Posted: 7/9/2009 2:12:34 AM EDT
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It had been some weeks since the so-called ‘food riots,’ and the Federal forces that had responded to the violence hadn’t been benevolent when they rounded up the’ rioters and malcontents’ and carted them away. During the long years of his political/social awakening, and the short months of his preparation, Patch had thought the ‘peacekeeping’ forces would have worn blue helmets; little had he known that they’d be made up of other Americans. Louisiana, Chicago, and the East Coast had been only three of the American regional dialects Patch had detected among the ‘peacekeepers...’ but none had the typical Southwestern drawl. All of them had worn the same uniform, copied from those of the U.S. military forces. None of them had any displayed any military bearing, behaving instead more like armed ghetto thugs. The police were forbidden to interfere with the authority of the Federal personnel. When the ‘mercy transports’ had finished, there remained less than 1/4 of the original inhabitants in this tiny little town, to pick up life where it’d left off.
Most others had been less fortunate. The rail lines in this central hub had never seen so shameful a transport. Patch was strongly reminded of the movies of Germans being transported during World War II. The railroad cars had kept moving day and night, for weeks, moving from north to south, then east. Eventually the frequency of the ‘cattle cars’ lessened, then they stopped moving at all. Patch walked cautiously down the single-track lane in the breathlessly hot air of the desert. His legs and back ached from walking in the soft sand; his eyes watered from the breathlessly hot New Mexico wind. The lane more or less paralleled the paved two-lane highway (which his team leader deemed too dangerous to march on), and eventually led to one of the hundreds of small settlements that dotted the New Mexican landscape. These settlements were each built around a half-million gallon municipal water tank. Water was precious in the New Mexico desert; drilling for it was expensive, and most people preferred to settle where it was already supplied. Patch reflected on how he’d gotten here; he didn’t like some of the conclusions he reached. He’d been assigned to several work teams, doing jobs that nobody else wanted; this new ‘adventure’ was his first trip out of town in weeks. He approached the outlying buildings of the community of Mountain Bend. Nestled between two arms of the Manzano Mountains, the community had long had an evil reputation for a high crime rate, and was a place the police never visited except in numbers. Most of its inhabitants were refugees from the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ that had been waged in Albuquerque, fifty miles to the north. The big cities had had Federal funding to wage war on drug dealers and other undesirables; the local law enforcement didn’t have the resources of the big city, and could do very little about the influx. The new inhabitants hadn’t been stupid, just criminal: they’d waged a low-level terror campaign against the town’s ‘decent’ inhabitants, burning and pillaging on a low-enough level that the local authorities could pretend to ignore the problem for several years, until finally the ‘decent’ inhabitants, mostly retirees, had moved or died off. Apparently, there were no human inhabitants of any sort now, not even a feral dog or cat could be seen. An occasional roadrunner croaked in the underbrush–– Patch watched one running across the road with a lizard in its mouth–– but otherwise the area was silent in the way that only the desert can be. The streets were deserted; a thin layer of desert sand blanketed the streets and sidewalks, and anything else that could collect it. Patch wryly recalled the comment of a student he’d met at the local university: “Everything in New Mexico is allowed to be one color.” The state color of New Mexico seemed to be Adobe. The team reached a small homestead, consisting of a small house, barn and horse corral. Tim motioned to Patch, showing two horizontal fingers: “CHECK THE BUILDING.” Edging around the corner of the building, Patch silently dropped his pack, drew his revolver, and quickly entered the open door. He opened his left eye, which he’d closed to restore some semblance of night vision, a trick he’d learned from Tim. He realized he’d been holding his breath from tension; he exhaled and took a deep breath. Big mistake. The stench of rotting flesh immediately assaulted his senses. He gagged and stepped outside to clear his lungs. Tim and his partner raised their guns, expecting danger; Patch waved his cupped hand next to his ear (“NO DANGER”). He gasped in the breathtakingly hot desert heat, glad to be out of the house… then gagged several times. Tim snapped his fingers once to get Patch’s attention, then signed with an open hand starting at his left temple, making a semicircle sideways (“WTF IS GOING ON?”). Patch responded by pinching his nose (“IT REEKS IN THERE”). Tim grinned mirthlessly and pointed back into the house. Breathing deeply in the fresh air, Patch reached into his pack; removed a bandana, smeared it with a cold remedy and tied it round his nose and mouth. He smelled the pungent odor of menthol. He had a good idea of what he’d find. He scanned the surroundings with his opened eye. The rest of his ‘recon’ team had held back, waiting for his signal Patch re-entered the door, looked around the living room of the pitifully small house. It was a frame house, stucco on the outside, stained wallboard inside. It hadn’t been painted for several years. He glanced at the kitchen, where there was little sign of use. He moved from the crowded living room to a small hallway; ahead of him was a filthy bathroom, and to either side was a bedroom. He entered the room to the right, ‘slicing the pie’ as he’d been taught, and was filled with disgust at what he saw: the dried, blackened bodies of a woman and an infant, perhaps eight months old, huddled together. Fat black flies covered the bodies. There was no sign of trauma, but Patch guessed what she’d been through. He searched the closet, trying not to disturb the bodies, found nothing beyond some shabby clothing; looked up at the ceiling for a crawlway entrance, found none. He moved to the other bedroom and looked at the bunk beds there. There was the body of a child, perhaps eight. Flies covered his body, and its eyes were open and unfocused. The eyes looked at him. Patch recoiled a couple of steps in horror. “Jesus,” he breathed. The child made a small sound, perhaps in pain, perhaps in supplication. Patch ran outside and, to his credit, kept his head enough to not yell but instead to make hand signs to Tim and his partner Patrick, pumping his fist up-and-down: [HURRY UP!] Tim crouch-ran up to Patch, who was gagging. He grunted, “Is the house clear?” “There’s a kid alive in there,” Patch gasped, and retched again. “Top bunk, left side bedroom.” Tim snarled, “IS THE HOUSE CLEAR?” “YES!” Patch grunted. “Go get the kid!” Tim motioned his partner to follow him. Patch heard the noises of the two as they systematically searched the house, first the kitchen, then fading as they went to the far end where the bedrooms were. There were some faint noises; after about five minutes, the two exited the house. They stripped off their own bandanas. Tim held a handgun, an ancient .38 Colt Police Positive, and