by Benton, Ken
Most new arrivals were unwilling to discuss the details of their arrest or the charges they likely faced. But some were not. Some, like Joel, insisted they were wrongfully imprisoned and demanded to see a lawyer or at least be able to talk to a judge. From day one, Joel could tell the guards had no interest in these conversations. Most were met with harsh rebukes and told to flat out shut up. Occasionally a higher-ranking guard would respond more civilly, but still blow the request off and mention something about not having access to the “tribunal schedule.” Joel understood by this language that they were completely under military law and subject to its processes, whatever those would turn out to be.
Therefore Joel decided his best chances lay in observation and not pissing off too many guards, as difficult as it proved to be. He occasionally asked about Sammy, never getting any kind of an answer but at least not irking them with legal crap. By the fourth day he was a tiny bit friendly with one corporal and one sergeant. He avoided the topics of due process and his own innocence, which they seemed to find refreshing. Both these young men were car enthusiasts, so Joel talked cars with them to pass the hours on their shift. By the time a week had gone by, he’d gotten on their good side. Or so he thought.
Then came the day Joel saw the lieutenant who’d brought him in casually conversing with both of them, all three inside the yard by the solitary tree. It was an opportunity Joel couldn’t resist. As he casually approached them, the image of Callaway saying, “the trees are your friend,” flashed in his mind.
“The Cougar is not the only 1969 Mercury that had hidden headlights,” Joel said to the corporal who never stopped bragging about his classic Cougar. “The Marquis and Marauder also had them that year.”
“Yeah,” The corporal replied. “If you like grandma cars.”
“Guess you’ve never seen a restored red Marauder X-100,” Joel said. “Would give your Cougar a run for its money. And the Marquis are popular with the pimps. I always put some tiger-striped sheepskins in those.”
All three laughed. So far so good.
“Hey Lieutenant, it’s been a week and can’t even get word on my friend you took to the hospital that night.”
“He’s here.” The Lieutenant pointed across the compound. “In sick bay. Doing well, I heard. Should be reuniting with you today or tomorrow.”
“Great. Reuniting in here, or being released together?”
He frowned. “In here.”
“Can’t you get us a tribunal or something? You know we don’t belong here.”
All three soldier’s demeanors instantly changed. They reacted as if involuntarily triggered to disperse in three directions.
“Sorry,” was all the lieutenant muttered walking off.
“It’d be nice if you at least sounded like you mean it!” Joel shouted after him.
The scowl Joel received in response told him he screwed up. A week of work down the tubes, most likely. He was once again in no better position than any of the prisoners.
Dammit.
Joel walked to the fence line and scouted the yard, succumbing to despair. There might be a chance he could slip through and make a run for it. Not too many guards around at the moment.
Would they really shoot him? If he could just make it to the closest woods…
A sight suddenly blessed his eyes as a beacon from heaven. It wasn’t Sammy. It was a man in an officer’s uniform wearing a cowboy hat, walking out from behind a group of trees.
“Colonel!” Joel shouted.
“Hey, shut up, there!” the lieutenant, still inside the yard, yelled back at Joel.
“Colonel!” Joel hollered again as loud as he could. “Colonel Cowboy!”
“Now you’re in trouble!” the lieutenant’s voice juddered, moving nearer. “Shut your mouth! Now!”
Joel glanced around him to see all three guards racing back. They weren’t coming to discuss cars.
The colonel still refused to look in his direction. Joel drew a deep breath for one final attempt.
“Colonel, where’s your pea shooter!”
Strong arms accosted his armpits and shoulders, forcing him up from the ground and sending spurts of pain shooting through his neck and torso.
But the colonel did turn to him this time.
“Hold it there!” the colonel yelled.
The guards held still, but did not ease their stranglehold for the agonizing twenty seconds it took the colonel to reach the fence.
“Release this one into my custody,” the colonel ordered.
Chapter Twenty Four
Joel watched Sammy grimace as his arm sling bounced from the Humvee taking a dip at full speed.
“Did that hurt?” Joel asked him.
Sammy manufactured a half-smile. “Not as much as it would without these meds.”
The colonel, sitting in the front passenger seat with his hat in his lap, said to his driver, “Easy on these bumps, please.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Colonel,” Joel said after noting they were close to home, “what’s going to happen to all your prisoners? None of them appear to be getting their day in court, so to speak, any time soon. If I hadn’t been so fortunate to see you today, I get the feeling we may have been in there a very long time before anyone reviewed our case.”
“So you might have been, McConnell, so you might have been. The country is currently under a state of total military justice, so there is no such thing as the right to a speedy trial, or any other conveniences you civilians like to refer to as civil rights. We’re handling things the best we can, but before a system can be followed it must be invented.”
“Well what’s going to happen to Sammy and me, then, if you don’t mind my asking? Turn right at the intersection. Do we have a criminal record of any sort?”
