Neighbors (6 page)

“I’ll bring it up at the meeting,” Hank said. “Just to check, we’re all in favor of the plan. There are going to be several that don’t like it at all.”
“I see it as the best possibility to save ourselves, if that outfit tries anything,” Elizabeth said.
The meeting that evening started much like the last one. A raucous mass of sound with little meaning. But it quieted down when Hank stood up. He spent all of twenty minutes outlining the plan of action, and the increased fortifications the team wanted to do.
There was silence at first, when Hank sat down. Then murmurs as family members talked it over with each other and with those sitting near them in the community building. Silence fell again. Sara was the first one to speak up.
“If trying to cooperate with the gang is out, I say we pack up and leave, lock, stock, and barrel. We have all the trailers just sitting, and enough trucks to pull them, if we make several trips.”
“Where would we go, that has the advantages this place does?” someone ask.
Sara shook her head. “I don’t know. We’d have to research that.”
Hank looked over at the door suddenly, seeing some movement out of the corner of his eyes. It was Juan. He was on gate watch. Stepping around him, Chap Hunniker came into the room.
“Hank, Chap wants to talk to you. From what he told me, the whole community might want to hear it direct from him.”
Hank nodded and motioned for Chap to come up to the table behind which Hank was sitting, facing the group.
“What’s on your mind, Chap?” Hank asked.
“You guys are in big trouble. If I was you, I’d pack up and leave. Right now.”
There was an uproar, but Hank lifted a hand and quiet resumed. “Why?” Hank asked Chap.
“There’s a big gang out there gunning for you. They… Uh… found out about your place here and aim to hit it after the harvest is done so they can take it all. They ain’t very nice folks, let me tell you.” Chap rubbed his jaw. It showed the effects of being roundly beaten for the information he’d given the gang leader. Even though Chap had told all he knew, right off the bat. The leader wanted to make sure Chap had given up everything.
“I just want to trade for a few supplies and take off for safer parts. I hear the National Guard is getting their act together, cross state. I’m heading for them.”
“And when did you plan on telling us about the National Guard, Chap?” asked Pete. “That could make a big difference in what happens from now on.”
“Don’t matter here,” Chap said, shrugging. “They aren’t going anywhere until spring. Supposed to have fuel and stuff they need then.”
It was a disappointment. “Can’t we get them on the radio and ask for help?” asked Sara.
“Done been tried,” Chap said. “The last place tried it. They were turned down flat. Everyone is on their own until the National Guard can mobilize properly. At least that’s what the guys there told me. That was after Gustav… that’s the head guy of the gang… contacted them and told them to surrender… or else. The idiots chose to fight.”
“And just how did you managed to get yourself caught?” Hank suddenly asked.
Chap turned red. “I tried to save my stuff. Couldn’t get away fast enough when the group decided to fight.”
“Chap, why don’t you hang around for a bit? We might want to ask you some more questions.”
Chap didn’t look happy, but seeing several of the group standing near the door, he found an out of the way place and sat down.
“All right,” Hank said, looking out at the crowd. “Those that want to go should make their plans. Those of us staying need to know how many people we can count on for the battle that looks inevitable.”
There was pandemonium for a few moments, but it quickly quieted as Hank held up his hand. “I plan to stay and fight for what we’ve done here. If we weather this, and the National Guard will be around later, we should be safe for a long time. Those of you that run… well… you’ll be on your own, open to attacks by any small force.”
“That’s not fair!” cried Sara. “Everyone should help those of us that are going to leave!” She looked around and saw only a few faces that seemed to support her. Most of those looked away when their eyes met hers.
She slumped back in the chair. “I guess we’re staying,” she said softly.
That was enough to kill the idea in any of the others that had been thinking about joining her in an exodus.
“We need to get started on a plan,” Hank said. “And we need a volunteer for a dangerous job. We need someone to go keep an eye on this gang, and warn us when they get ready to make a move on the community here.”