a half-empty box of shells. “You missed this, newbie. If someone’d been alive in there, they’d ‘a shot you with it.” “What about the kid?” Patch said incredulously. Tim said, “You’re wrong. There’s no one alive in there.” “I saw him move!” He started toward the open door. Tim grabbed the front of his shirt, stared at him for a long second. “There’s no one alive in there,” he said softly, almost sadly. Tim ordered a security perimeter set up. Four of the team members took corners and kept a lookout for any intruders; two more moved a few yards toward the town and took cover there. The other three started systematically pillaging the buildings surrounding the small house. There was a barn and a work shed that yielded some worn tools, and a Ford truck that contained a farm jack and about two gallons of gasoline. The precious fuel was collected into a five gallon gas can; the gas can and tools were left beside the truck, to be retrieved when the team departed. As they rested from their work, sitting in the shadow of the tool shed out of the blistering New Mexican sun, they chewed on some jerky and sipped some of their limited water. To make conversation, Patch said, “That gas was probably the most important thing here.” “That ‘n the form jack,” Cathy said. It was she who’d looted the truck, systematically cutting all the gas lines to drain the tank, even the ones going to the engine, recovering every drop of precious fuel. With her thin, wiry frame, she was the best-suited for the job; they hadn’t even jacked up the truck. “I’ll rassle yew t’ see who carries it back!” she said in her Virginia hillbilly accent, with no particular gleam of humor in her eye. “Okay, enough with the chatter,” Tim said. “Go and relieve the guards. Let ‘em have a break.” Cathy immediately trotted off to the south, the direction they’d come from. There was only one guard there. Patch went to the northeast, the side closest to the main town. The guard there gratefully returned to the tool shed. He pointedly refused to leave his rifle. Patch thought of the AR15 he’d left behind at the police office. He’d been told that he’d carry his Ruger revolver and a pack, but nothing else, as there were seven well-armed team members. Patch grimaced at this news: it seems he was to be a pack mule, and worse, an ’auxiliary’ if any shooting started. He was at the bottom of the pecking order, and knew it. Certainly his ‘point’ position, unarmed as he was, demonstrated that he was expendable. Everyone in the team seemed to know each other; some seemed to be related. Patch was the odd man. And they’d made sure he knew his status, promising better things as time went along. Yeah, right. After about 30 minutes, each guard relieving the next in turn until they’d all had a short break and a snack. They’d refilled their water jugs at the kitchen faucet (with Patch actually doing the work in the reek of the charnel house), which still had clear water and, surprisingly, electricity. Nevertheless, they put water purifier tablets in their jugs. They headed northeast into the town, Patch being a nervous ‘point man,’ upright and visible, while the rest of the team kept to whatever limited cover there was in the barren, sere desert. “At least I don’t have to run as far as they do, zig-zagging as they are,” he thought wryly. Still, he made it a point to take no more than five steps in a straight line. Tim had told him not to look backward, but to listen for his whistle. Whenever he approached a possible choke point or hiding place, he put his hand to the small of his back, where the .357 Ruger revolver resided, and kept his head swiveling. By late afternoon, the team was able to make a preliminary scouting report: in the twenty-four houses and trailers in the section of Mountain Bend they’d scouted, they’d collected another eight gallons of gasoline, found a number of cars and trucks with even more gas, and found a gas station that had had the electricity turned off. The station had been damaged by a small fire, but the pumps were intact. Patch guessed that it’d been shut down to prevent fire, and later, pillaging. He mentioned to Tim that it might be worthwhile to bring a portable generator to see if the tanks held any more fuel. Tim gave him an appraising glance and concurred. “We’ll see if ‘da Man’ agrees, but I like the idea.” “Da Man” was Tim’s reference to the police chief. Other than the hapless victims in the first small house they’d encountered, they found no signs of life. On the way back, Patch carried the two jugs of gasoline on a pole that dug into his neck. Cathy carried the farm jack, which must have weighed half of what she did. She slung it over her shoulder and didn’t seem to be slowed down at all. Patch started to develop a grudging respect for her. He’d formed a low opinion of her when she refused to carry even a small revolver, saying that she didn’t like guns. But she was no weakling, easily shouldering a burden of which Patch was glad to be rid. The rest of the tools were divided among the team members. After the team completed the tiring eight-mile trek home along dirt roads, they delivered their burdens to the local PD and then fell out in the shade of the oak tree in the park. A local woman who’d owned a restaurant brought some sandwiches and cold (WOW!) Gatorade, a welcome treat. Tim, who’d stayed behind to report to the Chief, came out with Patch’s AR-15. “Do you know how to use this?” he said. “Sure, I’ve shot it a lot. In fact I took the basic 4-day carbine course at the Personal Defense Institute in Colorado Springs.” Tim looked at him with some surprise. “Okay, we’re going back to Mountain Bend tomorrow. You’ll carry this,” handing him his AR. “Carry three extra mags too. Do you have a trauma kit?” “No,” Patch replied. “I assembled some big bandages and stuff, but a medic would probably laugh at it if I called it that.” “Bring whatever you got. Be here at oh dark thirty, tomorrow morning.” Tim turned to walk away. “Tim?” The leader turned around. Patch motioned with his rifle. “Why the change of heart?” Tim returned to the tree, crouched down. “You surprised me. You earned it. You’ve worked hard since things went to hell around here. You do your job without bitching, you follow orders you don’t like— meaning, you’re smart enough to trust your team members— and— so far— you haven’t screwed up. You keep your head swivelin’, too: no one’s gonna sneak up on you.” He rubbed the stubble under his chin, then passed his hand over his face and into his hair. He paused. “I talked to da Man. He liked your suggestion about the fuel tank. We’ll be going in style. We’re bringing a truck and a tank trailer, and that generator you suggested. Do you know any electrical stuff?” “I can do some basic house wiring.” “Then bring some tools,” the team leader said. “No one else on this team can change a light bulb without hurting someone,” and stalked away. Evidently his position in the pecking order had changed. His estimation of Tim had changed, too: the man gave credit where it was due. Patch sipped his Gatorade and closed his eyes. A word about ‘auxiliaries:’ In ancient times, these were captured and disarmed troops and civilians, driven in front of an attacking army to absorb and blunt the initial contact with the defenders. |
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Okay! Here's the second installment. This continues from the first story. It is about halfway through the second chapter.
