The Blue Ridge Resistance (13 page)

“What is it?” asked Evan.

“All I can see from here is a box… okay; they set it down on the front porch. Charlie is walking back out to his ATV now. It looks like he’s coming back.”

“Without the box?” asked Evan.

“Yep, but the box is on the porch still, so we may have a trade to work out.”

Charlie rode back down the hill towards the fork in the road, where the others waited. He pulled up alongside the trailer, shut off his engine, dismounted, and said, “Well, guys, you’re gonna be quite pleased with our first little negotiations session.”

“How so?” replied Evan.

“Coffee,” Charlie said with a smile.

“Coffee? Great. How much?”

“Forty pounds of whole bean coffee. It turns out the man’s son was sort of an amateur prepper and just happened to work at a club wholesale store. He’s willing to trade ten pounds of coffee per jar of Jimmy’s moonshine. He wants at least four jars, so that’s a hell of a lot of coffee. He’s got more than he can ever drink, which means we may be able to come back through some other time for more.”

Ed smiled and said, “His son was smart—stocking up on things like coffee, that is. Coffee will always be useful as a form of currency.”

The men shared a laugh and then looked at Jimmy to get his approval. Jimmy smiled and said, “Well, hell yeah! Get that man his shine.”

They put the four jars of moonshine into a box on Charlie’s ATV rack to take back up the hill. Charlie made the trade and then came back down the hill to join the others. After loading the coffee into the trailer, Charlie said, “I asked if anyone else up there may be interested in working out any deals. Unfortunately, he told me it would be best if I didn’t let the other folks know we had barter items, unless we were willing to give it away for free. He said no one else had anything to give and that they were a bit trigger happy with strangers after a few less-than-desirables have been through as of late.”

Jason interrupted to ask, “Did you ask him about what’s on down the road this way?”

“Yes, he said after a few more miles we’re gonna find a stretch of road that most of the locals won’t go down. It’s uninhabited, with no outs if you run into a problem. He said most of the locals here continue up Route 107 to get anywhere, but steer clear of 70 from here to the bridge that takes you back across to the other side of the river”

“Why is that?” asked Evan.

“Probably the same reason the Gibbs and Jackson families didn’t fare so well down that way. He said there are some low-life folks that stay up in the hills and come down to prey on passersby.”

“Did he know exactly where they stay?” asked Jason.

“No, unfortunately the locals just know somewhere up on the hillside, overlooking the road. All they have to do to pin someone in, is block the bridge and the other end of the road. Whoever is on the road in-between, gets trapped with no way out without going through them. He said he thinks they are from Richmond or Asheville. Acting like that, they are definitely not local folks, according to him.”

“Yep, probably out-of-towners looking for a small pond to be a big fish,” Nate replied.

“Well, guys, I say we press on into the spider’s web and smash it. We need to get to Hot Springs. Along the way, we’ll keep any eye out for the Jackson women. Are you guys still up for that?”

“Hell, yeah!” they all replied.

“Well, let’s load up and get rolling then. Daylight is burning,” Evan said as he climbed back onto the tractor.

Chapter 20: Living in Hell

She could hear her mother’s screams from the other room. She curled up on the floor behind the bed, bound to it by handcuffs and chains, trying to pretend the horrible events weren’t happening. She knew all too well the hell her mother was enduring, as she herself had gone through it repeatedly since they were taken from their father. She was a virgin before this all started, but she knew she would never be able to wear that moniker again.

She had been brutally beaten and repeatedly gang raped by the band of thugs that had taken them. Their rhythm seemed to be to take one at a time into the other room while the other recovered for a few hours. They would then trade them off and do it all over again. She was bleeding from inside and was in terrible pain. She hadn’t eaten in days and had barely been given anything to drink—just enough to keep her alive. She had been stripped of her clothes and was forced to shiver in nothing but the cold of her own blood and tears. They had done terrible things to her—twisted things that she never imagined would please a man—things she would never be able to get out of her mind. She prayed for God to take her, to let the next time a man hit her be the final blow that sends her off to Heaven to join him.

The door swung open as one of the men carried her naked mother into the room, throwing her on the bed. She was unconscious from the vicious beating she had received while trying to fend off her attackers and smelled of their alcohol, cigarettes, and sweat. The man looked at the young girl and said, “Don’t worry, bitch, you’re not gonna miss out on all of the fun. It’ll be your turn again next.” He then leaned down and handcuffed her mother’s limp wrist to the metal bedpost. He stood up, spat on her, and turned to walk out of the room. Before he left, he turned and said, “We’re gonna have to hose you beasts down, you’re starting to stink.” 

As soon as he was gone, the young girl climbed up from the floor, where she was attempting to stay out of the man’s way, and checked on her mother. “Mom… Mom,” she said as she shook her.

