by Mark Goodwin
Danny went in first and cleared each room on the way to the kitchen. Alisa and Pauline followed behind. Pauline sat down at the table while Alisa got a towel and a bucket of water. Danny heard a commotion coming from outside. “Will you be okay?”
Alisa soaked the towel and wrung it out. “Yeah, go ahead.”
Danny walked back out the door to see Steven and Jack restraining Rocky, who was yelling at JC.
“You sent those animals over here!”
JC put his hand in the air. “They were coming to you anyway. I just made them feel comfortable enough so I could hit them.”
“You almost got Pauline shot! How did you know how we’d react?”
JC let his rifle hang by the sling. “Listen Rocky, you’re okay, Pauline is okay and the threat is eliminated.”
“For now! How long until the rest of them coming looking for these?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. At least, now we’ll be able to get information on how many of them there are, where they’re located and what they plan to accomplish.
Gorbold defiantly said, “You won’t get any information out of us.”
JC turned his attention to the man lying by his feet and began to laugh. He kicked Gorbold in his injured wrist, sending blood flying two feet across the yard and splattering it all over his boot. He hit the quick release on his single point sling and set his rifle against the tree in Rocky’s front yard. He looked at Jack. “Let Mr. Cook go and drag this one back to the barn. Get him strung up on a beam.”
Jack and Steven let Rocky go and each picked up one of Gorbold’s feet to begin dragging him back toward the barn.
JC put his feet shoulder width apart and addressed Rocky. “If you want to take a swing at me, you come on. If not, shut your mouth and don’t ever say another word to me about my decision here today. I just saved your tail.”
Rocky still looked angry, but in no way looked ready to take JC head on.
JC looked Rocky in the eyes. “If you haven’t learned anything from this whole EMP experience, you should have learned that sticking your head in the sand doesn’t make problems go away. Just because you can’t see the Boogie Man doesn’t mean he isn’t there. You better get on board or get ready to die a horrible death, because there ain’t no in-betweens in this world.”
JC turned to Danny. “Let’s get our gear and drag the other one to the barn.”
“What about the vehicles?” Danny asked. “We have to do something with them. Shouldn’t we just drive him over in the Jeep?”
JC stopped to process the idea. He looked at the Bronco and the Jeep, then at the restrained man. “Nah, let’s just drag him. I don’t want to get blood all over the vehicles or our stuff that’s inside. Besides, I want to drag this one, face down through the creek. It will be part of his condition process. Dana, check the Bronco and see if the keys are in it.”
Dana walked over and looked. “Yep.”
“Good, what about the Jeep?”
She checked that as well. “This one too.”
“Great. You drive one of them back and have Alisa drive the other. Pull them around to the back of the barn so they won’t be visible from the road or the driveway.”
“Okay, we’ll see you there” Dana said.
“What about the dead?” Rocky asked.
“Make yourself useful. Build a fire pit to burn them on.” JC said without turning to look at him.
Rocky huffed, but followed JC’s directions.
The man JC and Danny pulled by the feet across Rocky’s yard and down the hill had an entry wound in his side, another in his thigh, and another in his shoulder. Danny wondered how the man could still be alive. At first he had considered him fortunate to have survived, but as the man screamed and yelped at the pain of having the dirt, grass and rocks rubbed against his open wounds, Danny thought those who Rocky would be putting on the burn pile were better off. The man was unconscious by the time they got him to the creek, but came back around after getting his mouth full of water. He looked very near death once he was in the barn. The girls pulled around with the vehicles about the time Danny and JC arrived with the wounded man. Steven and Jack were resting from having dragged Gorbold to the barn.
JC left the wounded guard to throw a rope over the beam. He tied one end to Gorbold’s foot and hoisted him up in the air by one leg. He tied the other end of the rope to a support beam and let the sergeant dangle. JC resumed his gullible hayseed routine as he addressed Gorbold. “We thought you were here to help. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you taking those good folks’ guns. And to think, I was gonna skin a cow for you. I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.
