Pilliars in the Fall (18 page)

“I think I have four orange and green ones.”

“Okay let's grab those too. Colors won't hurt if we’re just trying to mask a position,” Clint instructed.

“You going to wear that plate carrier?” Blake pointed to the heavy ceramic bullet
proof
armor on a shelf in the corner.

“Too heavy, especially if I’m
already going to be loaded down; shouldn’t need it either. I doubt anyone is going to try to tag me with a rifle,” I answered him and tried not to think about all the people who had tried to shoot me with a rifle in just the last week.

“I don’t want to run into anymore random goddamn sniper ambushes either!” Blake yelled after me as I walked out of the room.

"Speaking of which," I called back to Clint, "Are you kitted for this?"

"Yeah, I kind of upgraded to the fancy stuff before we left the house," he patted the long gun case that was leaning in the chair next to him.

“We’ve only got about four hours before it gets dark out so lets make sure everyone has a light,” I reminded them all.

"What about the tunnels? Are their rats and stuff down there?" Danielle asked.

"Shouldn’t be but in case we do have to do any shooting in there, we might want to take along a .22 or two," I answered.

"Seriously? You're afraid of a little rat or something?" Blake looked over at me.

"Or dogs or lights or anything else that a nice quiet little twenty two can take care of. In fact, just give me a minute to change holsters and I'll stick the conversion on my CZ75. It runs great with the suppressor on there and I'll just throw the forty five slide and mags in my pack. That way I can always change it back over."

"And what if you need to transition?" Blake couldn’t believe that I would willingly load up a twenty two in place of a bigger caliber hand gun.

"Nice thing about AKs is you never
need
to transition," I joked.

Chapter 16

"I thought you said the steam plant was shut down," Blake pointed ahead of us.

We were slowly driving our way along the edge of town, lights off, and being very careful to not get stuck or trapped. The snow had stopped after yesterday’s short storm and was only now beginning to start up again. So far there was only about half an inch that had stuck on the open ground and nothing under the trees yet, more was obviously on its way though.

We had finally gotten close enough to get a view of town and the first noticeable thing, besides the power being off in most parts, was a grayish-white, fluffy column rising up into the clouds from behind the big grain silos that were on the edge of town. What I noticed was that the column wasn’t coming from the smokestack tower.

"It is shut down... that’s not steam, its smoke. Hey pull over up here, I want to check on the gas station," I turned in my seat and told Clint.

He pulled up and stopped the truck on the corner arterial street next to the gas station. From the looks of it, the doors were all closed up tight. The driveways in and out were unobstructed, three cars having been pushed into the little grassy drainage ditch in between the two paved lanes that led into and out of the gas pumps.

"You think they’ve got some gas left?" Blake stretched his neck around from the back seat and searched through the cracked windshield that was getting speckled with the light snow flakes.

"Doubt it. I used to know the owner. What do think is under the tarp?" I asked rhetorically and got out of the truck. Slinging my gun around on my chest I took a couple of steps toward an ominous looking pile off to one side of the parking area. The other three truck doors quickly opened and shut as Blake, Danielle and Clint all joined me. Blake and Danielle each had their FAL and M1 close at hand, and I noticed Clint checking the chamber of his old shotgun.

"You! You stop there! You don’t come any closer!" a high pitched male voice yelled at us from the direction of the darkened store as a high intensity flashlight flicked on, causing us to all shield our eyes.

"Timmy? What the fuck man?" I called out and waved to the figure on the rooftop of the one story convenience store.

"Oh hello my friend!" the light moved away and a little brown hand waved emphatically back at us. "Come, come. Come in, come in."

"Jesus dude," Blake pointed at a hand sticking out from under the tarp. Judging by the size of the pile, there had to be at least three bodies under there. The one visible hand had a red bandanna tied at the wrist. "Who the hell is this guy?"

"Its cool man, he's a friend and a kick in the pants, you'll love him," I told him.
 

Using the end of the silencer attached to my AK's barrel, I lifted up one end of the tarp just enough to see a blood soaked red and white checked shegmah wrapped around a partially deflated head.

"Come, we'll go inside. I'll be right down," the little man waved at us again as we walked up closer to the store. From the small amount of light we had to see by, I watched as he slung a long scoped rifle onto his back and dropped over the side of the building using a steel fire escape ladder to bring him to the ground.

Despite everything, I smiled wide as the skinny little five foot tall figure rounded the corner and came into view. He was wearing black snow pants, a green tactical type mesh vest over a turtleneck
sweater and a blue stocking hat with a big fluffy white ball on the end of it that stuck straight up off of his head.

"Hello, hello. Come, we'll go get warmer inside," Timmy invited us in.

"Those guys try to steal some gas or a Pepsi or something?" Blake asked as the little man unlocked the metal gate that covered the entrance to his store.

"No man, they were bad men. Very, very bad men. They came trying to recruit me on some fucking jihad. I told them to eat a pig and they didn't like that," he relayed to us, his hard practiced English grammar still hinting at the last pieces of an old heavy accent.

"Jihad?" Clint looked concerned.

The inside of the gas station was dark until Timmy lit two small oil lamps, their glow sending the shadows back from the empty shelves and also from an impressive array of weapons that were laid out on his main counter next to the cash register.

"Not real Jihadists, just wannabees. Not even the shitty militia, Fedyeen, guerrilla dropouts. Just some freaking crazy religious, fanatic, zealot losers," Timmy spit out his adjectives precisely. He would never say it and I would never let on that I knew, but he was very proud of his ability to use such large and appropriate words, and he used them as often as possible.