She heard her mother whisper, “Is he gone?”

“Yes, he’s gone. Please wake up, Mom.”

Her mother opened her swollen eyes slowly, her eyelids flickering from her disoriented state. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry this is happening. I’ve failed you. I’m supposed to protect you, and here you are in this living hell.”

“Shhhh, don’t say that, Mom. It’s not your fault. Daddy tried to save us. Daddy tried. We all tried,” she said as she broke down crying.

Her mother reached up with what little strength she had left and held her by the hand. The young girl noticed that her mother had burns all over her body. They looked like cigarette burns. They had even burned her genitals with whatever it was they used. The young girl shook in agony for the pain her mother must be enduring, and for the horror that she may face the same abuse the next time they come for her.

As her mother drifted back out of consciousness, the young girl laid her head on her mother’s shoulder and closed her eyes, once again praying to God for help. “Please God, if you’re there, please help my mother. Take my life if you must, but please don’t let them continue to hurt her like this. And if you aren’t able to send us help, then please just let us die. Please take us to Heaven with you and get us out of this hell on Earth.”

Suffering from severe fatigue, she slipped off to sleep with her head on her mother’s arm. She dreamed about her father, and about the happy times they once had as a family. She loved her parents dearly, and could not imagine making it in this cruel and ugly world without them.

She awakened at the sound of two men arguing in the hall.
How long was I asleep?
she thought to herself as she looked around the room in her disoriented state. She listened closely in an attempt to hear what the men were saying.

“It’s my turn, damn it!” one of them yelled. “I was on watch when you had your last go. It’s my turn, and I’m taking the young one,” he again yelled.

“Mom… Mom, they’re coming,” she whispered as she shook her mother’s arm, trying to wake her. She noticed that her mother felt colder than before. A sudden panic went through her body as she realized her mother was no longer breathing. “Mom! Mom! Wake Up!” she screamed aloud as tears ran down her face. “Mom, please don’t leave me here all alone! Please don’t leave me!” she continued to yell as she shook her mother by the shoulders.

Hearing the commotion from within the room, the door swung open and two of the men entered. “What the hell?” one of them shouted as they walked over to see her pale, lifeless mother and the panic in the young girl’s face. “Damn it, Dog told you not to be so damn rough with them. We’ve got to make them last for everybody to get least a few goes at them. You’re missing your next turn for that asshole!” he shouted. “I’m taking the young one again while we’ve still got her.” He unchained and dragged the screaming girl out of the room while she desperately reached for her dead mother. “And do something with that damn body before it stinks any worse than it already does!” he added as he took the young girl down the hall.

Chapter 21: The Spider’s Web

As Evan and the men proceeded into what Evan jokingly referred to as “The Spider’s Web”, they could sense the danger in the air. There were just too many warnings about the type of individuals that may lie in wait for them not to heed. After they passed the last road that they could see on their map prior to the bridge, they knew they were coming up on the area where the Jackson women were more than likely taken. Evan pulled the tractor to a stop, shut off the engine, looked at Jason, and said, “Okay . . . Game plan?”

Jason thought for a minute and then replied, “Unless we run across them prior to reaching it, I think we need to focus on the area where the containers and trailers are that Tyrone mentioned. If those guys come down and check on them at night on a routine basis—hoping to find travelers seeking refuge—we could use that to our advantage. We know some of the things they’ve done and what kind of people they are. They, however, have no idea we are coming, what we know, and what actions we are willing to take. It may be their home court, but we are the only ones that know there’s about to be a game.”

“I like where you’re going with this,” Evan said. “Go on.”

“Looking at the map, we know the containers are just before the bridge that crosses back over the French Broad to the south. After we round this last bend, we’ll be in the kill zone all the way there. They will have the position of elevation with woods for cover, and we will be in the open on the road below. There
is
an option we can take to catch the spider in its own web.”

Evan said, “Let’s get the other guys in on this.”

“Right on,” Jason replied.

Evan and Jason then climbed down from the tractor and joined the other men at the back of the trailer. Jason caught them up on what he and Evan had discussed so far, and then said, “Here’s what I think we should do. What we’ve seen, so far, is uphill terrain to the left and the river to the right. Up ahead, there is wooded uphill terrain to the left, and wooded downhill terrain to the right before you get to the riverbank. If they are watching the road, and not the river itself, we can ditch the tractor in a secluded area on the last road we just passed. Then, we quietly hike down the riverbank, with the lower stand of trees as cover. Once we find the containers, we can figure out what we want to do from there, based on what we see. From what Tyrone described, they very deliberately and methodically drove down to the containers and cleared them one-by-one, looking for people. We can use that pattern if they repeat it.”

