by Dana Fraser
“Oh, much more than that,” Daniels went on. “People are either with the program or they’re not. If they aren’t, well…”
“They’re executed,” Cash filled in.
“Yeah,” Daniels agreed, a grin evident in his tone as they came to a second clearing, this one with a Humvee at its opposite edge. “After a while, at least.”
Some guy a decade or more older than Cash spun around at their approach, the butt of his M16 pressed firmly into his shoulder. Seeing Daniels and Clark with their captive, he relaxed.
“Bout time,” he complained. “Don’t know how you expected me to wait this long.”
“But you did?” Daniels said, the questioning lilt at the end confusing Cash.
“Yeah,” the old guy agreed as they rounded the Humvee and the conversation suddenly made sense to Cash.
Two girls were tied together. One, the older girl, could have been anywhere from fifteen to twenty. She was tall, but lanky. With her arms tied behind her back, her chest angled painfully forward to accentuate firm covered breasts that were too big for an A cup but too small for a B.
The other girl was no more than a preteen.
Cash stared at their dirty faces and split lips, swollen eyes and stained clothes ripped in places. With both of them in shorts and short-sleeved t-shirts, he saw bruising on their arms and legs. Reaching the juncture of the older girl’s thighs, he prayed that the blood staining her crotch was menstrual.
“Drop your gear, soldier,” Daniels ordered with another prod by the Browning’s barrel. “I think we need to give you a commitment test first, make sure you don’t embarrass me in front of the boss.”
Cash began to unpack the heavy load he was carrying, putting Grub in his sling down first then layering the water bladders around him for some measure of protection in case shooting started.
The older soldier leaned down and scooped up one of the bladders, careless with the way his rifle swung on its strap in Cash’s direction.
Just out of reach.
“What do you want me to do?” Cash asked as he shed the pack. From Daniel’s gleeful enunciation, Cash had an idea of where this was headed and he made another assessing sweep of the men.
Daniels jerked his head at the girls. “Warm them up for me.”
The two other men laughed even as they started protesting.
“No fair,” Clark said, turning careless with his weapon as he loosened up his uniform.
Already thumbing open the buttons on his pants, the one left behind to guard the girls whined at the same time. “You guys didn’t have to stand around watching them. My balls are going to fall off.”
Pausing in his disrobing, the old guy counted the water bladders. “I should go first. You bring enough to clean the younger one up? I can’t believe she puked and pissed on herself. I coulda been balls deep already.”
Daniels poked at the man’s shoulder with the Browning, the subtle threat ridiculous since all three of them carried M16s.
“You’ll get to pop a cherry next time,” he warned the man then gestured at Cash. “This time, I need to know if he’s on our side.”
An ugly hunger settling over his face, Cash unthreaded his belt, folding it nearly in half, the heavy buckle on its own at the end. Slapping his palm with it, he looked at the girls.
“Sorry ladies,” he said, his left foot lifting to take the first step toward them.
Right before the boot would have touched down, Cash spun, arm swinging at full force so that his buckle slammed across the bridge of Daniels’ nose.
At the same time, he grabbed the underside of the Browning’s stock and viciously thrust the barrel and scope up toward Daniels’s bloody face. The impact jarred Cash’s arm. He dropped down, his hand still on the stock. Daniels tried to get a shot off, but blood spray from his nose clogged his eyes and he clearly didn’t know how to work the Browning’s lever action or three-step safety.
Cash twisted on the rifle as he fell. Daniels couldn’t keep hold of the weapon. He fumbled blindly for the strap to his M16 as Cash rolled and took aim at the man who had been left to guard the girls.
Whether it was too much untamed adrenaline or inexperience beyond being a weekend warrior, the man couldn’t get his fingers to work. Cash shot him center mass, the impact knocking the body backwards. Hearing the shot, Daniels sank to his knees, blubbering mindlessly.
“I can’t see. I can’t see.”
Cash took aim at Clark, the Browning cycling fast and smooth. Same as the guard, the bullet struck him right between the nipples, shattering the sternum before shearing through half of the heart’s right atrium and obliterating the superior vena cava.
The body spun and dropped like a two hundred pound lead weight — hard and fast.
Turning back to Daniels, Cash brought the rifle up. He knew from target practice that the Browning’s barrel was hot enough by the third round to throw his aim off by an inch or so. None of that mattered shooting at point blank.
He prodded the front of Daniels’ face, a small part of him rejoicing to hear the terrified whimper that escaped the coward.
“I wish I had time to do this right,” Cash said, the ugly hunger that had terrified the girls resurfacing as he looked at its cause — Daniels.
“I wish I had more time to spend killing you, to rip you apart one fingernail, one tooth, one broken bone at a time.”
He pulled the trigger, his gaze unflinching as Daniels’ head exploded like an overripe watermelon.
“But I don’t,” Cash finished before turning toward the girls.
They cowered to see his attention on them, the Browning still held at the ready. Catching the direction of the barrel, he quickly shouldered the rifle.
“Are there more soldiers?”
He barked the question and they turned into one another, shaking just as hard as when they thought he was about to rape them.
