Cascadia Fallen: The Complete Trilogy, page 23
“I saw the bridge!” she hissed as quietly as she could.
“Bridge…” Stu was confused. “What bridge?”
“The bridges!” she insisted. “The Tacoma-Narrows bridges. The old one is barely standing. We’re sailing right for them!”
“That doesn’t make sen—” THWUMP! Stu crumpled to the floor, and the space behind him was filled with a short sneering biker holding a hammer.
“What do you mean ‘toothless tiger’?” the commissioner asked.
“Exactly that, Commissioner. The curfew has been unenforceable. There just isn’t enough manpower. We have no idea how many thefts have gone unreported. Or murders.” Sandy McCallister was once again leading a session of the Unified Command. “How many of you beefed up your security to get up here today?”
There were no shows of hands, but the men and women looking around the room—more importantly, the looks on their faces—gave Sandy her answer. “Violence isn’t our only problem. We’re about to face a serious death wave.” This caused a murmur, particularly from the politicians.
“What exactly does that mean?” asked the mayor of Port View.
“It means that without power the critically injured and ill are in the process of perishing… if they haven’t already. Refrigerated medicines, life support systems, people on breathing treatments, cardiac patients, strokes—these are the people we bought all those three-person grave liners for. Well, them and eventually the diabetics and asthmatics…” She was being blunt. She was too tired to be political anymore. “Tell me, Greg, when was the last time you checked in on the nursing homes in Port View? ‘Cuz you sure aint gonna like what you see!” she said, reverting back to her grandmotherly slang to soften the blow.
The mayor just sat there staring back—the politician in him not wanting to say the wrong thing. He knows I’m right, Sandy thought.
“Folks, we all heard from Sheriff Raymond himself. How’d you say it, Ward? ‘Negative values on supplies needed to care for detainees?’ That sure sounds a whole lot like ‘We can’t feed the prisoners anymore’ to me.” She looked around for a few seconds. “Lucky for you, we have a solution. Gerry?”
Sandy’s right-hand come over from her wall chair holding a new padded pelican case. She set it down on the table and unsnapped the lid, hinging it open. She pulled out a handle that looked similar to the type a grocery cashier might use. She held it over her own arm and it made an audible beep. She then showed it to the South Slaughter Fire Chief, the closest person at the table.
“Johnson, Geraldine,” he read on the scanner, looking up in disbelief. It took about five seconds of staring at each other for the room to erupt. They were speaking over each other, most just in shock but a few vehemently opposed. Sandy couldn’t have cared less about all of them. There’s only two men I need to make this fly. She watched National Guard Major Matsumoto and Sheriff Raymond’s faces. Both seemed to be considering the idea quietly.
“We call it catch and release. Not only can we release the lock-ups and find them later, we’ll be able to chip anyone who was involved in any type of violent event. That way we can hold trial later on when things are normal again.” Things will never be normal again. You fools just need to believe they will be.
“Pardon my ignorance, Director,” said Don Dale, the Sylvan Fire Chief. “If we’re ultimately going to have people flocking to the big FEMA camp at the sports park next door, why wouldn’t you just feed the lock-ups from that supply? That way—they’re still locked up!” The chief’s snarkiness was not lost on anyone.
“Our supplies are for the law abiders, Don. Let the prisoner’s families worry about feeding them. And in case you hadn’t noticed, the camps are already becoming somewhat…restless.” Ignorance not forgiven. Idiot. “Now—let’s talk about what to do about guns, shall we?”
It was early evening and Payton and her father were walking north on Canal Vista Highway. They were almost to Medford Lane. They had been engaged in a dialogue along the way, taking advantage of the time to talk about the lunchtime visit from Crane. They eventually tried to thaw the chill from their earlier tension. All conversations eventually turned towards ways to improve the camp. Several days earlier Phil had made a big run to his house for ammo and the rest of his equipment. While not in the realm of possibility to completely move all his goods, he felt alright about what was left. The point of this trip was to talk, not grab stuff.
