“I’m Jeffrey Solomon, and I’m 16. This is my girlfriend, Susan Lewis. She’s 15.” He then pointed to a younger girl who was now holding Susan’s hand. “That’s Elaina. She’s 13 and is Susan’s little sister. The dark haired girl behind Elaina is Mariah Peters. She is Elaina’s best friend and is also 13. The two boys next to her are Tommy and Billy Peters. Tommy is 11 and Billy is 7. Drake Goins is 12, and he has his little sister Anaya and brother Freddy. Anaya is 6 and Freddy is 4.”
Lionel squatted down and asked Jeffrey why they were out in the woods instead of at home, who were the men who were looking for them, and where were their parents. Several of the younger kids started to cry.
“We don’t have parents any more, or homes. A motorcycle gang came into town about a week or two ago. They tried to grab my mother, and shot my father while he was trying to rescue her. Mom tried to fight back, but one of the guys hit her in the head with a club, and then he shot her. I was hiding in a closet and heard it all. Susan’s father left a long time ago, so it was just Susan, Elaina, and her mother at home. When the gang tried to grab the girls, Susan’s mother screamed to run, so the girls did, and they were able to get away. Susan found me hiding behind the church, and I went back to try to find her mother, but I didn’t at first. Then, we saw Mariah and her brothers. They were also trying to hide in the woods near the church. The gang killed her parents, too. We went deeper into the woods and hid for a couple of days. I went back to try to find Mrs. Lewis, but I was too late. The gang killed her, too. We decided to try to get away from town because it was just so bad there, so we figured we would go into the country. We started walking and a couple of days later, we ran into Drake and Anaya and Freddy. They didn’t have anywhere to go either, so we all just stuck together. Then, last night, some men on motorcycles started yelling that they saw us, so we jumped into the woods to get away from them. We’ve been trying to find a good place to hide. We didn’t mean to be on your land, but we were scared.”
“Drake, where are your parents?” Lionel asked in a soft voice.
“My dad is in the army in Korea, and my mom went to the grocery store a few days ago and never came home.”
“When was the last time any of you had anything to eat or drink?” Lisa asked.
“It’s been a couple of days since we ate, but we did find some creek water a little bit ago. We had some food, and that lasted for a while with us just eating a tiny bit each day. I thought we could maybe kill rabbits for food or something, but that’s really hard to do with just a stick.”
Lionel then asked if any of the kids were hurt or sick. Mariah answered and said, “Just our hearts and our feet hurt, but the rest of us is fine.”
The security team looked at each other, and then Jon pulled out his radio and called the house. “Bugs Bunny to Minnie Mouse, over.”
I answered, “This is Minnie, go ahead.”
“Minnie, we are bringing a few pretty rocks back to the playground, over.”
“Bugs, what kind of pretty rocks? Over.”
“Minnie, we have 52 pieces of granite and 48 pieces of quartz. We’ll be back to the playground in a little while, over.”
“Roger, Bugs, I’ll warn Elmer Fudd. Out.”
By now, the kids were giggling. Jeffrey asked them why they were talking so strange, and Jon answered they didn’t want anyone else listening to know what they were saying. “Would you like to come back with us? We can fix you something to eat and give you a warm place to sleep.”
“That depends. Are you guys the good guys, or are you like the gang? We will protect ourselves if anyone tries to hurt these kids!”
Lionel answered, “Jeff, we’re the good guys. We are out here making sure the bad guys don’t come along and hurt our kids.” That seemed to satisfy Jeffrey, because he turned to the kids and told them to gather their stuff.
