Fire From The Sky | Book 9 | Brimstone

by Reed, N. C.

  “Plenty,” both Sanders replied at once.

  “Well, my mission was simple. Is simple, I should say,” Adcock amended. “Investigate this Worthy business, see if there's anything to it at all, and if so, find out if they are a threat to our region and if possible, determine how much of a threat.”

  “That doesn't sound all that easy to me,” Gordon noted.

  “I never said easy, Mister Sanders,” Adcock shook his head. “Just simple.”

  “They're rarely the same thing in the Army, Dad,” Clay verified.

  “That is an unfortunate truthism,” Adcock's face made a cross between a grimace and a smile. “Have you any ideas about where any of this “Worthy's” people might be?” he asked Clay, getting back on point.

  “None,” Clay shook his head. “We've had no contact with other towns, as I said. I do know that the Huntsville group claimed to have more or less stripped north Alabama before heading our way. We also know, or believe, that they attacked some towns on this side of the line, but that is all unsubstantiated information gleaned from their members. They also reportedly had a series of run-ins with a large gang operating out of Birmingham, which was why they turned this way when they did. Some kind of agreement not to go further south, I guess?”

  “I see,” Adcock mused. “My problem is a bit compounded. We are technically supposed to be supporting the local and state authorities in 'restoring and maintaining order',” he raised his fingers in quotation gestures. “Same old tired words, applied in an entirely new setting. One they aren't meant for, I might add.”

  “For the most part, there aren't any more local or state authorities,” the Captain continued, laying out his problem. “A few men and women, here and there, doing their best to keep a small piece of sanity for the people around them, usually including their own families. And they aren't interested in going anywhere else and leaving their families behind.”

  “Don't blame 'em for that,” Gordon said firmly. “Man's family, or woman's, has got to come first.”

  “I agree,” the soldier sighed. “Problem is, however, that it leaves groups like mine being responsible for trying to keep that civil order, and we really aren't equipped for it.”

  “What do you mean?” Gordon frowned. “I'd think one hundred heavily armed soldiers would be more than enough for most problems they run into.”

  “In a more stable world, yes,” Adcock agreed. “But, without a court system to try offenders, without a jail system to hold them, or a prison system to lock convicted offenders up in, we become extremely limited in our ability to enforce any kind of civil law.”

  “You become judge and jury, as well as police,” Gordon saw the problem.

  “Yes, sir,” Adcock replied. “And that is a problem. I can't imagine using military force in a situation where someone stole something because his or her child was starving. Or where someone killed to protect his or her family,” he looked at Clay, who nodded. “How do I investigate that? How do I process evidence? Where do I send it? Assuming I found a real judge, by what law these days do I have them tried? Who prosecutes and who defends? I have all these questions, and I have zero answers to them,” he threw up his hands in defeat.

  “All you can do is all you can do,” Clay said quietly. “You have to let locals sort out their own troubles, regardless of how they decide to do it. Even if things were more or less normal, you'd never be told to do it yourself, but just to support locals who were responsible for doing it. Like fire-teams deploying with deputies for increased firepower. You support, not instigate, or even respond on your own.”

  “Exactly,” Adcock replied firmly. “That's it exactly. Even the training we have in that very thing falls far short of preparing any of us for taking the reins of enforcing the law ourselves. And with no courts, there's no way to seek real justice, other than ways I'm not willing to avail myself of.”

  “There aren't many things that are punishable by death,” Clay agreed.

  “I don't envy you, son,” Gordon said, getting slowly to his feet. “I really don't. I wish I had an answer for you, but I can't imagine what it would be. We got spoiled, having all that modern technology and food on the shelf, ready to go. We got used to a more or less civilized way of doing things, like laws and courts and the like, and then when we lost all that, seems like we just went ahead and lost our minds as well.” He had made his way to where Adcock had stood, and shook the younger man's hand.

  “Good luck to you, son, and Godspeed,” the elder Sanders told him.

  “Thank you kindly, sir,” Adcock bowed his head slightly even as he shook Gordon's hand.