People looked around at one another in dead silence. At least for a few moments. Finally Stan stood up and said, “I’m your man, Hank.” His wife put a hand on his arm to urge him to sit down.
“Got to, Honey. These folks took us in. With all we had, I don’t think we would have survived long without their help.” Stan’s wife nodded and her hands went to her lap, clasped tightly together.
“Okay,” Hank said. “Hang around for a few minutes, those that have ideas for increasing our defenses. The rest of you might as well go home and get some rest. The harvest is going to be done shorthanded; as many of the able bodies will be working on whatever defenses we can come up with.”
Only Elizabeth and Juan, Pete, Bren, Henry, and Stan stayed behind. Stan caught Chap by the back of his jacket when he started to ease out of the room. “I think we may have some more questions for you.”
“You got no right to hold me! There ain’t no laws now!” Chap lunged once, but Stan had a tight hold on him.
“There are still laws. The natural, inalienable rights and laws that good people observe automatically. Now sit down over there and shut up until we ask you something.”
It is a sad sight to see a grown man pout, but that was what the small group saw when Chap sat down.
“We’d better grill Chap before we lose him,” Stan told the group, speaking softly.
“I know. We can’t make him stay,” Hank replied. The group discussed for a moment the information they needed to get from Chap, and then Hank stepped over in front of him.
Chap flinched a bit. “We’re not going to hurt you. And we’re not going to keep you here for the battle to come. We just want some additional information.”
“I don’t know nothin’ more!” protested Chap.
“You probably know more than you think you know,” Pete said. “Like… How many are there in the gang?”
“They’ll kill me if I help you,” whined Chap.
“They’ll kill you if they catch you again anyway, Chap,” Hank said. “They’ll just assume you helped us.”
Chap groaned. “Okay! Okay! You are probably right. And you’ll let me go after I tell you what I know?”
“You have my word,” Hank said. Chap saw the looks on Henry’s and Stan’s faces and shuddered slightly.
“How many in the gang?” prompted Pete.
“There’s about forty when I left. Plus maybe twenty… twenty-five women. All but a couple of them are pretty much just slaves. Aren’t any kids that I saw.”
The number of men was a blow. Hank and the others looked at each other. “There has to be a way,” Pete said. “There’s always a way.”
“Not always,” Chap said. He got a glare from every one of the others and shrank back in his chair.
“What that means…” Hank said, but another glance at Chap and his voice trailed away.
“I ain’t going to tell no one,” Chap protested.
“You aren’t because you aren’t going to know,” Hank said. And then he and the others grilled Chap for almost an hour getting much more information from him than he knew he had, just as Pete had said.
It did not sound good. It would take a daring plan, well executed, and at least some luck, for the residents of the cul-de-sac to survive what was coming. The planning group broke up at midnight that night, with no set plan, but scheduled to consider things again after everyone got a night’s sleep.
At noon the next day, with the majority of the people in the cul-de-sac harvesting and processing food, Hank and his handful of advisors met again. Stan was equipped with supplies for a month, a bicycle, and bicycle toddler trailer to haul the supplies. He left the compound, headed for the small farm where the gang was now, according to Chap.
Chap was nowhere to be found. But that didn’t deter the others. They’d gleaned as much from him as they were likely to get. And the night of sleep, though short, had allowed each of the group to come up with some ideas on how to increase their defenses and defeat the gang.
Once the idea of going after the gang was put to rest, the group turned to the defense of the cul-de-sac. It was quickly decided to keep the children and teens in the shelter, with the majority of the women on top of it, keeping watch on the woods. Though it made it easier to come through them, the removal of much of the brush that had grown willy-nilly among the trees to be used for firewood, allowed the women to see deep into the growth. They would have to deal with any infiltrators coming through the woods.
Hank explained his idea on how to cope with the Caterpillar D-10 dozer that Chap had said the gang used to breach fortifications. There was much discussion on whether it would work or not, but the decision was made to do it.
