Renewal 10 - Blind Force

by Jf Perkins

  Bill seemed unaffected by the mess, and Terry leaned on his leader’s strength to gather himself, to step into the blood-soaked patch of earth. Once the shock had passed, Terry felt a little better. He realized that the remains extended into the trees. Blood dripped from nearby platforms and streaked down the bullet ridden walls of the training headquarters farther into the woods. Terry caught glimpses of unmoving limbs dangling over wooden edges. In the deeper surrounds, Terry spotted single bodies in several places, and caught his dropping stomach again as he suddenly understood that those were his people, dead on the forest floor.

  “Hey, Bill,” Kirk said in greeting. “I was just showing Mr. Tucker his handiwork.” Kirk turned Gary around, exposing Terry to a view of the Junior Dragon’s hand. It looked almost shredded, and Terry wondered how that had happened.

  “Hello, Kirk. How’d we do?” Bill asked.

  “We lost some, Bill, but in the grand scheme of things, we did well. In our four layers of defense, these jerks didn’t even get past layer one,” Kirk replied with a grim look of satisfaction.

  “Good work. What happened to the prisoners?” Bill asked, casting his eyes around the platforms in the trees.

  “Junior’s people cut them to ribbons. We have eight survivors, though. They are pretty messed up in the head right now.”

  “Did the Jenkins boy make it?”

  “No, Bill. He didn’t. Nobody on the front platforms made it. Only some of the Dragons you brought in.”

  Now Bill looked sick. He took a couple of deep breaths. “I can’t talk to this guy right now. Let’s just load him in the truck.”

  Kirk walked Gary over to the truck and shoved him into the cargo box. He jumped up and removed Gary’s handcuff from one wrist, attaching it to the tubular leg of the steel bench running the length of the truck bed. He retrieved another set of cuffs from his vest and attached the other wrist to the same tube. Gary tried to sit on the bench, but found himself straining his forearms against the hard metal bench. He slid to the floor and faced away from the men outside. Wherever Bill intended to take him, it would be an uncomfortable ride.

  Kirk dropped to the ground and latched the doors to the truck. He stepped back over to Bill and seemed to notice Terry for the first time. “You ok, Terry?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right. This is just a terrible mess, that’s all.”

  “It really is. It could have been a lot worse, though,” Kirk said.

  “Yeah. It could have been us piled up like that.”.

  Kirk gave Terry a gentle slap to the shoulder. “It never gets easier. We just learn to ignore it longer.” Kirk turned to his younger brother. “What’s next?”

  “We have any wounded?”

  “I sent them to town twenty minutes ago. Nothing life threatening.”

  “Ok. Well, I guess we’d better get started on the cleanup. Let’s bring our people down to the north barn until Sue can decide how to handle it. Get me a list so I can talk to the families,” Bill said with real sadness and fatigue.

  “I’ll do it, Bill. They’re my people, my responsibility.”

  Bill was surprised. Kirk was never one to handle the human side of his job. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah... I never let it show, but I loved all of them. It’s only right.”

  It was Bill’s turn to drop a comforting hand on a shoulder. Kirk took it with tear-filled eyes. “All right, my brother. I’m sorry to leave you to it, but we have one more piece of business. Wyatt.”

  “Wyatt Jenkins? I figured he was in this pile somewhere,” Kirk said with his first real surprise of the morning.

  “Nope. He’s sitting in the middle of the road with his men. I’ll let you know, ok?”

  “Ok, Bill. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Big Brother. See you later.”

  Bill and Terry turned to the truck to leave. They took a couple of steps before Kirk called out, “Hey, Bill. What about the rest of these bodies?”

  “Bulldozers and backhoes, Kirk. I’m thinking the schoolyard. No one wants to go there anyway.” With that, Bill levered himself up into Big Bertha.

  Terry started the engine once again and backed slowly out of the woods. He was able to take a final look at the ugly price of battle and decided that combat was to be avoided at all cost.

