The Storm: War's End, #1 Read online

  She had been losing weight and was listless and slept round the clock. They’d had to put baby Joseph on formula because Amy just didn’t have enough milk to sustain him. The doctor gave her a battery of tests, looked grim, and sent her to a specialist in Nashville. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She had died less than three months later. It had been just Fenton and the children ever since.

  He stopped polishing the shotgun and looked over at Chris, met his eyes, searched them for deceit. He thought about how happy Carrie had looked in the last few weeks and how gentle Chris was with Joseph.

  Even Liza seemed to appreciate his company, especially when she had discovered that they shared a love for science fiction. Chris had done a lot of reading those first two weeks while his ankle healed. There was no denying it; the boy was a good fit for their family.

  Young love. I wonder if it will actually take. He thought about Molly, who had passed away over thirty years ago now. They’d met at a square dance when she was fifteen and he was eighteen going on nineteen.

  Her daddy had been a doctor and her mama a nurse in the war. They wanted something more for their daughter than a life as a farmer’s wife. But as the years had passed they had seen how much the two were in love. Fenton had ended up being drafted and sent off to Vietnam as a medic. Thousands of miles from home he had watched men bleed out, spending the last moments of their lives in alien jungles, so far from their homes. So many lives lost, so many dreams dead with them, before he had returned home to his grandparent’s farm, safe. After three years of courting, he had asked Molly’s daddy for his blessing and the man had given it. They had married, built this enormous house after his grandparents died, and began practicing at making babies. Oh, how they had practiced! Both of them were only children and they wanted a big family. They dreamed of a passel of kids to fill the house’s five large bedrooms and tumble through the gardens.

  Fenton looked out over the land. It had been in his family for more than a century. And for the last five years he had wondered who would take it on next. Joseph? Carrie? Liza? Who would stay and work this land? The dreams he and Molly had had of a passel of little Perdues died the day of Isaac’s birth. The birthing had been hard and the doctors said if they hadn’t of taken everything out she would’ve bled to death. So they loved their son and loved each other for the rest of their time together. That time hadn’t been nearly as long as Fenton would have liked. Molly had gotten breast cancer during Isaac’s freshman year in high school and passed away less than a year later.

  He looked again at Chris and realized the boy had been sitting there patiently, waiting for an answer. “Yes son, you can court my granddaughter. And heal up quick, ‘cause I think the southwest corner of the house roof is needin’ some repairs.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Gramps.”

  “Sir?”

  “Y’ can call me Gramps. Everyone else does.”

  “Right...Gramps.”

  Fenton closed his eyes and listened as Chris got up slowly and limped inside the house. He heard the boy whisper to Carrie. She let out a happy squeal and gave him a loud kiss. Fenton smiled sadly. I miss you, Molly.

  Coop’s End

  “A damn smart man that I cain’t ‘member the name of right now said, ‘There comes a time when you have to make a decision. Y’either lie down and get busy dying, or y’haul yer ass up and gits to fightin’.” – Arno Cooper

  It had been a week and still the pup moped, barely touched her food and refused to play with her brother. At present, she was lying near Coop’s feet staring at the bend in the road where she had seen the girls disappear from sight. Her brother was pulling on her ear with his sharp teeth and trying like hell to get her to play – but the girl pup wouldn’t budge.

  Coop saw the writing on the wall. The pup had given her heart to that Jessie, and there wasn’t anything to be done about it except send her on her way. He smiled as he thought of it. This one was worth a lot. She had the right instincts to be one of the best hunting dogs he had ever bred. Lord knows he had been breeding them long enough to know. She was young, but damned smart.

  Annie, the pups’ dam, was the only one of Coop’s dogs to survive when the troops blew through town. She had been out with Coop, checking lines and rooting out pheasants. Annie and the old man had returned to chaos – the rest of the dogs dead, Tiffany missing, the trailer a jumbled mess and their entire stash of canned food gone. Except the beets, seems no one wanted the beets. Damn fools. Coop smiled at the thought, he liked beets.

