The Storm: War's End, #1 Page 22

  “Okay, okay. Chill out. We’re going, we’re going.” His good mood had vanished. What the fuck was up with that guy anyway? It was like Perkins knew he had been in the Western Front. And that wasn’t possible, no one knew but the Perdue’s and they sure as hell weren’t going to say anything.

  The ride out of town was uneventful, but it was tense and silent. They passed the lookouts and the awful burned out wrecks of trucks. The burned and blackened skeletons still hung from the windows or lay crushed underneath. Chris’s stomach turned every time he saw it. The town had left them there on purpose, as a warning, but it made him sick to see it. No matter what those men had done, they were people, they had been alive and breathing. It didn’t seem right to leave their bodies out there, exposed to the elements and not given a proper burial. Then again, he had heard some of the stories, whispered to him by the girls when Fenton wasn’t around. The Western Front had done terrible things to the citizens of Tiptonville. They had more than earned the hatred the townspeople felt towards them.

  He glanced over at Liza and saw a tear trickle down her nose, then another and another. They were still over a mile from the farm. He pulled Ichabod to a stop, turned and looked at her. The girl was hunched over, arms crossed in front of her protectively, and as she noticed his gaze she began to sob hysterically.

  “What the...” Chris sighed and closed his eyes, this was definitely not his day to deal with the Perdue women. “Look Liza, everything’s fine, the guy is an asshole, don’t worry about it.”

  “He knows.”

  “What? What does he know?”

  “That you were in the Western Front.”

  He started to scoff, then stopped and tried to meet her eyes. They flicked up, saw his, and dropped to the buggy floor and she began to cry even harder. “Liza...what did you do?”

  “It’s what I didn’t do. I mean I tried to burn the clothes. Oh God! Gramps is gonna kill me!”

  “Liza...” he grabbed her shoulders, turned her towards him and forced her to meet his eyes, “I’m gonna kill you if you don’t tell me what the heck you are talking about.”

  It rushed out in one large torrent, “I didn’t burn the clothes! Your uniform. I mean, I tried, and they were burning and I heard someone coming so I ran away quick. They must have seen the fire, put it out and found the clothes. “

  He gave her a small shake, “Must have?”

  She cried harder, “When I went back the next day to check, the clothes were gone.”

  Chris closed his eyes. “Crap, crap, crap. Double crap. Triple crap...shit!”

  “You hate me, don’t you?” Liza sounded so tiny, so childlike and fearful. He opened his eyes and saw her wincing in his grasp.

  “No Liza, I don’t hate you.” He struggled to explain his emotions, “I’m worried. I’m scared I’ve brought trouble to your door, to all of you, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’ll tell Gramps.”

  “We’ll tell Fenton together. Right after I propose to Carrie and right before he shoots me for knocking up his eldest grandchild.” He managed a small smile, “Like you said earlier, it will all work out.” That earned him a weak laugh in return.

  He set Ichabod to a nice trot and the last twenty minutes were spent with cracks about shotguns and ducking for cover. As they entered the private road that led straight through to the farmhouse Chris could see he wasn’t too far from being right. Fenton had had enough time to not only clean the shotgun but reassemble it. It was resting across his folded arms and the old man looked pissed.

  Liza took it all in and summed it up in one succinct word, which she muttered under her breath, “Shit.”

  “Elizabeth Molly Ann Perdue,” Fenton barked, “you know I can read lips.” Liza winced in response. “Boy, you have got some explaining to do.” He caressed the barrel of the shotgun and adjusted it so that it aimed, ever so slightly, in Chris’s direction.

  “You better show him what you got, Chris, now.” Liza whispered.

  But Chris had a different idea about how this was all going to play out.

  “No.” He climbed down from the buggy, unbuckled the knife and pistol and set them up on the seat next to Liza. “Sir, I would like to speak with Carrie, please.”

  Fenton pursed his lips, reached over and yanked the door to the farmhouse open and bellowed for her. A moment later she appeared her eyes puffy and red. They widened when they saw Fenton’s shotgun.

