Warlords Page 7

  Instinctively, John covered the man’s mouth, muffling his cries. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he told him. “Now just relax. That’s it.” Slowly the man’s breathing began to ease. “What happened here?”

  “I thought you were with them,” the stranger said in the raspy voice of a man who hadn’t said a word in many days.

  John reached for his ten-inch Ka-Bar Becker BK9 and cut the man free. The man sank to his knees, rubbing his discolored hands.

  “The people who tied you to this shower?”

  “Yeah. The ones who live here. They own this place. I came looking for a few things and they boxed me in. I’ve been tied to that shower for over a week now.”

  “They live here?” John asked, wondering how they ate. Taking over a grocery store made sense, but a Home Depot? “How many of them are there? And how well armed are they?”

  Jerry shook his head. “Not sure how many. At least a dozen, maybe more. And they got an assortment of guns and blunt weapons.”

  “Blunt? You mean clubs?”

  “I mean all sorts of medieval stuff. And when they find out I’m gone, who knows what they’ll do. They wanted to find out where I lived. Wanted to know if I had a wife and daughter. I don’t, but they didn’t believe me and said I’d tell the truth eventually or they’d eat me.” The man looked at them, then at the weapons they were carrying. “Are you cops?”

  “No,” John answered. “Just regular people like you, trying to survive.”

  The man rose to his feet. “Jerry Fowler,” he told them. “And I owe you my life.”

  The shrill whistle blast that cut through the air a moment later was followed by the echoing boom of gunshots and deer rifles and John was suddenly certain that whoever had tied Jerry to that shower was coming to do the same to them.

  Chapter 16

  “They’re all dead,” Jerry shouted at John, who was checking the other captives for signs of life.

  The rattling of AK fire reverberated from every direction. Efficiency had dictated that his men spread out to search for the items they’d come to retrieve. Now they were divided and maybe even cut off.

  John and Reese hurried toward the gunfire closest to them, Jerry close behind.

  The end of the aisle was just up ahead and John swung his AR up, squaring his shoulders into a universal fighting position. Behind him, Reese with his .45 was covering the flank, a single hand on John’s shoulder, a clear sign he’d been trained in close-quarters battle.

  A shriek of pain in the distance told John someone had been hit. Were they one of his?

  They were rounding the corner when a round ricocheted off the metal shelving near John’s head, sending a burst of sparks into the air. Thirty feet ahead were two figures. Sliding his finger over the trigger, John squeezed off four rounds, two for each of them. The first one dropped and stopped moving. The second must have been hit in the shoulder because he spun a full one hundred and eighty degrees, staggered back and tried to dart out of the way.

  A shot from Reese’s pistol went wide and thudded into a bag of cement. Powdered dust puffed out. John followed up with a final round to the torso. The attacker fell dead.

  “How’d you know he wasn’t one of ours?” Reese asked.

  “It’s simple. Our light won’t attract fire from our own men. The real question is why you missed that shot. I thought you were a sniper.”

  “Funny,” Reese replied, scanning the darkness. “And I thought you were a general contractor.”

  Through a break in the gunfire, one of his men shouted in the distance. They were falling back to the front entrance, blowing their whistles as they ran. Like all hardware stores in the chain, the place was laid out in a grid with long aisles stretching from front to back. This made each two-man team with a light particularly vulnerable. On the one hand they needed the lights to see, but that also meant the enemy could target them.

  Double-timing it back down the aisle toward the front entrance, John and Reese came up behind a group of their men, taking cover and firing into the darkness. A handful of others had cleared the open space and were kneeling behind a set of washing machines.

  “They’ve got the entrance covered,” Barry said, his voice rising to a panic.

  “Relax and take a breath,” John ordered him, as he muffled the light. “Who are we missing?”

  Barry looked around. “We were trying to carry their bodies out.” Barry wasn’t answering the question.

  “I count eight of us alive, John,” Reese said from behind him.

  “They ours?” John asked, pointing at the two lifeless bodies by the washing machines.

