Fifty Falling Stars

by Wesley Higginbotham

  The two women rushed to the young woman’s side. Lucy started to rush towards her, but Kirk grabbed her shoulder. “Lucy, go find a doctor right away. Preferably a lady doctor if you can.” Confusion showed on Lucy’s face, but she ran off to do as he requested.

  Sherry and Jenny led the woman back down the hall to an exam room. Kirk stopped Will as he followed. Will frowned when he saw the muscles in Kirk’s jaw contract. The veins in his neck were beginning to bulge. “What do you think happened to her?” Will asked.

  Kirk looked him in the eye and raised a quizzical eyebrow. He could see Will hadn’t put the pieces together. “She was raped.”

  “Raped? Here in Celina? You think one of our own people did this to her?”

  “Yes. Don’t look so surprised, Will. Something was bound to happen eventually. They’re a lot of people confined in this small town. Listen. I don’t like it any more than you. One of the things I’ve argued with Terrance since we got here was the lack of police efforts. Sure, he’s got deputies running out of his ass, but they’re all focused on security. Beyond very minor disputes, all I’ve heard about this town says that they’ve only had one major infraction among the populace. Apparently they banished a couple of folks for counterfeiting food chips.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that story. Man, I just can’t believe this.” Will said. “I guess we’ve all been so concerned with just trying to survive and warding off threats from outside the town that we’ve all just taken any internal threats for granted.” He paused in thought. “You think we’ll find who did it?”

  “I suspect we will. There are only so many of us, and everyone knows everyone else, or at least, someone who knows everyone else.”

  “You think we should go back there and ask her if she can tell us who did this?”

  Kirk tensed. “Will, I imagine that the last thing she needs right now is another man poking around, asking her questions. The girls will take care of her for now.” Kirk reached into a pocket of his camouflage pants and pulled out two food chips. “I need you to go get Terrance and let him know what’s happened. Take these chips and get some extra food for the girl on your way back.”

  “Ok. Wait, aren’t those your rations for the day?”

  “Yeah. I just won’t eat tonight. Won’t be the first time. Besides, she’ll need it more than me. It might help calm her down a little.”

  “What about the rest of today’s training?” Will asked.

  “Put Clay in charge and have him go over hand-to-hand and bladed weapons drills.”

  Sherry and Lucy appeared fifteen minutes after Will had left. “How is she?” Kirk asked.

  Sherry answered. “She’s in with the doctor and Jenny now. They’re giving her an exam. It looks like her left cheek has been fractured, and she’s been….”

  “Raped.”

  “Yes… can you believe it?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to. I don’t suppose she has said anything about who did this to her?” Sherry shook her head. “I figured as much. Poor thing is probably scared shitless.” He looked down at Lucy and then back to Sherry. “First thing’s first.” Kirk said as he reached past the small hatchet tied to his belt and into the side of his pants. He pulled out the little pistol that Scott had given him. He pressed the gun into Sherry’s hands. “Take this. You remember how your dad and I taught you to use it?” Sherry nodded. “Well, if anyone tries something with you, use it and use it well. I’m sorry. You should have had this all along.” Kirk turned to Lucy. “Until we find out who did this and they are dealt with, I want you to stay close to your mom. Understand?”

  Sherry and Lucy went back to work while Kirk waited for the Sheriff and Will to return. They did ten minutes later. “Where is she?” The sheriff asked as he, two of his deputies, and Will entered the building.

  Kirk was about to respond when Jenny entered the lobby. She had heard the sheriff’s question. “Her name is Samantha Gaines, and she is resting in one of the beds now. The doctor gave her some pain meds for her face and other ailments.”

  Will looked to the Sheriff and his two deputies. “Either of you guys know her?”

  The sheriff and the deputy to his right shook their heads. The other deputy spoke up. “I do. She helps out in the gardening and with the work horses. She’s one of the refugees we got a few weeks after the collapse. She’s friends with my cousin Amy.”