  A couple of months later Annie disappeared for a few days. Several weeks after she returned it became obvious she was knocked up. Coop chuckled at the irony that for all his careful breeding, Annie had apparently found just the right mix of wild seed. All three of the pups she had borne in this litter were exceptional. One boy pup had been snatched up by the Walkers and Faen Brooks was coming for the last boy pup today.

  Coop reached down and petted the little girl’s ears. “I shoulda sent y’with her when they left.” The pup whined sadly. “Hands down, girl, you’re the best I got.” The pup did not respond, just continued to stare down the road.

  His rough hands slowly undid the collar from the pup’s neck. Dozens of pups had worn this old leather collar, but none of them had been quite like this one. It seemed fitting somehow, considering what he was planning on doing. The pup looked up at him, tail slowly thumping. “Go on with yeh,” he pointed towards the road, “You got a long road ahead of you if you’re gonna catch up with ‘em. So’s you best get started.” Annie gave her daughter one sharp bark of encouragement.

  For the first time in over a week, the girl pup looked excited and alive. She looked up at Coop and back at her dam, then turned and ran towards the road. She stopped for a moment, stared back at the trailer and its inhabitants, wagged her tail, put her nose to the ground and then disappeared round the bend and on into the trees.

  About an hour later, Faen Brooks showed up. He was a small man, with dark hair, pale blue eyes and sunburnt skin. He was Coop’s cousin three times removed. Around these parts, if your family stayed around for long, and most did, eventually everyone was related to everyone else.

  “Hey Coop, whatcha know?” The old man just grunted and pointed to Annie. She was lying on the ground a few yards away, not so patiently enduring her son’s industrious attempts to get her to play. The boy pup tugged on one of her ears which earned him a short growl and quick snapping of teeth to show her displeasure.

  “I need a full pack of jerky, any dried fruit you got,” Coop replied, staring at his prize hounds, “and every box of ammo you can spare.”

  Faen looked pissed, “Now look here Coop, y’know we ain’t got much, that’s askin’ an awful damn lot for one little pup that ain’t even proven himself.”

  The old man didn’t even look up. “That’s for everythin’, not just the pup.”

  “What the hell you talkin’ bout, old timer, what everything?”

  Coop looked over at the younger man, “The dogs, both of ‘em. The trailer, the land, most of my traps, and whatever else you want.”

  The silence stretched on as Faen tried to stare Coop down.

  One minute...

  Two minutes...

  Three...

  He finally broke, “Godamnit Coop, no. This won’t bring her back. Scott is still out there. What’s he gonna do when he comes back from the Army? Find y’all gone with no one left?” Faen shook his head, “Think about how he’d feel, old man, with his whole family gone. He’d...”

  The old man interrupted, “Scott didn’t join the Army,” he looked down at the ground, “That boy ain’t got a home to come back to after what he done.”

  The younger man gaped at Coop in shock. No matter how bad Scott had acted up in years past, the old man had always shown him a patience and understanding that belied the crusty old-timer image that Coop had cultivated so well over the years.

  Coop continued, “He joined ‘em, the West
ern Front, he joined ‘em willingly, and he was one of the bastards that tried to,” his voice broke, “tried to...Tiffany was his sister, his own blood!” He sat for a moment, body shaking.

  “I thought I could set it to rest, but I can’t. I’m going to that camp, and I’m gonna finish him, and as many more as I can. That’s just the way it is, Faen, so’s you take Annie and that pup and you take good care of ‘em, y’hear?”

  Faen just stood there in shock, unable to form words; finally he nodded, reached out a hand and grasped the old man’s shoulder. “I’ll take the dogs now, come back with a full pack for ya. Y’leaving first thing in the mornin’?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll bring it by at first light.”

  Faen’s wife, Connie, went ballistic when she heard about Coop’s plans the next day at breakfast. Faen had gone out at first light with a full pack of food and three boxes of shells that they really couldn’t spare.

