Thad knew the post office was on 45 in Land O Lakes, and that was where he was going to start looking for that son of bitch. The problem was going to be getting there. He couldn’t just drive the truck into town; that was guaranteed to get him snagged. He had to find another way to get there. At his old house he had a mountain bike. He, Anita and Tony used to go for rides together, but that was not something he could think about right now.
Parking the Scout at the burned house, he took the truck and went over to get the bike. Pulling up in front of his house, the house where he had lived for so long with his wife and son, he almost couldn’t get out of the truck. There was no way he could go inside, so he walked around the house to the barn out back. The bikes were leaned against one wall covered in a tarp. Thad pulled the tarp off and dropped it to the ground. He stood there for a minute looking at the three bikes leaning against the old boards of the barn. He remembered the day he had put the basket on the front of Anita’s bike, and the day he took the training wheels off Tony’s. He was starting to well up thinking about them, but he pushed it back down and grabbed his bike and returned to the truck.
He tossed the bike into the bed of the truck and headed back to where the Scout was parked. Having seen the way the mail truck turned when it left the house, Thad knew which way it had to be going to get to the post office, if that’s where it had gone. The opposite end of Swift Mud Road dead-ended into Pump Station Road. It was a county road and was usually blocked by gates at either end, but it was the most direct route into town. They must have opened it up for their use, Thad figured. If they were using that road, that was where he was going to get him.
Thad drove past the road to the burned house and headed towards Pump Station Road and just as he had thought, the gate on that end was open. About halfway down the road was the pump station, and just before he came to it Thad turned off the paved road onto a dirt road off to the right. He drove the truck down the little dirt road until he was a pretty good distance into the swamp, then pulled off the road and concealed the truck in the swamp. He cut limbs and palm fronds to hide the truck. Once that was done, he got on the bike and headed back to where the Scout was parked.
Riding the bike was another trigger for the memories to surface; they had ridden on this very road many times before. It had been a safe place for Tony to ride, as there wasn’t any traffic on it. Again, he pushed those memories back into that deep dark place, the pit that was getting bigger every hour. He was back at the Scout in just a little more than a half hour. Once there, he loaded the bike on the roof of the old truck and headed back to where he had hidden the pickup. He hid the Scout farther down the dirt road and on the other side. Since it was four-wheel drive, he was able to drive it farther out into the swamp before concealing it.
Thad got on the bike and headed for town. He wanted to see if the mail truck was at the post office. He took his pack and pistol with him. In the pack he had some MREs and two canteens of water.
Sarge and Ted made it back to the cabin without seeing another person. Ted was securing a line to a cleat on the little dock when Sarge jumped off and started down the little boardwalk. Ted met him on his way back. He was carrying his M1A and a pack, “Where you going?” Ted asked.
“Hunting,” Sarge replied as he jumped into the boat. “Keep an eye on things here, I’ll be back later.”
“You going to keep an eye on Don and see who shows up?”
“Yep.”
Sarge backed the boat down the creek and motored down towards its mouth. He nosed the boat into the back behind a couple of cypress trees and tied it off. He found a suitable hide under a couple of downed trees not far away. Climbing under them, he started to make the hide comfortable for his stay. He cut some limbs out of his way and put down the foam mat. Once he had his hide ready he took the suppressor from the pack and screwed it on the M1A. Laying the pack in front of him, he laid the rifle across it and put some camo cream on his face. Once he had his face painted up, he got comfortable and waited.
He had his thermos of coffee with him and he passed the time sipping on it. Using his NVGs, he scanned the river from time to time but didn’t see anything. As dawn approached and the sky began to lighten, he began to hear boats on the river and saw them soon after: mostly canoes and rowboats.
It was one of the canoes that spotted the body floating in the river. There were three people in the canoe and they carried on a conversation amongst themselves. Eventually, the person in the middle held onto Don’s shirt and the other two paddled the canoe to the other side of the river and pushed the body against some snags to keep it in place. The spot where they hung the body was at Sarge’s two o’clock and about three hundred yards away.
Now that he had a target distance, Sarge made a couple of adjustments to his scope and settled down again. The canoe started down the river and soon disappeared from Sarge’s line of sight. Now it was a waiting game. Sarge was screwing the cup back on the thermos when he first heard the sound of someone in the swamp behind him. Now he wished he had brought his carbine with him.
Drawing his .45, he rolled over so he could look behind him and waited. After a moment a low whistle came out of the swamp, Sarge shook his head and whistled back. In a moment, Mike’s face appeared under the logs. He had a big goofy smile on his face, all the more goofy because of the wound to his jaw.
Sarge was shaking his head. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I had to get out of there. I’m going stir crazy.”
“Well, get your ass in here before someone sees you.”