  “She said who did this?” Sheriff White asked.

  “No.” Jenny said. “She’s pretty traumatized. She’d barely speak to me or the doctor.”

  “We need to get back there and question her.” The sheriff said.

  “Give her some time, Terrance.” Kirk said.

  “Can’t do that, cowboy. We need to get all the info we can out of her before the meds kick in. I’m not about to let something like this happen in my town!”

  “Take a breath, Sheriff. I saw her when she came in. She had been hit in the face. That should mean that whoever did this was in front of her, and she probably got a good look at him. We’ll find him. It’s just a matter of time. Give her a few hours to calm down and think clearly, maybe talk it out with one of the female nurses or docs, and she’ll tell us.” Kirk said.

  The sheriff snorted and pushed his way past Kirk. He led his deputies down the hallway. “Stubborn old ass!” Kirk muttered under his breath.

  “How bad is she, hun?” Will asked his wife.

  Jenny flushed. “She’s pretty bad, babe; but she’ll live. Whoever this guy was, he tore her up pretty bad…” she motioned with her eyes to Will’s crotch.

  “How…” Will began, but Jenny cut him off.

  “Let’s just say that he didn’t really care where he went.”

  The radio that Will wore crackled and Clay’s voice came over the airwaves. “Unit two back in the nest.” Will turned the radio volume down.

  “Let’s hang out to see what the sheriff learns.” Kirk said.

  The sheriff and one of the deputies emerged from the hallway. Will and Sherry stood as he approached. “Did she say anything?” Will asked.

  “No. You were right. She’s in a bad way right now. I left one of my guys to guard her door. If the guy who did this knows she can identify him, he might try to shut her up.”

  Kirk smiled. “Terrance, I have an idea of who she might talk to. Let’s give it till dinner time and see what happens.”

  “Good a plan as any. Guess you’re not going to tell me who this mystery interrogator is?” The sheriff asked.

  Kirk looked over at Will. “I just heard that Jimmy and Leesha made it back from their perimeter patrol. Will, let’s go find Leesha?”

  The darkness outside the hospital doors reflected the mood in the lobby. “I still don’t know why you want me to do this.” Leesha said as she looked around at the group made up of Jenny, Sherry, Lucy, the sheriff, the deputy who knew the young woman, and Kirk.

  “Do you remember how we met?” Kirk asked.

  “Yeah, it was after you killed those guys that attacked us on the road.”

  “I guess that’s right, but I was talking about the first time I saw you. You were bent over the hood of the truck, pants down around your knees, about to get the same treatment that this poor girl got. As I recall, I stopped that with a well-placed shot.” Leesha blushed, the lighter apples of her dark cheeks fading into a darker crimson-brown. “Do you remember how that felt? To be so vulnerable and fearing what was going to come next?”

  Leesha looked at the floor. “I’ll never forget that, or what you did for us that day, Kirk.”

  “Well, imagine that feeling, except worse. That’s about as close as I can get to it, just describing it through your experience. You lived it. You felt it. You’re a strong woman, Leesha. I’m hoping that you can put those two things together and lend her some strength. Maybe you’ll find the words to comfort her, let her know it’s going to be all right, and find out who did this.”

  “I’ll try.” Leesha said. Jenny led her back to the woman’s room. />
  The rest of the group waited in the lobby. After thirty minutes, the silence began to grate on Kirk. He turned to the sheriff. “How are the foot holes coming?” He asked, inquiring about the patches of ground on either side of each of the gates and a ten-yard perimeter around the inner defenses. After hearing Will’s tale of getting overrun by people on foot, Kirk had requested the supply and farming guys take posthole diggers and dig eighteen-inch deep holes to cover vulnerable patches of open ground. He hoped that any invaders that broke through the outer defenses would step in them and turn an ankle or break a leg. It wasn’t much, but it was another layer of defense.

  “They should be done tomorrow.” Terrance said. “I gotta hand it to you, a makeshift human cattle-gap, that’s a pretty good idea. Where do you come up with this shit?”

