An Undeclared War (Countdown to Armageddon Book 4) (15 page)

     “T
hey’ll let the fire burn itself out, and then stir the bones with a shovel and light them up a second time. Sometimes it takes a third burn, but when there’s nothing left but bones and ashes they’ll scoop them up and put them in a large metal drum on the back of their truck.

     “E
ach drum will hold the remains of a dozen bodies or more, and once they’re full they’ll be taken to a mass grave north of the city and buried.”

     The men watched the bodies burn. Mark was a man who joked around a lot because it kept him from going insane.

     But he was also a deeply religious man.

     As the bodies burned, he stood before them, removed his fire helmet, and held it over his heart. He lowered his head, and his crew did likewise.

     “Dear God, we commit these souls to your care. We ask that you watch over them and keep them safe from further harm. They’ve suffered enough, Lord. They deserve a more peaceful journey now. Amen.”

     It was a touching moment that Scott had seen several times before, but that never got old.

     Rhett had one question.

     “Why are they standing by with hoses if they’re just going to let the fire burn out?”

     “That’s to keep the wind from spreading the fire. The water pumps are working at the water plant now, but only at about twenty percent of capacity. Some of the fire hydrants don’t work at all, so they can’t risk a fire that might burn hundreds of homes. Most of them are empty anyway, but some of them contain survivors. And they’ve been through enough already, without the fire department burning their houses down.”

     “Good point.”

     Mark walked back over to them.

     “I see another pile a few houses up. Is that is?”

     “Yeah, that’s the only other pile for today. We’ll be back tomorrow to pick up where we left off.”

     Scott and Rhett got back in their unit and drove away. All total, they’d searched twenty four houses and recovered fifteen bodies.

     Fifteen souls who would finally be given a permanent resting place.

     The SAPD was manned at only fifteen percent of its official authorization now. Most of the officers who’d been on the force a year before were dead, or had quit their jobs to protect their families and forage for food on a full time basis. In a world where money was now worthless, a job just didn’t mean as much as it did before the blackout.

     Being so short manned, the department had eliminated or modified many of its policies and procedures.

     Among the first to go was the standup and
outbrief that once took place at shift change. It once served a valuable purpose; a chance for the oncoming shift to compare notes with the officers going off duty, and to pass on any pertinent information the new shift needed to know.

    
Now, the officers finishing up their shifts just called in to report they were “10-7,” or off duty. Incoming officers would call in that they were “10-8,” or in service.

     Seldom did their
paths cross.

     Another policy that changed was their squad car policy.

     In the weeks just following the blackout, the SAPD was completely afoot, on bicycles, or on horseback. That was when most of the officers got frustrated and quit. They felt that without transportation they were absolutely worthless for preventing crime. And they were essentially right.

     As the months went by, though, Scott’s friend Tom figured out a way to get a few vehicles running. Scott passed the word to John Castro, who passed it onto the department’s motor pool, and within days a few units were running again.

     As the months went by, more and more units came back into service.

     No longer did officers coming off shift have to pick up their replacements, who then took the outgoing officers home. It was time consuming and a waste of manpower, and nobody missed those days.

     Now, there were enough cars available to allow every officer to take his squad home at night.

     And the twelve hour shifts everyone was working no longer stretched into thirteen.

     Rookies, though, got no car. Not until they completed their ninety day probationary period.

     Scott dropped Rhett off at
his house on Baker Street and Rhett said, “You’re welcome to come in and meet my girl, if you promise not to try to steal her. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

     “Not right now. Maybe sometime when I don’t have the stench of death all over me. What’s her name?”

     Rhett smiled. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

     “Sure I will. Wait a minute. It’s not Scarlett, is it?”

     “Yep. Scarlett it is.”

     “No shit?”

     “No shit.”

     Rhett got out and said, “See you in the morning.”

     Scott drove away laughing.

-26
-

     Up on the mountain near Junction, four men rode down Highway 83 on horseback. They slowed as they neared the berm marking the private road to Tom Haskins’ ranch house and to the compound.

     A tall thin man on a tired old bay appeared to
be in charge of the group.

     He sidled up to the
berm and looked over the bodies lined up on its side.

     “Yep. That’s Tony Pike all right.”

     The sign gave him pause.

THESE MEN

WERE WARNED TO KEEP OUT

AND IGNORED THE WARNING.

