Divided We Stand

by C. A. Rudolph

  Thorny Bottom

  Hardy County, West Virginia

  Wednesday, December 1st

  Arranging the short-barreled AR-15 Fred Mason had given her into a secure position, Michelle mounted her Honda Rancher ATV and prepared for departure.

  Jesseca and her three daughters paraded around from the rear of their house, each seated on a bicycle. Modern, multispeed mountain bikes for the teenagers, and a somewhat outmoded, one-sprocket beach cruiser for Jess. Jesseca’s bike had broader tires and a much wider seat, and while it lacked the bells and whistles of the newer bikes, it did appear to provide a more comfortable ride.

  Jesseca threw out her hand, aiming a finger downhill as she lined up her bike in parallel with Michelle’s ATV. “Lead the way. Only, watch your speed and take lots of breaks. My knees aren’t in the best shape. And these bikes won’t win any races against that quad cycle.”

  Michelle nodded and started her engine, allowing it to warm up while she regarded the mass of gear Jesseca’s girls had strapped to them. Mack, Alex, and Desirée each had bulky, military-surplus style backpacks hanging from their shoulders, olive drab in color, crammed to their brims with an assortment of items. Each also had a knife of some type attached to or otherwise hanging from their belt.

  Mack’s knife was a full-tang Bowie, complete with wooden handle and leather sheath, while both Alex and Desirée sported daggers, Alex with a duo, one on each hip. None of the handles matched and no blade was the same length, but they were all double-edged and just as deadly as their companions. A handmade slingshot hung just outside Mack’s hip pocket, and a recurve bow enfolded Alex’s backpack, along with several twisted, wavy arrows lashed alongside, appearing themselves to have been handcrafted.

  Michelle was fascinated, and she allowed her curiosity to get the best of her. When she turned her attention to Desirée, the youngest of the three, to scan for more improvised weapons, Jesseca pulled up and intersected her gaze.

  “See something you like?” Jesseca asked with a smirk. “Or maybe something you don’t like?”

  Michelle smiled uncomfortably, feeling caught in the act. “Sorry—I wasn’t gawking. I was just getting familiar with the girls’ choices of weaponry.”

  “I see,” Jesseca said. “We’re fond of primitive weapons. They never run out of ammunition. We like knives the most, they can be used for just about anything, up to and including constructing other weapons.” The proud mom motioned to Mack and then Alex. “Mack made her slingshot herself. Carved it from hickory, same as Alex did with her bow. They’re not perfect, but they don’t have to be perfect to be functional.”

  Michelle nodded her agreeance. “Or lethal.”

  The group departed the house and continued downhill over grooves and potholes along the narrow washed-out path back to the road. With Michelle maintaining a leisurely pace the others could sustain, they eventually returned to the confines of the valley and the undermaintained asphalt surface of Trout Run Road.

  Continuing south for several miles, the northern barricade soon came into view. George Brady and one of his sons or grandsons were normally found guarding it on the opposite side of two rusted-out cars, which had been parked bumper to bumper, effectually blocking the road.

  But as they drew closer, Michelle let off the throttle upon coming to the realization that not only was the barricade undefended, an opening had somehow formed between the two vehicles. One wide enough for an automobile to breach. For reasons unknown in her time away, both antique cars had been moved.

  Michelle turned the wheel hard, pulling her ATV to the side of the road. She cut off the engine, then motioned for Jesseca and the girls to fall in behind her.

  “What is it?” Jesseca asked, leaning her bike over. She struggled to gauge Michelle’s demeanor. “Is something amiss?”

  Michelle hesitated, her anxiety mounting. She didn’t know what to make of the scene at the barricade and didn’t know what to say to begin with. It had been practically drilled into her that something such as this was entirely possible and could occur without warning. Still, it was unexpected and was taking her completely by surprise. “Amiss? Yeah. Something definitely looks amiss. I…I think there might be a problem.”

  Jesseca sighed, almost chuckling under her breath. “A problem? You mean another one?” She chuckled aloud this time. “You do make a habit out of this sort of thing, don’t you? Finding or otherwise running into problems, that is.”

