“What do you mean?” Dr. Krueger asked. “How can things possibly get worse? We got the medical supplies back, and may God rest the souls of those who died getting them, but you three are here, alive and well. What else is wrong?”
“What’s wrong,” Ted said coolly, “is that William’s damage didn’t stop at stealing our medical supplies and forcing us out there to get them back. He was captured by the same scumbags who have taken over the town, and before they killed him, they got information out of him. Information that will lead them here.”
More gasps of shock rippled through the crowd.
“Ted’s right,” Callum said grimly. “And believe me when I say that this is a danger that threatens not only our property and lifestyle but our very lives—the lives of every person here.”
“They’ve got an army,” Ted said. “An army of bloodthirsty killers, gang bangers from the city who have survived the apocalypse there because they were the toughest and most ruthless sons of bitches around. When they took over the town, they massacred the population there. They’ve committed acts of … unspeakable cruelty. I don’t even want to begin to describe what we saw there. But the bottom line is, they’ve burned up all the resources there, and they’re living off the last few scraps of junk food left in the stores they’ve looted. And like a plague of locusts, when they’ve burned through everything there, they’ll be looking for the next place to ravage. And we heard what they said. They know about this place, and they know that there’s food here. They’ve got a lot of guns, and they don’t bat an eye at killing and mutilating people to get what they want.”
“What are you trying to say, grandpa?” Ann asked, her face twisted into an expression of fear and alarm.
“What I’m trying to say, Ann,” he said, sighing and shaking his head, “is that we’re going to have to prepare for a battle.”
“A fight? Against people like that?” Dr. Krueger gasped. “Look, Ted, we all know how to shoot straight, and we’ve all hunted deer, but even so, going hunting or shooting at a paper target, and trying to pull the trigger on a man who’s doing his best to kill you, they’re vastly different things, things that I don’t think many of us are psychologically capable of doing.”
“I didn’t think I had it in me to shoot a man,” Mary said, “but when your life is threatened, and pure instinct takes over, you’d be surprised what you’re capable of.”
“And believe me when I say our lives are at stake,” Ted said darkly. “The leader of this gang of murderers is a psychotic warlord who calls himself ‘T-Dawg,’ and he has a penchant for chopping people’s heads off with a machete. He’s not the kind of man you can reason or negotiate with, trust me on this.”
“There must be some solution to this beside war,” Dr. Krueger said, shaking his head and wringing his hands. “I’ve seen war, I spent my life around war and its victims, and it’s something I never wanted to see again, especially not out here, in this little slice of paradise.”
“Doc,” Ted said, “I wish that peace could be an option here, but judging from what we saw in the town, there’s not a chance in hell that there’s going to be a peaceful resolution to what’s coming.” He turned to address everyone, raising his voice so that they could all hear him. “I want everyone to listen up!” he said. “From this point on, everyone is to carry their firearms with them at all times, with as much extra ammunition as you can manage! I don’t like this any more than any of you do, but this the bottom line: whether we want it or not, war is coming to this place! All we can do from this point on is be prepared … and pray that we’re able to survive the hell-storm of a battle that’s coming…”
33
The war came to the homestead sooner than anyone had hoped it would. At dusk, two days after Mary, Ted, and Callum had returned from their ill-fated mission, the homesteaders were all returning to their homes after a day of hard work in the fields and orchards when a dirt bike came tearing into the center of the homestead at breakneck speed.
The young student who was on it skidded to a halt near the firepit and dropped the still-running bike on its side in his haste to get off and communicate his message of alarm. “They’re here!” he yelled desperately. “The gangsters are here!”
Ted and Callum ran over to the young man, who had been on sentry duty near the river.
“What’s going on, Kenny?” Ted asked. “Slow down, tell us what’s happened.”
“The gangsters, the arm– they– they’re across the river,” Kenny gasped breathlessly. “They’re all there, maybe, maybe a hundred of ‘em, armed to the teeth.”
“My God,” Ted murmured. “Did they try to get across? Did they see you?”
