Military Fiction: THE MAC WALKER COLLECTION: A special ops military fiction collection...

by D. W. Ulsterman

  Bear paused again, lifting his arms above his head in another stretch before sitting back down on the bed.

  “It was maybe a week…week and a half, and news report says that the Texas Resistance had dispersed…that the authorities were able to successfully negotiate with the group’s leaders and that everyone just handed over their weapons and went back home.”

  “But that’s not what happened.”

  “Oh no, that’s not what happened. Never heard from my dad again. I went back out to where the trailer park was supposed to be…where there were supposed to have been ten thousand people living, and it was gone. Not a trace of it. Like it never existed. Mom was…she was really freaking out. Demanded I take her out there too. She kept saying they killed him…that the government killed my dad. She felt guilty, said she should have believed him. That he was right…America didn’t exist anymore.”

  “And how did you feel about it by then, Bear?”

  “Me? I felt the same way my mom did, that Dad had been right. If a government can come in and bomb ten thousand of its own citizens and lie about it, cover it up like it never happened…that’s not the America I was taught about growing up. I realized then that we were living a lie. That we had given up what we used to be without realizing it. Just like Dad tried to tell us. He was right about the football ban too. The next year the NFL was terminated. NASCAR was gone too. Bad for the environment was the reason. Seems like anything that gave people pleasure, the government was taking away because it was for our own good – or for a good cause, or whatever other lie they came up with.”

  “You said your mom passed away about five years after…after your dad’s death. Can I ask you about the circumstances of that?”

  Bear shrugged again.

  “Not much to say. She just kind of…faded away. Little by little, she just lost her spark. Guess it was the guilt of not really believing Dad until it was too late, I don’t know. Didn’t make sense to me then and doesn’t make any more sense to me now. I had more life to live – I wasn’t ready to give up. Maybe…Clancy told me years later that maybe that’s why Mom just let go. She knew I was strong enough, and she wanted to be with Dad again. Whatever, it seemed like every time I checked in on her there was a little less of her to see. Physically she seemed about the same, but mentally and emotionally, she was checking out. Talked less and less. More indifferent to anything around her. And when the mandates started to really impact every day life…all the government controls over everything…I think it just reminded her again that Dad had been right all along. So it was about five years after Dad was gone. I got a call from a hospital saying a neighbor had found Mom inside the house on the bed like she was asleep…but she was gone. She just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

  “Did you suspect foul play?”

  “No, Mom wasn’t a threat to anyone. She just got tired of living.”

  There was a light knock at the door and Clancy Tedlow peered into the room to ask if either Bear or I needed anything. I knew what she was really doing was making sure her husband was cooperating with the interview.

  Bear rose from the bed again to walk over to his wife, placing his tree-trunk sized right arm around her small shoulders.

  “No need to worry honey, I’m being a good boy. Ain’t that right, Reese?”

  I informed Clancy her husband was doing great – and told them both how much I appreciated the opportunity to speak with him. Clancy leaned up onto her toes to give her husband a quick kiss on the cheek before stepping back out into the hallway and closing the door behind her.

  “Would you like to tell me how you met Clancy? She obviously cares about you a great deal.”

  Again Bear smiled, his eyes softening at the question.

  “After Mom passed, I drifted. Did some refinery work in the Gulf, before regulations cut all that work in half. Bunch of us made our way to the Dakotas. Did rig work there for a couple more years. Then got an offer to work with a crew in Alaska doing a refit job for the North Shore pipeline. We were told it would be a three year job. Came all the way up here and the project was shut down by the Feds after six months. The whole pipeline was shut down just a year later. After that I drifted some more, ended up on St. Paul Island working in a cannery. I worked, drank, fought. It was a tough place but people were allowed to do their own thing. The bars allowed drinking, smoking, music – seemed like the federal government hadn’t really reached out there yet. I liked it. It was the first time since they took away my ability to play football that I was happy doing something for a living.”

  “And that’s where you met Clancy?”

  “St. Paul, yeah. She was working at a pay as you go health clinic…lot of the fishermen used it. Run by this Eskimo doctor. Cash and carry type place. No records. No government bullshit. Busted bones, stitch work…had a dentist there too. Without the regulations the cost was low. The way it could be. The way it should be.

  “I had gotten into a scrape with a couple guys at a bar. They thought between the two of them they could have a shot at me. Didn’t work out that way but they did manage to bust my head up pretty good and it kept bleeding. Wouldn’t close up right. So I finally walked my way down to this clinic I was told about and there she was working the front counter. Beautiful little thing – great smile. She’s about ten years younger than me, but a hell of a lot smarter, more mature than I’ve ever been.