  “Look—I’m sorry, Jess. But I’m not joking. I wish I were, but I’m not.” Michelle dismounted her ATV and leaned out to study the scene as she grew more nervous. “That’s our southern border,” she said, pointing. “We barricaded the road a while back, and there’s usually at least two people standing guard over there.”

  “Usually?”

  Effortlessly tossing a leg over the frame of her bike, Alex hopped down and pushed it forward to join Michelle and her mother, urgency on display in her body language. “She’s right, Mom, I’ve seen them. And those rusty cars are usually so close together you couldn’t get this bike between them.”

  Jesseca unslung the M1 carbine from her shoulder and pulled the bolt back to verify a chambered thirty-caliber round. She glanced at Alex, considered the zest in her eyes, then shook her head disgustedly and frowned. “I was really hoping I wasn’t going to have to use this thing anytime soon. I suppose we do have ourselves a problem though, don’t we?”

  Michelle cocked her head. “We?”

  Jesseca glared. “Yes, we. We, Michelle. The five of us. We have a problem.” Turning away, she took turns regarding each of her daughters, all three of whom returned her glance with undivided attention. “Girls, mouths shut, ears and eyes open.” Jess pointed to the woods. “Go. Into the forest. Make yourselves scarce. Stay hidden from sight until I call for you.”

  Almost simultaneously, and without protest, all three of Jesseca’s daughters uttered the words, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mack was the first to grab her things and disappear.

  Desirée started to follow, but stopped shortly thereafter, rerouting to her mother. “I’m scared, Mom,” she said, reaching for Jess.

  “Don’t be. Stay close to your sisters. Do what they do. You will be fine.” Jesseca placed her hands to Desirée’s soiled yet unblemished cheeks. “Evil is nothing to be afraid of. You’re better than that…you’ve survived worse. Remember, you’re strong now. Stronger than ever.”

  Desirée ran off to rejoin Mack after a moment of reassurance.

  Alex remained. Unlike her sisters, she dragged her feet, gathering her things together slowly while she stared at the barricade. “Hey, Mom? Don’t be mad…but I have an idea.”

  “What is it?”

  Alex looked unsure. “I think maybe I should…I mean, should I…reconnoiter?”

  Jesseca exhaled through her nostrils, wavered a moment, then nodded hesitantly. “Yes. Yes, you probably should. That’s good thinking, Alex. I can’t be mad at you for that. Get over there and get back as fast as you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Alex said, her eyes enlivened with exuberance. “I will.”

  Several minutes passed before the two women remaining behind said anything.

  Jesseca took a seat on the road’s edge and laid her M1 across her lap. She glanced at Michelle for a second before returning her attention to the barricade. “You look troubled, Michelle.”

  Michelle nodded while she took a moment to study the short-barreled AR-15 in her hands, realizing only now just how unfamiliar it was to her. “That’s because I am troubled.” She gestured ahead. “We shouldn’t be the ones sitting here, waiting behind. I feel as though your girls should be here, and we should be the ones doing the investigating.”

  “Don’t be so quick to discount them,” Jesseca said, a sharpness in her eyes and tone. “My girls have had a lot of practice in similar matters.”

  “Similar matters? What do you mean by that?”

  Jess sighed. “Do you recall my rather forthcoming commen
tary concerning the former fifth unit in our household?”

  Michelle nodded.

  “Well, there were times…times when the ex made the decision to make me his primary target. That so, the girls were never far from his aggression when he got mad enough to…well, when he got mad enough. And that scared me. So we practiced these little maneuvers.” Jesseca paused, peering left into the forest and then right. “Needless to say, my girls have become very adept at staying hidden if the need arises.”

  “Staying hidden is one thing, but you just gave Alex permission to go up there and investigate a potentially dangerous situation…and I don’t know if I—”

  “I know what I told my daughter, Michelle,” Jesseca cut in. “Alex is a capable young woman. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have offered, and I wouldn’t have allowed her to go.”

  Michelle hung her head slightly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interfere.”

