Righteous Bloodshed: Righteous Survival EMP Saga, Book 2

by Timothy Van Sickel

  John and I shoot first, as the fast moving dirt bike crests the rise. The biker continues forward as Jan's 12ga barks loud in our ears, and I hear rifle fire from the old farmhouse train in on the satchel charge loaded bike. The biker falls from his ride and tumbles into the cornfield not more than twenty yards from where we lay hidden.

  A massive explosion ensues as the biker's satchel charge explodes, leveling the corn stalks around us. The shock wave literally knocks the breath from my lungs. I gasp for air, which fills my lungs with dirt and debris from the explosion. My ears are ringing as I look to see that the concussion from the explosion has rolled Jan on top of John. John is bleeding heavily from his left arm. I shout for information from Brit through the mic, but realize, that the mic has been blown of my head.

  I see headlights coming down the lane at speed and regain my composure enough to point my rifle at the headlights and begin pulling the trigger as fast as I can. I see flashes coming from the trucks rolling down the lane. Through the ringing in my ears, I hear John start shooting. Jan's shotgun fires several more times. I vaguely hear fire from the old farmhouse, but the ringing is so loud, I don’t know what is going on. A truck goes veering off to the left, through the cornfield, heading towards the pond.

  A loud crash makes its impression through the ringing in my ears. I look to my left and see that the second truck has barreled straight into our barricade. I see several people leap out of the back and begin to run back up the road past us. I fire several shots at them and see two go to the ground. A bike that had been involved in the raid roars back out the lane towards the county road. More shots are ringing out as I see people trying to run from the crashed truck. I try to site in on those renegades that I see fleeing, but have trouble gaining a site line through the double vision that is setting in on me. Jan's 12ga rings out several more times, and I see some more of the renegades drop in the lane, fifteen yards away.

  My ears are still ringing; I convulse violently where I lay. John's blood intermingles with the vomit at my face. My body trembles from the violence and concussion that has just taken place. I raise my head to survey the darkness of the lane before me, but it feels as if I am moving in mud, moving in slow motion; like my head weighs a thousand pounds. I think I hear more shots ringing out from the farmhouse. The violence of the past minute seems to have lasted an hour, but also seems to have been over in a second, a strange dichotomy of time during stress.

  I manage to roll over, away from the blood and vomit. I see Jan kneeling over John, shaking him violently, then she falls over him, sobbing. My vision is returning, the double vision slowly going away, the ringing in my ears subsiding. I start to realize that John has been seriously wounded. I roll onto my back and try to assess the situation. I don’t hear any more gunfire. I don’t hear any motorbikes. The threat has been repulsed?

  Time to regroup and recover. I dig into my vest pocket and find my small LED flashlight. I turn it on and roll over to where Jan is kneeling over John, still sobbing, trying to get his pack off his back. In the light, I can see that John is very pale, unmoving, eyes wide open.

  "Help! We need help out here! Help fast!" I scream, barely hearing my own voice. Jan looks at me and grabs the light out of my hand as she frantically looks for the wound that is draining the lifeblood from her husband's body. I regain my senses enough to start helping her strip him of his pack and shirt. Blood is spurting from his arm on his lower bicep. Tourniquet! My mind says, now! I quickly strip my belt from my pants. Jan has also spotted the deadly wound and is desperately trying to apply pressure to the wound, blood oozing through her fingers. I take my belt and strap it high on his arm, pulling it as tight as I can, feeling that I may be doing more damage than good, but the blood loss has to be stopped.

  I sense, more than see, someone coming through the cornfield from the road. I try to focus, and recognize Herc, dirty and bloody, heading our way. He is still spitting dirt from his mouth and trying to wipe his face clean with his bare arm.

  "We got to get him inside. He is hurt bad, Herc we need to get him inside and cleaned up! Help me get him to the porch!" I stammer, still in shock.

  Herc looks the scene over quickly and thrusts his 30/30 at me. He kneels down and lifts John limp body in a cradle carry; 12ga still strapped to his back. "Lead the way, let's go!" He barks.