Grunting, he jerked his M&P45 out of Daniels' pocket then reclaimed the K-BAR. He moved on to securing the men’s M16s. Even with the fatigue weighing at his arms, the weapons felt too light. He pulled the magazine out on the first one and cursed, then repeated the inspection of the other two rifles.
Empty, empty and empty.
No wonder Daniels had claimed the Browning and held on to it so tightly.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he growled.
He shouldn’t have been surprised that the ammunition was gone. The sadistic fucks had been shooting their wads off up and down U.S. 45 for the better part of the last four days.
Leaving the weapons in the dirt, he turned to the girls, his K-BAR out. The younger one started gagging from fear while the other whispered something over and over.
Please, no, please, no more, please…
“I’m cutting you free,” Cash explained, trying to bring his voice down to a level that projected a calm he didn’t feel. “Do you have family around here? Is there somewhere near for you to go?”
The girls wouldn’t answer him, just clung against one another. He freed their legs first. The little one kicked wildly at him but she didn’t have the strength to land anything that would cause him injury. When he cut the rope binding the older girl’s wrists, she just wrapped her arms around the little one and kept whispering that damn prayer of hers.
“I’m not going to touch you,” Cash assured, wishing he could kill the three men all over again. “You need to settle down and tell me if you have someplace nearby.”
They weren’t going to talk, not yet. He walked to the dead bodies, picked up one water bladder and all three rifles. Grub hadn’t moved from where Cash had set him down. The puppy was shaking just as bad as the girls.
“I’ll get to you in a second,” he assured the pup.
Walking over to the Humvee, he tossed the rifles inside and cast a quick glance around the floor to see if there was any ammo. He didn’t expect any, not with the rifles empty, but the men could have overlooked a few loose bullets. Finding nothing, he returned to where the girls c
ontinued to huddle together and placed the water bladder next to them before heading to where Grub devoured him with a needful gaze.
At least there was one soul that appreciated him, Cash thought. Getting on his knees in the blood and the dirt, he unhooked the empty dog food tin from the outside of his pack and poured some water in it before taking a long swig for himself. Putting the bladder down, he picked up the puppy and gently placed him in front of the container.
“Go on,” he said, softly petting the dog. “Take a drink.”
With a feeble wag of his tail, Grub obeyed.
“Keep drinking,” he encouraged before bracing his hands on his knees, ready to stand and see if the girls had calmed any. Starting to push up, he turned his head to look at them.
All he saw was the business end of a very big stick moving at a fast rate in the direction of his head.
Jerking his arm up, Cash defended against the blow, his other hand simultaneously scrambling for his Smith & Wesson. With the stick knocked out of her hands, the older girl reached for the Browning. He kicked at her arm but the angle was off, dulling the strength of the kick. He shot the M&P45, intentionally missing her hand but coming far closer than he wanted.
With the older girl distracting Cash, the little one had reclaimed the stick and was halfway through her swing when he brought the hot barrel of the pistol up to her forehead.
She yelped and immediately dropped the stick.
“Back off! Now!” He barked the commands like gunfire. “Both of you!”
The girls obeyed, retreating with steps that felt measured in hours, their eyes big and round, their lips quivering. They kept backing up until the older one brushed against the trunk where they had been left tied together. Her expression changed as she made contact with the rough bark.
Her eyes went feral.
Snatching hold of the little one’s wrist, she screamed one word and then they disappeared.
“Run!”
Chapter Eleven
The fuel tank on the Humvee was as empty as the magazines for the M16s. Cash scavenged the men’s gear for anything useful, coming up with only a few packages of ready to eat meals. Not knowing if the girls might bring someone back or if Daniels and his team members had radioed for fuel, Cash grabbed the MREs and stuffed them in his bag, followed by three of the full water bladders, the pack bulging to its limits. He fastened the fourth bladder around his body then scooped up the one the girls hadn’t touched.
Returning to Grub, he placed the injured dog back in its purse sling before shouldering the pack.
The dog, his sling and the front of Cash’s shirt all smelled like piss, but he would deal with that later, when it didn’t involve wasting fresh water or standing in the open like a dumb ass.
Satisfied there was nothing left to salvage in a safe amount of time, if ever, he headed into the woods, his route carrying him in a direction opposite that in which the girls had fled. He chose each step carefully, feet landing where he wouldn’t leave tracks when possible and where there were no snags to catch at the pack or his clothing and leave a fabric trace or broken branch to mark his passage.
Stretching his endurance until it snapped, Cash walked five more hours before finding another copse of trees and bedding down for the remaining daylight.
Cash spent the next three days putting as much distance between him and the dead soldiers as his body would permit. The decision pushed him west, where the terrain for the first two days consisted mostly of squared off corporate farmland, with thick buffers of trees and only a scattering of houses. When he heard gunfire, it was at a comfortable distance.
Each night, as he woke to start another long trek of covering unfamiliar land in the dark, he searched along the radio’s dial for Bobby Joe Gallows, but all he got was dead air. He didn’t know the man, or whether he had family, but he hoped no harm had come to him and his.