I had met Timmy, which was very doubtfully his real name, maybe three years ago now when he showed up virtually overnight as the new owner of this gas station. He had come out with the same big smile and wave to talk with me as I filled up my truck at his gas pump. Timmy's first questions to me were about how bad the winters here got, how slippery the roads would be and if we ever lost power, since he was from Nevada where it didn’t get cold, as he had told me.

The little guy had made me smile and I started making a point to go in and talk with him each time I was at his station. He was a genuinely nice man and tried hard to be accepted as an American. One night he even invited me to sit in on a game of cards he and some friends were playing in the back room. It was a surprisingly fun and interesting experience. They were smoking hookah and drinking Japanese sake chased by cheap Canadian beer. I had the mother of all hangovers the next day.

"And if they were real Jihadies?" Blake asked him suspiciously. He had never met Timmy before and seemed to be a little mistrusting of him, despite my assurances.

"Same thing you do with any real goddamn Mujahadeen," Timmy squinted and picked up a really nice Benelli shotgun off the counter, letting its weight fall into his outstretched hand with a slap. "Those real muj, they are crazy bad mother fuckers. I'll tell you right now, if you hear anyone even start to say ‘Allah Ackbar,’ you shoot them in the fucking head man!" He tapped his finger on his own forehead for emphasis.

"You seem to know quite a bit about extremists, where are you from anyway?” Blake asked him, which made Timmy get a look on his face like he had just smelled something bad.

"Chill out man," I backhanded Blake's chest lightly with my hand and walked up to the counter to check out the hardware. "These yours or theirs?" I looked over the two AKs, one full size UZI, a long slide Glock pistol and a really nice looking HK UMP. There was also a pile of assorted magazines and boxes of ammo at the other end of the counter by the Lotto machine.

"They're all mine now. They had the shit guns, the nice stuff I bought," he said pointing to the AKs and Uzi as the lesser guns and proudly spanning his hands over the expensive ones as his own.

"Impressive," Clint said looking over the scoped Tikka bolt action rifle Timmy had slung on his back.

"Timmy, how'd you know these guys were just wananbees? When did this happen? Didn’t the cops come out here yet?" I asked him.

"Yeah and what's going on in town?" Blake added his question to the mix.

"You haven’t heard? Police are all gone. I talked to Mr. Grimes last week. He was headed into the city in his cruiser to move his family out. He said all our cops had taken their stuff from the station and left. So now everyone here, they are doing... what do you call it... a parade or some shit. It started over by the school. Now everyone is just smashing windows and stealing stuff."

A parade... a march... a demonstration. The riots had finally reached us in our little out of the way town. I guess it wasn’t little enough.

"And these guys?" I prompted, pointing at the dark spot of the tarp in the snow.

"These assholes came here last night trying to recruit me," he continued. "Do you believe that shit? Why me?" Timmy asked with a straight face, the straight brown face of a foreigner who had only been in this country for a short while. Neither Clint, Danielle or Blake were sure if he was serious or joking and I was loving it.

"I don’t think there are any more of them around but you look out for these guys my friend. They are amateurs but dangerous as hell," he turned to me very seriously.

"How do you know that, that they're amateurs I mean?" Clint asked him.

"The hard core guys, they don't need me. They're out there in real places plotting and kidnapping. These guys came trying to get my help and then tried to shoot me when I told them to screw off."

"You did that with only a sniper rifle?" Blake asked, still not doing well at hiding his mistrust, but also seeming genuinely curious.

"Not only. They didn’t have a chance when we realized they wanted to make problems," Timmy grinned and swiveled a short barreled FN P90 around that was slung at his back, hidden underneath his snow bibs.

"We?"

"My brother Daniel and my cousin Mikhail, they are in those cars in the ditch over there," he pointed.

"Damn. Nice work," I raised an eyebrow only to be followed by Danielle's first words during the conversation.

"
Your
cousin is named Mikhail?"

"Yes, he is Russian but he doesn’t like to talk about it," Timmy nodded very seriously.

"Hey listen, you guys might want to think about getting out of here while the gettin's good," I suggested to him.

"What, and leave all this?" Timmy joked back.

"I'm serious man. If things keep getting any worse, being the only not-white guy in these parts could get pretty crappy," I leveled with him, remembering my confrontation with Jacinto and the elitist, racist lady at the train station.

"Things are already crappy my friend, but I am afraid that you are right. We have our
Lincoln gassed up in the service shop, I don’t like this snow anyway."

I looked out the shuttered window at the initial skiff of snow as he gestured and realized that it might be time for is to be on our way as well.

"You take care of yourself," I shook his hand.

"You too my friend. There are mean men out tonight, but I think you may be able to handle it," he said curiously darting his eyes at the others, then patting my armored chest knowingly.

"Is he a Muslim?" Danielle asked me as we drove down the dark street away from the gas station and taking a back way over towards the college.

"Naw, I think he's Indian or Mexican or something."

"What?" she recoiled at my perceived ignorance.

"Well hell how am I supposed to know? I never felt the need to ask and if you did ask him, he'd just say he's
Australia or something. He drives a Chevy, smokes Marlboro's, drinks Budweiser, and eats convenience store hot dogs. That’s all I need to know."

"So you trust him?"

"I have a hard time trusting anybody these days," I had to restrain myself from looking at Blake in the rear view mirror as he worked to peer his head around and see over an overgrown bush on the side of the road.

"This is perfect," Blake rubbed his hands together.

"Excuse me?"

"A riot... it’s the perfect distraction for us to slip in while the opportunists are busy looting. We get in, grab some gas, and get out."

While the
other
opportunists were busy looting... I had to remind myself why it was that we were out here and doing what we were planning on doing. He unfortunately wasn’t wrong, again, and I sighed, loudly.