I thought to myself, I could get used to this. We joked and talked, drank and cooked and generally enjoyed ourselves. As the fish were ready to come out, Thad would pull them out of the oil with a set of tongs and put them on a baking sheet Bobbie brought out to us. It was one used for broiling and had a rack that held the fish above the pan, allowing them to drain. Paper towels were a thing of the past, but this worked just as well. We carried the pan into the house to a chorus of cheers from the women. It didn’t last long though, as soon as they saw the fish they started to bitch. They expected fillets, not this.
While they were still complaining, I picked a fish up by the tail and took a butter knife and ran it down one side. All the meat on that side fell off onto the plate and I repeated the process on the other and held up the bones still in one piece. Seeing how easy it was, everyone immediately set about filleting their own. There was cornbread, skillet corn and a pot of beans. Everyone came past the island and loaded their plates.
I was sitting in a chair on the far side of the living room looking at the kitchen. The scene reminded me of a party and everyone was enjoying themselves. The house was lit by the flame from the fireplace and several oil lamps scattered around. Danny had some electric lights but used the lamps more often than not. Thad was sitting beside Little Bit, leaning down as she was saying something to him. He had a big smile on his face and was nodding his head and a moment later he leaned back and began to laugh, Little Bit looking up and cackling with laughter.
Taylor, Lee Ann, Mel and Bobbie were sitting at the table laughing about something. Jeff stood at the island picking at the plates eating whatever was left. That brought a smile to my face, here was the smallest guy amongst us and he had the biggest appetite. He looked up and saw me looking at him and smiled as he stuck a crumb of cornbread in his mouth, licking his thumb as he did. A feast like this and such good company made me understand holidays like Thanksgiving better. A couple hundred years ago, there were probably only a few times a year when you could eat until you couldn’t eat any more. I knew we wouldn’t always have this much in the years to come, but I was glad we could appreciate it now when we did.
If this is how life was going to be from now on, focused on family and friends, I could live with it. I thought about how much time I had used to spend on the road for work, missing my family. Things were a lot harder now, but I never went to bed alone far away from home and wondering what they were up to any more.
Turning my attention from Jeff, I stared into the fireplace. The smile on my face faded as I watched the flames dance, I knew in my heart that this surely was not how life was going to be from now on. This was merely a moment of peace and happiness in an uncertain world. But why couldn’t this be the new normal? Why did we have to suffer and worry? If we put our minds to it, as well as our backs, this could be the way we lived. The thoughts were still bouncing around in my head when I heard the first shot.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sarge followed the other guys into a large hanger. Passing through the huge open doors, he saw several rows of tables set up with uniformed men and woman sitting around them. Captain Lewis was off to the side talking to another man, and Sarge noticed when the captain gestured in his direction. He walked over to where Mike and Ted were setting their gear down.
At his approach Mike looked up. “What now, boss?”
“I have no idea, and from the looks of things, I ain’t your boss anymore,” Sarge said.
Mike looked at the officers then back to Sarge. “Aw hell, you ain’t going to let those guys take over are you?”
Sarge looked at the guys for a moment before speaking. “Look here fellas, you’re back in the Army now. I suggest you get back in that mindset now. I don’t know what they’re going to do with me, but you boys are still property of the good ol’ US government.”
Ted dipped his chin in the direction of the officers. “Looks like we’re about to find out.”
Sarge looked over to see Captain Lewis and what turned out to be a bird colonel heading his way. Sarge snapped to attention, “Attenshuh!” he shouted as the men approached. Mike, Ted and Doc all immediately followed suit. The colonel smiled and stuck out his hand as he approached. “ At ease, gentlemen. First Sergeant Mitchell, I’m Colonel Fawcet. We spoke on the radio.”
Sarge reached out and took his hand. “Good to meet you, Colonel.”
Colonel Fawcet looked at the guys standing behind Sarge. “This your crew?”
Sarge glanced back over his shoulder and said, “Well, I wouldn’t say they were mine. I’m sure they probably belong to you, but when I found ‘em, I knew they shouldn’t be without constant adult supervision.”
The colonel smiled. “First Sergeant, I know you’re retired now, but I need your help. Are you willing to come back aboard and help us out?”
“Colonel, when I took my oath it wasn’t until I retired, it was forever. If you can use an old man like me I’d consider it an honor to help any way I can.”
“You forming a geezer brigade, Colonel?” Ted asked.
Without turning his head, Sarge said, “No one’s talking to you, dipshit.”
“I think we’ll get along just fine, Sergeant Mitchell.”
“Can you tell me exactly what in the hell is going on, Colonel?”
“Let’s get into that over lunch, Sergeant.”
Sarge looked over his shoulder at the guys standing behind him. “These boys need some grub and probably some sleep, sir. Can you arrange that before we have lunch?”
“Putting your men first, absolutely.” Colonel Fawcet turned to the people gathered at the table and said, “Lieutenant Cox, can you find these men some quarters and some grub?”
“Yes sir,” came the reply.