“Laundry,” Payton said. “That’s another thing. We’re going to need more clothes because hand-washing is a fairly abusive method. And we need one of those washboard things of our own. I hate asking Teresa to borrow hers every other day.” And because I finally found something I can do for other people. “I’ve been offering to hand-wash some of the older women’s loads for them.”
“Wellll…it might be a bit late to get one of those, Olive,” her dad said. “We may have to figure out a way to make one. It seems like that’s just the latest example of old technology that is suddenly in demand again. I would die of joy if someone showed up with an old-timey plow harness to use with those horses.”
Phil had approved the stay of two non-range members—Crane’s roommate Maya and her mom, Pam Jorgenson. They had arrived on horseback with a third horse in tow. Phil had known them since the kids were in elementary school together, and he vouched for their character. He knew that the horses and Pam’s ranch knowledge would be invaluable. Nate Jorgenson had been deployed on his submarine, USS James L. Hunicutt, and nobody had heard from him since long before the disaster. Despite Nate’s being a sailor, Phil had the utmost respect for the man. He considered sheltering the family an honor-bound duty.
Payton nodded in agreement. “Anyway, I have an idea for building a semi-circular clothes line around the firepit. We could back it with mylar blankets, too, to make it more efficient.”
“That’s actually a great idea, honey! I can see it already. You draw up your vision, and we’ll see what we can piece together.”
They made the left onto Medford Lane. As usual the conversation eventually turned sour when Phil made a comment that Payton took as a slight. “So, with all the good ideas you’ve come up with, it seems like you’re finally able to say you’re growing up some, huh?” Phil knew immediately he shouldn’t have phrased a compliment like that.
“You know…I guess I should be surprised by how long it took you to actually go there. Why am I such a disappointment to you?” She didn’t want him to speak—she just wanted to make him regret saying yet another judgmental thing.
They were on the final approach to Phil’s driveway. Phil suddenly wished they’d brought Dakota along to help deflect some of the vibe. He was starting to think about the flavor of crow he wanted to eat when something caught his eyes. He could see through the trees as they approached the house that windows were broken out.
Phil unslung the rifle that had been riding on his back. He re-slung it to the front of his body and started his heel-toe procedure for walking and aiming. “Wait here,” he ordered.
“No way,” Payton countered, drawing her Walther off the hip holster that she’d started using.
This wasn’t the time and place to argue, so he kept going. He got to the stairs at the bottom of the split-level entry, and he pointed to her to go post herself on the corner of the house. She could cover that approach and the front yard if somebody tried to enter the house after him.
“No!” she argued. “I’m coming in with you!”
“Damn it, Payton!” he hissed as quietly as he could. “Do what I say and cover the house! They may still be in there and have a watch out here!” He was tired of everything turning into a debate.
Her face was livid, but she turned and moved to the corner by the garage. After Phil saw Payton set herself, he made his slow entry. Four minutes later, Phil came back out onto the front porch. “Clear,” he mumbled dejectedly. Payton holstered her pistol and followed him upstairs. The furniture had been tossed over. Pictures were off the wall. Stuff was strewn everywhere.
“Mom’s painting! Now I’m pissed!” Payton said. Caroline had painted a family portrait when Payton was about fourteen. It lay on the floor with a book case on top of it, the contents resting on the painting. “What was the point of all this!”
“We’ll never know, hon. It could be kids, could be druggies, could be people who know I might have guns and ammo.” Phil knew one negative aspect of being a well-known gun guy was that his property was a target for opportunists. He walked over to the sliding glass door and peeked out. The shop’s roll-up metal door had a huge gash in it, like someone had cut it open with a chainsaw. “I bet they took the air compressor…”
They headed back outside. His damaged truck looked the same. He popped open the bed-cover and looked in. “There’s still some stuff in here. We’ll drive the jeep back and take this stuff...” His voice trailed off as his face turned sour. He made a beeline for the garage, unlocked the door, and rolled it up. The jeep was still there.
