by Nathan Combs
Noah rose to his feet, pulled Anna into his arms and they held each other tightly. Finally, he pulled away just enough to look down at her. “Let’s check out Athens. It’s about fifteen miles from here and has—had a population of around fourteen thousand. We can be there before dark. They have great beds at the Hampton Inn.”
Anna playfully punched his shoulder, grinned, and said, “How do you know that?”
It was dusk when they reached the outskirts of Athens and cautiously made their way through the sparse vegetation of Veterans Park. There were a lot of campfires and several bonfires.
“Damn, Noah, how many do you think?”
“About twenty-five. Maybe thirty campfires. About a hundred men. There’re four guys at that one down there,” and he pointed to the closest campsite fifty yards away. He assessed the occupants gathered around the fire. Definitely Nirvana. “Well, they’re here. I’m guessing they’re using Athens as a base while they send patrols to smaller towns. That would be the logical thing to do.”
“Does that mean we won’t be checking out the beds at the Hampton Inn?”
He laughed. “Yeah. That’s what it means. But making love in a sleeping bag will be more fun, anyway.” He handed her the night vision binoculars. “See that big pine tree this side of their campfire?”
“Yes.”
“We’re going to make our way to that tree. I have an idea.”
“Wanna let me in on it?”
“Yeah. We’re gonna steal some rides.”
“Noah. Let’s not. What if they see us?”
“If they do, it’ll be the last thing they ever see.”
Chapter Nine
Redneck Stew
Colonel wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, burped, pushed his prodigious gut away from the table, and said, “That was damn good chicken, Ransom. Now suppose you tell me why you found it necessary to interrupt my supper.”
“Sorry, Colonel, but a bunch of our boys up in Tennessee was jus’ kilt. Blown up and shot fer no reason atall.”
“Blow up and kilt for no reason, huh? That doesn’t tell me shit, Ransom.”
“Sorry, Colonel. That patrol we sent to Cleveland went over to a little town named Delano and was stayin’ in a campground jus’ east of there. They found themselves some wimen and were… you know… checkin’ em out. Well, sumbody shot three o’ the boys at the river campsite and blew up a buncha gas barrels they stored inna field. Then they kilt five of our dogs that was trackin’ ’em and thirteen more men. Dunno if it’s related, but one o’ the boys ’tween here and Ringgold got coldcocked by a guy few days back. ’Parently, he asked a lotta questions ’bout us. ’Bout you. Wanted to know where you lived and who you were. How many guys we had. That kinda stuff. Jesse… that’s the name of the soldier, said the guy had one blue eye and one green one.”
“Why am I just learning about this, Ransom?”
“Ah didn’t think the first one was ’portant ’til I found out ’bout the secon’ one.”
Colonel cringed inwardly. Stupid bastard. “All right, Ransom. Take Billy Bob and his boys to Delano. If you find the guy, or guys, responsible, crucify their sorry asses. And make sure they’re visible from the highway.”
“Crucify?”
“Yeah, crucify, Ransom. Nail them to a cross. Like Jesus.”
With an ear-to-ear grin, Ransom said, “Oh. Gotcha, Colonel.”
Ransom left Fort Oglethorpe with one hundred twenty-five men and headed north to Delano. They stopped at the Hiwassee-Ocoee Campground, and the “hero,” Jamie Sloan, who saw the guy who killed the men and the dogs, took them to the field, where they stood staring at the pile of week-old corpses.
Ransom’s second-in-command, Billy Bob Marks, asked, “Should we bury ’em, Ransom?”
“What?”
“The guys. Should we bury ’em?”
“No. Fuck ’em. They got themselves kilt. They were dumbasses. But bury the dawgs.
Colonel wants this guy found, Billie Bob. Where do ya think he went from here, Jamie?”
He shrugged. “Ah don’ know, Ransom. He shot from over there on the edge o’ that field.” He pointed. “We checked ’er out, but we got us a shithouse full o’ snow since then, so… yer guess is good as mine. Ya wanna take a look?”