Writing is LOTS more difficult than I ever imagined! Someone said that to write, you simply sit down in front of your keyboard and open a vein. He was optimistic! *************************************** Patch woke early, with a nagging cramp in his thigh. The sixteen-plus mile ‘walk’ they’d taken the day before was still making itself known. He’d gotten plenty of water to drink when he returned—the Chief was wise enough to make that mandatory—but the effects were still with him. He checked his rifle, a 20” AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. He oiled the moving parts, then checked that his mags were topped off, and slipped ten stripper clips of ammo and a loading spoon into his backpack just to be sure. “Ammo in a firefight is like bubble gum in school,” he muttered to himself; “if you don’t have enough to go around, you’re screwed.” He got his electrical tools together, with some ten gauge wire, wire nuts and a 20-amp plug. He also filled a couple of gallon jugs of water; they were “riding in style” today, as Tim put it, taking a truck with a trailer to scavenge some gasoline from the deserted town. Also, they were bringing another team of eight shooters for cover. The Chief recognized the importance of the abandoned gasoline, and didn’t want to take any chances with getting it back. Patch ate a sketchy breakfast, then waited by the side of the road; the team had to pass his house to get to the highway leading to Mountain Bend. Tim said he’d brief him when he joined up with them. Presently he heard the sound of the truck: an old Dodge pickup, towing a small Army fuel trailer that had been ‘borrowed’ from the local National Guard armory. Clinging to the sides of the tank were the fire team; sitting in the truck bed was his own team. Cathy drove the pickup, her usual dour expression somewhat softened by the prospect of the truck’s A/C being available when the day got hotter. Tim sat in the passenger seat, but swung onto the bed when Patch joined up. Taking Patch’s pack, rifle and tool bag, he then assisted Patch into the bed of the truck, which never completely stopped. “Today, our main goal is to retrieve as much gasoline as we can carry. The other fire team is going to continue into Mountain Bend for a recon. They’ll be in touch with us on the radio; if we need help, they’ll back us up fast. There’s also a general store and a Six-Ten stop-and-rob they want to check out for food and stuff. Got any questions?” “Works for me,” Patch replied. The rest of the team nodded its assent. They passed the miles talking desultorily about nothing in particular, until they passed the charnel house; they shut up then, each absorbed in his own thoughts. Pulling up to the gas station, they positioned the trailer within easy reach of the gas hoses and offloaded the generator. The other fire team took the truck into town. Patch got busy with the wiring on the gas pump, while Tim set up a security perimeter. Cathy stayed to help Patch. The wiring job was finished in short order and Patch pulled the starter cord on the genny. And pulled. And pulled again. Nothing happened. “Dammit, Tim, didn’t anyone check to see if this thing works?” Patch fumed. Tim walked over and crouched beside the genny. “Hell, the damned thing worked just last week; we had it running at the clinic.” The two men did some more swearing and pulling; then Cathy, with her usual milk-curdling expression on her face, reached between them and pushed a rocker switch labeled “1” and “0.” She pulled the starter rope and the generator chugged into life. The two men looked at each other with the typical “WTF” expression reserved for such occasions. Patch said, “Cathy… I was just testing you.” Cathy walked away saying something like “Boo shit. Yew min don’ wanna garble garble…I’m gonna see if innythang survahved the fahr.” She went into the gas station. “Well, let’s…. let’s see if… if we can pump… some gas!” Tim gasped between guffaws. Patch just shook his head, kept his mouth shut. The wiring job was fairly straightforward; presently, they had high-octane gasoline flowing into the tank. “Damn, but that was stupid!” Tim said good-naturedly. Patch was about to make a retort when they were interrupted by a high-pitched scream from within the station. Both men grabbed their rifles (remembering to move away from the gas tanker) and found what cover they could, chambering a round as they moved. Presently, Cathy left the station, the front of her shirt covered with vomit. She waved her hands in the “All OK” signal, while still spitting. “What the Hell’s wrong?” asked Tim as he handed her a greasy shop towel. “Sumwun’s in there, wasin’t there yesstidy,” she gasped. “It’s bad, reely bad, Timmy.” She sank into a squat, her back to the tanker tire, and sobbed. “They cut ‘im up. They jist–– cut ‘im up an’ left ‘im.” Tim motioned to Patch to stay behind, held his rifle at port arms, and sprinted to the station. Presently he emerged, his face white with shock. “All perimeter guards, check in by the numbers,” he said into his radio. After all the guards had checked in, he said, “There are still some bogies in the area. There’s been a really bad scene in the gas station, so keep your eyes open.” The radio squawked; one of the perimeter guards asked, “What the hell’s in there?” Tim replied, “You don’t want to see it, Bobby. It’s bad. It’s… just bad. It’s worse than anything the Manson family did. Everybody, keep your eyes open.” He was clearly rattled as he picked up his radio again. “Second team, did you copy my last?” “Ten-four, we’re on the alert. Haven’t seen anything.” “Stay alert, that’s all. Call every five minutes.” He crouched next to Cathy. “You OK, Snake Hips?” he asked. “Ah’v seen sum shit before but this jist surprised me, that’s all. He weren’t there when we came by yestiddy. But Ah nevir seen innythin’ lahk this.” She started to tremble. Patch reached in the back of the truck, handed her one of his jugs; she poured some water into her mouth, spat, then bathed her face a little. “Ah ain’t goin’ back in