Fortunately for me, our property is covered in old lighter stumps. When my stash gets low I just go out and cut about one foot off the current one I’m working on and split it up. I had been surprised to find a log almost eight feet long that was completely cured into lighter wood. On a cold morning, or better yet a wet one, it made it really easy to start a fire. After cutting the piece I split it out into pieces about a half-inch in diameter and piled them into the can by the front door. A pile of pine needles and piece of fatwood and you had a fire in a matter of minutes.
As I was putting the fatwood into the back of the truck, the old bell at the roadblock sounded out into the night. Jeff and Thad both looked over at me. “What the hell is that? Little late for church,” Thad said.
“That’s not for church, it’s the warning from our barricade. It means trouble. We need to go out there and see what’s up,” I said as I ran around the truck to the driver’s side. Jeff jumped into the passenger’s seat and Thad got in behind him as I started the old Cummins up. We were in motion before Thad’s door slammed shut. I flipped on the high beams as the old truck swung out on the road. In the light we could just barely make out the two guys standing behind the logs, the fire in the barrel off to the right cast a yellow light on the bush, but I couldn’t see anyone on the other side.
Dan was at the barricade along with one of the young guys from the neighborhood. On the other side was a group of four or five people. I couldn’t tell if they were men or women from where I was. Stepping out of the truck I was able to clearly hear the shouting, seeing the arrival of the three of us caused those on the outside of the barricade to pause and exchange glances.
Dan was crouched behind the logs with his carbine at his shoulder. He stole a quick glance our way then quickly looked back at the group on the other side of the logs. The three of us approached the logs, spreading out across the backside. Thad had his old coach gun laid over his shoulder. Jeff didn’t have anything in his hands, but I knew there were at least one and maybe two Glocks on him. I had my trusty old Bushy slung around my neck. I’m sure the added firepower got the visitors’ attention.
“What’s up, Dan?” I asked.
“I want ma boy!” a short, fat pie-faced woman on the other side of the barricade demanded. Her hair was matted and she was red-faced. In the light cast from the old truck, she really looked rough. Beside her was a skinny man with long hair. He didn’t look particularly dangerous or even interested in being there at the moment. With them were two other men. Those two had rifles with them, lever actions of some sort.
I looked over at Dan and said, “What?”
“She thinks her son is here or some shit and wants us to bring him out,” Dan replied.
“He is ‘ere dammit, don’chu fuckin’ listen!” the old woman cawed.
“Look, lady, I done told you, I don’t know who in the hell you’re talking about. I ain’t seen anyone come in here. No one just walks in, as you can tell,” Dan said.
“Ma boy come here to see Randal, whur’s he at?” the skinny man asked.
Dan looked over at me. I just shrugged. Dan looked back to the gaggle on the other side of the logs and said, “He ain’t here anymore.”
The old woman squinted an eye and her upper lip curled up over her two top teeth. “Whur’d they go?”
Dan shrugged. “Don’t know, they’re just gone.”
“If’n my boy ain’t home tomarra, we’ll be back,” she said as she turned and headed over to an old Suzuki Samaurai that I hadn’t noticed. I was surprised that the thing would actually run. The skinny man got behind the wheel while the other two climbed into the back and that woman got in the passenger seat. It started with a loud rattle and headed off down Nineteen into the forest.
“Where’re they from?” I asked Dan.
“I don’t know. From the looks of them, I would guess a rock out in the damn woods somewhere. You seen anyone around here? Their kid maybe?”
I thought about the body I had seen draped over Reggie’s four-wheeler. “Nope, haven’t seen a soul.” Dan looked as though he didn’t believe me.
Jeff said, “Gabions.”
I said, “What?”
“Gabions were fortifications used during the Civil War. They’re baskets filled with rocks or dirt and stacked up to form defensive positions, that’s what y’all need here.”