They started to head around the house. “Dad, do you suppose—”
“Shhh!” Phil commanded. At first, Payton didn’t notice it. Out in Canal Vista on any given day a person could hear their neighbors enjoying their natural rights in the form of gunfire.
Klack-Klack-Klack-Klack!
“That’s an AK,” Phil said seriously.
“So?”
“Not the gun, Olive. The direction. That’s coming from the range!” He started speed-hobbling back towards the garage.
Just then the HAM radio that Jerry had given Phil for the extended range crackled to life. “Phil! This is Fred! Get back here. ASAP.”
“What is it, Fred? We’ll be coming back in Crane’s jeep.”
“I’m not saying on the radio. Is Payton with you?”
“I’m right here!” Phil had tossed the radio to his daughter so that he could concentrate on firing up the jeep. It was difficult for him to drive a stick-shift but not impossible. Rocks went flying as he punched the gas. He didn’t even look for right of way as he turned out onto the highway.
Even with the round-about along the way they had managed to make it there in about two minutes. He hit the brakes and clutch and came sliding to a stop in the end of the driveway, throwing open the door as he stomped on the parking brake. The vehicle trap, Payton remembered. She was wondering why he stopped there.
There were several members milling about excitedly, many of them with their rifles and pistols drawn. Upon seeing that, Phil pulled his rifle out of the back. About then Fred came running up.
“What happened!” Phil demanded.
Fred was overwhelmed. “Don got hurt—Dakota! Oh, God! Phil, its—”
“Calm down, Fred.” Phil was marching past Fred, the gate, and the vehicle trap to the small crowd in the middle of the parking lot. He could hear Dakota barely whimpering from inside a circle of people and see Don’s family tending to him. He was laying on the ground, bleeding.
“Phil!” Fred hollered, catching up. His face matched the other thirty faces Phil could see—they were panic-stricken.
“Spit it out, Fred!” Phil said loudly.
Payton had caught up. “Where’s Savannah?!” she demanded, her mother’s intuition firing on all cylinders. Where’s my baby?
Fred’s face was crinkled in guilt and failure. “They got her! That’s what I’ve been trying to say!” The old man started to gulp air between statements.
“What?” Payton screamed. “What, Fred?!”
“Two people took her. Came right over the berm that separates the parking lot from the highway. They shot Dakota with an arrow and just grabbed Savannah while she was playing in the parking lot. When Don ran up to fight them, he got clubbed in the head! Then they took off through the woods to the west. When he got up he returned fire, but they made it over the berm too fast. We can’t find any blood trails!”
Just then Jerry came flying up the lower road from down-range in the gator. “Phil!” he called out.
“Not now!” Phil growled. He was heading toward his tactical gear, which was staged down on the rifle line.
“Now, Phil! This will help, I promise!” He was reaching into the back of the gator and unzipping a bag. Phil stopped and took a breath, looking over. He changed directions toward the gator.
Payton had beat her father over to the machine to see what Jerry was excited about. Jerry, I could kiss you, she thought when she saw it.
21
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
— A quote, though disputed, often attributed to Irish Statesman Edmund Burke
Tahoma’s Hammer + 11 Days.
Phil and the others were moving slowly. It was dark, and the brush was thick with salal and huckleberry, which made travelling through it loud and cumbersome. They’d taken off after dusk intent on making ground—they knew time was of the essence. The small group was led by Phil with three of Don’s family members insisting they go, too. They were fueled by the horror of what could be happening to Savannah. Deep in his mind, Phil was irate with himself. If I’d gotten the stupid OP built and manned, my granddaughter would be safe, my friend would be okay, and Dakota would be alive. He was doing his best to keep his emotions pushed to the back of his mind. He needed to keep his senses tuned to the moment.