LEARN FROM

THEIR MISTAKE.

     “We’d better move cautiously from here on out.”

     He took out his Winchester from the sheath on the side of his saddle and tied his horse to a roadside shrub.

     The others followed suit.

     The group crept slowly past the berm and down the gravel rode. It was eighty yards to the end of Tom’s driveway, and they had nothing for cover but sparse brush on each side of the road.

     It would be a good place for an ambush.

     But their progress went unimpeded, until they got to the turnoff for Tom’s ranch house.

     Marking each side of Tom’s
driveway was a huge white boulder. Tom had them trucked in many years before because he thought they would impress his wife.

     She’d laughed and said, “Honey, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but those are the butt-ugliest rocks I’ve ever seen.”

     In an effort to make them less ugly to her, he’d taken a mallet and a cold chisel and carved their initials into the back of one of the rocks. Then he chiseled a heart around them, and called her out to take a look.

     She softened her stance.

     “Well, I guess they’re not
that
ugly after all.”

     Then she added quickly, “But don’t get any more.”

     In the years since Millie’s death Tom had gone out every year on their anniversary, picked her a bouquet of wildflowers and laid them on the ground next to that heart.

 
   The tall man told the others, “You men take cover behind those boulders. I’ll scout out the place. Be ready to provide cover fire for me if the shooting starts.”

     One of the men dropped behind the biggest of the boulders. He laid his knee into a pile of dead flowers and found himself wondering how they came to be there.

     The tall man carried his Winchester at arm’s length, far away from his body. He wanted it known he didn’t want any trouble.

     As the old ranch house came into view, he called out.

     “Tom Haskins! It’s Jim Colson. You know me from the old days. We don’t want any trouble. We just want to talk.”

     Colson hadn’t seen Tom Haskins in several years. But he knew Tom well enough to know he’d fire a w
arning shot before he killed anyone. That emboldened him enough to move a little closer.

     Hannah, on the security console, had seen the group of men right around the time they paused at the white boulders. The wireless camera
Scott had installed on Tom’s roof was sharp enough to make out their faces.

     Hannah had call
ed Tom and Jordan as soon as the men came into view.

     Both came running.

     “I know those men,” Tom said. “They’re good men. They’re not outlaws.”

     Linda, walking up behind him, had seen enough pain and violence lately.

     She told him, “Just let them be, Tom. They’ll see you’re not there and they’ll leave. Just let them go.”

     But Tom was old school, and a cowboy. And that wasn’t the cowboy way. When an old friend or neighbor came calling, you didn’t hide from them. You went out to see what they wanted. They might have trouble, and they might need help.

     It was how he was raised, and how he lived his life.

     “No,” he’d said as Colson left the others and started walking toward the ranch house. “I need to see what they want.”

     Tom turned to Jordan and said, “Jump on the Bobcat and head for one of those mesquite trees at the end of the driveway. I’ll meet you there with a chain and hook you up.”

     “Yes, sir.”

     The compound’s north field shared a common fence with Tom’s old ranch. Normally, Tom would have gone that way to meet with the men.

     But that was the way Tony Pike and his gang got in before. And now it was heavily fortified. The dead mesquite trees that lined the barbed wire fence, with their razor sharp needles poin
ting to the outside, were staked to the ground now. They could only be moved with great effort, and the men would be long gone by the time Tom got there.

     The end of the driveway for Scott’s house, the one leading from the compound to the gravel road, wasn’t as
heavily fortified. They’d never been assaulted from that direction. The dead trees there were too heavy to push or pull by hand, and had to be dragged away by the Bobcat or the tractor. But at least they weren’t staked down, and could therefore be moved relatively quickly.

     In six minutes flat, the largest of the two mesquite trees blocking the drive was out of the way.

     Jordan stood at the ready with a AR-15 and a 9 mm handgun, in the event there was trouble.

     Tom left him with instructions.

     “Use the Bobcat’s hydraulic jaws and pick that tree back up. Be ready to drop it back into place as soon as I come back through that hole. If you hear shooting, drop it into place immediately and high-tail it back into the house. Take up a position in the northeast window.”

     “Tom, I can’t leave you out there if they start shooting.”

     “Yes you can, and you will. There are four of them and only two of us. If they take a shot at me, I’ll be off in the brush quicker than a jackrabbit. I’ll lose them in the heavy woods and let you know when I’m ready to come back in. If you go out there, they’ll just have twice as many targets to shoot at.”