  He given it all to Coop and watched the old man take U.S. 13, turn a bend and disappear from sight. Annie had gone crazy, pulling at the lead and trying like hell to break free. Faen calmed her down as best he could, she was a fine hound, but her heart belonged to Coop.

  As he fought to keep the dog in line, his thoughts turned to his kids. Mick was turning twelve soon, Emmy was just six years old. Faen’s stomach clenched at the thought of what this war could do to them in the years to come and wished the old man well.

  He didn’t tell her the truth about Coop’s boy. That was something he just couldn’t fathom. How could that boy join the Western Front? He’d always seemed a bit cold. The girls thought he was devilishly handsome, and Faen had to agree on the devilish part of it. Still, the idea that he had joined the Western Front – it was like suggesting you join the Union when you lived in the South, or like joining Al Qaeda after losing your family in the Twin Tower bombing. It was crazy!

  Some part of him feared that if he said it aloud it would make it real. He may never have liked the boy, but damn, he wouldn’t have expected this out of him. Besides, Connie had babysat Scott when she was a teenager and she’d always had a soft spot for the kid.

  Faen just sat and stared at his scrambled eggs and let Connie rant about the stupidity of old men. When that didn’t work, she pleaded with Faen to get on the road, catch up to Coop, and talk some sense into the old man, but her husband was unmoved. “He’s got a right, Connie, he’s gotta do this and I expect he’ll be back. ‘Member, he was some badass in ‘Nam. I hear tell he had something like a hundred and fifty eight kills. Shit, but that old man was legend back in the day.”

  Swearing earned him a small, annoyed smack on the back of his head from his wife. Only five foot tall, Connie was a spitfire and she didn’t like swearing. God help Mick and Emmy if they let loose anything they had picked up in the schoolyard. She had thrashed Mick but good after he had uttered “Jesus Christ” within earshot. Connie was a deeply religious woman, and she did not cotton to profanity of any kind.

  Faen knew the chances of the old man coming back weren’t good, not at all, but if it calmed down Connie, well, she’d come around to an understanding of it later. That night she was so angry at Faen she made him sleep on the couch. Despite the fact that he could feel every spring and every lump in the aged thing, he slept well, feeling safe, well away from his angry, little wife.

  By nightfall on the first day, Coop made it almost seven miles before he stopped and pitched a tent. By his reckoning, it would take two, maybe three days of hard walking before he reached the camp. In the end, it took him nearly a week and a half. He twisted his ankle crossing a river, two of the bridges had been torn out and his arthritis slowed him down considerably.

  The last night of Coop’s life found him camped without a fire. He didn’t even set up the tent. He was so close that could hear men calling to each other in the enemy camp as he oiled hinges and sharpened the teeth of his snares and traps, all of them.

  Coop’s traps, snares and guns killed and maimed a lot of men early that morning. He had been a sniper in Vietnam, brought in on the tail end of the Tet Offensive. He had lost his cherry (in more ways than one) near Khe Sanh. Arno Cooper had been one of the best snipers the Army had ever had.

  But time catches up to us all. Thirty-four minutes after the first shot had been fired; twenty-eight men lay dead. One of those twenty-eight was a good and honest man.

  Captain Scott Cooper, stood over Old Coop’s lifeless body, the Glock 40’s barrel still smoking. There was not a trace of emotion in his handsome face, no recognition or acknowledgment of the man he had once called “Pops,” in his pale blue eyes.

  He ran a hand through his coal-black hair, removed a stray leaf and walked away from the old man’s body without a backward glance.

  Rise to Power

  “War is the perfect excuse for all of my most beautiful dreams to finally come true. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.” – Scott Cooper

  When the two girls had escaped into the storm he had heard talk there was others connected to them. He asked the right questions, got a hold of one who hadn’t managed to run fast enough, and got to use his favorite knife.

  In the end that sniveling little deserter had told him little he didn’t already know and begged for death. Five men had tried to desert the same night as the girls escaped under the cover of a violent thunderstorm, three were shot, the fourth, one Allen Banks, had made it almost to Highway 60 before they caught up with him and hamstrung him. The fifth had run southeast, towards Tennessee, and gotten away. That one was the blond girl’s brother.