  Chris wasted no time. He strode to the porch, knelt on his knee at the top step, and looked up into Carrie’s eyes. “I’m sorry it took me this long to find it. I love you, Carrie Lynn Perdue. So...please,” he fished the box out of his pocket and held it up to her, “Will you marry me before your grandfather goes and put me out of his misery?” This earned a choked laugh from Liza and Carrie and an angry grunt from Fenton.

  Carrie reached out and took the box from his hand, opening it slowly, and gasping when she did. “Oh my God, it’s beautiful!”

  Chris sighed, partially in relief, and then in exasperation as she began to cry. Why did they always have to cry? She pulled him up to her and hugged him violently.

  He could feel her tears soaking his neck and he struggled to breathe as she clung to him and cried harder, “Yes, yes, yes! I’ll marry you!”

  “Young woman, don’t you have some news of your own?” Fenton still sounded pissed. Carrie jumped a little at his voice, and pulled away from Chris, looking a little scared.

  “I’m uh,” She struggled to utter the words, “I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.”

  Her eyes searched his eyes for rejection or anger. She had been afraid to tell him; afraid he would leave or maybe not want to have kids. They had never talked about it and they were both so young, something that Gramps had repeated over and over until she had dissolved into tears and he had stomped away.

  Chris reached down and placed a hand on her stomach. There was the tiniest of bulges there. It was firm, not soft or mushy, and he wondered at the miracle growing inside. His child...their child. He looked into her eyes, watched them turn that emerald green he loved to see.

  “We need to get married soon, then. How does January sound to you?”

  She laughed and hugged him again. Fenton snorted, but this time it was with less anger. He stomped down the stairs, grabbed Ichabod’s reins and began to lead the buggy and Liza away to the barn.

  “I’m bringing my shotgun to the wedding.” Fenton said as he strode away.

  You Reap What You Sow

  “Your intelligence is measured by those around you; if you spend your days with idiots you seal your own fate.” – Author unknown

  “The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.” – Rensis Likert

  Captain Scott Cooper seethed as his second in command brought him the numbers. Three more missing, slipped away in the night. Two of them had been from the ragged remnants of Tent Five, the pretty blonde he’d broken in a couple of months ago and a recent tasty morsel that he hadn’t quite finished with.

  Of all of the whores he’d had, the newest one had reminded him the most of Tiffany. Or at least a young version of his sister before she’d filled out and started knowing her own mind and ran to Daddy to complain about him touching her. He’d gotten the beating of his life after that. Old Coop would have thrown his ass out then and there, but Mama was already sick and had begged her husband to show mercy on Scott. She always had been particularly fond of her son. She had ignored or explained away his dark deeds, saying only “boys will be boys.” When Tiffany had gone to her mother first, she had been ignored and then punished for making up such awful lies.

  By the time that pathetic, stupid woman had gotten around to dying, he’d left. The uneasy truce between him and Arno collapsed the moment his mother’s body had cooled. He’d heard of the Western Front, listened to the whispers that they we
re now in Colorado and marching east and he’d set out to join up. It was his bravado in walking right up to the troops on those grass-filled plains of Kansas outside of Fort Riley and asking to join that had caught Granger’s attention. And later, after their unit had been left as an outpost outside of Springfield it was his intel that had provided the rewarding raids on nearby towns, including his own hometown.

  His mind strayed for a moment as he remembered the girl’s body under his, no real woman breasts on the new one, not even the beginnings of pubes. The rest had worked out just fine, though. Sex was what whores were for; no matter how old or young, that was all they were really good for anyway. His Mama had made that clear when she went tramping around, spreading her legs for that fool in town and getting knocked up with Tiffany.

  An awkward cough brought his thoughts back to the present. He blinked, realized he’d been standing there lost in thought for far too long.

