“Baby, I love you so much. Please don’t scare momma like that again,” Angelica sobbed.
“I fell on the slip and slide. I bumped my head and woke up in the pool. It’s dry over here,” Harry said, pulling her hand.
“Have you gone any further?” Angelica asked.
“No ma’am,” Harry said. “I figured I wanted to wait for one of you, otherwise I might get lost worst.”
“Worse,” she corrected, “Let’s at least see what this cave connects to. Stick close to me.”
“I will momma.”
They worked their way around the small cave until they found another fissure, one that looked like it had been hand chipped wider with old school hand tools.
“I think this is it. You stay here, and I’ll go as far as I can. You’ll be able to see my light. If it’s no good, I can come back to you, but I need you to listen for anybody coming to find us.”
“Ok, I can do that, just… it’s scary in the dark,” he muttered.
“Here, trade me,” Angelica said handing him the lantern. “I’ll take the flashlight.”
“Ok, that’ll work then,” Harry told her seriously.
Angelica ran her fingers through her son’s hair, then started moving in a semi squatted walk.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she said thirty seconds later.
“You found somebody?” Harry asked.
“I found a way out,” Angelica said, “come here, and let’s get going so I can call off your father.”
Harry ran to her and saw an opening about six feet above their head, the cave floor like a ramp as it led up to the opening. This was not a carved entrance, more like a space that had collapsed in on itself. The floors were littered with white droppings, but Harry did not slow down much. He ran up the rock and rubble and jumped, grabbing the lip, and pulling himself out.
“Come on Momma, I’ll catch ya,” he said.
Angelica grinned and walked up, grabbing the opening, and started pulling herself up, but not before she saw a pile of bones near the opening to her left on the rock ground. She shuddered seeing it was a small set of bones, human she thought. Now she scrambled out, spooked. Angelica took a look around and saw they were near the rocky part of the acreage that was heavily treed.
“Angel for group, I have Harry, we’re both out and safe,” she said immediately.
“Copy,” Rob said. “I was just getting to the house.”
“Copy,” said Steven.
“The police are requiring all of us to meet up at the medical center,” Rob said into the radio.
“Oh poop,” Harry exclaimed.
Twenty-Seven
Once again, the technology of cameras saved the group. Every camera put up had recorded everything to a DVR-like base in the house. Dante had told Steven to make sure it was all backed up to the cloud, and Rob assured him he had already done it before making the call to meet at the medical center. They burned a DVD before the cops took it, this time the police knowing full well who had backup copies.
Andrea’s lawyer Lucian was called on, and he had just gasped when told there had been another incident, though this time she was not the shooter. He promised to get right on the road. LeBaron had heard as well and had bullied his way through the police cordon, demanding to see his ‘clients’. None of the group had hired him, but none of them denied his claims either.
“Nobody speaks to my clients without me first speaking to them,” LeBaron shouted as he was directed to the medical center.
“We aren’t,” one of the deputies said. “We’re just trying to keep the two groups separated for now. The two docs are working on some of ours, some of theirs.”
“What?” LeBaron said, shocked.
“This one’s stable enough to go now,” Dante called, rolling up a big door.
LeBaron watched as two EMTs pushed a patient through two layers of plastic sheeting and into the opening near a garage door, to the waiting ambulance.
“Who was that?” LeBaron asked.
“One of my deputies caught a round in the side of the throat,” the sergeant said. “They… they saved my man. Two of them, really.”
“Ok, let me see my clients then,” LeBaron said, pushing through the front door where a contingent of cops and EMTs waited.
“I said sit still, dammit,” he had heard Leah shout.
LeBaron pushed through the people, shouting to see his clients, to find that Anna had been placed in the medical center and was getting her neck stitched up by Leah.
“That fucking hurts,” Anna hissed.
“You catch two slugs and all you are going to have to show for it is a small scar on the side of your neck.”
“You forgot that my tits are going to be bruised for a year, this shit hurts, dammit.”
The cops looked at the two women uneasily. Anna had been stripped to her bra, her vest and shirt cut away and discarded on the floor. Leah started cursing her friend out in a blue streak that would make a drunken sailor blush, so Anna finally held still, pouting the whole time.
“Excuse me,” LeBaron said, “Please do not question my clients until I’ve had a chance to speak with them,” he told the throng of first responders.
“Please don’t interrupt them while they save my partner’s life,” a cop growled.
LeBaron tried to swallow, but his mouth and throat were suddenly dry. He went past Leah to a room that had another group of people around it and pushed the door open slightly.
Two of the EMTs were working on a man who had been shot in the chest, lower, towards the belly.
“I’m just going to stabilize him. Let the hospital know—”
“We know, it’s cool, Doc. We appreciate what you’re doing,” one of the cops yelled over the EMT’s heads. “We got this,” the EMT said, giving him a smile, “Most of the time, we see these, we know the man isn’t going to make it,” he told Dante. “But with you having a surgery right here… you saved three or four that would have died on the way.”
