by J. B. Craig
Both Kim and Luis said, “Honor System” at the exact same time. Kim continued for both of them, “When you’ve been shot at, and lived through it with someone who was also being shot at, you don’t really care to cheat each other out of a few points. We all watch each other’s back, so after that, who needs a Scrabble Dictionary?”
“Touche! Kim. Nice to meet you both. Looks like Angel is already looking for me.”
Angel was indeed walking down the road to a barn in the distance. Pete had to jog to catch up. “What next, Angel?”
“You see that barn?”
“Si, Angel. I see it.”
“Do you see the hunting rifle pointed vaguely at you from the loft?”
After Pete’s butt puckered a few points, he looked hard, and said, “Nope.”
“That’s the plan, Amigo.” Angel stopped, held his rifle over his head in a T-shape, and a guy stepped up out of the straw, waving his large sniper rifle over his head in the T. The two men continued to approach, when the older man yelled, “Hey, Manito! Que Pasa?”
The guys spoke in Spanish for a while. It sounded like an update, with lots of “Nada” in the report. Angel pointed to Pete. “Es Peter. He’s living with Jefe now. I think he looks at Jefe’s baby a little too much. Maybe we take his eyes, eh?”
Pete smiled up at the man introduced as Bill, hoping for a smile back. He noticed that, Like Angel, the smile stopped at his eyes, until Bill winked and laughed out loud. “Nah, I don’t want to face Greg’s daughter, if half the stories about their ‘Captain’ are true!”
Pete looked up at Bill. “Um, good choice, Mr. Bill. I am way more afraid of her than I am of you 2, and youtwoscare the shit out of me.
“Okay, Amigo. You know how to drive a motorcycle?”, asked Angel.
“Nope, I can drive a stick, though – some of the units at work were stick-shift.
“Okay, then you ride the 4-wheeler.” Make sure to grab that empty backpack with it and have bungee cords on the rack. We’re going scavenging. We have to go farther from Tappahannock than ever, so make sure your weapon is loaded, and safe. And I see your Glock in the belt. The 4-wheeler is automatic. You start it here…”
“I got this, Angel. I had one of these on the ranch in Oklahoma.” He promptly started it up, and rode a wheelie across the road, turning around down an embankment, jumping back up it, and driving back to Angel. “Yeah, like riding a bike. I’m good, Angel.”
“Angel looked at Bill. Call it in, Salvage run, should be back by midnight. He tossed up his shift-leader walkie-talkie to Bill and pulled the police radio from his almost-empty backpack. “Radio Check, Night Rock actual to all stations, over?”
4 walkie talkies all clicked the affirmative, by some pre-ordained order. “Okay, Rookie, let’s go shopping! Both tanks are filled up, so let’s go find some pretty things for the ladies… Oh, and food too!”
Pete laughed, and followed Angel down the road, passing a burned down convenience store, and then long stretches of fields, with wet drainage ditches often on both sides of the road. Angel’s Harley was one of the bigger ones, with the buckets on the side, so he figured that between their backpacks, the buckets on the bike, and the tie-down stand behind him, they might be able to move close to 200 lbs of whatever they found, give-or-take.
As they drove towards the small river town of Tappahannock, on the Rappahannock River, Pete saw Angel pointing at houses with Red X’s spray painted on them. Through hand signals, and some shouted words, he understood that these had been salvaged already, and marked if anything of use remained. Occasionally, they would pass houses with smoke coming from their chimneys, or with the dim glow of a fire, or oil lamp flickering in the windows. Once in a while, a citizen would emerge from the houses, look to see who was coming, then raise their rifle in a T over their head, while waving with the other hand. Eventually they got to the approach road into Warsaw. As they approached a ruined McDonalds on the Left, Angel flashed his headlights in a pattern, which looked like “shave and a haircut” and got a flashback from under the golden arches sign, which was two flashes, or “two bits”. Pete smiled at the joke, and remembered his parents using it as a secret knock to his club house when he was a kid.