  The chow line was still underway up at the barn, and the men of Manchester were most likely eating right in front of the prisoners. Most of them had been relieved to avoid the fighting, but there were always a few who would take any kind of pain they could inflict.

  Terry pulled out on Blanton Chapel Road and turned left. He drove to the edge of the crowd of guardsmen and killed the ignition. Bill was out the door before Terry was able to finish his methodical check of Big Bertha. He risked a glance over his shoulder into the cargo box. Gary Tucker was looking back at him, but there was really nothing in the look. The man was blank. Terry slid the steel armor over the back window and dropped to the ground.

  Bill was working his way through the guardsmen when Terry caught up. Bill had complete respect from his men. They moved out of his way immediately. The surprising part was that Terry was becoming something of a legend himself, and he was afforded the same respect. Wyatt Jenkins and his men were sitting on the rough pavement, completely unbound. There seemed to be no need.

  “Morning, Wyatt. What brings you to these parts?” Bill acted like he had run into the man by chance, in the feed store in town.

  “Pure stupidity, I reckon,” Wyatt replied without a hint of irony.

  “I hear that you snuck away from Gary’s army just before the fighting started. You laid down your weapons in the grass over there, and you walked out to the road and sat down.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what we did.”

  “May I ask why?” Bill rubbed his jaw and stared at Wyatt as if he could guess the answer.

  “Well, sir. Lots of reasons. Some of it had to do with what I’ve done. Some of it was what George Talley said. I was purely pissed off at the time, but I’ve had time to think and George was right. But mostly, I reckon it was Gary Tucker. Even by my family’s standards, that man is an asshole.”

  A muted chuckle stuttered through the assembled men.

  “No argument there,” Bill agreed with a tight smile. “Well, you may have been stupid to come out here, but you were smart to get away when you did. Gary’s army is gone. Gary’s home is gone if I know Charlie Bell. Which reminds me... You’ll be meeting Mr. Bell very soon. He’s the man who prosecutes the criminals in this state.”

  “That seems fair,” Wyatt said, looking as lost as he felt.

  “I’ll tell you what, Wyatt. Down the road, I’d rather work with you than against you, and that’s more than I can say about your father. I’m going to turn you over to the State, but I’m also going to put in a good word for you. If you can agree that the old ways are over and that you will play fair with the people of this county, I’ll try to make them go easy on you. Deal?”

  “It’s a deal, Mr. Carter.”

  “Good. Now stand up and shake my hand on it.”

  Wyatt rose stiffly to his feet. The pattern of rocky pavement was imprinted on his hands and the seat of his pants. He brushed his hands together to shed the black and gray particles, and took Bill’s hand. Bill started the gesture and Wyatt kept it going. Tears fell from his eyes as he released an ocean of pressure that he didn’t realize he was holding back. His mind knew it was over, but his heart only knew that he would not be alone. Bill stopped the motion and gave Wyatt one final squeeze before releasing his hand. The Teeny Town guardsmen began to clap their hands together and soon, Wyatt’s men joined the applause.

  Bill waited for the clapping to subside. “Two more things... There’s a catch I forgot to mention. You’ll be riding with Gary Tucker. Sorry about that. And... the rest of you men, go home and stay out of trouble. Stay on the road, take your trucks. We are watching.”

  Chapter 10 – 15

  Sally B. Carter was angry. She h
ad trained for half her young life to be in the guard. She had beaten most of the boys in every individual measure of performance, and almost all of them in her overall skills. If anyone needed to be in the battle that the community had prepared to fight for her entire life, it was Sally. Instead, she had been stuck back on barn defense, the inner ring of Teeny Town’s fighting system. Instead of working in the field, she was stuck on the roof of a barn with the other women of the guard and eight muscle bound idiots whose sole skill was having the brawn to control a Gatlin cannon at full gallop.

  The other side of her anger was the full understanding that, after her first kills, she was not nearly as mad as she wanted to be. Part of her was indignant at being stuck with the girls, and the other part was completely thankful that she was in no position to kill anyone else. In the end, her pride was wounded, but her soul had taken no damage from the fight.

