Don’t you dare let them get away with it!
Lucia nodded her head in agreement with the voice on the radio.
“He’s right, you know! And it can’t happen with old people like me. No sir, it means young folks like yourself need to go out there and take it back!”
Preacher and Sarah exchanged a quick glance accompanied by half smiles on each of their faces. They were both enjoying the elderly Hispanic woman’s fiery views on what needed to be done to restore order in America.
Don’t count on the impotent general locked away in Camp David trying to fight a proxy war inside his own country. He has too many enemies and too few friends. As certain as the sun will rise in the morning know that this is a time of choosing. You are either with the cause of freedom…or you are with THEM. They want us to kill ourselves out here. That’s been there plan the whole time. Destroy the outliers, the independent-minded, so that only the willingly compliant are left behind.
And they have a name for it, first hatched in a long-ago think tank by men who thought resources to be finite and people’s willingness to be controlled infinite.
Protocol X.
Remember the name. Know it’s meaning – the unknown variable required for a pre-determined outcome. YOU are that variable. YOU are the unknown. Don’t allow yourself to be assigned as part of their pre-determined outcome.
I must get moving once again, listeners. I can’t help but wonder if I’m running out of places to hide. Oh! Before I go I wanted to give a quick thank you to Moses for his kind words of encouragement during a private radio conversation we had recently. I’ll keep the faith and you keep the light on, old timer. Maybe we might meet up some day. I’d love to listen to you play me something. You spoke words that keep repeating in my head and I hope you don’t mind if I share it with everyone else before signing off.
Be on your guard and stand firm in the faith; be people of courage; be strong.
Lucia shook her head as she turned off the radio.
“God have mercy on our terrible troubles during these dark times.”
Preacher hadn’t realized how intensely he had been listening to the broadcast until the program ended. He recognized the biblical verse as being from Corinthians, having recited it to himself and others often during his time in prison. It had in fact been included in his very last sermon just days before his sudden release by the warden. It reminded him of another passage he often quoted.
“The Lord your God goes with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Lucia looked upon Preacher with newfound respect.
“I take it that’s how you came by that name. I thought I sensed the Holy Spirit working in you, young man.”
Preacher gave Lucia a slightly embarrassed smile.
“I read the Bible enough times to keep me sane in a place where sanity was in short supply.”
Lucia placed her right hand on Preacher’s two folded hands and tapped them lightly with the bottom of her palm.
“None of us are without sin, are we? You have a good soul, that’s easy enough to tell. Now how about I get us all something to eat and we can talk about that gasoline you were hoping to find for your trip.”
Akrim’s stomach unleashed a loud growl in response. He was starving.
Sarah joined Lucia in the small kitchen. When pouring the lemonade she had not noticed an abundance of food. Lucia already sensed Sarah’s question.
“Lift up that throw rug there.”
The four-by-four white rug was directly in front of the sink. Sarah moved it aside and revealed a hatch cut into the kitchen floor with a single, much-used dark brass handle which she then pulled up on. Below the hatch was a set of simple wooden stairs leading to a cellar space below.
Lucia grabbed a flashlight and lowered herself into the cellar, showing a remarkable bit of dexterity for one so old. Sarah, with her slightly swollen belly in front of her, found it difficult to move as quickly down the steps as the much older woman.
Once they were both standing on the compacted earth floor underneath the house Lucia turned on a battery powered lantern that illuminated a ten by ten room that contained shelves on each wall half full of canned goods, dried fruits, vegetables, and several large bottles of water. There was also a stack of sealed plastic bags full of cookies.
“My husband dug this out almost twenty years ago after a particularly bad tornado ripped through the area missing our home by just a few hundred yards. He said we needed a safe place where we could stay for a spell. I’ve been adding supplies to it ever since. It’s kept me alive for the last month after the store in town was ransacked and the owners left. I also have a little surface well out back that still provides a bit of water, though I don’t much care for the taste so I’m leaving that until later when I have no choice. For now there’s enough to make up a decent meal. Here, take these back up to the kitchen if you don’t mind.”
Lucia handed Sarah a bag of dried fruit and another bag of cookies. A moment later found both women in the kitchen preparing a meal of fruit and cookies on plastic plates and cups placed around the small wooden kitchen table. Lucia was humming softly to herself as she did so.
Both women turned at the sound of Preacher’s footsteps stopping at the kitchen entrance. He folded his heavily muscled arms across his broad chest and nodded his head approvingly.
“Nice to see a couple of beautiful women who still know their way around a kitchen.”
Sarah shook her head with an exaggerated frown while Lucia continued smiling and humming to herself.