  “Oh, I can’t take credit for that one, Terrance. I picked that one up from Caesar. He used similar holes when he besieged and defeated Vercingetorix to conquer Gaul. He placed metal spikes with barbs on the end in his holes so that when the Gauls stepped on one, they would be both wounded and stuck in place. I didn’t figure we had enough metal or workmen to do that. Still, with all of the chaos of charging through our other defenses and being under fire from our interior defenses, I suspect any large group of people will injure themselves at least a little. It should slow them down and allow our guys more time to shoot at them.”

  The sheriff shook his head. The group settled back into silence. They sat that way for another twenty minutes until Leesha emerged from the hallway door. She wiped tears from her eyes. She looked at the group and said a name. “Brandon Hunter.”

  “Shit!” Kirk swore.

  “You know him too?” The sheriff asked. He noticed Will’s face flush red.

  “You know how I told you I was going to take on another round of volunteers for the scouts?” Kirk asked. He didn’t wait for a response. “Hunter’s one of them.”

  By eleven o’clock the next day, the trial concluded. The mayor had wanted to wait a couple of days, but Kirk, Will, and the sheriff had pressed him to get this over with. The sheriff’s deputies had found Hunter within thirty minutes of being given his name. He was a local guy that they knew on sight. Someone had mentioned that he had been somewhat of a troublemaker before the collapse. He had stayed on the edge of trouble for years, minor crimes here and there, but nothing serious. When they found him last night, the twenty-year old man had still been wearing bloody overalls from his attack. He had lied and told them that the blood was from a cut on his leg. A prompt medical evaluation found no injuries to account for that much blood but did find scratch marks on his upper chest and shoulder.

  Witnesses were gathered. Clay testified that Hunter had not come back after lunch. Another man said he saw Samantha walking in the general area where Hunter had last been seen. The most damning of all was Samantha’s testimony. Kirk didn’t know what Leesha had said to the young woman the night before, but it had an effect. Samantha exuded courage and determination before the jury and the town council as she gave her account and identified Hunter.

  “Brandon Hunter,” the mayor addressed the blond-haired, blue eyed youth standing in the center of the courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back, “we, the city council and a jury of your peers, find you guilty of the assault and rape of Ms. Samantha Gaines. Bailiffs, please escort Mr. Hunter outside while we deliberate on the sentence.” Two of the sheriff’s deputies led the man out of the room.

  “What do we with do with him?” Reverend Thomas, the Methodist preacher asked.

  “We don’t have the manpower or resources to run a jail.” The sheriff said.

  “I vote that we banish him like we did the others a few months back.” Brother Bob said.

  The Garry backed him up. “I concur. We can’t expend the resources to hold him in prison. We might be able to do some sort of corporal punishment such as whipping or caning; but we don’t have any guarantee that it will work. The only permanent solution I see to this is to expel him.”

  Everyone seemed to agree and began getting ready to break the meeting. They planned to sentence Hunter outside of the courthouse and explain his crimes and their verdict to the mass of people who waited outside. Kirk spoke as they began to rise from their seats. “I think we should kill him.”

  The council sat back down. “Mr. Chandler, you weren’t here when we established the rules and laws of this council. We recognized that we are the continuance of the laws of the country; however, we decided against the use of capital punishment against our own people. Besides, rape is not a capital offense.” The mayor said.

  Kirk was disappointed in the town’s leadership. He couldn’t believe that these people had slipped back into such a coddling mentality. Didn’t they get it? They were fighting for their lives. This wasn’t just some blip. Kirk was certain of that now. This was the beginnings of the new Dark Ages. They couldn’t afford to allow things to deteriorate any more. This was their sanctuary, their oasis in the chaos. Couldn’t they see that not meeting heinous crimes with aggressive punishments would undermine the security of town’s residents? He held his tongue as the council adjourned and proceeded to leave the courthouse.