there.” “Okay,” said Tim. “Patrick, take 2 men and scout the ravine to the north; I’ll take the south. Patch, you come with me. Bobby, maintain the perimeter here. Snake Hips, can you handle the pump?” “Sure I c’n, I ain’t hurt, jist shook,” she replied. “Okay,” Tim whispered. “We’re gonna check out the ravine that runs along the side of the station. There are some dirt roads there, and a runoff ditch where some people may be hiding. Keep an eye open for tracks and signs of habitation. There may be a hobo village down there so keep alert. Go up about a half mile, then come back.” Patrick nodded silently, then disappeared with his team along the bank of the ravine. Tim looked at Patch. “Are you locked & loaded?” “Hell yeah, after that scream Cathy let out I charged it reeeal quick.” “Good. And don’t diss her, pal. She got surprised, that’s all. She’s tough as a brick in a pinch. I don’t want to take more than 5 away from the station; we need the perimeter security there.” They started out along the ditch bank, moving slowly. The ravine had been an irrigation ditch at one time; dead and dying trees lined the bank, providing sketchy concealment, while the bottom of the ditch was mostly packed sand. In some places the dropoff to the bottom was sheer, four or more feet high. The going was made tougher by the sandy, grassy soil, but Tim didn’t want to give up the high ground for an easier path. Patch, about ten feet in front, saw it first: a pile of detritus that plainly indicated a transient camp. Cans and paper wrappers, bottles and cardboard boxes in a heap, showed the boundary of the camp. Everything was strangely odor-free, as if it had been abandoned for a long time. Under the bones of a dead cottonwood tree laid the remains of a man. He’d been severely mutilated, betraying an orgy of violence. His limbs and neck were twisted, his torso deeply slashed with a knife, and from what Patch could see of his face, the jaw had deliberately been broken. It looked like he’d been worked over for several minutes; Patch hoped he’d died early. It was Tim who noticed that he was no transient; the shoes had been almost new, and looked like some high-end loafers, not the ragged tennis shoes of some vagrant. The rest of the clothing—what little remained–– just didn’t bear inspection. There was no sign of the man’s other belongings. Tim reported back to the station. “Patrick, there’s another one here, about a quarter mile from the station. He’s been worked over pretty badly. We’re returning right now.” Tim got an acknowledgement, pocketed the radio. “Let’s beat feet back to the station. I don’t want to stick around where there aren’t plenty of rifles to back me up.” “No argument from me, boss,” said Patch. They made a quick jog to the west of the ravine, onto some slightly rolling desert shrubland, then turned northward. “Why are we in the open like this?”asked Patch. “Most bums can’t use a gun worth crap. They’re all druggies and drunks. Not many of ‘em know how to aim a rifle either; the farther away we are from ‘em the safer we’ll be.” They trudged through the loose sand for a couple of minutes. “How long have you known Cathy,” whispered Patch. “Quite a while. We served together in the Army for a couple of years in the transport section. She’s steady as a rock; this is the first time I’ve ever seen her worked up. Works like a coolie, never bitches about anything, drives any damned vehicle like it’s a part of her I’ve seen her drive everything from motor scooters to Bradleys. After the Army we lost track of each other; she showed up in town about six months after Amy died.” Amy was Tim’s wife; she’d died of lung cancer, undiagnosed until too late. “You two hooked up?” Patch said with an innocent face. “Hell no!” Tim replied. “She don’t need a man to keep her safe, and, hell… with a face like that…” Patch grinned; as much as he’d grown to respect Cathy, she had a face like a can of worms. Presently they approached the station. “Stop here,” Tim commanded. After a few seconds, a low whistle sounded. “Come on in.” Tim and Patch closed the few yards to the station, Tim’s head swiveling all the time. Suddenly, from behind them they heard a noise. “Gotcha,” grinned Mickey, one of the perimeter guards, as he sat up from behind a shrub. “Dammit, Mick, one ‘a these days I’m gonna plug you,” Tim grumped good-naturedly. Patch looked at him quizzically. “Where’d he come from?” “We walked right past him, almost stepped on him probably,” Tim laughed. “Mick worked for Special Force, Rangers I think; that boy could camouflage himself in the middle of a king-sized bed.” The two men returned to the pumping operation; with the limited output of the gas pump, the large fuel tank was filling slowly. Tim looked around. “Where’s Cathy?” “Over there, takin’ a piss. She’s prob’ly crouched behind a fence post,” said Farmer. “Tim, I gotta talk to you for a sec,” continued Farmer. “That guy in there wasn’t just sliced up. I been a butcher for eight years, and them ain’t knife wounds.” “What then?” “They look more like... ah shit, that poor bastard got torn up by teeth.” Tim considered this for a minute, didn’t speak. Farmer continued. “Torn up by teeth. No blood to speak of on the body or in the station. So he got torn up somewhere else, and the body was dumped there. Right where we’d find it the next day. And… this is the worst part… no guts. No entrails, no lungs, heart, liver, nothin’.” “What’re you thinking happened?” “Some sonsabitches left him staked out somewhere for the coyotes to get him. But why the hell would they bring him to the station… where we were gonna be the next day?” Farmer was clearly rattled by his observations. “Did you talk to anyone else about this?” demanded Tim. “No, we took him over and buried him, just got back a minute before you did. We figured with two to lookout n’ two to dig, everyone’d be safe. We just took him over there a little ways. The others didn’t want to look at him, let alone touch him, but I saw he had strange wounds, and I looked at the body a little. That