“I wish we had something better than Oliver’s .300 Winchester Magnum to snipe with,” Hank said during a break. “You can see several places on the approach from my house. More from the roof.”

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to bring it up…” Pete said, a bit awkwardly for him. “I’ve got a Barrett M82A1 rifle with scope that uses the fifty caliber Browning Machinegun round. I’ve only shot it a couple of times… and… I don’t know if I could be a sniper. Seeing faces close up with the scope and just… killing them… in cold blood…”
“If you can show me how to use it,” Henry said immediately, “I can do what has to be done. My conscience won’t bother me a bit.”
Pete looked relieved. He knew the Barrett could be a key component of their defense, but just hadn’t wanted to be the one to use it the way it should be used.
“I’ve got something for you to do,” Hank told Pete. “I want you in charge of the tank… er… dozer trap. And Juan, you’re the best on the heavy equipment. Help Pete first, and then you’ll start digging with the excavator.”
Hank turned to Bren. “You think you can run the small grader well enough to put a slope on the ditch in front of the trailers?”
Bren nodded. “I’m sure I can. But why?”

“I’ll come to that,” Hank said, the ideas the others had offered coalescing into a workable plan. “Elizabeth, I need you and a couple of others to go in after some other things. Pete gets priority of the equipment, but I want you to gather up the rest of the supplies we need while he gets the parts for the tank trap.”
Elizabeth nodded. Hank filled them in on his plan. There was much skepticism, but Hank’s plan was the best any of them could think of. The individuals set off to do as asked. Hank got on the four-wheeler and went out to survey the locations for the additional fortifications.

CHAPTER THREE

It was a worry-filled and rather frenetic two weeks. Everyone except the children and their care givers worked from before sunup to after sundown. Some, using equipment with lights on it, worked late into the nights.
But by the time that Stan gave the coded radio signal that the gang was on the move, Hank was satisfied that the community had done everything it could do to prepare for the coming attack. That didn’t keep him from checking and rechecking each portion of the defense time and again. He made sure that each person knew their part of the plan and would fulfill it to the best of their ability.
Sadly, during that time, Sara and Steven’s children died, one after the other, from the radiation they had picked up getting to the cul-de-sac right after the attack. Sara simply fell apart and Bernie had her on anti-depressants and tranquilizers. Steven, on the other hand, always quiet, put in every minute he could stay awake helping with the defenses.
When Stan radioed that the gang was turning up the road that led to the development, Hank shook hands with the members of the team that would be going out to attack the gang after they passed a certain point. Hank wanted the gang fighting on two fronts.
Juan ran out to the excavator and began to dig on the existing trench he’d dug during the two weeks. It was down the approach road at its narrowest point between two arms of the woods. He worked slowly. He didn’t want to go too far. The point was to have an area that was very difficult to cross, but look like there hadn’t been time to finish the trench.
The others took their places in the cul-de-sac and on the defensive fortifications. Suddenly there was a loud sound behind them. Hank turned to look. Henry was on the roof of Hank’s house, in a sandbag emplacement, with Pete’s Barrett .50 BMG.
Hank couldn’t tell if Henry was doing any good, but he would fire a shot or two every few minutes. He turned to look at Pete, who was standing beside him. “You sure about this Pete? We might still have time to rig a remote release.”
“No, we don’t. I rigged the thing, I’ll remove the props.” Pete left the cover of the earth berm created with the dirt from the trench Juan was digging and slipped into a hole in the ground at the far left corner of the excavator.
Juan’s second job, after going with Pete, Elizabeth, and a crew to pick up steel road plates from an area of the nearby city that was doing road work at the start of the attack, had been to dig a very large hole just next to the forest.
He’d carefully peeled up the sod, setting it out of the way, and dug the hole. Pete used a dump truck to move the dirt to create other fighting positions away from the hole. Using highline poles from the power company storage yard, the plates had been lowered in two rows, with one edge on the bare dirt at the edge of the hole, and the other edge supported by the highline poles cut to length. When there was a row along each edge of the hole, a third row was placed, overlapping the other two rows slightly, covering the hole completely.
