The growing community had made this both possible and complicated. Lamar had returned in January with eleven others crammed into the SUV. A month later, Karla took in three half frozen and starving women she’d found during a foray into an outdoor store. They had fled a group on the edge of collapse. People cast out or shot to save food for the remainder. Karla didn’t have to tell the women what came next.
A new addition had gone up to house the newcomers, and the double fencing around the farm had been completed. Their increased number added a level of security and with their vastly improved weaponry, Karla was confident the group could fend off small arms attacks, but she remained leery that bigger guns were out there.
Their situation was more precarious than Karla wanted to admit. She had opened her food stores in February to supplement the meat brought in from hunting. She withdrew precious seeds in the spring, twenty needing vastly more food than the seven from the year before. What would have sustained her and Jessie for a decade was largely gone.
* * *
Eighteen people sat in the greatroom in the first addition—Brittany and Jeff absent, standing watch. Lamar’s cohort comprised twelve of the eighteen present. The six women huddled on chairs to Karla’s right. The men occupied the two couches on the left. Ray, Lamar, Rainy, and the other women held the middle ground.
Lamar had called the meeting and opened with a few words about the improved conditions, the excellent garden, and the rapid progress on the second addition. Several men had already moved in from their temporary housing in the barn. Everyone would soon have their own quarters. The women already did.
Lamar asked for suggestions to make the farm a better place to live. June, Lamar’s youngest, requested a better movie selection for the twice weekly screenings. Karla suggested June make a list, and she’d do her best. Abby, a pretty blond of seventeen, said the clothes from the open closet didn’t fit. She wondered if they could go to a store.
“We’ll go to town next week. Pick two shoppers and talk over what you need. It will be one store, grab and run. It’s not safe to spend time indoors.”
“I’d like an iPod, like Brittany has,” Glen said.
“Me, too,” Karla replied. “Her mother bought it before the troubles. For the rest of us, luxuries have to wait.”
Alicia stood and flipped back her long red hair. “I love the hot shower. Can we sometimes have more than three minutes?”
“It’s a power thing. We only have so much in the daytime, and we charge batteries and pump water at night. And the security system has to run and the ventilation. I’m afraid it will get worse this winter if we don’t come up with another turbine or two. Ray and I are working on that.”
“I’d like off construction.” It was Blake, a solid twenty-year old—the strongest of the younger lot.
“It’s what we got a lot of,” Karla responded. “But we can see if anyone wants to rotate off the garden early.”
“I was thinking security,” Blake said.
Karla bit her lip and tried to be tactful. “We don’t have any openings at the moment.”
“How come they don’t rotate? You keep all the good jobs for your friends.”
“Okaaay. Everyone filled out a skills questionnaire and a work preference sheet. Is there something we missed?”
“I can whoop those girls you got.”
“If someone attacks us bare-handed, I’ll remember that.”
Blake glared at Karla. “What’s so special about them?”
“Three things. Have you ever killed a person?”
Blake pouted like it was a stupid question.
“They have. If someone comes at them, I know they’re not going to run.”
“You think I will?”
“I don’t know what you’d do. That’s the problem. And that leads to the next question. Would you take a bullet for the people in this room?”
“Nobody’s shooting at us.”
“Not today. But they will. Count on it. Are you prepared to die defending us?”
“Yeah. Sure. Why not.”
“Then we have the third thing. People who carry guns twenty-four/seven need to be trusted—to do their job, to follow orders, to not slack off no matter what. We’ll ask the people that know you. Does anyone think Blake can be trusted to handle the situations I’ve mentioned?”
Three men from the group and Lamar raised their hands. Blake had no support from the women.
“I guess that’s a ‘no.’”
Blake came out of his chair, jaw set. “Who put you in charge, anyway?”
“I did,” Karla replied.
Blake scanned the room. “Well maybe it’s time we voted you out.”
“Be a good move if you had a vote. You don’t. I told you how things were on the day you arrived. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.”
Blake stepped toward Karla, fists clenched.
“Sit down!” Karla commanded.
“No bitch talks to me like that.”
Karla ducked his roundhouse, catching a glancing blow to her head. She drew a gun from behind her back and jammed the barrel into Blake’s stomach. He gasped and bent at the waist. She racked the slide and pointed the gun at his head. “And no boy has ever called me that and lived.”
Blake’s eyes raged as he straightened. Then he opened his mouth, and Ray smacked his head with the butt of the Beretta.
“Doin’ you a favor,” Ray said, as Blake hit the floor. “She’d kill you.”
“Meeting over.” Karla stared down at Blake, resisted the urge to kick him, and walked away.
Lamar caught her in the hall, halfway to the old house. “He’s a boy.”
“He took a swing at me in case you didn’t notice. He says anything to me but ‘yes ma’am’ and he’s a dead boy.”
“You’re serious?”
“I’ll kill him before I take crap from him again. You need to explain that. He makes a mistake like that again, he’s going in a hole.”
“What’s got you so riled up?”
“His attitude. He’s a damn bully and probably worse. Did you not notice every woman in the room was afraid of him? . . . You should have.”
