To drive home both points, Swain gathered everyone in the large den on the farm house’s first floor.
The men were tied to dining room chairs in the center of the room, with guns pointed at their heads.
The women and children were seated on the couches, their hands tied behind their backs, two men standing over them with rifles.
Swain drew his handgun and calmly walked over to the three men and shot each of them in the head as the women and children screamed in terror.
Two of the three slumped down in their chairs, their deaths instantaneous.
The third and last of them fell over, still tied to his chair, his blood pooling onto the hardwood floor and his legs kicking wildly in nervous response to the assault.
Swain kicked the other two chairs over as well. To him, a bigger pool of blood would make for a more dramatic show.
But he wasn’t finished yet.
He walked over to one of his own men, a convicted rapist named Bennett, and shot him in the back of the head as well.
His men, some of whom had been mocking the women and children for crying and screaming, immediately gave Swain their undivided attention.
“Oh, relax,” Swain told his men. “This man betrayed me. As long as the rest of you remain loyal, you’ll never have to worry about meeting the same fate.”
He addressed the survivors.
“Okay, here’s the way it’s going to work. Your men were expendable, so I got rid of them. You, I have a need for. So you all will remain alive as long as you follow my rules and don’t try to escape.
At the end of this meeting we will untie all of you except for one. One of you will be designated my “Ace in the Hole.” An insurance policy, if you will, to ensure that none of the rest of you try to escape.
He walked over to little Beth.
“And what’s your name, little one?”
“Elizabeth Renee Speer. And you are a mean man and you’re going to hell.”
Swain chuckled at the tiny girl’s audacity. He couldn’t help himself.
“Well, I’m sure you’re right about that, you little snot. But it won’t be anytime soon.”
He turned to one of his men.
“Take her into the downstairs bedroom. Tie her to the bed. Close the blinds on the window and sit next to her with your gun aimed directly at her head.”
Sarah rose and screamed out in horror.
“No! For God’s sake, please! She’s just a little girl! She’s no threat to you! Take me instead!”
One of the men forced her back onto the couch.
“Sit down and shut up. She won’t be harmed, as long as the rest of you follow my instructions.
“The little snot will be held at gunpoint, and the rest of you will be released to service me and my men. By service I mean cook and clean and do our laundry. The women among you will also service my men in other ways. But relax.”
He smiled wickedly.
“You won’t be asked to do anything you haven’t done before, I’m pretty sure.”
He turned back to Sarah, and addressed her directly.
“You are the exception. You remind me very much of a woman I once fancied. I choose you to be my personal assistant and mistress.”
“Like hell I will.”
“Ah, my dear. Like hell you won’t. You see, if any of you try to escape or refuse any of the duties you are tasked to do, the little snot will immediately be shot dead. No questions asked. No fanfare. One minute she’ll be here among the living, the next minute she won’t.”
He glared at Sarah, daring her to say something else.
She merely wept.
He panned the group.
“Any questions so far?”
Not one person in the room, including his own men, dared say a word.
“Good. Then I’ll continue. Your boys are no threat to me at this time. They look old enough to fetch firewood and water, and will also help with the other chores. They will not be asked to perform any sexual activities, and neither will the girls. My men are not animals, after all, and that should ease your minds a bit.”
“All of you will take turns as my insurance policy. You will rotate out in twenty four hour shifts. Insolence will earn you extra shifts, as will malingering and lollygagging. The process will be simple. Do your assigned chores and don’t sass me or my men. Perform sexually when asked and have a smile on your face when you do so. Do not try to escape. If you do, you can expect to hear a gunshot from inside the house as you leave the grounds. That will be my insurance policy’s brains being splattered all over the bedroom walls. His or her blood will be on your hands. Not mine.
“Taylor!”
A man stepped forward from the back of the room.
“Yes, Captain?”
“You are the duty officer. Make a schedule for rotation of my insurance policy. Leave my personal assistant off of it. She’ll have her own duties to perform that will keep her pretty busy.”
He turned to Sarah.
“What is your name, honey?”
“Sarah.”
Swain smiled a broad smile, but at the time Sarah hadn’t known why. She’d find out later that she shared a name with the woman he’d fancied and who’d resembled her.
He turned back to Taylor.
“Once you make the schedule, post it in the kitchen. It’ll be up to each of our ‘guests’ to report for insurance policy duty no later than their scheduled time. If they are late, beat them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Swain turned to Karen, whose kneecap had been totally destroyed by a bullet during the battle.
“You look older than Sarah.”
“I am. She’s my younger sister.”
“Very well. You appear to be the oldest of our guests. It will be your responsibility to schedule the others for their chores. Include yourself in the mix as well. I don’t care how you do it, as long as my men are well fed, and my new fortress is clean and well maintained. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
He addressed the others.
