CHAPTER 17: REGROUPING
Tak took an empty duffel bag off of the first man he’d killed at the hospital and stuffed all of the thug’s pistols, extra magazines and bandanas in it before slinging it across his body. He also picked up the bag of stolen pills. He picked up the chief’s body and threw it over his shoulder. He then kicked Ghost awake, jerked him up and escorted him out towards his jeep. On the way through the ER he dropped off the bag of pills with the nurses up front and told them that they needed to re-secure them and that they likely had a homicide or a severe injury of at least one of their staff wherever their medicine was stored, but he’d have to check on that later. Ghost shrieked in protest most of the way but Tak didn’t care or slow in the least. Once he buckled Ghost in the back seat and put the chief’s body in the trunk he sped off towards the police station, lights and sirens blazing.
The radio was full of chatter about multiple incidents having all over the county, and now with much of it concerning the explosion of the police department. He heard radio traffic about other local department’s being hit as well. All emergency personal were swamped and unable immediately to respond to any new incidents. Tak picked up his raid and said into it “All remaining Marion Police officers, this is sergeant Graves. I want a head count of all remaining officers. Sound off on the radio if you are hearing this.” Officers started reporting in immediately. “This is Hoyt, I’m still at the ER with DeYoung. We’ll be here a while.” Another officer checked in, “This if Sergeant Naff. Lewis and I are at the station trying to help some injured people who were near the blast.” Tak replied “Lewis? I thought he was working dispatch when we lost the PD?” Naff replied “Ya, we were hurting for officers in the field so I stopped by and picked him up. We had an auxiliary officer show up so I had him take Lewis’s place.” Graves said “Roger that. Any other officers, check in.” The next check in came over the radio, “Stotlar and Botha here, we’ll be at the PD in about five minutes.” Tak waited for more officers to check in. Seconds ticked by as he sped towards the PD. Five seconds went by, then ten, then twenty. Tak said into the mike, “Is that is? Any other officer’s check in now.” His only reply was continued silence. Ghost yelled from the back seat, still grimacing in pain but trying to talk tough; “That’s right you pig, the Sons just about wiped ya’ll off the map today. And we ain’t done yet, you’ll get yours soon enough. You should have killed me back at the hospital… you’ll regret that.” Tak met his gaze in the rearview mirror. After a few moments he quietly spoke. “Ahh yes, the Sons of Freedom. I see you are branching out from weed and meth distribution to murder now. I’m looking forward to getting some answers out of you later.” Ghost spat back “Hah, you won’t get nothing outa me, you slant eyed oinker!” Tak grinned again, “We’ll see about that.” He had plans for this one.
Tak met some other officers in the parking lot of the post office, which was just across the street from the former police department. Sergeant Naff and officers’ Lewis, Stotlar and Botha were there.
Officer Lewis was an early 30’s white guy with a tiny bit of Native American mixed in him, which gave him a tan complexion. He was six feet tall and in good shape at 200 pounds. He kept his dark hair buzzed short and wore a scruffy beard. Lewis and Tak had become friends on the force and Lewis had trained martial arts with him and Naff often.
Officer Stotlar was a mid-30’s white guy who had been a firefighter before joining the blue team. At six feet tall and 170 pounds he kept himself in fantastic shape. A truly friendly guy, he was an asset to the force.
Officer Botha, the oldest member of the force at 54 years young, had kept himself in fantastic shape; setting an example for many others. At 5 feet 10 and 200 pounds he wore a grey flattop and came off as someone you wouldn’t want to mess with, as he took no flak from anyone. Botha was a lifelong adventure junkie who enjoyed anything outdoors such as skydiving, scuba diving, hunting and fishing. He provided a lot of leadership to the officers around him.
There were at least a dozen injured people lying around, and a crowd of at least 20 civilians were there trying to help out the injured. The officers formed up in a circle near the front of Tak’s Jeep and had a quick meeting. Tak said, “Folks, since we don’t have a PD anymore I’m going to make my home our temporary station. I’ve got a good com center set up there and I’ll have power and water if the rest of the grid goes down. I have a guest cabin out back with eight bunk beds in it and a couple other good spaces where folks can sleep. You are welcome to crash there and bring your families until things get safer in town, if you’d like to. If you do decide to stay, be careful that you and your families aren’t followed. If you decide to stay with your families at your own home be sure to keep in constant radio contact. The com center at my place will be monitored at all times. Have anyone you bring keep the location very private and bring tents, sleeping bags, clothing, guns, ammo, and food if they can.”