* * *
Lindsay and Alicia stood in Karla’s doorway, still in the old cellar. “We wanted to thank you.” They spoke in stereo.
“If he bothers you, tell me. He won’t do it twice.”
“We’re glad you’re not scared, or Mr. Ray. Even Mr. Lamar is. Blake took over when Mr. Lamar and Mr. Freeman left. It’s so good to be here.”
Chapter 95
The alarm tone was low and didn’t carry, but it sent everyone from the garden running for the additions. There had been drills all summer, but this was the alert that meant people had passed the outer barriers.
“Hey,” Karla spoke into the handheld. She was in position with Alicia atop the first addition.
“North gate.” Cameron at the monitors, relaying information.
“Clear.” Ray in the barn with Lamar.
“Set.” Brittany with Rainy in addition two.
“Home.” Jeff and Glen in the attic. Glen was there at Lamar’s insistence. Ray had backed him. Karla hoped Jeff could keep him in line. She didn’t want him.
They had talked of arming everyone. They had more than enough rifles. But what good was an untrained army? Karla let Ray drill them, but she forbade target practice as wasteful. The hunt had to serve as live fire training: kill a deer, there was a chance you could kill a man.
“Four hundred north.” Cameron read the camera position. Two Humvees, a truck, a panel van.”
“Hold.” Chatter could be intercepted. Not easily, Karla had seen to that, but she did not want to underestimate an adversary’s prowess. She couldn’t be the only electrical engineer left alive.
The clatter of diesel. Trucks idling at the gate. Karla watched as they puzzled with defeating the lock—a ¾” hardened rod slid through four eye h
oles and secured at the bottom with a trailer hitch lock pin. One man studied the formidable front fence and went back to the lock.
Bolt cutters, pry bar, hammer. Two shots from an M16. The gate swung open. Three minutes. Karla smiled: the delay not in their plans. Their frustration vented in gunfire, not a knock at the door. Their style and intentions made obvious.
They rolled around the additions, positioned the Humvees between the dwellings and the garden. Machine guns sat atop the Humvees, next to open roof hatches in which the gunners sat, an arc of bulletproof glass protected them from nearly one hundred eighty degrees of return fire.
The truck and van backed to the fenced garden, thirty feet from its gated entrance. A loudspeaker on the lead Humvee crackled.
“We are here on behalf of the Tri-State government. We provide the protection that has kept your settlement secure.” The male voice paused. “You have not paid your taxes. That is not fair to the others. If you come out, we can discuss the particulars. If not, you will forfeit the three quarters tax charged to scofflaws.”
“Hey.”
“One,” Ray answered.
Four men with rifles dropped from the covered truck. Another stepped from the front of the van. He opened the back door. Six women and a lone man piled out. They held green plastic bags and stiffly faced the lead Humvee.
“Unarmed,” Karla said.
“Is there an answer?” The voice from the Humvee asked. Thirty seconds of silence. “Then to the field.”
The harvesters moved for the gate. Ray shot the lead machine gunner. Karla hit one of the guards. The other three fell in a volley of fire. The second machine gunner got off a burst at the attic before Ray dropped him. A Humvee door opened. A man went down. The field workers dropped to the ground.
“You are surrounded,” Karla said into a microphone. “Step out of the vehicles or you will be killed.” She counted to five. “Last chance. We know your vehicles are armored. It won’t matter.”
The lead Humvee moved. Brittany fired a grenade through the still open hatch. The windows blew out. Smoke trailed through the openings.
Karla put a .50 caliber bullet through the windshield of the second Humvee. “Out. Now!”
* * *
Eight dead. Three men on the ground in shorts and T-shirts—all they’d been allowed after an open strip-search. The field workers stood at a distance, their clothing returned, a mix of relief and fear in their eyes. Ray, Lamar, and Karla huddled by the Humvee, a box of shackles and handcuffs at Karla’s feet.
“Keep them separate. Interview one at a time.” Ray looked to Lamar. “The three of us and Alicia.”
“Why her?” Lamar asked.
“She’s a good listener.”
Karla nudged the box toward Ray. “Let’s get it done before the next group shows up.”
* * *
Ray started with the three men, in the barn. Lamar and Alicia set up in out buildings. Karla looked over the field hands and had the first women delivered to the kitchen in the old house.
“What’s your name?” Karla began.
“Hannah.”
“Hannah, have a seat.” Karla waited for her to take a chair at the table. “Would you like coffee? I only have instant. Hardly remember what the real stuff tastes like.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“You won’t. Karla filled a pot at the sink and put it on the burner. “How did you get hooked up with those men?”
“It just happened.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Everything went wrong. They kept us alive.”
“Where you from?”
“Brodhead, in Wisconsin. That’s where I grew up. Then Winona. Now Rockford.”
The kettle whistled. Karla poured the water, then fetched a pitcher of condensed milk, and a bowl of sugar.
“That’s where the men are from, Rockford, Illinois?”
“Now. Most were from Chicagoland.”