“If you want to make it up to me, and I’m sure you do, just tell me how many people are in this new government, and where they’re stationed.”
Gorbold grunted in pain as he swung upside down by the leg. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”
JC chuckled. “That might be true, but I can promise you, there are different ways to die. There’s fast and painless, and then . . .” JC ripped open the man’s shirt, took out his knife, and ran it across Gorbold’s chest, making an even laceration so that blood ran down from his chest into his mouth and nose causing him to choke and spit in order to breath. “Then, there’s the other way to die.”
Alisa turned away and Dana excused herself from the barn. JC noticed and said, “Danny, why don’t you and Steven take the girls back to the house. Get some water, and first aid supplies, we might need to keep the guard alive for a while longer. See if you can find some apple sauce or something easy to digest. He probably needs something to eat. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Okay.” Danny wasn’t in the habit of arguing with JC anyway, but particularly not when he was in the middle of extracting information.
Before they reached the house, Catfish’s truck turned into the drive. Danny nodded to Steven. “Can you guys get those things together for JC? I need to fill Nick in on what happened.”
“Sure.” Steven said, then went in the house with the girls.
Catfish pulled up to Danny. “What in tarnation is a goin’ on around here?”
Danny debriefed Catfish, Korey and Nick.
“Is everyone okay?” Korey quickly exited the vehicle.
“No one was hurt, at least no one from our compound,” Danny explained.
Nick looked deeply concerned. “Any idea how many more there are? Where’s their camp?”
Danny shrugged. “JC has the squad leader hanging like a Christmas ham in the barn right now, trying to find all that out. One of the guards is lying on the floor, barely conscious, but I don’t know if he’ll live long enough to interrogate.”
“I’ve got some advanced medical supplies. If all his organs are intact, I can probably keep him breathing. Then, I’ve got enough pain killers to cut him a deal, because I’m sure he’s feeling it.” Nick headed off toward his RV.
“I’m going to check on my family.” Korey started toward his trailer.
“JC moved them all into the house,” Danny called out.
Korey changed course and b-lined for the house. “Thanks!”
“I turn my head for five minutes and the whole operation goes to the devil. Don’t reckon we’ll be goin’ to get no gas today.” Catfish cut the engine.
Danny looked over toward the barn to see if he could see the Jeep and the Bronco. “We might not need to.”
“What are you figurin’ on?” Catfish got out and closed the door.
“Come on, I’ll show you.” Danny led the way toward the barn. As they got closer, tortured cries could be heard coming from inside.
Catfish shook his head. “That JC sure knows how to make em’ squall.”
Danny tried to ignore the pleas coming from inside. He opened the door to the Bronco and turned the key. “About three quarters of a tank.”
Catfish was already doing the same thing with the Jeep. “’Bout the same here. We probably get about fifty gallons between the two
of ‘em.”
JC walked out back. He was sweating heavily.
Danny said, “Looks like a tough job.”
“Easier than his.” He pointed the knife back toward the barn. “How much fuel in the vehicles?”
“Both about three quarters full,” Danny answered.
JC nodded. “That sounds about right. Gorbold says there’s roughly fifty men in Greenville, another seventy-five to a hundred in Spartanburg. Charlotte is the hub for this new government. It supposedly has a couple thousand and is growing by the day.”
“I thought he wasn’t going to tell you anything,” Danny quipped.
“Guess he had a change of heart.” JC wiped the knife off on the bottom of his boot.
“Them other ones, up yonder in Greenville, they know where these ol’ boys was?” Catfish spit tobacco to the side, away from where Danny and JC were standing.
“They have a mapped out route of the areas they were supposed to go to. If he’s telling the truth, they’ll know where they disappeared, down to an area about two miles wide by ten miles long,” JC answered.
“If they come round here, and see us set up like Fort Apache, I reckon we’ll be prime suspects.” Catfish stuck his hands in the top straps of his overalls.
Danny looked at JC. “So what do we do?”