“Don’t be such a Neanderthal, Preacher. If we didn’t make sure you ate you’d probably curl up and die of starvation.”
Preacher did a quick, mocking bow.
“I am but your humble servant.”
Sarah’s eyes once again locked with Preacher’s for a second or two longer than they would have had there been no physical attraction between them. Both looked away at the same time as Preacher cleared his throat and motioned for Akrim to join them in the kitchen for the meal. Soon after all four were seated and saying a prayer of thanks before quickly consuming what little food was placed in front of them.
Akrim nodded his head toward Lucia after swallowing the last bit of peanut butter cookie on his plate.
“Thank you for being such a kind host to us, Lucia.”
Lucia smiled warmly, genuinely humbled by the compliment.
“Just because the world has gone dark don’t mean my home has to.”
In the proceeding hour after the meal Lucia told the others her story of coming to America with her Mexican immigrant parents and working on several of the large farms that surrounded the Macy area. It was on one of those farms that she first met the young man who would eventually be her husband. Back then marriages between whites and Mexicans was somewhat of a rarity, but the Macy farming community said little in the way of disapproval and soon Lucia was simply another wife of a respected farmhand. They were far from rich, but they were happy in their own quiet and dignified manner.
They had a daughter two years after their marriage. It was a difficult birth, the newborn sickly and underweight. The delivery had nearly killed Lucia. The baby’s short life was marked by repeated bouts of pneumonia, its lungs never fully developed. Two weeks after her first birthday, Lucia and her husband buried their daughter. Since that time they rarely spoke of her, but the absence remained as much a part of their household as was the air they breathed.
“Douglas wasn’t one to say much regardless, but when our daughter passed it left a hole in him…in both of us that could never be filled. He was a different after that. I suppose we both were. I couldn’t get pregnant anymore. We thought about adopting but…well I suppose we couldn’t risk that kind of heartache again. One time was about all we could take.”
Lucia looked up at something the others could not see – a distant but always present memory.
“Her name was Antonia, after my grandmother.”
Sarah reached
across the kitchen table and lightly squeezed the old woman’s left forearm.
“Antonia is a beautiful name.”
Lucia smiled again and then stood up, blinking away the tears that threatened.
“You said you needed some gasoline. I might have something you could use. Let’s go out back and take a look.”
The three followed Lucia into her backyard and then to a small, decrepit wooden shed that sat underneath the outstretched limbs of an aged oak tree.
“After he retired and took Social Security, Douglas loved to mow the yard. He kept one of those riding mowers in that shed there. Mowed almost every day whether the lawn needed it or not. Round and round he went. I asked him one time why he liked to mow so much and he just shrugged and said it gave him time to think. He always had one of those big red gas cans filled up in there too and I’m thinking there might still be some gas in it.”
Akrim opened the shed door and immediately found the large red metallic gas can Lucia had just described. He lifted it up and estimated it to be nearly full.
“Yes, there’s still gas in it!”
Lucia nodded her head, happy to be able to help her newfound friends.
“Take as much as you like. Take it all if you want. I have no need for it.”
Preacher took the can from Akrim and opened it. He took a quick whiff trying to determine if it had gone bad while sitting unused for so long in the shed. He then poured a few drips onto the fingers of his left hand looking for any sign of water contamination.
“Smells ok, I think this will work fine. We have four, maybe five gallons here. Thank you so much, Lucia.”
Lucia was about to respond when all four turned their heads toward a noise coming from front of the house.
It was the unmistakable sound of an engine being shut off and a vehicle’s doors opening and then closing.
Lucia looked at the Preacher, Sarah, and Akrim with eyes full of equal parts fear and confusion.
“Stay here!”
The old woman scurried through her back door into her home and then onto the front porch. She was greeted by the leering faces of four Hispanic men. The first three had already been there earlier. The fourth man was somewhat older, tall and heavily built. He was in his late 30’s, and unknown to her. He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands on his hips looking every bit like the aspiring dictator he thought himself to be.
“You Lucia?”
The man’s Spanish accent was thick. His large, dark eyes looked Lucia up and down as he waited for an answer.
Lucia nodded while making certain to close the door behind her.
“Yes, who are you?”
The man jutted his smooth-shaven chin outward like some Mexican Mussolini. He responded in Spanish.
“I’m Arturo. I’m in charge here. Why do you think we let you stay in your home, Lucia?”
The old woman frowned.
“I don’t know for certain. I suppose your men like my cookies.”