boy died badly, Tim. Real bad.” “Don’t tell anyone else about this. I’m gonna tell this to Chief Renquist when we get home. Go relieve Mick on perimeter, let him get some chow. Then relieve the other guards in turn.” Farmer jogged off to the south. “Don’t you say anythin’ either. People get worked up when they think something’s up.” Patch nodded silently; Tim got pretty taciturn when he got bad news, and wouldn’t have replied if asked. Presently Patrick and his team returned; they had nothing momentous to report. They’d worked their way north from the station, along the backs of several houses and trailers, and hadn’t encountered any people, dogs, or even roadrunners. “Getting boring around here,” Patrick opined. “What’d you do with that body?” “Farmer & a couple others buried it over there,” said Patch. He looked at Tim, only to see that Tim was watching him. Probably to see if he’d keep his mouth shut. Patch shut up. Tim and Patrick were close; Tim would tell him anything he needed to know. Presently, Micky came in for a break. “What’s got into Farmer? He’s usually noisy as a bar full’a sailors.” “He got burial detail for the body, that’s all,” said Patch. “He’s a little shook, that’s all.” “Patch, go ‘n relieve whoever’s on the north end, let’em come in for a break. Take yer evil gun, too.” Patch flashed a grin, picked up his AR and jogged away to the northeast… the side closest to the town. He let the perimeter guard return to the station, where everyone had left their packs and personal stuff. Hunkering down, he unwrapped his own sandwich and chewed it thoughtfully. He was a little disturbed by what Farmer had to say about the body; it matched what he and Tim had seen in the hobo camp. He thought about being gnawed to death by a pack of coyotes; the idea horrified and fascinated him. Who would do such a thing to a fellow human? The only answer Patch could come up with was this: Someone had lost their humanity. Patch didn’t know much about coyotes; he assumed that they’d do most anything if they got hungry enough. ***************** Patch had relieved each of the perimeter guards in turn when Tim called them all in. The generator was silent; Cathy was climbing off the trailer, the gas pump hose in her hand. “We’re finished here,” Tim said. “The gas tanker’s full, at least as full as we can make it, so we’re taking it back. Haven’t even reached the bottom of the station tank yet. Second team has reported a bonanza at the store and the stop-n-rob; seems the looters weren’t smart enough to bust down the storage room doors before the Feds came by and hauled them away.” “What’re you gonna do? Can’t leave the stores full, now we know there’re still some looters around,” Mick stated. “Take it all with us, as much as we can,” Tim said. “It’ll be a day’s work moving it out. We got the OK to overnight here in town.” Cathy looked stricken. Farmer didn’t look too happy about the prospect, either. Neither one spoke. Presently, the second team drove up, four men short, driving a minivan. Tim sat down with the leader to take his report; Patch went to the van to help unload some canned foods. They sat on the east side of the building, shaded from the westering sun. “Man, this beats all!” said Mick. “This’s the reason I go out on these trips: to get the first crack at the goods!” There were canned vegetables, canned soup, (warm) soda, even canned meat, a delicacy Patch appreciated. Three of the men passed around a small pipe; Patch, outraged, thought it was a hash pipe until he saw one of them crumple the end of a cigarette into the bowl. Fine economy, that; before, when everything was plentiful, most of a cigarette got wasted, smoldering away between puffs. Patch asked, “Got any canned chili in that box?” “Beans or no beans?” asked Shorty. “Beans, of course.” “Damned philistine.” “So what the hell happened while we were away?” Shorty asked. Short and stocky, he looked like he could lift a truck single-handedly. “Heard something on the radio about someone getting beat up.” “Worse than that. Lots worse,” said Farmer. “This poor bastard in there got all… cut up.” He glanced at Patch, who acknowledged with a blink. “Looked like someone had a damned orgy with a butcher knife. We buried him across the road.” Patch didn’t mention the man at the hobo camp. “Well if that don’t beat all. Why’n Hell would anyone do that, cuttin’ him up like that? Ain’t enough misery in the world without torturin’ someone to death. “Funny thing, we didn’t see anyone all day, didn’t even see any tracks in the dirt, till we got to the store. Place was wrecked, windows busted, shelves bare as a baby’s butt, but no one’d checked the back. Only locked with a padlock, and we cut that easy enough. Patch, there’s racks and racks of food there! Enough to feed a platoon for weeks. But no one had the smarts to look for it. We left half the team there guarding it, just in case. There’s a gas pump there, too, and I bet it’d be worthwhile to see if we can scavenge some gas from it.” First Team was loading the goods into the truck when Tim and Stretch, the Second Team leader, walked up. “Okay, here’s the plan. First team will head back with the tanker and the minivan. Second team will guard the storehouse, meaning the Stop & Rob, overnight. They’re loaded for bear. We’ll gas up a couple of cars from town and that’ll give them mobility if they need to bug out. It’s hot enough that no one’ll miss a bed or blanket tonight.” He looked at Stretch. “Keep a watch all night. Keep at least half your people on guard duty. I don’t want to come back tomorrow and find you gone.” Stretch nodded wordlessly. Patch and Farmer swung the generator into the rear of the truck. As the rest of First Team climbed into the truck bed, Farmer checked the tow hitch and wiring; while no one worried about the police stopping them for lights, the trailer, now laden with gasoline, would need its electric brakes more than ever. They swung into the truck bed and drove into the sunset. |
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Chapter 3.