“It’s my job,” Dante said with a growl.
“No questioning my clients please,” LeBaron said from behind them.
“I’m shutting up now, Baron,” Dante grunted. “I just get talky when I work.”
“How are you doing anesthesia?” LeBaron asked, fearing malpractice.
“We’re not,” he said simply.
“I’m good if you’re good,” the man on the table said with a hiss, lying horribly. He had passed out twice already, but the EMTs had been helping hold him still.
The press had been there when the rioters had turned on the police and fired on them. They had footage from up high on top of their news van of the rioters just blasting away before the police started firing back. It was like watching dominos that had been flicked between two different lines, tumbling down.
The police and EMTs had set the triage up and ran it, ferrying those most at risk to the farm’s medical center, and ambulances were coming and going, taking away as many of the injured as they could. They would come for the dead later, who were still lying where they had fallen. The crime scene itself would be a nightmare.
They had footage of the jacked up pickup truck that had yanked the front of the gate off and then of the protestors running at Anna’s position or firing at her. The farm’s cameras had been running from the start.
A little later that evening, almost every news network nationwide was covering it. A large contingent of people who were sick and tired of the left’s endless rioting, looting and arson were relieved. They watched the heavily edited video as those who posed a real threat to life were taken out of the equation. Anna became even more famous when it was leaked that a professional shooter had been the one responsible, but not famous in a good way.
The cops were mum on who they were charging, but those they had arrested so far had been all from the protest/riot/attackers. There was speculation that the owners of the farm were going to be charged with all kinds of things. Apparently a heavily electrified
fence, barbed wire and even razor wire had been used to slow their advance. Then throw in the two devil dogs who had killed one and maimed another were thrown into the spotlight. It would be funny if it were sarcastic, but the MSNBC nighttime host was breathless and serious in her coverage.
The local health department, working with animal control, had verified both dogs were up to date on their shots, but the animals had not been taken into custody at the time. Nothing had been mentioned about Harry’s bumpy and scratchy ride down a rock slip-n-slide. The cops were keeping that one quiet, and a new team had been called in to investigate the remains that Angelica had spotted in the cave they had escaped from.
The cops are talking about everything else, why didn’t they mention the skeleton from the cave?” Dante asked Leah. They were lying in bed, watching TV.
“I overheard that local cop Buckley say he thinks it’s a cold case. A missing person’s case. If it turns out to be that… I do not know. They looked old to me,” Leah said. “Hell, it could be from the times of cowboys and Indians, and they’re really, really old.”
“They weren’t recent,” Dante agreed, then sighed. “Have you talked to Anna yet?”
“Non-stop when Steven wasn’t right there,” she admitted. “She’s in the basement working in her project room.”
“Do you think that’s healthy?” Dante said. “She’s torn up about the shootings, so she’s making more guns and ammo?”
“I don’t know if she has her mill fired up or not, but she said she needed to do some reloading. She… didn’t miss today. She said reloading is like her mind dropping into a Zen zone. She’s probably compartmentalizing herself, so she can work through it slowly.”
“I wish we had a psychologist in our group,” Dante said.
“No, you don’t, they’d drive you nuts.”
“You’re probably right.”
“How was Harry’s head?” she asked.
“Knot on it. Slight concussion. Angelica and Harry are sleeping on Andrea’s couch. Andrea said she can keep an eye on him from her recliner and be there if Angel has any questions.”
“So, where’s that leave us?” Leah asked.
“Another day where we had our arms soaked in somebody else's blood up to our elbows. I just pray our insurance holds up and they don’t bend us over for the meatball surgeries we did without all the permitting we didn’t do.”
“We never intended it to be for the general public,” Leah said, using her nail to gently scratch across his bare chest.
“They better remember that,” Dante said, “or we might be looking at jail time ourselves if we don’t lose our licenses.”
“You know we’ll be fine, you’re just worried,’ she said dragging the nail deeper, drawing his attention to him as her hand worked slower. Lower.
“What are you doing?” Dante asked her gently.
“Reminding you that there’s an opposite to the death, pain and suffering we see day in and day out. There’s also happiness, pleasure and joy.”
Anna sat on her stool in front of her Dillon 650 and cried. She had switched the dies over to run some .308 brass.
The man who had clubbed her had gotten so close. She kept going back over that, how she hadn’t seen him coming. How the dogs had done their jobs. She had almost let him kill her, putting one of her best friends and son at risk.
And she had killed. It was not like TV, or even her tournaments. She had had a good enough look at the folks she shot. The ones she had killed, she had watched the light go out of their eyes. Could she ever forgive herself? She never doubted any of it would be labeled anything else but self-defense, but she was having a hard time dealing with it. The flashes of their faces. The screams of those she had shot but who had not died, suddenly sorry and begging for help.
She remembered the smell of the woman who had come at her with a revolver. She had lost control of her bowels and bladder the moment she had died. The icky, sticky, metallic smell of the blood. Both dogs had been drenched in it as well. They would need a bath. She would take care of that while Rob and Angelica took care of little Harry. She would do it, but first she needed to… deal.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” she yelled, knowing it was going to be Angelica or Steven. She wiped her eyes and reached for a tissue.
