by Noah Mann
I spun away, covered in what had been blasted from my friend’s head, and took cover behind the painted pine. Suddenly there were sounds in the woods now. Movement. Words. Directives.
Get him...
Waiting was no option. I pushed off and sprinted away, jerking left and right through the grey woods that hid what was very plainly a trap. One that had lured us in.
Us...
There was no more ‘us’. There was only me. And I had to get out of what was clearly the kill zone. Shots rang out behind me as I moved. Bullets ripped into the trees to either side. Five separate shooters were taking aim at me, I could tell. All squeezing off single shots. Conserving ammunition with aimed fire.
My choice was to press on, maintaining a fast pace as I fled, or to pause and return fire. I chose the former. For now, at least. I needed to get away from my pursuers and back to...
The plane.
It might as well have been a speedboat. Either would have done me as much good as the other parked on that road. I was not capable of flying the Cessna. I didn’t even know how to start the aircraft. At best it was a thin-skinned coffin for me.
Think, Fletch...
I tried as I ran and dodged the fire chasing me. There were a hundred and fifty miles between me and home, if I could fly. It was easily over two hundred by any land route I could manage.
Except I could manage none. The only supplies I had were back at the plane, a survival kit in the baggage compartment meant to last us three days. That would be six days for one person, now.
Focus...
There was only one priority. Not getting to the plane. Not getting home. Getting to safety was the only thing that mattered at the moment.
I spun fast and fired three bursts, one in each slice of the pie behind me, hoping the attack would be slowed by my resistance. It wasn’t.
More weapons opened up on me, from the sides now, rounds impacting the trees ahead. I changed course, ducking, struggling to avoid the incoming fire. Moving due north now I slid down a small slope through the monolithic grey woods, the pursuers still behind me. Driving me forward. I fired more bursts, but they were not deterred. That was not the worst realization right then, though.
“No...”
The woods which had afforded me some cover ended ahead, spilling into an open expanse of dirty earth stretching hundreds of yards down the hillside. I would be totally exposed.
This is it...
I stopped where the last line of trees was and turned back, my M4 up, scanning the forest I’d just raced through. Shapes flitted about in the cover I’d left behind. I squeezed off two bursts, then dropped the empty magazine and inserted a fresh one, pushing the bolt forward to continue the fight.
It turned out, I fired no more shots that day.
“You’re surrounded, Fletch,” the man’s voice said. “We have people across the field.”
The nearest cover, several hundred yards across the slope, was another patch of dead woods. It was too far for me to make out any hostiles amongst those trees, but I had no reason to doubt what I was being told. We’d walked into a perfectly set ambush. We’d taken the bait laid for us. One of us had paid with his life. I wondered if I was about to.
“Last chance, Fletch.”
Beyond the tactical disadvantage I was at, the man speaking was addressing me by name. He knew me. And I had to admit, with each word he spoke, I believed I knew exactly who he was.
“What do you want, Perkins?!”
Earl Perkins. Leader of the Yuma survivor colony which had aligned itself with the Unified Government. That entity, presumably, existed no more. But somehow Perkins and, it seemed, some of his followers, had managed to hang on after being cut off from the supply chain our side had enjoyed.
But it had been years since we’d had any contact with the officious, arrogant turncoat. How had he survived and made his way north? That might have been a very valid question, but another which came to mind, ‘why’, I could imagine an easy answer for.
He was coming for Bandon. What the Unified Government military had failed to do, Earl Perkins, and whatever force he had with him, was going to try to complete.
“Fletch, you had a chance to sign on with me long ago,” Perkins shouted through the woods. “This is the very last chance I’m giving you to stay alive.”
If I’d known where he stood amongst the shadows between the trees, I might have used what ammunition I had left to fire a final volley his way. It would be a suicide mission, but, if successful, the satisfaction might have been worth the price I’d pay.
That was fantasy, though. In this very real moment of decision that I faced, my life hung in the balance. I could make my stand and die or live to fight another day.
Maybe.
I had to take the chance, no matter the consequences. I rose slowly behind the tree, which was the only cover I had, and brought my M4 up, then tossed it out into the open.
“Now your sidearm,” Perkins said. “Do you still have that Springfield you liked so much, Fletch?”
I didn’t. The pistol that replaced it slid from my holster, likely for the last time. With a gentle throw it sailed off and landed next to my rifle.
“Anything else, Fletch?” Perkins asked, a smug politeness in his manner. “We don’t want to find some hideout piece when we search you.”
Hideout piece...
The man had watched too many bad detective shows when there were such things. He probably believed that a thump on the head from a pistol butt would simply knock an adversary out, and not cause a likely fatal subdural hematoma. But that was what I remembered of Perkins—he was a man of shallow intellect paired with a broad sense of self.
“I don’t have one, Perkins!”
“Drop all your gear and step out into the clear,” Perkins ordered.
There was more movement to the woods on either side of me. His people were closing in for the kill if I didn’t cooperate.
It was time to face my reality.
“All right!”