Patch was awakened by the sound of a truck horn, honking stridently. He recognized the Dodge truck from earlier that day. “Whass’ up? Wha’ time is it” he groggily called out the window. “Get the lead out, Second Team is in trouble,” called Farmer, from the back of the truck. Patch threw on pants and grabbed his AR and his pack – left untouched since he got home yesterday afternoon— grabbed his other clothes and ran out the door. Farmer helped him into the truck. “Where’s Tim?” asked Patch. “He’s gone ahead with some other guys from the station,” said Farmer. “We’re in touch with them on the radio.“ “Second Team reported trouble about ninety minutes ago. Someone’s attacking the Stop & Rob. Said they were returning fire and had some casualties, but then they just stopped calling. I don’t like this situation at all. There’s exactly one paved road into town, and it’s likely to be guarded. I hope Tim’s got a plan that’ll keep us from walking into an ambush.” The radio squawked: Tim calling Team 2. There was no answer. “Tim and Patrick went ahead with two cops from the station. They’re all armed. They left about an hour ago. That’s about all I know.” “Any idea who we’re fighting,” demanded Patch. “How well they’re armed? What’re their tactics? Do we know ANYthing about what we’re getting into?” “Not a damned thing,” breathed Farmer. He grunted as the truck hit a bump in the road. Cathy had it running flat out by now. Tim, Patrick and the two cops had stopped their car a mile from the gas station marking the entrance to Mountain Bend. One of the cops had a pair of night vision goggles, which lit up the moonlit desert like daylight. Tim was profoundly glad to have them, but told their owner to put them away and conserve the batteries; they would need them inside the store. Tim called his backup and told them to stop where they were; he’d stopped calling Team 2 some minutes ago. Avoiding the main entrance to the town, they hiked a couple of miles diagonally across the desert, crossing two ravines, until they got to the edge of town. They circled around the buildings, advancing singly and in pairs, cutting one wire fence in their way, until they got to the parking lot of the store. They listened for several minutes, then Mickey, one of the cops, took something from his backpack, showed it to Tim, who nodded. Mickey belly crawled to the front of the store (miraculously making no sound in the gravel and broken glass outside), lit an automobile flare, tossed it inside. The light from the flare made an eerie flickering on the inside. The others waited for a few seconds, then joined Mickey, who motioned them to either side of the door. Mickey put on his goggles, adjusted the sensitivity, then, rifle at high ready, charged into the store. Tim and the others could hear his boots crunching in the debris. They heard another flare being struck and thrown into the back room; presently Mickey called, “All clear. All clear.” Tim entered the store, looked around. Empty brass casings littered the floor in six places, left there by the shooters. Several empty magazines marked the shooter’s exact positions. “Gawd Damn, looks like they had a hell of a fight in here. But they’re no bodies! None at all!” “No guns, either,” said Mickey. “And no radios.” He looked meaningfully at Tim. ”Let’s get two of us outside, just in case someone comes back.” Presently Farmer heard the radio: “Team1, team leader, ten-twenty?” It was Tim. “Farmer here. What’s up, Tim?” “NO NAMES ON THE RADIO! Codes only!” “Aahhh, uuhhh, okay, my twenty is about 1 mile south of the turnoff to Mike Bravo, over.” Patch winced. “Team Two, stop in place and maintain position till I call, copy? And get a perimeter in place, STAT.” Farmer looked strangely at Patch, said, “Ten-four, staying in place.” He banged on the roof of the cab. “Stop right here, shut your lights off.” Cathy stopped in the middle of the road. There followed one of the longest hours of Patch’s life. The team, numbering seven including Cathy, took defensive positions at each corner of the truck, and waited. The waxing half moon illuminated the desert well enough, yet Patch wished he’d closed one eye upon entering the bed of the truck; presently his night vision returned. Imagination is most fertile when fed by fear; people see things they wouldn’t have seen before. There were several ‘alerts’ whispered by various members of the team. Patch was pressed to keep them from shooting up the desert. “NEVER shoot what you can’t be sure of,” he hissed. “Things are bad enough right now. We don’t need our eyesight or hearing destroyed by shooting blindly.” Farmer was just as spooked as the rest of the team; Patch (who’d taken over as de facto leader of the team) had to keep him on his corner of the truck–– Farmer wanted to be next to somebody–– and as Patch passed the driver’s window, he heard a strange clicking noise. Looking inside, he saw Cathy’s eyes, wild with fear, and realized he’d heard her teeth chattering. After a long sixty minutes, the radio squawked again. “Team One, team actual,” Tim called. “Team One here.” Farmer didn’t want to risk another on-air ass chewing. “Meet us by the Old Oak Tree.” Farmer looked quizzically at the radio, expecting it to answer his unasked question. Patch touched him on the shoulder, touched his forehead [I UNDERSTAND]. Farmer keyed the radio: “Ten Four, Old Oak Tree it is. Team One moving out.” Patch explained. “On the way into town there was a scrubby little tree that was festooned with plastic shopping bags. Tim said it reminded him of that old song.” Patch climbed into the truck with Cathy, told her where to go. She was still rattled, but calmed down with something to do. They drove for about twenty minutes before they approached the rise before the meeting point. “Turn off your headlights,” said Patch. She did so, finding that she could drive in the light of the half-moon. They stopped several feet short of the rendezvous point; two men from the bed rolled out to take guard position. A flashlight winked three times from the shade of the tree. Tim and his companions strode out, hands off their weapons, and joined the Team. As Tim approached the driver’s window, the others fanned out to scan the perimeter; Mickey turned his goggles on. Patrick told the two at the rear of the truck to scan the rear. “Where’s your car?” asked Patch. “Gone. Just gone,” replied Tim. “Someone must’ve known we were on our way and waited for us. We never saw ANYone, not even any members of Team Two. They’re all gone. Hell of a firefight back at the store. Their cars are gone, too. Hell of a creepy feeling, thinking that someone was watching us all along.” Farmer looked at him in wide-eyed fear; Cathy stared at the road ahead, but even in the light of the half-moon, Patch could see her knuckles white against the steering wheel. “Here’s the plan, fans. We’re outnumbered, that’s plain. If they can take a nine-man squad and not even leave any dead, they’re out of our league. We were set up, that’s plain. As soon as the firefight started, maybe even before, they planted someone along the road. Maybe stopping where we did saved us from an ambush at the gas station, I dunno. We’re gonna head back and return in the morning with some serious firepower.” “Lynch?” queried Patrick. “Yeah, Ol’ Man Lynch, and the whole of the Hell’s Angels if I can find ‘em. Let’s mount up, troops.” Tim swung into the truck beside Cathy; the others climbed into the bed. Patrick, Micky and the cop mounted last, in good order. Cathy swung the truck around and drove southwest, accelerating steadily. Behind them, just beyond the scrawny, litter-bedecked tree, a lone figure crouched, watching. |
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Quoted:
Great read!! I hope your going to give us a little more information as to how all this came about? Keep up the great work. AKASL LIVE FREE OR DIE Information will come by and by, as the story progresses. You know something? Whenever authors, writing about their work, said that 'A story takes on a life of its own," I thought they were BSing. It ain't so. The more I write about this, the more I find that needs to come out. 'Triage' has become a part of a much larger story. I'll be putting parts of it online; hopefully, the main story will make me obscenely large amounts of money so I can retire spend it all foolishly. |
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She awoke from a deep slumber.