Pete followed Angel into the long-abandoned parking lot that previously served billions, according to the sign. They pulled the bikes under the drive-through awning, furthest from the river that was clearly down the hill, based on the smell that said, “tidal water”, and walked over to a black man sitting on a folding chair, behind bushes that were tall enough to shelter him to head-height when sitting in the chair. He had a rifle with a scope, and a cooler next to him.
“Afternoon, Angel, and friend. You boys want some chow? I got some Johnny cakes with real honey! The reaction force boys just bedded down in the Mickey D’s, as it’s quiet, and the barricade at the top of the bridge span is quiet.”
“Gracias, Leo. No, de nada. We ate good this morning, and I have to pop this guy’s Tappahannock cherry. I don’t want him messing up the seat on my 4-wheeler, Si?”
Leo laughed, then got real serious, looking at Pete. “Hey Brother, are you sure you want to go over there? Some of them gangs really don’t like seeing brothers hanging out with anyone else. They’re going to take offense with you and my Honduran friend on their turf. You don’t want to end up one of their bitches, do you?”
Pete laughed out loud, then, in the best John Wayne impression he could, said, “Well, Pilgrim, I didn’t dress up for the dance to stand with the wallflowers. Ya know?”
Leo laughed. “We have a barricade on the peak of the bridge-span, and an LP in some of the buildings near the bridge exit into town that are ours, but it’s cowboy territory within a few blocks. That’s a Listening Post for you civilians. The bad guys have pushed us a few times, and got pushed back, and usually OFF the bridge when they try it. Me and the boys sleeping in the Golden Arches are the QRF, or Quick Reaction Force to help out if things get dicey. Good luck! We’ve picked that town clean as far as we feel safe, and I hear they’ve picked it clean everywhere that’s not in no-man’s land between us. It’s getting rougher in that zone every day. There’s still some useful stuff, but mostly it’s just dead guys. For what it’s worth, I’d suggest North, out of town, as there aren’t really any established gangs there, they’re mostly all in town towards the Wal-Mart and other big box stores.”
“Gracias, Leo! Catch you later.” Angel made the “start your engines” motion, and the two were driving across the bridge and up to the roadblock. Angel flashed his lights again and stopped long enough to say hello to a few of the guys manning it. Introductions were made, and the vehicles finished crossing the bridge, at speed, and zipped through the main crossroads of Tappahannock, where main street crossed the intersection for the bridge. A few random rounds pinged off of the concrete road, but they moved fast, and swerved a lot. From there, they drove North, looking for supplies not claimed by others.
Pete noticed that they were driving North on route 17, and after several minutes, they drove past the sign welcoming them to Chance, VA. Angel took the next left, and they drove down some side roads until they saw a rancher-style house with an overgrown front lawn, but the front door closed. There was an old Army-Style jeep in the carport, painted olive drab green.
“Hey Angel, maybe we’ll get Lucky? Our ‘Chance’ is good.” Pete started laughing, and Angel just looked at him.
“Chance, Amigo, get it?”
“I get that you’re stupid. Pay attention, man, I don’t want to get shot. We approach with our hands on our weapons but pointed at the ground. Finger off trigger. You greet anyone that may be inside, Pete.” Angel pointed in the direction to the right of the door and went left. In this way, the people opening the front door would see Pete first.
Pete got within ten feet of the front door. His hand was on his Scorpion, but it was pointed at the ground. “Hello in the house! Anybody home? Just let us know, and we’ll move on if you don’t need any help!”
There was silence, so Angel walked around back, and called to Pete, who was trying the locked front door, unsuccessfully. When Pete got to the back, Angel explained, “Front doors closed this long may keep away looters, because those that made it this long are probably almost as badass as I am!”
Pete smelled the unmistakable, and way too regular smell of death. “Damn, Angel, something died, man. Whew! I hope it’s not in the house!
The back door had glass panes, and Angel knocked on the wood frame with his rifle butt, loud enough to get the attention of anyone in the house. Shadows were getting long, so he shined a flashlight inside and saw a light coat of dust on everything.