  It was a pointless metal argument anyway. She knew her father’s philosophy about women in combat. He would never stop a woman from doing what she wanted to do, but he would darn well pull the strings to keep her safe. Deep down, she could not help feeling happy about it. That acknowledgement dissolved periodically with her frustration at having no idea what was happening beyond the bowl of Teeny Town’s little valley. She paced. She growled at her friends. She occasionally stood on her tiptoes as if she would finally be able to see the fields where all the action was occurring, but every time, her toes were the exact same length.

  Runners came by periodically to bring water and food, but none of Aggie’s runners were in the tactical loop. Sally did her best not to scream at them for failing to know what she wanted. After the sun came up and started to bake the rooftops, she settled for her own form of patience, which was more a conservation of energy for whatever lay ahead. It was a tough skill for her, learned only from the universal truth of any fighting organization. Even Teeny Town’s tiny guard was subject to that law. Hurry up and wait. If you can’t wait, you’re in the wrong business, and Sally knew it as well as she despised it.

  Her angry mental loops were interrupted by the sound of a diesel roaring at the end of the western access road. She caught a glimpse of Big Bertha’s shiny roof through the gaps in the fencerow trees, and her impatience dissolved. Terry was coming. Only in that moment was she aware of the tension of worry for him that had plagued her all night. Her excitement intensified as the truck passed through the gate and rolled down the hill. She tried to look right through the barn roof as Big Bertha slid through the double doors almost beneath her feet. She heard the engine rattle to a halt and the sounds of shuffling feet, doors slamming, and orders being spoken. Impatient Sally might be, but undisciplined she was not. She wanted desperately to run down the stairs, to see for herself that Terry was unhurt, but she could not leave until given the order to stand down. She would not.

  The footsteps on the wooden stairs drove her half insane. Faster, she thought. So slow. It seemed like final training exams as she waited for those feet to arrive. When her father’s head appeared in the opening, she felt a moment of intense disappointment, and then guilt. It was her father, safe and sound. Be happy, she told herself. A few seconds later, Terry showed right behind her father, and she had no further trouble with the full onslaught of happiness that brought tears to her eyes.

  “Stand down, folks. It’s over,” Bill said as his daughter flew past. The first thought he had time to formulate was the fear that she would knock Terry right off the barn roof. Terry had some practice with Sally’s attack-style greetings and managed to brace himself before the impact. He stopped her momentum with practiced ease and lifted her on the rebound. The rest of the people on the roof pretended to look the other way as Terry thoughtfully spun her around while moving her away from the long fall at the edge. Bill grinned helplessly as the young pair lost themselves in each other.

  “Terry Shelton,” she said with a challenge. “Are you ok?”

  “I’m fine, Sally Carter. Not a scratch.”

  “I was worried.”

  Terry set her feet back on the platform and gasped in comic shock. “You were worried about me? Me?” Terry placed his hand on her forehead, pantomiming a check for fever.

  Sally slapped his hand away playfully. “No, really. I was. I’m so happy you’re all right.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Sally. You know I’ll always come back to torture you some more.”

  “You will?” she asked, dropping her smile for a more serious, wide-eyed expression.

  “Will what?”

  “Torture me... Forever.”

  Terry paused to let his own smile drop. In that space of time, he knew the answer. “I will.”

  Three people knew what was really being said on the barn roof. Two of them were wrapped up in a happy embrace. The third was trying to hide the fact that he was crying tears of real joy.

  Chapter 10 – 16

  The aftermath made the battle seem easy by comparison. Bill arranged for the Manchester volunteers to ride home in style. He checked that food would be released from the stores to go home with the men for their families. He had Kirk send the remaining Dragons home. Bill didn’t really care what happened to them; he just wanted them to go away before he started feeling obligated to feed them. If Tam Rogers used them for sport in Bedford County, that was her choice. He checked on the cleanup operations, which were being handled perfectly by John Hall. John’s father was having a field day with the heavy equipment over at Hickerson Station and had managed to dig a pit that hit the bedrock of the ridge. A combination of guards and engineers would be handling the Dragon dead all day.