The door opened and Rob stepped into the room. She blew her nose and turned to the Dillon, crying again, her shoulders shaking as she tried not to sob.
“It’s going to be ok,” Rob said from behind her, pulling the other stool out and sitting next to her.
She turned to him, then looked away. It was him, he was alone, and his wife was a jealous woman. She did not want to get monkey stomped, especially while she was dealing with this.
“Angel sent me down,” he said softly, then waited.
She got herself under control and then turned to him, wiping her nose with the tissue. She tilted her head, not trusting her words.
“I think I’m the only one in the group who has gone through what just happened to you,” he told her simply.
“Does it get easier?” she croaked.
“For me it did, except when I dream,” he admitted. “But after time, the flashes, their faces…. it’s not so clear. I have no regrets, I just wish I weren’t the tool that God selected the day the people I killed died.”
“You’re religious, yet… you’ve killed people—”
“Lots and lots of people,” Rob agreed. “Probably three or four times as many as you have. Maybe lots more. And almost every one of them I saw the lights go out of their eyes.”
“Yes,” Anna said turning to him, no longer trembling. “That’s… it’s what I keep seeing. I don’t know how the docs handle it, they see it all the time in the emergency room… I’ve never…”
“You know, you’re right,” Rob said. “You, Andrea and I might be the only ones here who were forced to kill, but almost all of us, one way or another, has seen death up close and personal.”
“I have now,” she said quietly.
“And you’re going to have bad dreams and it’s going to bug you for a while.”
“Until it doesn’t?”
“Until it consciously doesn’t,” he said, correcting her. “Nobody can control their dreams though, so get ready for that. Now I want to ask you some questions that my boss asked me after I had my first confirmed kill. You ready?”
Anna nodded.
“Were those people coming to kill you?”
“Yes.”
“Would they have killed you and your friends, any or all of us?”
“Yes,” she said, a little more power in her voice that time.
“Did you ask them to stop, did you tell them to leave?”
“I did,” her voice was stronger now.
“Did you randomly kill people out there? I saw the bodies, they all had weapons.”
“No, only those who were attacking me or shooting at the house,” she told him.
“So despite being under fire, shot twice, clubbed in the side of the head, and Leah said you’re on concussion protocols and shouldn’t be down here alone anyways… despite that shit, you acted in a way that saved you from dying, saved your friends from dying… and you have the balls to be sorry for the pieces of shit who wanted TO FUCKING KILL YOU?” The last of his words had risen in volume until they were a shout.
Anna cringed and stood there still, her arms wrapped around her front, holding her elbows tightly. She started crying again.
“Do you feel sorry for the assholes who wanted to kill you? Tried to kill you?” Rob shouted.
“No,” she said softly.
“I can’t fucking hear you,” he screamed.
“No, I don’t.” Louder, but her voice had lost the strength it had earlier.
“Answer me, do you feel sorry for them?” Rob’s face was beet red.
“I’d kill every one of those fuckers over again if they tried it,” Anna yelled back, her patience snapping.
“I just wanted to know,” he asked simply.
“I… you did that on purpose,” she said suddenly.
“I forced you to snap out of a vicious cycle you were starting to spiral down,” Rob said. “And like Maui from that kid’s movie… you’re welcome.”
He had been backing towards the door, but when he tried to slip out, he bumped into someone.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Angel said, smacking him on the ass. “Harry wants you.”
“Ok babe,” he said bending over and kissing her hard. “I’ll head up. Can I use the basement entrance?”
“Yeah, that’s how I came down. They’ll be expecting you.”
“Good, I… yeah, that’s good.”
Rob left, but not before Angel closed the door behind her and walked to Anna with a pint of an amber liquid sloshing in a bottle.
“He’s brutal when he’s trying to snap you out of whatever mood you’re in.”
“I thought he was about to beat my ass for a second there,” Anna told her.
“He explained it to me once. Fight or flight or something. His CO had to do almost exactly that to him when he first went overseas in the sandbox. He said if you get through to somebody quickly before they spiral, you have a lot less suicides later on down the road.”
“You mean… I never would…”
“No, but you were spiraling, blaming yourself for what those folks were trying to do. It’s their fault you had to do what you did. Not theirs.”
“You two make it sound so simple. In my head, it’s still a jumbled mess.”
“That’s why I brought this,” Angel said, “but half is mine.” She handed her the Cuervo.
“Oh no, I don’t do Cuervo,” she said, pushing the bottle back into Angelica’s hands and shaking her head.
“You do tonight. Tonight, you’re going to have a drink with me and we’re going to talk girl shit for an hour or two. And if we’re too drunk to go upstairs, we’ll make our manly husbands carry us, but we’re talking some shit right the fuck now or I’ll monkey stomp your ass and walk a mudhole dry in it.”
Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 1 | The Farm Page 18