“They saw me, yeah,” Kenny said. His eyes were wide with alarm. “And they gave me a message to give you. The leader, that T-Dawg guy, I guess, he said he wants to talk to our leader, man to man.”
Ted nodded slowly. “I see. They didn’t try to shoot at you or anything?”
Kenny shook his head. “No, they want to talk. Like I said, they all had guns, a lot of ‘em. They could easily have shot me if they wanted.”
“I guess I’d better go see what they want,” Ted muttered. “And I’ll bet it isn’t something we’re willing to give ‘em. Even so, talking will buy us some precious time. Callum, you need to get everyone ready for an attack while I’m gone. Get some makeshift barricades set up and saddle up the horses and get the other dirt bikes, the truck, and the Hummer fueled up in case we have to flee. I’m guessing that this is some sort of trap … but if it’ll buy the rest of you some time to escape with your lives. I’m willing to put my life on the line. Callum, where’s Mary?”
“She’s with Ann in the kitchen, I think,” Callum answered.
Ted gave him a nod. “I’ll go let her know what’s happening before I go.”
He headed over to the kitchen, where he found Ann and Mary helping to prepare the evening’s dinner.
“Baby girl,” he said softly, “they’re here.”
Mary had had a smile on her face and had been laughing and joking with her daughter. When Ted came in and said this, though, her face fell, and her smile faded, replaced with a deep frown and a look of intense concern. She knew exactly who “they” were, and what these four simple words meant. Ted didn’t have to say anything else; Mary ran over to him and threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly. Ann walked over to them and also put her arms around the two of them, for she too knew what this meant. For a while, the three of them just held each other tightly in silence.
Eventually, Mary spoke. “Do we fight, or do we run?” she murmured.
“I don’t know,” Ted said. “I’m going to speak to them now.”
“Speak to them?” Mary gasped. “Dad, are you crazy?! They don’t want to speak! You’ll get killed!”
“They sent Kenny with a message that they want to talk to me,” Ted said. “Believe me, baby girl, I know that their intentions are not good, but if anything, this will buy a little time for the rest of you to get ready. As for whether you should run or fight, well, I’m prepared to die fighting here. This land is my life, it’s what I’ve put everything into for the past few decades, and I’ll die defending it. As for whether anyone else should make that choice, that’s up to them. But for now, I’m going to put my life on the line to buy the rest of you some time.”
“Isn’t there another way, grandpa?” Ann asked, on the verge of tears. “Do you have to do this? Do you have to go?”
“There’s no other way, Ann,” he said, giving her one more hug, and when he stepped back from her, tears rimmed his eyes. “Now you two, you need to get ready. I have to go.”
Without saying another word, he turned and walked out. He told Kenny to get back on the bike and accompany him to the river. “You hang back. Stay where they can’t take a shot at you,” he told Kenny as he kickstarted his own dirt bike. “If they shoot me, come straight back here and tell everyone what happened. Callum and Mary will be in charge if I don’t
make it.”
He and Kenny rode their dirt bikes down to the river, and the closer they got, the more fear began to well up within both of them. Neither said anything nor slowed down, though, for they were committed to seeing this grim task through, approaching the invaders with courage in their hearts.
When they got to the top of the ridge in the woods that looked down over the river, Ted caught his first glimpse of the horde. There were, as Kenny had said, over a hundred of them, and T-Dawg was at the head of the army, standing right on the water’s edge. From here, Ted could easily have taken a shot with his rifle and blown and a hole right through T-Dawg’s skull, and for a moment or two, he was sorely tempted to do this but realized that as satisfying as it would be, it would surely prompt an immediate invasion.
“Stay here, and keep your bike running,” Ted said to Kenny. “If I get shot, you turn and get back to warn the others as fast as you can ride.”
“Okay, Ted,” Kenny said nervously.
Ted left him on the ridge and rode his bike down the dirt track that led to the river’s edge. When he got to within a few yards of the water, he dismounted, killed the motor, and walked up to the water’s edge, staring coolly across the river at T-Dawg and his army.
