The soldier saluted and walked away.
An hour later the prisoners of the refugee camp were lined up and waited to hear what was going to be announced. Choi walked in front of the group, the harsh glare that he projected told the prisoners that whatever he said would not be good news for them.
“Last night, twelve of you thought it would be better to live outside of here than stay and be our guest,” Choi started. “This is an insult to the Chinese people and the effort we have put in to keeping you safe. In order to correct this outrage, I am ordering the last row of this camp to bury the bodies of the fifteen who did not make it. Remember that if you try to do this that one of your brothers will also bury you. To make up for the twelve who are still on the run, we will be executing the first row of this camp.”
The few people in the camp who had started to pick up the Chinese language gasped at the announcement. Soldiers rushed in and started to grab the people in the front row who had no idea what was about to happen.
“What’s going on?” a man hollered back into the group.
One of the people who understood the order spoke up. “You are to be executed,” a woman said hoping to give the man, and the rest of the group, a fighting chance.
The front row of the group started to struggle and fight. Some still went willingly. One of the men was shot on sight after he punched a guard in the face. The guard pulled his pistol out and shot the man in the head. The rest stopped struggling and went with the guards towards the back of the camp. The graveyard would be dug along the fence as a reminder to the rest what would happen if they tried to escape. The ten prisoners who were assigned the task of digging the graves resented the fact that the others escaped. They had been invited like the rest, but none of them had anticipated that there would be executions for the act. The dirt was rocky and difficult to work with. The guards would push the workers to their designated task. Some tried to stop at three feet, realizing how little top soil there was. The guards didn’t accept the jobs that were presented and ordered them to dig deeper. The men worked through the night with spotlights from the guards helping them see their work. At the end of the night all 22 bodies had been buried. The men didn’t have a chance to rest since they needed to be present at the morning count.
By the time the morning sun shone above the buildings and onto the courtyard, the men were angry at themselves and the people who made it out alive. What had been an Orwellian nightmare had quickly changed into a Nazi dream straight out of Schindler’s List.
Chapter 17
The Rangers had set up camp on a ridge overlooking the valley. The roads leading to their position were in clear view and they would know if anyone was coming by vehicle to find them or the escaped prisoners. The woman they carried was now in a full fetal position and unable to move.
“What do you think is wrong with her?” Dallas asked Kelly.
“I’m not a doctor,” Kelly replied. “It could be so many things.”
“Worst case scenario.”
“Appendicitis, ectopic pregnancy, pancreas. In any case I’m guessing that there is internal bleeding and we don’t have a place to perform a surgery or anyone to do one.”
The woman would soon be dead. The most they could do was make sure she was comfortable.
“Is there anything at the base that could help her?” Dallas asked.
“That’s a three-day hike, one way.” Clive added. “That’s only if we don’t take her along.”
“She won’t make it three days,” Kelly responded. “If we move her she will die sooner.”
The decision was a difficult one. The most difficult thing about it was knowing that there wasn’t a choice to make. The moment the woman escaped and became sick the choice had been made. If she had stayed in the camp the Chinese wouldn’t have invested in saving her either. Likely she would have been killed and buried in a shallow grave.
Budd and River showed the group how to build beds and lean-tos for the fire. Karen was kept close to the fire. The group tried to make her as comfortable as possible. During the middle of the night the crying stopped.
In the early hours of the morning, two of the men who had escaped from the prison started to dig the grave. By noon a quick funeral was given, but nobody in the group knew anything about the woman except that she wanted to escape.
“She died free,” were the only words spoken by Clive. The man had spent time looking into becoming a priest, a profession he could never enter after killing Chinese soldiers and loggers since the camp was destroyed.
After the funeral the Rangers gathered together to make their plans on where to go from here.
“What now?” Budd asked.
“Looks like we have people to train.” Dallas looked at the rag tag group who were failing miserably at tearing down their camp. “We need to return to the base, find one of the ammo and weapons caches we buried and get started at turning these people into soldiers.”
“These people aren’t soldiers,” Budd pointed out.
“No,” Dallas answered. “But neither were we before boot camp.”
During the hike back to the camp Clive and Kelly had created guns out of sticks. They weren’t real weapons except for swinging at a person’s head as a club.
“What are we supposed to do with these?” One of the men asked thinking the whole notion was a joke.
“Point it at the enemy,” Kelly answered.
The men looked at one another.
“Until we know you can handle a stick and not point it at one another, you can’t have a gun,” Clive responded. “The hike to the base will be your training on how to move in a group.”
The people understood and moved in the middle of the line. They carried the sticks like they were shown and by the time they reached the base, three days later, they were moving very similar to the Rangers.
A cache of weapons and food were dug up and the added mouths to feed were quickly putting a dent into their supplies. Nobody complained about the MREs that were being handed out. Bellies had been empty and growling. The food at the prison camp was the most generic calories that could be handed out rice along with any greens the prisoners could scavenge from the yard. Even the dandelions quickly disappeared from the landscape. Having a fatty calorie packed meal left many in an afternoon siesta.