I shed my belt and holster and backed away from the tree, my hands held up. Within seconds a dozen fighters emerged from the woods, their mix of weapons aimed at me. Shotguns, ARs, AKs, bolt actions, pistols. And one crossbow. If they wanted me dead, that’s exactly what would happen.
But they didn’t. Or, rather, he didn’t.
“Eric Fletcher,” Earl Perkins said as he stepped out from cover and onto the sloped clearing. “Fletch himself.”
The diminutive autocrat walked toward me and stopped, regarding me with a grin that was both satisfied and surprised.
“Who was your friend, Fletch?” Perkins asked.
Was...
For a few minutes as I’d fled from the pursuit, I’d let thoughts of Dave Arndt fade, masked by tactical and practical considerations. Now, though, I was thinking of my friend again.
“He was a good man,” I told Perkins. “That’s who he was.”
The grin faded. I hadn’t offered a direct answer to the question posed. I had shown a sign of resistance. Of disrespect. All quite intentional.
And I was going to pay for it.
Perkins drew a long revolver from the holster he wore diagonal on the front of his belt and whipped its thick barrel across my face. After the pummeling I’d experienced aboard the Vinson, the hit felt amplified, as though I’d been struck by two men twice Perkins’ size. I spun to the side and fell to my hands and knees.
“Get on your feet,” Perkins ordered me.
I hesitated and looked up to the man, but he was having none of my resistance.
“Get him up,” he told his followers.
A pair of men, thin and muscular, grabbed me and held me up, facing Perkins.
“Strip that shirt off and search him, Bryce,” he instructed one of the men. “Then get him on my truck.”
Hands pulled at my clothes and probed my pockets as Perkins turned and walked away through the woods, a half dozen of his followers in tow. Others gathered my weapon
s and gear before my hands were tied, but not behind my back or in front. Instead they were bound together at the back of my neck, with a loop of rough rope circling my throat.
“He’s clean,” one of the people said after finishing their check of me.
“Let’s go,” the one called Bryce said, some clear authority about him. “Get him to the boss’s ride.”
The hands that had rifled through my clothing now seized me by my upturned arms and forced me back up the hill through the trees, marching me past Dave Arndt’s body. His fate had been decided and played out. The only hope I had was that, right then, mine was not.
Forty One
The convoy of vehicles left the road next to the woods and drove back to Balsam Drive and turned toward Klamath Falls.
One vehicle was ahead and one behind the flatbed truck that carried me. I’d been lashed to a steel roll bar behind the cab, facing backwards so that I faced Perkins. He sat in an upholstered lounge chair that had been bolted to the truck bed. It had all the appearances of a cheap throne.
“So what was all that noise?” Perkins asked me from his chair. “We couldn’t hear you guys for a while.”
The jamming. His group had heard it because they’d been listening to us. Monitoring our communications. Listening to our plans.
“You knew we were scouting this area today,” I said.
Perkins grinned, one corner of his mouth twitching upward. He brought an imaginary mic to his mouth.
“Uh, Camas Valley, will you tune your repeater for southern reception in the morning,” he mocked. “We have a scouting flight heading out toward Klamath Falls tomorrow.”
He lowered his hand and laughed fully now.
“You think the world is an inherently safe place now,” he said. “You can just scatter the sweet folks of Bandon to this spot here, or that spot there, and you’ll all be the better for it.”
Bryce, standing next to me, chuckled as he gripped the roll bar with one hand and his shotgun with the other.
“Fletch, for a community which has lasted this long, you’re all fairly naïve,” Perkins commented. “You have to be strong, and stay strong, and you have to be willing to project that strength if you want to stick around.”
“Your point, Perkins?” I challenged him.
“You don’t divide your people,” he said. “The people are power. Dilute that, and you have nothing.”
“You’re coming here to save us from ourselves, Perkins? Is that it?”
“I didn’t think I was,” he said. “No, Fletch, this was supposed to be a pure revenge play. My intent was to destroy.”
“General Weatherly tried,” I reminded him. “Him, his troops, they all turned to fish food.”
“Weatherly was a soldier,” Perkins said, dismissing that classification with a shake of his head. “Believe it or not, my friend, he had a code of honor. Enemies can subscribe to such quaint notions, you know.”
“But you don’t.”
Perkins leaned forward in his green fabric throne and almost sneered at me.
“I’m a leader, Fletch. A man willing to do anything to see that my people survive. Through strength and discipline.”
“You’re quite the little dictator,” I said.
Ignoring the motion of the flatbed, Perkins shot up from his chair and charged at me, grabbing my throat with his bare hand, fingertips digging painfully into the flesh.
“Talk is easy, my friend,” he growled. “You know what isn’t?”
I had no answer for him, and wouldn’t have bothered even if I had.
“I returned to Yuma from that fiasco in Alaska with a hundred and change,” he said. “Less than two hundred people. By the time the Unified Government showed up, we’d grown to three hundred. When we left six months ago, four hundred followed me.”
Was he suggesting that the entire Yuma survivor colony had up and left, on his orders, to come here?
“Surprise,” he said, mocking my obvious reaction. “That, Fletch, is what a leader does. And do you know how many are still with me? Right now?”