  “It’s okay…you’re stressing,” Jess said, doing her best to console her. “And there’s a lot you don’t know about us. The girls’ grandfather, my dad, for all his faults, was a decent man. He always impressed upon us how crucial it was to feed our inborn human will to survive. But he capitalized on the notion by sharing a lot of his knowledge with me and the girls.” She paused a moment, glancing down at the inscriptions on the sling of the carbine her father had given her. “My dad was in the Army, First Air Cavalry to be precise, something he used to call a ‘highly unconventional infantry unit’. He used to tell us his unit’s only objective was to engage the enemy and never be seen, rarely be heard, and only be felt. He did several covert tours in southeast Asia—the kind no one talks about.” She paused a moment to recollect while pointing ahead to where Alex was emerging from the woods near the barricade. “There she is. Watch her now. I swear, she moves like a cat.”

  After checking twice to verify her weapon was safe, Michelle brought the SBR’s optic to her eye and watched Alex tiptoe around the cars at the unguarded barricade, a dagger in each hand. “She definitely looks like she knows what she’s doing. But it still makes me nervous.” She hesitated. “Gosh. She reminds me so much of Lauren.”

  “Hmm…and where is Lauren?” asked Jess. “It just dawned on me, the rest of us still haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her.” She squinted her eyes. “And it also just now dawned on me that you came alone today.” She paused a moment to give Michelle time to fill in the blanks, not getting a response. “Where is she, Michelle?”

  Michelle lowered her weapon’s muzzle, turning her head shamefacedly away. “I let her go. I let her go on that goddamn expedition. Like some idiot.”

  “What do you mean, you let her go? She’s old enough to make her own decisions, isn’t she?”

  Michelle cast a scornful gaze in Jesseca’s direction. “That isn’t the point. I didn’t stop being Lauren’s mother on the day she turned eighteen.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Look, I know it’s wishful thinking, but I still like to believe I have some level of influence with her,” Michelle said, her tone dreary. “I guess I should know better than that…definitely by now. I’m just worried to death about her. I’ve had a bad feeling in my gut ever since she left.”

  Jesseca reached over and rubbed Michelle’s lower back. “I didn’t mean to dredge up negative feelings.” She suddenly perked up upon noticing Alex motioning to her with hand signals in the distance. The two conversed back and forth before Jesseca concluded the exchange with an index finger being pulled across her throat.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I told Alex her little recon mission is over and to hightail her booty back here,” said Jesseca. “She says there’s two dead bodies up there. Any idea who they could be?”

  What little confidence Michelle had managed to piece together within herself started to dismantle in short order. Her lips set into a grim line, and her shoulders slumped. She looked heartbroken. “Two? Oh, Jesus.” She shuddered. “Can she describe them?”

  Jesseca shook her head. “I’m afraid our hand-signal vocabulary hasn’t progressed too far beyond the basics. She’ll be back in a few minutes to fill us in.” She leaned in closer. “You see? I told you Alex was capable. My father might not have been the best dad in the world, but he was an exceptional granddad. My girls learned an awful lot from him.”

  After a few minutes, Alex returned. She pounced out of the woods and, after looking both ways, crossed the road to rejoin Michelle and her mother.

  Wiping her forehead, Alex pushed back her long curly bangs from her face. Her forehead puckered, and she hung her head slightly while looking to Michelle. “I think it’s Mr. Brady and his wife. But I’m only going by what you’ve told me, since I’ve never actually met them. I don’t know who else it could be.”

  Michelle put a hand over her mouth. “You’re certain they’re dead?”

  Alex secured her water bottle after taking a sip and nodded solemnly. “Yeah. Both of them.”

  Jesseca reached for Alex and brushed some of her hair over her shoulder lovingly. “How did you verify the deceased?”

  “I checked the old man first. He didn’t have a pulse, but I didn’t expect him to. It looks like he got shot with a cannon.” Alex retrieved two spent shotgun shell casings from a jacket pocket and handed one to her mother. “The lady didn’t have a pulse, either. Her head was mashed up and had lots of cuts on it.” She paused. “Their blood was still warm, Mom.”