“No footprints, amigo.” Then he smashed his rifle butt into the bottom right pane, reached in, and unlocked the door. The two men entered the house and cleared the rancher with their flashlights and headlamps probing every corner. They then searched cabinets and counters and didn’t find anything useful. As they were searching, Pete saw a nicely carved mahogany cross on the wall and took a moment to admire it. When he took it off the wall, there was a folded piece of paper stuck to the nail holding it up. He unfolded the paper and started reading. When he realized what he had, he yelled, “Angel, come here, Amigo!”
Angel came trotting into the bedroom. “What’s up, Amigo?”
Pete showed Angel the note, and started reading it. “If you found this note behind a simple wooden cross, I have to believe that you’re not a bad person. My wife, Mary, and I made it through the toughest of the days, defending our property, but the Virginia heat in August, coupled with her heart condition killed her on August 19th. I buried her by her favorite dogwood tree. It blooms in both pink and white.
I ask you, as a fellow God-fearing human, to do me one favor, and I’ll return it many times over. I tried not to be too much of a bother. I dug my own grave and plan to sit in it and join Mary. I will cover up as much of me as possible. I ask that you cover me the rest of the way, so I may rest in peace with my sweet Mary. In return, if you really are a man of God, there is a treasure buried at Psalm 17:8. Even if you are not a man of God, please cover me up, and take the revolver that I will end myself with, as well as whatever else you can salvage. I’m sorry about the mess. We were prepared for this, and we defended our property, but without my Mary, I’m done. I hope to see her, and one day you, my friend, in heaven.
Thank you,
Colonel Jeffrey Drago, Retired, US Army”
“Well, Angel, I like wood work, and this is fine craftsmanship, looks like three kinds of wood, laminated and hand carved. I’m going to bring it back to Maria. However, I’m not really that much into any one religion. They’re all good, as long as they are good to each other, I guess no treasure for us.”
Angel replied, “Psalm 17:8. Keep me as the apple of your eye. Hide me in the shadow of your wings.”
“No shit, Angel? That’s some pretty fierce stuff.”
“Amigo, do you know how many times my Mama made me read the bible? After I had it memorized in Español, she made me read it in English 20 times! Sounds like mystery. Let’s go find this Colonel and do him right. Should not be hard, just follow the smell.”
The men walked into the back yard and saw some decorative trees in the distance. True to his word, underneath a dogwood, presumably, because it wasn’t blooming when his wife died, they found a relatively fresh grave, and another one, half-filled. In it, there was a decomposing man in a colonel’s uniform. He was buried up to his belly, with a shovel stuck in the dirt on top of his waist. There was a pile of dirt on the side of the grave, and a hole in his chest, with a revolver still in his hand.
“Dios Mio. He didn’t shoot himself in the head. Maybe he believes, like some, that heaven is what happens in your brain after you die. I have talked to men who say that suicide to the brain means no heaven, because no eternal dreams after your heart stops. Others say suicide is a ticket to hell, and more say that it’s an unstable mind, and God will forgive that. I don’t know what’s behind the scripture. Either way, it’s like that football player did it. Must have been terrible pain, even if only for a few seconds.” Angel dropped into the grave, grabbed the Dan Wesson .357 pistol, which still had five rounds in it. He wiped it off and admired the quality of the revolver, despite the days exposed to the weather, then put it into the small of his back, under his belt, and put the Colonel’s hat over his face. “Go with God, Sir. In Jesus name, Amen.”
Angel walked out of the hole, thanks to the pre-filling by the Colonel. He pointed at Pete, and said, “Go find the treasure, Amigo. I will take care of this.” Then he started filling the hole.