  Stunned, Jan and I quickly rise and start off as fast as we can manage towards the old farmhouse, Herc right behind us, carrying a full-grown man as if he where an infant child. We meet Ken and Larson in the road, heading our way. I holler at them to head back to the house, to clear off a bed for John, and for them to let the main house know that John is badly wounded. They turn and run back ahead of us.

  In the minute that it takes us to get to the farmhouse, we can see that lights are on behind the drawn curtains and shades; the place is full of activity. Brit has the large dining room table cleared and she guides Herc there, where he gently lays John down. People are crowding around to see what has happened. Brit commands loudly "clear the room, get back to your positions, stay alert. We can't have all these people in here, we need room to work!" The room clears out just as Becca and Kim come up from the main house. "Get hot water and clean towels," Brit says to no one in particular, Kim and I head into the kitchen in response.

  Jan is leaning over John, still sobbing. She goes to her knees and prays. Prays that God will let John live, that it is she that should be on the table, bleeding out. She tells God that John has the skills to help the farmstead survive, that he should take her, not John, she prays on, sobbing but convicted.

  As she is praying, kneeling on the floor, I notice a pool of blood forming at her knees. "Jan! You're bleeding. We need to look at you." As I say this, she collapses on the floor, revealing a dark red bloodstain on her shirt, reaching all the way down through her hips and down the leg of her pants. "Brit, you and Kim clean up John, Becca, help me with Jan!"

  Herc, who has been wiping blood and dirt off his own injured body, scoops up Jan and carries her over to the couch, where we begin cutting away her blood soaked clothes. We find a gruesome exit wound low in her abdomen. Turning her over, we find the entry wound, higher on her back. Herc and I look at each other grimly. We both know this is a fatal gut shot wound. Her kidney, liver and lower intestines have been damaged, nothing less than a trauma center, with a first class surgical team, can help her.

  SON OF A BITCH! I rage inside, SON OF A BITCH! Why God, Why? But I say nothing, as I know my sister-in-law is going to die. Jan opens her eyes and looks up, then looks at me. "It's bad isn't it?"

  "Yea Jan, it's bad." I say somberly.

  "I’m going to die." Say's Jan, almost too calmly. "John is going to live. Make sure John lives." She grimaces in pain, now that the adrenaline that has kept her moving, has kept her alive, starts to ware off. "I'm okay Mark, I'm at peace with God." She gasps in pain and takes a deep breath. "Have Becca come over please. I want to speak with her, pray with her."

  I remorsefully go to the dining room where Becca and Kim are working on John. The belt tourniquet has been replaced by a sheet tourniquet and a more proper pressure bandage has been applied over the lower bicep wound. The mud and blood have been cleaned up and his blue lips are starting to regain some color. I check his neck and feel a weak but steady pulse.

  I take Becca by the hand, startling her a bit. "Jan wants to talk with you." I say. Becca turns to head into the living room where Jan lays. I pull her back and hug her. "Jan is dying, She has a gut wound." Becca stiffens and pulls back.

  "What!" She looks at me sternly, stunned.

  "She has a gunshot wound that came in through her back, probably has hit her kidney, liver and intestines. She is going to die. We have no way to help her. No one can help her. She is at peace with God. She wants to talk with you."

  Tears well up in Becca's eyes. She turns and runs into the living room, where Herc is kneeling beside Jan, holding her hand. Surprisingly, both of them are smiling as they talk quietly.
I know that smile, it only comes from the peace you know when Christ is in your heart, even in the face of death, that peace allows you to smile.

  Becca hugs her, sobbing. "Don't cry Becca," says Jan. "I'm going to a better place. I made sure John got here, you need him here, he needs to be here. Pray with me Becca, pray with me…."

  Brit grabs my arm and pulls me back into the dining room. "We have to stitch this wound. Becca brought out these stitch packs but I have never used them. You know how to do this?"

  "Make sure John lives," echoes through my mind as I look at the assorted array of medical supplies before me. I have never done this. The sponges are for keeping the wound dry as we stitch it, the curved needle and thread to close the wound and the coagulant powder to help stop the bleeding. What about the artery, how do we close that? Will it heal on its own? I say a silent prayer for guidance, a prayer I have said many times for skilled doctors and nurses when someone I know is in need of medical care. But I am an unskilled man in this area, Lord please guide us!