“I like it,” said Evan in complete agreement with Jason’s plan.

“Me too,” said Nate. “Let’s do it.”

“Hell, yeah,” said the others as everyone got on board with Jason’s plan.

With their new plan in mind, they unloaded the ATVs and hid them in the brush alongside the road the best they could. They then began backtracking with the tractor and trailer, to leave them hidden on the side road they had just passed. They did not want to lose their entire cache of supplies in one fell swoop if someone found the tractor while they were away. Having the ATVs stashed in a different location would at least give them some form of transportation in the event that happened.

Once everything was in place, they all suited up with their tactical gear they had brought along. Each man’s loadout was different, based on his weapon and ammunition of choice, but they were all ready for anything that may come their way: from first aid, to ammunition, to emergency food in the event things took longer than expected. The events of the recent past had forced people such as them to think about all possible eventualities every time they undertook such a challenge, and these men were ready for anything.

Jason rallied the men together and said, “Okay, guys, let’s travel down the riverbank via a bounding overwatch. Let’s split up into two groups. Evan, Ed, and myself in one; Charlie, Nate, and Jimmy in the other. One group will move down towards the objective while the other lies low in the tree line, providing cover. When the first group on the move hunkers down in the trees, the second group will move forward while being provided with cover. It will slow us down a bit, but we won’t be caught off guard that way. As long as we get there before dark to get the lay of the land and set up accordingly, we should be fine.”

With that said, Jason led the first group while Nate led the second. They entered the lower tree line, worked their way towards the riverbank, turned east, and hand-railed Highway 70 from the river, continuing towards their objective. Along the way, they would occasionally stop as a scout would climb back up through the lower woods and to the road to scan the area for threats and to look for their objective. The scout would then rejoin their group, and both groups would proceed.

Just as the sun was going down, the groups were getting close to the bridge. They couldn’t see any movement on the bridge and decided to move through the lower woods and back up to the road while maintaining their bounding overwatch. Once they reached the road, they could see the scene that Tyrone had described. “This must have been some small time trucking company’s base before things went to shit,” said Jason as he checked the area out with his binoculars, lying low in the trees with the others.

“So what do you think?” asked Evan. “Should we put a moth in the web and wait for the spider?”

“But who gets to be the moth?” asked Jason with a crooked grin.

“Why, us, of course,” Evan replied. “We are dragging these guys into this mess; we can’t volunteer them to be the bait.”

“My thoughts exactly,” replied Jason.

Evan and Jason then shared their plan with the others. Upon reaching a consensus, Evan and Jason stripped their tactical gear off to try and look like two ordinary travelers. They put their pistols inside their waistbands to hide them from plain view, and then pulled their jackets over top of them. They quickly doubled back down the riverbank, confident, now, that it was clear of threats. They rejoined the road above as if they were merely two travelers heading east towards the bridge. 

As they walked down the street in plain view, Evan said, “I feel naked without my VZ.”

“Ditto, brother,” replied Jason. “Imagine how I feel; you only had half a rifle to start with.”

“Ha,” Evan said sarcastically. 

“Besides,” Jason said, “only a fool takes a pistol to a gunfight.”

“Well, nobody ever accused us of being smart,” Evan chuckled in reply.

As they approached the containers and semi-trailers, Evan said, “Well, which of these luxury accommodations do you want to spend the night in?”

“Let’s go for a trailer instead of a container. The height of the door will give us an advantage if emergency egress is necessary,” he replied.

“Roger Roger,” said Evan with a chuckle, poking fun at Jason’s signature phrase.

“Keep it up and I might just let one of those scumbags have you,” Jason replied in jest.

The two selected a trailer, opened the door, and climbed up inside. They closed the door loudly to make sure they sent a message to the spider that it had indeed caught a moth.

After about an hour, as the two men sat in the pitch-black darkness of the trailer, out of the silence, Jason said, “Are we there yet?”

“Don’t make me pull this car over,” Evan replied.

“I wonder how long it will take those scumbags to come check on their prey.”

“Dunno,” answered Evan. “Heck, they may not even come, for all we know. We’re making assumptions based on limited information. You’ve got to do more leg work than this to pattern a deer, much less a gang of thugs.”

“Hell, don’t give them so much credit. The deer are probably way smarter,” replied Jason with a chuckle.

Just then, over their own laughter, they heard a truck coming down the road. The truck came to a stop right in front of the trailers and containers just like Tyrone had described.

“Game on,” whispered Jason.

“It’s about damn time,” whispered Evan in reply. “I’d go nuts if I had to be cooped up in this thing with you any longer.”