  “So the first time she sees me I got this blood soaked towel wrapped around my head and I’m still hung over from the night before. Sure I smelled like the cannery and stale beer. Not exactly a great first impression. But, as soon as I saw her I felt like we had this connection. Sometimes…sometimes you just know.

  “She takes me to the back room and the doctor comes in and looks over the gash in my head. He’s telling me I should have come in sooner, that it looks like there’s some infection already setting in. Clancy spends about ten minutes washing the wound up. She’s trying to be gentle about it…and the damn thing starts bleeding as bad a when I was first opened up. Just running down the side of my head and she’s kind of freaking out about it. The doctor comes in and shaves around the wound and tells Clancy to apply pressure so the bleeding stops. So that’s my future wife, standing next to this stinking man with a head wound, pushing a handful of gauze on top of my head for about thirty minutes until the bleeding slows down to a trickle again. The doctor comes back in, and stitches me up. No shot…just goes right in with the needle and thread. Hurt like hell but by then I’m trying to act the part in front of Clancy. The tough guy. So I hardly flinch, but you could of pulled a diamond out of my ass I was clenched up so tight.

  “I walk back out to the reception area and hand Clancy a hundred to cover the cost of the doctor’s work. I’m kind of shifting in my feet at that point, I apologize for causing such a mess…apologizing for the way I smell…and she’s just being so nice to me. Not in a fake this is my job kind of way. I could tell she was just a nice person who genuinely cared about people, reminded me a little of my mom I suppose. So I ask her if she wanted to grab a bite later that day, when she was off work and she says yes. Sure. Told me I owed her a meal after putting her through all that bleeding.

  “And that’s how we met. We dated for a few more months and then I asked her to marry me. She said no.”

  I couldn’t help but sound surprised at what Bear just said.

  “She told you…she said no? She wouldn’t marry you?”

  Bear managed a small chuckle. I could see the scar from the story he just shared with me cutting across the upper left side of his now shaved head.

  “Yeah, she told me we needed to get to know each other a little better first. But I always thought that what she was really saying was that I still had some growing up to do. And by then I figured she was right. So, I stopped all the hard drinking…stopped the fighting. I just woke up, went to work, came home and cleaned up, and got back to Clancy as fast as I could. A few more months after that, she said yes. And we got marr
ied. There was the little church in St. Paul…we did it there. Just the two of us and a witness. But it was a done deal, and I was the happiest man alive. No doubt. I knew right then my purpose for the rest of my life was to keep her safe, and when the kids came along, to keep them safe too. And that’s what I’ve tried to do. The best I can.”

  “Is that why you had a less than friendly greeting for me when I came here to Dominatus? You considered me a threat to the safety of your family?”

  Bear scratched the unshaved three-day growth on his face as he contemplated the question.

  “Maybe, yeah, but I’m not so friendly to anyone I don’t know. Sorry if I wasn’t all warm and fuzzy, but I don’t really do warm and fuzzy. I have Clancy, the kids…I worry about what the future is for them. Do we have a future? We’re all sitting inside this damn cave. What now? Clancy was just telling me last night, in this room, that this was something we knew could happen, but that doesn’t make it easy. Sure don’t make it right either. I mean, what have we done wrong out here? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. We keep to ourselves. We grow our own food…produce our own power…take care of the environment, but in this world we are living in now, that makes us enemy #1 doesn’t it? Just like my dad told me all those years ago, that the world we have now is the one that was coming our way. People were giving up their freedom, little bit here, little bit there. Pretty soon, that freedom is gone. Dad was right, and I’m sure there were other people trying to get the word out like he was, but not enough of us listened. We kept telling ourselves that couldn’t happen in America, but it did. It happened right in front of us and…and we let it happen.”

  “How did you find Dominatus?”

  “Dominatus found us. You know the guy who drove you up here, Yoti?”

  I nodded – recalling the cheerful Eskimo who had driven me from the reservation to the trail that eventually led to Mac’s tavern in Dominatus.

  “He was at St. Paul when the Feds finally started to shut down some of the canneries. The ones that refused to unionize. That was a few years after Clancy and me got married. She was pregnant with our second, little Jeanie. So Yoti was telling us about this place way up in Alaska’s interior that a rich old man had built where the government left people alone. Yoti came from the reservation. He is actually one of the company officers for the entire area – same company the Old Man bought up all the land from that became Dominatus. And him and the Old Man are pretty tight. Go back over twenty years. Yoti was a part owner of one of the canneries that got shut down on St. Paul…so he told me…told Clancy and me… that he was going back to the reservation and asked us if we wanted to check out Dominatus. He said it would be a great place to raise our kids. We said sure, and a few months after Jeanie was born, we made our way here with the Old Man’s blessing. He told us to come on up. That was…about five years ago.”