Mike wiggled his way into the hide, elbowing Sarge in the ribs in the process. Sarge rolled onto his side and put a boot against Mike’s hip and shoved him over, both of them cussing. Adding Mike to the small hide was bad enough, but he had also brought the SAW with him and they had to make room for that as well. Mike took a few minutes to cut away some limbs to give him an unobstructed field of fire. Eventually they were both settled into the little hide and they got as comfortable as they could.
They laid there talking in low whispers, Sarge asked how his jaw was and Mike told him it was getting better. Doc was pretty anal about the dressings being changed and made sure he took the antibiotics. After an hour, Mike elbowed Sarge and nodded his head down river. Sarge looked up to see a boat coming slowly upriver from the direction of Suwannee.
Lowering his head to the scope, he looked at the boat. There were two men in black uniforms, and while he couldn’t read the patch on their shoulders, he could see enough to know it was a DHS patch. There were also two other people on the boat in civilian clothes, and one of them for sure was from the canoe. Without lifting his head, he told Mike to keep an eye on the river for any other boats. The boat eased up to the body at the direction of the civilians. While one of the DHS goons controlled the boat, the other three men leaned over the side of the boat to where the body was snagged on the logs.
As the three men were trying to pull the body back into the boat, Sarge settled the crosshairs on the side of the boat driver’s head. As the body was clearing the gunwale, Sarge let out a slow breath and squeezed the trigger. The driver fell into the boat and the other looked back. Sarge already had the cross hair lined up on the second uniformed figure and when he turned to look back, Sarge squeezed the trigger again. The black-clad figure fell over the side of the boat, taking Don’s body with it; the two civilians ducked down in the boat.
Sarge watched them as they crawled around in the boat. He saw a bloody hand reach up and pull the boat into reverse, then take hold of the steering wheel and start backing the boat out into the river. Once the boat was out in the channel, one of the civilians stood up and opened the throttle on the boat and headed downriver. As soon as the boat was out of sight, Mike and Sarge immediately started to clean out the hide. They took everything with them, leaving as little trace as they could.
Chapter Seventeen
I left Danny and Bobbie to once again marvel at the miracle that is indoor plumbing. Mark was out in the yard at his shed when I went by, so I pulled up to his gate and let myself in. He was going through some boxes he had gotten from the county labeled “Humanitarian Aid.” He had several of them laid out in front of the little shed.
“What’cha doing?” I asked.
“Looking at these. Check this out.”
I looked at the boxes scattered around the door to the shed. Inside was an odd assortment of items. There were boxes of water, flour, salt and sugar. There was also a box of multivitamins. The most interesting thing was that all the packages had labels in several languages. It looked like the kind of stuff the US usually gave to starving people around the globe, not here. Some of the boxes also had things like baby formula, lentils and something like Cream of Wheat, but it wasn’t Cream of Wheat.
“What are you going to do with this stuff?”
Mark was on his knees on the ground, one of the open boxes in front of him. His hands were on either side of the box and his head dropped down to his chest. “We’re out of the food we got from the county, I need to do something for these people.”
“From the looks of that stuff, they aren’t going to be very grateful. I think you should put that stuff away for a while. When they’re really desperate, they’ll appreciate it more.”
Mark looked up at me, and the expression on his face disturbed me. “You’re one to talk. It’s easy to talk shit about food when you’re not hungry.”
That caught me off guard; it was definitely no longer a friendly conversation. “Just a thought,” I said. I thought we had settled at least some of this the other night, but now it was sounding like Mark was even more in the “let’s take Morgan’s stuff” camp. I filed that away.
I told him about the tracks we had found at Miss Janice’s house and what we did to the trail. He told me to keep an eye on it and let him know if there were any further tracks. I told him I would and said goodbye. We didn’t shake hands. Mark went back to digging around in his boxes and I headed for the gate. His comments about the food really bothered me, and that was something to worry about.
Back at the house, the big girls were busy hanging laundry out on the line and Little Bit was climbing a tree with a piece of 550 cord. Mel was in the kitchen washing some dishes. I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her and kissed her neck.
“Nope,” she said without pausing from her washing.
“What?”
She looked over her shoulder. “Maybe later.”
I smiled and kissed her again. “How’s it going?”
“Just trying to get some stuff done around here. How did your trip go?”
“Good. We dropped off the food and she was really happy to get it. I don’t know what she’s going to do when it’s gone.”
“You did what you could, we can’t feed the entire neighborhood.”
“That’s another thing. Tonight we need to move some of our food and bury it in drums. Even Mark is starting to get a little weird.”
She stopped her washing and turned to look at me. “You really think he would come here after it?”
I thought about that for a minute and said, “He might, and that’s too close for me.”
“Where are you going to put it?”
I had been thinking about this on the way home. “I think I’m going to take it down to Danny’s. We can bury it out in the woods behind his place.”
“Well, if you think it’s coming to that then let’s do it. I’m not going to let the girls suffer because other people didn’t prepare for themselves.”
“I agree, but people don’t think that way. They’re getting hungry and desperate.”
“Should we just share it all, let everyone know what we have, and distribute it?”