  “Son, I'm going to head home,” Gordon turned to Clay, clasping his son on the shoulder. Clay patted that hand twice before clamping it to his shoulder to stop his father.

  “Did you talk to Patty?” he asked, looking at his father.

  “Tomorrow,” Gordon nodded.

  “Goodnight, Dad,” Clay patted the hand once more.

  “Night, Son,” Gordon returned as he departed.

  “Your folks seem like great people,” Adcock said admiringly once Gordon was gone.

  “They are, leaving aside the fact that they are still parents,” Clay chuckled at the statement. Before he could say more, Flores stepped inside.

  “Second group is having chow, sir,” she reported. “Sergeant Gleason is supervising.”

  “Very well,” Adcock nodded. “I'll join you momentarily, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir,” she snapped to, then turned and departed.

  “Sergeant First Class Gleason is tough as shoe leather,” Adcock told Clay, smiling. “Was RA for almost thirty years, then stepped into the Guard at just under fifty. Had to drop a stripe to do it since he didn't transition, but it didn't slow him down. Even at his age he can outdo all but the most determined young soldiers. A great example for the men to follow, to be honest.”

  “Sounds like a real lifer,” Clay agreed.

  “So,” Adcock decided to get back to the point. “Any suggestions as to where I should start looking for signs of this 'Worthy' outfit? Other than Atlanta, I mean,” he clarified with a grin.

  “Try Lewiston and points south, I guess,” Clay thought about that. “Which way did you come to get here?”

  “We used 65 from just south of Murfreesboro,” the other man replied. “Came south from there. Flores and Gillis, my Second Lieutenant, were the ones who suggested this was farm and cattle country, so we should try and trade for or buy some fresh food while we were in the area.”

  “Smart move,” Clay nodded.

  “Turned out to be,” the Captain nodded. “Anyway. Lewiston?”

  “Yeah,” Clay nodded. “Moderate sized town south and a little east of here. It's a good bit further off the interstate than say, Jordan. This really is rural country. If not for the interstate I imagine no one would ever use this road but us and a few beer drinking teenagers.”

  “That is likely a fact,” Adcock nodded absently, looking at his map.

  “Here is it,” Clay pointed to a small dot.

  “Ah,” Adcock circled the small town's dot with a grease pencil. “Well, that is more or less the next town from Jordan, I guess,” he studied the route into town. “Should we go to Jordan and then turn south, or use the interstate, you think?”

  “That road from Jordan ain't a highway,” Clay pointed to the slim line. “It's a back road, mostly fit for log trucks and heavy tractors. I know that the interstate was clear enough for traffic just a scant few weeks ago, and we haven't seen or heard anything that leads me to believe that there's much traffic out there since then. I'm sure people are using it, just probably not right through here. Like I said, this is really rural out here.”

  “Don't expect that to last,” Adcock told him plainly as he rolled and snapped his map case shut. “Especially now. After harvest season, I mean,” he clarified. “Smart people will know there's food out here, somewhere, and they'll be on the lookout for it.”

  “We fig
ured,” Clay nodded his understanding. “We're prepared for that. Surprised, really, that we haven't seen more of it. We've taken in a lot of people, including a group of kids taken from their parents. Built a small orphanage at the top of the hill, there,” he pointed to a dim light in the distance that was coming from inside the hilltop mess area.

  “Amazing,” Adcock shook his head even as he smiled. “This is nothing short of amazing. In the middle of all this, you still take in not only adults, but orphans. You really are rare people, Clayton Sanders.”

  “I guess,” Clay was uncomfortable with any kind of praise. “I've not always been in favor of it, on a group-by-group basis, but one group that looked like it was all women, and each of them with a child, came walking up the road one day. It was a setup from the word go, and I was almost sure of it, but my folks insisted we take them in. We had to kill five men who were hidden among them, trying to use them to barter food, they said. Once we got them here, we discovered that other than four women, all the others were not the mothers or even the proper guardians of the children they carried. They used the kids as cover to get inside and try to create a disturbance right before we were attacked by the aforementioned and not overly mourned reconstruction committee.”