“Nah. Don’t matter none. Coulda went in any direction.” He began picking at his teeth with a pocketknife while considering the situation. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’ll check out Delano, but ah doubt he’s holed up there. Then we’ll mosey on up to Athens ’n work the smaller towns from there. Git us some more wimen.”
“Hell, yeah!”
Colonel was born Ronald G. Simmons in Athens, Georgia, in 1985. He held a Master’s Degree in Psychology from the University of Georgia, and while he commanded several thousand of them, he was definitely not a dumbass redneck. In fact, he was pretty smart.
Simmons didn’t have an axe to grind against anything or anybody except for liver and women. The mere mention of the word liver made him want to toss his cookies. As for women, he considered them the cause of all things evil in the world and hated them with a passion bordering on obsession.
Simmons had no father. Well, obviously he did, but had no idea who or where he was, because his mother refused to talk about him. Consequently, he conjured up a bigger than life image of his absentee dad, which helped nurture his hate for the fairer sex, beginning with his mother. During his miserable, dysfunctional childhood, his mother never once acted like one. Not because she didn’t know how. She simply didn’t care. Simmons’ mom was a crack addict, prostitute, and part-time whore, thus was seldom home. On those rare occasions she deigned to grace him with her presence, she always had a new “Uncle Bob” in tow. Until he was ten years old, Simmons thought the screams of “Oh my God” coming from her bedroom meant his mother was engaged in a religious ceremony of some sort.
He realized the goings-on behind the bedroom door had nothing to do with God on a sunny Sunday morning in March, 1995. Watching cartoons on the ten-inch black and white TV in the living room, the screams of oh my God, oh sweet Jesus, yes, emanating from his mother’s room were louder than normal. He was concerned and quietly cracked the door. The image of his naked mother sitting on his latest “Uncle Bob” was seared forever in his memory.
He spent the next two years watching her alternate between sleeping, nodding off, and venting about her lot in life in increasingly incoherent rages. She never cleaned the filthy, roach-infested one-bedroom apartment they lived in and never washed clothes or cooked. Once a week she brought him new clothes from the Salvation Army or Saint Vinnies and threw his old ones away, and once a month exchanged the blanket used for a sheet on the broken-down couch he slept on. She filled his belly daily with food she brought home from the McDonald’s where she worked part-time and used some of her food stamps to stock the cabinets with chips and other gourmet food. Simmons didn’t know any other life, but as he got older, he started to suspect that, compared to his school peers, his life existed outside the boundaries of normalcy.
When he was twelve, his mother did the only considerate thing she’d ever done for him. She died from an overdose of smack at high noon in the bathroom of the Mickey Ds where she worked. Custody of Simmons was remanded to the state of Georgia, and because he had never been in trouble, and miraculously got good grades at school, he was soon placed in a foster home. His foster parents were reasonably well off and were decent, law-abiding people. They were strict but fair. Unfortunately, they had no idea what the word love meant. Not toward each other, and certainly not toward him. So Simmons grew up with a skewed perspective of life and came to the conclusion that the pursuit of happiness was nothing more than an illusion. A full belly, however, was not an illusion, and eating became his refuge. By the time he graduated college, his refuge was full to the tune of fo
ur hundred fifty pounds and at five foot six he looked more like a mobile blob of Jell-O than a human being.
The summation of Simmons’ love life was as large as the head of a pin. It consisted of exactly one date, if coffee with a girl from his American History class counted, and sex was on the menu one time.
He read a joke somewhere, or maybe someone told it to him, but he thought it had a great punch line and, as the young pudgy girl he convinced to come to a hotel with him lay on the bed trying to look interested, he unzipped the line while unzipping his fly. “Stand back, baby, I don’t know how big this thing is gonna get.”