“You will all address me as sir or Mr. Swain. It’s what my men all call me, and they should not be held to a higher standard than you. For they are the victors in our little campaign. You, ladies and children, are the spoils.”
Almost as an afterthought he added, “Some of you are probably wondering why I shot Mr. Bennett. It was because he was an undisciplined bastard, and because he placed his hand upon the breast of my woman. Sarah, stand up and come here.”
Sarah, terrified and afraid not to comply, stood up and walked toward him.
She was unsure whether she was the next in line to be shot, or was to be beaten down as Swain’s next “example.”
Neither was the case.
“Turn to face my men, please.”
Her hands tied behind her back, she was unable to resist.
He placed his handgun back into its holster and unbuttoned her blouse. Then he unbuttoned and unzipped her shorts and let them fall to the floor.
He took a large hunting knife and used it to cut off Sarah’s bra and then tossed it aside. Then he did the same with her panties.
Sarah held her head high, desperate to show that his efforts to shame her would not defeat her.
The innocents before her averted their eyes.
Swain’s men ogled her as he continued.
He cupped her left breast in his hand.
“These are mine, and mine alone.”
He pointed the tip of his hunting knife to the area just below her waist.
“That is mine, and mine alone.”
“If any of you men dare encroach upon my property, make no mistake about it. You will pay the same price that Bennett did.”
He placed the knife back in its sheathe and looked at the bloody bodies of the four men on the floor. He said, “Taylor… Martinez. Untie our guests so they can clean up this frickin’ mess.”
That had
been almost exactly a year before, three weeks after the blackout and a week after the prison break.
Many things had changed in that year, but many others stayed the same.
Sarah still hated Swain with the same intensity she felt the day he made her stand naked in front of her family and his men.
Karen lost total use of her right leg, and had to use a cane to hobble her way around.
Little Beth, the one Swain called “little snot,” was no longer with them.
All in all, though, the compound had settled into a very tense routine of sorts. Swain continued to ride roughshod over his men and captives alike. His men stayed in line because they feared Swain’s wrath.
And in the downstairs bedroom at the farm house, a captive continued to be held at gunpoint, tied to a bed and knowing full well they could die at any moment, should the call ever go up that one of the others was running toward the fence.
Dave knew none of what had happened a year before. But despite that, he decided it was time for the routine of the compound be upended.
One dead body at a time.
Chapter 28
At just after sunrise on a beautiful spring day a robin took a break from gathering twigs for her nest and swooped out of the sky for a rest.
She landed on the end of Dave’s sniper rifle barrel.
He lay perfectly still, as snipers are trained to do. Even though Dave had failed to make the cut in the Marine Corps sniper school some years before, Dave still remembered much of his training. Remain still, regulate your breathing. Don’t freak out when you have an itch you want so bad to scratch, or fire ants crawl across your face or get into your pants.
Or a bird lands on your rifle barrel.
Gunny Davis actually covered that possible scenario in one of his classes.
“If a bird lands on your weapon, let the damn thing be. He’ll fly off when he gets damn good and ready. Just be thankful he didn’t land on your head and shit in your damn eye.”
Gunny Davis always did have a gift with words.
But he also knew his stuff.
“Unless, of course,” the Gunny had gone on, “You’re lining up your shot and all you can see in your sights is damn feathers. If that’s the case, slowly roll your damn weapon from side to side until the damn bird gets flustered and flies off.”
But Dave wasn’t lining up his shot. Not yet. His shot was to the east, and the sun was still facing him and obscuring his target. In just a few minutes it would be go time. Now he focused on his sniper basics, trying to remember everything the good gunnery sergeant had taught him. Ignoring the pain and the numb limbs. Regulating his breathing. Fighting through the occasional itch. Keeping his face out of the dirt so he didn’t accidentally inhale some of it. A single cough in the wrong place, at the wrong time, could give away his position.
While he waited for the sun to rise just a bit high in the sky, he studied the bird. He didn’t know birds. Couldn’t tell a pigeon from a parakeet. Except for the American eagle. He had a thing for eagles. Collected them, in fact. Back before the world went to hell and he had turned the den into his man cave, he had several shelves full of eagle statuettes.
But that was before, when things like that mattered. Now the only thing that mattered to Dave was surviving long enough to get his family back.
The bird turned and looked him directly in the eye, then flew off.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Was it something I said?”
Then he remembered back in sniper school, when he was caught whispering to himself.
Gunny Davis had been standing over him, and he hadn’t even known it.
The crusty old sergeant put his boot against the back of Dave’s head and drove it into the dirt.
Dave had come back up spitting dirt and tiny pieces of grass.
The gunny yelled at him loud enough for other wannabe snipers nearby to hear.
“Never whisper, damn it! Not even to yourself! Save your whispers for when you tell your girlfriends late at night, ‘I’m sorry honey, I swear that’s never happened to me before.’