The gangster gave Ted a mocking smirk and muttered something to his followers that had them hooting and howling with derisive laughter. Ted ignored this and addressed T-Dawg directly. “What do you want here?” he demanded. “You sent my man to bring me here to talk, so here I am. Open your mouth and talk.”
“Yo farmer,” T-Dawg said, folding his muscular arms defiantly across his chest. “I got a business proposal for ya.”
“Go on.”
“See, y’all got a lot of good food on your farm there,” T-Dawg said. “Your boy wid’ the glasses told us all about it. And all that good food y’all got there, well, we be fuckin’ needin’ it. But I’m a fair man, see, and I don’t want to work on no fuckin’ farm, diggin’ dirt all day and walkin’ around in pig shit. Me and my boys, we don’t wanna take yo’ farm. We just want to make a deal wid’ you.”
“I don’t see what sort of agreement you and I could possibly come to,” Ted said coldly. “But go on, put it on the table, I’ll hear you out.”
“Give us two-thirds of your food every week, and you get to keep the rest and stay on yo’ farm,” T-Dawg said.
“And what do we get out of this arrangement?” Ted asked.
T-Dawg chuckled darkly and flashed him an evil smirk. “Not dyin’, and not gettin’ yo’ redneck heads chopped off and tossed in this fuckin’ river is what y’all get.” A rumble of aggressive emphasis came from the men gathered behind him when he said this. “That’s what you get, motherfucker. You understand what I’m sayin’, man? Look behind me. There are over a hundred of us. We all got guns and ammo, and we hungry and pissed off. If we want to, we could kill every last one a’ you farmers before the sun rises tomorrow. You know that, and I know that. Your boy told us exactly how many of you are on the farm, so don’t bother wid’ tryin’ to bullshit me about numbers. I’d prefer to keep y’all alive, though, so y’all can give us food, see? But make no mistake, you old-ass country hick, if you turn down my offer there ain’t gonna be another one. You take my offer, or you all die.”
“I see,” Ted said calmly. “And how long do I have to give you our decision on this?”
“I’m a generous man, yo,” T-Dawg said, grinning savagely. “We’ll be back here at sunset tomorrow. If you farmers ain’t here by the water with some crates of food for us then, we’re coming across the river. And when we come across, bitch, we ain’t stoppin’ until every last one a’ y’all rednecks is fuckin’ dead.”
“You’ll have your answer tomorrow at sunset then,” Ted said. Without saying another word, he turned around, got back on the dirt bike, kicked the motor to life, and then rode up the ridge, to where Kenny was anxiously waiting.
“What did they say?” Kenny asked. From his position, he had been out of earshot of the exchange that had taken place.
“I’ll tell you and everyone else when we get back,” Ted said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
They rode back to the homestead, where news of what had transpired had gotten around. Everyone was waiting anxiously near the firepit for Ted’s return, and Mary, James, and Ann were overcome with relief when they heard the familiar sound of his dirt bike motor and saw him and Kenny come riding toward them.
After hugging a few people and assuring them he was okay, Ted got up onto a table to address the homesteaders. He relayed T-Dawg’s offer to them in stark terms. He had personally decided, the moment the offer had left the gangster’s lips, that there was no way in hell he would be handing over even a single carrot or apple to the criminals. Still, he knew that although he was the leader here and owned most of this land, that this was a democracy, and that everyone had the right to have their own say about how the homestead as a whole should respond to the offer.
Not surprisingly, it didn’t take too long for a heated discussion to break out. Many of the homesteaders were relieved that the gangsters had made any offer at all, instead of simply crossing the river and attacking the homestead without warning. This group, led by Dr. Krueger, believed that a diplomatic solution was the best option, and if giving up two-thirds of their food to the gangsters would avoid any further violence and loss of life, they were happy to do this.