Weapons were handed out and exchanged with the sticks that were tossed aside. The rifles were not loaded and three days were spent on the base trying to teach the people the most basic procedures.
“Is it hard to kill somebody?” one of the women asked.
“Hopefully you won’t think about it when the time comes,” Kelly responded.
“Thinking will get you killed,” Clive added. “Don’t think.”
Ammo was too precious and rare with the size of the group to take anybody to the shooting range. Instead they used dry fire practice to get the people acquainted with their new rifles. Safeties were checked and when the people were performing as expected they were given loaded magazines for their trip out of the base.
“You think you can make that map now of the camp?” Dallas asked the girl he came to know as Maria.
“We can help,” another man added.
Maria and a few other people spent an hour making a detailed drawing of the camp in the dirt. The guard positions had changed on the map a few times to accommodate the size of the camp, with the number of tents in the middle. Arguments arose with how the camp was set up in the middle with the number of rows and the tents in the yard. The buildings that surrounded the area were a confusing mess that most didn’t know anything about. The approximate number of guards were written on the side along with the people in charge they could remember or describe.
“Who is this Choi?” Clive asked.
“A by the book prick,” Maria added. “That guy does everything by the clock and by the book.”
“Probably fucks how the government orders him to,” one of the men added.
“The guards, are they Chinese
nationals?” Dallas asked.
“From what we can see they don’t recruit from the locals at all,” a man added.
“Where does Choi stay?” Dallas asked.
“No idea,” Maria answered. “There are days that we never saw him.”
Clive took Dallas aside. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Dallas looked over at the map and the three people making sure everything was accurate. “Why shouldn’t we free some American prisoners?”
“We don’t have the food, material, or supplies to take care of anybody. We don’t have enough for the people we found.” Clive paused. “If we are going to start freeing people we have to make sure we can take care of them.”
“Alright,” Dallas replied. “Get Budd and Kelly. I will let them know.”
“What do you mean we’re not going to hit the prison?” Budd argued with the news.
“We can’t support that many people with the resources we have,” Dallas tried to explain.
“Oh that’s fucking bullshit and you know it.” Budd stormed off.
“So if we aren’t going to free the prisoners what are we going to do?” Clive asked.
“I don’t know,” Dallas couldn’t help but be honest with Clive.
By the fire, Ben was making arrows for the bows he had put together for hunting. Feathers were being added to the ends for fletchings, tied on with sinew from the small game they had been collecting from traps. Ben was always working on things like this knowing that time was of the essence for having usable material.
“You have one ready?” Dallas asked.
Ben tied off the end of the sinew and set the finished arrow down.
“This is about your strength,” Ben handed Dallas a longbow made from a young hickory tree. Dallas picked up a makeshift quiver and slung it over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Budd asked. “This is no time for hunting.”
“You see the people here,” Dallas pointed out. “They don’t have food, and we don’t have food. That is the first problem we have. When we take care of that we can look into bringing more people out. Until then we will only be starving people and killing them by freeing them. So either grab a bow and go hunting or sit here and be part of the problem.”
Dallas marched out. He had no idea what he was doing. Sure, Ben had shown him a few things. He wasn’t sure he could hit anything with the bow or not. It was better to use it on an animal with the chance of taking it home than practice and ruin a day’s worth of work on one arrow. The rest of the men grabbed bows and Ben took his bow out into the woods last. He was the most experienced and was the most likely to bring something back. The men stayed in pairs except for Dallas who disappeared on his own.
The forest was asleep in the middle of the day. Most animals eat during the morning hours and the evening before the sunset. Dallas looked for tracks and signs of wildlife. He was coming up empty handed. Resting against a tree, he waited. The break was more for himself than thinking an animal would come walking by. He had heard stories when he was a kid about his dad bringing a deer home. His dad’s story was the deer walked right up to him before he put it down. In secret he had hit the animal with his car and threw it in the trunk.
Dallas didn’t have the option of hitting a deer with his car. He had no car. He had to use pure skill, or luck, to bring something back to camp. After two hours he was becoming discouraged. Hunting an enemy was one thing. You had food and a warm place to return at night. As a resistance fighter he had to feed himself and others while trying to fight an enemy force. Fighting was difficult on an empty stomach.
The barking of a squirrel caught his attention and the animal continued, becoming braver over time and descending the tree to move closer to Dallas.