I was thinking about that when Dan said, “I’ve seen those, that’s good idea. It’d provide a lot better cover than these logs. I don’t know what we’d make ‘em out of though.”
I said, “We could use that stand of river cane back near Reggie’s house.”
“River cane would work real good. Use whole stalks for the verticals and split halves to weave around them, that’d work great,” Jeff said, nodding his head.
“How big do they need to be?” Dan asked.
Jeff rubbed his chin for a moment. “Prolly three feet in diameter would be enough.”
“Damn, that’ll take a lot of cane and a lot of dirt to fill,” Dan said.
“And a hell of a lot of manpower to complete. Just moving the dirt to fill them would be a hell of a job,” I added.
“Well, these fuckers ain’t doing anything else,” Dan said, nodding over his shoulder towards the neighborhood. “If they’re not gonna stand guard, they sure as shit can help make sure we don’t get shot doing it for them.”
We went on to discuss the logistics of such an undertaking and whether it was even worth doing. We could only block the road here; the rest of the neighborhood could be entered from the rear of any of the houses. Then we talked about whether or not the folks in the neighborhood would even help do it. I doubted that they would do anything to help out. Some would, but the majority of them wouldn’t. They didn’t even help man the barricade. Dan said he would talk to Mark about it and asked me to go and check out the stand of cane in the morning. Jeff said he’d go with me, and Thad, Jeff and I headed back to the truck.
I helped the guys unload the wood on their back porch, the closest approach to the fireplace. The lamps made a huge difference. Having my solar set up enabled me to use the lights in the house and I hadn’t gotten used to how dark the nights were without them. Over at Thad and Jeff’s place I was able to see just how dark it was. With the aid of the lantern it was no big issue to get a fire going. There was already quite a bit of kindling in the house and a large box of strike-anywhere matches. I told the guys to come down in the morning for breakfast and left them for the night.
As I was heading home, I slowed at the side road that Reggie lives off of. I thought about going down there to look at the cane, but really I wanted to go talk to him about his passenger and our visitors. Instead I went home to spend some time with Mel and the girls. The girls were already in bed by the time I made it back, so after banking the fire with a couple of logs I headed off to bed where I found Mel buried in a pile of blankets.
After a breakfast of tasty casserole, Thad, Jeff and I headed down towards Reggie’s house. As I was getting in the truck, Lil’ Bit came out wanting to come with us. I told her to wait a bit and she could go with me later. I didn’t pull into Reggie’s drive, instead stopping the truck at the end of the road where the stand of cane started. The three of us got out to look it over, trying to figure out if there was enough there to make what we wanted.
While we were talking, Reggie came down the drive “What’s up, guys?”
“Hey Reg, we’re thinking of using the cane for something,” I said.
“What?”
Between Jeff and I we explained what we were thinking of doing. Jeff offered a pretty fair idea of the design of the gabions, how we would need to split some of cane to weave in around the whole stalks. In the sand I drew a rough sketch of how we could set them up to improve the log barricade. When I finished my chicken scratch in the dirt I st
ood up and waited to see what Reggie thought. He was standing thinking, reaching up and rubbing the stubble on his chin. I looked at his hand as he scuffed the beard on his face.
“Instead of using this cane, why don’t we use some field wire? It’d be a lot easier to make ‘em out of, find something to line ‘em with to keep the dirt in,” he finally said.
“That’s a great idea, but where are we going to get the fence, start taking it down?” Thad said.
“I’ve got ten rolls of it.” Reggie replied.
“What, where’d you get all that?” I asked.
“I got it at an auction months ago. I was going to replace a bunch of the fence here and split fence the pig pen back there.” Reggie jutted a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the pasture.
“Reg, you have pigs?” I asked.
“Yeah, I moved ‘em into the barn to keep ‘em out of sight. They’s seven sows and one boar in there. I’m waitin’ for them sows to drop their litters, I know a couple of ‘em are almost ready.”
“Holy shit, that’s a lot of bacon,” Jeff said.