Ted, however, made it clear from the outset that he wasn’t willing to hand over a single ounce of food that he and the homesteaders had worked so hard to produce. The two groups, which were split quite evenly in terms of numbers, debated the issue for quite some time. Tensions were running high, and even though everyone was doing their best not to let their tempers get too heated, things got close to blowing up into a full-on argument on several occasions.
“I can’t believe you’re choosing war, violence, and death when there’s a peaceful option on the table!” Dr. Krueger yelled at Ted. “I know how hard we’ve all worked to produce this food because, believe me, I’ve been digging and harvesting right there alongside all of you. I know how much it’s going to hurt to hand so much of it over to these violent thugs, and how horrid it’s going to be for us on nearly starvation rations, but nobody has to get killed this way! If those people invade, sure, we might take a few of ‘em out, but so many of us will die too! I can’t believe that choosing to fight them—which, I might add, is absolutely suicidal and crazy—is an option that anyone is considering! It’s madness, pure madness!”
“I know why you’re saying that Dr. Krueger,” Ted said, his jaw clenched tight as he did his best to keep his mounting anger in check, “but you do not see the bigger picture here. If we hand over most of our food, we get weaker, a lot weaker. We have to drastically cut down our own rations, and that means we can’t work as hard. And that means we can’t grow as many crops. If we give in to those monsters, we’re all going to die anyway! They’ll slowly starve us to death, sucking us dry like the parasites they are! And what do you think they’ll do when we’re no longer able to produce enough food for their unstable demands? They’ll come in here and kill us anyway! There’s no way that this is a sustainable option. Both choices give us death and killing, Doc. Can’t you see that? One way is just a lot slower and more agonizing and humiliating for us than the other, but the outcome of both choices is ultimately the same, give or take a few months.”
Dr. Krueger opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. Instead, he simply stood there with his mouth hanging open for a few seconds, and then, finally, he slowly closed it.
“No matter where I go, I can’t escape war,” he finally murmured, staring sadly at the ground. “I had hoped this was the place I’d finally never see war again, but I guess I was wrong. You’re right, Ted. I’m sorry I’ve been arguing so vehemently against you. You’re absolutely right. Both choices involve death—one just means the suffering is a lot slower than the other.”
Dr. Krueger’s supporters
were all silent for a while, but soon enough, they started to murmur their reluctant support for Ted. Ted expressed no joy in this minor victory; the reality of the situation was far too tired to feel happy about anything. “So we’re all in agreement then?” he eventually asked, after he’d given the dissenters a few moments to reconsider their position. “We’re not giving in to these thugs with their extortion and threats, are we?”
“No, we’re not,” everyone answered, some a lot more enthusiastically than others.
Ted knew that for the homestead to be defended effectively, every defender had to be fighting with all their heart and soul in the battle. “Listen,” he said, “if any of you aren’t fully committed to defending this place with everything you’ve got, I’d rather you left now. I won’t think any less of you; I’d rather you be honest now rather than fail us when we need you most. If any of you don’t want to fight and would rather leave the homestead and take your chances elsewhere, you should leave tonight and get a good head start on T-Dawg and his thugs. If you choose to leave, you have my blessing, and I wish you well. If you choose to stay and fight, though, I need to know that you’ll fight with everything you’ve got. I won’t put anyone on the spot right now, but we don’t have much time to waste, because we have to start preparing our defenses right away. Those who want to stay and fight meet back here an hour after dinner. Those who want to leave … well, you can go whenever you want. That’s all I have to say for now; meeting adjourned.”
Everyone dispersed, and most went off and ate dinner alone, or with their families. Despite the almost unanimous support Ted had eventually garnered for the option of resistance against T-Dawg, he suspected that some homesteaders had just been paying lip service to this, and would slip away with their backpacks and whatever belongings they could carry throughout the evening.
However, when he returned to the firepit an hour after dinner, a deep swell of emotion filled his chest almost to bursting point—every single homesteader was gathered there with looks of determination and resolve on their faces, and weapons in their hands.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 21 | The Darkest Day Page 20