Rise From The Ashes: The Rebirth of San Antonio (Countdown to Armageddon Book 3) (14 page)

     “Look. They’re leaving. Do you think they’ve given up?”

     Tom scratched his head.

     “I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe they’re just a scout team and they’re going back for reinforcements.”

     “Honey, I don’t see any rifles. I don’t think they’re armed.”

     Linda was right. Tony and Kevin
had left their rifles in sheaths on their horses. They weren’t expecting to be challenged in the darkness, and didn’t see the need in carrying rifles when all they were doing at this point was looking around. They both had handguns and thought they would be sufficient.

     Unfortunatel
y, the holsters the men wore were not picked up by the night vision camera.

     “Well, armed or not, they’ve broken onto private property. If they come back, it’ll be the last mistake they’ll ever make.”

     Joyce went to the kitchen and poured coffee for herself and for Linda. Neither expected to sleep much on this particular night in light of the circumstances. Tom, Jordan and Zachary stayed at the security console, monitoring the situation.

     All five of them hoped that
this situation was over. That the two men had simply given up when faced with the ten foot high wall they couldn’t climb over and couldn’t see through.

     Tom would go out at first light and examine the tree line to determine how they’d made it through the toppled mesquite trees, and would reseal the break so it wouldn’t happen again.

     Then, once again, Tony and Kevin came into the camera’s view.

     This time, they appeared to be carrying something. It was the old six foot folding ladder that had been leaning against the back wall of Tom’s ranch house. The one he’d used to clean out the rain gutters the day before the EMP hit and the power had gone out.

     “Dammit!” he muttered under his breath.

    
Jordan called out once again to the women, who were sitting at the dining room table conferring.

     “Mom! Joyce! They’re back.”

     Tom grabbed an AR-15 from its nest at the side of the console and headed for the stairs. He knew that he’d have a great view of the north wall from Jordan’s bedroom window.

     Linda called behind him, “Tom, what are you going to do?”

     “I’m going to put a bullet through the first head that peeks over that wall. Then I’ll take a bead on the tree line in the distance. When the second one breaks free from the cover of the wall and is in the open, I’ll take him out too.”

     Linda followed hi
m up the stairs.

     “Tom, you can’t. They don’t appear to be armed. Maybe they’re just people out scavenging for food or water. Maybe they mean us no harm.”

     “Scavengers don’t break into the property of others. They had to have intentionally broken through the tree line in order to get this far. They couldn’t have just wandered onto the property by accident.

     “And the fact that they’ve stolen my ladder to come back for a second look also proves they’re up to no good.  If they were just looking for food, they wouldn’t steal a ladder to do so.”

     “Well, then, what do you suppose they’re doing?”

     “I think they’re checking out what’s in the compound to see if we have anything worth stealing. And when they see that we do, I think they’ll come back in force, with others, and try to take it.”

     The two were at Jordan’s bedroom window now, the bedroom light off. All of the upstairs lights were off, to prevent the room lights from slipping through the windows and serving as a beacon to those looking from nearby hilltops. It was a precaution they’d always taken.

     Linda moved aside the curtains and she and Tom looked down into the compound below.

     They could hear Jordan’s update over the radio.

     “They’re nearing the wall now, about fifty yards or so from the northeast corner.”

     Joyce cut in.

     “Tom, they don’t appear to be armed. If you shoot them down, that’s tantamount to murder. Let’s just wait and see what they do.”

     Even Tom was conflicted. He knew in his heart that he couldn’t let these men get away to tell others what they saw. But what if the women were right? What if they were just two hungry men who meant no one harm and were just desperately searching for food?

     Then he saw something that concerned him even more.

     “Honey, did you leave the porch light on to the Butler building?”

     “Yes. I knew it would be dark when we went back to go to bed. Why?”

     “Because the men will see that we’ve not only got livestock and crops, but power as well. They’ll have even more reason to want to break in and take everything over.”

     Linda immediately got on the radio.

     “Hannah, are you still in the basement?”

     “Yes. Go ahead, Linda.”

     “Hannah, can you cut the power at the main breaker box?”

     Tom followed.

     “No. Hannah, don’t. If you cut power, we lose video also. We need to know what those two are doing.”

     Hannah went to the panel and waited there, unsure what to do.

     Jordan provided another update.