“I guess we get set up like Fort Apache, right?” JC looked at Catfish.
Catfish chuckled and then spit again. “I reckon so.”
JC blotted the sweat off his face with his shirt tail. “I left Rocky on less than desirable terms. Danny, why don’t you get Nana to cook up something nice for him, then take Alisa up there to check on him and Pauline? Talk to them, try to smooth things over for me, then see if you can get him to hook up his front-end loader and start digging this trench. We’ve got the rest of the day to get ready for the goons. Tonight, when Gorbold doesn’t come home, they’ll start looking for him. They might be here tomorrow or they might be here next week, but sooner or later, they’ll be here.
“Jack and Catfish will help me get the gas out of these vehicles, then figure out where to hide them.”
Catfish cut JC off. “You drive ‘em into the lake. Straight off the boardwalk.”
“You thought of that pretty fast,” Danny commented.
Catfish started walking back toward his truck. “Won’t be the first time.”
“There’s no chance we might need them later? Wouldn’t it be better to keep them somewhere so we could get to them in an emergency?”
JC shook his head. “Those vehicles will stick out like a sore thumb when the goons come looking. Anywhere we put them is going to be a potential problem. Plus, in Regent Schlusser’s mind, as long as they can’t be found, there’s always the chance that Gorbold and the others went AWOL.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Danny agreed.
An hour later, Nana insisted that she walk over to Rocky’s house to take her pot of homemade rabbit dumplings. Danny had sampled a few, but was still hoping that they’d be invited to eat with the Cooks.
Pauline opened the door when they arrived. “Come in.”
“How are you holding up?” Alisa gave Pauline a big hug.
“Better. That was quite a morning. Of all the things your mind tries to prepare you for . . . I never expected a bunch of thugs putting themselves out to be a legitimate government to show up on my doorstep.”
Danny snickered. “Yeah, I thought those days were over with.”
“Well these here dumplins will have you feelin’ fit as a fiddle.” Nana took the pot to the kitchen.
“Where’s Rocky?” Danny inquired.
“Out back, building a fire, to get rid of the . . . the bodies.” Pauline turned her head. She was a sweet woman, kind and gentle, but she wasn’t cut out for the apocalypse.
“I’ll go give him a hand if you ladies want to set the table.” Danny didn’t mind pitching in, but he wanted it to be understood that he expected some rabbit dumplings if he was going to be dragging dead bodies up on a wood pile.
Danny headed out back to find Rocky. “Hey, need a hand?”
Rocky had a sufficient amount of wood collected, but hadn’t gotten around to moving the corpses yet. He cracked a faint smile and gave a nod. “Sure, thanks Danny.”
Danny grabbed the arm of one of the fallen guards. “Did you go through their pockets?”
Rocky shook his head as he grabbed the man’s other hand to drag him over to the wood pile.
They stopped at the pile and Danny bent down to unzip the man’s tactical vest, remove his belt, and boots. “AK-47 magazines in his vest. All full. This is like Christmas.”
Rocky evidently hadn’t become quite as battle-hardened as Danny. This was Danny’s fourth engagement and he was losing all sympathy for his assailants. If they were evil enough to try to hurt him or the ones he loved, he felt no remorse for sending them on down the line. While not quite up to the task of assisting JC in the information gathering process, Danny was quickly adapting to this uncivilized environment and lost no sleep over whatever had to be done to the aggressors who were reluctant to share what they knew. Danny riffled through the man’s trousers, extracting a knife and a tactical flashlight. The shirt and pants were too blood stained to be of any use.
“Okay, let’s get him up on the wood pile.” Danny took the man under the armpits and nodded for Rocky to grab the legs so they could hoist him up.
Next, they proceeded to do the same to the three other men. Danny took the vests of the four, all of which had full magazines for their rifles, since the attackers had all been eliminated before they had a chance to reload. Some never got off the first shot. Danny and Rocky collected the weapons strewn about in Rocky’s yard, which had become a make-shift battlefield. They picked up one M1A which used the same ammo as JC’s .308 deer rifle, two AR-15s and two AK-47s.