“Shut up,” he whispered to the fur ball as it jumped from the trunk to the ground. He tried to shoo it away, but the squirrel wouldn’t listen. The rodent was going to ruin his chance of bringing big game home. “Shut up,” he repeated louder. The squirrel jumped back at Dallas’ movement and barked louder at the gray faced man. Dallas notched the arrow and pulled the string back. Dallas tried to remember what Ben had told him about shooting. The animal didn’t move, it’s tail waving in the air. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Dallas released the arrow and watched as the head pierced the ground an inch from the squirrel. To his surprised the squirrel jumped a few feet away, but stayed to bark at him. The insult to his manhood was too much to bear coming from a tree rat. Dallas notched a second arrow and pulled the string back. “Teach you to mock me,” he sighted in the rodent and released, this time hitting the mark and watching the animal squirm on the ground, pinned to the earth. The squirrel tried to run and fought the arrow, but it was pointless. Dallas pulled his knife, but as he approached the animal noticed him and growled.
“Would you just die already?” he said trying to figure out a quick way to end the animal’s life. “I told you not to be an asshole.” The squirrel continued to bark and over a few minutes the animal weakened. It was at this time Dallas pinned it down with his boot and used the knife at the base of the neck. He wanted to give it a quick death, but the squirrel was a fighter until the end. He hoped he had as much spunk as this rodent.
Dallas pulled the arrow from the squirrel and placed the body in his pocket. Walking back to the camp Dallas was proud, but at the same time disappointed by his catch. As he walked into the camp everyone appeared lively as the smell of meat traveled through the air along with the sight of a deer hanging from a tree.
“Who was the lucky one?” Dallas asked Clive as he approached.
“Who do you think?” Clive answered. “Ben walks out behind us. Twenty minutes later he is walking back, dragging a buck behind him. Did you find anything?”
Dallas pulled the squirrel from his pocket and handed it to Clive. The man laughed looking at his friend’s kill.
“We can throw this over the fire and cook it up.”
During the evening, while everyone filled up on fresh venison, the squirrel was the last item anyone looked at. The less desired meat sat next to the fire still skewered on the stick it was cooked on. Dallas didn’t want it to go to waste so he picked it up and nibbled on it the rest of the night.
Chapter 18
The Rangers created an evacuation plan for the camp in case the Chinese ever found their position. The plan became more detailed as the men looked into doing recon on the prison camp. The trip was a few days one way. With the group only having River to watch over them, the Rangers wanted to make sure they would not be sitting ducks while they were gone.
With their plan set the Rangers hiked out to the city. A few miles from the city the Rangers started to see Chinese patrols. The purpose of their mission was pure recon; gather information, and return with more intelligence to work with. The first patrols were vehicles traveling down the roads looking for anything out of the ordinary. Unarmored Humvees were the primary vehicles. The men smiled knowing what a small bomb could do to them.
The roar of the diesel motor grew as the Humvee approached. On the side of the road, the men hid behind trees and shrubs blending in with their environment. The truck stopped across from the Rangers and they watched as two of the soldiers stepped out. They talked in Mandarin and appeared to be having a casual conversation, or shooting the shit in military lingo. One of the soldiers walked over to the side of the road the Rangers were on and unbuttoned his pants.
I swear to God if he pisses on me, Kelly thought to himself as the stream of urine shot out a few feet directly in front of him. The Chinese soldier tilted his head back exhaling in delight as he relieved himself. Kelly didn’t move and glanced down to see the splatter hitting his boots. The Chinese soldier jiggled and placed his member back in his pants. The driver called out and the soldier turned around running back to the Humvee. The truck started and they drove away.
The Rangers emerged from their spots and crossed the street.
“I thought you were goin
g to kill that guy,” Budd said looking at Kelly.
“I should have,” Kelly said looking down the street. “Guy pissed on my boots.”
“Urine foot fetish. Interesting,” Clive commented. Some of the men snickered as they entered the forest on the opposite side of the street and disappeared.
Less than a mile away they came across a fence that had been put up. Dallas had a bad feeling about it and decided to travel along the fence instead of cutting through or scaling it. Budd pulled out a pair of wire cutters and Dallas stopped him.
“Why not?” Budd asked.
“I have a bad feeling,” Dallas said.
Fifty feet from their spot, Dallas found a bird dead on the ground. It was nothing out of the ordinary. The wings were singed at the tips and Dallas was starting to think the fence was electrified. If it was, this could have been some of the measures added after the prisoners escaped.
“There has got to be a way to cross.” Clive commented looking at the bird.
A chipmunk was moving around on the ground when it saw Dallas and Clive. The chipmunk ran away to hide and moved towards the fence. Once the paw touched the metal fence the sound of a pop caught everyone’s attention. Fur flew in the air as the chipmunk disappeared and the smell of burning flesh ascended into the air.
“Good thing I didn’t cut the fence,” Budd said looking at the spot where the chipmunk was.
“No shit,” Kelly added.
“So what now?” Clive asked.
“Now we find the entrance and see how serious they are about security.”
The fence might have been patrolled regularly. The Rangers retreated a few hundred yards and traveled along the street where there should be a guard post. A few miles away the Rangers saw the Humvee that had stopped by their position. Instead of watchtowers the soldiers had a booth and a wooden gate that blocked the entrance.
Two men were at the post along with the three soldiers from the Humvee.
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