Stealing Second (The Amendments Book One 1) (17 page)

Only Ace and I remained where we were.
He shook his head and grinned. “That went well, huh?”

I rubbed my face and shook my head. “No, it didn’t,” I said, but I began to laugh out of the sheer madness of his observation. “That went very bad.”

“The poor bastard,” said Ace. “You can’t blame him for wanting to avenge the death of his best friend. I would’ve done it just like he did. I’m sure of it.”

I stifled my fit of laughter and turned to face the house. “Do you suppose there are any more of them in there?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been out here since last night and those guys were the only people I saw, other than the folks that you saw out here. Still, we ought to go inside and take a look-see. Maybe we can find some guns and ammo in there.”

I nodded to the shotgun. “Do you think there are any more shells in that thing?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to run down to the shed and take a leak. My bladder is killing me. I’ll grab Scooter’s rifle. He won’t be needing it, not where he’s headed.”

I nodded and watched Ace jog off to the shed. The others were gathered inside the barn like sheep waiting to be led somewhere. I walked over and picked up the shotgun, careful not to look at the dead bodies. The smell of gunpowder and fresh blood hung in the air and I fought the urge to gag. The shotgun was spattered with blood and I brought it over to the lawn and wiped it down the best I could in the green grass. Ace appeared a moment later. He carried the rifle in one hand and a canvas satchel in the other.

“We’ve got half a dozen boxes of twelve-gauge shells in here,” he said, holding up the cream-colored bag. “And at least a hundred rounds for the rifle. Let’s make a quick search of the house. These people are starving. We’ve got to get some food into them.”

I nodded and we started walking up to the blue and white farmhouse. The h
ouse was smaller than my parents’ and could use a coat of paint, but it looked solid and full of good memories. We hadn’t been inside the house for thirty seconds before I ran to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. Whatever reservations I still held about the deaths of the three brothers were gone in a flash. We had entered a house of unspeakable horrors and death hid behind nearly every door we entered. Tears fell down the face of my new friend as we continued our search.

From the best I could tell, three generations of a family had been slaughtered here. Three men, presumably the grandfather
, the father, and his son, were lying face-down on the floor of the living room. Two women, naked except for their socks, were sprawled out on the beds upstairs. Each had been shot multiple times. There were others, but I can’t bring myself to write about them. Their tiny images will haunt me for the rest of my days.

We returned to the kitchen and raided the pantry. There was bread there and a big jar of peanut butter. We filled a plastic trash bag with cans o
f soup and chili. I found a two-gallon jug of iced tea in the refrigerator and a sleeve of plastic cups in the cupboard. We continued filling the bag until we could no longer stand being in there. Ace rummaged the drawers and found a large meat cleaver. He hefted the jug of iced tea and nodded for me to take the bag. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” he said sadly.

We left the house and made our way up to the barn. Ace
had been right about one thing—the people waiting for us were ravenously hungry. We set the food out on a long workbench and watched the feeding frenzy begin. Cathy and Violet sat on a bale of hay, looking lost and frightened. I turned away and caught Ace marching out the door. I followed him outside and stopped. He held the meat cleaver in one hand and walked straight for Scooter’s dead body. I grimaced as I watched Ace grab a handful of Scooter’s hair. He stepped back and delivered a savage blow to Scooter’s exposed neck. He repeated the process three times before the head was separated from the body. Ace then carried Scooter’s head down to his dead brothers and callously dropped it in the dirt.

Ace then repeated th
e grisly process two more times, first with Henry, then with Daryl. Henry’s head was already horribly mutilated and I wondered about the hatred inside Ace that gave him the fortitude to perform such an act. When he had finished hacking off Daryl’s head, he dropped the cleaver and carried the head down to one of the steel stakes that lined the driveway. Our driveway back at the farm had similar stakes we used each fall to hang the snow fence. Ace took Daryl’s head by the ears and impaled it on the stake. He then gave it a quick twist so Daryl was facing the road.