     “Okay, they’re at the wall now. They’re setting up the folding ladder. Now one of them is climbing up the ladder. The other appears to be holding the ladder to make it steady.”

     Tom had the window open now, the front hand guard of the AR-15 resting in the palm of his left hand as his hand rested on the window sill. He scanned the top of the fence, and drew a bead on Tony’s head as soon as it came into view.

     Linda was beside herself.

     She got on the radio.

     “Jordan, Joyce… do you see any indication at all that those men are armed?”

     “Negative. They’re definitely not carrying rifles or shotguns. Can’t tell if they have handguns or not. The images are too grainy. Tell Tom that they may be innocent people.”

     Tom restrained himself. At least for the time being.

-25
-

     Outside the fence, Tony said, “Holy shit. You’re not gonna believe this.”

     Between the full moon and the starlight on this crystal clear night, Tony was able to make out images of cattle grazing on the far end of the compound. A bit closer, he saw what appeared to be pigs rooting around in the mud of their pen.

     And the porch light on the front of the Butler building where Tom and Linda lived illuminated the vegetable garden quite nicely.

     “They’ve got beef, and I think pigs too. And a big freakin’ garden. And power! Holy shit, they’ve got power!”

     Tony took it all in with the wild-eyed gaze of a kid at Christmas time. Then he climbed back down the ladder so his friend and accomplice could get a look as well.

     But Tony and Kevin weren’t the only ones watching. Kevin never knew that Tom had his sights on the center of Kevin’s
forehead, his finger hard on the trigger, and ready to fire. Kevin never knew that his brain was half a second from getting blown out the back of his head. And Tony never knew how close he was to being knocked to the ground by Kevin’s lifeless, falling body.

     They never knew because Tom never pulled the trigger. Standing to his left was Linda, telling him he might be making a dreadful mistake. To his right, on his h
ip, was his two way radio. Joyce’s voice was pleading with him, saying, “Tom, you’re not a murderer. You can’t just shoot down unarmed men for peeking over a fence.”

     So Tom caved. It went against everything he’d ever stood for. He was an old school Texan. He
took no crap from anyone. And he defended what was his, be it liberty or property.

     But not this time. This time he backed down. He hoped that none of
them lived to regret it.

     Kevin scampered back down the ladder and the two men huddled at the base of the tall black wall. They were out of Tom’s view now, but still in full view on Monitor 8.

     Tom got on the radio and said, “Okay. I’ve held my fire for now. But if they come over the fence, they’ve elevated it to a new level, and I’m taking them out. Hate me if you want, but that’s the way it is.”

     He’d drawn a line in the sand. A line that Tony or Kevin would never be able to consider. They’d never even know it existed, yet their lives depended on their making the right choice. Either to proceed farther or to withdraw.

     If they proceeded, Tom would wait until both of them were in the compound and then shoot them down like dogs. He wouldn’t risk one of them getting away and gathering reinforcements. He’d shoot them down and bury their bodies and feel no grief.

     It was the way of old
Texas. Defend one’s property as you’d defend one’s honor: without hesitation or quarter.

     They never realized it, and in fact
never even realized they’d had an option, but Tony and Kevin made the right choice. They took the ladder down and laid it on the ground beside them.

     Then, in whispered tones, they discussed their next move.

     Kevin said, “We’re probably gonna need a couple more guys before we go in.”

     “My guess is we’ll need more than a couple. To run an operation this size, they’ve probably got a dozen men, maybe more.”

     “Yeah, maybe. But let’s be careful not to bring too many. The more we bring, the more we’ll have to share. And it looks like they’ve only got the one house. I plan to move in there, and I don’t want to be sharing it with a dozen other men.”

     “Do you think there’s some women in there?”

     “I sure hope so. And I hope they’re friendly, too.”

     Kevin laughed.

     “Since when is that a requirement? I kinda like it when they put up a fight and I get to slap them around a little. Bloody them up a little bit and they’ll do exactly what you tell them to do.”

     Tony smiled.

     “Yeah. And after we’re done with them they can cook us up some great big juicy steaks.”

     “We have to be careful who we let in on this. If the word gets out we have beef, and fresh food, it won’t last long. We have to make sure whoever gets involved in this can keep their
freakin’ mouths shut.

     “
We don’t want to go through the trouble of taking this place just to let it slip through our fingers.”