  Finally, Bill managed a few moments of private time with his wife, and shared the events from the roof of the barn. Many times in the past they had seen young men come and go, usually with their tails tucked firmly between their legs. Bill and Aggie had turned Sally’s inability to find a boyfriend into a fatalistic joke, usually at Kirk’s expense, since he was the other celibate warrior monk in the family. The news cut right through all the old jokes and had Aggie practically dancing with happiness. Bill reminded her to calm down before she ran through the center of town shouting the news.

  “It’s their business to say,” he told Aggie.

  “I know, I know, I know...” This was accompanied by rapid bunny hops on the kitchen floor.

  “Ok, let’s just sit down before you throw a rod or something. I know just the place.”

  Bill led his wife out the back door and handed her into the old swing with a flourish. He sat down beside her and pushed the swing into a gentle rocking motion. He kept the rhythm steady until Aggie finally retracted her claws from his arm and began to calm down. After ten minutes of swinging under the hot August sun with his beloved Aggie leaning her head on his shoulder, Bill said, “I love you, Aggie, but I’ve got to go.”

  “What? Where? You can’t go anywhere. You haven’t slept for two days.”

  “I promise, after I get back, I’ll sleep for two full days. You’ll kick me out of bed before I get caught up.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got two guests for Charlie Bell.”

  “Why can’t you send someone else? Why can’t you wait?”

  “It’s going to be a complicated talk about the future. I could wait, but I want to finish this thing. We’ve been living under this gun long enough. I’m ready to put it behind us and get on with the real work. While I’m gone, you need to keep an eye on the funeral arrangements. We lost some people today, and I don’t even know who.”

  “No rest for the weary,” Aggie said.

  “Soon enough, My Dear. Soon enough.”

  After they left to stare endless responsibility in the face, the swing continued to rock back and forth, keeping time on Bill and Aggie’s lives.

  ***

  Bill rode in his usual shotgun seat with his rifle tucked in the clips on the door. Terry was still driving, but he was beginning to feel the effects of fatigue, and hoped that he would not fall asleep
on the road to Murfreesboro. Seth was in the back with the two prisoners, riding the line between big and friendly and big and scary. Big Bertha was flanked by two duplicate trucks belonging to the ten state police officers who had come to Teeny Town to assist in the fight. All of them had been involved in Kirk’s group during the fight, and two of them had caught bullets in the luckiest way possible. One officer had been grazed on the calf, and another across the top of his shoulder. The rest felt even more fortunate, not just because they had come through untouched, but because they had learned more while working a short time with Kirk than they had learned in the entire training program that the State offered its police.

  Bill sighed as they passed through Beech Grove. The place reminded him of Larry Harris and his people, and how much work would go into to getting them up and running. Larry had ended up supplying a number of fighters to group two, including his own two sons. Not one of the boys from Beech Grove had passed Kirk’s stricter standard and that was fine with Bill. He owed Larry’s people enough as it was. Terry respected Bill’s lost-in-thought mood and tried not to fall asleep in the silent cab, but he couldn’t help but wish for a conversation, or even better, more of the story.

  The trip was mercifully short from Bill’s subjective measure of time. Before long, they reached the edge of Murfreesboro, and Terry was thankful for the distraction of following the lead truck through the busy streets. He couldn’t help thinking that these people were safe on the concrete sidewalks of their town, while forty miles away, an entire battle had been fought in the early hours of the morning. It was difficult for him to connect the two worlds together.

  He pondered the disconnect until the lead truck pulled to a stop in front of the police headquarters building. Terry took his place in the line, and waited in the cab while Bill and Seth did the talking and handling of the prisoners. In less than five minutes, Bill climbed back into the truck and slid to the middle of the seat. Seth bounded up behind him and took over the window seat.