2nd Earth 2: Emplacement (3 page)

3

Billy really wishes he could come along, but they may need him here. He is definitely the strongest man in any of the groups, and the biggest. He is over seven feet tall and weighs about 350 pounds. He is also one of the nicest people you could ever meet. We take off about mid- morning. We do not even know where we are going once we get past the city. It takes less time getting there this time because we had to push some vehicles and other obstacles out of the way the first time. We stop by the propane trucks and see that they are both almost full. We will definitely get these either on the way back, or we will come back for them. The gasoline tanker is also almost full, so we will get that as well. We go to where we last saw the guys from the south. The bodies are still here and so is some sign that we didn’t expect.

Looking around we find where the truck was parked and not too surprising there is a puddle of oil on the ground. Not a lot, but enough to see they have an oil leak. Now, according to the people we found here, those guys came here fairly often, so there may be a trail of oil leading to where they come from. There is not a lot of traffic on the roads, so it stands to reason that if we find oil on the road it came from their vehicle. Like most small cities there are only a couple of main roads in and out of here. Gary and I decide to walk ahead of the vehicles and look for signs of oil on the road. It doesn’t take very long until we find what we are looking for. We don’t have to follow the trail closely because there are only so many places they could turn off. We drive a good ten miles before we see more sign that someone has been driving on the road. This is at a cross roads and there are tire tracks on the pavement where someone took the corner too fast, more than once, by the amount of rubber on the road.

We have to be more careful now because we have no idea how far away they are. We are all watching a different direction searching for any sign of life. We go down this road for about six miles then we see the same kind of tracks on the pavement. We are following cautiously, still looking all around, hoping to see them before they see us. We are hoping to see some smoke maybe or something else we can see from a distance then go ahead on foot to see what we are getting into. We are barely crawling, not wanting to tip them off that we are coming. This reminds me of some of the missions that Tim and I have been on. Sara looks at me and asks me if this feels more like home to me. The unit Tim and I were in rescued her when her plane got shot down in a war zone. That was only a little over a year ago, but it seems like such a long time ago. I was going to say worlds ago, but it really was.

I turn to look behind us and when I turn back forward again I am startled by a young woman, who almost runs into the side of the van. She is disheveled like she is running away from something or someone and is about at the end of her endurance. Carol says she knows that girl, who is trying to run around the van, to get away from us. Carol, Ray, and I jump out of the van and Carol calls to her that we are friends. She looks extremely frightened and unsure whether or not to believe us. The next thing I know, I am face to face with a very dirty man carrying a gun, obviously following the young lady. He is as startled as I am, but I am better trained because I strike out with my forearm and elbow knocking him to the ground. He is not out though and is scrambling to get his gun around to bear on me when I hear the whistling sound of an arrow going past my ear, and see an arrow sticking through the dirty man.

My first fear is that they are traveling together and now we have killed her husband, but she finally relaxes and all but falls into Carols arms. She is sobbing almost uncontrollably trying to tell Carol what happened. We give her some water and let her sit in the van, where at least she is comfortable, and can catch her breath. Finally she can tell us what we need to know. She was apparently working in the fields and overheard the dirty guy telling one of the other guards that he was going to take her back to the barn and teach her some manners. We all understand what he meant. She says when he unlocked the leg irons she pushed him down and took off running. She ran for what seemed like a long time, all the while the dirty guy kept yelling for her to stop because he would just hurt her more when he finally catches her. She says she was just about ready to give up, because she couldn’t run anymore, when she ran into us. At first she thought that she had run into some of the others, even though she has never seen the vehicles.

