Hard Rain Falling (Walking in the Rain Book 3) (19 page)

I nodded, understanding. “I have feelings. I do care about the safety and welfare of others. Amy first, but Lori and Summer are right up there too. I know both of them feel like they did something wrong, and in hindsight, maybe mistakes were made when we came the other day, but I take responsibility for those mistakes. I don’t hold them liable, and I think they have figured that out.”

“And you don’t plan on adding them to your harem?” Scott said it as a joke, but I wanted to make sure we were very clear. These were his sisters, after all.

“Dude, no offense. Lori is attractive, and Summer is going to be a cutie someday, but so not going to happen. Not only do I not feel that way about them in the slightest, but my fiancée just killed for the first time a few days ago and I’ve seen her more upset about burning the rabbit when she made dinner for us. Lori, I think she went and took a body count of those they killed and wrote about it in her journal.”

Scott laughed again, but he got the message in ‘guy code’. There would be no misunderstandings on the road.

Going through the hoard of weapons, I got Scott to make two stacks. One, the smaller of the two, would go with us, joining the Footlocker of Destruction, while the other would be boxed up and donated to the militia group at Krebs Avenue.

Scott thought that made good sense. We’d been cruising through their territory like it was the new express lane, and these guys deserved something for their trouble. The area they claimed was fairly free of violence, or crime of any sort. Captain Bisley was already working with them as his eyes and ears in the community.

They clearly weren’t gang affiliated and though I wondered where they were getting their food, I only asked Captain Bisley after I couldn’t figure it out myself. The good captain laid out a detailed map in front of me and said, ‘figure it out.’ And I did. There was a fairly large warehouse complex nearly in the middle of the area claimed by the residents. I’m going to guess the warehouses had at least some food supplies in there.

In the end, I said Scott should help himself to an AR-15 and a .45 ACP pistol. He picked out a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 and a .45 ACP Rock Island Arsenal 1911, which were two of the better weapons in the mix. I asked him if Helena or Connie could shoot, and when he said no I had him pull a pair of semi-automatic shotguns for the ladies. He gave me a funny look but didn’t speak until he had the two long barreled weapons, a Benelli and a Winchester, and lay them aside.

“For them to stick out the widow and pull the trigger. I prefer pump action myself, but sometimes you forget to work the slide when people are shooting at you. No shell in the chamber though; I’m crazy, but not that crazy.”

With that, I watched Scott finish loading up the donation box and wondered what devilment the girls were getting up to while we were out of the way. I said as much to Scott and he laughed all the way to the garage. Even better, he never ratted me out to the ladies. He was definitely beginning to grow on me as potential ‘bro’ material. Someone to watch your back and trust enough to stand watch while you slept.

On the return trip, I talked the others into letting me drive and my only passengers were Amy and Summer. Andy and his friends were excited to unload the box of presents we left on the back of the loading gate. The guns were a hit with the guys, but Andy admitted to me in a low voiced conversation with me sitting in the driver’s seat that the ammo was even more welcome. Again, if it didn’t fit our designated calibers, we didn’t want it slowing us down.

I told Andy this, and then said the only exception would have been .338 Lapua Magnum for the Barrett, but unfortunately no one had this. He understood I was joking because that caliber was harder than .50 caliber to find in most gun stores. To my knowledge, that caliber was exclusively for high dollar sniper rifles, and I still haven’t shot the darned thing yet. Between the expected recoil and the healing hole in my belly, that would not happen for quite some time.

When I explained that part to Andy, he laughed again and said he would keep his eye out for some. They had some .50 caliber rifles, a Barrett, and a Tac-50, he admitted, but nothing in .338. I thanked him for checking but didn’t think any more about the topic. I had 56 rounds of the nice Hornady A-Max Boat Tail and that was likely all I would have until I reached the ranch. I knew we had the dies and some primers in a package my father bought, but I would need to hold on to any brass we used.

My father didn’t have the .338 Lapua Magnum Barrett. I was always trying to get him a birthday present, so this would make a nice one. When I grinned, Amy demanded an explanation. Even Summer thought it was funny.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

We rolled out in an a six vehicle convoy, with three Humvees sporting M-240B medium machine guns, two five- ton gun trucks also carrying the same, and a commandeered Suburban with a shitty new red paint job and an irritated seventeen year old girl behind the wheel. Lori wanted her sister to ride in the Suburban with her, but Summer needed to man the radio in our Humvee. It was the complicated SINCGARS model that we were never going to use anyway, but our military element insisted someone needed to be there, just in case.

Since we drew Sergeant Barlow for our mission, I made the call and Summer was riding in the Humvee with her brother, and Connie was driving. Yes, Scott was occupied too, manning the machine gun. In the four days we waited for Lieutenant Colonel Forshe to arrive with his troops, I made sure all the newcomers to our little troupe received some type of useful instruction. Scott trained on the M-240B, Summer and I took radio classes, and Connie, Amy, and Lori trained on driving the Humvee.