“How many live there?”
Hannah shrugged. “Five hundred?”
“What is the Tri-State government?”
“Darren thought that up. It sounded official. We made patches for them.”
“So there’s just Rockford?”
“No. The Tri-State is real. It’s the government part that was the joke.”
Karla sipped coffee and pushed a plate of corn pastry to Hannah. She took one. “Where are the others?”
“Waukesha and Moline. Moline’s really in Illinois, but they’re in Iowa, too, and we go to Minnesota sometimes.”
“Do you find a lot of places like this?”
“Hardly any this close to a city. More people than you think way out.”
“How do you find them? Those states are huge.”
“Planes. They fly like these model planes with cameras.”
“The drones. I’ve seen them. They have a bunch?”
Hannah shrugged. “A few. They lose ’em sometimes.”
“Do these tax seizures happen often?”
“Sometimes.”
“And people are okay with that?”
“Most people trade for protection.”
“And the ones that don’t?”
“Darren says they need to learn a lesson.”
“Like us?”
Hannah nodded. “You should have talked to them.”
“Other people must have resisted.”
“A few of us were killed. So Darren sent more guards.”
“Those men were protecting you?”
“What did you think? They weren’t here to work.”
“With three states to cover, you must have help collecting taxes.”
“Yeah. There’s a dozen groups collecting from the three bases.”
“What do you think Darren will do about what happened here?”
“He’ll take it all. Then blow up the buildings.”
“With dynamite?”
“They got rockets and stuff. This house’ll be gone in one shot.”
“And the people?”
“He’ll kill your leaders. He might take some we say are okay. I’ll tell him you were kind to me.”
“What would you do if I said you were free to leave?”
“You can’t.”
“There’s no one in the house but us. Suppose I could?”
“Then I’d walk up the road and wait.”
“You wouldn’t have any desire to stay here?”
“Why? There’s going to be nothing left.”
* * *
“They have mortars and LAWS rockets,” Ray said.
“What will they do to the buildings?” Karla asked.
“They are very different weapons. You’ve got two feet of dirt between the outer wall and the next one. That’ll last one round with an AT4. A couple of direct hits will punch through all three layers. One hit to the rifle pits and they’re gone. The good news is they have to get within say three hundred yards to use them. Our snipers have to see to it they don’t get that close”
“And the mortars?”
“We’re shit out of luck. They can hit us from three miles. The shells land on top of you. Again, one hit to a rifle pit . . .” Ray did a wiped out motion.
“What’s the defense?”
“None from here. You have to find the crews and kill them.”
“How would you handle it?”
“I’d place a team beyond where I’d think they’ll set up and take them out. Behind them and outnumbered, it’s pretty much a suicide mission.”
“What’s the second choice?”
“Dig deep tunnels and hope they’re not waiting when you come out.”
“Where would you set up a defense?”
“The way you have the perimeter blocked, they’ll come in the road. North or south? Who knows, maybe both. The closer they are the more accurate they are. A mile out will seem safe. I’d say near the gates, two crews o
n each end a couple hundred yards apart.”
“How long from when they start firing till they destroy the farm?”
“The men here aren’t army. We’ll assume they’ve got a mix and have trained some. A couple minutes. They’ll launch a round. Spotters will tell them where it hit. Then it will get faster.”
Karla stood. “I’ll take the south gate.”
“I’ll go with you,” Alicia said.
Ray shook his head. “We need you here.”
“You just said there is no here unless we stop them.”
Karla loaded a Gator with their gear: the TAC 50 she’d pulled from the shelter, the scoped Remington, and two M16s, one with a grenade launcher. She packed food and water for three days and sleeping rolls. Jeff and Glen left for the north gate with similar equipment. After what Ray described, they elected not to defend from the attic.
Karla selected her ground: two silos attached to a barn on the south side of County Home Road. They put the Gator in the barn and stayed inside, wary of drones. They ate. They slept in shifts. They checked in every four hours.
* * *
The trucks rolled in at dawn the second day—three Humvees, four military style canvas covered trucks, a flatbed carrying a bulldozer, and another truck pulling an artillery piece.
“Hey, nine vehicles and forty.” Karla said
“Double down. North gate, too.” Ray replied. “On your own.”
“It’s been fun. Love ya.” Karla climbed the silo, and watched through the scope of the TAC 50. The dozer backed off the flatbed and brushed aside her gate. The same would happen with the much stouter second barrier. It was supposed to strand the vehicles short of the house and leave the occupants caught in a vicious free fire zone.
A man stepped from the lead Humvee and yelled orders. Teams climbed out of three trucks carrying gear.
“New plan,” Karla said. “Take the men, rake the trucks. On my signal”
Alicia’s eyes went wide.
“You can do it. Deep breath, concentrate.”
Karla shot the machine gunner on the lead Humvee. She took out the second gunner as Alicia began to fire and the third through the protective glass as he swung the gun toward them. Men lay in the road. Others fled to the ditches. Karla fired at the Humvees, hitting two drivers and a man moving to a machine gun.
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