John looked back at Matt, who looked even more uncomfortable. “You should have asked first. Jesus, Matt, the kid here is the one who took it from Carnegie in the first place.”
Jared placed a hand on John’s arm, telling him he was beating a dead horse and doing nothing positive. John shrugged, letting the topic drop.
That evening, the SEALs and Jared’s group sat inside the barn since it was the only structure large enough to shelter them all in the absence of the main residence. The two groups remained mostly to themselves after the hiccup over the Humvee, with John still bent out of shape, but biting his tongue on the matter. When it came time to eat, the SEALs realized they were pretty much bingo on chow after eating the few MREs earlier in the day they’d taken from the Humvees. Matt began putting together a two-man hunting party when Shannon stepped in.
“We have food enough for everyone,” Shannon offered with a warm smile.
Truth be told, no one in Jared’s group was really all that worked up over the Humvee situation except John. They’d all seen so much bad from people that what Matt had done seemed small-time. He hadn’t killed anyone, and his reasoning for taking the vehicle was for the betterment of his men and their families. Jared actually would have offered the vehicle to them if the whole thing hadn’t played out like it did.
The SEALs moved forward and sat in a semicircle along with Jared and his people. Essie, as usual when Jared was around, crawled up next to him and took her dinner as close as she could to the man in her life who most closely represented a father figure.
When everyone was getting close to finishing up with dinner, Matt cleared his throat. “Ah, I’d like to apologize and address one other thing.” He glanced quickly in John’s direction before continuing. “That was not the way this should have gone down, and it’s on me, all on me. I’m sorry for that. Secondly, Rip would like to stay with you guys.”
Matt’s last statement caught everyone off guard, and Rip looked like the new kid in school who’d just been brought out for a team, but wasn’t sure if he’d be accepted by its members.
“For the record, Rip was against just taking the Humvee from you all,” Matt proffered in the younger SEAL’s defense. This brought the beginnings of a smile to John’s lips and served to lighten the mood inside the barn.
The following morning the two groups said their goodbyes, with Rip’s being more emotional than anyone would have imagined. Two of the SEALs had gone out early and shot a small doe, which they’d cooked, and Matt offered half the meat to John in a last-ditch effort to right the wrong from the day before. Jared and Shannon packed the meat and readied their mounts for the long ride back to Livermore, where they hoped to find Calvin, Barry and Carlos in good health.
Before the groups parted ways, John had an idea. “Hey, Matt ole boy,” he called out as Matt was about to get into the very Humvee he’d intended to take without asking.
Matt stopped and looked back with a tilt of his chin.
“Thanks for the meat, but I’d like to trade something else for that truck there. How ’bout you take the truck and give us Ray’s rifle with all the ammo you have for it?” John proposed.
Matt turned, looking for input from his team, who provided nothing in response until Rip spoke up.
“I think it’s a good trade, boss,” Rip offered.
Matt looked at the ground, chewing on the corner of his mouth as he contemplated John’s proposal. While Matt debated his options, Denver stepped out from the back of the Humvee and hefted the Mk 13 along with a canvas ammo carrier full of all Ray’s loaded magazines for the rifle. He walked up to John and handed him the rifle along with the canvas carrier. Denver then unslung his pack and pulled out an additional canvas bag with several boxes of ammunition for the Mk 13, handing them to John. When Denver was finished delivering the weapon and its ammo to John, he turned to Matt and shrugged.
“It’s the right thing to do, Matt,” was all Denver said before getting back in the Humvee.
Matt looked up at John, a grim smile faintly shadowing one side of his mouth. “We good, bro?”
John nodded, with a pursed smile. “Yeah, we’re good, Matt. Take care of these guys and good luck.”
Matt nodded, then slid into the passenger’s seat, and pulled the door shut. The SEALs’ intentions were to find a body of water to bury Ray before continuing south until either radiation stopped them or they reached the Coronado area near San Diego. After seeing the state of the country in Northern California, the men held little hope of finding their homes as they’d left them.
Rip and John walked first while Stephani, Jared, Essie, Devon and Shannon rode horseback. As expected, Devon stayed with the group for roughly thirty minutes before dropping to the ground and offering his animal’s reins to John with a guilty smile. John took the horse and swung into the saddle before shooting Rip a wicked smile.
“Fucking leg,” John mouthed silently to the younger SEAL good-naturedly. Even though he’d mouthed the words, John couldn’t help glancing over at Shannon, who just shook her head disapprovingly.
Leg was an Army term, but every grunt knew what it meant. John was riding while Rip was legging it.
Devon fiddled with his gear as if there was something else on his mind until John couldn’t take it any longer. “Go on, get the hell out of here.”
With a relieved smile Devon took off at a dead run, Crank close on his heels.
“Where’s he going?” Rip asked.
“To clear the way,” John answered. “Kid’s the best scout I’ve ever seen. The reason I wanted Ray’s rifle was for him.”
Two days later, Jared and the group rode up the Thackers’ driveway. Carlos was the first to spot them, stopping short before realizing they weren’t a hostile force. When Calvin came around the side of the barn, he gave hoot that brought Barry and the Thackers out into the open. The reunion was a joyous one, with Jared realizing he was more than a little relieved Calvin and the rest were in good health and hadn’t experienced any tragedy in his absence.