I wanted to take the machine gun training as well, but Dr. Spaulding nixed that plan immediately. I was walking around now, sort of hunched over yet mobile, but the doctor wanted to give my incision a few more days, or a week, to heal first. So I got to lookee, but no touchee.

Since learning to operate a Humvee turned out to be no big challenge, I asked Nurse Nicole to continue Amy’s First Aid training to include suturing and removing them. I figured she was going to get the honors of removing the fishing line holding my guts on the inside. Oh, and Dr. Spaulding had fibbed a bit; only the outside stitches came from a Zebco reel. The internal stitches I received were dissolving after all, so that was great news for me personally.

While all was being done to prepare for our departure, Lori completed her own task of trying to track down the parents or guardians of the remaining group of girls from the cheerleading camp. We took turns riding with her and she crisscrossed the town trying to locate the proper addresses. The goal was to arrange their eventual return to the McAlester area, but after two days of fruitless searching and being shot at several times, she finally had to give up.

Most of the houses she found ended up being either burned or deserted. She only found three parents, a mother and father for one little girl, the mother only for another. Once Lori was able to give the parents some reassurance about where their daughters were staying, all three urged Lori to keep their daughters at the Keller farm. At least there they had a better chance of surviving.

Lori felt bad, I could tell, but at least she could turn in a report to Captain Bisley regarding the exercise. I went with her as moral support, and to practice more of this walking around thing I was still readjusting to, but the captain did not seem the least bit surprised by the news.

Sergeant Barlow got the bump to staff sergeant and had twelve men in his outsized new squad, including the sergeant, and Scott and I spent time trying to get to know each man, at least a little bit. Neither one of us were pretending to be soldiers and made that very clear, but we could help out and would be responsible for protecting our own vehicles as part of the convoy. The captain quickly added his endorsement of Scott and Helena to my dog-eared contract for security services, even though at the McAlester armory everyone went armed all the time. The paper would probably be useful down the road.

One of the soldiers, a bit of a comedian and a crackerjack on the M-240B, jokingly asked Scott where he was hiding his Oakley’s. The other soldiers laughed but neither one of us got the joke until Corporal Carmichael explained.

“Man, when I was in the ‘stan, everybody that was cool in the private security companies, you know, the mercs, they all wore Oakley sunglasses. I think it started out as a Special Forces thing, but all those guys would pop their Oakley’s on as soon as they hit the sunshine.”

Scott finally got the joke and then asked, “Why didn’t you ask Luke where he was hiding his Oakley’s?’

That caused another rumble of laughter after Carmichael responded, “Well, we kinda figured the Kid had his in his pocket. If not, he might just get the idea in his head to shoot me and take mine!”

That was another thing. These soldiers, the ones at the armory, had gotten to know me well enough by this point to start trying to hang me with a nickname. It was juvenile, something that would have fit in fine in a high school setting, and I laughed along with the names. As a kid, elementary and junior high anyway, I’d bounced all over the country as my dad followed the whims of the Marine Corps. I knew how to fit in as the new kid.

So, over a period of days, they tried out Skywalker, Vader, and Anakin. Easy ones. Then they went with Cool Hand and Machete, and then for some inexplicable reason, settled on the Kid. For every one, I just grinned when they tried it out, never letting my smile waver. That was the secret. Don’t react to a bad one, or bang, it stuck like the Super Glue I used to seal up that gap in my head. For me, the Kid wasn’t so bad. I’d put up with worse.

For these men, I took the nickname as a sign of respect. Barlow had seen me doing the job, and one of the other men, a black guy named Weeks that I didn’t recognize, had been along on Sergeant Jenkins run to link up with our convoy up on I-40. He didn’t talk a lot as a rule, but whatever he said about the scene there made most of the guys accept me on a provisional basis.

Barlow was cool about getting us the training and about loaning us the machine gun for the Humvee once he realized Captain Devayne wasn’t pulling his leg. A colonel actually wrote out a receipt for the Humvee in question for our use.

After killing a slew of gang members as well as at least forty men tentatively identified as Homeland Security agents, the unit was flush with ‘salvaged’ M-240Bs. That made me stop and wonder. Where were they getting the manpower? And the ordnance? Camp Gruber likely had a stockpile of some ordnance, but those Javelins are hot ticket items and limited in availability. All questions for another day, I decided. Anyway, we got one of those for our Humvee and several boxes of belted ammo. For self-defense, Sergeant Barlow stressed.

He was riding in the second Humvee from the front of the column, and he would oversee the rest of the movement from that spot. The lead vehicle was a five ton made over into a badass ‘technical’ with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted over the cab and two of the M-240Bs pintle mounted, one on each side. Trailing Barlow’s Humvee was our SUV, with Lori and Scott in our Humvee behind us. Strung out behind were the third Humvee and finally, the second five ton with a rear mounted M-240B to act as a stinger.

Barlow rode convoys like this in combat before, and the evening before kickoff, he gathered us all in the expanded motor pool to go over scenarios and to game plan for the next day’s objectives. The newly promoted staff sergeant was detail oriented and focused on the mission. After he completed his briefing, he sat listening as the men groused about not going on the much rumored but little discussed ‘Big Mission’.

