Against the Grain Read online

  “Yeah I’d have done the same thing. Did you see any backpacks or anything else with them?” I questioned him again.

  “Sorry, I saw ‘em, they shot, I ran,” he managed.

  “Alright. Get back to the house and bring Nick and Breanne some radios back out here. Nick is up in that cluster of rocks over there,” I said, pointing out Nick’s hiding spot and handing him the now unloaded guns that the two dead guys had been using. “Here, take these to the house too.”

  I did a once over of my own gear, making sure everything was still in its place, then I climbed the rest of the hill to where Breanne was crouched, and knelt down beside her.

  “Okay this isn’t over yet. I’m going to go to Paul’s and see if I can find out if there is one more guy or not. He’s going to bring a radio up to you. I’ll call in and let you know what I find. Got it?”

  “You’re going alone?” Breanne asked me.

  “Yeah. You saved my ass with these two, but I’ll be alright alone on this one. If I call in though, move your butt to give me a hand.”

  “Alright, be care…”

  “I’m good to go,” I cut her off and started moving.

  I was not good to go. This was freaking stupid. I was basically waiting to walk into an ambush after all the noise we had just made, and I had no clue of how many, or where, any other bad guys might be. All this with virtually no discernible back up whatsoever… not a good plan.

  I took nearly a half hour to move the long way around and come to a spot where I could clearly see Paul and Michelle’s house. It was a nice little manufactured home with a deck, detached garage, chicken coop and a nice yard beyond that. It was a pretty nice little place, and a pain in the ass with way too many angles, corners, and hiding spots if I had to search and clear it on my own.

  Laying down at the edge of the field on the side of the property about three hundred yards away from the house, I was using my scope to try and see if it was safe or not. I had chosen this side on purpose, the morning sun was still coming up over the top of me and anyone looking this way would have to battle the bright rays piercing their eyes.

  The sound of a door slamming closed gave me a direction to look in. It was hard to pin point from where I was and as I was just zeroing in on the garage area, the shape of a man emerged.

  I never could figure out how when so many people were starving in the world today, that there were still fat people around. He seemed quite at ease, surveying the garage, waddling around through the little fenced yard. This group must have done this type of thing before and he guessed that all the shots were from his guys taking down the owner that they had surprised. That was one big ASSumption, I laughed to myself.

  The fat guy started to go toward the front door to the house and I decided that he was not going to be going inside. I lined up carefully and fired. The (finally!) suppressed shot flew right into and back out of his huge left butt cheek. I really hadn’t wanted to blow his femur apart, and got lucky on the very small difference in shot placement from this distance. Either way, this guy was going to be talking.

  Biggie tried to waddle-run away, but stumbled after just a few steps. I slowly moved back from where I had been laying and came around to set up in another spot. I wasn’t going to wait for long, but if there was anyone else with him, I wanted to know it sooner rather than later.

  After probably too short of a time, I came around from the other direction to find him still whimpering where he had fallen. A 1911 pistol was on the ground next to him, and he knew enough not to go for it when he finally saw me come around the side of the garage.

  “You move, you die,” I stated simply.

  “Hey shit man, I’m bleeding to death here. Help me out,” he pleaded.

  “Bleeding to death is what your buddies did just a little while ago,” I informed him.

  He paused, then spat “You …!”

  I cut him off, not really interested in hearing his crap.

  “How many in your group?” I demanded.

  “Screw you!”

  “Look, I’m going to level with you here, I’m having a bad day… but you are having a worse one; you’re going to die today,” I stated it again in a very mater-of-fact way. I was somehow managing to hold my voice and my temper in check pretty well all things considered. “I’m going to kill you… today. It is up to you whether it happens slow or fast.”

  “Just take me to the hospital man, or let me go. I’ll never come back here, I swear!”

  My pistol barked and a hole in the top of his hand appeared. He screamed and clenched it to his chest, but a kick to his face reminded him what we were doing here. I really was not a violent person by nature, but I was also not in a good mood.