A minute later, Ace had the three heads mounted like Halloween jack-o-lanterns. Each faced the road and I had no doubt what his intended message was.
I watched as Ace walked over to a watering trough and washed the blood from his arms and hands. He dried them off in some tall weeds and stared at me out of the corner of his eye. I nodded back at him in approval.

“Bastards,” he spat, after walking back up to join me by the barn.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Where were you headed when they caught you?”

“North Branch,” he said, eyeing me up. “What about you?”

“North Branch,” I repeated. “I think they’ve got my family there.”

“Small world
… I’m hoping to find my wife and kids there. Most of these folks are headed there, too. I don’t know; do you think we should split up? Some of these people are pretty old.”

I shook my head. “You saw what happened in there. I’d rather die than let that happen to anyone else.
You can do what you like, but I’m staying with the others.”

Ace nodded. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Henry was stashing our guns somewhere out here in the barn. Let’s grab some chow and find
those guns. You’re right, buddy. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

I shook my head. “Buddy’s dead,” I said, and I offered my hand to Ace. “My name’s Gary.”

“Ace,” he said and shook my hand.

He began to tell me his last name and I held my hand up to stop him. “First names only,” I said. “I think we’ll be safer that way. You know, in case any of us get
s captured.”

“You’ve got a point there,” the cowboy said, scratching his chin. He then turned and walked up to the barn. I watched as the others stepped back and gave him a wide berth.

Chapter 12

We found the guns stashed under bales of hay and by the time we left, each of us carried at least one firearm. Even
Violet, despite her tender age, carried her mother’s gun. Cathy now carried a lever action rifle and I carried Daryl’s shotgun. There were now seven of us, and many of those who remained decided to head back for their homes. I couldn’t blame them. Most were the oldest of our group and I was happy to see them leave our group. They had seen enough death. After they had eaten, they began to scatter like fallen leaves. We walked to the woods behind the barn and with Ace leading the way cautiously made our way to the south.

The red-headed kid was named Neil
; he was fresh out of high school. His family had disappeared while he was out chasing a milk cow that had wandered off their farm. He was a nice kid but had very little experience handling firearms. Ace outfitted him with a small revolver and gave him a quick lesson on how to fire it. Ace warned him, “Our lives depend upon you carrying that sack. Don’t you dare lose it.”

Neil’s eyes grew large
; he swallowed hard and nodded his head vigorously.

The portly farmer’s name
was Jack. From the moment we met, I found him to be frequently sarcastic and critical of others. His wife had been taken captive the day before and like us was determined to free her from the FEMA camp. He carried a semiautomatic hunting rifle and two semiautomatic handguns in a pair of hand-tooled holsters. On his back was a pack similar to my own. He occasionally sipped something from a pint-sized flask and brought up the rear of our contingent. As large as he was, Jack looked to be as healthy as a horse.

The dark-haired
woman was named Lisa, and she was the last of our group. Once we set out, she shadowed my every movement. She was attractive and looked to be of Asian descent. She wore a black t-shirt over tan cargo shorts. Her legs were toned and she looked as firm as an Olympic athlete. She carried a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun that she claimed had been given to her by her grandfather. She wore a school backpack over her slender shoulders and the straps accentuated a pair of grapefruit-sized breasts. I caught Neil staring at them on more than one occasion.

I followed Ace and Lisa
followed me. Behind her was Neil. Cathy and Violet followed him and Jack followed them. Every now and again, I caught Cathy eyeing Lisa suspiciously, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she wasn’t just a bit jealous. Ace seemed to have a good sense of direction and we headed well east into no man’s land before we once again turned south. We occasionally crossed narrow highways and gravel roads, but not without pausing to make sure the coast was clear. Once we came upon a small homestead and a frantic woman began shooing her small children into the house. That was the only sign of life we encountered for the rest of the afternoon. Our rest stops were short and our pace was steady.