The other old man in this mini-squad was forty-four-year-old Eli Bryant, Don’s son-in-law. Eli was an avid hunter and knew his way around the woods and preferred bows or hunting rifles to tactical rifles. Phil wasn’t going to argue, knowing it would be much better for Eli to use what he was familiar with. Seeing the rest of the firepower in the group, Eli chose his compound bow with a Smith & Wesson Model 69 Combat Magnum revolver chambered in .44 to back it up. He carried it in a leather holster-sling that kept the pistol secured squarely on his chest. Eli was just over six-feet tall, with thinning dark-brown hair and was barrel-chested. He worked in a lumber-mill and had the rough hands and beard to prove it.
Phil had appointed Eli’s little brother as second-in-command for the mission. Josh Bryant, thirty-four, had served five years in the infantry as a good old-fashioned “11-Bravo” Infantryman, including deployments to Iraq in 2007 and 2009. In the years since he’d worked as a plumber and gone through not one but two messy divorces. Like Phil, he was using his personal AR-15. He’d borrowed one of Phil’s surplus chest-rigs and battle belts. While not containing actual plates, the chest-rig allowed him to carry magazines up in his “work-space.” He had pistol mags and rifle mags on his belt in addition to one of Phil’s older trauma kits. His back-up gun was a Canik 9MM pistol that he kept tucked into an appendix holster.
The third and final Bryant man to join the crew was Eli’s seventeen-year-old son, Jeff. At 6’ 2” tall, his senior year playing tight-end for the North Mason Bulldogs had come to an abrupt end thanks to Tahoma’s Hammer. Phil had lent the young man one off his AR pistols to use. Don had worked with his grandson a handful of times, so Phil knew the kid was proficient in the Four Commandments of Firearms Safety.
All three Bryant men were decked out in a combination of hunting clothes and jeans. Phil had changed into multicam pants and shirt to go under his plate carrier. He was even sporting a ballistic helmet with PVS-14 monocular night vision attached. It was hinged down as they moved. He wore it in front of his non-dominant left eye, reserving his shooting eye for his red-dot sight. Phil was on “point.” It wasn’t the normal spot for a squad’s leader, but he was the only one with night vision.
The evening before, as the gray dusk set in and the evening winds started to pick up, Jerry had shown Phil his latest gimmick in a seemingly endless bag of tricks. Force multipliers, Phil called them to himself, named for the tactical advantage the items brought with them. In this case it was a $4,500, quad-bladed DJI drone with high-resolution camera attached. Jerry had a side business filming promotional videos and had brought the drone so it didn’t get stolen. They had only gotten about seven minutes of flight time because the batteries weren’t fully charged, but it was enough to help.
The drone’s camera didn’t show the perpetrators, but it did show some broken brush and muddy tracks just past the fifteen or so houses to the immediate west of the range. Jerry carefully lowered the rig over someone’s backyard, and they discovered what was an old trail leading further west.
“That’s it,” Phil decided. “Unless they’re in one of these immediate houses, that’s where they went.”
Over the years Phil had met most of the range’s neighbors. All of them loved having the range there—they were all liberty-loving patriots who appreciated the value of the gun-range. Phil had never gotten a bad vibe from any of them. He decided the trail was worth investigating.
Jerry went to work. He recharged both sets of batteries for the drone as best as he could while digging up a few Baofeng ham radios and two of the GoTennas for the crew to take with them. This had allowed Phil the time he needed to calm down and think a little more rationally. They all had a quick snack, and Alice—the club’s president—suggested they all say a prayer. They gathered around Don, who was asleep, resting. Phil’s hunch was that at worst he had a nasty concussion. Alice asked Phil, “Do you want to say a few words?” They were down on the far end of the rifle-line at the makeshift infirmary.
“No, Ma’am. I might say some stuff that contradicts the act of asking God for help,” came his honest reply. He’d already thrown out his one prayer for the day.
Alice nodded and bowed her head. “Dear, Lord. We ask You now for guidance and protection. Please protect Savannah, and watch over these men. Bring them all home safely, Father, but above all, let Your will be done. Amen.” Short and simple. A chorus of “Amens” rolled out around the group.