“That could sure help out some folks, if you’re willing,” I said.
Reggie looked at me with a slight squint. “Morgan, I ain’t going to just give the meat away. There’s a shit pile of people here that ain’t lifted a finger to do a damn thing around here. Hell, most of ‘em are just sittin’ in their houses starving to death instead of doing anything about it.” He paused for a moment. “But those folks that are working to keep things going are more than welcome to it.”
“I think you know where I stand on that particular issue, Reggie,” I said.
“How many people are back in here?” Thad asked.
“No one’s ever done a count, but we guessed there are probably over a hundred, or there were anyway,” I answered.
“With that many bodies you guys should be able to get all kinds of stuff done around here if everyone was working together,” Thad offered.
Reggie looked over at the big man. “That’s just it: no one has really tried to organize a real effort to do anything.”
“Who’s in charge around here?” Jeff asked.
Reggie and I looked at one another. “I guess Mark kinda is,” I said.
I had been thinking about the baskets and what to line them with while we were talking, and had an idea. “What if we used some tar paper to line the baskets with?”
Reggie said, “I have a few rolls of that too, that would work real good.”
Jeff said, “That’s perfect.”
I said, “I have a few rolls too. I did half the roof earlier this year and had bought enough paper to do the whole thing, so I have a bunch.”
“Well then, it sounds like we got a plan, let’s get to work. Morgan, back your truck up to the shop there and we’ll load as many rolls into the back as we can. It’d be better to make these at your place since it’s closer to the end of the road.”
In the morning we met back at Reggie’s and backed it in the drive as Thad and Jeff followed Reggie up the drive. Reggie opened the big doors on the front of the shop and I was able to back the ass end up into it. They were already rolling the wire out when I got out. I went to the back of the truck and stood a roll up and leaned it over the back and hefted it up into the cargo area. Reggie came up and helped me muscle it in.
“Hey Reg, what happened to your knuckles, man?” I asked, nodding at his hands on the roll of wire.
He just looked at me, then at his hands. He stood there in thought for a moment and said, “Follow me.”
I followed him out a back door of the shop as Thad and Jeff rolled another roll of wire past us. Reggie went to the barn and opened a padlock on a small door. He hung the lock on the hasp and turned to me. “Before you say anything, hear me out.” He opened the door and stepped into what at one time was a tack room of sorts.
The early morning sunlight cut through the open door lighting up a rectangle on the floor. It took my eyes a second to adjust to the dimness of the small space. What I saw caught me off guard; in the center of the room was a man tied to a chair, a rag of some sort over his eyes. An old wool blanket was draped loosely over his shoulders. He had a flannel shirt on over a blood stained t-shirt. He was unconscious and what I could see of his face told me why.
“Uh, Reg, who the fuck is that?”
“Remember we found that ID in Randal’s room?”
“Yeah, but—” He cut me off.
“This here is the one that helped Randal. They killed them girls. They raped, tortured and brutalized ‘em.”
I looked at the figure in the chair, then back at Reggie. “You sure about that?”
Reggie nodded. “I’ve even got the names of the other girls. He knew where they were dumped too. Remember the tire tracks that Mark drew a picture of?” I nodded and he said, “I didn’t need a damn picture of ‘em. They were Super Swampers.” He waved for me to follow him.
I followed him as he headed for the back of his property line, following a very obvious set of tire tracks. At the edge of his property under an old green canvas tarp was a red Nissan pickup sitting on a set of Super Swampers. Reggie pulled the tarp back over the bed and stood there looking into it.
“This is the last place she was. She was probably alive in here before they did what they did to her.”
“Reggie, you positive about this?” He nodded. I said, “How’d you get the truck back here? No one saw it.”