“Are you guys for real?” he finally asked; his voice cold and hard. “You all don’t even know where that crew is headed, but you’d rather be there. Let me ask you guys this question—why are we taking the five tons?”

“Because someone thinks we need the firepower,” one of the soldiers responded.

“Really? Why not take a Stryker? Or one of the MRAPs? Specialist Weeks, do you know why we are taking the five tons?”

Weeks gave the staff sergeant a wry grin before answering.

“Because they don’t run, Staff Sergeant. So we are stuck with the old war wagons.”

“Gee, Specialist Weeks, what is the purpose of the objective?”

“Staff Sergeant, the Red River Army Depot fixes wheeled vehicles for the U.S. Army. The place is also a holding point for repaired vehicles waiting to go back to their respective units, Staff Sergeant.”

Weeks spoke in a weird cadence, which was something I finally recognized as the way recruits answered drill instructor questions at boot camp. Or at least how they did in the movies. I figured out quickly that Barlow was using Weeks to educate the rest of the men.

“Oh, is that all? Hmmm. That sounds like a lovely place to help ease our mobility issues, don’t you think, Specialist?”

“Yes, Staff Sergeant,” Weeks nearly barked. The other men finally allowed a few chuckles to trickle out as they saw the performance for what it was.

“We need the wheels. Only thanks to our friends in the Arkansas National Guard do we have some of our Brads back online, and who wouldn’t like more? Like getting those fucking Strykers up and running. If we can get additional transport, we can do more good for ourselves and our people here.

“So, we are going to travel quietly, open a dialog with whoever is left there, and see if we can work out a trade with these men. That is the plan. And tomorrow, we are going to proceed along Highway 270 east to Wister and take the bypass to highway 259 South. From there, continue on down south to Texas, and arrive at New Boston; hopefully before sundown. We will then recon the facility the next day and proceed accordingly based on what we find.”

I looked at the map in my hand and wondered if we could really make it that far in a single day of travel. We were taking spare fuel and enough rations to last us three, maybe four days. I was still adjusting from the world of walking everywhere and hiding from the least noise. This motorized travel thing had a whole host of new dangers, and I paid particular attention to everything Barlow said in the briefing.

That night, I held Amy close as we lay in our own barracks tent, surrounded by our new friends. The two of us made no excuses as we laid out our bedrolls side by side, and I noticed Scott and Helena copied the move without hesitation. The ten was what the military called a ten man tent, but the nine of us made for a snug fit, and that was with little Rachel and Kevin in the mix.

“Is this really happening?” Amy whispered in my ear, her arm carefully draped across my chest to avoid any inappropriate areas. No, not that. She was being considerate in not to putting any pressure on my still stitched wound.

“I know, right?” I paused, thinking how to answer her question honestly. “Yes, I think so. We’ve been through so much shit, and seen so many bad things happen, I can hardly believe it myself. But, tomorrow we will be heading out into unknown territory. Head on a swivel, love.”

“Head on a swivel,” she whispered back, and stuck her tongue in my ear.

***

“What are you thinking about?” Lori asked me, jolting me back to the present. She was still fuming about being separated from Summer but trying to be a good sport about it.

With my silence, Lori looked over briefly and caught my blush. Then she started laughing, and suddenly her bad mood was gone. Amy, sitting in the back seat behind me, leaned forward to see what was so amusing.

Lori didn’t wait to spill the beans.

“Whatever he was thinking about must have been pretty good, given that red face. Want to share with the rest of the class?’

“Well, I would except we have little ears in the car,” I stuttered out.

“Oh, come on,” Kevin complained, “I won’t say anything. I just close my eyes when I see my sister and Scott sucking face.”

We had Kevin and Rachel in with us, much to Connie’s chagrin. She took it in good grace when she realized the booster seat we scavenged for Rachel would not work in the Humvee. I also assured her the Suburban might look stock, but the armor was at least as good as what was found on the up-armored Humvees.

And Kevin would not be separated from his new little sister. There was something sweet about how the kid doted on the little girl, and I think it was because he had been the baby for so long that he wanted to have someone to help.

Rachel, still a little scared about everything in the world, accepted the assistance with good spirits anyway. Every time I looked at the little girl I wondered if she remembered me from the wild killing spree, the one where I likely gunned down her parents. I refused to feel guilty about how it all went down, but seeing her reminded me of something just out of reach; maybe to be more careful next time.

“No thanks, Kevin,” I finally managed to retort, “that’s okay. I was just thinking about something else.”

I was looking back and right on cue, Amy proved once again she could read my mind by sticking out her tongue. Not like a little kid on the playground. No, this was way different. Suggestive. I whirled around in my seat quickly and made myself pay attention to our surroundings.

“Alright, kiddies,” Lori announced, “that’s our friends at Krebs Avenue coming up so be prepared to stop.”

We had only gone a few miles, but beyond this last outpost would be the unknown I’d warned Amy about.