     “How about this… instead of bringing a whole crew, we just bring two or
three more guys? We can hit ‘em until things get hot, then back out again. Come back the next night and then maybe the night after that. They’re not gonna go anywhere. We’ll use their own damn roadblock against them. If they try to leave for reinforcements we’ll stop them at the roadblock and blow them away.”

     “I like it. We can take them out a few at a time, until there’s nobody left but the women. Then we can give them the choice. They either play nice and live under our rules. Or they can die like the others.”

     As they watched the monitor and saw Tony and Kevin retreating with the ladder, Joyce and Jordan breathed a sigh of relief.

     So did Linda, after
Jordan updated her and Tom on the two-way radio.

     But Tom wasn’t so sure.

     “I’m afraid this isn’t over.”

     “Why do you say that? They’re leaving.”

     “Yes. They’re leaving for now. But now they know what we have. And you can damn sure bet they want it.”

     He looked at her intently.

     “And you can also bet they’ll be back to get it. And there will be more than two of them.”

-26-

     After he rode with John for three weeks and learned the ropes, Scott had been given his own squad car and a new partner of sorts.

     The SAPD had long before recognized that many of its calls after the blackout would be for medical emergencies. After all, only three ambulances were operational now for a city that encompassed
four hundred square miles.

     In addition, the SAPD was way understaffed. It had made sense to combine the two functions – the policemen and the paramedics, so they could work together to help each other out.

     At least it worked well in theory. Over time, the SAPD became discouraged that some of the paramedics were unwilling to get their hands dirty and help with things like body collection and burning.

     The fire chief, on the other hand, was constantly complaining about police officers who were too timid to be of much use in emergency medical situations. Although trained in the basics of lifesaving techniques, many of the officers simply panicked and froze in place, leaving the paramedics to do everything themselves.

     Still, it was the best option they had to deal with in an extremely difficult situation, so they tried their best to make it work.

     Scott wasn’t an officer who panicked easily. He had no qualms about giving an old man
mouth to mouth resuscitation when there was a chance of saving his life. And he wasn’t so squeamish that it bothered him to get another human’s blood all over him while he worked to stop a badly bleeding bullet wound.

     He was a team player, above
all, and was willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.

     Scott’s biggest problem was that his partner, Randy Rhodes, lacked a similar gung-ho attitude.

     Laid back to an almost impossible degree, Randy’s philosophy in life was that most things will take care of themselves when left alone.

     When Scott did his house to house searches looking for decaying bodies to drag out to the street and burn, Randy typically sat in the patrol car, leaned back, and took a nap.

     “Just leave them where they are. Mother Nature has been taking care of corpses for millions of years. They’ll eventually get picked clean by the insects, or they’ll rot away to bones. And even the bones will turn to dust in time. All you’re doing by gathering them up and burning them is speeding up a process that Mother Nature already has a handle on.”

     “Randy, we have a civic duty to clean up the city as best we can so it can get back to normal again.”

     “Hey, that’s an SAPD policy that has you guys gathering bodies between calls. I don’t work for the SAPD. I work for the fire department. And we have no such policy. So if you want to fulfill that particular ‘civic duty,’ I admire you for it. But I want no part of it. I’ll save my energy for saving lives.”

     “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, Randy. You can do both, you know.”

     “I suppose. But ‘can’ represents an option, not a directive. And I simply choose not to. Sorry. I’ll sit in the car and monitor the radio for our next call. Listen for the horn while you’re dragging your bodies. I’ll blow it three times when we have somewhere to go.”

     Scott was quickly learning to despise Randy, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. He’d learned when talking with other firefighters and paramedics that Randy had always been that way, even before the blackout. In an organization of heroes, he’d somehow slipped through the cracks. Had made it through paramedic school and his subsequent fire department training without anyone discovering his tendency to be incredibly lazy.

     “So how come I have to partner up with Randy?” Scott once complained to John and Robbie as they sat in their kitchen eating Ramen noodles and red beans.

     John laughed and looked at Robbie
.

     “You wanna tell him, or should I?”

     “Go ahead.”

     “You see, Scott, a police department is a brotherhood. I know you’re learning that now. It’s a profession that relies heavily on trust. You have to know that your brothers have your back. That they’ll be there for you when things turn ugly.

     “And as part of that process, of becoming brothers in blue, we have traditions that go back for centuries. Probably as far back as that first caveman who picked up a stick and went to punish the scoundrel who was stealing from his neighbors.”

