wooden stairs leading to the basement. When she returned, she had a small canvas sack filled with canned food.

  “If you wan’ it hot, I’ll have to fire up the grill out back.”

  “Out of the can is fine, isn’t it, Tanner?”

  He nodded, still wondering about Gran’s sudden change of heart.

  The old woman went about making up two plates of shredded beef with gravy, potatoes, and peas. Next, she pulled two biscuits from a ceramic container in the shape of an apple. She tapped one on the counter, and based on the heavy thud, it wasn’t clear which would break first.

  “Been a week or more on these, but you can still use ’em to sop up the gravy.” She set a biscuit on each of their plates, carefully wiped a couple of forks on her shirt, and slid the ensemble across the counter.

  As Tanner and Samantha ate, Gran pulled a stool over to the bar and sat across from them. Even with her sunnier disposition, her dark eyes and sun-marred skin made her look every part the frontier woman.

  “I like your knife,” Samantha said, noting the thick Bowie knife hanging across her chest. “I keep mine here, along the small of my back.”

  “This old thing?” Gran said, laying a hand over it. “Jus’ somethin’ my husband left behind. Got it as a gift.”

  “Really? From who?” she said, making conversation.

  Gran’s lips curled up in a smile as memories of better times pushed their way in.

  “There’s a story behind it. You sure you wanna hear it?”

  “Oh yes, I love stories.”

  “All right then. It was Christmas Eve some twenty years past. Carl and I was sittin’ here, no different than you two, eatin’ our suppers and mindin’ our own business the way we always done.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone bumped on
the door, that’s what. Carl goes to open it, and there’s a man standin’ there, soaked head to toe on account o’ the rain.”

  Samantha paused from eating. “A man appeared at your door on Christmas Eve? What did he look like?”

  “Kinda mysterious-like. Short white beard. Soft voice, real beautiful. Said his motorcycle had died not far down the road.”

  “White beard?” She looked over at Tanner and mouthed “Santa.”

  He didn’t even bother to look up.

  Gran held up her hand. “So help me, it’s true.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Damn fool that he was, Carl went out into the rain and tried to help him get it runnin’.”

  “And did he?”

  She shook her head. “They ended up pushin’ it onto an old flatbed and bringin’ it back here.”

  “You brought the stranger in for Christmas dinner, didn’t you?” Samantha had all but forgotten about eating. This was a holiday miracle story, if there ever was one.

  “Carl couldn’t say no to nobody. We brought that man in, fed him some of our supper, and dried his clothes. Treated him real proper, we did. But that wasn’t enough. Not for Carl, it wasn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The stranger said he’d do darn near anythin’ to get back to his family, it bein’ Christmas Eve and all. Tow trucks wasn’t runnin’. Not even so much as a fillin’ station open.”

  “Did your husband take him home?”

  She wiped at her eyes, as if reliving a touching memory.

  “Carl up and drove that man and his broke-down motorcycle all the way to La Grange. That ain’t no short drive, neither.”

  “Wow, your husband must have been a very kind man.” She glanced over at Tanner, who seemed to be utterly oblivious to the storytelling. “Tanner wouldn’t do something like that.”

  “That’s cause he ain’t no damn fool.” She stopped talking and breathed with her mouth open, as if having trouble getting enough oxygen.

  “Gran? You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped. “Now where was I? Oh yeah, must have been jus’ past midnight, time Carl got back home.”