Very carefully the sod had been replaced over the steel plates, camouflaging the hole almost completely. The hope was, that the driver of the D-10 Cat dozer wouldn’t recognize the fact that something was amiss in his haste to knock over the semi trailers that would be placed on the cul-de-sac side of the hole right at the last minute. Chap had said the cat skinner dearly loved running the dozer over people and knocking down impromptu fortifications.
Inside the hole, Pete very carefully removed the horizontal braces that tied the vertical poles together, leaving only the weight of the plates on the poles holding them in place. He scrambled up out of the hole, breathed a sigh of relief and signaled Hank. He ran to one of the two semis parked just inside the line of partially buried trailers. Pete and another man would drive the trucks and park them and their box trailers near the hole where the attackers could see them. Hopefully it would help convince the dozer driver that the area of the hole was solid ground that Juan simply had not had time to dig a trench through.
To make it even more a likely target, Pete, the other truck driver, and Steven would take up defensive positions at the trailers. According to Chap, the driver wouldn’t be able to resist the target.
The Barrett boomed again and Hank saw the D-10 Caterpillar lurch into view. The cab area and engine area both had heavy steel plates welded in place to protect the driver and the engine from rifle fire.
Men began to come into view walking behind the dozer and a large four-wheel-drive pickup truck. The pickup suddenly stopped, just after the Barrett boomed again. A white flag suddenly appeared and three men started to walk forward.
“Should I take them out?” Henry asked through the radio.
“Negative!” Hank immediately replied. “I won’t violate a white flag parley. Unless they do. If they gun me down, take them out.”
Hank started to get on the four-wheeler and go out to meet the three men as they approached, but decided he’d do this on his own two feet, despite the limp. He moved past the excavator, which Juan had abandoned and taken up a defensive position, as per the plan, and walked toward the three men.
When they stopped, Hank did, too. They were at least thirty feet apart. Hank didn’t wait for some type of ultimatum from them. “Turn around and leave and we’ll let you go,” Hank said loudly.
The three men all laughed. “Not a chance, farm boy,” said, by Chap’s description, Gustav, the leader of the gang. “You walk away and we’ll let you live.”
“I guess we have a battle to fight then,” Hank said. He started to turn around and walk away, but out of the corner of his eyes he saw movement. He dove to the ground as a shot sounded behind him. Then the Barrett boomed and one of the men went down. The one carrying the white flag. The gang leader and other man took off running, firing over their shoulders.
Hank’s men tried, but they weren’t trained soldiers. Not a single bullet hit the running men. They made it back to the cover of the dozer, which again began to move. Thankfully, it moved toward the two semi rigs parked to the west of the excavator. Hank ran the best he could, back to the excavator and took up a position with his PTR-91.
The gang followed close behind the dozer until they were exposed to the fire from the two men on the berm along the trench on the far east side. They took prone positions and waited for the dozer to do the job it had done so well before.
Knowing it would do little good, but wanting the antagonizing effect on the cat skinner, Hank and the others kept firing at the dozer cab, the rounds bouncing off with loud twangs. The man saw the telltale signs that something wasn’t right with the ground right in front of him, but it was too late.
The poles held the plates up for just a fraction of a second when the weight of the dozer began to come onto them, but it was enough for the Cat to get to the balance point. When the poles and plates collapsed, it was all at once. The dozer nosed down into the hole, at a slight angle. The grousers on the tracks of the dozer could get no purchase on the steel plate in the moments that the driver had to get it into reverse.
Steel on steel screamed and the dozer slid over on its side, into the bottom of the hole, unable to move.
Rather than stay and fight at that point, Hank motioned all of those at the trench and hole to fall back to the line of partially buried dump truck trailers. All were careful to use the narrow path through the barbed wire tangle foot emplaced in front of the trench that was in front of the trailers. They crossed the walkways over the ditch and paused to pull them up.