  John is still out cold, we have to try and close this wound now. I worry that he may end up losing the arm; are we back to civil war style battlefield medicine? I quickly pray for guidance again as the two ladies take the pressure bandage off the wound. The bleeding is minimal due to the tight tourniquet. I do my best to put things back together and stitch up the wound. Ten minutes later, after a lot of sweat, second-guessing, and advice from the ladies, we look at a closed up wound, probably caused by flying debris from the satchel charge explosion. We all pray together that our attempt to stitch up John's arm has worked.

  We leave Brit with John as Kim and I turn and head into the living room, where Becca and Herc are both crying softly. Herc gently pulls a quilt up over Jan's head, and bows his head, whispering softly his own words to the Lord before he looks up at me. "She's with her Father now." He bows his head and walks out of the room, shaking a bit, as he heads into the kitchen. Becca is kneeling next to Jan on the couch, trembling as she weeps. I kneel beside her and put my arm around her. The violent world around us has hit us hard, taking a good woman from us. Becca turns and hugs me tightly, her tears rolling down her cheeks as she mourns the loss of her sister-in-law, and a good friend. My tears mingle with hers as we hold each other, trembling from the violence and loss of life.

  Chapter 9, Regrouping

  Central City,

  September 15th

  The gunfight over, Colonel Brit, and her husband Ken take charge as Rebecca and I are emotionally drained. A strong defensive vigil is maintained for the few hours remaining until the sun comes up. Windows have been shattered from the explosion, and a few minor injuries need attended to, mostly to Herc. Other than that, the farmstead stands strong. At sunrise, Linc, Herc and Ken retrieve five bodies of dead methheads left in the open from the attack. Two more badly injured methheads are found hiding in a makeshift blind down by the pond. A short gunfight ensues, resulting in a minor shoulder wound to Ken, both renegades are killed. One methhead is found close to the road, a serious leg injury preventing his escape. He is brought back to the old farmstead porch for treatment, evaluation, interrogation.

  "This one will survive, Mark," Ken states. "The other two we found are dead now, they fought back." I shake my head in disgust, not at Ken's actions, but at the situation we are in. Are we, mere men and women, supposed to determine who will live and who will die? I think back and understand that this determination of life and death has been left to us for eons. Until the advent of modern medicine, we always had to determine whom we could save and whom we couldn't. Death was a common occurrence. Modern secular man has become pious in thinking we can save everyone, but we can't. Have we now been returned to a situation where life and death decisions are in our hands?

  John still lies on the dining room table, our stitching job is ugly, but clean, his lips are pale, no longer blue, his pulse is weak but steady. His condition is fragile. Do we move him so we can practice our primitive medicine on this methhead, who wanted to kill us, make us his slaves, being obedient to his evil master?

  "John's vital signs are stable," I start. "Put him on a stretcher and move him to our bedroom in the main house. Keep him warm and make sure he gets as much fluids as he wants. Kim, tend to that dressing as needed, if it swells anymore, or gets red, let us know. Bring the methhead in and lay him on the table. We have to do what we can to save him." I say the last sentence as though there is grit in my mouth. But I know this is what we need to do, but it is hard to swallow.

  The methhead is conscious. He tells me his name is George. He has a badly broken leg from being thrown from the truck that hit the barricade; the one they expected to be blown up. He had crawled all the way out to the road, but his maraudering friends had left. He expected that he would die lying next to the road.

  Now that the decision to help this man has been made, a peace comes across me. I no longer feel the anger that this man may have killed Jan. He is helpless, and needs our help, as primitive as that help may be. His femur is broken, but not compound. The swelling is already distorting his skin and turning blue from internal bleeding.

  "Your leg is badly broken. I am going to do my best to reset it. The pain is going to be excruciating, we are going to need to strap you down, Okay?" Through his tears of pain he nods.