    
Jordan didn’t like the idea. But he knew there was no point in arguing.

-27-

     Jim Colson made it to within twenty feet of the ranch house, twenty yards at a time, calling out loud and clear that he wasn’t looking for trouble.

     It finally became apparent that Tom Haskins wasn’t there. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d cower in his house, even if he somehow knew he was outnumbered.

     Finally, Colson walked up to the door and knocked.

     “Tom, it’s Jim Colson! I mean you no harm. I just need to talk to you.”

     Nothing but silence.

     Colson turned and walked back down the drive, and met the others at the boulders.

     “He don’t appear to be here. He may be hunting, or foraging food.”

     One of the men asked, “You didn’t go in to make sure he wasn’t there?”

     Colson looked at the man as though he were a special kind of stupid.

     “We didn’t come here to invade a man’s home. We just came here to talk. Either he’s not home, or he don’t want to talk. In either case, we’re finished here.”

     It was at that moment that the four heard the Gator, coming up the gravel road toward them at a good clip.

     “Well, I’ll be damned,” Colson observed. “I wonder how he got that thing running.”

     Tom stopped his vehicle forty yards away from the men and dismounted. He held his hands out to his sides and briefly turned around so they could see his back.

     He wanted them to know he was unarmed.

     He approached them with due caution. He’d known Jim Colson for years, and knew he was a good man. He knew the others too, to varying degrees, and believed them to be God-fearing men as well.

     But then again, he wanted to be careful. Even good men sometimes turn bad under the right circumstances.

     Colson handed his rifle to one of the other men and met Tom halfway, his hand outstretched.

     “Tom, I never thought I’d see one of these things moving again. Are you a prepper?”

     “Well, no. But I’m acquainted with some.”

     “So maybe the rumors I’ve heard are true? That you got that old Ford of yours running also?”

     Tom was still wary.

     “Well, that depends on why you’re asking.”

     “Oh, relax, Tom. We’re still friends. At least I consider us so. I hope you do too. I don’t really mean to pry. It’s just that I thought all the vehicles were dead forever. I heard rumors flying around Junction that you’d been seen foraging for food, and driving that old Ford around with boxes tied to the top. But I figured them to be fairy tales. The only other vehicles I’ve seen running since the blackout are a couple of dirt bikes. They’re owned by the Willow family, up north of the lower Llano River. They’re preppers, and somehow managed to save them from the blackout.”

    
Tom said, “Down in San Antonio, they’ve got quite a few vehicles running now. Or, at least their police cars and fire trucks. All it takes is a new dry battery that’s never been used and a few replacement parts.”

     Colson raised an eyebrow, a bit leery of Tom’s story. But then it dawned on him that Tom Haskins was as honest a man as he’d ever known.

     “Would you be willing to show an old friend how to do it? You could help a lot of folks out.”

     “I’ll show you, Jim, if you can find the battery. It won’t be a lot of folks, though. Any battery that ever had acid in it
will be shot. And that lets out about ninety nine percent of them, since they’ve only sold sealed batteries for years. About the only place you’ll find a dry one is in an old farmer’s barn somewhere, or at a farm implement store.

     “But that’s not why you came here. What can I do for you?”

     “One of my friends came to me a few days ago and said he saw the Pike gang out there on the roadway, getting picked apart by buzzards and coyotes.”

     “They attacked us, Jim. We had no choice but to defend ourselves.”

     “I know that, Tom. They were a bad lot. They won’t be missed, and nobody is faulting you. In fact, once word got out around town that the Pike gang was dead everybody breathed a big sigh of relief. They’d been terrorizing the town for awhile now. You’ve earned yourself the reputation around Kerrville as some kind of a hero. Like Superman.”

     “I’m not alone. I’ve got my own group of folks now. They’re good people and peaceful. All they want is to be left alone.”

     “I respect that, Tom. No one will do them any harm while I’m alive. But the townsfolk wanted to make you a proposition. And since you and I go way back, they asked me to come out here to talk to you about it.”

     “A propos
ition?”

     “Tony Pike’s gang weren’t the only ones who’ve caused us problems during the blackout. They were by far the worst. But there have been others also.

     “The city leaders have gotten together and decided we need a sheriff.