It was nearly twilight when we stopped at an abandoned farm on the far side of Harris. The little town was only a few miles from North Branch and we all agreed that this was as good a place to camp as any.
The dilapidated farm was well off the beaten path and at least a mile from its nearest neighbor. There was a solid-looking outhouse behind the garage next to two rusted cars on flattened tires. The house appeared to have been empty for a few years, but it had that look of a home that had been seized by a bank. The place was littered with the odds and ends that families leave behind when they could give a shit about who the next owner is. Inside, there were two ratty queen-sized beds and an ancient sectional couch. A battered dining room table sat on the far end of the living room near the kitchen. There were no chairs, but someone had set sawn logs on end around it to serve that purpose. The floor was strewn with empty beer cans and I imagined the local kids had claimed this place as their own. We even found some pots and pans and plastic dishes in the kitchen cupboards.

With darkness still an hour away, Ace built a small fire in a
steel barrel and salvaged a cooking grate from the oven. Cathy and Lisa began preparing dinner, with Lisa chatting amiably and Cathy grunting one word replies.

I took Ace aside and we walked down to the double-car garage. Once we were inside, I turned to face him. “What do you think we should do once we get there?” I asked. “Aren’t you worried they’ll just lock us up?”

He nodded. “I’m hoping to find a dump truck to drive through the gates. If there are towers, I might be able to take them out. I don’t know. I’ve been kicking it around all afternoon and that’s the best I can come up with. What about you?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a roll of cash. “I’m hoping this will help. Do you think we can buy the freedom of our people?”

Ace stared at the money and whistled. “Maybe,” he said, “if you had about ten more of those.”

“I’ve got more than that. Please, just answer my question. Do you think we can buy their way out?”

Ace ran his fingers through his hair and stared up at the house. He squared his jaw and his eyes darted around inside his head. “Yeah, I think they’ll do it. If you’ve really got that kind of cash, I think they’ll take it. But how do you propose we make the switch? They’re going to want to double-cross us. You know that, right?”

I did know that and I had been thinking of little else all day. I had been thinking of how Bob had tricked us into leading him to members of the rebellion. I couldn’t allow that to happen, not again.
“You seem like a pretty smart guy, Ace,” I said. “I want you to think up a plan to make the switch. I’ve got about twenty more rolls of cash buried outside of Milaca. I’ll need to have someone drive me out there to dig it up. We’re going to have to figure out how to make that possible.”

Ace looked at me and raised his
chin. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but where did you get that kind of money?”

“That’s a long story.”

“We’ve got plenty of time. I want to hear it.”

I laughed. “Okay, I’ll tell it to you. Actually, looking back, it almost seems like it was a dream. If I hadn’t brought along a couple of rolls, I’m not so sure I’d still believe it actually happened to me.”

“What, did you win the lottery or something?”

“No, it was nothing like that. I was set
up as a stooge to haul that money out of a prepper’s compound outside of Milaca. Some friends invited me to join them up there when the shit started hitting the fan. Well, when we got up there, my friend’s brother told me that I could spend the night, but that was it. I hadn’t contributed to their camp and I was cool with that. I really only wanted to get out of Minneapolis and make it out to my parents’ farm.”

“Where is that?”

“Pine City.”

“That’s where I live. We just moved up th
ere. Huh, small world. Go ahead. I’m sorry for interrupting.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, seeing the pain flash in Ace’s eyes as he thought of his family. “Well, it was getti
ng late and I noticed this good-looking gal checking me out. Her name was Madison and her ex-husband belonged to the group. We got to talking and she asks me if she could tag along with me when I bugged out of there in the morning. What was I going to tell her? Something happened up at the gate and the whole bunch of them picked up their guns and ran to see what the commotion was about. So Madison says this is as good a time to leave as any and she asks me if I’m ready to go. I said I was ready if she was and she led me to one of these RV trailers they had parked out behind the house. She went inside and handed me out that backpack I’ve been wearing. The damn thing must’ve weighed a hundred pounds. She grabbed a knapsack and a rifle and led me out into the woods.”