“I took care of both your cases.” The colonel rolled his window down. “At such a time when army clerks are deemed to have nothing better to do than forage through the mess of paperwork we are now creating to enter into some computer database, you’ll have an arrest record, but not a conviction. In the meantime, should you end up back at the same detention camp, they’ll know it isn’t your first visit and that won’t bode well for you. I would try to defend your home from within the boundaries of your own property if at all possible.” He turned his head to face Joel. “You’ll be much less likely to have damaging witness accounts against you in such incidents.”
Joel shook his head. “Those accounts came from people who have completely lost their minds.”
“I understand that, and it is something we are beginning to consider. It takes time to piece everything together when the world has gone mad. But I expect the testimony of nocturnals against diurnals to be weighed less heavily when the new tribunal proceedings are established.”
“You’ll never get that past the Supreme Court,” Sammy mumbled.
The colonel laughed. “We don’t need to, son. Not until the current state of military justice is revoked, anyway. I can’t see any reason for the President to revoke it, can you? Most big cities have become a horror movie set. How close are we?”
“This is almost it,” Joel said. “Go straight up here. You’ll pass the piece of crap nocturnal commune on your left, and then mine is the next driveway.”
Joel bent down to see if the U-Haul truck was still parked in the same spot when they passed the crossroad. It did not appear to be there.
The colonel turned back to him again. “Right next door, huh?”
“I’m afraid so. That reminds me, Colonel. We had four firearms confiscated when your soldiers took us in: my Glock, a superbly accurate Savage .308, a Mossberg short-barrel shotgun, and a Remington .22LR rifle that is going to make the bulk of my ammo worthless if I don’t get it back.”
“I’m sorry, McConnell. The army is taking a hard stance against civilians starting their own wars. The only one I can give you back is this.” He reached to hand Joel the Glock 19.
Joel sighed and accepted it. “Thanks for this, a
t least.” He then noticed a scratch on the grip that wasn’t there before.
“This is your pea shooter, isn’t it, Colonel?”
“Much easier for me to replace than you now. This your place?”
“Yes.”
The driver turned up Joel’s driveway and stopped after ten yards. The colonel jumped out to help Sammy down to the ground. Joel exited through the opposite door.
“I’ll send a regular patrol down this road,” the colonel said. “As often as I can, at least. We lost a lot of vehicles, too. Everything modern we didn’t get stuffed into a metal blimp hangar. From what I’ve heard, all solid state electronics that weren’t protected are toast, which includes all cars that depended on solid state electronics. Always did like old trucks better than the new ones.”
“Thanks, Colonel. Thanks a lot. Come by for dinner any time. You and your men, with or without you, are always welcome here. Even the patrol who took us in.”
The colonel shook his hand before turning to talk to his driver through the window.
Joel and Sammy began crunching gravel. They didn’t get far before Debra and Mick appeared at the head of the driveway.
Debra broke into a run. Her blonde ponytail flew from side to side.
“I think your new girl is still your girl, boss,” Sammy said.
“Oh, you guys!” Debra squealed. She slammed into Joel with a force that nearly knocked him down. Joel found himself in a bear hug. His arms did not wait for instructions from his brain and wrapped around her just as tightly.
Their eyes met, and before any kind of awkwardness could form her lips pressed hard against his with a passion that changed Joel’s molecular structure.
“Welcome home,” she said. She then turned to Sammy, who had kept on walking.
“Welcome home, Sammy!”
Sammy waved his good arm without looking back.
Debra launched into a news update.
“Jessie and Archer came to get their things the night of the … incident. I made Jessie give me back her key. She threw it at me and called me a name I never would have believed her lips could utter. We haven’t seen them since. I moved into the master bedroom. Hope you don’t … mind.”
“I don’t mind.” Joel glanced ahead at Mick still standing in the clearing, now talking with Sammy. “As long as you are … the only one who moved there?”
Debra pulled back. “Of course! Don’t be stupid.”
This time Joel kissed Debra.
“There’s a couple more things I need to tell you,” she said when they stopped.
“I’m sure there are. How’s Callaway doing sleeping with the goat?”
“He was doing fine, but he went for a walk yesterday and never came back.”
Joel felt something brush against his leg and looked down to see a dog.
“Jules?”
Jules panted in response.
“That’s one of them,” Debra said. “You know him? And where he lives? He showed up two days ago. I’ve been giving him table scraps.”
“Oh, no.” Joel looked back up the driveway in time to see the colonel finally reentering the Humvee, smiling and giving him a wave.
“Debra, I’ll be back.”
Joel ran to the Humvee before it could leave.
“Colonel,” he said through the open window. “I think there’s a problem at one of my neighbor’s.”
* * *
“Poor Parker,” Hal repeated. “How are we going to get word to his daughter?”
Joel watched the army medics load Parker’s covered body into the back of a green transport truck. Jules, who must have already seen his master dead, would not approach the body again. But he did release occasional whimpers.
“I don’t know,” Joel replied. “An old fashioned U.S. Mail letter, I guess? Maybe they’ll bring back the Pony Express to deliver it. I’m just glad to see there was no foul play. Did he ever tell you about a heart condition?”