  “This is happening you fat piece of shit… slow or fast? How many in your group?” I bellowed at him.

  “Four, there’s only four of us left!” he screamed.

  “Wrong. There is just one left; you,” I corrected.

  “You psycho little…”

  The concussion of the bullet going by his leg brought him up short. I really didn’t want to waste any more bullets, and I needed to get some more answers so I decided to switch my tactic up a bit.

  “Where’d you guys come from? How’d you get here?” I lowered my voice slightly.

  He was a wallowing mess, but he quieted as I holstered my Glock and drew my knife. I actually didn’t know the first thing about knife work other than being able to skin a deer, but I could imagine what might seem scary.

  “Hey, no man, I didn’t hurt anyone,” He pleaded.

  I stopped and stared at him, fingering the knife delicately, then refolded it and clipped it back to my pocket. Walking the few steps to where I had kicked his 1911, I stooped and picked it up.

  “How many bullets in this thing?” I asked evilly.

  “Oh no please…” he sobbed frantically.

  “Where did you come from and how did you get here?” I asked again.

  “A truck! We left it at the end of the road,” he finally answered.

  “Anyone else there at that truck? I’m not going to ask you again,” I checked the chamber and cocked the hammer back.

  “No! No one!”

  The .45 placed a hole in the dirt by his right shoulder followed quickly by another scream and more pleading.

  “Nice trigger,” I remarked absentmindedly. “Anything else? Anyone else out there? You working with anybody? Any other groups like you? Where were you going?” I started pounding the questions out. He was loosing his concentration, but I was hoping something would stick.

  “No man, no,” he sobbed pathetically.

  “Alright… can you walk?”

  “What?”

  “I said get up, fat ass.”

  “What, why?” he looked around confused.

  “Do it!” I roared as he struggled to his knees, then holding on to the fence with his good hand, staggered to his feet.

  “Get going, that way,” I instructed him.

  “What! No way man, you’ll shoot me!”

  “Motherf…” I trailed off exasperated and then reminded him, “I already shot you… twice. Now GO!”

  Still sniffling and holding his hand, he started limping off in the indicated direction. I wasn’t actually giving him a chance. He was a piece of crap and part of a group that had tried to kill my friends, and I was sure that we were not the first ones. The farther he could walk under his own power away from here, it was that much less his lifeless, bloated body would need to be dragged.

  He actually gave it a good effort, constantly looking back to see if I was lining up on him or not.

  Man that’s going to be a big hole to have to dig by hand with only a shovel.

  Chapter 8

  “What was that last shot?” Breanne asked over the radio a few minutes later.

  I had called in to give her the all clear and to get everyone settled down a bit too.

  Yeah what was that last shot? Mercy? Justice? Vengeance?
/>   “Insurance,” I radioed back to her.

  “Get Drew, Nick and Paul back here... and bring that AK looking gun and magazines from the other guys.”

  “We’re on our way,” Breanne responded.

  While I was waiting for them I walked in a big circle around the house and other buildings. Everything was still intact from the looks of it. I had just taken my first swig of water when the others came into view. They were in one group, walking with their guns slung. I waited for them to join me and tried to remind myself for the thousandth time that they didn’t know any better.

  Breanne was quiet, but the others all started trying to talk to me at once.

  “Alright guys, here’s the deal,” I started after quieting them all down. “There was one more guy hanging around here. He’s now dead over there.” I pointed to the spot the fat guy had finally dropped. “And Paul, you guys need to get a dog. Get with David and talk to the neighbors, see what you can come up with.”

  “A dog? But I’m allergic,” Paul whined.

  “Are you more allergic to dog hair or hollow points? How about a knife to the throat when you’re sleeping? Your place is on the outer edge, closest to the road. You need a better early warning that something is wrong than a bullet up the ass. We should have had some dogs out here a long time ago…” I berated him knowing that it was partly my own fault for not getting them properly set up with a good guard dog in the first place.