He told me that he and Luis had been at the barricade when the kid came by looking for Randal. Reggie didn’t like the look of him the moment he pulled up and started to talk to the kid. From the conversation they had he knew the kid was involved with what happened. I asked how he got him to his house, and he said he had caught the kid off guard with an uppercut to the chin. He had loaded the kid up and took him home on his four-wheeler, then went back for the truck, driving it around through the woods to the spot at the back of his property.
“What about Luis?” I said.
“He knew my niece some. He won’t say nothin’.”
Reggie pulled the tarp back over the truck and we headed for the shop. When we got to the barn, Thad and Jeff were standing there looking in the open door.
“What’s this, Morgan?” Thad asked.
I looked at Reggie. “You tell him.”
Reggie gave the Cliffs Notes version of what led up to the kid being tied to the chair. While he relayed the story, Thad kept his eyes on the kid in the chair.
“I guess this is who they were looking for huh?” Thad said once Reggie finished.
Reggie looked over at me with a question on his face and I told him about the encounter at the barricade the night before. Thad looked at Reggie and me and said, “If he did it then he needs to be dealt with. You can’t let anyone find him here.”
“Is he still alive?” Jeff asked and Reggie nodded.
“I guess we can bury him,” Reggie said.
Thad looked past Reggie and said, “Them hogs in the barn here?”
Reggie looked a little confused. “Yeah, in there.” He jutted his chin towards the end of the barn.
Thad said, “Morgan, we got five rolls into the back of the truck. Why don’t you and Jeff head to your place and start on the baskets.”
“Gabions,” Jeff said.
“Gabions,” Thad corrected himself.
“What are you guys going to do?” I asked.
Thad said, “Morgan, from what you have told me about things around here, you don’t need any more shit on your head. I’ll help Reggie do what needs done an’ we’ll come down in a little while.”
The way Thad spoke surprised me, he had changed, and I didn’t have to guess why. I looked at Jeff and jerked my head towards the shop. He followed me to the truck.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sarge looked out the open door of the Black Hawk at the Apache off the starboard side. He leaned back into the web seat with a smile on his face and closed his eyes. When he had retired from the Army he thought he would never sit in one of these vibrating monsters again, but here he was. This was what he had missed, what he had tried to find out there on the airwaves of the world, the camaraderie of brothers in arms. He opened his eyes and looked around at the faces of the men with him, men that had chose to fight the good fight.
Captain Lewis met his eyes and a smile cracked his face. His eyes shifted and Sarge followed them out the open door; they were crossing the fence line of Camp Riley. Smoke rose from several places around the base. Farther off in the distance they could see the airbase, and there was smoke there as well. Sarge looked back to the captain and pressed the PTT button on his intercom. “Looks like they put up a fight.”
Captain Lewis replied while still looking out the door. “Still are. We’re mopping up right now, look out there.”
Sarge followed his outstretched arm to a small runway. On the apron in front of a hanger were dozens of men sitting on the asphalt. They were on their knees with their hands on their heads and their ankles crossed. Standing around them were several other men. A lose ring of camo uniforms contained a fidgeting mass of black ones. Sarge could see a couple of camo uniforms walking amongst the captives, probably looking for the ones they wanted to interrogate.
“What are you going to do with all of ‘em?”
Captain Lewis said, “I don’t know what the plan is, but I think there’s plenty to keep ‘em busy.” He finished with a smile.
“Look at all them jack-booted thugs,” Mike said looking out the door.
The Black Hawk was descending towards the runway and the Apache banked away and flew across the base. As the helo approached the deck, a ground handler came out holding two small orange wands and began to give hand signals to the pilots. He was wearing the regulation earmuffs and goggles. Ted saw this and thought, even under the current circumstances the Army is still the Army. The wheels touched the deck and took the load of the big bird. The pilots started to shut down the power plant as the ground man gave them the signal to kill power. Captain Lewis and his men bounded out of the ship with Mike, Ted and Doc in tow. Sarge levered himself out of the web seat and went to the door, looking out at the activity.
Surviving Home Page 29