Lewis asked “What’s up with that guy?” motioning to Ghost as he moaned in pain in the back of Tak’s Jeep. Tak replied, “He’s with the Sons of Freedom, who are responsible for the destruction of the station and several other crimes today. I will question him soon. For now, all of you go home and take care of your family situations. Report to my place for work at 8AM sharp tomorrow. If you’d prefer for your families to stay at my place for the time being instead of in the city, feel free to bring them anytime between now and then. Without knowing more details about the threat were up against today it would be foolish to go back out there right now. We need information and assistance, and we seem to have targets on our heads. We’ll try to reach other departments and see if they can lend us any help. Naff; you, Stotlar and Botha go get DeYoung from the hospital and see if he wants to come to my place, if he’s ok to be transported. He’d probably be safer there than at the hospital and he can take shifts on the com center. Take two vehicles. As ya’ll know the chief was killed there today; I have his body in my trunk and will take it to the morgue in a few minutes.” After a few more minutes of discussion, the remaining officers left on their new assignments.
With that, Tak walked back to the rear of his Jeep and opened it up and retrieved an ace bandage from his medical kit. He then opened the rear door and grabbed Ghost, who struggled briefly but couldn’t do much as he was handcuffed and in severe pain. Tak blindfolded the man with the bandage; completely covering from just above his upper lip to his forehead in several layers, making sure he couldn’t see anything. As he drove off to drop the chief’s off at the morgue, his mind raced as he considered the best course of action. He knew the Sons had to be stopped and he wanted to recruit some help.
CHAPTER 18: THE RULES HAVE CHANGED
11:30PM The day of the crash
When Tak had gotten home this evening after dropping the chief’s body off at the morgue, he had put Ghost in the underground tornado shelter 20 yards into the woods behind his bunkhouse. Its entrance was well hidden, as it was a three by five foot door that lifted open to reveal a staircase going down about eight feet to the bottom of the one piece fiberglass shelter. The door had a foot of artificial grass attached to its top, which made it blend in perfectly with the grass all around it in the woods. Inside the shelter it was about 15 feet in length and 10 feet wide, with benches up against the walls on both sides and across the rear. A dozen people could ride out an emergency down there, and twice that many if they were really packed in. Several clear plastic bins of food, water and emergency supplies were stored under the benches. Wooden shelves for additional storage had been added along both walls about five feet off of the ground. Tak’s father had had the foresight to install two large metal loops on both walls at the rear of the shelter. They were attached to 4x4 pieces of wood on the outside of the shelter walls with large bolts and washers, in the event that a prisoner needed to be secured there. A set of large steel ankle cuffs on a two foot chain was attached to each loop, and a set of handcuffs was attached to each ankle cuff. This enabled a prisoner’s hands or feet t
o be held securely in a variety of methods. When his wife used to tease him for his paranoia, Mr Graves would just smile and say, “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, my dear.”
Tak had secured Ghost’s left hand to the chains on the right side wall loop and his right foot to the chains on the left side wall loop, leaving him stretched out with his back to the rear wall and barely unable to sit on the bench at the rear of the shelter without having the cuffs cut painfully into his flesh. Tak opened the shelter door and descended the stairs, which activated a small LED motion lights at the bottom. His friend Nathan followed behind him. He had attached his Marine Corps Ka-Bar fighting knife to the upper left section of his police issued nano-kevlar tactical vest, which is not something he would normally wear on his uniform. Ghost immediately began yelling and complaining, “Man this is illegal; you can’t hold me like this! My hand is messed up bad; I need a doctor you bastard!” As Tak walked towards him more small motion lights placed under the benches turned on. Nathan stayed quietly back by the stairs and shut the shelter door; only there in case things went bad. Tak noticed that the man’s right hand and wrist were swollen horribly to nearly three times its normal size and was a grotesque black color from the middle of his forearm to his fingertips. It was so bloated it looked fake. Blood had run down arm from the large bite taken out of the right side of his hand. Ghost still had the bandage over his eyes that Tak had placed there earlier as a blindfold. Ghost continued ranting, “Come on man, give me some water and pain pills, this is unbearable!”