  The unmistakable sound of a large caliber gun firing several rounds gently shook the interior walls of the cave as I heard the footsteps of someone running down the hall just outside the room’s door. Bear jumped from the bed to look out into the hallway and was greeted by Clancy and their two kids. Clancy did not appear panicked, but there was stress in her voice.

  “Drones. At least three of them just flew over the entrance to the cave. I guess Keith is firing on them now…trying to shoot them out of the sky.”

  As Clancy finished her sentence, another round of gunfire was felt inside the cave: BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  I could hear Mac’s voice calling from down the hallway.

  “This is nothing we weren’t expecting. Everyone either stay in the main room or your personal room. I’ll report back to everyone in a few minutes.”

  Bear placed Clancy and the kids onto one of the beds.

  “I’m going to check in on Mac, see if he needs anything. Keep the door closed until I come back.”

  I followed Bear out into the hall and closed the door behind me. Several people were gathered at one end of the hall where the main room and kitchen were, while Mac stood at the opposite end. When he spotted Bear and then me, he motioned for us to join him.

  “Bear, I need you to keep people away from this door – don’t want anyone waiting around the defense room, or bothering Doc in the medical room. Reese, you’re welcome to stick with me if you want.”

  I followed Mac back into the cavern area and then to the defense room where Keith still sat in the chair facing the large monitor that was showing the outside image of the entrance to the cave. Keith’s gaze never left the monitor as Mac began questioning him.

  “Did you confirm the number of drones?”

  Keith nodded slowly, switching the screen’s image over to the area where the Freedom Tavern once stood.

  “Three drones - shot one down about two hundred yards east of the cave entrance. None of the drones appeared to be armed. They’re surveillance.”

  “They were testing the system Keith, seeing what kind of firepower we had. Now that we’ve shown them, they’ll adjust and the next group of drones will be armed. I’d put the eta on that at around ninety minutes. The first batch will also be a test of our defenses, but we need to prepare people for it…it’s gonna be loud and scary as hell. The defenses should hold though. We got a lot of rock between us and them.

  You need a break Keith?”

  Keith shook his head, the image on the monitor now coming from the camera at the top of the hill looking out across the valley.

  “I want another chance to shoot down more of those drones - hate those things.”

  Mac’s right hand squeezed Keith’s left shoulder.

  “Well, you’ll be getting that chance soon enough, my man. Soon enough…”

  As we re-entered the hallway Mac turned to the right and lightly knocked on the outside of the medical room. Dublin’s voice answered back for us to come in. The Old Man remained in the hospital bed, his eyes closed and his breathing sounding more labored than when I saw him last just a few hours ago. Dr. Miller looked up at us as we entered and I noted a hint of sadness on his face.

  “How’s he doing?”

  Mac’s question hung there unanswered for a moment as both the doctor and Dublin glanced at each other. Finally Dr. Miller replied.

  “He still has that fever…low grade at this point – 100.4 degrees, but it came up fast in just the last hour. Keeping him hydrated but when he woke up a bit ago he wasn’t hungry and a little disoriented. Confused for a minute or two about where he was at.”

  Mac looked over at Dublin and then back to Dr. Miller.

  “So – how bad? Or how good? What are we looking at here? Can you give him a shot of something? An antibiotic?”

  “We are fighting early onset pneumonia here, the fluid in the lungs has increased. Marginally, but any increase is concerning especially given his age. That is causing the labored breathing. He already has some congestive heart issues, normal given his advanced age, but it can worsen very quickly if the pneumonia spreads. You likely noticed the wheezing sound during his breathing. That is indicative of viral pneumonia, not bacterial. Normally viral presents less severe conditions and the body is more able to heal itself, but again, Mr. Meyer’s age and already weakened immune system compromises that normality. I’ve already administered him a dose of Zanamivir …a viral inhibitor. At this point, it’s a matter of waiting this out, and hoping he regains some strength.”

  I looked over at Dublin and noticed her looking back at me, offering a slight, reassuring smile as she did so.

  Mac gave the Old Man a long look and then reached a hand out to open the door.

  “Keep me updated, Doc, and if you need anything, Dublin, you let me know. Or talk to Lucille and she’ll be happy to help you out.”

  Dr. Miller spoke up before Mac entered the hallway.

  “Should we expect another drone attack Mac? And if so, how soon?”

  Mac nodded slightly and then shrugged.

  “Yeah, wouldn’t be surprised to hear them dropping on us
in another hour or two. We’ll be safe though. The Old Man had this place built right.”

  The doctor paused, appearing uncertain if he wanted to ask another question. He did.

  “But for how long Mac? How long will we be safe in here? And if…if they breach the blast doors, what then?”

  Mac opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the voice of Alexander Meyer whose hand swiped away the oxygen mask from his face.