  Evers looked nervous standing there, waiting for Cooper to either explode or start barking orders. He hadn’t wanted this promotion, but the last guy who’d had this job had tried to leave three weeks ago. Tried being the operative word, for he hadn’t gotten far at all. It still turned Evers bowels into jello to think about how that guy had looked when Cooper had finished with him. He had wiped off his blade, ignoring the piece of dead meat at his feet that had screamed for mercy just moments before and returned the blade to its sheath. He had turned to Tom Evers and said, “You’re 2nd Lieutenant now, Evers. Don’t let me down.”

  It had been all Evers could do not to empty his bladder on the spot. Who wanted to be a second to a psychopath? The memory of it was still sharp as he cleared his throat, “There is one more thing, sir.”

  “Yes?”

  “They sliced the tires on the last seven trucks. And we got no spares left.”

  “We had eight trucks yesterday.” Cooper’s eyes smoldered with fury, anticipating the next sentence that would come out of Evers mouth.

  “Yes sir. They took that last one. They must’ve pushed it out a few hundred yards before starting it up and driving away ‘cause the sentries didn’t hear a peep. Well, except for Private Angelo, who they knocked out and tied up. We found him this morning and sounded the alarm.”

  “Yes,” Cooper’s voice was dry and cold, “I heard the alarm.” It had woken him with a start, pulling him from a dream filled with blood and sex. He felt frustrated, sleep-deprived, and the darkness in him threatened to boil over. He fought to contain it, and then smiled as he focused on a ‘positive’ outlet for his frustration. “Bring Angelo to see me after I’ve had some coffee.”

  Tom Evers saluted, Cooper barely bothered to return it, and the man hastened away. He winced as he imagined what would happen to Private Angelo. The poor kid would probably be better off dead after Cooper took out his frustration on him.

  Cooper fought to control his fury. No more trucks, how would they move out without the vehicles? The areas surrounding had been picked clean and anyone still living was deep in hiding. They had crossed into what amounted to a no man’s land a few days before inside the Mississippi side of border between Arkansas and Mississippi. The closest town was that of Lobdell, Mississippi, and it was dead quiet, any inhabitants who remained were deep in hiding.

  The last two months had been one disaster after another. The unit had moved south into Arkansas and hadn’t gotten far, only to a tiny town in the hinterboonies called Mountain Home, and promptly gotten their asses kicked. The small towns were wising up and either fleeing or, in odd cases such as this, arming themselves and fighting. He’d lost nearly five dozen men before they took the town. When Granger had been in charge, they’d had nearly two hundred and fifty men. Now the complement was down to a hundred, maybe less. Especially after a second ass-whipping in Forrest City, miles to the southeast.

  The men were losing a taste for war and conquest and more deserted each day. Cooper couldn’t understand it. This was his perfect world, it was all he had ever dreamed of after those years of being smothered by his fool whore of a mother and ignored by an indifferent father.

  Old Coop had spent more of his time kowtowing to Tiffany, that little slut had the old man wrapped around her finger. What kind of man preferred the company of another man’s child, a man who had cuckolded him no less, to his own son?

  No matter, each and every day of the past six months he had gotten to have whatever woman he wanted, take what he wanted and go where he wanted. It wasn’t just the power that got his rocks off, it was the freedom to say and do whatever he pleased. He liked to see the fear in the men’s eyes. He’d earned every ounce of it and more.

  Still, now they were without transportation of any kind. His sipped the steaming cup of atomic waste the cook had prepared. They had managed to grab several pounds of coffee when they blew through the border and into Scott, Mississippi. That had been what he called a ‘grab and stab.’ Scope out the town from a distance, find the weakest point, hit them at sunrise and grab what you could and kill anyone who tried to stop you. It was better than a frontal assault, especially now that the people who were left were the tougher ones, determined to survive, with the weapons to back themselves up. His thoughts spun like they were stuck in mud up to the axles. How in the devil were they going to keep moving?

  The flap of the tent moved aside and a soldier walked in with Angelo, who was bleeding from a cut on his forehead. No one had bothered to patch him up. Ever since their medic team had up and disappeared halfway through Arkansas, first aid services were a tad scarce nowadays. The man looked terrified. His back was ramrod straight, and he saluted Cooper, a slight tremor in his hand as he did so. Scott nodded to the other soldier, excusing him from the tent and he left quickly.