Tak walked to a few feet in front of his prisoner and sat a small range bag that he had brought with him down on a bench. He stood about three feet in front of the man, but Ghost was unable to hit him since his only free hand was his crippled right, and he was chained in a way that held him stretched tightly and unable to kick with his left leg with any power or effectiveness. Ghost yelled a string of profanity and threats at Tak, assuring him that he was a dead man as soon as he got free. Tak patiently waited for him to stop, not reacting in the slightest.
Tak knew that people often listened to a whisper more than they did a yell. His words were quiet, slow and deliberate. “Sir, I am going to ask you some questions, and I WILL get honest answers out of you, one way or the other.” Ghost tried to give his best smug laugh and tried to speak in an intimidating fashion, but his didn’t pull it off convincingly. “I told you before, I ain’t tellin you a damn thing, you chink pig! Ya, that’s right… I know who you are. I’m looking forward to guttin’ you slowly. You can bet I’ll make you pay for this. You and all of your friends and loved ones… you’ll watch them all bleed out before it’s your turn. You have messed with the wrong bad ass!”
Tak’s calm reply unsettled the man, “Let me tell you about the SERE school I attended in the Marine Corps several years ago. SERE stands for Search, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. It’s a two week long school in which the students received a few days’ worth of classroom training before the real test begins. We were hunted for the first week as we had to try and evade capture while scavenging for food within a 500 acre area. Those of us who made it without being captured for an entire week then had to turn ourselves in on day seven when a loud siren signaled us to do so. The benefit of lasting a week without capture was simply a lot less time being tortured by the class instructors, who posed as enemy combatants. We all had information that we were to try and keep from our captors, which simulated us being down behind enemy lines. We were taught a simple truth in the initial classes; nobody can resist torture done properly and not give up their information. Knowing that, we were trained to try and lie and misdirect our captors, feed them false information to make them ease up and stop the torture. But eventually, with enough torture, done in the right way, everyone talks. Everyone. That’s just the way it is. This human body that we live in is weak and can only take so much. Stronger men than you and I have tried and failed to hold out; it just can’t be done. That’s why it’s smart to operate on a need-to-know basis with the information a command gives out. While they couldn’t go all out with their torture like if it we were actual enemy combatants, it didn’t matter, we all broke down and eventually told everything we knew. From water boarding to putting a man in a tight box just big enough for him to fit in and burying it 10 feet in the ground with only a small air tube leading out of it and leaving him there for 12 hours straight; they did several non-invasive things that made us talk. After the torture phase week of the training was over and we all broke, we received more classroom training. We were taught how to be the tortures. How to extract accurate information very quickly when necessary. How to know if we were being lied to. Now sir, I am not an evil man and I certainly do not enjoy torturing anyone, but I will get the answers I seek from you. That is an absolute certainty. How much torture you receive depends on how forthright and honest you are. If you delay, you will experience truly unbearable pain. If you lie, you will experience that same pain. Your only out is to tell me the absolute truth. Once I have the information I need from you, you will be transferred to a jail in a neighboring county. I will deny ever torturing you and you can attempt to pursue legal action against me, but I doubt that will even be an option for quite some time now. However, know this as a fact; you will not be released until I am completely satisfied.”
