The bags crossed the threshold of the church and Pastor Eisenbach slammed the doors shut.
Cheers rose up inside the church. Everyone rushed in to watch Chief Howell open them up.
He pulled the rifles and ammunition out, separating them into neat piles on the floor. It was quite a haul. Eight M-16s, four AR-15s, four Remington 700 rifles, and three Remington 870 shotguns to round out the bunch. Most of these weapons had never been out of their cases in the police station.
The weapons were war surplus purchased with special funds handed out by the state. Heck, compared to what some of the other cities had purchased, he'd been frugal with the money. There were rumors that more than one city had an armored vehicle at their disposal. While he never quite believed his small town police department would need this type of gear, he was never one to turn down a steep discount.
"Holy crap," Roy said, earning a glare from Pastor Eisenbach.
"Who knows how to shoot a rifle? Anybody here gone deer hunting?" Chief Howell asked.
Dutch and two other bikers raised their hands.
"Here. Take this and here's the ammo that goes with that rifle," he said, handing out the Remington 700 rifles with scopes to Dutch and the other two bikers.
"The rest of you pick a gun and grab some ammo. You three with the rifles come with me," he said.
Dutch and the other two bikers followed him as he led them to the far side of the church. "Now we've got rifles to match the firepower of those men up on the rooftop over there, but they still have a better position than we do. That's going to change in a few minutes here when your friends get back. They'll be coming in hot but we'll still need to lay down covering fire for them. You take that window over there. You, that one over there. Dutch, you man the stained glass window and I'll fire through the front door. Remember, you're not trying to kill them. Just make them keep their heads down. We'll take them out later," he said.
The sound of motorcycle engines grew closer as the biker gang sped into town.
Chief Howell checked his watch. Thirty minutes on the dot, just like they'd agreed to.
"Here they come. Get ready," Dutch yelled.
He took his position by the church door, keeping a path clear inside the doorway.
Pastor Eisenbach threw the heavy wooden door open and jumped out of the way.
Chief Howell joined Dutch and the other two bikers and laid down suppressing fire on the rooftop down the street. One of the snipers showed his head and bravely attempted to return fire but quickly discarded the notion as an overwhelming number of large caliber bullets homed in on his position.
A motorcycle came flying down the main street and the biker revved his motor, riding right up the makeshift ramp and into the church. The man fishtailed the bike on the smooth wooden floor and planted his foot to keep his bike up. The biker parked his bike at the back of the church and got out of the way, preparing for the next motorcyclist to copy his stunt entrance.
Over the next few minutes the remaining bikers came home to roost, racing up the ramp. Once the last of them rode his bike into the building, Pastor Eisenbach slammed the door shut, shaking his head in dismay at the state of his church.
The bikers joined him at the front of the church.
"Cease fire. That's enough, they're all in," Chief Howell said.
Dutch and the bikers with rifles took a last few pot shots at the snipers, then lowered their weapons.
Chief Howell took the remaining shotguns and assault rifles and handed them out between the biker gang. When he acquired the guns, he certainly never had arming the local biker gang in mind, but he was glad to have both the manpower and the armaments all the same.
Everything was in place. Eight motorcycles and their riders along with several more bikers on foot. It was an army compared to the small police force he usually commanded. These were hard looking men. A band of misfits and outlaws they might be, but they looked more than capable of putting the second half of the plan into action. By nightfall, their town and the surrounding valley would be under the control of Wheeler citizens again. Even if those citizens were a gang of low down, dirty bikers and a drunken old police chief.
Chapter 20
Time seemed to slow down as he fell through the air, his arms and legs windmilling as he reached out instinctively to grab on to anything to halt his fall. He caught glimpses of the ground below rising up to meet him through the dizzying rolls and flips as he continued his free fall through the air. He caught glimpses of what lay below between the flashes of clear blue sky as he tumbled. The trees and rocks next the white water rapids of the river below grew in detail until Jack finally closed his eyes, unwilling to witness the last few seconds of his impending doom. In his mind's eye pictures of Amy, Danny, and Kenny came unbidden in the darkness of his closed eyelids.
The air was knocked out of him and an intense icy coldness took hold of him, ripping his mind away from his family. His legs and arms stung as if he'd been smacked across his entire body. He opened his eyes and realized he was underwater, being tossed about by vicious currents that pulled him about in every direction. He fought against the urge to draw a breath despite his body's desperate demands for air.
He was thrown against a boulder as he was washed downstream. The current pinned him against the immovable giant rock. Pushing hard with his legs, he was able to force himself away. He swam hard for the surface, kicking his legs and arms, which were growing numb from the ice cold rapids.
Jack broke the surface and gulped in a lungful of air, and was immediately pulled under the water again. The raging current carried him along, bouncing him against the rocky bottom and then smashing him against bedrock exposed by the river. He surfaced again and kicked with all his might to steer himself out of the raging white water current. All of his energy spent, he swam through the calmer water at the edge of the river and crawled onto the rocky shore on his elbows and knees, unable to lift himself up.