“Looks like you have your pick for a new battle rifle,” Danny said.
Rocky looked the selection over. “I like that M1A. Classic. How many magazines of ammo did you find for it?”
“Four in the vest. One in the rifle. They look like twenty round mags, so assuming they’re all loaded to capacity and he didn’t get off a shot, you’d have about a hundred rounds. But JC stocked up a lot of .308.”
“Yeah, but he’s ticked off at me. I don’t think he’ll be in any hurry to fork over a bunch of ammo to me.”
Danny started shaking his head the second Rocky started talking. “Not at all. JC would be more than happy to give you ammo. Even if he were mad, this is mutual survival, we depend on each other. JC isn’t mad. Frustrated would be a better word. One thing we all have to understand is that he was a New York cop. He’s seen the full depravity of human nature and understands how low it can go, if not arrested by people willing to stand in the way of evil. Then to have to babysit the rest of us, until we come around to realize what we are up against makes his job harder.”
Rocky crossed his arms as he listened to Danny. “Pauline and I haven’t acted very appreciative of his efforts. I suppose he had to deal with that as a New York cop also.”
Danny patted Rocky on the back. “I don’t think he got into law enforcement hoping for accolades from the public. But, it would be easier on him if he didn’t feel like he had to fight the bad guys and the folks right here in our own compound.”
“I think Pauline and I are waking up to the facts that it really is going to be as bad as JC has been saying. We’ll probably move into the trailer this evening, if we’re still welcome.”
“You are absolutely welcome. In fact, we’ll help you move. JC was hoping you wouldn’t be too mad and that you’d give us a hand digging a trench around the compound this afternoon. He thinks the rest of these heathens may be coming sooner rather than later.”
“I’d be more than happy to. It’ll give me a chance to sort of redeem myself. Thank you, Danny.” Rocky pulled out a box of wooden kitchen matches. “Would you like to do the honors?”
Danny took the
matches. “Sure. Can we wait till after lunch? It’s not exactly going to smell like barbecue pork.”
“Hmm. Good call. Let’s get washed up.” Rocky put his hand on Danny’s shoulder as they walked around to the rain catch barrel.
After lunch Danny walked out back to light the fire. He took out a match and struck it. As he looked at the corpses piled on top, he remembered the two men in the barn. He blew out the flame and tossed the smoking match on the wood pile. “Better see if JC has anybody else who needs to go in the oven. We certainly don’t have time to be collecting more wood.”
Danny grabbed the two AKs and the two AR-15s, along with the vests and peeked his head in the back door. “Alisa, Nana, I’m going to head on back over to the house. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Danny dropped the weapons and vests off at the common area in the compound courtyard then headed on down to the barn. JC was coming out with Nick.
“We collected the rifles, stacked the wood and got the four bodies from Rocky’s up on the pile. Do you have anyone else who needs to be disposed of?”
JC nodded. “Yeah, Gorbold is ready. The other one needs a few minutes. Nick promised him a comfortable passing in exchange for more info about what type of hardware we should expect.”
Nick’s face looked somber. “I gave him enough morphine to ease him on out of this world. He wasn’t going to make it anyway.”
JC added. “Catfish can drive them over when they take the vehicles to the lake. Any word on the trench?”
“Rocky is going to do it. He feels bad about how he acted toward you.”
JC waved his hand. “We’re all under a lot of stress. Stuff like that is going to happen. I’m glad he’s coming around. Do you think he’s seen the light? Will they move down here now?”
“Yeah, said he’s moving tonight.”
JC nodded. “Good. What rifles did you pick up?”
“An M1A, which Rocky is keeping so he’ll have a battle rifle, two ARs and two AKs.”
“I guess you were happy about the AKs. More ammo.” JC smiled.
“Yeah, they had about eight full thirty-round AK mags in their vests. I left them up at the picnic table.”