Survival Rules Series (Book 4): Rules of Engagement

by Hunt, Jack

  She narrowed her eyes, and he was sure he caught a flicker of a smile.

  “We didn’t kill Brent,” Tyler said.

  “I know you didn’t. Thomas has been overstepping the line for some time now.” She gazed at Jude as if he already knew. “I’ve been meaning to speak to him but…” she breathed in deeply. “It took a lot of guts to come here. Is it true, Andy doesn’t know?”

  “Please. If he knew where we were heading, I would have been put on lockdown.”

  “How is he?”

  “Ah you know, just a bag of joy. But you should know that he has a little issue. Yeah. The big C.”

  Dianna stopped walking and looked at Jude. Tyler tried to gauge their reaction.

  “Yeah, it seems like you might not have that problem after all. You know, the one where you’re only in charge of one camp. Though I will admit it might be a hard sell getting them to take Jude back. No offense, Dad, but I think you stepped on a few too many toes.” He paused. “I think I may have even seen your face on a few of the firing ranges.” Tyler chuckled.

  “You think this is a game?” Jude asked.

  “I think you don’t have long to decide what you’re going to do. If we have any chance of overcoming this threat, we have to work together, work smart, and act now before it’s too late. Once they roll up here, it will turn into a bloodbath.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me first?” Dianna asked crossing to the window and looking out. “We could have avoided all of this.”

  “Shit happens. Clean it up. We’re not responsible for your people,” Tyler said.

  “Our people? You were out there talking about uniting. Working together and yet you still refer to them as our people?” Jude asked.

  “Bother you much, does it?” Tyler said sarcastically. “Maybe you should have used this,” he tapped the side of his head, “before deciding to create a separate group that would raid towns.”

  “We had our reasons.”

  “And they involved killing people. Right. Got it. Glad we cleared that up,” Tyler added. The tension could be felt in the room. It was palpable. “So… what’s it gonna be?”

  15

  Hopkins sucked on a cigarette. He inhaled deeply, letting the nicotine hit his system and keep him alert, then left it in the corner of his mouth. Gray smoke spiraled up into his eye causing him to squint as he glanced down at his watch. After Ferris never returned, he figured the asshole had gone back on his word so they decided to scope out the place. Perched high on a rocky bluff overlooking Camp Olney he’d watched the comings and goings, intrigued by the settlement. Not only had they created a self-sufficient community but they had one hell of a way to protect themselves. Domed concrete bunkers, a heavily guarded fence with barbed wire, wood and steel reinforcements, guard houses and a catwalk for security to scope out the land. Something that caught his eye was how the gate was protected. They had steel pipes that had been sawn off at the end and filed down to look like the tip of a fountain pen. Multiple spikes were sticking out of the gate to deter anyone thinking of charging the gate. They also looked as if they were in the middle of constructing a moat around the entire settlement. Now that was crazy but clever. There were multiple layers of protection and that was only what he could see. What else was in place? He scanned the landscape with a pair of binoculars.

  He turned to his second in command, Nathaniel Foster.

  “That’s some medieval shit right there. What do you make of it? Can we breach it?” Nathaniel had tackled all manner of challenging obstacles from armored vehicles to supply centers with heavy security. While each one brought its own set of challenges, Nathaniel was an expert at figuring out the weak link. There was always a weak link, some area that had been overlooked.

  “I need some time but you know me, I’ll find a way in,” Nathaniel replied, jotting down what he had seen so far and outlining a map. Sometimes he never used the ideas he came up with but he had to rotate through a few before deciding.

  “We don’t have time.” Hopkins glanced at his watch and patted him on the shoulder. “You have ten minutes.”

  Nathaniel rose to his knees from a prone position. “Wyatt, you can’t rush these kinds of things.”

  “Surprise me,” he said as he walked off into the tree line towards thirty of his men who were preparing themselves for the first wave of attacks. The rest were back in Whitefish, monitoring and controlling the masses. Hopkins wasn’t stupid, he knew it would probably take more than one attack before they breached the walls but he needed to test them, prod the wasps’ nest and see what they were made of. A lot could be learned from an attack and retreat. His men were talking up a storm, checking their rifles and shooting the breeze when he approached.

  “Remember. We’re just testing them. If you can take out a few in the process, great but this is a short five-minute burst and then we’ll retreat and go from there.” He turned to Davis. “You got the RPG?”

  Davis was a burly man, tattoos covering half of his body. “Ready when you are.”

  Matthews was in charge of the GAU-19/B Gatling gun, a powerful weapon that was often used on air, land and sea platforms. With a rate of fire of 1,300 shots per minute, the .50 caliber beast could make easy work against area suppression and point targets.

  “Right, let’s move out. Once we get close enough, you got the gate, Davis. Matthews, focus your efforts at the guards on the walls, and in the guard towers. Turn that wood into Swiss cheese. The rest of you know what to do.” They would attack from the south and west side, in an L-shape to avoid friendly fire. The goal was to surprise them. Shake ’em up. Hopkins was eager to see what would happen.