The girl sat up and stared in eager anticipation. When his erect two and a half-inch penis sprang into view, she started laughing, then pointed at it, and said, “You gotta be kiddin’ me. Fuck you, you fuckin’ loser.” She dressed and, still laughing, exited the room, leaving Simmons embarrassed and his mini-dick limp.
Thus for Simmons, the thought process was cemented instantly that all women were evil and only good for cooking and cleaning. Nothing more. Maybe not even that.
Simmons rode out the collapse of the United States and the ensuing plague in a shack in the Georgia hills. When the Millennial Bug abated, he made his way to Athens, Georgia, where he met Ransom and five other rednecks from the Georgia mountains. Within days, he became the undisputed leader and began building his empire. Simmons ruled with an iron fist. Although he had no choice but to tolerate their ignorance, he refused to abide stupidity and dealt harshly with those who underperformed or did stupid things: he shot them. He eliminated competition for top dog by limiting membership in his clan to those with low grey matter. The only people he allowed around him were numb nuts he could control. The three thousand men under his loosely-knit command had the collective IQ of an ameba, and while they were capable enough in woodcraft, their goals in their new life were little different than their goals in their old one. Their priorities were women and booze. Not necessarily in that order. They readily accepted his decree that women existed for one purpose only. To please men and to do “woman things.”
The majority of survivors in Northern Georgia consisted primarily of males who instinctively gravitated to larger metro areas. That included Simmons and his men. After setting up shop in Chattanooga, newcomers willingly assimilated into the group Simmons called Nirvana. The promise of a woman who would do whatever they wanted her to do, whenever they wanted her to do it, was, for most of them, a dream come true. Men who brought women with them and refused to share were killed, and their women integrated into the collective “Bitch Pool.” Small children, generally those under ten years old, were kept at the Bitch Pool and were collectively cared for by “the bitches.” Male children over ten years of age were indoctrinated into the world of warfare and, for lack of a better term, redneckism. No one, except for Simmons, seemed to know what the word education or the term higher learning meant.
The horses were tethered thirty feet from the campfire. Peering around the big pine, Noah whispered, “They’re half in the bag. You take this one,” nodding to the closest animal twenty feet way. “I’ll get the one right behind him. We’re gonna lead them back here, mount up, and ride home.”
Anna slithered up to the first horse, untethered him, and returned to the pine tree. Noah got the second horse and was less than five feet from Anna when a shout rang out in the dark. “Sumbitch. Sumbody’s stealin’ our horses.” Two gunshots followed.
As soon as the man started yelling, Noah and Anna mounted, hugged their horse’s necks, and galloped into the darkness.
The sounds of pursuit rang distant in their ears.
After Bill cut Horst loose, he headed south and ended up outside Veterans Park in Athens, Tennessee, three nights later. Concealed on a knoll a hundred feet away, he watched two guys untie horses mere feet from five men sitting around a campfire. They were leading the stolen horses into the darkness when one of the campers rose and moved towards them. He was getting ready to take a leak and, as he unzipped his fly, looked up. He yelled to the other men and got off two shots at the fleeing horse thieves as they disappeared into the dark. Three men mounted the remaining horses bareback and rode off in pursuit while the fourth ran toward another group of campers a hundred yards away. Within minutes, a dozen more riders joined the hunt.
The man who remained at the campsite sat down. Horst could see another twenty or so fires scattered haphazardly throughout the park. Since this campfire was well away from the others, he decided he would take the guy out and help himself to whatever he could find.
Horst stealthily moved from his position and entered the campsite behind the man, his knife blade flashing in the firelight. With his throat slashed, the guy dropped like a sack of fertilizer, his life spurting onto the frozen ground. The mason jar he’d been tipping miraculously landed intact and, as the man lay beside him twitching, Horst picked it up and sniffed. Shine. What else? He took a sip and spit it out. Nasty. With no wasted motion, he took the guy’s Glock 19, released the magazine, checked it, racked the slide, caught the round in his hand, and reinserted it. Fifteen rounds. Shoving the gun in his belt, he felt through the guy’s pockets and found two extra magazines and an LED flashlight. He put them in his jacket and picked up a Mossberg .12 gauge that was propping up a stump. Six rounds. He quickly entered the tent, grabbed a sleeping bag, and walked back to the campfire. Dipping a cup into the pot on the fire grate, he brought it to his nose and sniffed. He didn’t know what it was, but he was hungry and it smelled good. He skulked back into the darkness, gulping the broth.
