When The Grid Went Down

by Nick Randall

  … “There he is!” Mitchum shouted, his flashlight beaming on Robert.

  Robert ran for it, his heart pounding. He dared not go back into the trees, because they had now seen his location and the brush would just slow him down. He had no choice but to run down the road and round the corner that was around forty yards up ahead, where he could hide among the trees again.

  Butler and Gale started to run after Robert when Mitchum said, “Wait.”

  Mitchum dropped his flashlight and raised his SKS carbine.

  “Keep your flashlights up,” said Mitchum.

  Butler, Gale, and Phil kept their flashlights trained on the fleeing Robert while Mitchum aimed carefully.

  Then, after taking in a deep breath and exhaling, Mitchum carefully squeezed the trigger to fire a single shot.

  The report rang through the woods and the flying bullet struck Robert in the right thigh!

  “AHHHH!” Robert cried in pain as he fell face first into the dirt.

  “We got him!” Gale yelled.

  Mitchum grinned victoriously.

  Butler, Gale, Mitchum, Phil, and the rest of the militia started to run up to Robert’s position.

  In all the firefights he had been in throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, this was the very first time Robert had actually been shot. He was a tough guy, but the pain was worse than he had ever imagined.

  Leaving his shotgun in the dirt, Robert attempted to crawl back into the woods where he could hide.

  But it was no use. The others caught up to him and trained their weapons on him. Robert had no choice but to give up and stretched out his arms to indicate he was surrendering.

  “Don’t shoot him!” Butler barked. “I want him alive.”

  Mitchum turned Robert over on his back and quickly disarmed him of his knife and revolver. Finally, Robert had officially been captured.

  “It’s over for you,” Butler said, standing over Robert on the ground. “You’ve lost.”

  “Only after getting your ass kicked all that time,” Robert replied defiantly. “How many of your guys did I hit? Ten? Twenty?”

  Butler promptly raised his foot and stopped it down hard on Robert’s gunshot wound on his leg.

  Robert HOWLED in pain, screaming more than he had in his entire life. Gale, Mitchum, and the militia laughed sadistically, except for Phil who winced in disgust.

  “You’re sure as hell gonna get it for what you did to us!” one of the militia members said.

  Butler finally released his foot from Robert’s gunshot wound. Robert clutched the messy wound with his hands and grimaced in uncontrollable pain, sweating profusely.

  “What’s your name?” Butler asked. “And how you are related to Thomas and his brother?”

  “I’m not telling you crap,” Robert said through gritted teeth. “You’re just gonna have to torture me the way you did Thomas.”

  “Have it your way,” Butler shrugged. “But I can promise you this, things aren’t going to end well for you or your family.”

  The headlights of the convoy, now reduced to seven vehicles and containing the rest of the militia, drove up and came to a stop.

  “Did you get him?” one of the militia members asked.

  “We got him,” said Gale. “And we got him alive.”

  * * *

  The Cabin

  “Let’s move, move!” yelled Marcus.

  The member of the Parker family, each carrying guns and/or a casket of supplies, were running out of the cabin and to the Hi-Lux.

  Barry already had the Hi-Lux running and he and Christine were in the front seat ready to go.

  “We can fit one more in the front, the rest of you have to be in the back,” said Barry.

  Angela squeezed into the front with Barry and Christine while everyone else climbed into the bed with the guns and supplies.

  As soon as everyone was in, Barry didn’t hesitate in slamming the gas pedal and hightailing it down the dirt driveway.

  They had made it to the end of the driveway when Thomas exclaimed “Look!” and pointed out across the field: the headlights of the Compound’s seven vehicles were now emptying out of the woods and fanning out across the field.

  “They’re here!” Susan said.

  “Where’s Robert?!” Jane asked.

  The convoy of the Compound’s vehicles came to a stop.

  “Wait, they’re stopping!” Thomas said.

  Barry slowed down the Hi-Lux. The Compound’s vehicles were spread out in the field about a hundred or so yards away.

  Butler stepped out of one of the vehicles. Behind him, Gale and Mitchum dragged out Robert.

  “They have Robert!” Claire screamed in tears, seeing her husband wounded and tied up.

  “STOP YOUR VEHICLE!” Butler’s voice BOOMED through a loudspeaker across the field. “WE HAVE YOUR MAN!”

  Barry hit the brakes.

  The militia members now began emptying out of the vehicles and formed a line around seventy five yards away from the Parkers. There were around fifty of them all in all.

  “Turn off the car, dad,” the wavering voice of Bruce told Barry. “They have Rob.”

  Barry did so. Bruce, Marcus, Thomas, Claire, and Jane jumped out of the bed in the Hi-Lux with their guns. Susan remained crouched in the bed behind them, while Barry, Christine, and Angela stayed in the front of the truck.