I looked at her for a minute before speaking. I had thought about this very thing. It might bring us closer to our neighbors, create a little more community in our little world. But I said, “No, if we did that they would just come back when whatever we gave them ran out. We would never be able to convince them all that we didn’t have more. Right now they just think we have it; if they knew we did we wouldn’t be able to fight ‘em off.”
She turned back to the sink and said, “Do what you have to. You know we’re depending on you. No else is going to look out for us.”
I thought about what Mel said as I went out the sliding glass door. I was going to go out to the shop and start trying to figure what and how to cache. The girls were still hanging up clothes on the line and I stopped to look at them. Lee Ann saw me and waved, a big smile on her face. My girls were not living the reality of most on our block. They were fairly removed from the suffering all around us. There was one reason for that, and it was that I had taken the time when things were good to prepare. I had no way of knowing that this was in our future. Even in my worst imaginings, this had never even made the list.
Sure, I had thought of an EMP, but the totality of it didn’t even come close to what I imagined. Not having transportation or water were things I thought of, but you really can’t get a feel for it until you’re there. We had always had power and running water, and even during the worst hurricanes we could go to town for some ice or other supplies we needed. Maybe the folks that lived through Katrina had a better idea of what it took, but I damn sure hadn’t.
I was surprised at how much was still on the supply shelves: everything from canned food and toothpaste to lamp oil and feminine hygiene stuff. There was shampoo and soap, first aid stuff, rice and bags of beans and lots more. I wondered where to start and what to take. For many years I have been buying ten pound bags of rice and beans and storing them in mylar bags with O2 absorbers, then placing the bags in five gallon buckets. There are a dozen buckets I can see, plus the ones under the bottom shelf. While not the most appetizing combination in the world, it will keep you alive. Thankfully I thought to store a lot salt as well.
My pack was lying on the bench and I went over to it and opened it up. I hadn’t really messed with it since I had gotten home. There wasn’t much left in it: just MREs, my mess kit and sleeping bag. I pulled the sleeping bag out to hang up and let it air out for a while and I saw the envelope in the bottom of the pocket. I opened it and found a note and a thumb drive.
I remembered Sarge had said something about putting it in there. He had asked if I had a computer. I had my old laptop in the shop, but the battery would need to be charged before I could use it. I was walking across the shop to get it when I heard the bell at the barricade, three bells, then three bells. It caught me off guard.
I was standing there looking out the door of the shop when the bell started to ring continuously. Running outside, I yelled at the girls to get in the house. I was yelling at them and waving them towards the house when the first shot rang out. It started as a couple of pops, but it turned into a fusillade of continuous cracks. The girls ran for the back door and I ran in behind them. Picking up my carbine, I headed for the door. Mel yelled at me, “Where are you going?”
“To the barricade! You hear that? Get the M1 and stay inside!” I shouted as I ran out the front door.
The bell had stopped and the crackle of gunfire had slowed. I was running down the driveway when a figure ran in front of my gate, a man in dirty clothes. He had a short beard and a Ford hat on his head. He stopped and looked right at me. He was breathing hard and his eyes were huge. He held a rifle at his waist and turned towards me as he brought it to his shoulder.
I dove to the ground and shouldered my AR while prone, and he fired before the rifle got to his shoulder. I brought the sights up and started to fire at him. My first couple of rounds missed, but the third hit him in the left thigh and he spun in the road. He was sideways to me when I finally got a good sight picture and p
ut two quick rounds in his ribs. He fell like a sack of meat. The sound of gunfire started to rise again. It sounded like it was coming from down the road, farther into the neighborhood.
I slowly got to my feet and in a crouch moved towards the gate. The sound of guns going off and the crack of the rounds as they passed grew louder. As I got closer to the gate, I was able to see up the road a little. There were several people in the road, standing upright and firing at something. One of them was the guy that had talked to Danny and me at the gate when we gave the group heading into the forest water. He had a rifle to his shoulder and looked back and yelled at someone. I knelt on one knee and lined him up in the sights. Two quick rounds and he went down.
In my peripheral vision, I caught some movement to my right and swung the carbine around. Mark was in a crouch firing his carbine and moving towards the barricade. I moved to the gate and called to him. He didn’t look up so I checked the road and saw two men running for the barricade. One of them fell and the second turned to shoot back and was met with a hail of fire from Mark, me and Dan, who was behind Mark. He went down just inside the barricade. The three of us spread out and started up the road looking for anyone else. Once we made it to the barricade, Mark and Dan checked the road to see if there were any others out there. The road was empty of the living, but there was one body lying in the road.
With the area secure, we started to look for the two guys that should have been on the barricade. My gut tightened when I saw two bodies laying on the right side of the road. One of them was face down, his rifle lying under him. The other was laying back, his legs folded under him as if he had been on his knees when shot and he fell back. From where I was I could see the wound was to his face, and I didn’t want to get closer to see who it was.
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