“If you whisper in the damn field, you’ll be dead. Remember that. A whisper in the field means a damn bullet. And don’t spit dirt either, Speer. If I treat you to lunch, you damn well better eat it.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Dave was certain that there was no one in the forest within earshot. But whispering was still as bad an idea as the day Gunny Davis shoved his face in the dirt.
He made a mental note to stop the habit.
The sun was now high enough in the sky for him to take his shot.
He slowly and deliberately moved the barrel of the rifle from side to side, using the powerful scope to scan the horizon.
Then he checked his wind, returned the scope to his target, and placed the crosshairs on center mass.
He placed the pad of his trigger finger on the trigger, took a deep breath, then let half of it slowly back out and held his breath.
He didn’t pull the trigger, so much as he gently eased back his finger until he felt the recoil.
Instantly, a small security camera mounted on the northeast corner of the house shattered, sprinkling pieces of the camera into the flowerbed below.
Dave doubted that anyone in the house heard much of anything. If they did, it would have been almost undefinable. Something akin to someone dropping a fork on the kitchen floor, or knocking over a bottle of perfume on an upstairs dresser.
On the southwest corner of the house Dave could make out a sentry standing within the shadows and peering through a raised window blind.
He noticed the sentry didn’t change position after the shot. Didn’t even lower the blind.
That told Dave that the sentry, based two rooms and a mere fifty feet away from the shattered camera, hadn’t heard a thing.
That was good. Very good indeed.
Dave waited.
He knew that one of two things was about to happen. Either his shot would continue to go unnoticed.
Or it would attract a lot of attention, and someone from inside the house would go out to investigate. Possibly several someones.
Possibly several targets.
Dave had mixed feelings about what he’d prefer to happen. If the camera was operational and tied into the security system, whoever was sitting at the security console would have noticed immediately after Dave took his shot.
The monitor assigned to the destroyed camera would have instantly gone to black or gray static, with the notice “No Signal” in the center of the screen.
Someone would have been sent immediately to the camera in question to see why it had stopped sending a signal.
And Dave could pick off one, maybe two bad guys, before they scattered back into the house to take shelter.
On the other hand, if no one came out to investigate, that meant the whole system of surveillance cameras wasn’t operational.
That would explain why they were willing to put sentries in harm’s way, when a good camera system would render it unnecessary.
It would mean that Tommy’s plan to render the camera inoperative if it looked like the farm was going to be overrun worked.
And best of all, it would mean that Dave could sneak onto the farm’s grounds after dark, to do recon or conduct guerilla style attacks, without fear that the cameras would give him away.
He breathed slowly and deliberately, using the number of breaths to mark the time.
It was a talent he’d learned in the Corps. His resting breathing rate was eleven breaths per minute.
When he exhaled fifty five times, he knew that five minutes had passed.
And no one had appeared outside the house to look at the shattered camera.
Of course, the man working the security console might not be paying attention as he should.
He counted fifty five more breaths.
Still nothing.
He took that as confirmation that the camera system wasn’t working. And while that was certai
nly good news, Dave was a bit disappointed.
He was looking forward to taking out another of his enemies.
Not because he liked to kill. But because the more of them he killed, the more likely the rest would decide the farm wasn’t worth dying for and would simply leave.
Or, the sooner he’d kill the last one and rid the farm of the cancer that had infected it.
And the sooner he’d taste Sarah’s sweet kisses again and feel the loving hugs of his two girls.
He repositioned his sights on the window where he’d seen the shadow of a sentry, peeking through the blinds a few minutes before.
The blind was still up. The sentry was still there.
He did some quick calculations, and tried to estimate where the sentry’s chest would be, if the lifted blind was at eye level.
He placed the crosshairs on that spot and once again placed the pad of his index finger on the trigger.
Then he had second thoughts.
He suddenly remembered a movie he’d watched in his tiny safe room in San Antonio a couple of months before, when he was still waiting for the long winter to end.
Odd how he couldn’t remember the name of the movie.
But he did remember the plot. A group of terrorists took a group of people hostage, and placed them in front of the doors and windows, tied to chairs or propped upright. Their thinking was that if there was a rescue attempt, the hostages would be the first ones killed.
Perhaps the person behind the window blinds wasn’t a bad guy at all. Perhaps it was his wife or one of his daughters. Or someone else who didn’t deserve to die.
He took his finger off the trigger and hit the safety switch with his thumb.
If it was a hostage behind the blinds, he or she wouldn’t die at Dave’s hand.
If it was a bad guy, he just got a temporary reprieve.
But his days were still numbered.
Chapter 29
Life inside the farm house had become a lot more tense since Dave started his personal war.
The three casualties Swain had taken had left its mark.
But Swain still had the numbers, and took great pains to convince his men of that.
The Battle: Alone: Book 4 Page 11