She eats the food we give her like she is starving and probably is. We can finally ask her where the others are, how many of them are there, and how many captors are there. She says they brought two more girls in last week, which makes it fifty-three. Thirty-three are women or girls and twenty are men or boys. She says there are ten guards now, there were more, but a couple days ago several didn’t come back with the others. Carol and Ray tell her we know. They got killed when we tried to capture them. That news makes her have more hope. Sometimes when you are treated badly by others, you have a tendency to think of them as being invincible. She can see that the one chasing her wasn’t. Speaking of that we better get somewhere out of sight before they come looking for their compatriot. We go back the way we came about a mile. There is a place I remembered seeing on the way in where we can get the vehicles out of sight behind some brush.

She can finally tell us approximately where the farm is that we are looking for. She says they keep the prisoners chained wherever they are. In the fields they have chains running down the aisles that they work in and in the barn, where they sleep, they chain them in a stall. She says that they have been very busy picking vegetables and fruit. They aren’t allowed to eat any while they are picking. If they get caught they get whipped or worse. Gary, Roy, Dan, and I decide to go in on foot. Ray says he would like to go, but I hesitate to leave the women and the vehicles unguarded. Besides I know all the men with me, I don’t know how he will react if he has to kill someone. Actually, in this case it’s when, we can’t let these animals live to do this to others. Please do not think we enjoy killing, we don’t, but we have no organized law, so we have to do what is necessary to survive. Believe me; those men will be trying to kill us as much as we will be them. The young lady whose name is Amy wants to go with us, she says the others won’t trust us because they don’t know us. It takes a lot of courage to go back into a situation like that one, but we are sure she is correct.

We are waiting until we see the layout before we make any plans. We work our way to the farm, if you want to call it that. It is a group of rundown buildings that was a farm once. These guys probably came upon it, with the fruit trees and vegetables growing wild like at our places, and were too lazy to work it, so they captured slaves to do the work for them. Man’s inhumanity toward man never ceases to amaze me. Getting into the barn will not be any trouble, but getting all ten, if Amy is correct, will not be easy. It is getting dark quickly so we make our way down to the back of the barn. There are so many boards missing that we can see pretty much everything going on in there. The nights get cold, and almost none of the people we can see even have coats on.

The back door to the barn is broken and hanging on one hinge, so Roy and I go in that door while Gary and Dan work their way around to the side door. It is so dark inside plus we are in the shadows so no one even sees us come in. We start to take a step toward the first stall when two of the filthiest people I have ever seen come in the side door carrying a lantern. They head to a stall toward the front and we hear a young woman’s voice pleading for them not to take her. That is followed by an older woman’s voice pleading with them to take her and leave her daughter alone. She tells them she is only twelve and they will hurt her too badly. They just laugh and say that will make it all the more fun.

They unlock the chain and drag the screaming girl out the side door that they came in through. I hand the bolt cutters to Roy and tell him to start freeing these people. I’m going after those two who just left. I back out the door and cut toward the back where I am hoping to cut them off before they can attack that poor girl. I am almost too where I am hoping to meet them when I hear a blood curdling scream that came from a man not the young lady. I keep going and I see Gary and Sara coming toward me with the young lady between them sobbing. The scream brought everyone coming from what is obviously the main house. The man who was screaming is still crying for help. I ask Sara what happened and Gary asks me if I have ever seen a man gelded.

Apparently Sara decided to join us and just happened to walk straight into that pair that had the girl. Gary saw them leave the barn so he followed for the same reason I did. He got to them just in time to see the young girl thrown on the ground and one of the men taking down his pants. The one that was watching lurched suddenly and fell to the ground with his throat cut from ear to ear. He didn’t make a sound. The second one wasn’t that lucky. Gary says he saw the knife flash and heard something hit the ground then that guy let out the scream that I heard. Sara just says he will never assault another young girl or old girl for that matter. I was going to ask her what she is doing here, but in the mood she is in, I will wait until later.