Suddenly Jared realized Clarence and his family weren’t with his friends and asked about them. Clarence and his family had never made an appearance at the Thacker ranch, which both puzzled and concerned Jared. In a world as uncertain as the one they lived in, Jared couldn’t afford to spend too much time worrying about things he had absolutely no control over. Clarence could have very well decided his family was better off in a different situation, or they could have run into trouble. Either way, Jared could do nothing for them in the absence of actionable information regarding their whereabouts.
Nowadays when someone went missing, you could only hope for the best. Gone were the days of mechanized search efforts both on the ground and in the air. Amber Alerts and electronic missing persons fliers that could be instantly circulated to thousands of law enforcement agencies around the country were also absent. Jared thought about Clarence for a few seconds longer before shaking the thoughts off and returning to the conversations within his group of friends. A flash of white in one of the pastures caught Jared’s eye, and he realized Devon was back with Crank. The teen made his usual awkward re-entry into the social setting and was soon sitting with Essie, petting Crank, who, while enjoying the attention, never stopped reading the air currents with his sensitive nose.
Four days after Jared returned to the Thacker ranch, he and Barry were inside the barn, sorting through the solar panels. The Thacker family had kept Barry so busy while Jared was out looking for John, he hadn’t been able to touch the solar equipment. As they talked about how and where to set the equipment up, a loud crash sounded outside, startling both men. Jared was the first to reach the barn’s door and saw smoke rising from the ground not more than a hundred yards from the Thackers’ house.
John came around the back of the house and glanced at Jared with a look that told Jared something wasn’t right. Within seconds everyone was standing around what appeared to be the crash site of some sort of aircraft. There was the clear outline of an
aircraft in the charred grass, but no sign of a body.
“We’re in trouble,” John stated flatly.
Epilogue
Carnegie gave strict orders that if the drone were to locate one John Buckley, he was to be notified posthaste. Now, four days after he’d lost John, he was standing behind the drone pilot, watching a feed from somewhere nearly fifty miles from the base. Carnegie watched the pilot struggling with the aircraft’s failing systems, knowing the drone wouldn’t make it back to the base, doomed, soon to be a fiery black mark on some distant California hillside.
Carnegie was watching the feed from the drone, showing a small ranch just outside Livermore, California, where they had a positive sighting of Buckley, but no indication he was in possession of the two missing Humvees. The camera shuddered, and the video feed seemed to change angle.
“She’s going down, Colonel,” the pilot announced as his fingers raced across the keyboard in front of him before returning to a joystick as he struggled mightily to stabilize the foredoomed craft.
Carnegie wiped a hand across his jawline. “Fly it into Buckley. If he’s inside the house, hit the house.”
The pilot looked up long enough to see Carnegie was not joking. He’d never purposefully crashed anything in his life. He’d launched missiles and taken life in that abstract way all the pilots of these aircraft did, but this was somehow more personal than loosing a missile and watching from a distance as something no longer under his control took human life.
The pilot took full manual control of the aircraft and brought it out of its orbital flight course. The pilot leveled the faltering aircraft at the small ranch house and let it fly, neither applying nor decreasing power. Any inputs on his part seemed to be shortening the aircraft’s life span while making straight and level flight more difficult to maintain. The pilot made a series of keystrokes that set the camera in a twelve o’clock, neutral-zoom condition, giving him a realistic feel for how far he was from the ranch.
Half a mile from the house, the drone’s nose dipped, rose slightly; then it plummeted toward the ground. The pilot was only able to partially arrest the drone’s fall toward earth, bringing the nose nearly level again just in time to realize he was dangerously close to the ground. His eyes flitted to the screen, which told him the drone was actually forty-two feet AGL. A second later the grass-covered ground rushed up, and the screen went dark.
“We’re down,” the pilot rasped.
Carnegie drew a breath, was about to turn and leave when he changed his mind, snatching the pilot bodily from his seat. Carnegie heaved the pilot up and over his head before throwing the pilot in a heap in the far corner of the cramped confines of the control center. The pilot landed awkwardly on his head and left shoulder, the sickening sound of his neck breaking rocking the ears of his co-pilot, who sat as still as a statue, watching and praying she wouldn’t be next.
Carnegie knew immediately he’d killed the pilot by the rag-doll manner in which the man’s body slumped lifelessly to the side upon impacting the ground. Carnegie hadn’t intended to kill the man, but he’d also done something so violent and irresponsible that the man’s death was not a surprise. Well, he thought, that line’s been crossed, and not being the type of person to have regrets, Carnegie turned on the co-pilot, who quickly looked away.
Carnegie stared at the woman for the briefest of moments before storming from the control center without an ounce of compunction. He was a man of action, more than willing to escalate the application of violence should his situation dictate. Times and circumstances determined he become the tyrannical monster who’d just murdered a subordinate, and he wouldn’t fight what he needed to evolve into. Carnegie’s tectonic shift from bad to worse would bring order to the region.
THE END
About the Author
Rick was raised in Napa Valley, California. In 1986 he joined the Marine Corps and served over four years with Third Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment as an anti-tank assault missleman and later as a scout with 3/1’s Surveillance Target Acquisition (STA) platoon.
After the Marines, Rick went into law enforcement, where he worked for 28 years in numerous positions such as Gangs, SWAT, Patrol and Homicide before retiring in 2018.
Writing has always been his passion, which he now pursues full time. He draws on his experiences from law enforcement and the Marines to flesh out reality based apocalyptic novels.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 3 | Chains of Tyranny Page 36