The Blue Ridge Resistance (21 page)

Chapter 34: A Helping Heart

As Luke arrived at the Lewis home, he saw Linda sitting out front on the porch with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. She looked up as he drew close, exposing her distraught face. Luke dismounted and tied his horse to the porch railing, and asked, “How is Daryl?”

“He’s just sitting in the bedroom like a zombie. I can’t get him to leave and can’t get him to talk. I’m afraid to leave him here. I don’t know what he would do. I took his pistol, it’s lying right over there,” she said as she pointed to his model 1875 Remington that had become a part of Daryl’s persona. “I unloaded it. I have his bullets in my pocket. After what Jimmy did… I’m just afraid.”

Luke sat down next to her and put his arm around her. “How are you doing? Charlie told me everything that happened. That had to be hard to witness.”

“I’ll survive,” she said. “I’ll go to my grave with the image of what Jimmy did in my head, but I’ll survive. It’s Daryl I’m worried about. He used to be this large, burly man with a bulletproof outlook, now—it’s like he snapped. He’s just a shell of who he used to be. He seems empty inside.”

“I’ll go and check on him,” Luke said as he stood up and limped to the door.

“Thanks,” she replied softly, putting her face back into her hands as she began to cry.

Luke walked into the room slowly, making sure Daryl recognized him. He glanced at the macabre scene on the bed and looked away quickly. “How are you doing, Daryl?” he asked. Daryl just sat there silently staring at the bed. “I wish I could say everything will be alright, but nothing is alright anymore. We have our ups and our downs, and our downs are pretty damn low. But the one thing that has kept all of us going and alive is that we don’t ever intentionally let each other down. This community’s strength lies solely on that. We will never be able to stop bad things from happening, but when they happen, we all need to continue to band together all the more tightly to pull everyone through it. This community not only needs you, it loves you. Everyone here looks up to you, and no one thinks any of this was your fault. You’re the glue that binds us together. We just want you to know that.”

“Thank you,” Daryl said, breaking his silence.

“Why don’t you come back to Mildred’s farm with me,” Luke said as he walked over to Daryl. “We can trade places for a few days. I’ll deal with this and make the rounds. You can help out on the farm. Mildred really needs a strong man around there this time of year, and with the others gone, you’d be a big help. I’ll make rounds through your place every day to care for your animals too.”

“I need that. Thanks,” replied Daryl. “How are the others? Did Charlie say anything about Ed, Jason, and Nate?”

“He said they are fine. He’s got more stuff to tell us later, but nothing that needs our attention right now with this going on. You’ll be able to get a radio update from him at the Thomas farm.”

“Where’s Linda?”

“She’s out front. She’s really worried about you. After seeing what happened with Jimmy, she is afraid of what might happen next,” Luke explained.

Daryl stood up and closed his eyes for a moment as if he was saying a silent prayer, and then said, “I had better go talk to her.”

“She really does need that,” Luke replied.

Daryl walked out of the house, stepped out onto the porch, and sat down next to Linda. She turned to look, thinking it was Luke. Realizing it was him, she gave him a big hug, and the two just held each other for a while. “I’m sorry,” Daryl said.

“For what?”

“For how I’ve been acting,” he said. “I think I had done a pretty good job of not letting anything in this jacked up world get to me all of this time. I put things away and played it like it was a big game. When that happened to Beth, the reality and the suppressed feelings hit me like a ton of bricks.” He kept his arm around Linda while she gathered her composure and then said, “Thank you for taking my gun. I honestly don’t know what I would have done in the moment, given any easy options. The horror and heartbreak of it all…”

“I know,” she said. “I know. Jimmy had his reasons, only God knows the hell that was going through his mind in that moment, but those of us that are still here need to stick it out for each other. Maybe someday this screwed up world will straighten itself out. I mean, I’m sure it will. If you look at history, upheaval and strife are the norm. Peace and stability are the exception. We’re just in one of those times—but to us and everyone in recent history, it seems apocalyptic. We’ll get through it, though, if we stick together.”

She then patted him on the leg and said, “Can you escort me home? I need to get away for a bit. I don’t want to walk back into this house right now.”

“Yes, ma’am, absolutely,” he said, standing and then helping her to her feet.

Luke joined them on the porch and said, “I’m gonna try and get in touch with a few of the others. Robert Brooks, Lloyd Smith, to name a few. We will get this taken care of. You two have seen and done enough. So, Daryl, do you want to come stay at the farm for a while?” he asked.

Daryl looked at Linda and then turned and said, “You know, I think I’ll be just fine. I’ve gotta catch up on a few things around my place anyway, and I would prefer to be able to check in on Linda from time to time. I’ll be okay.”