  Jesseca handed the shotgun casing to Michelle. “It happened recently, then. Possibly within the last hour or so.”

  “They shot him with his own gun,” Michelle lamented, her voice stricken with grief. She admired the expended shell, taking note of its overall length and the unmistakable stamping on the brass indicating ‘10 gauge’.

  There had been a time when she wasn’t aware what that meant, back when calibers, gauges, and millimeters weren’t spoken of every day with regard to firearms. But now, Michelle knew beyond a shadow of a doubt there was only one person in the valley, and perhaps only one person she had ever known in her lifetime, who’d been the owner of a shotgun chambered in 10 gauge.

  Michelle limply handed the casing back to Alex. With a sorrowful voice, she said, “Rest in peace, George and Elizabeth. May the Lord have mercy on your—”

  Jesseca snapped her fingers and got in Michelle’s face. “Enough! Snap out of it, Michelle. We don’t have time for this…do you have any idea what’s happening here?”

  “No. I—”

  “Two people were murdered. Two friends of yours are dead, and their blood is still warm. Do you have any clue who might have done it?”

  Michelle cut her eyes at Jesseca, disturbed by her impulsiveness. “What are you asking me?”

  “You said they, as in they shot him with his own gun,” said Jess. “Who, pray tell, are they, Michelle? The only ‘they’ I can think of is the ones you’ve told me about…but what Alex found doesn’t exactly scream DHS involvement, if you ask me.”

  Michelle sighed, now coming to the slow realization that sentimentalities required deferment for now. “Look, I know what I told you earlier sounded far-fetched. But I assure you, anything else I tell you from here on out isn’t going to fall far below that threshold.”

  Jesseca repositioned herself to get comfortable. She took in a breath and released it and wriggled her fingers. “Okay. I’m primed and ready now. Go on, fire away.”

  Michelle searched the sky. “We’ve done everything in our power to keep to ourselves since living here. Not once have we gone looking for trouble, but that hasn’t stopped us from making enemies. There’s a group…a small society of people living nearby. We don’t know much about them, and we don’t know who they are or where they came from, we just know they’re violent. We call them ‘takers’ because that’s what they do. It’s all they do. They’ve attacked us several times, and they’ve been nothing but hostile to us ever since last summer.” Michelle paused. “To me, this looks like thei
r doing. Their attacks have been sporadic and inconsistent at best, but we’ve always had the upper hand. We’ve always won. I guess they must’ve been waiting for this. They must’ve known we divided ourselves up…and were vulnerable.”

  Jesseca sighed and lowered her head, then beheld Alex. “Are these the same people who snatched my Alex from me?”

  Alex stared at Michelle anticipatively, the sparkles in her eyes diminishing.

  “We believe so,” Michelle said. “They’ve tried to steal from us, attacked us in our homes twice, burned a family’s house to the ground, and they tried to kill Lauren and her friend on the day we found Alex. I wouldn’t put anything past them.”

  Jess nodded, her brows knitting. “Fine. So be it. I’m a simple person, Michelle. I’m not fond of overcomplicating things, as things generally don’t require complication. Black and white, good and evil, alive or dead, kill or be killed, make a move or sit still…that’s the simplicity I’m talking about.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve told you before—there’s nothing to understand,” Jess said. “You’ve been attacked. Your people are dead. That much is obvious. Question is now, do we do something about it, or do we run away and pretend it didn’t happen?” She paused, taking hold of her M1. “What say you, Michelle? It’s your call.”

  Chapter 9

  Allegany County, Maryland

  Saturday, December 4th. Present day

  Lauren felt like pinching herself. Was this a dream? With so many unexpected events coming to pass in a matter of hours, nothing seemed real to her. Seeing Dave Graham again for the first time after a year’s worth of misfortune was no different.

  The esteemed soldier carried himself in the same manner he always had, with charisma and poise, and the intensity of a war veteran with a lifetime of combat experiences under his belt. But today, even at a distance, Lauren could sense there was something different about him, and in the dimness of the early morning sky, she was beginning to see it, as well.