  Barry nodded. “Craig Johnston and Graham Sanders.”

  “There’s a back door,” Jerry said. “If we head that way and hook left along the break through the middle of the store, we might be able to make it.”

  John shook his head. “We’re not running away with our tails between our legs. Two of our men are dead. Two of theirs are dead too. So right now it’s a fair fight. Running away is more likely to get us shot in the back.”

  He pointed at Barry and two other men hunkered down across the aisle behind the washing machines. “You three stay here and keep them busy. The rest of us are going to move up this aisle and around to catch them in a crossfire.”

  Barry looked on with doe eyes. John shook him by the shoulder. “Can you do that?”

  Nodding, Barry whispered that he could, but the look on his face said all he wanted was for this to be over. Combat might not be the only test of a man, but when the bullets started flying, it was certainly the quickest way to find out what you were made of.

  John turned to Jerry and winked. “Stay here and keep the enemy’s heads down.”

  Beside them was a display with clear shower curtains. John removed his BK9 knife and cut off a square piece. In his pouch was an elastic which he used to secure it over the end of his flashlight.

  “What’s that for?” Barry asked, mystified.

  “Homemade flashlight diffuser. I’ll leave the light off, but if we need it to see, we won’t be sticking out like a sore thumb. As soon as we leave, I want you guys to open fire. Keep it sustained and make sure you don’t run out of ammo, so pace yourselves.”

  Barry nodded.

  After that, John, Reese and the three men going with them backtracked away from Barry and the group who were taking cover behind the washing machines. As ordered, those who remained opened fire, drawing the attention of the men guarding the exit.

  Since John knew where all his men were, he let his finger slide down over the trigger. They were inching forward in near darkness, each person behind him gripping the shoulder of the man in front for reference. It was the blind leading the blind in an otherwise textbook flanking maneuver. His old CO would have had a fit, a thought which might have made John laugh if he wasn’t so focused on the darkness ahead. Crazy as it was, extreme circumstances required adaptability. In their own way, the thieves and murderers who now called this hardware store their home had done exactly that. It was too bad they’d made the choice to become vultures, preying upon the weak and the unsuspecting.

  John’s disdain for that kind of predatory behavior was part of why he’d opted to stay and fight instead of cutting and running. What would happen to the next Jerry Fowler who stumbled in here looking for supplies? If the country survived the current crisis, it would need to be rebuilt from the bottom up and in John’s mind, this store and the bandits inside of it were about as close to ground zero as you could come.

  John and the others reached the main intersection which cut the store in two and made their first right. They weren’t more than a few feet along, sporadic gunfire to their right as Barry and the others kept up the distraction. Suddenly, a shadow loomed out of the darkness. The rough outline of a man’s face appeared a split second before John pulled the trigger on his AR. The round tore through the first man at point-blank range and continued into the next one standing behind him. Both collapsed dead.
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  Then came the deafening noise from Reese’s .45 as he fired over John’s left shoulder. The flash illuminated the space before them, revealing a group of nearly ten men, armed mostly with pistols, a hunting rifle and an odd assortment of brutal-looking homemade weapons. Their faces were painted coal black, accentuating the whites of their eyes. The thought of how barbaric they looked occurred to him at about the same time as the thugs before him raised their weapons.

  Chapter 17

  Gunfire exploded as the rest of John’s men opened up. Staccato images of death punctuated the darkness as rounds impacted the attackers. The enemy only had enough time to get off a single shot, but John could see that they’d made the most of it. A Mossberg 500 pump-action had struck the man next to Reese in the chest, killing him instantly. Seemed that each side had set out to flank the other and it was a good thing John’s side had been able to squeeze the trigger first. Tenths of a second, that was what most gun fights came down to.

  John pulled the flashlight from his utility pouch and surveyed the scene. All the attackers were either dead or gravely wounded. Reese and the others quickly disarmed them, ignoring their pleas for aid.