He coughed and spluttered, bringing up a lung full of water, and doubled over as he expelled what felt like gallons of swallowed river water. His body thoroughly exhausted and wrecked, he dragged himself all of the way out of the water and lay on his back on the bank, catching his breath. Every extremity was numb and shivered violently with the extreme cold. His eyes grew heavy as his body demanded sleep.
Forcing his body to obey his mind’s commands, he willed himself to get up onto his feet. He had to get up and find a way to warm himself or he would be dead from hypothermia within minutes.
Jack found a pine tree with a bed of dry needles and large chunks of pine resin clinging to the base of the tree. He gathered them up and brought them over to the root ball of an ancient tree that had fallen down in a storm. Noticing something in the corner of his eye, he stopped what he was doing and dropped down behind the tree to hide himself.
A few hundred yards upstream a plume of grey smoke billowed out of the woods next to the river. Shane was there, gathering limbs and branches from the ground around him. He, too, had survived the fall from the cliff. He was no fool either. There were some limits of his blind rage in pursuit of revenge. Without a fire he would die from hypothermia, unable to pursue Jack and his sons any further.
Jack cautiously watched for several minutes for any sign that Shane knew he was here, but he appeared oblivious to his presence. It was possible Shane didn't see him go over the cliff or assumed him dead after the fall. Either way, Jack would do nothing to change that assumption.
The sun was going down fast, already half obscured by the mountain ridge. It would be dark soon and he could safely start a fire without Shane spotting the smoke. He would just need to hide the flames.
Looking around he quickly determined what he could do with the materials around him. Jack climbed over the enormous downed tree and examined the hollow elbow created by the root ball and the trunk. It would take very little work to start a fire in the space and conceal it from Shane.
He worked quickly to gather enough firewood to
last through the night, dragging branches and small tree trunks into a pile next to the downed tree. Just before the sun fell he stopped gathering firewood and snapped off a bunch of spruce boughs to use as bedding underneath him and to bury himself under to retain heat. The job would have been much easier if he hadn’t lost the knife in his belt sheath during the fall.
Jack dug a long, shallow pit running parallel to the downed tree and lay the dry pine needles and pine resin along the length, then placed small sticks and kindling on top of the starter material. Using the flint and steel he kept in his pocket with him at all times, he fought against his numb fingers to get a flame started. Eventually the fire caught, and the dry wood quickly became a glowing bed of red hot coals.
Jack dragged larger branches onto the long fire and then stripped his clothes off, hanging them next to the fire to dry. He lay down on the pine boughs and shivered until his wet body dried and began to warm from the fire. Out of danger from hypothermia, Jack sat patiently waiting for the clothes to dry.
It didn't take long for the blistering hot fire to drive the moisture out of the clothes, and he put them back on, grateful to be out of the bitingly cold wind. Once dressed, Jack climbed over the downed tree and peered at the bright flames of Shane's unguarded open fire upstream from him. The glow illuminated the woods around Shane's camp, telling Jack exactly where his adversary was.
Feeling his way through the darkness, he slowly but steadily approached Shane's camp. He had to know what he was dealing with. It took him the better part of an hour to creep his way to within thirty yards of Shane's fire, where he crouched down in the deep dark shadows just out of the firelight. Jack sat quietly, taking in every aspect of Shane's makeshift camp, appraising his enemy.
Shane huddled next to the fire, still wearing his wet clothes, his teeth chattering in the darkness. Every few minutes he added more wood to the fire and resumed his shivering.
From what he could tell Shane had lost his rifle during the fall from the cliff. There was no sign of anything useful in his camp besides the stack of fallen, dead wood piled next to the fire. That put them both on an equal footing.
He crept back to his camp and climbed over the fallen tree trunk, lay down in between the pine boughs to conserve his energy. He wondered what was going through Shane's mind right now as he huddled over his own fire less than half a mile away. Hatred most likely. Blinding hatred for him.
Jack could understand it up until a certain point. If someone took one of his family members from him he would follow them to the ends of the earth. But not like this. That was the difference between the two men. He would never sink to the level of killing another man's son in order to exact his revenge.
It was such a small thing that started all of this. A backpack of canned soup. The backpack of soup that would save his younger son’s life, but would cost Shane's son his own. That backpack of soup was the cause of all of this. Such a small thing, yet immensely important to Danny. If Shane's son had just let him walk out of there...
Jack stilled his mind and stopped the train of thought. What was done was done. Now he had to deal with it and put a stop to Shane's murderous madness. When the sun came up in the morning he would find some kind of weapon and turn the tables. The hunter would become the hunted. He would no longer play Shane's game by his rules. Out here they would play by Jack's rules. Out here there was nothing but pain, starvation, and desperation. He'd been in the bottomless pit of desperation several times on his way home after the EMP. It was almost familiar ground to him by now. He knew he could pull himself out again.
Tomorrow morning he would push Shane to the limit and see what the man was made of.
Chapter 21
The exhaust fumes from eight motorcycles revving their engines in the confined space of the small church was almost as overpowering as their deafening roar. The bikers were armed to the teeth with a mix of rifles, shotguns, and pistols. The tables had turned now and the intruders of their small town were about to face a motorcade of destruction.