By that time the attacking gang began to run forward, the amazement of the loss of the dozer having stalled them for moments.
Hank made a motion with his hand and water sprays from the construction site water truck shot over the trailers and wetted the ground in front of the trailers. The tangle foot, the paths between them, and the new sloped area in front of the ditch itself all got a light sprinkling of water.
Finally able to get a sense of the numbers of attackers, either Chap had lied or simply not known the real numbers, Hank warned the women at the shelter to keep an eye out for infiltrators. There were at least fifty men in front of Hank, and if there were that many, there were probably more.
Henry continued to fire when he had a target, which wasn’t often. The battle bogged down into trading shots between the attackers behind the berm of the new trench and Hank’s people in and behind the fortified dump trailers. Then, one after another, Hank motioned for his small group to go down and not get up until signaled again. Soon only Hank and Steven were firing.
Things happened quickly then. The gang leader gave an order, and his men scrambled over the berm and headed for the gaps in the tangle foot only a hundred feet away. There they got a huge surprise. All had wondered about the water sprays, but none guessed they were simply moistening the bentonite sprinkled over the paths through the tangle foot, and on the entire slope leading down to the ditch. Which was now filled with water. And though it couldn’t be seen, concertina lay beneath the water.
First one man hit the slippery, slimy path and went down hard, falling to his left into the tangle foot. Hank and Steven kept their heads down, just watching, as attacker after attacker tried to get to the trailers. But bentonite, when wet, swells up and turns slimy. Any misstep, or any step on a slope, and it was almost impossible to stand up on the stuff if one wasn’t wearing spiked shoes.
Twenty men went down on the flat. At least thirteen made it to the edge of the slope to the ditch and with a single step onto it, slid right into the water, and became entangled in the concertina. Most drowned. The rest were killed, as were those caught on the flat paths and tangle foot, when all of Hank’s men rose again and began to fire at the hapless attackers.
Many turned to run back to the other ditch and the berm, but the group that Hank had seen off that morning had made their way around and come up from behind the attackers, killing the half dozen or so that had stayed back to guard the equipment. Trapped between the berm and the line of trailers, every last one of the attackers went down, dead or mortally wounded.
Only after the sound of the battle out front died away did Hank and the others hear the shots coming from the cul-de-sac. Steven was the first to run that way, closely followed by Juan and Pete. Hank hobbled after them as quickly as he could.
It was over when he got there. After a careful survey of the woods, another seven dead attackers were found. There were signs that at least a couple had been injured, but there were no live gang members to be found.
Bernie, medical pack on her back, slung her rifle over one shoulder and went to check on the injured out in front of the cul-de-sac. The defenders had not gotten off without taking some wounds, though no one died. It was a near thing with a few of them, but Bernie brought them through.
As soon as it was clear that the danger was over, Stan headed back to the gang’s last conquest. It didn’t take much to get control of the small farm from the five women that were part of the gang that had been left behind to control the captive women. Stan made himself scarce when the former captives took care of their guards.
A week later, with more bodies in Boot Hill, and the first early snow falling, Hank said goodbye to the woman that had become the leader of the captive women. They were going to stay at the other farm and make a go of it there until the National Guard showed up, hopefully the next spring. In the meantime, the cul-de-sac community would lend a hand with personnel and supplies to get the women through.
Steven stood with Sara a few feet away to say goodbye. With the children dead, and the anguish of it all, Sara was going to go to the farm, to get away from the memories. Steven would stay at the cul-de-sac. He would be the newest member of the small standing defensive force the cul-de-sac had agreed should be maintained, despite the danger of a major attack now gone.
“What do you think, Hank?” Henry asked, walking up to him as the small group headed to the farm with the first load of supplies. “National Guard going to be a good thing, or bad?”

“I talked to the Commanding General for this area the other day. They are reaching out as they can. Things will come back. It’s just going to be a long time.” Hank turned to look at Henry. “It helps when you have good neighbors.”
 

THE END