We can see four men running toward the sound of the dying man so we cut loose with our hand guns and all four drop where they were standing. We stick our head in the barn door to see how Roy and Dan are doing getting all the captives loose. Amy tells us that four of the women were taken up to the house earlier. As angry as I am, I start toward the house with a gun in each hand. Sara and Gary are only a step behind. The people in the barn are now helping our guys get the rest loose. We hear gun fire and the bullets kick up dust around our feet. That reminds me that I have far too much to lose to get myself killed foolishly. I duck behind a car that is parked in the yard. Gary and Sara are behind a small truck that is parked behind the car. I no sooner get behind the car when the window directly above my head is shot out. I look toward Sara and she smiles and tells me it’s about time I realized where I am. I definitely have to agree with her.

We are exchanging gunfire with the people in the house. I can count five different guns and that is just about right for what Amy told us. I am looking for a way to get closer to the house or to at least get a decent shot at those inside, but there is just nothing big enough to do that. I am wishing for the .50 I used to use when I was a Navy SEAL when I hear my .307 coming from the loft in the barn. I look back and can see just enough of Roy to know he has the rifle and is obviously putting it to good use. There is another volley from inside the house, only this time I can only count four guns. The .307 roars again and we can hear someone fall out of a second story window and hit the ground hard. He isn’t moving so I am pretty confident that they are down to three.

I am getting ready to work my way around the car and maybe get to the house keeping in the deeper shadows. I see movement out of the corner of my eye, I hear the whooshing sound of an arrow and see a figure stand straight up and fall face down in the dirt. Dan is sure pulling his own weight and then some on this trip. I signal for Gary and Sara to draw their attention while I try to get inside and end this thing now. I hear the two guns left firing back so I crawl around the car and into the shadows beyond. When I have only a few steps to go I rush the house in a crouching run. I was going to knock the door in, but it is open. I almost fall down because I was expecting to come in contact with the door. There is one man at the front window firing when I come into the room. He turns quickly, but not quick enough to shoot before I do. He falls out through the window. There was very little glass in it anyway.

The last one must be upstairs, there is no more firing so maybe he is out of ammunition or someone got lucky and hit him. Two of the women that they brought in tonight are lying on the floor, kind of behind a beat up couch. They are scared, but other than that they don’t appear to be hurt. Gary and Sara rush the house expecting to be shot at, but no shots are fired. I tell them to cover me, and start to go upstairs, when a man starts coming downstairs holding a young woman in front of him like a shield. He has a hand gun pushed out in front of him. He says that if anybody tries to shoot him, the girl will get killed first. I take a couple of steps back keeping my gun ready to shoot. The man is coming down the stairs slowly and finally we can see his face.

“Bennett, is that you? How did you get here?”

Sara recognizes him as soon as I do, I didn’t even know that she knew him. He was a SEAL like Tim and me. I never cared for him, but I would never have guessed that he would be behind something like this. He says he thought he recognized the sound of Sara and my Sig Sauer’s. He asks how we came to be here, so we tell him. Ray, Carol, Amy, Dan, and Roy have come into the house. The people who were being held are sitting around outside talking. Ray, Carol, and Amy think that Bennett has lost his mind, believing a story like the one we are telling. When we finish he says it sounds like what happened to him. He was on leave in Atlanta and was on an underground train and fell asleep. When he woke up he was definitely not in the same place or time. He managed to get a car running and finally found the guys he was partnered with here. They found this farm, but none of them wanted to work it so they went looking for women and some men to do the work for them. He says that was about six months ago.

Here is a man who could have helped all these people instead of using them like animals. He says he will leave and we will never see him again if we will let him go. If we don’t, he is going to start shooting until one of us finally gets him. I am tired of all the killing so I ask the others what they think. As soon as he thinks he has the upper hand he starts making demands. He says he wants one of our vehicles and four women of his choice to take with him. I tell him that is just not going to happen. When we knew each other in the other world he was always trying to pick a fight with me. I was not afraid to fight him then and I am still not. I ask him if he would like to settle this between him and me. If he wins he goes free without the women unless they wish to go with him. He asks me what happens if I get lucky and win. I tell him he knows the answer to that, only one of us is going to survive this fight. He smiles and says that’s more like it.