The colonel said, “If you guys will get with Cox there, he will get you sorted out.”
“Roger that,” Ted said.
The colonel beckoned to Sarge and said, “Sergeant Mitchell.”
After the first shot we all looked at one another. I walked over to the front door and in the background I could hear some of the others moving. From behind me I heard one of the girls ask if that was a gunshot. I picked up my carbine before stepping out the door. I was listening for any sound; the absence of man-made sounds allowed the natural sounds of night to really stand out. Aside from the crickets I could hear, there wasn’t any other sound.
Danny came out on the porch beside me. “Hear anything?”
“Naw, nothing.”
“That damn sure sounded like a gunshot though didn’t it? Maybe someone got a deer like you did the other night.”
Before I could answer him, another shot ripped through the night, followed immediately by another. The shots were followed by shouts and screams. The sound was coming from the back of the neighborhood, back towards the forest, and they were getting louder. Danny ducked inside and returned with his carbine and Thad and Jeff followed him out. The four of us were standing there in the dark listening to the chaos, not sure what it was, where it was or what to do.
“Look over there.” In the light coming through the window we could see Jeff pointing to the east. There was an orange glow in the sky that was rapidly growing in intensity.
“It’s a fire,” Thad said.
Danny dipped back into the house. I could hear him talking, feet shuffling across the floor and all the lights went out. He came back out on the porch. “We need to go check this out.”
“Yeah, but someone needs to stay here,” I said.
Before anything else could be said, the sound of ATVs coming up the road filled the air. There were several of them from the sounds of it, then shooting, lots of shooting. Through the trees we caught glimpses of small flames moving fast. Danny and I took off running towards the gate. I saw movement in the yard of Danny’s neighbor: an ATV with two men on it. One of them was holdi
ng a torch of some sort. As they pulled up to the house, the man on the back lit something with the torch and threw it on the roof of the house.
Whatever it was rolled off the roof, spilling flames out onto the shingles as it did. When it hit the ground the man stepped off the four-wheeler and bent over to pick it up, when he straightened and went to throw it again there was a thunderous explosion to my right. I instinctively ducked but realized quick it was Danny shooting. By the time I had my wits together enough to look back, the guy was down, the little flame lying in the grass beside him. The four-wheeler was turning to head for the gate. Danny was firing at it and I joined him. After three or four shots, the rider fell off and the ATV continued until it hit the fence.
“Look!” Danny shouted, pointing down the road where more men could be seen in the yard of another house. There was a large wash of flames running down the side of the house. Another man took a running start at the house and heaved a Molotov cocktail through the front window of the living room and the flames lit up the inside of the house. Danny and I both started to fire at them, though they were probably three hundred yards away and it was dark. Our fire drew their attention. I saw one of them point then shout at some of the others.
Suddenly there were three ATVs racing towards us. The passengers on each were firing wildly at us. We fired a couple of shots at them and turned to find some cover in the pine trees in front of Danny’s house. As I slid in behind a tree, the first ATV raced through the gate. I thought we had closed it, but it was open. Danny started to fire at it, I joined him, and the two men both hit the dirt. The second and third ATVs had already come through the gate.
I tried to angle myself to get a shot at one that was moving towards the front of the house. The passenger was standing up, one hand on the rider’s shoulder, a Molotov in the other. They were going to try and run up to the house and throw it. I flipped over on my back and started firing and then there was an explosion. The Molotov turned into a fireball, consuming the men and their machine. They fell off and writhed on the ground, rolling around trying to put the flames out. I turned my attention to the third machine.
It was suddenly quiet. There was still some shooting, but it was a little farther away. We could see the one house burning and the glow from what had to be two more. The sound of the third ATV caught my attention, it was behind the house.
“It’s around back!” I yelled to Danny.
As we ran past the porch, I wondered where Jeff and Thad were. As we rounded the house, we saw the four-wheeler sitting in front of the screen door to the back porch. Danny hit the Surefire on his carbine to light it up. One of the men was lying on the ground behind it and the second was lying on the stairs to the porch. Thad and Jeff were standing there. Thad had a bucket in his hands and water dripped onto a black scorch that still smoked where the stairs met the porch. Jeff was holding one of his Glocks, a tendril of smoke rising from the end of the stubby suppressor.
“We got ‘em,” Jeff said
We could still hear some ATVs running around along with some sporadic gunfire. Whoever this was, they were well equipped. “I need to go check on my house,” I said.
“I’ll go with you,” Thad said.
We ran out to the Suburban and jumped in without saying a word. Thad had his old coach gun at the ready as I went through the gate and started down the road. The house next to Mark’s was burning and I saw Mark out in his yard as we went by. I kept my eyes open for four-wheelers but didn’t see any. My gate it was open, and I knew we had closed it. I turned into the drive, fishtailing the old truck and slinging rocks and dirt.
I floored it and took the drive to the back yard, planning to come at the house from the rear. As we passed through the gate in the split fence, I looked over at the shop. I had modified the door on it with a half-inch thick piece of flat bar that I secured with two padlocks. It was a typical metal shed style building and the door was nothing more than styrofoam sandwiched between two thin veneers of metal. This with the bars on the inside of the windows was the best I could do to secure the building.