  Confident the immediate area was secure, John was about to switch off the light when he caught sight of Reese’s shoulder.

  “You’re hit.”

  Reese glanced down. “Caught a couple pellets in the arm is all. Looks like our bud here wasn’t as lucky,” he said, pointing to the man from their group who lay dead. He was the third member of the expedition they’d lost so far.

  It was horrible to admit, but John knew next to nothing of the dead man except for his age—early forties—and that he was from Oneida. He’d volunteered to come help them and said he could handle a weapon.

  Gathering themselves, they pushed on. The gunfire from Barry’s group had begun to slacken. They needed to hurry. Surely by now the thugs blocking the exit had caught on to the vicious one-sided firefight that had just taken place. With any luck, the bandits would think their side had won, which would only help to cement the element of surprise.

  Their vision now recovered from the muzzle flashes, John and the others came to the aisle that intersected the enemy position. Judging by the distant bursts of light as they returned fire onto Barry’s men, there weren’t more than half a dozen of them.

  John and the others broke into two groups of two. Each would hug the edge of the shelf as they approached. The idea was that if the enemy decided to spray the aisle, the chances of being hit were greatly reduced. Plus, approaching from two different places would further divide the enemy’s fire.

  In a burst of inspiration, John reached into his pouch, removed the diffuser from his flashlight, turned the light on and flung it toward the enemy position. The beam spun in circles, temporarily confusing the men near the door and also exposing where they’d taken cover. John was the first to fire. It didn’t make sense to use the Acog sight because of the darkness and so he made do with the iron sights and his best guess. The others with him followed his lead and it was immediately clear that the enemy had been caught completely unaware. They’d thought that by ambushing John’s men in the dark, they would make off with their weapons, vehicles and perhaps even intel on where they’d come from. Instead, they got exactly what they deserved.

  •••

  “This one’s still alive,” Reese called out, pointing at the figure on the ground with the barrel of his .45.

  Barry and the others were collecting the enemy’s weapons when John stood over him. “How many others are in here?” he asked the wounded man.

  He was olive-skinned, maybe Mexican or South American. He shook his head and said something in Spanish.

  Jerry stood by John’s side. “He speaks English.”

  “How do you know?”

  “’Cause he’s the one who tied me up. His name is Ramone.”

  “Please, I beg you,” Ramone pleaded, suddenly finding his tongue. “We thought you were going to steal from us.”

  John sneered. “Is that why you tied Jerry and the others up? ’Cause you thought they were looters? What have you been doing for food?”

  Ramone didn’t answer and it was just as well because part of John thought he knew.

  “What do we do with him?” Barry asked. “They killed three of our people.”

  “Not like we can call the police,” Reese said. “You let a worm like this go and he’ll go right back doing the only thing he knows. Even if the police were still around, I’d have a hard time finding the motivation to call ’em.”

  More suggestions rang in from those gathered and they ranged from mutilation to outright murder.

  John turned to Jerry. “You were the one they tortured for a week. What do you say?”

  Thirty minutes later it was done. The pickups were loaded with the bodies of the dead along with all the items they’d come to collect. It seemed sacrilegious to load the dead next to the things on their grocery list, but burying them here would deny their loved ones in Oneida the chance to grieve properly. The enemy were loaded onto a utility cart normally used for lumber and thrown into the Dumpster out back, a decision that was made less out of hostility for what they’d done and more out of practicality. There simply wasn’t enough time to dig graves for all of them.

  With the truck beds full, there was one final act that needed to be addressed. The seven remaining men John had brought from Oneida as well as Jerry stood before the shower stalls, plugging their noses against the stench. Each of them looked on with a sense of admiration at a job well done. The focus of their attention was Ramone, bleeding from a wound he’d taken to the thigh, his hands tied above his head in much the same manner Jerry’s had been.

  “What if some Good Samaritan comes along and frees this worthless piece of garbage?” Reese wondered, searching his pockets for a smoke.