Tak then took a blood pressure cuff out of his bag applied it to Ghost’s restrained left arm. Sweat had broken out all over his body, a result solely of Tak’s words. He knew fear for the first time in a very long time. He desperately wanted his blindfold off and to be in the light again. He badly wanted out of this hell hole and up in the fresh air. He strained against his cuffs, but they would not budge. He could imagine no way to escape. Suddenly Tak grabbed his right forearm and slapped his swollen right wrist. Ghost screamed in pain and wet himself as his useless limb throbbed in excruciating agony that made him swoon. He cried out “AHHHH, You didn’t even ask me anything man! What do you want… Damnit what do you want to know?!” Tak grabbed his face with both hands and whispered in his ear; “Everything. Anything that could possibly be useful. Even things that you don’t think would be useful. I will know if you are lying. Your body cannot hide its biological reactions when you lie. I have you hooked up to a monitor that will tell me with over 99% certainty when you are lying or hiding information”. That last part was a bluff, playing on the blood pressure cuff he’d put on the man’s arm. “I’ve done this both in training and against enemy combatants in war. You should know that I have a 100% success rate. It’s really not that hard if the torturer is just willing to do what is necessary… and I am. It would behoove you to be completely honest and open with me. If you do that then I promise you that I will torture you no more. If not, then I will work my way through razors, rubbing alcohol, and finally up to the blow torch.” With that Tak reached in his bag and lit a hand-held blow torch, the distinct sound of fuel being burnt as a jet of blue-white flame came from its tip was not lost on Ghost’s ears. Tak held it in front of the man’s exposed chest a good foot away, just close enough to feel a little heat from it. Ghost had thought he was strong. He had thought he was tough. Now he had been reduced to a trembling baby. He began shaking and crying and screaming in desperation; “OK, OK… stop it man, just stop! I’ll tell you anything you want to know! Damnit… please stop… please don’t hurt me anymore… please!” Ghost was a sobbing, dirty, snotty faced mess. He had never been so shaken in his life. Tak looked back to Nathan and they shared a little grin as Nathan gave an approving nod.
Two hours later Tak had all the information he’d wanted, and a bunch he didn’t. He didn’t have to cause Ghost pain again to get all that he needed. He found out the location of the Sons of Freedom. Their numbers. Their setup at the Freedom Compound. He knew all about Gunner. How they met in prison. He knew of their monthly meetings and how they trained. He knew of their weed and meth business. How and where they produced their drugs. How they distributed them. He knew of how they had bombe
d the largest half a dozen police departments in the area. More importantly, he knew of their plans and preparations for the upcoming days and weeks.
When it was over, Tak motioned for Nathan to join him and they uncuffed their prisoner from the wall and cuffed his hands behind his back. They had to use a set of leg irons to fit around his huge, swollen right wrist. Tak attached a set of leg irons to the man’s feet so he could only take short steps as they escorted him out. He grabbed Ghost’s left arm from behind and walked him out of the cellar, as Nathan opened the door for them. Ghost felt himself being led out and relief flooded his mind when he met the cool night air. He walked for a couple minutes with Tak directing him. He found himself actually looking forward to the county jail. Even more than that, he looked forward to returning here to kill and torture this cop and any of his friends and family members as soon as he could. Nobody had ever embarrassed him the way this cop had. He’d make him regret ever meeting him. Even though his right hand still throbbed horribly, his usual arrogant confidence was returning. He started to murmur part of his thoughts out loud, “Now don’t miss me too much cop… you’ll be seeing me soon”. Ghost was suddenly tripped forward and pushed into a deep hole in the ground. The realization hit him suddenly; it was his grave. He immediately began crying and pleading louder than ever; “No man… No! You don’t have to do this! I won’t come back for you man! I’m sorry officer, I’m really sorry for what I’ve done! Please… please!” Tak jumped down and sat on his back. He reached in front of the man’s throat with his razor sharp Ka-Bar knife in his right hand and put it up against his left carotid artery. He quickly pulled it up and in back towards the right side, slicing open both main arteries and the esophagus. Ghost’s pleas came out in a gurgle as air hissed out of his throat and bubbled through his gushing veins. Tak quietly said in his ear, “I just can’t allow you to come back and hurt us. The rules have changed.” Within a few moments Ghost lost consciousness as his life poured out into the dirt floor of his grave. Nathan stood at the head of the makeshift grave with a shovel waiting to fill the dirt in over him, which was a good 200 feet into the woods behind the storm shelter. Tak retrieved the cuffs and the leg irons from the man and climbed out of the hole. He made eye contact with his old friend and Nathan put his hand on his shoulder “You did the right thing my friend. Don’t ever doubt that.” Tak nodded to his friend in solemn appreciation.
IN THE APOCALYPSE, A HERO RISES Page 7