She felt…. different. She felt… rested. Peaceful. A line from the Mass drifted through her mind: “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding…” She felt GOOD, for the first time in Lord knows how long. Her headache was gone; no more body aches; the nausea seemed to be a thing of the past, and the rotten taste of chemotherapy no longer filled her mouth. And she wasn’t groggy, but alert: she felt like she’d already had her morning coffee. The first thing that crossed her mind was that she’d died and this was what Heaven felt like, where people were cured of all their earthly ailments. She sat up and saw that she was still in her hospital room. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. As she sat on the edge of her bed, she looked back to see if her earthly body was still lying there. It wasn’t, of course. She was still alive. No, not alive. ALIVE! For a moment, she thought she heard a chorus of angels. It was only the hospital staff, going around its morning routine. Change of shift, apparently; Judy, the elfin-faced senior graveyard shift nurse, was giving instructions to the morning staff, using her lecture voice. Odd that she could hear the nurse’s station from her room; it was down the hall and around a corner. She could hear the patient next door, softly snoring; on the other side of the hallway someone was watching TV with the earphone on–– she heard the dialogue, and she heard the whine of the picture tube from that distance. Usually she was unable to hear these things, much less care about them. She’d been in too much pain to care about anything. The doctors in the other hospital had been very frank with her: she had less than a month to live. The cancer had spread too far to be stopped, and she simply had to accept that she was going to die. At 43 years of age, she was dying. The social people had done everything they could do to soften the news for her, offering counseling sessions and the assurance that her state was advanced enough to assure that she’d be (mostly) pain-free in her final days. Yeah, right. She’d known too many people in her time who’d had that promised to them; they all had died either unconscious or writhing in pain. She wasn’t going to go that way. Raised in the rural country of Virginia until she joined the Army, she had a keen appreciation for the usefulness of guns. She was actually comforted by the fact that she could meet death on her own terms. She kept a .38 Special under her pillow at home for this purpose… only to lose it when she went to the hospital to await her final crisis, dragged from her one-room apartment after a seizure by three paramedics seemingly determined to wrest the last moments of free will from her. Then an older man, a doctor, came to the hospital, a man surprisingly earnest in his manner despite his years. (She’d gotten used to young interns too burned-out by long hours to care about an ugly, middle-aged woman in the throes of metastatic cancer.) He promised her a part in an exciting experiment, a trial of an entirely new kind of therapy. She understood fewer than a quarter of the words he spoke: quantum physics, gene therapy, geriatric reversal… the list seemed endless. The bottom line, though, seemed to be that they could cure her; since it was experimental, the treatment was also free. It was worth a shot. They’d taken her on a long airplane ride, riding in first class. Too bad she’d been too doped up to appreciate it at the time. She’d landed at a military base near Las Vegas (she knew the place, she’d spent time there in the Army) where they poked and prodded her even more; she was used to it by now. After a week, during which she was doped up with drugs, the doctors withdrew her pain medication. They explained that the painkillers would interfere with the new exotic drugs she was going to be given. The next week was pure hell. Not only did she have to deal with the pain of her cancer, but she also discovered that she’d developed a significant dependence on painkillers. She hardly slept at all; when she did manage to nod off for a few minutes, she awoke to agony. The attentions of her nurses, who actually seemed to care for her, meant a lot. They tried to keep a cheerful face on things, and helped her with her pain as much as possible while administering bag after bag of ‘pre-therapeutic’ IV solutions. This led to more indignities: what goes in also comes out, and she was too weak to walk to the toilet in her room. If she were lucky, a nurse or aide would quickly arrive to help her. Too often, she was not lucky. Finally the doctors came by with the ‘experimental’ treatment. Four clear IV bags were hung by her bed; they were to be fed sequentially, not at the same time. By then, she was beyond caring, almost insane with the pain of her condition. The docs assured her that the pain would start to subside soon, the treatment was that effective. That was last night. And for once, the docs had told the truth: almost immediately, the treatment had started to ease her pain. By the end of the first bag, she was able to breathe without pain; halfway through the second bag, it had lulled her into a blissfully deep sleep. She didn’t see the nurse attach the third or fourth bags. She rose from her bed, found hospital slippers and a bathrobe. As she fastened the tie across her stomach, she saw that the backs of her hands looked healthy, instead of deeply wrinkled and sunburned. She saw her face in the mirror, and had the shock of her life. She’d never been pretty. Kind people had said that she was plain. Others said she was butt-ugly. But the face looking back at her was unlined; the sunburn had faded, the creases of long years of care were gone, and she looked almost like she had at twenty. Her hair (what remained of it after a month of chemotherapy and radiation) looked different somehow; she squinted and saw that she was growing dark roots, and tiny new hairs, dark brown as hers had been in her youth, were sprouting. She opened her robe and discovered that her chest and torso was firm and unlined; her breasts, too, had recovered the shape and firmness they’d had at that age, and her belly was flatter than it’d been in years. Fine, downy hair stretched down the middle of her abdomen and across her forearms. No hair graced her upper lip. Her right toe itched. Her right little toe… severed in an accident when she was young. She slipped her hospital shoe off and found a pink patch of skin where the toe had been, and beneath that, BONE, where there’d been none before. The night before, she’d have jumped out an open window if she’d been able to crawl that far; this morning, she felt like dancing. She felt giddy. She looked out the fourth-story window of her room and felt as new as the dawn. She felt that she could sprint across the high, lacy clouds that crossed the morning sky. She just felt GOOD. She heard voices outside in the hallway. She skipped quickly to the door, wanting to spread the news of her recovery. She seized the handle, twisted it… and banged her nose on the unyielding door. It was locked. Locked from the outside. Eventually, it turned out that her imprisonment was not as sinister as it had seemed. The locked door was due to the previous experiences of