  “That’s why we have this,” John replied, producing a sign which he hung above Ramone. Little more than a single word, it brought back echoes of what justice must have been like in the Old West.

  The sign read: Cannibal.

  Chapter 18

  Not long after, the five-vehicle convoy loaded with equipment was headed back to Oneida. The three casualties had meant that some of the men riding shotgun on the way down were now drivers. Among them was John. Seated next to him was Jerry. After spending a week held captive and stewing in his own filth, it wasn’t a surprise that his body odor could make your eyes water. Before they left, John had found the cleaning aisle and tossed Jerry a roll of car wipes. Smelling like a new Buick sure beat smelling like goat.

  “I appreciate what you did back there,” Jerry said, rubbing the deep red grooves still left in his wrists.

  “I couldn’t leave you hanging there to die,” John replied, feeling like he neither needed a thank you nor particularly wanted one.

  “That too,” Jerry told him. “But what I meant was how you handled the Ramone situation. I think most men would have just killed him outright.”

  “Maybe. Don’t think for a second the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. But if you give into bloodlust, it has a nasty habit of leading you down a slippery slope.”

  Jerry didn’t look up. “That may be true. All I know is that he didn’t deserve a quick death.”

  “The idea of hauling him back to Oneida to be tried and perhaps hanged had occurred to me,” John admitted. “After all, he did kill three of our people. But on the other hand, we were on his territory.”

  “His territory?” Jerry exclaimed. “He didn’t own that hardware store anymore than you or I.”

  “So who owned it then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who owned the store?”

  “How am I supposed to know? The corporation, I guess.”

  John shook his head. “A corporation is a legal concept that’s only as strong as the courts and laws designed to uphold it. It’s part of the reason internet crime became so rampant in those last few years. You can draft up all the
laws you want, but if they can’t be enforced, then all you’re doing is making people feel safe.”

  Jerry smiled. “Sorta like the way we had to remove our shoes at the airport?”

  “Precisely. There’s a term for it, you know. Security theater. Measures designed to provide a sense of safety in order to keep the public calm.”

  “So how does this relate to Home Depot?”

  John grinned as the convoy slowed to avoid a wreck on U.S. Route 27. “People still cling to the way the world used to be because it gives them a sense of security. Right now, that store doesn’t belong to a corporation. It belongs to whoever can keep others out. You ever heard the term possession is nine-tenths of the law?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, that’s the only real rule which applies nowadays, at least in the less civilized parts of the country.”

  Jerry seemed to ponder this. “And in Oneida?”

  “Oneida is probably one of the last holdouts against anarchy and lawlessness.”

  “I was expecting you to say something about freedom,” Jerry said, rather surprised.

  “The truth is, we’re not quite there yet. But if we can win this war then we can begin working in that direction. Look, for the most part, the people in Oneida have security. At least far more than the folks who’ve chosen to remain on the outskirts of town and be vulnerable to bandits. And yet, in spite of that security, I still can’t allow people to do as they please. Everyone has to pitch in...” John paused and swallowed hard, unable to help thinking of Emma. “Anyway, you get what I’m saying.”

  “You’re starting to sound like a president,” Jerry joked.

  “I was elected mayor of Oneida,” John told him, shaking his head. “But under protest, I might add.”

  “There’s a first. Most of the politicians I know are foaming at the mouth for power.”

  John grew quiet. His main interest was in keeping his family and the community around him safe. If the best way to do that was by assuming the helm, then so be it. Dictatorship had become a nasty word over the last hundred years, but the term as it was originally conceived by the early Romans during the republic had a humility to it that had been lost over the centuries. When the republic was at war or under serious threat, the two consuls who ruled would step aside and allow a dictator to take the helm. The idea was that in times of crisis, a leader with unhampered powers was the best choice to get the job done. But once that threat had been dealt with, the dictator was expected to step down, allowing the consuls and senate to take back the reins of power. This was how John imagined his role, not as a stepping stone to something larger, but as his duty to those around him. A duty that, once completed, he could relinquish in order to return to a simpler life.