  “I repeat, we have your man!” Butler’s voice boomed again across the field through the speaker. “You see him?!”

  “We see him!” Bruce shouted back.

  “Do you know who I am?!” Butler asked to no response from any of the family members, even though Thomas knew very well who he was. “I’m Lewis Butler, leader of the Compound! And we’re all here for revenge for what happened to my son!”

  “Your son drew on us first!” Thomas shouted back.

  “LIAR!” Butler screamed, his determined voice piercing the eardrums of everyone else there. “Every one of you will drop your weapons and surrender right now, or else we kill your man!”

  Butler grabbed Robert from Gale and threw him down to his knees in front of him. Robert winced in pain from the gunshot wound in his leg.

  “You are impossibly outnumbered!” Butler yelled. “There is no way out of this for all of you! Either you surrender peacefully, or I kill him and you all die in a hail of bullets!”

  Butler drew his sidearm, the SIG .45, and aimed it to the back of Robert’s head.

  “Robert, are you alright?!” Claire shouted to her husband.

  “Don’t do what they say, they’ll just kill all of you anyway!” Robert shouted back.

  “Shut up!” Butler said, and pistol whipped Robert across the back of the head.

  Marcus and Claire raised their AR-15s, and Bruce his scoped .30-06, but Thomas and Jane were armed with only handguns that would be ineffective for a shootout across the field.

  “Mom, hand us a couple rifles back there,” Thomas said sternly.

  Susan, scared, handed a Ruger 10/22 .22 to Jane and a Mosin Nagant M44 carbine to Thomas. Now armed with rifles, they lined back up with Marcus, Claire, and Bruce.

  It was now a true stand off: Butler, Gale, Mitchum, and the rest of the militia members on one side of the field, and Thomas, Jane, Marcus, Bruce, and Claire on the other with Barry, Christine, Angela, and Susan in the car behind them.

  “What’s it gonna be?!” Butler asked.

  “Leave Robert, and get outta here!” Marcus shouted. “We never wanted this!”

  “You know that is not an option!” Butler responded. “My son and a lot more of our people are now dead because of all of you!”

  “Leave right now, turn around, and none of us have to die!” Bruce backed up his brother Marcus.

  It was hard for Bruce to see his son Robert on his knees and at the end of a gun barrel, but he kept the crosshairs of his scope trained steady on Butler.

  “This is your last chance!” said Butler. “Either you all die, or you all surrender!”

&nb
sp; Butler cocked the hammer on his SIG .45 and held the muzzle just inches away from the back of Robert’s head.

  “Surrender or die!” Gale had his Mini-14 raised and aimed at the family.

  “I’m going to count to three!” Butler had had enough. “ONE!”

  “Let him go!” Bruce insisted.

  “TWO!”

  Robert closed his eyes, accepting his fate that he knew was about to come.

  “LET HIM GO!” Bruce, Marcus, Thomas, Jane, and Claire all yelled in vain at once.

  “THREE!”

  BANG!

  Butler fired the .45!

  The family all watched in absolute horror as Robert fell forward in what to them seemed like slow motion. He was Bruce and Angela’s son, Jane’s brother, Claire’s husband… and in the blink of an eye, he had just been shot and taken from them.

  Chaos ensued:

  “NO!” Claire screamed and began firing her AR-15 rapidly, instantly cutting down two militia members.

  Bruce, seeing his son fall, squeezed the trigger on his .3o-06. Butler had been right in his sights and the bullet struck him in the shoulder!

  Butler crashed against the front of a vehicle from the impact of the bullet and then crumpled to the ground.

  “Dad!” Gale saw his father fall and in a rage began emptying his Mini-14 across the field.

  Marcus and Claire fired their ARs at the militia members in a rapid and yet controlled fashion, taking them out one at a time.

  Bruce fired his .30-06, racked another round into the chamber, and fired again, bringing down a militia member with each shot.

  Thomas’ rate of fire was slower due to his injured hands, but he managed to fire and work the bolt on the old Mosin, succeeding in bringing down another militia member as well.

  Jane’s 10/22 spat the little .22s into the night, striking several of the militia members and wounding them.

  Several of the militia members fired back, but most of them instantly dropped for cover in the tall grass of the field or hid behind the vehicles. As before, they were hardly disciplined or fit to fight.

  “Cowards!” Butler yelled from the ground as he clutched his wounded shoulder with one hand and fired away with his pistol with the other. “Fire back, we can kill ‘em all right now!”

  Mitchum emptied the clip of his SKS, inserted a fresh stripper clip, and began firing again. Gale blasted away with his Mini-14.

  “Let’s go!” Barry yelled over the gunfire. “We’re outnumbered, let’s go!”

  Marcus and Claire ejected the magazines on their ARs, reloaded fresh ones, and resumed firing. Marcus had already brought down four militia members, and Claire five.