The team helped the kids put the fire out. They checked the fence where the kids climbed through, and tightened the barbed wire. Then, they took some branches and swept away any tracks the kids left as they walked along the fence. When they were done, they led the kids back to the house. I sent Gabby downstairs to watch the monitor for a few minutes so I could be on the porch with several others waiting for the kids to arrive. We had no idea what to expect, so Janet put some soup on to heat and James, Samantha, and Amy got ready to provide medical care to the kids if needed. Soon, the little parade of security team and kids arrived at the house. By now, the kids were scared, cold, and tired. Lionel and Jon were carrying Anaya and Freddy, and Lisa was holding Billy’s hand. The kids were wide-eyed and looked terrified. I decided to bring them over to the pole barn to get some food into them, and let Janet know where we were going. She told us the soup would be ready in a few minutes. The wood stove in the pole barn was roaring, and it was comfortably warm in there. Frank got several lanterns lit so that it was fairly light in the barn. We brought the kids in and sat them down.
In the light, Jeff looked at Lionel and said, “Hey, now I know who you are. You were at the Methodist church a while ago with some other kids, some ladies, and a dude with a hurt arm, right?”
Lionel looked surprised, and said, “Yes, how did you know?”
Jeff answered, “I lived next door to the church, and I saw you.” Jeff seemed to relax a little when he realized that if the folks at the church trusted Lionel, then maybe he could, too.
Janet brought the food out to the kids, and you could see their eyes light up. In addition to soup, she brought out fresh bread and cold milk, and the kids dug in. We had to slow them down a little so they didn’t get sick. While the kids were eating, Lionel came over and related their stories to Janet and me. I was horrified. It was bad enough to see how hungry these kids were, but to know what horrible things had happened to them made me sick. Jeremiah helped Janet carry the food over, and he was surprised to see the kids.
“Hey, Jeff, what are you and Sue doing here with all these kids?”
Lionel looked at Jer and asked, “You know each other?”
Jer answered, “Sure, we’ve been in the same class since kindergarten.” Jeff looked very relieved to see his friend, but then his face crumpled. “Jer, they killed my parents. What are we gonna do?” Jer came over and put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. He told his friend that the only logical thing for him and the other kids to do would be to stay with us where they could be safe. I guess Jer realized after a minute that he just invited the kids to stay without talking to any of the adults, and he looked at me with a panicky expression on his face.
“Jer, you are right,” I told him. “You kids will be safe here. But, you have to know we have rules here that have to be followed. Everyone here does chores. The good thing is, though, that we all take care of each other, and even though we work hard, we also play.” I looked at each of the kids, and asked them if they were willing to be a part of our family, and they all nodded yes.
“OK, then I think the first thing you need to do is eat something. Then we need to get all of you cleaned up and find places for you all to rest. At dinner tonight, you can meet everyone, and we’ll figure out where all of you can sleep. Jeff and Susan, when you are done eating, I’d like to ask you both some questions. Jer, will you bring them over to my basement when they are done? I need to get back to the monitors and relieve Gabby.” Jer nodded, and then went to sit with his friends while I headed back to my duty station.
Frank and Tom met me at the house and followed me downstairs. After I relieved Gabby, they sat down so we could talk. We were all aghast at what these poor kids had been though, and none of us could stand the idea of not keeping them here – at least until we could find out if they had any other family with whom they preferred to stay. We did have a big problem, though, in that the only place for them to sleep would be in Jon or Chris’ basement. I think we could make that work for now, and then in the spring, if this crisis was still continuing, we could think about maybe constructing some additional housing or even go out looking for RVs or
something. I had a feeling, though, that these kids would not take kindly to being separated any time soon.
A little while later, Jer brought Jeff and Sue down to the basement to see me. Both kids looked really nervous, and I tried to put them at ease.
“Did you all get enough to eat?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am, we did. Thank you.” answered Sue.
“Good. I know you are both nervous, but please try to relax. You all are very welcome here, and we will do our best to give you a good home here. The reason I wanted to talk to you away from the little ones is I would like to get some more information from you on what is happening in Riverdale. I don’t want to upset either of you, but I need to know more about this gang. Tell me what you know.”