  His crew moved down through the valley using the forest as camouflage. Their gear blended in, making them barely noticeable to the human eye. They figured it would be enough. It wasn’t. They hadn’t made it within two hundred yards when an eruption of gunfire lanced away from the camp, slamming into the trees and dirt. A smile formed on Hopkins’ face as he pressed his back against a tree. Within seconds he saw two of his men taken out.

  Over the staccato, he bellowed, “Davis!”

  “I got it.”

  He saw him hurrying through the forest to get closer before he dropped to a knee and unleashed an RPG at the gate. A whoosh was heard and then an explosion, and the sound of wood hitting the ground. “Matthews!”

  He barely shouted his name when the gun echoed its steady beat of rounds.

  Under the cover of the Gatling gun the rest of his men unleashed fury.

  “Now we’re talking!”

  Corey had been having an argument with his father about Tyler when the first shots rang out. It had caught him off guard. Startled, he glanced up at the fence to see those stationed along the catwalk firing to the south and west. Both he and his father leaped into action. There was no need to direct people to where they had to go. They ran through drills several times a week that prepared them for this. Young mothers scooped up children who were playing and double-timed it into the domes. The elderly were already inside, and the few that had stepped out disappeared into the protection of concrete and steel. Corey raced towards a ladder to go up and see. He’d only made it halfway up when three of their own fell, riddled with bullets. A slew of gunfire echoed. Gripping the ladder tight he bellowed up, “Put up the shields!”

  All around the top perimeter of the wall was iron and reinforced steel that was used as an additional layer of protection against rounds piercing the wood. There were handles that could be gripped and pulled to bring up a section of steel, essentially making the top of the fence look like a castle from the outside with rows of metal teeth. It provided shelter that was unparalleled against attacks. As soon as the merlons were in place, the sound of rounds pinging off metal echoed. He made it to the top in time to see Jake Bomart pull the pin on a grenade and hurl it over. Down below he saw his father helping a crew of four men push into place two vehicles behind the gate. Apparently in years gone by they’d rammed the front of th
e gate to test it out and found it unbreachable. It was all a matter of how one vehicle slid into the other like a small hand going inside a glove and providing stability. Layering up had been a big part of the creation of the camp itself, from wood to concrete to steel to dirt, it all worked together to help them survive.

  The onslaught of gunfire from both sides continued for several minutes until it ceased. When it was over, Corey peered through a slit and saw that the militia were gone.

  “That was it?” Vern Halliday asked.

  “No. That was just the beginning. They’re testing us.”

  He hurried down the ladder to where his father was stationed by the main gates. He ran past multiple bodies on the ground. A few others had been injured. He was looking out through a slit in the steel. “They’ve pulled back. Two sides were hit. We’ve sustained a fair amount of damage,” Corey said.

  “This is why your brother shouldn’t have gone!” he said whirling around and brushing past him heading for the main center where the original members would meet.

  “No, this is why he went,” Corey replied, falling in step with him. “What we just dealt with was just a taste of their firepower. If they had brought all of their men, chances are we would be dead.”

  Andy scoffed before coughing into his bloody handkerchief. “You have little confidence in this place. I prepared. They never did.”

  “Listen to yourself. You’re not a god!”

  Andy stopped walking and looked at him. “No, I’m not but I know a thing or two about how to survive.”

  “This goes far beyond. We are dealing with a community. We need more help.”

  “We will cope.” Andy took off leaving Corey standing in the middle of the settlement staring at the dead.

  Nathaniel half-listened to Hopkins on the way back to Whitefish. His thoughts were with the men they’d just lost. He turned his head and looked at the zipped-up military body bags. They were good guys. Friends of his. People he’d known for years, long before Hopkins came along with his wild ideas and vision to build a militia that would challenge the status quo. Nathaniel shot him a sideways glance as he drove. He admired Hopkins’ spirit to improve the lives of his men but he often questioned his methods. Months earlier, he thought they had it made in Helena, Montana, a city that was devastated by the blackout. Recruitment was on the increase, training a breeze and with each new member they managed to expand their grip over the city. Then that asshole Pope came along. His ties to Hopkins’ father, and his wild story of escaping prison derailed their objective in the city. They were on the verge of establishing a force to be reckoned with and then this happened. He’d fought Hopkins on the decision. As a longtime friend, he respected him but there were times he wanted to draw a line in the sand and say enough was enough.

  “We lost two good men today,” he said, cutting off Hopkins from his spiel.

  “And yet we gained some very valuable intel.”

  Nathaniel frowned. “At the cost of two lives.”

  Hopkins lit a cigarette. He sucked deeply on the end and it glowed a deep orange. He snapped shut the lighter and glanced at Nathaniel.

  “You have a problem? Because if you do, speak up.”

  “We had it made in Helena, Wyatt. But here… This could all just be retribution for his pals.”

  “They weren’t his pals. They were inmates.”

  “Family is family,” he shot back. “You said that yourself.”