  When Kirk walked outside, he saw Hunter standing on the courthouse steps before the assembled mass of townspeople. Rumor had spread fast and everyone seemed to have turned out to see the outcome of the trial. The mayor and the sheriff stood to the left of Hunter. They stepped forward and the mayor read the charges against Hunter. Kirk watched the crowd, trying to gauge their level of anger. He saw fear and disgust in many of the women’s eyes. He saw clenched jaws and lowered brows among the men. There was anger there, but was it enough? He was counting on this anger to make his plea. If he succeeded, he could harness it to change the way the town handled these sorts of matters, for the better he hoped. The mayor read the verdict and was about to read the sentence when Kirk interjected. “Wait!”

  The mayor stopped and turned toward him. The eyes of the crowd followed. “Mayor, you said earlier that you based the town’s laws on the standing laws of the United States. Correct?”

  The mayor, annoyed by the interruption, answered in the affirmative. The sheriff looked at Kirk with skepticism, trying to determine what he was up to. “In that case,” Kirk continued, “I say your verdict, and this whole trial in fact, is in error.” He kept his voice loud enough to carry over the now silent crowd.

  “What do you mean?” the sheriff asked.

  “You of all people should understand this, Sheriff.” Terrance didn’t understand, but he was sure he wouldn’t like where this was going. Kirk continued to address the mayor. “You authorized the guards to use deadly force against people who try to enter the town without permission? You allowed men to fire on people who tried to invade the town?”

  “That’s right.” The mayor said. It was a policy that everyone in the town accepted and most agreed with.

  Kirk hated having to play pointless word games to try to make the law fit into the box where it should, but sometimes it was the only way to set things right. “I would contend that you, through this decision, have declared us to be at war.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” The mayor began to argue. Kirk cut him off.

  “Yet you order our security forces to kill people who would threaten or invade the town like we are being besieged. That sounds like a wartime scenario to me.” The mayor tried to respond, but Kirk kept going, turning to address the citizens of Celina. “Friends! Your town council has tried this man and found him guilty of viciously attacking and raping a woman. Do you know what they plan to do with Mr. Hunter? With this animal that would attack a defenseless woman? One of our own? They want to banish him.” Kirk watched the crowd for a reaction. Only a few people seemed satisfied with the punishment. So far, so good. Kirk thought. “Is this all we can expect for a punishment of this horrible crime?”

  Someone in the crowd yelled out “Hell no!” The voice was female.

  “I don’t think
so either. Why release this man to freedom? Sure, he may have to fend for himself and will have to give up the security of Celina; but ask yourself, if this was you, your daughter, your wife… would you be satisfied with this half-assed punishment?” The mayor tried to rebuff the argument, but noise from the crowd drowned him out. Kirk raised his hands to quiet the crowd.

  As the noise from the crowd decreased, the mayor yelled out. “You have no right to make this argument! Who are you to try to override our decision?”

  Kirk knew the mayor had no idea that he did have a legal argument. He hadn’t had a military law class shoved into his skull against his will like Kirk had. “I have every right. I contend that we are in wartime conditions. Even before we lost all contact, the federal government had declared martial law. When I arrived at this town, one of the requests that I made to the town council was that I be given men and resources to develop, train, and lead a group of scouts. You and the council approved that decision, effectively making me the commander of a military unit.” The sheriff’s eyebrows shot up. Kirk knew that Terrance had just figured out where this was going. He tried to speak, but Kirk yelled over him as he stepped up in front of Hunter. “Hunter is one of my recruits. He’s one of my own soldiers. As his commander, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which comes into effect under wartime conditions dealing with military members, I accept responsibility for his actions and administering the punishment for his crimes.” Kirk knew this was a stretch by every standard, but it was all he had. “As his commander, and by the authority I have just mentioned, I say that Mr. Hunter must pay for his crimes instead of just being set free.” The crowd reacted well to Kirk’s speech. “I say he has violated our most sacred trust by turning on and carrying out a war crime against one of our own. For this, he must be killed!”