Jeff was the first to answer. “We started hearing motorcycles about a week and a half ago, but we didn’t see anybody. We figured they were just traveling through the town and would be gone soon. Since we were trying to stay as close to home as we could, I guess we were just not anywhere near them. After a couple of days, though, we would see them driving up and down the streets near us. We tried to just stay inside and not be seen by them. Then, a big group of them – maybe 20 or 25 of them – drove up to the church next door to us. There were a bunch of people staying at the church and the gang started dragging people out of the church. They were shooting the men, and tying up the women and kids. Then, a bunch of them grabbed this one girl and they were doing…bad stuff to her. My mother was looking out the window and they must have seen her, because a few of them came running over to the house, yelling. My mom screamed at me to hide, so I hid behind a trunk in my closet. They broke down our door, and when my dad tried to stop them, they killed him. Then, they tried to grab my mother. It sounded like she fought back. I heard them hit her with something, and then a gunshot, and she stopped yelling. I stayed in the closet for a couple of hours until it sounded like they went away. When I came out, I found my parents. I ran to my room and grabbed my Scouting backpack and threw some stuff in it. Then, I left and hid in the woods behind the church.”
Susan jumped in. “I lived down the block from Jeff. The gang drove their motorcycles right up onto our lawn to our front door. They came barging through the front door and grabbed my mother. She yelled and told Elaina and me to run. We ran out the back door and headed into the woods behind our house. We wandered around the woods for a couple of hours listening to all of these men yelling and carrying on and women and men screaming, and every few minutes, they were shooting guns. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. A couple of hours later we were still in the woods and Jeff found us.”
Jeff cut in, “We tried to get farther from the church, but then we saw Mariah and her brothers trying to hide, so we all stayed together. Mariah looked kind of blank, and Tommy was trying to get her to come with him. Tommy told us about his parents. We went deeper into the woods and Tommy and I tried to get the girls to settle down, because they were still pretty shocked. It was starting to rain, and was pretty cold, so we got the blanket in my pack and got the girls and Billy together and wrapped them up in the blanket. I had a tarp in my pack, and we strung it up into a little lean-to and got them underneath it. We threw a bunch of leaves over the tarp to try to hide it. When it got dark, Tommy climbed a tree to be the lookout, and I went back to Susan’s house to find Mrs. Lewis. She wasn’t there, but when I peeked out the front window, I saw her laying on the front lawn. I did not go out to her because she was…well, I could tell she was not alive any more. Plus, she did not have any clothes on. I wanted to bury her and my parents, but...” He began to cry. “I was scared. I grabbed a couple of coats from the coat closet in the Lewis’ house and went back to the girls. After a few hours, we decided we couldn’t stay in the woods, and we would do what we could to get away from town. We were afraid to walk on the main roads, so we were cutting through backyards until we were out in the country. Then we thought it would be okay to walk on the road. That’s when we ran into Drake and his brother and sister. We walked with them for a while until we heard the motorcycle guys, and we ran into the woods again to hide. We stayed walking in the woods until we came to your fence. We figured if we were on somebody’s property, we were probably safer than on the street, so that’s when we built the fire and you found us.”
I asked the two if they had any idea how many gang members were in town. Jeff said he would guess probably close to fifty. He said that even while there were so many of them at the church and then at his house, he could still hear lots of engine noises and gun shots from farther away. He said he did not know if they planned to stay in town or not, but he guessed that as long as they could find food, booze, and women or girls, they would stay. I asked him if he knew what gang it was, and he said he thought it was a couple of different gangs hanging together. I asked him why he thought that, and he answered that they were wearing different color bandannas, and their motorcycle jackets had different names on them. Susan added that most of the gang members were white, but there were groups of black and Hispanic gang members, too.
I thanked Jeff and Sue again, and told them how sorry I was that they had to go through all of this, and assured them that we would do everything we possibly could to keep them safe. I asked them if any of the kids had any family anywhere that they might want to go stay with, and Jeff shook his head no. “We want to stay together. We’re all each other has now,” he said solemnly.