The other three men laughed before Arturo raised his right hand to signal he wanted them to be quiet. He wore a dirty blue tank-top which exposed his muscular, heavily tattooed arms. A holstered handgun hung from his right hip. On the left hip he kept a sheathed ten-inch hunting knife.
“No, old woman, you are allowed to stay here because you’re not white. We thought you were one of us, yeah? We thought you were loyal to the cause. We chased all the white families from this place and made it ours. We worked their farms and now we control them. I was told you were married to a white man, but I ignored that sin. But now…”
Lucia waited for Arturo to finish. Arturo in turn gave her a disapproving shake of his long-haired head. Sweat covered his face as several dark strands hung over his pock-marked forehead.
“I was told you might have visitors in your home, old woman. Is that true?”
Lucia avoided Arturo’s glaring gaze as she answered.
“That’s my own business.”
Arturo pointed to Lucia’s well cared for front lawn.
“See that there? Tire marks. Looks like two motorcycles. My boys aren’t so dumb they miss something like that, old woman. Now where are they? You think you can give us bags of cookies and then hide strangers to my land? Shame on you, Lucia.”
Lucia rose up to her full height and tried her best to hide the fear growing inside of her.
“I’ve done nothing wrong. I keep to myself and don’t give none of you any trouble.”
Arturo’s right hand shot out and clamped tightly around the old woman’s throat. He then brought his face close to her, close enough Lucia could feel the hot, acrid scent of his breath.
“I don’t play games, old woman. Are they still here, inside your home?”
Lucia choked out a response.
“Please, just leave me alone.”
Arturo’s left hand grasped the hunting knife which he then pressed against Lucia’s throat.
“I’ll kill you, old woman. You know this to be true. Where are they?”
“LET HER GO.”
Arturo and his three men turned around slowly and were greeted by Preacher pointing the M16 at them. Arturo appeared unimpressed by Preacher’s attempted bravado. He had seen and personally delivered much death during his lifetime.
“Oh look, another nigger with a gun. You’re a long ways from home, black boy.”
Preacher’s eyes gleamed with his desire to see Arturo punished for his treatment of Lucia.
“I said let her go. We’re already getting ready to leave. We stopped here to get something to drink. She has nothing to do with us.”
Arturo looked at the assault rifle in Preacher’s hands with the same desire he might look upon a beautiful woman. The weapon represented power and intimidation, the two things he desired most.
“You hand me that rifle and maybe we let you leave.”
Preacher’s grip on the rifle tightened as he shook his head.
“You can’t really be as dumb as you look, can you?”
Arturo pushed Lucia back inside her home and then placed his hand atop the holstered handgun on his right hip.
“Watch your mouth, mayate. These are my lands and you are trespassing. Show some respect.”
Arturo suddenly tensed as he felt the business end of the hunting rifle pushed against the back of his head. The voice of Akrim issued from just inside Lucia’s home.
“Get moving, asshole.”
Preacher stepped aside to allow all four migrant workers the space to walk past him while he remained ready to fire the M16 if need be.
“Wait.”
It was Lucia. She stood on her front porch looking down at Arturo and his men.
“They’ll just come after you. There are more of them in the area. You just let them go and they’ll be hunting you down before you’re able to get more than a few miles away.”
Akrim looked at Preacher, waiting to be told what they should do next. Preacher knew what Lucia was suggesting, and wanted nothing to do with it.
“I’m a survivor, Lucia, not a killer.”
The old woman’s mouth formed a pained smile. She understood how Preacher was right, while also knowing he was avoiding how he was also wrong.
“These times might require you to be both, Preacher.”
Akrim cleared his throat.
“Perhaps we just tie them up?”
Lucia grunted.
“And leave them here while you ride away? How do you think that will go for me if you do?”
Arturo spit onto the ground and then snarled his rage over the topic of discussion.
“You have no authority over me or my men! Stop talking like we aren’t here. The old woman is right, we will hunt you down. I promise you that.”
“Take his gun.”
Sarah emerged from the house. She recognized the tone in Arturo’s voice. It was the very same tone spoken by the Imam as he threatened to remove her head from her body while holding her captive in the cellar of his Dearborn mosque. It
was the voice of a man who took great pleasure in delivering death to others.
I’m not letting anyone hurt my baby.
“Take his gun, take his knife, and then tie them up and leave them in Lucia’s cellar. There’s food and water down there and it’ll give us time to get away from here. Preacher’s right, we’re not killers. That doesn’t mean we have to be nice, though.”
Lucia was about to object but Sarah interrupted.
American Survivalist: RACE WARS OMNIBUS: Seasons 1-5 Of An American Survivalist Series... Page 19