  Bruce fired the last shot out of his .30-06, taking out yet another militia member, and then drew his Colt .45 and continued firing even though the Compound’s forces were far out of effective pistol range.

  “Let’s go!” Barry cried out again, incoming bullets whizzing over their heads and some striking the Hi-Lux.

  Even though several more militia members had been already killed or wounded, most of the surviving ones were now returning fire from their positions of cover.

  “We gotta go!” Thomas yelled over the gunfire, seeing that the tide was about to be turned.

  He and Jane jumped up into the back of the Hi-Lux, where they continued to fire on the militia members.

  Claire, through tears, continued to fire her AR-15 until it clicked empty and she had no spare magazines. She turned to join the others.

  Marcus and Bruce’s weapons also clicked empty and they turned to jump into the back of the Hi-Lux as well. With everybody in, Barry slammed his foot down over the gas pedal and they took off down the road.

  Gale, Mitchum, and the militia members continued to fire after them.

  One stray bullet struck Bruce in the lower calf near the ankle.

  “AH!” Bruce yelled and almost fell out of the bed, but Thomas managed to grasp his shirt collar and hold onto him.

  Marcus drew his Glock .40 and continued to fire on the militia members, but a bullet from Gale’s rifle flew through the air like a missile and struck him in the shoulder.

  Marcus fell back in the bed as Barry managed to swing around a corner and they disappeared from the point of view of the militia members, officially ceding their property and the cabin.

  “Cease firing, cease firing!” Gale ordered, and the gunfire from the militia members came to a halt.

  Butler was on the ground and clutching the bullet wound in his shoulder while clumsily trying to reload his pistol with one hand.

  “Did we get any of ‘em?” he asked Gale.

  “At least two were hit, maybe more,” Gale responded, reloading his own weapon.

  “We’re in no position to pursue,” said Mitchum. “A lot of us are wounded, gotta get back to the infirmary in the Compound right away.”

  Butler pulled himself to his feet. He could see nearly twenty militia members were dead in the grass around him and more were groaning from bullet wounds.

  From a strategic standpoint, they may have been successful in conquering the Parker’s cabin, but from a tactical point-of-view, Butler knew the mission had been an unmitigated disaster.

  Of the slightly over 100 militia members who had originally set out with him, two dozen were dead and twice as many had some form of wound or injury to some degree.

  Fortunately, there were hundreds of more armed militia members back at the Compound), so Butler took comfort in knowing that he had plenty of reinforcements and the Parkers had none at all.

  “Check their cabin for medical equipment,” said Butler, acting as if the bullet wound in his shoulder was nothing. “We’ll do what we can with the wounded. Mitchum, take four vehicles back to the Compound and gather reinforcements and anything to help the wounded. Be back here in twenty four hours. This is enough fighting for tonight, but this thing sure as hell isn’t over. We will pursue the Parkers until they are all dead.”

  As the militia members began to tend to the wounded and obey his orders, Butler turned to face Robert’s body on the ground.

  In an uncontrollable fury building up inside of him, and to the surprise of everyone else, Butler raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger repeatedly into Robert’s body until every last round had been spent.

  Chapter Three

  The Forest

  Being blindfolded, Randall had no idea of where Joe and his gang were taking him.

  After he had surrendered himself in exchange for Jane’s life, who had fled with Robert in their Hi-Lux, a bandana was wrapped around his eyes and he was then led away at gunpoint.

  Even though Randall didn’t know where they were taking him, he did know that they were going uphill, and he also knew they were walking through the trees due to the branches that he was repeatedly running into.

  “Move it!” barked Joe and forcefully shoved Randall along.

  There were five members in the gang all together: Joe, Duncan, and two other men and a woman. All looked to be in their 20s and 30s.

  Randall thought that if he had any chance of escaping this gang, it would have to be due to Duncan’s help. He could tell that Duncan sympathized with him the most, as the others had seemed to be as tough looking as Joe due with the quick glimpses he had gotten before being blindfolded.

  Furthermore, Duncan had tried to explain to Joe that Alexandra, another member of the gang who had been killed by Randall’s neighbor during the supply run to Coeur d’Alene, had held Randall and Robert at gunpoint and was going to kill them, but Joe didn’t listen.

  After a good two hours of walking, they eventually came to some flat terrain and Randall was flung hard to the ground. His blindfold was removed and he was at long last able to look around: it was dawn and they were in a campsite in the middle of the woods on a hill.

  No less than four tents were set up at the campsite with a campfire in the middle. Randall could also hear a running stream from somewhere.

  “Welcome to our camp
,” said Joe, and then kicked Randall in the stomach.

  Randall grimaced in pain.

  “We’ve kept you alive and will continue to keep you alive for one very simple reason,” Joe continued. “You work for us now. Oh, except you’re not gonna be getting paid anything either, so it’s not like how work used to be.”