The complete radio silence unnerved him. If FEMA had been out to a little Podunk county airport so soon, why wasn’t the emergency broadcast network running? Even if reports the government transmitted might be all lies, it would go a ways toward reducing some tension. At least let people know there was some kind of plan or that some of their own soldiers were now their enemies.
He hoped it was only some of the soldiers. Daniels’ comments had sounded like a mutiny had happened on a local level. But the damn election year and 24/7 news coverage had the country highly polarized and ready to split in half on its own without the catalyst of radical Islamists.
He folded his thoughts into the pack along with the radio then hooked the water tin to the outside. Stretching across his hiding spot, Cash picked up Grub. The splint he’d made after rescuing the dog from the farmhouse had protected it against the rough treatment by the soldiers. Without an X-ray, Cash couldn’t be sure, but the way the puppy was starting to hobble around, it was looking like more of a splintering of bone rather than a hard break. Still, Grub would need to be carried for a few more weeks at least. Even uninjured, the five to ten miles covered each day was too much for such a young dog.
“C’mere, chubby puppy,” he said, settling Grub into the purse sling. The dog squirmed happily, licking at Cash’s hand and trying to gnaw on the tasty human fingers.
For a few seconds, Cash could forget why he was standing in a patch of woods not his own. He could look at the leaves already turning yellow and gold on the hickory and larch and see beauty instead of feeling the constant pinch of desperation to keep moving, to keep surviving.
“I hope I don’t have to eat you,” he chuckled, giving the puppy’s tummy one last tickle. “Gabby and Jace are going to love you.”
His jaw tightened at the reminder of his niece and nephew. At seven and five, they would be almost as helpless alone in the world as Grub. Marie had consented to him giving Gabby shooting lessons with a pellet gun, and both children had received numerous safety lessons. But Cash was certain his whip smart niece was mature enough to learn how to operate and shoot the SW22 Victory he used for target practice. He had already drilled the proper stance into her so that the first time she took up something with a real kick, she wouldn’t get knocked on her butt.
Kick me, Uncle Cash!
A grin crept along his face. It was a game they played when doing maintenance on the handguns, their ammunition and magazines in purposeful disarray. He would give her a push, varying from the softest possible to something that would move her a few steps backward. She would point at the pistol with the corresponding kick, name it, then point to its magazine and ammunition. The weapons left over, she knew the trigger pull and kick would be too much for her child’s body.
He would have started the same game with Jace, but guns were the one area Marie remained obstinate on. Some junk ass Saturday night special wielded by a Louisville, Kentucky, gang member had ended her husband’s life. The shots had been fired in a room full of kids Greg tutored in math after school, the program one he had started to provide kids in the heavily urban area a safe zone while their parents were at work.
The gangs didn’t like how Greg’s help in bettering the children’s lives was cutting into recruiting. So they made Marie a widow and Gabby and Jace fatherless.
“Assholes everywhere,” Cash whispered as Grub started to squirm from the lack of motion.
“Okay, brat,” he said, acknowledging the delay and shouldering his pack. “It’s dark enough now.”
He started walking, the last of the sunlight orienting his steps southward. Navigation became sketchy as the hours rolled by. The foliage was dense enough to block out the stars and he didn’t know how many football fields or miles he would have to walk to reach a clearing.
Cash mused that it might be time to start edging along U.S. 45 again — if he could find it in the dark.
Stopping for lunch at midnight, he opened the last tin of dog food for Grub and filled the empty one with water.
His own food stores weren’t that bad, yet. He had stuck
with the protein bars while the puppy’s food hadn’t been exhausted. Once he needed more soft food for Grub, they could share the MREs.
And be constipated together.
He laughed, no sound leaving him. The soldiers he’d served with hadn’t nicknamed the Army’s nutritional offering things like “Meals Refusing to Exit” or “Meals Requiring Enemas” without good reason.
Cash pulled on a full water bladder then loaded up with the rest of his equipment. With only one remaining filled bladder, he would have to risk some daylight travel if he didn’t stumble upon a water source before morning.
Grub squatted next to a tree, doing his business, so Cash pulled out his compass and risked using its built in light. Finding true north, he picked up the puppy and headed east, stopping to check the compass every two thousand steps since there were no visible landmarks he could fix on in the woods.
Just trees, trees and more trees.
Near dawn, his ears picked up a welcome trickling sound. He had known the Little Wabash River was around him someplace, but it traveled a meandering path in this part of the country and had proved elusive.
Trying to keep his enthusiasm from making him careless of being spotted, he followed the sound, stopping every hundred feet or so to make sure no one was about.
Like roads, waterways attracted travelers.
He couldn’t be careless again. His capture at the tanks should have ended his life.
After another fifteen minutes of walking, scouting and walking some more, he came to the river bank. The sky was early morning purple. Hiding his pack and Grub in the trees, he dipped down with the empty water bladders and his rifle.
With the bladders full, he quickly returned to his gear and the dog, loaded everything up and started moving east at a cautious pace in case anyone had seen him.
A solid tracker, he tried to move without making the mistakes that someone like him could use to locate a person. It wasn’t easy, especially when he was carrying so much weight and the earth was soft from the dew that had soaked into it overnight.