people who’d developed strange psychoses after their treatment. She was unaffected by these problems, and was released after a few weeks of observation. She’d been asleep for five days, not the one night she originally thought. The experimental treatment the doctors had unleashed in her had performed a medical miracle; not only had her cancer completely gone away, but her body repaired itself completely. She was stronger and faster than she’d ever been; she demonstrated this several times by picking a fly out of the air, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. Her eyesight had improved, and was far better than she ever remembered. Her hearing, too, was enhanced: one of the first things she’d noticed upon awakening. Her teeth were perfect. She was a new woman. The next year was eventful, to say the least.. She returned home to Virginia and went to work at a local hospital, at first volunteering and then in a paid position, offering hope to the dying. She became frustrated that her treatment wasn’t being offered to others. She tried to convince the doctors of her own miracle, but was rebuffed, and finally warned that she’d be fired if she continued her efforts to spread the news of her cure. No one believed her. It was while working at this hospital that a dying patient with bleeding gums bit her severely. She had reached across his chest to help another aide fasten a restraint; the patient, dying from complications of AIDS, sank his teeth into the soft flesh at the back of her upper arm. She struggled to free herself; her screams brought the attentions of a burly aide who almost broke the patient’s jaw. Within an hour, the patient had sunk into a deep coma; he was taken from the AIDS ward into another place, a place charitably called a ‘hospice.’ (Imagine her surprise when she saw him, two years later, having metamorphosed into perfect health. Exactly as she had.) Her own injury healed quickly; after a couple of days she couldn’t even find a scar. Subsequent testing showed that she hadn’t been infected by the patient. She’d come under pressure from people who’d known her before she left for the Army. She was somehow younger; this was unexplainable. She had developed a belief that her cure was a miracle from God. Medically induced, to be sure, but all miracles come from God. She tried to explain that it was due to her miraculous treatment, but they didn’t buy it. Born and raised in a largely ignorant environment, they lacked the sophistication to understand. Because of this, she was ostracized, and actually came under attack by some whose roots were planted too deeply in the superstitious culture of the Virginia hill country. Finally, she left, moving west. She’d received a generous stipend when she left the military hospital, supposedly for being a cooperative patient; she’d thought of herself as a lab rat. An extremely fortunate lab rat, to be sure. She withdrew her money—almost as much as she’d made in a half a year in the Army, and more than she’d ever amassed at one time—and hit the road. She lost it in a mugging east of Amarillo. She’d fought hard; the young punk who’d tried to restrain her would never father children. His partner had snatched her bag (which contained her money) and ran, leaving his partner groaning in agony. Besides the injury to his groin, he suffered a broken neck, jaw and ribs. Her bruises had disappeared by the time the cops had arrived, leaving the police in doubt of her story. As petite as she was, how in hell could she have taken down this 190-pound hood rat? That didn’t prevent the sheriff’s deputy from taking a little humor at the mugger’s expense: “You mean t’ tell me that this little girl whipped your ass? YOU PUSSY!” Her bus ticket went through to Albuquerque; she guessed that any place was as good as the next, so she continued her journey. With only a few dollars in her purse, she disembarked into the hot noonday sun. Shouldering her way away from the bus, her money and spirit almost spent, she felt that this was the end of the line for her. She walked through the terminal, her purse slung over her shoulder. She went outside into the pitiless noonday sun. She faced a quandary: she was in perfect health, but since the mugging, was broke and had “no visible means of support” as the police put it. She mulled her options; they were not palatable. She’d always prided herself on being self-sufficient; she’d been involved in a number of jobs that made others dependent upon her. Having to ask others for aid was extremely distasteful to her. She looked across the street, at the surge of people there, and saw a familiar face. She straightened, amazed, and called, “Timmy? Izzat you??” A man raised his head, searching for her, finding her. “Snake Hips?” A grin split her face. “SNAKE HIPS!” He dodged traffic as he jogged across the street, and embraced her. Things were finally looking up. Years before, Tim and Cathy had been in the Middle East together. They’d worked together, forming a bond that is seldom found outside the military. They worked in the transport section of the Army, performing much of the mind-numbing work that supports a combat Army in the field. Raised from childhood on a truck farm, and later working the farms of more prosperous owners, she’d displayed an aptitude for operating most any kind of machinery; she was as at ease driving a large caterpillar or M1 tank as she was driving a Humvee or a motor scooter. This skill was not as mundane as it sounds, and set her apart from many of her comrades. She also worked tirelessly, and never complained, at least not about her work; she thought that her duties in the Army were small potatoes compared to the work she’d done as a youngster. For this reason, she despised many of the young men and women she had to work with. The feelings were mutual. She’d gotten into one fight in the Army, with an inner-city girl twice her size, and sent her to the hospital. No one picked a fight with her after that. They didn’t even try to argue with her. Tim and Cathy formed a working alliance and found each other to be utterly reliable. There was no romance in this relationship; Tim had a wife at home, and was a faithful husband, and frankly was not attracted to her in that way. They’d been comrades in arms, a different, but no less close bond than sex could provide. Being a sergeant in the Army, and thus a middle manager of a unit of young men and women, he deeply appreciated the capabilities of any soldier with a ‘Can Do’ attitude. He quickly had her promoted to corporal, where she grew into her new responsibilities. A word on the apparent lack of caring exhibited by some medical personnel: These people are human, with human limitations; they are in a profession that requires a total commitment to saving lives and easing pain. Faced with the inevitability of death, and the inability to ease the pain of the dying, some—by no means all—of these people turn their backs on those patients who cannot be treated, preferring to serve those who can respond to their attentions. Most doctors, nurses, and other medical people do what they can, and do their jobs professionally. However, those who make a profession of caring for such patients are rare and special people. |