Chapter 35: Farmageddon

As the day drew on, it was quiet in the barn. They watched through the gaps in the wood as the occupying soldiers searched the surrounding woods for signs of the attacking militiamen to no avail. There were no more interactions between the prisoners and the soldiers either, which was a welcomed silence. As the evening approached, the sun began slipping off behind the trees, yet again. “Damn, I’m hungry,” Jason said as his stomach pains began to grow increasingly noticeable and he began feeling shaky.

“I wouldn’t eat their food right now, anyway,” Quentin replied. “They’d have probably pissed in it after today.”

“Let’s just hope we won’t need to worry about them being the hand that feeds us for much longer,” replied Evan.

Quentin walked over to the other two men on the far said of the barn, reached out his hand, and said, “Let’s start over. If we stand a chance of dying alongside one another, I think it’s only appropriate that we know each other’s names. I’m Quentin.”

The man Quentin had the altercation with earlier reluctantly reached out his hand and said. “My name is Dustin, and I’m sorry about before.”

“Don’t sweat it. This isn’t a place where every man is at his best. Just do what’s right from this point forward, no matter what the circumstances, and you’ll never have to apologize again. I’m glad to meet you and I’m sorry about before too.”

The other man then shook Quentin’s hand, as well, and said, “My name is Kyle, sir.”

“Nice to meet you, Kyle,” Quentin said, returning the handshake.

Before Evan and Jason got a chance to make their introductions to the men, Jason looked around the room and said, “Guys, I hate to say this, but I think I’m gonna have to do the deed.”

“You’ve gotta crap?” Evan asked.

“Yep, I’ve been hoping to avoid this, but… that only works for so long. I’m up against a wall here.”

“Speaking of up against a wall, go find a spot on the far wall… way over there,” Evan replied with a familiar sarcastic attitude while pointing to the far side of the barn.

“At least they didn’t beat your so-called sense of humor out of you,” Jason said in rebuttal. “At least it’s getting dark. It won’t be as easy for you guys to stare that way.”

As Jason began doing the walk of shame to the other side of the barn, the crack of a distant gunshot carried through the air, followed by another about ten seconds later. The soldiers all took positions of cover as best they could while trying to ascertain the origin of the shots. A third shot then rang out, cutting the rope being used to suspend the bodies of the two murdered civilians, dropping them to the ground. A few seconds later, an RPG round came streaking out of the woods directly at the farmhouse. The RPG entered a downstairs window and exploded inside.

Using the RPG’s flight path as a tracer, the remaining machine guns inside the house opened fire on the woods, firing blindly in an attempt to hit or suppress their attackers.

Incoming small arms fire then began to focus on the barn from the right flank. “Hit the ground!” yelled Quentin as he and the others tried to avoid the friendly fire. They kept their heads down with their faces in the dirt as wood debris filled the air around them. Militiamen in the woods at the right flank of the barn were assaulting the soldiers guarding the barn in order to clear a path for the captives to escape.

Once the barrage of bullets hitting the barn subsided, Quentin crawled over to the front wall, peeking outside, and said, “Two down on this side.”

Jason then crawled to the back wall of the barn, getting a look at that side, and said, “One barely moving, but hit pretty bad. The other is down hard.”

“Let’s make our move!” shouted Quentin over the intense sounds of gunfire all around them. “We can’t go out the front. Let’s go through the back wall,” he said as he ran across the barn to the plank he had been loosening. He easily yanked on the board, freeing the few remaining nails holding it in place. They then used the opening to get a better hold on several of the surrounding planks and began ripping them lose, breaking them in half to increase the size of the hole.

Once there was a large enough opening, Quentin pulled the plank into the barn, laid it down flat, and fed it out onto the ground, over the glass, and towards the body of the nearest guard. He then scurried quickly out onto the plank using it as walkway to avoid the glass and metal shards with his bare feet, grabbed the guard by his load-bearing vest, and dragged him back into the barn.

Quentin removed the AK-74 that the man wore slung around his neck while Evan stripped him of his load-bearing vest, containing his spare ammunition.

“Who wears a size nine?” Jason called out while removing the man’s boots. “Too small for me.”

“Nope,” said Evan.

“Negative,” replied Quentin.

Dustin, who was cowering in the far corner, said, “I can wear a nine.”

Jason tossed the boots to Dustin and said, “Put these on; I’ve got a job for you.”

As the man frantically donned the boots, Jason said, “Now, Quentin there is gonna cover you with the AK. You slip out the hole and drag the other body in here so we can strip him, too, before we make a run for the trees. You got it?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dustin replied nervously.

As Quentin got into position to cover Dustin through a gap in the wood, Jason said, “Okay, go!”