“No, now you have us as your family,” I answered softly. Sue gave me a hug, and I walked the two kids over to the door to Chris’ basement where the kids would sleep, at least for tonight.
I called Frank on the radio and asked if he, Bill, and Tom could come down to the basement to meet with me. When they arrived, I told them what Jeff and Sue shared, especially their estimate of approximately fifty gang members in the city. We needed to come up with a plan in case they decided to come out this way. We tossed a few ideas around and decided we needed to meet with everyone first thing in the morning.
Chapter 18
The pole barn was noisy at our meeting the following morning. Everyone except the security folks were present, and they all had walkie-talkies so they could listen in. Frank and Bill led the meeting. They first related all of the information about the gang that Jeff and Sue shared the night before. There was a lot of discussion about things we could do, but after about fifteen minutes of discussion, Frank and Bill got everyone’s attention.
“Look, I hear a bunch of different ideas, and some of them are really good – if we were a police force or a military unit. We’re not. We need to have plans that are realistic for the people we have here. First of all, we need to be sure our kids are protected. So – just like our plan has always been – at the first sign of trouble, Stacy, Maria, and Gabby will take all the younger kids to the basement. We now have six young teens who could be posted to windows on the second floor to be our lookouts. Clark and Maureen, you and the girls will continue to get the animals, and Jeff and Susan can help. James and Samantha will get ready to open the infirmary. Father Dan, we need you to be at your radio in the basement so you can relay messages for us. Tom and Denise, you will be assigned to the area around the front of the house. Jon, you and Chris will man the OP/LP.
“Grace, Patty, and Nate will be on the security cameras. That leaves Lynn and Red in the north fox hole, Lisa and Jeremiah in the south fox hole, Amy and Janet in the east fox hole, and Judy and Marcie in the west fox hole. The security teams will be made up of everyone else.
“Until the issue with this gang is resolved, let’s try to limit how much time is spent outside. Stick close to your ‘battle stations’. After this meeting, Janet, could you and your cooking group put bottles of water and granola bars in some kind of container in each fox hole? We’ll also need to be sure each person on the roving security team has a pack with water and bars in it ready to go. Bill, Chuck, and I will make sure there is extra ammo placed in the fox holes as well. We’ll also be making sure the neon spots on the
bottom of our homemade claymores are clearly visible in case we need to use them. Bill and I made a few more claymores that we are putting close to the road and a ways outside the berm on all four sides. We’ve wired them up, so no need to shoot them to set them off. We will be able to set them off by hooking them to a battery. We only had enough stuff to make eight of them, though. We’re also going to put more toe poppers out, so please stay inside the berms. Security teams, we will mark the new poppers the same way we marked the others.
“Folks, we don’t know when the gang is going to come. I say when, because I really believe the motorcycle guys we saw out on the road were scouts. It doesn’t sound like they are conserving food and water, so I don’t think it will be long before they are on the road looking for more. If we are invaded, everyone has to remember that we cannot hesitate to take these people out. They are animals. Just remember what they did to the parents of our newest kids – they deserve no mercy. If you hesitate when you need to be shooting at them, they may be able to shoot and kill some of us. When I was in the Marines, I had a Gunny who would quote Bible verses to us. The one I remember best is from Ezekiel chapter nine, verse ten, and it says, ‘And as for me, my eye will not have mercy, and I will have no pity, but I will send the punishment of their ways on their heads.’ If they attack us, they are asking for us to heap punishment on their heads. Because if we do not destroy them, imagine what they will do to our ladies, to our children. The world may be in chaos, but we are an island of civilization, and we need to do everything we can to protect our life, our civilization, our society. We need to do this so our kids can grow up in a peaceful world.” At that point, Frank’s voice broke and he sat down quickly.
Premonitions (Book 1): The Farm Page 20