  Of course it’s not like those were just laying around in high supply either, but the fact still remained.

  Not interested in wasting any more time, I turned back to address everyone again. “I’m going to head toward the road and see what I can see. The last guy said that they came in a truck and parked it at the end of the road where we blocked it off.”

  “You talked to him? What the hell were they doing here?” Paul sounded incredulous.

  He was upset; his home had been violated, he was shook up and feeling really insecure, but trying to vent at me right now was not going to go well for him.

  Holding up my hands I tried to calmly address him individually.

  “I know how you feel, but it wasn’t exactly a real good conversation. I didn’t get much out of him… which is why I’m going to go see about this truck, and figure out what sense I can make of this mess.”

  “Not a good conversation? You didn’t find anything out?” Paul seemed surprised.

  “I asked him a couple questions and got a couple of answers,” my eyes narrowed dangerously.

  “You got a couple answers? What the hell does that mean?” he asked again.

  First he didn’t like that I didn't find much out. Then he didn’t like that I had even tried. Well he was welcome to do better. Ignoring him, I turned back to the others.

  “I think you guys are safe for now, but you might want to do a couple things before you bring Michelle back here.”

  “Like what?” Andrew asked me.

  “For starters, I’d grab some water and shovels and get the blood washed out of the dirt over there.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at the spot where I had questioned the lardass marauder.

  Everyone stiffened and Andrew’s eyes grew wide.

  “You also might want to do something with the body,” I said evenly.

  “What! Oh man I’m not messing with a dead body!” Paul proclaimed.

  I had felt it coming and I knew I shouldn’t give in, but I was just at that point.

  “You want me to take care of that too? How much more shit am I going to have to do before you get your head out of your ass, get your own shit together, step up, and get something done? I’m sick of this and if you think you can just sit down and watch someone else do all the hard work without getting your hands dirty, you are out of your goddamn mind!” I yelled at him.

  “Hey man this is my property and I work around here too you know!” Paul snapped back.

  Breanne stepped over and put a hand up to my shoulder, half to calm me down, and half to restrain me from choking the little bastard.

  “I don’t really care what you do. Let the fat guy that tried to kill you lay there and rot for all I care. The girls can plant some flowers around him. It’s your problem.”

  “Because of you…” Paul began to say but Nick quickly stepped in to block him from me.

  “Look you little prick…” I spun, but Breanne stood firmly in front of me, blocking my way to go beat the living hell out of her older brother. I was definitely done talking.

  “Common, let’s go,” Breanne said to me.

  “I’m good, you stay here with them,” I nodded toward the others, her family.

  “You’ll need another gun if there is anyone else at that truck,” She wisely advised me.

  “I’ll go,” Nick volunteered suddenly. I looked over to him still standing next to Paul.

  “Nick, do what you can here and keep your radio on. Bre, grab that Galil,” I said and started walking off toward the road, still feeling the fleeting urge to snap Paul in half and wring his neck in the process.

  Nick caught up to me after just a few long steps.

  “Hey I’ll go with you. I don’t want Breanne out there.”

  He said quietly enough for only me to hear.

  “Dude, you don’t want her digging a grave for a fat, bloody guy either,” I told him. “She can keep up and run a gun plenty well enough to help me out a lot better than what she’s going to be able to do around here. I don’t think we are going to find anything out at the road anyway; she’ll be safe with me.”

  Breanne came up and looked back and forth from her husband to me. Nick dropped his shoulders a little and looked at her. “Alright,” he relented and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek as she started walking again to keep pace with me.

  We walked on in silence for a few minutes until she finally spoke. “So what did you call this thing again?” she looked down at the foreign gun in her hands.

  That was what I liked about Breanne. She knew I was in a bad mood and that I didn’t need some girly “how are you feeling” type question right now.