After returning to his position on the knoll, he sat down and watched. He didn’t have long to wait. A group from another campsite rode in and found the guy he just offed. Their actions and mannerism told him they thought the horse thieves killed him. They wrapped the body in a blanket and left, heading back the way they came. Horst considered, then decided he would backtrack and come up on the northernmost campsite at the far end of the field. It was about a hundred fifty yards away, and he maneuvered through the woods on a circuitous track. Sheltered from view, he put his hand over the flashlight and quickly checked both weapons for markings. There were none. He struck a match and looked at the flashlight. It was clean too. Fifty feet from the campsite, he paused and watched for another ten minutes. Six guys were drinking shine. They were loud, and he could easily hear their conversation, which involved women. They didn’t appear concerned about the theft of two horses or the death of one of their own, so he decided to walk into their camp like he belonged.
Because Noah and Anna had night vision, they easily eluded the pursuit. After twelve minutes of hard riding, they stopped and dismounted to let the horses rest.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Anna was beside herself. “We took a big chance, Noah. Promise me you’ll never do something like that again.”
Noah didn’t understand why she was so upset. He just looked at her, mouth open.
Grabbing his face with both hands, she said, “Noah. I’m serious. Please. Promise me you’ll never risk your life again.”
Silence.
“Promise me!”
Guilt overcame him before words came to mind. It struck him that Anna could have been killed. He nodded. “I’m sorry, Anna. You’re right. You have my word. I’ll never put either of our lives in jeopardy. You are my life, Anna. I’m gonna be there for you forever. Forgive me?”
Anna looked at him long and hard, then smiled and said, “Yes. Let’s go home.”
Horst learned long ago that intimidation was an effective approach for dealing with dumbasses and walked into the campsite like he was their supreme commander.
He stood just inside the circle of firelight in plain sight, but they didn’t see him. He said, “Hey.”
One of the men looked up and nonchalantly asked, “Who’re you?”
Horst stared the m
an down. “Who’s in charge here?”
Silence ensued, so he got into the face of the guy whose mouth worked and said, “I asked you a question. It requires an answer. Who’s in charge?”
The man swallowed hard. “Ransom. Ransom’s the boss.”
“Where is he?”
The man motioned with his head. “Over there. Center o’ the park.”
“Take me to him.”
The man hesitated.
“Now!”
Horst followed the half-drunk wannabe soldier across the open expanse of park, through a small copse of trees, and into Ransom’s camp. “I understand you’re in charge here?”
Obviously leery of the stranger, Ransom replied, “’Pends who wants t’ know.”
Horst decided to take his aggressiveness up a notch and grabbed Ransom by the throat with one hand. He touched his nose to Ransom’s. “When I ask you a question, boy, you’d best answer it. Your health depends on it.”
Ransom’s Adam’s apple tried to disappear down his throat, but Horst’s hand wouldn’t allow it, so it sat there and bobbed. When Horst let go, Ransom swallowed hard several times and massaged his throat. “Yeah. Uh… ah’m in charge.”
“Get this straight, asshole. It’s not yeah. It’s yes, sir. Got it?”
Ransom didn’t hesitate. “Yes, sir.”
Grabbing Ransom’s arm, he dragged him out of earshot of the others and said, “Now, who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Whaddaayah mean, who are we? We’re Nirvana.”
“Nirvana? Like the rock group?”
“Huh?”
“Forget it. Tell me about Nirvana.”