"Are you ready? Roy, Dutch, and I will storm the building while four of you circle the building and keep them busy. The rest of you split into two groups. Scout out around the rest of the town and the mountain passes at both ends of the valley. We'll meet back here in an hour and go from there. Good luck and give 'em hell," Chief Howell said.
He took aim at the rooftop and opened fire on the snipers, sending them for cover behind the building's concrete and brick facade.
"Go! Go! Go!" Roy yelled, waving his arm in the air in a rallying motion.
Pastor Eisenbach opened the door and the biker gang roared down the ramp and into the street.
As soon as the last one of the bikes left the building, Chief Howell ran down the sidewalk, staying as close as he could to the brick buildings along main street. He headed straight for the building where the snipers were perched, pausing every thirty or forty feet to lay down more covering fire.
The shots turned out to be overkill as the riflemen on the roof were preoccupied with the bikers circling the building armed with AR-15's and M-16's. They worked as a team, maintaining distance between each man and pausing every so often to unleash a few rounds of semi-automatic rifle fire as they rode around the building harassing the occupants.
He ducked into an alleyway behind a brick building, catching his breath and recovering from the sprint. After a moment he barreled towards department store, now only half a block away, and didn't stop until he was under the awning of the building and right underneath the snipers. Careful not to disturb the broken plate glass on the ground, he opened the door and crept inside.
Dutch and Roy were right on his tail as he entered the building, huffing and gasping for breath just as badly as he was.
"Keep your eyes on corners and doors. Those are the danger zones. Watch your friendly fire and keep an eye on our backside," he whispered.
Chief Howell swept through the main floor of the building, clearing area after area, working towards the back of the showroom until they came to a warehouse at the back of the building. Once inside he saw an open stairwell leading to the roof at the back of the room.
As he crept closer to the open stairwell, he clearly heard at least three men talking in frantic tones up on the roof.
"Ok, let's do this. Hand me that shotgun," he said to Dutch. Howell traded weapons with the biker and checked the shotgun to ensure it was fully loaded. Once he was satisfied, he shouldered the weapon and pointed it at the empty space of the stairwell, quietly ascending the steps.
Once near the top of the stairwell, he peeked his head up through the opening just enough to spot the positions of the men on the roof. All three had their backs turned to him as they focused their attention on the bikers riding around the building.
He climbed the last of the steps, moving with deadly speed onto the roof. He brought the shotgun up to his shoulder and made a bee line towards the shooters. He pulled the trigger and sent a shell of double aught buck shot into the back of the first shooter, who dropped his rifle and slumped forward onto the roof.
He pumped the shotgun and swung the barrel to the left, putting the shotgun's red bead on the second rifleman's back and blasted a round into him.
The third rifleman turned around to face him and was in the process of swinging his gun around as Chief Howell pumped the shotgun again and then sent a volley of double aught into the man's chest from a mere six feet away, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. He kicked the rifles away from their hands and swept the rest of the roof, making sure there were no unaccounted for shooters.
"We're clear. Let's get back to the church and see what information the scouts have returned with," he said. Stooping down, he picked up the three rifles carried by the Long Branch crew and handed them to Dutch, then made his way off of the roof.
Chief Howell walked back to the church, shaking his head with disbelief at the devastation such a small group of people had caused his town. Two deputies were dead and Wyatt was gone, as
well as two of Roy's men. Five of the Long Branch crew had been taken out so far.
"Is it over?" Pastor Eisenbach asked.
"No. This isn't over yet. You have to keep in mind, Pastor, that communication doesn't work the way they used to. Whatever orders those men were issued are what they’re still going by. They don't have radios or cell phones. I can't pick up the telephone and call Long Branch and work out a deal. We'll have to meet in person to clear this up. Until we reach some sort of accord I can't leave town with any of the Long Branch folks running around wreaking havoc. This won't be over be over until we subdue or kill all of them in our town right now and then force a negotiation with Long Branch. The scouting parties will be back soon to let us know how many more hostiles we still have to deal with," he said.
Not long after, the bikers pulled up outside of the church and parked their bikes. One of them stepped forward from the first group and addressed the Chief and Roy.
"There's a group of eight men up at the east end of town on the highway. They've got a blockade set up and fired on us when we rode by. I saw rifles and shotguns amongst them and they're keeping their heads down, spread out along the blockade," the biker said.
"Eight? That’s too many. Going up against eight men in a fortified position would be suicide. All of us together wouldn't be enough to storm the position," the Chief said.
"Same deal at the other end of town, Chief. Another small group of men manning a blockade of old cars in the highway," the second biker said.
"Damn. With both of the passes blocked we're stuck in town. Even if we wanted to we couldn't get to Long Branch to negotiate with the blockades up. We have to fight our way out of one end of town or the other," Chief Howell said.
"Not necessarily. There’s another road out of town. More of a trail now, really - the old mountain pass road. You couldn't get a car or truck through it in the condition it’s in, but you can get a motorcycle through. Moonshiners used to use them back in the day and they've come in handy for... other people trying to avoid local law enforcement," Dutch said.
EMP Aftermath Series (Book 2): Desperate Measures Page 13