“Nah. Wasn’t the sort to talk about his physical burdens. Only his emotional ones.”
The colonel shortly emerged from the house and called both Joel and Hal inside to sit at the dining room table with him. There he quickly checked over some paperwork he’d completed, before giving Joel and Hal each a signed letter with his business card attached.
“I am assigning you equal custodianship of this property,” the colonel said.
“What does that mean, exactly?’ Joel asked.
“It means, for all legal purposes, while the current state of military justice exists, you two gentlemen possess and control this property. You can do anything you see fit with it, except sell it. All you have to do is show that paper to anyone who gives you any guff about it.”
“Are you reachable by the contact info on this card, Colonel?” Hal asked.
“Of course not.” The colonel laughed. “But it’s legit. Who knows where I will be on any given day? Your best bet for finding me, should you really feel the need to pursue such a fool’s errand, is to hang out at the Three Points Base for about a week.” He looked at Joel. “Or try to get a message to me via any patrol you come across. Here’s your chance to move a half-mile farther away from that nocto compound.”
“Hmm,” Joel responded. “Did your men search this property? I have a guest who apparently disappeared yesterday. Someone I was letting sleep in my chicken coop.”
“Can’t say I blame him for leaving, then. We inspected the house and checked the property from one side to the other. No one else is here.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
In another five minutes Joel and Hal were alone at the empty house they unexpectedly inherited together.
“Guess I’ll take my other goat back home,” Hal said. “And you may want to build another nest box or two in your coop.”
Joel followed him into the barn, but gravitated towards the spot Parker’s body was found. Leaning upright in a nearby corner he came across Parker’s rifle.
“I have need of this,” Joel said carrying the rifle to Hal. “How would you like to settle it? By a trade? Or maybe rock-scissors-paper?”
“Take it,” Hal said. “All my ammo is centerfire, though I surely wish I had more of it.”
“Which caliber?” Joel asked.
“.308, mostly.”
Joel smiled. “I think I have a way to balance our ledgers.”
Twenty minutes later Joel strode back down his driveway with Parker’s rifle resting on one shoulder, a large bag of dog food on the other, and a new faithful companion trotting at his heels. No one walked out to meet him this time. But as soon as he cleared the last trees, Debra rose from the bench on the porch and came to him.
“Is everything okay?” Debra asked.
“For us,” Joel replied setting the bag down. “Yes.”
“Oh, dog food! Great!” She kneeled to pet Jules, then stood to grasp Joel’s free arm with both her hands. Joel felt her watching his vision as it moved from the seedling crop shelves inside the front windows of the trucks, recently repositioned to best face the sun, to the solar generator set up outside the dining room window.
“We shut the big generator off a few days ago,” Debra said. “Everything works well, almost exactly as you drew up. I confess I’ve been turning it on for fifteen minutes when the water pressure is gone, just long enough to get it back. Baby steps, you know?”
“It’s a forgivable offense.” Joel’s eyes moved back to hers.
She looked at him now with love only hindered by a tiny speck of reserve.
Joel shortly discovered its source. The redhead member of the U-Haul gang appeared, walking out from the side of the cabin carrying a pail. He changed hands to hold the other up before his face, wiggling his fingers and turning to Debra with it still in the air, smiling.
His smile fled when he saw Joel. The redhead continued walking into the goat pen with the joyless movements of a condemned man. Debra’s vision stayed on Joel’s facial reactions.
“He swears up and down he wa
sn’t a part of it,” Debra said. “And that he was only trying to escape before they made him spend another day indoors. I think he may have a slight mental disability of some sort. He sleeps in the pen with Callaway, who refers to him as an ‘orphan of rotation,’ whatever that means. He’s actually really good at milking the goat.”
Debra paused, lowered her head, and leaned it against Joel’s shoulder.
“Joel, I know you can never trust him.”
“It’s okay,” Joel said seeking her gaze again. “He can stay in the pen. You’re right, though. I can never trust him.”
She looked back into his eyes. “Then why are you letting him stay?”
“Because I trust you.”
The speck of reserve vanished.
The End…
Sol Survivors 2 is a work in progress that will only be completed if you let me know you are interested in seeing this made into a series (otherwise I am going to write a yoga instructional book). There are two ways you can do that. One is to leave a review of this book on Amazon and mention it. The other is to join my mailing list to be notified when it becomes available, which you can here:
http://tinyurl.com/lrcl7mo
Meanwhile, I have several other survival-style novels already out, written more or less in the same vein but with varying characters, bug-out snafus, bad guy intellects, weapons, and SHTF scenarios. If you enjoyed Sol Survivors, you should love these as well:
Buck Out: Two Wall Street wizards must bug out of New York when the financial markets crash rendering the U.S. Dollar worthless, ushering in famine and upheaval.
In this collapse-of-society adventure you will encounter:
• Manhattan in all its glory going up in flames
• Financial market melee
• Bugging out by kayak and scooter
• An unorthodox “shotgun preacher”
• A creative way to evict squatters