Pete wandered the Colonel and Mary’s small, but varied orchard until he found the apple trees. The apples in September were mostly still green, but a few looked ripe enough to pick. He jumped up and pulled a half-dozen off the tree and made a mental note to come back here in October, when the picking would be best. He looked around and saw that some grapes on the vines nearby were ripe, as were the Pears and Pecans. He ate several handfuls of each, then took off his t-shirt, tied the sleeves and head-hole, and filled it with the ripe fruit that he could see in the area, putting the delicate grapes on top. He ran the t-shirt back to the house, then came back with a laundry hamper from the laundry room and filled that too. Another trip back to the house had a good harvest of what was easily reachable, and ripe. The apples were mostly not there yet, but a few were, and the more green ones would make fantastic pie.
As he was enjoying the fruit, he saw a bird house in the middle of the apple trees. “Apples and wings… Hmmm”, he said to himself as he approached the bird house. There was no real sign of excavation, so he looked in the bird house. There didn’t seem to be anything in there, except the birds inside making a loud squawking. As he backed away, he saw that the grass below the nest had a rectangle shape, like a fresh piece of sod, when laid on a new lawn.
Pete bent down and put his fingers under the edge of the sod and pulled it up. It came up pretty easily, and under it was… dirt.
He started scraping at the dirt with his fingers, and hit metal in one spot, about four inches down. He ran back to Angel. “I found it, give me the shovel, por favor. I’ll finish this, then we can dig out the treasure.
Angel, who was sweating in the September heat, even though sunset had passed and the light was fading quickly, gladly handed over the shovel, and took a drink from the canteen on his belt. Pete shoveled quickly, excited at the prospect of a treasure. When the grave was filled, he started to walk quickly to the apple trees.
“No, Amigo. Not yet. Come back.”
Pete walked back to Angel, who closed his eyes, bowed his head, and said a prayer in Spanish. Pete didn’t know too much, but he knew enough to know that it was the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” prayer. He bowed his head, and when Angel was done, he said, “Muy Bien, Amigo.”
After a few moments of Silence, Pete walked back to the bird house in the apple orchard. He started scraping dirt from the two by three-foot hole created by removing the sod. When he had enough of the dirt scraped off, Angel approached, and they reached down and pulled a large olive drab ammunition can out of the dirt. By now, it was almost dark. The crate was almost the size of the hole, and about 14 inches deep. Pete wiped off the dirt, and laid it on the ground in front of thetwoof them. There was no lock on it, so he lifted the latch and opened it up.
On top of everything in the ammo can was a pistol in a leather holster. Pete took it out, dropped the magazine and cleared it, gaining a look of admiration from Angel. Pete said, “Stainless steel 1911 with engraved bone grips.” He read some of the verbiage stamped into it, “Colt Officers Model 1911. In appreciation for 22 years of active duty, served with Honor. Colonel Jeffrey Drago. From your troops at 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division. It’s been an honor, Sir.”
“Well, you found the treasure, amigo. It’s yours! I’m keeping the .357, though. I had to go into the grave. What else is in there?”
Pete pulled
out a round black plastic thing, and looked at Angel, who said, “Distributor cap for the jeep. This is getting good!”
Under the distributor cap was a set of keys, with “Jeep” written on the fob. It didn’t take either of them long to figure out what those were for. All of this was sitting on top of several SAS Survival manuals, and under those were 12 boxes of .45 ACP Hollow point ammunition with some Silica Gel packets to keep it from getting moist. At the bottom of all of the ammunition was a simple note, which said, “Floorboards in workshop. Thanks again, God bless you!”
“I guess I know what’s next, right, Angel?” They both walked to the large shed behind the house. After not much knocking on the floor, they found a few loose floorboards, and pulled them up with a pry-bar hanging from the wall. In the light from their lights, they saw a large hole. In it, they found an M-1 Thompson Machine gun, with a circular magazine, filled to capacity with .45 ammunition. There were also a half-dozen stick magazines, all were wrapped in a silicon sleeve. The “Tommy Gun” was sitting on top of eight boxes of Mountain House freeze-dried food. Also on top of the food were two bars of gold. When Pete lifted them out, they felt like about 30 lbs. each, and were stamped with 400 oz.