As they heard footsteps headed in their general direction, they double-checked that their pistols were concealed but ready. The sound of a metal door swinging open was followed immediately by it slamming shut. Then more footsteps and the sound of another metal door on rusty hinges being opened and closed. The footsteps then grew louder and closer as their door swung open abruptly, followed by a strong spotlight shining in their faces, temporarily blinding and disorienting them. They put their hands in front of their faces, out of reflex, to block the light, struggling to see.

“Jackpot!” a crude voice yelled out to the others. Evan and Jason squinted in the blinding light as another voice said, “Walk slowly towards us, and maybe we won’t hurt you.”

Evan and Jason began to comply when the voice ordered, “Empty your pockets. What do you have on you? Are you armed?”

In an attempt to stall the men, Jason answered the men in a fake foreign language. “Kaba dosta teno dringas monghumar! Monghumar! Monghumar!”

“What the hell did you say? Speak English, asshole!” the man demanded.

“Jason again answered, “Monghumar! Monghumar!”

The man then said to one of the others, “Get up in there and check them out.”

Before the other man could react to the demand, Ed’s voice rang out from the darkness, yelling, “Drop your weapons, or die where you stand!”

As the assailants turned around in surprise to engage Ed, Evan and Jason both drew their handguns as Jason yelled, “Monghumar means ‘wrong trailer, mother fucker’! Now drop your weapons or die like he said.”

The men then heard the sounds of Charlie, Nate, and Jimmy’s actions all cycle a round into the chamber, verifying that they were surrounded and in the line of fire.

Jason and Evan took the spotlights from the men and illuminated the assailants while they each stayed in the darkness, intensified by the blinding light for cover. Evan walked up to the one who seemed to be in charge and pistol-whipped him on the back of the head, knocking him to the ground. He then looked at the others and said, “One wrong move and you’re wasted. Now drop to your knees.”

Each of the men reluctantly complied while Jimmy and Charlie came along behind, tying their hands to a metal bar, keeping all of the men secured together.

Once they were all secure, Evan went to the first man and said, “Where are the women?”

“What women?” the man answered. “We don’t know what you’re talking about. We don’t have any women.”

“I don’t think you realize who you’re messing with. Two of my whores got away. Some man who claimed they were his family came and took them in the middle of the night. Those bitches were worth a lot of money to me—especially the young one. I have reason to believe you took them from him. If you have them, let’s work a deal for me to get them back and I’ll let you live. Hell, maybe I can even give you a job and cut you in.”

“Were they black? An older one and a younger one in her teens?” one of the men asked.

“Yeah, that’s them; so do you have them?” Evan replied.

“Ah, yeah, man. We’ve got’em. Them some good lookin’ bitches. That young one, she’s got it goin’ on. We popped that guy that took’em from ya too. They may not be as fresh as when you had them, though. We’ve damn near used them up,” the man said with a laugh. “But hey, we can get them back to you, and maybe even help you get some more. Just cut us in.”

“Where the hell are they?” Evan demanded, trying to hide his growing rage.

“Up on the hill behind us. At our place. Let us go and we’ll take you,” the man replied.

“Shut the hell up T,” the man that Evan pistol-whipped said to his cohort.

“Is he your boss?” Evan asked.

“Yeah, man, he’s in charge,” the man replied.

Evan then went over to the leader of the group, pulled his knife from its sheath, and slit the man’s throat, spilling his blood to pool at the feet of the other men.

“I’m your boss now,” Evan said as he pointed the bloody knife at them. “Anybody got a problem with that?”

“Na, man. You’re the boss. You’re the boss,” the men replied.

“Now, how many more on the hill that I might have to cut in on this?”

“There’s three more. They’re all cool though. They’ll be in. They’ll be in,” the talkative one said.

“What are they doing up there right now?” Evan asked.

“They’re supposed to be keeping watch over the place and the women, but knowing those bastards, they’re probably riding your whores right now,” the man said with a laugh.

“Three, huh? Well, hell, that’s too many. I can’t cut so many of you in, I guess I’m gonna have to cut some of you out,” he said as he slashed the throat of the first man, with Jason killing the other in the same fashion.

“What the hell, man? What the hell was that?” yelled Ed, aghast at what he had just witnessed.

“Ed, relax,” said Nate. “These scumbags just admitted to murdering the father and kidnapping the mother and daughter to use as their sex slaves. What else were we supposed to do? Let them go? I can tell you that’s just not gonna happen.”

“Yeah, we’ve seen this before,” Charlie added. “And we’re not gonna let it happen again. That’s how we got young Haley back at Mildred’s place. That poor girl went through hell. I had a hard time coming to terms with this sort of thing at first too, but trust me, these guys only do what’s necessary for the good to survive. The bad simply reap what they sow, the way I see it.”