  I couldn’t help but to let out a little laugh. “It’s a Ga-leel. Israeli made updated AK. Shoots the same round as an M16. It’s a good gun, good design… heavier than it should be but it has something like a thirty five or forty round mag if I remember right. I don’t know where in the world that guy would have got it from.”

  “Cool,” she said. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Give it to you,” I answered her.

  “What?”

  “You need a gun that fits you better and you’ve outgrown that SKS anyway. Plus it came from the guy you nailed, so it’s yours… right of passage.”

  “Uh, thanks then, I guess… I think,” she replied.

  “We need to check it out, clean it I’m sure, and sight it in of course, but we know it shoots and it’s similar enough to my AK which you’ve shot, so you should pick it up pretty quickly,” I told her.

  “Okay, but should I really have it here, now, I mean after having never shot it?”

  “Probably not… but I’m doing everything else ass-backwards and against the rules today anyway so what’s one more thing?” I mused half heatedly and mostly to myself. Breanne seemed to be unsure if she should take offense at my implication or not.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Figure it this way, I’ve got a relatively slow firing, longer range gun as my primary right? Well you’re carrying one that fills the void of short range, high volume of fire,” I defused and explained.

  I left off the part where I was taking an untrained person carrying an unfamiliar weapon with me on a reconnaissance scout of a possibly hostile area. I wasn’t exactly setting myself up for success here… yet again.

  “Do your best for now and we’ll get some time in with it soon. Actually after all this, I’m thinking we are going to need to get everybody some more time on the range,” I added as an afterthought. Again, I probably sh
ould have kept that last part to myself, but she seemed to be thinking the same thing.

  “Yeah, this could have been pretty bad. I mean really bad, couldn’t it?”

  “Bre, it is pretty bad,” I stopped walking and looked her in the eyes. “These guys got right up to you at the house. It’s a miracle Paul or no one got hurt or killed. They were dumb for the most part, but one or two of them knew enough to be dangerous. The gear, the style of assault with an over-watch…we got damn lucky. They had probably done this type of thing before just enough to get cocky and stupid, but this was not good. I know there are organized groups out there that are doing this type of raiding and looting thing. We’ve been lucky so far, but if groups like these guys are now coming into this area, there is a lot here for them to plunder and we need to be able to deal with it a lot better then how we did today.”

  “So what do we do?” she asked after letting that sink in.

  “Work on it,” was all I could come up with as an answer. Because really, what could we do? We had limited people and limited resources to work with.

  “This all just seems so crazy. There’s guys shooting at my parents house… where my kids were playing, and now I’m walking in the woods with a big ass gun, looking to see if there is someone else to go shoot… to go kill. When did all this happen? I mean, how did we get here?”

  If this was the extent of her losing her composure, I was impressed. She wasn’t panicking and she wasn’t sounding overly remorseful for having to kill someone just a little over an hour ago.

  “You know how we got here… and contrary to popular belief, I don’t like this anymore than anyone else does. All we can do now is figure out how to keep moving forward. The shitty truth is that your kids are not going to grow up in the same world that you and I grew up in. I’m sorry for that, but the best we can do anymore is make sure that they have the opportunity to grow up at all.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she sighed.

  Once that was sorted out, we quieted down and continued walking towards the end of the road. I fell into my standard routine of watching our surroundings and listening for the forest sounds. It was good for Breanne to get a bit of time out here too, learning how to walk in the woods. Besides the physical toll of carrying a long gun and the mental toll of being clicked “on,” it really worked at your patience to force yourself to go slower than you knew you could be going. It was easy to turn your mind off and get into a rhythm like a distance runner would, but to go slow and concentrate for miles and miles at a time, always staying aware and constantly observing, it was all very taxing. It was like doing power yoga for a day straight. People go in thinking yoga is all relaxing and it will stretch you out, but when you start pouring sweat after the first four minutes, your brain starts to turn on you.