  Hopkins chuckled as he took another drag on his cigarette and put his muddy boot on the dashboard. “When the government comes knocking and they will, where do you think they’ll hit first?” He waited. “Cities. They’ll go to the cities first, and more specifically the capital of each state. Helena had a crosshair on it. Yes. We gained a lot of good people and we were having a blast doing it but it wouldn’t have lasted, Nathaniel. Eventually the government would show up and—”

  “But you said…”

  “I know what I said,” Hopkins cut him off in an angry tone. He didn’t like anyone to speak freely, especially those closest to him. He loved yes-men, people who would agree with whatever he said. He showed one side to them and another to those closest. “Plans change, Nathaniel. People in small towns are of a different caliber. They’re tough. They know how to fight, hunt and survive. Aren’t those the kind of people you want at your side? Because let’s face it, for every ten men we recruited in the city, only one or two had any kind of skill set. The rest were newbies.” He brought the window down and blew smoke out. “I want to shorten the learning curve. Besides, the forest around here is plentiful. There is more than enough wild game to get us through the winter, and if Pope is right, there is a storehouse of resources, supplies and ammo that would last us years, and believe me when I say it will take the government years before they can turn the tide on what has happened. This country is crippled. And you forget FEMA camps.”

  “They exist.”

  “Sure they do but not up here. That’s why I like this place.”

  “You sure it’s not because of your old man and the Montana Freemen?”

  “Maybe. My old man was as tough as nails. He would have carved out something of his own up here had the government not moved in and thrown his ass in jail. That man didn’t deserve to die in a cell. He was fighting for liberty, and everything that the government has taken from us. No. I’m staking my claim. Putting down roots and Whitefish is as good a town as any other.”

  “But how many must die before we return?”

  “Return? I’m not returning. Didn’t you just hear what I said?”

  Nathaniel sighed and accelerated trying to get back to town as soon as possible. He was beginning to resent being in his company. It was one thing to fight for a piece of the pie but another to be greedy and want it all, and he knew Hopkins wouldn’t be satisfied with Whitefish. What then? Bloodshed was on the horizon and he was already counting down the days to when he found himself in one of those body bags.

  Back in Camp Olney, Corey assisted in the burial of those that had fallen. He watched family members cry over their loved ones’ bodies and helped bury them in a small plot of land that had been assigned as a graveyard. Hammering in a cross at the head of a grave brought home the reality of the situation. Before the month was out, many more would find their way into the earth, becoming nothing more than prayer on the lips of those left behind. As he walked away, leaving the families to mourn, he couldn’t help but wonder how Tyler was getting on. Had they managed to get through to them? Were they on their way back? And how would his father take the news about Dianna? On one hand he wanted to tell him but with cancer spreading through his body he started to think that perhaps going to the grave without knowing would be kinder.

  He crossed the settlement as a group went out to assess the external damage and another highly skilled security group scouted out the surrounding forest for further threats. “Shit,” Corey said wiping his brow with his arm. “That will take some time to rebuild.”

  “No, no it won’t,” Andy said. “Unlike Jude, I used the times of peace to cut down enough trees, strip them and size them for an event like this. I figured he would attack and so,” he gestured to the east where men and women were hauling out large cut trees from the forest. “We will work around the clock to get this moat finished. I want to ensure that nothing gets through those gates. We will reinforce every area inside the campground and double our efforts to improve this camp.”

  “How’s Edison coming along with the tunnels?”

  “Working like a Mexican drug smuggler.” Andy chuckled. “At least once those are completed, we’ll have a way out of the camp if the domes are breached.”

  “They’d have a hard time getting through those vault-style doors.”

  “They would but nothing is impossible,” Andy said, sizing up the walls. “Come on, give me a hand.” Behind all the wood were sheets of metal taken from car hoods. With so many stalled cars on the roads, it was the easiest place to find supplies. The hoo
ds had been flattened out and welded together. It was a tapestry of every make and model pressed up against the log fence. Had it not been for those, it was very possible they would have buried more.

  16

  Danny had survived his close brush with death. He’d even given them the bird at one point after pulling a wheelie. Even Evel Knievel would have been proud of that daredevil stunt. In some ways it was exhilarating. The look on the faces of those assholes as he weaved in and out of alleys, revving the Kawasaki’s engine and zipping past them knowing full well they wouldn’t shoot. At least that was what he believed until several rounds slammed into concrete nearby. That was when he opted to lose them, dumping the bike among a cluster of trees, a few streets away in a secluded spot. Before he fled on foot, he took with him a couple of parts from the bike in case anyone found it and tried to take it. At least this way they would have to hunt down some critical components to get it started.

  As soon as he left the bike, he pulled out a baseball cap and put it on, tore off his coat and threw it away and pushed on a pair of sunglasses. It wasn’t exactly the best cover, but they were looking for a specific profile, a kid in a red jacket on a dirt bike with a helmet on.

  He caught up with the other three and scared the shit out of them by leaping out of a side alley. Erika took it the worst. She went off on him, calling him all manner of names. Telling him that she could have shot him, and that… Well, before she could finish, they found themselves having to duck into another alley to avoid a Humvee that rolled by. Even though Nate was dressed as one of the militia, they still had to avoid contact.

  The four of them had managed to make it to the back of the Tree of Life Tattoo parlor before they were spotted. A soldier, obviously responding to the alert of a dangerous rider on the roads, was jogging south on Spokane Avenue when he glanced their way.