Two men were at work on the lower half of the door with an axe. There was already a sizable hole in the lower half and it wouldn’t be long before they could get in. I swung the truck to face the shop and the headlights swept across it to light up one of the raiders, axe raised over his head for another strike. At the same time, Thad opened his door, the momentum of the turn flinging it open and he stepped out while the truck was still moving. He raised his shotgun as the second man at the shop raised his rifle, an AK variant of some type and fired as he backpedaled around the shop. His partner quickly followed him. Thad’s shotgun went off as I jumped out of the truck. We ran to the shop, going wide to get as much of a view around the building as we could. The two men were running for the back fence. It was so dark we couldn’t see them, but could we clearly hear their feet slam into the ground as they ran. Thad let loose another shot from the old coach gun.
We weren’t about to chase them in the dark and went back to look at the shop door. They had done a hell of a job on it. Chunks of foam were scattered all around the front of the building along with torn pieces of the sheet metal cover. I was relieved to see that they hadn’t made it in the shop.
“Don’t look like they got in,” Thad said.
“No, I don’t think they did, but how did they know to hit my shop, of all the buildings out here? That’s what worries me.”
“You think they been watching us?”
I thought about it for a minute. “They had to be. I don’t know if the attack on the back of the neighborhood was just a diversion or what, but it seems too well coordinated, don’t you think?”
Thad said, “You’re prolly right. I’ll stay here. You go back down to Danny’s and check on your girls.”
“Thanks, I’ll be back in a bit. If anything happens just start shooting and we’ll come a runnin’.”
“Don’t worry ‘bout me, go on.”
Driving back down to Danny’s, there were people all over the road. I saw Mark and his Mule racing around the houses with Dan and his four-wheeler checking on others. As I was passing the side road to Reggie’s house, I saw headlights coming down the road and stopped, unclipped the quick release buckle on the sling of my rifle and switched it to my left hand in case I needed to fire out the passenger window. Reggie came sliding to a stop beside the truck.
“I got one of ‘em tied up at the house. What do we want to do with ‘em?” Reggie said.
“Where’d you get him?”
“He was running past my place heading for the woods. I was out in the barn trying to keep an eye on my place when I heard him coming. I hit him across the chest with a shovel as he rounded the corner. He’s tied up in the barn.”
Remembering what had happened to the last guy I saw tied up in Reggie’s barn I said, “Well let’s get him out of there. I’ll follow you down to your place and we’ll load him up in here and take him to Mark and see what he wants to do with him.”
“Take him to Mark? You still beatin’ that horse?”
“Shit, man, I don’t know. Maybe this’ll wake him up.”
Reggie said, “Yeah, okay,” and took off down the road with me behind him. We pulled up in front of the barn and found the guy still tied up, in the same chair the kid had been tied to. What surprised me the most about the guy was how clean and well-fed he looked. His clothes looked new, he was shaved and didn’t look like he had been missing too many meals. And he didn’t look scared either, which kind of scared me.
“Here’s what he had on him,” Reggie said, nudging a pile of gear on the floor by the door.
There was an AK variant, a pistol in some kind of tactical looking holster, a chest rig with mags and a pack, the three-day assault style. The pack was black and didn’t really scream tactical until you really looked at it. He was wearing je
ans and a camo jacket of some kind, definitely not military, but not Joe Civilian either.
Reggie had the guy’s hands secured with tie wraps behind his back and several wraps of rope secured him to the chair. I said, “We’re going to take you out of the chair. I have no problem shooting you, so just walk out to the truck and we won’t have any trouble. You fuck around and I’ll drop you.”
He never acknowledged I was speaking, but we got him out of the chair into the truck without incident. Reggie threw his gear into the back and sat beside him in the rear seat with his well-worn Para Ordnance .45 stuck in the man’s ribs.
We found Mark in the road in front of his house and showed him what we had. Reggie relayed the story of how he had caught him. Mark looked into the backseat at the man. “What the hell do we do with him now?” he asked.
“You tell us, you’re the law,” I said.
“I don’t know what to do with him. Where can we put him?”
“How ‘bout the stocks we built?” I said.
“You actually built that thing?”
“Yeah, Danny and me did.”
“Go put him in there, I guess, but someone needs to stay there and keep an eye on him. I have to finish going through the neighborhood. We have seven dead so far.”
“Seven?” Reggie said.
Mark looked over at him and nodded. “A couple of those are just assumed at the moment. Some of the fires are still burning and we can’t get in to look yet.”
“Jesus, how many houses did they burn?” I asked.
“Four are totaled, three others were hit with fire bombs, but they either didn’t catch or got put out.”
“We took one out next door to Danny. They threw it on the roof but it didn’t break, just rolled off spilling fire the whole way, then Danny shot that dude. You know, this sure seemed awful coordinated. Where did they get all these damn ATVs?”
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