  A half hour later and Cooper stepped out of his tent. He calmly walked to a creek that ran by the edge of the camp and washed the blood and gore from his hands. His first in command, First Lieutenant Riley, stood a few feet away impassively.

  “I’ll be taking over your tent, Riley.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll clear that out for you, sir.” Riley then motioned to two of the grunts standing nearby and looking rather pale and pointed them towards Cooper’s tent. It would take them several hours, and two panicked runs outside to vomit before they finally managed to clean up the mess. The stains on the canvas walls of the tent, however, were permanent. Riley didn’t much care one way or the other. Bloodstains notwithstanding, he liked having a bigger tent.

  A unit that had once been nearly 200 men strong was now a very dangerous, violent gang of raiders. Cooper had many more moments of fury and frustration in the next two weeks. By the end of them, only twenty-five men remained of the one hundred plus who had crossed into Mississippi with him. Of that number, six were too terrified and cowed to leave, and twelve of the men were far too stupid to know when to cut and run. Another three were biding their time, hoping for a better opportunity that might include a set of wheels, and the last four, which included Riley and Cooper, were complete psychopaths bent on murder and mayhem. They had managed to hold on to three of the women. The rest of the women had escaped, or died while trying to escape.

  Some simple-minded redneck named Brad Osterman, and the woman and girl he had taken with him, had broken the back of Western Front outpost while making their timely escape in late October. Disabling the vehicles had dealt a heavy and rather unrecoverable blow to the unit. In time, Cooper and his remaining men managed to scrounge enough useable tires from abandoned vehicles and surrounding terrain to return three vehicles to service. They headed up Highway 1 in mid-November and drove until the road dumped them on Highway 49. This they followed southeast until the road crossed the state line into Tennessee and moved towards Memphis. There were plenty of small towns to loot and burn along the way. The trucks moved inexorably north.

  A White Wedding

  “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.” – Robert Browning

  Chris pulled the edge of his jacket out of Mutton Chop’s curio
us mouth. Tomorrow was Christmas and the week had flown by. It had been tense; Fenton was still perturbed that the ‘natural’ order of things had not been observed.

  He finally confronted Chris in the barn after breakfast. Chris had just finished feeding the goats and was mucking out Ichabod’s stall when Fenton came in.

  “There’s courtin’, then askin’ the father for the girl’s hand in marriage,” he glared at Chris, “Which would be me since her daddy is gone, marriage, the lovin’ and eventually,” he stressed the word and glared, “lil ‘uns.” His vernacular degenerated when his emotions ran high. “You seem to have your priorities ass backwards, young man.”

  He had said this after three long days of silence and brooding. Chris felt ashamed. The shock of realizing that Carrie was pregnant combined with his concern about her young age and his lack of control had lessened him in the old man’s eyes. In the last few months, Fenton had become a unique combination of father, grandfather and mentor. He felt Fenton’s disappointment keenly and wished he could change how it had all played out. He studied the ground, searched for the right words and felt the old man’s gaze steady and unrelenting.

  “Sir...I,” What could he say to make this better? He had agonized over it, but if he couldn’t make it better, at least he could apologize and ask forgiveness, “I’m sorry. I know I screwed up.”

  He looked up and met Fenton’s eyes, struck by how old and sad the man looked, “You’re right, there’s an order to it all and I should’ve exercised control and waited.”

  Fenton pursed his lips and sighed. “Christopher, I know you love my granddaughter. I know you’ll marry her and I know it coulda played out a lot worse than it did.” He shook his head, “You disappointed me, son. But I’ll get over it...’cause tomorrow you’re gonna make this right.”

  “Sir?” Chris was confused, tomorrow was Christmas.

  Fenton’s eyes had lost their disappointment and sadness and now they twinkled with mischief. He reached over and clapped Chris hard on the shoulder. “You’re getting married tomorrow, son.” And with that he sauntered out of the barn, Chris staring after him, stunned.