Dustin slipped through the hole in the barn, started to go in the direction of the body, then turned and ran straight for the tree line.

“Damn that son of a bitch!” screamed Jason as Dustin abandoned them, wearing the only pair of boots.

“If he was a soldier, I would shoot his pansy ass in the back,” grunted Quentin.

Jason and Evan then quickly pulled the plank back inside and repositioned it to try and get close to the other soldier, but could not get to the steep angle needed from the opening to create a clear path all the way to him. Evan pulled the plank back inside, stood in the middle, and said, “Pick that end up to snap it in half.”

Kyle and Jason both pried up on the board, using Evan to hold down the center, until it snapped in two. Evan took both pieces of wood to the hole in the wall and said, “Cover me!” to Quentin, who kept watch out the front of the barn. Evan hurried out onto the plank, getting as close as he could to the soldier, carrying the second piece with him. He then tossed the second piece on the ground about two feet away, making the pathway long enough to reach the downed soldier.

Leaning as far as he could to reach the downed soldier’s belt, he lost his balance and stumbled, falling off the board, stepping onto the broken shards of glass and metal, cutting his feet in multiple places. “Damn it to hell!” he yelled, grabbing the man and dragging him back towards the barn, leaving a bloody trail of footprints on the plank behind him.

Before he could reach the safety of the barn, a barrage of small arms fire focused on him from one of the side windows in the farmhouse. Evan dove to the ground, landing mostly on the plank, and pulled the corpse of the dead soldier up to himself just as he felt the sickening
thump, thump, thump
sound as bullets impacted the dead man’s chest.

Another RPG round streaked from the trees from behind Evan and smashed into the side of the house from where the gunfire came, ending the assault on Evan’s position. Jason and Kyle took advantage of the lull in the fire from the RPG hit, to reach out onto the plank and drag Evan back inside, still hanging on to the dead soldier’s body.

Once inside, Jason screamed, “Evan, are you hit? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” he insisted. “I got cut up a little bit, but I’ll live.”

“Damn, man, your feet are cut up pretty bad,” Jason added looking at Evan’s wounds.

Quentin joined up with Jason, Kyle, and Evan in the rear corner of the barn to strip the soldier of his weapon, vest, and boots. “Boots are eleven,” Quentin said. “Evan, what size do you wear?”

“Ten and a half to eleven, but you take them. Those are your boys out there saving our asses.”

“No way, man, your feet are sliced up. We can’t carry you out of here so put the damn things on!” Quentin insisted. He then turned to the others and said, “Okay, we’ve got two rifles and ammo for each. It’s too dangerous to try and get outside in front of the barn in clear view of a majority of the enemies’ positions, so we are just gonna have to do with what we’ve got and leave the other two rifles behind. As Evan stood up, Quentin said, “Are your feet good to go with the boots on?”

“Oh, yeah, marathon ready,” Evan replied.

“Good. Jason and I will cover you while you piggyback Kyle to the edge of the glass. He can sprint for the woods from there.”

“Roger that,” Evan said as Kyle jumped up on his back. Evan squeezed out the now enlarged hole in the side of the barn, carried Kyle past the debris, and said, “Run, man, run!”

Kyle took off running for the tree line and never looked back.

Quentin and Jason provided cover with the rifles while Evan made his way back into the barn. “Who’s next?” he said. “Go, Jason, and give Evan the rifle when he puts you down.”

Evan and Jason made it to the edge of the clear grass, handed off the weapon, and Evan returned to the barn, covering Jason’s escape as he went. Once back at the barn, Evan joined up with Quentin and said, “How’s it looking?” as he looked through a gap in the planks towards the front of the house.

“It looks like a majority of the gunfire is still between the front of the house and the front tree line off in the distance. Those bastards better start bailing out of that house soon though. That bitch is on fire and that old wood is torching up fast. As much as I want to watch them burn or be gunned down while trying to escape, we need to get the hell out of here.”

Evan and Quentin ran back over to the rear corner of the barn where their escape hole was located, Quentin jumped on Evan’s back, and Evan ran like hell for the edge of the debris field. Once in the clear grass, Quentin jumped off and the two started a run for the tree, taking turns pausing to return fire to cover the other man.

Upon reaching the trees, several militiamen waved them in their direction. Evan and Quentin joined up with them to find Jason and Kyle already hunkered down with them, when one of the men said, “Q, thank God, man! We know about Wilkins, but where are Thomas and Scott?”

“Dead,” Quentin replied.

“Damn it,” the militiaman said in disgust. “Well, let’s get the hell out of here. Blue Team has the Hind tied up with a diversion, but I’m sure it’s figuring out the ruse by now.”

“I was wondering what was taking that bastard so long to get here to wipe us out.”