  “Well, they don't seem to have been successful,” the soldier noted.

  “No, they weren't,” Clay settled for saying.

  “If I were to find abandoned or suffering children during my patrol, would you consider taking them on?” Adcock asked carefully.

  “Let’s talk about that tomorrow,” Clay suggested. “Not on a full stomach. Or a shot of bourbon, assuming you'd care for one?”

  “Social and professional constraints dictate that I politely decline,” Adcock said carefully. “Things being what they are, however, I would gladly partake of a snort with you in private. Wouldn't do for any of them,” he nodded his head toward the door, where his men were being fed, “to see me imbibing. Or even know that there's alcohol around, for that matter,” he laughed.

  “Come with me then,” Clay led the way back to his small office. “We'll hoist one to finish off dinner and then head outside. Come back tomorrow. We can talk about whatever we can do.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “So, who were all those guys last night?” more than one person asked at breakfast. “Where they really soldiers or was it another group like the last one?” was the real and more prevalent question that most of the young women rescued from Peabody wanted answered. Once assured that they were the real deal, some of the tension left them, but they remained in a high state of alert.

  Clay had invited Adcock to a late lunch at two o'clock, which would give him time to discuss Adcock's request with others in the group.

  The results were typically mixed.

  -

  “Well, of course we'll take them,” Angela Sanders sounded as if it were a foregone conclusion.

  “Mom, it's not that simple,” Clay said calmly, wanting to avoid another rift between himself and his mother. “We could be talking about children with disease, or children with mothers still attached, or any other number of things. We don't know who we might end up getting, or what they may bring in with them.”

  “I'm afraid he's right, Mom,” Patricia actually chimed in to support him. “Taking in people from here in our local area, some of which we already knew, was risky enough. Taking in people we have no information on, even children, is very risky. I don't have the inoculations I would need for our kids or any new ones. I also don't have a way to run labs on them to see what kind of disease or illness they might have. And I hate to say this, maybe more than most, but we are strained to the breaking point already. And not just medically.”

  “We cannot simply turn away a child,” Angela said firmly. “We can't.”

  “So, which of our kids do you want to let go without?” Clay asked her. “Or, which of the orphans do you want to sacrifice to your ideals? Because if we take in a strange kid,” he got louder in order to talk over her protests, “that could be just the choice you end up making, even by accident.”

  “Mrs. Sanders, he does have a point,” Jaylyn Thatcher said quietly. “Like Patricia, I can't stand the thought of not helping. It goes against everything we swore to uphold. But in this case, where it's essentially a large family group like ours, it is a problem I can't see a way around. We don't have the labs, as Patricia pointed out. We also don't have any proper isolation areas, nor the medicines we would need to treat diseases we might be able to identify. Which means in turn, we couldn't treat our own people when they caught the illness as well,” she ended strong.

  “There's more to consider here than just that,” Clay tried to get off the subject of children at least temporarily. “Can we estimate how well we did in the harvest? Or what we might still glean from the gardens? I know they're starting to peter out,” he raised a hand, “but nearly one hundred acres of gardens should have some food left. And we should have a few apples and peaches left, maybe?”

  “What do you have in mind?” Gordon asked.

  “Just thinking of what we can trade to Adcock and his men and women,” Clay replied. “They're doing a large-sized job. If we can help them, everything they do is to our benefit. I'd go so far as to gift it to them, just to be sure we're on their good side, if I'm honest.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Mitchell Nolan mused. He wasn't technically part of the group, but Beverly was.

  “So, we give food to soldiers, but we ignore children,” Angela just had to wade back in.

  “Mom, I am begging you,” Clay said softly. “Please don't do this. Not again.”

  It was the tone of his voice that drew her attention, more than the words he spoke. She hadn't often heard her youngest son plead. With her, or with anyone else for that matter. She took a deep breath and released it, then got to her feet.