  I go to the barn and retrieve half a dozen ratchet straps and bring them back to where the man lays in pain. To his horror, I proceed to strap him to the dining room table; across the chest, shoulders, neck and head, waist and feet. I am sure that he thinks I am about to torture him, and in a way I am, but for his own good. I take two short pieces of wood that will be his splints and place them alongside where I believe the fracture is. With no warning to him, I snap his leg back into place, as best as I can figure. He howls in pain and tries to thrash about, but the straps hold him in place. Sweat breaks out on his forehead as he continues to scream in pain. Ignoring his pain, and praying to God, I strap down the two splints, keeping his broken bone in place, knowing full well that muscle and veins have been ripped and displaced. I am hoping, no, praying, that what I have done will save his leg, maybe his life. He continues to scream and tries to thrash as the violence I did to try and reset his bone sends waves of pain through his body.

  We need to get George and John into town, to see a real doctor. Our mid-evil remedies are stop gap measures at best.

  * * *

  I walk out onto the front porch of the old farmhouse. Linc and Larson are sitting guard. I fire up a smoke and collapse into one of the chairs. Linc begins to ask me a question, but with a look at my weary face he stops. He walks to the front of the steps and stares down the country lane, where the scar marks from the satchel charge are very prominent.

  "This may sound funny Mark, after the events of the last few hours. But I want to thank you for taking us in. I want to thank you for being a good man. You look beaten down Mark, but you told me just the other day, 'if God is with us, who can stand against us?' God is with you Mark, with us, I can see that, like you told me. Remember that."

  I smile, 'oh yeah of little faith!' I think. I remain in my seat. I finish my smoke and rest, allowing the folks around me to take care of business, guarding the homestead, cooking breakfast, taking care of the children, taking care of the wounded, taking care of the dead. I fight back tears of joy for those that are with us, and tears of sorrow for the loss of Jan. I am conflicted, but I know I must press forward, hopefully following the path that God has laid before me.

  Linc and Ken bury the dead bodies of the renegades in the hole blown out from the satchel charge. My wrecked Dodge truck at the barricade is towed through the gate to be used as spare parts. The truck that veered towards the pond managed to turf up the hay field and make it back out to the county road. Larson and Grace are going over ideas to repair the glass in the windows to the old farmhouse that got blown out. I tell them where there are old windows and glass from jobs that I have done that can be cut and used as replacements.

&
nbsp; I doze off in the front porch chair for several hours. I am awakened about mid-morning by Brit. "You can't sleep all day General! Shit happened here last night, and you need to let those town folk know. As your second in command, I need you to get your ass in gear, and let those folks know what happened. We ain't shit if the townsfolk ain't on our side General, and you need to get your brother in to see the doctor too."

  The reference to my brother gets me moving more than anything else. "Is John okay? Is there redness? Swelling? Let’s get him into the van. Let's get moving!"

  "John is okay, but that renegade, George, his leg looks bad. You need to get to town, you can take them both in. Get them to the doctor in town."

  * * *

  An hour later I arrive in town after going through their roadblock. I stop at the doctor's office first. A half dozen people are there with stomach ailments, diarrhea. The effects of the power being out are starting to be felt by the general population. Dysentery and sanitation problems will become a problem very soon. Due to the severe nature of the wounds to my two patients, we are ushered into the doctor's office quickly. The doctor assesses both patients and starts firing questions at me. I answer them as best I can. He is disgusted with the crude stitching on my brothers arm, but he figure's it will be okay; John may lose some feeling, but he won't lose the arm. He decides to let our crude mend stand rather than risk opening the wound for a better fix. He does hook him up with fluids to help replace the blood he lost.

  He is not at all happy with the situation of George, our renegade patient. "Should'a just killed the bastard." The doctor mumbles.

  "Seven of them where killed doctor, this one could live, we felt we should try and help him live. No offense doctor, but he was alive, so we did what we could."

  The doctor mumbles and weeps a bit. Regaining his composure he says. "I'm sorry. We are all doing what we can. These renegades didn't do this, but they are causing mayhem! It's hard for me to treat one of them knowing the havoc they have caused."