This time I managed a slight shake of my head against the grip he still had on my neck.
“All...of...them.”
He let go of me and returned to his chair as the flatbed slowed and rumbled off the road, using the space of a barren farm field to skirt the spot we’d landed. Perkins looked to the Cessna as we eased past it, a group of his people already poring over it, attaching a tow strap to the nose wheel strut.
“Air power,” Perkins said. “What do you know, Bryce—we have an air force now.”
“Yes we do,” Bryce agreed. “We can mount some machine guns on it. Have a real warbird.”
Perkins smiled at me.
“I have four people who can fly,” he said to me. “Three more planes and I’ll have a squadron.”
“Are you actually thinking you can attack Bandon?” I asked. “We’ve faced worse than you. A bigger force than you. Our population is over twice your number.”
“Long odds, you think,” Perkins said.
“Suicide odds, Perkins. And you know that.”
“Do I?”
We bounced back onto the road and picked up speed, heading east toward Klamath Falls.
“You, Fletch, are missing one key piece of information.”
“And what is that?”
Perkins reclined in his cushioned throne and beamed, more satisfied with himself than he’d ever been, I suspected.
“My secret weapon,” he said.
Forty Two
Our three vehicle convoy pulled into town, stopping in front of an old motel, its signage toppled onto the sidewalk out front. The wide avenue we’d come to looked no different than any of the deserted thoroughfares in any of the countless towns I’d passed through in the wake of the blight. Broken windows. Scattered, rotting furnishings in the street. Dust blowing in the breeze.
“What do you think, Fletch?” Perkins asked.
“I love what you’ve done with it,” I said.
Perkins smiled at my insolence this time, then nodded to Bryce, who thumped his fist on the top of the cab. A second later the vehicle’s horn sounded, three long blasts. When the last one had faded to silence, the town, slowly, came to what passed for life.
From trashed stores and abandoned motel rooms, people emerged. Men. Women, Children. They were haggard and thin, but they stood straight. Every man carried a weapon, and most of the women as well. The smallest children hugged stuffed animals and toys soiled by years of use or persistent neglect.
“Get him down,” Perkins ordered.
He climbed down and stood next to the flatbed as Bryce cut me loose from the roll bar, my arms still lashed awkwardly behind my head. Two others, a man and a woman, approached, and Bryce passed me down to them before hopping down to guard me himself.
“This is it, Fletch,” Perkins said. “The Yuma survivor colony. Four hundred and five strong souls.”
He stepped toward me and grabbed my jaw, twisting my face so I was looking at a line of the people he had brought north. They all looked worse for wear. Weary. Bitter. And something more ominous.
Angry.
It was a quiet hate that simmered in the stares they leveled at me. I represented something to loathe. Or something they’d been conditioned to loathe.
“Most of them walked,” Perkins said, shifting my view to gaze over more of his people as they gathered to stare at me. “We didn’t have enough fuel or trucks to carry everyone. So they walked. Do you know how far it is from Yuma to this very spot? Do you?”
My eyes angled toward him.
“A long way,” he said without specifying further. “But they made it. Do you know why?”
He gripped my chin tighter and shook my head for me.
“They persevered, they crossed deserts, and mountains, and rivers, all because they wanted to see the chosen ones,” Perkins said. “They wanted to see the ones who’d been favored with supplies, and seeds, and equipment, and doctors,
and all the things we were all promised when they shipped us out of Skagway. Do you remember Skagway, Fletch? Do you? That place the government took us to after KIDNAPPING US?!”
He tossed my face aside as he shouted, stepping back.
“You were the favored ones!” he yelled, stabbing a finger toward me. “You received the shipments, the supplies!”
“You turned against us, Perkins,” I countered. “You allied yourself with the Unified Government.”
“I had no choice!” he shouted. “They had supplies, all your side had was empty promises!”
Unintentionally, a monster had been created. While Bandon was easy to resupply, Yuma, far inland, was not. Possibly there had been delays, even a full disruption of getting needed materials to the survivor colony that Perkins led. More likely, though, I imagined that the man was primed to react to the most minor slight, however unintentional. Siding with Weatherly and the authoritarian message of the Unified Government would not have been a stretch for him, and that he had done, by his own admission, in response to a radio call from us years ago.
“This is what happens, Fletch, when promises are not kept to people who will die without what is promised,” he said. “By God, though, I kept them going. I led them. I let them know there were fertile fields and clean water at the end of the journey. All they’d have to do is help me take it for them.”
Take...
There was no surprise in his characterization of the mission he’d set for himself, and his people. But there was a moment of shock when I saw who approached him next.
“Fletch, I believe you two know each other,” Perkins said as the young woman stopped next to him and put an arm around his shoulders.
“Hello, Fletch,” Sheryl Quincy said.
Private Sheryl Quincy. The turncoat uncovered by Martin during the Unified Government siege of Bandon. She’d been traded for Neil, and was on Weatherly’s chopper flying away from the exchange point when my friend had been gunned down by Ty Olin.