     Scott rolled his eyes. This was becoming tedious, and he almost regretted asking the question.

     John didn’t care. He was having fun at Scott’s expense, and droned on.

     “One of the biggest traditions, and this is true of every police force everywhere, is that rookies get dealt a crummy hand. Rooks are the poor saps who have to keep the chief’s car sparkling clean, and who get the details and shifts that nobody else wants.

     “A rook gets to do the paperwork after a long shift and a very complicated arrest, while his partner drinks coffee and talks sports with the other senior officers.

     “And, yes, like it or not, rooks have to partner with people like Randy Rhodes, so the real officers, the more experienced cops, don’t have to. It’s simple, really. It’s the way of the world.”

     “I see. You guys are the real cops, simply because you’ve been around longer.”

     John looked at Robbie and chuckled.

     “By Jove, my dear Watson, I think the old chap finally has it.”

     Then he turned back to Scott.

     “You see, my friend, rookies like yourself are barely cops. Shoot, some of you are barely human. Now don’t get me wrong. We like having you around. You come in handy for making coffee in the squad room and pumping gas at the gas station while I stretch my legs and hit the john.

     “But in the world of the police brotherhood, you’re still a cop with training wheels. A cop lite, as it were. If I were to reach behind your ears, my fingers would come back a bit damp.

     “So all that being said, why would my fellow experienced officer here, Robbie, or I, ride around with somebody like Randy Rhodes? When we have a bright-eyed young rook like yourself to do that for us? Why should we have the stress and grief of working with someone who’d rather sleep his way through his shift, when we can pawn that off on you?

     “No hard feelings, little buddy. It’s just a tradition among the brotherhood of blue. It’s not that we like doing it
, necessarily. I myself cringe just thinking about spending my days cooped up in a car with Randy Rhodes. And since you’re my friend, I hate to do that to you.

     “But traditions are traditions. They go back a long way, and they must continue. It’s the way of the blue. You do understand, don’t you?”

     Scott looked at John, and then at Robbie. Both were grinning like possums.

     “Okay, I get it. So when do I stop being a rookie, so I can dump Randy on someone else?”

     Robbie moved over to Scott and put his arm around Scott’s shoulders, in the manner of a father getting ready to pass bad news to his son.

     “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, buddy, but you don’t officially become a veteran until you complete your first year on the force. And you’ve already
said that you don’t want to be with us for that long.

     “So unfortunately, my friend, Randy Rhodes is yours to keep, as long as you’re here. We now pronounce you rookie and wife.”

     Scott said, “You guys can be real buttheads, you know that?”

     John and Robbie looked at each other, smiled broadly, and then said in unison, “Yep!” It was as though th
ey were proud to be buttheads.

     Then John changed to a more conciliatory tone.

     “There’s another tradition, Scott, that you should know about. Cops come under a lot of stress. It’s always been that way. And to relieve that stress, every good cop had little ways to cope. Sometimes they’re sneaky, and sometimes they’re funny. That’s why every police precinct is home to a lot of practical jokers and pranksters. It’s one of the ways we cope with stress and keep from going mad.

     “Sometimes, when you have a partner that you don’t particularly like, you find ways of getting under his skin. You do it in a subtle way, so you don’t piss him off too much. But you do it as a stress reliever for yourself, to help you get through your shift without strangling the guy.”

     It was Scott’s turn to grin.

     “I like it. Tell me how.”

     “Nope, sorry, can’t do that. It’s another tradition. You have to figure it out on your own. But you’re a bright guy, so I’ve got faith in you.”

     John saw a tinge of disappointment on Scott’s face a
nd took pity on him.

     “However, since you saved my life once upon a time
on a planet far, far away, I’ll give you a hint.”

     John got up and walked out of the room.

     Scott, confused, looked to Robbie for answers.

     Robbie merely held up his index finger to indicate
that Scott should be patient, and that John would return in a moment.

     And John did. He’d retrieved a bottle of blue Aqua Velva after shave from the master bathroom.

     “Here. Start wearing this to work every day. Not a lot. We don’t want you to smell like a French hooker. Rumor is that Randy Rhodes likes French hookers and you certainly don’t want to give him the wrong idea. Just wear a hint of this to work tomorrow and watch what happens.”

     Scott was puzzled. He looked over at Robbie, who vigorously nodded his head yes.

     They obviously knew something he didn’t.