  “I think it's best if I remove myself from this discussion,” she said simply, but not unkindly. “I'm afraid my objectivity is compromised. And, honestly, I do have work to do. Please excuse me, everyone.” With that she was gone, leaving the little group behind her. Clay dropped his head slightly for just a second, but recovered so fast that only his father, and maybe Lainie, had seen it.

  “We can feed them another meal, I'd say,” Gordon got back on track. “But one hundred soldiers eat a lot.”

  “They waded through every potato and cob of corn we had managed to gather over the last three days, last night,” Martina Sanchez agreed. “I don't regret letting them eat, mind you. You could tell they were hungry for real food, and they were surprisingly well-mannered, considering that they're living in the field. I'm just agreeing with Mister Sanders that so many men, and women, eat a lot even at one sitting.”

  “Okay,” Clay nodded. “What else? Or who else?”

  “I'm not opposed to making a trade,” Jose noted. “I'm not sure how wise it would be to make it a gift. Might bring them back to us for another gift, even if we don't have it to spare next time.”

  “They already know we're here,” Clay shrugged. “They got a good meal last night, and they'll remember it for a long time to come if all they've got is MREs. Since there was no hiding from them once they showed up at the door, it seemed like making friends was the better play. And we got some information about what's happening in the rest of the world. I think that was worth the price of a good meal, even for so many.”

  “All of that is true,” Jose agreed. “And, let’s be honest. If they are somewhere to the south, we probably won't need to expect trouble from that direction in the near future.”

  “Good point,” Mitchell agreed. He was limiting his contributions, since he wasn't really meant to be there.

  “I don't see any problem with what we've done so far,” Beverly dipped an oar into the discussion. “But whatever decision we make, we need to have a goal in mind. Just what is our goal, here? To make them our friends? To bribe them? Buy them off? I was in the shelter with the children, so I haven't spoken to any of them
. Were they polite? Crude? Demanding, or demeaning in any way? Things like that.”

  “They were all very polite,” Martina assured her. “On their best behavior, I'd say, in fact. Their sergeants rode herd on them and their officers ensured they behaved, even among themselves. Every group like theirs we meet may not be that way, but these were. How long will it last? That I cannot say.”

  “The fact that it's lasted this long says a lot about both them, and their leadership,” Jose pointed out.

  “If they had decided to simply attack us, could we have stopped them?” Beverly asked.

  “Yes,” Clay, Jose and Mitchell all replied at once. “But it would have hurt,” Jose added before Clay could do so.

  “Were they aware of that?” Beverly inquired.

  “No,” Clay shook his head. “They knew we were hiding a great deal, but not what, or how much.”

  “So, the odds are that their behavior was the actual way they normally conduct themselves,” Beverly extrapolated. “In that case, and assuming nothing changes, I don't see why we can't be friendly toward them to the extent we can afford. I do, however, suggest that our military capabilities remain hidden from them,” she suggested. “There is no reason for them to know that. Bad enough that they will see everyone armed.”

  “I can get behind that,” Clay nodded. “I would likely have done it anyway, to be honest. Just my nature,” he grinned.

  “We could give them a couple of smoked beeves, I guess,” Gordon mentioned.

  “I'm not part of this, really, other than for this right here,” Dee Talbot spoke up from where she was sitting on the ground, outside the immediate circle. She got to her feet, dusting herself off as she moved toward them.

  “We've given away a lot of your beef since I got here, Mister Sanders,” she told Gordon. “We've consumed a lot of it, as well. After the wake-up call we got from Kandi, Sam and I began working on increasing the herd, where before we had been limiting it to simply replacing what we were using ourselves. That was a mistake, and we have taken steps to rectify it, but that takes time. Every time we slaughter a cow, it takes a year-and-a-half to two years to replace it. Normally, with a herd the size of yours, that isn't an issue. But our initial actions, combined with how much we've used, have left us in a bit of a quandary. One we can solve, with time,” she promised, “but it does take time. We're only perhaps three months into that two-year time frame. Remember that we have to anticipate how much beef we're going to consume during that two years, atop all other concerns. And there are a lot of people on this farm, many of whom have a very large appetite.”