     “Not just a man who will put on a uniform and then start his own brand of bullying. No, they want a good man, who will do a good job, run an honest department. Actually help people instead of just pushing them around and taking from them.

     “The city leaders have been struggling on how to find such a man, since money don’t mean much any more. Also, they’ve been arguing on who to ask.

     “B
ut then, at the last town council meeting, word went around that the Tony Pike gang was killed and put on display on Highway 83 as a warning to others. And the counsel started talking and decided that any man tough enough to stand up to Tony Pike and win is the kind of man they want.

     “
Pike was feared. People scattered at the sight of him. He took what he wanted from our women and from our stores. His gang was brutal. Between them all, they shot and killed at least twenty people that I know of. One man was shot just for getting in their way on the sidewalk.

     “If word got around that
our sheriff was the man who killed Pike and his whole gang, I suspect the rest of the bad guys would move on to easier pickings elsewhere. And I reckon that any who stayed behind would be no match for you.

     “The mayor told me to tell you that
Kerrville will authorize you to hire ten deputies. You and them will be sworn officers of the law, and authorized to enforce the laws of the city, county and state for all of Kerr County. The county has mostly died off, people wise. We figure only about twenty percent of the population has survived since the blackout started. But those who are left need some kind of lawmen if we’re ever gonna get back to normal.”

     Tom wasn’t sure what he felt.

     “I’ll be honest with you, Jim. I didn’t shoot Pike and his gang. At least not all of them. I’m not alone. The people I’m with are good people, just trying to protect what’s theirs. And I lost a good friend and a good woman in the fight with the Pike gang”

     “I suspected that might be the case, Tom. I even told the council that. It didn’t seem to matter much. They said that whether you shot them all yourself or led a group of others to help, it wouldn’t matter. You’d still have a group of good me
n once you hired your deputies. What the city needs isn’t just a man with a gun. We’ve got plenty of those already. What the city needs is a man with a gun who knows right from wrong. And a man capable of getting other good men to follow him.”

     “I’ve got a good thing here, Jim. I’ve got me a missus now, and a lot of good people I care about and who care about me. I’m not sure I want to give that up to go and get shot at for a bunch of people I mostly don’t know. And to be honest with you, I’m not so sure my missus would care for it much either.

     “And there’s something else, too. We’ve got a baby with us. If I went out to Kerrville and brought the plague back in with me, the baby would be in danger. That’s something I cannot bring myself to do.”

     Colson looked puzzled.

     “What plague, Tom? What are you talking about?”

     “The respiratory plague. It’s swept through
San Antonio and a lot of other places around the country too. It’s killed a lot of people.”

     “Well, I don’t know what’s going on in
San Antonio, Tom, but there’s no plague in Kerrville. We’ve got a lot of dead out there. We’ve been burying them as we find them. But they haven’t been killed by no plague.

     Most have killed themselves because they just couldn’t take the struggle any more. Others have been killed by marauders or bandits. And like I said, the Pike gang killed more than their fair share.

     “And most of the medical emergencies we’ve had since the blackouts, the heart attacks and other stuff…

     “They’ve caused a lot of deaths because there were no vehicles to get people to the hospital. And those that made it there found a hospital that was barely functioning.

     “Hell, there’s a lot of ways people in Kerrville have died, Tom. But none of them by this plague you speak of.”

     “Well, that’s good to know, Jim. It’ll definitely make my decision a lot easier. But I still have to think about it, and talk it over with Linda.”

     “I understand that, Tom, and I respect it too. I didn’t know you had a missus now. Congratulations on that. I reckon that changes things a might. But the offer’s still good if it’s something you want to do. There ain’t a lot of good ways to compensate you, what with money not being any good any more. But the council says to tell you they’ll consider any demands you make.”

     He smiled.

     “That is, if you can talk the missus into letting you do it.”

     Tom held out his hand and said, “How about if I let you know? Are you still at the same spread?”

     “Yep. Second turnoff after you turn west on I-10.”

     “Let me talk it over with Linda and the others. I’ll let you know.”

     “Fair enough.”

     There was no more to be said. The men shook hands and went their separate ways.

     On the Gator, on the way back to the compound, Tom smiled to himself and said, “Well I’ll be damned…”

-28
-

     “Tom Haskins! You’ve got people here who love you dearly. Why would you even consider such a darn fool thing?”

     Tom looked at Linda and chuckled.