  Scott seethed as he walked past the bodies of the men his father had killed and kicked one furiously. He was still pissed all these months later that he hadn’t found the deserter or the two little whores right away. He had lost valuable time; there was no word from Easter or Burton, the two fools he had sent south after the brother. He had just sent another pair of men in search of the two whores after the last pair disappeared or deserted. He spat a fine stream of tobacco juice on the ground and walked back to his nice tent. It was the largest, and it had an actual honest-to-God bed in it. Right about now one of the new whores would be waiting there for him.

  He liked breaking the new ones in; they were more interesting when they fought. He likened it to breaking a horse – you had to break their spirit, break them to the point that the stupid whores knew you were the one with the power.

  The camp had just blown through another podunk town and picked up some new girls to replace those fool enough not to root out the bastards growing in them. He didn’t waste time – when he heard of any whores who started showing he didn’t even bother wasting a bullet, the knife worked just as well and it felt better.

  The other men kept their distance now. They followed his orders and kept their mouths shut. No more Captain Kipling to give them orders, no more arguments about whether or not Tent 5 was ‘within guidelines’ – Cooper had used that favorite knife of his and taken care of the CO nearly two months ago. That damn politically correct little twit would not be rattling on about human rights anymore.

  Kipling had been field-promoted after Granger had been taken out in a skirmish near Bolivar. Scott shook his head at the loss. Granger had been a mean S.O.B. who didn’t give a crap about the Geneva Convention or what any other fool political monkeys thought.

  He had set up Tent 5, coordinated the sorting of prisoners, and arranged for the range disposal of the old and weak. Under Granger’s command this rattletrap group of fighters, once saddled with some stupid official military designation Cooper couldn’t even remember now, had become a terrifying future for any unfortunate towns that lay in its path. Few survived the onslaught, and those that did were either conscripted or put to use in other ways.

  Those too old or young to fight, work or whore were ended quickly and efficiently. No need to let survivors loose to warn others of troop movements or to get some stupid ideas to fight back later.

  Granger had been a great man and Coop
er had been his apt pupil. Then he had to up and die and that fool Kipling had taken over. Nearly shut things down around here. He was old school; he’d been with the regiment from when it still was a regiment and still in contact with the Western Front.

  The long silence from HQ had rankled at Kipling, he’d complained to Granger that they needed to follow commands and find out what the hell had happened. But since the entire cell phone array had been destroyed, along with most of the power stations and other networks, they were back to the frigging Dark Ages. “We might as well be fighting in the Civil fucking War.” Cooper had listened to the two go at it and wondered why Granger didn’t just shoot the uppity little twerp.

  The night Kipling ordered Cooper into his tent to tell him how things were going to change now that Granger was dead and that orders would be coming soon to stand down...that was when Cooper had had enough. He waited until the camp was quiet and then he put to use some of those skills his dad had so foolishly taught him. He snuck in and cut Captain Kipling’s throat ear to ear. There hadn’t been any voices saying “nay” when he told the men the next day that Kipling had put him in charge. He’d sent two men on the southern routes that night, and two on the road towards Belton, those runaway whores’ hometown. “No one deserts and no whores get to leave,” he said, surveying the mass of faces he had called to the camp meeting. “You leave here and it better damn well be in a body bag.”

  The following weeks would see several tests of that edict – in the end, no one survived stepping away from camp, unless they were under orders to go.

  He was almost to his tent and he pulled on his belt, unbuckling it in anticipation. Inside of the dark tent he removed his ammo belt, placing it well within range. Most of his men were idiots just begging to be told what to do and where to march. The fact that he kept them fed, clothed, and well-laid did wonders, but he was no fool. There were some who still thought they were in the Army, and he knew that the way he had taken the reins of power in this crappy little corner of the world could be the same way they got rid of him. He was taking no chances. He kept a knife close by as well.