A Distant Eden (10 page)

Alice said, “Deal. We can show you the best things to have on hand, and plenty of it, even painkillers. We stashed quite a bit of those back for trading—or to use on ourselves to end it, if things get bad enough. What we want to know is where are you going and will you take us with you? You’re the first decent men we’ve come across since the raiding started. We need to get out of here.”

At that moment, John, who had gone back up on the roof to keep watch, returned. “There’s a raider band moving in fast. They’re armed and moving with discipline. They look like a motorcycle gang without motorcycles. I’d say we have about two minutes before they hit the front door.”

Roman yelled out to Sarah, “Honey, we have visitors!” That phrase was code for her to grab her shotgun and leave through the back door to the first rendezvous spot. She was gone through the bamboo and out of sight almost before he had finished yelling. As he did so, he was reaching into the shed, pulling out his AK-47 and flipping off the safety. A bullet was always in the chamber, ready to go. He had chosen the AK-47 for its maneuverability, reliability, and low purchase price. It didn’t hurt that it was the world’s most battle tested combat rifle.

The four men walked through his gate to where he was standing with the AK in his hand, barrel pointed down towards the ground in front of them. Roman wasn’t going to start off by pointing a rifle right at them, but he wasn’t going to point it away from them either. They stopped ten feet away, standing almost shoulder to shoulder. One of them, obviously the leader, looked around and said, “Looks like you’ve been wiped out, but you look well fed. You don’t look like you missed any meals.”

Roman did not reply. They hadn’t asked any questions yet, and he wasn’t going to play their game. The leader, acting a bit irritated by Roman’s unflinching calm gaze and silence, said, “We’ve come to offer you a deal. We’ll offer you protection...”

At that word, time ceased. He was watching these four men who had come striding onto his property as if they owned it. They hadn’t asked permission to come in, they hadn’t acted like they were visitors; instead they had acted as if they had conquered and owned him—as if he should be cowed. They stood there with so much cockiness that they didn’t bother to have their weapons in position. Each of them was holding his gun as though it was just something to carry. Two of them did not have their fingers anywhere near the trigger. They must have thought that they had him buffaloed by their numbers; it angered him to be dismissed that way. It was as if they thought him nothing but helpless, even if he was clutching a loaded rifle.

Then, right off the bat, they had informed him that they were gangsters, about to steal everything of value he owned. Protection indeed. That racket was older than prostitution. His anger and these thoughts had reached a tipping point with the word protection being spoken. Roman felt something inside him slip and then let go entirely, an instantaneous shift to cold, clarifying rage. These were filthy little thugs that would kill him and rape and kill his wife. Without consciously commanding his arm to do so, Roman tipped the rifle barrel up and began firing.

The first bullet hit the leader in the heart before he got to the next word.

Roman’s rifle, as if of its own volition, continued moving from right to left without hesitation, without hurry, in a smooth arc, firing two more shots like a brief roar of thunder. As the rifle covered the fourth man without the slightest sign of tremor or shake, the three on the ground twitched their lives out while blood pumped out of the holes in their chests and backs. Men don’t die like in the movies. They don’t fall down or get blown backwards and just stop moving and die instantly.

They twitch and drum their heels and try to sit up or crawl. They cry, moan, talk and plead. It takes time, sometimes three or four minutes for a man to bleed out and lose consciousness. The only instant deaths are the ones where a bullet massively disrupts the brain. Headshots are low probability shots though. Roman watched the three men die while holding the fourth man at gunpoint. He didn’t want to take a chance on one of them getting off a shot while he wasn’t looking. He could have finished them off with mercy shots, but they didn’t deserve the gesture. After they were motionless, Roman told the fourth man to toss his shotgun off to the side, get down on his knees and put his hands behind his head. Standing behind him, Roman placed the barrel of his rifle against the man’s head.

Roman said, “Here’s the deal. You have one chance and one chance only to walk out of here alive. Your chance is to answer my questions immediately, without any hesitation and without holding back or lying. If I sense that you are hesitating, or suspect that you are holding back or lying—I pull the trigger right then. I would rather have no information than bad information. Is that clear enough?

The man stuttered, “Y-yes.”

Roman said, “If you answer to my satisfaction I’ll let you walk away. But be warned: if I ever see you again, anywhere at any time, I’ll shoot you on the spot and I won’t ask what you were doing there either. Is that clear enough?”

Again, without hesitation: “Yes.”

“Where did y’all come from?”

“From across the river, about a mile past the bridge. County Road 1351. Take it east half a mile. It’s the old brick house on the right with Campbell on the mail box.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Six total, three now, ‘cept I won’t be going back, so there’s two left.”

“How long y’all been there?”

“Two days. We walked in from Hillsboro. There’s no food in Hillsboro so we left and started looking for a place with food. We found the Campbell place, an old couple living there. They had food so Willy shot ‘em and we stayed. Willy got the idea of looking around and seeing who else around here had food. He said we would give them protection. We would come around to each place once a week and take whatever we could, keep milking them. We stopped two other places before here, found people, roughed them up a bit and then took their food.”

“Those two back there, they any smarter than you four? They have any experience at this sort of thing?”

“Yes, sir, they both been to prison. They’re mean, but I thought these guys were mean too. I didn’t see it coming; none of us seen it coming. One second we’re talking, then wham, everyone’s dead. I never seen nothin’ like it, and I don’t want to see nothin’ like it again.”

“What time are y’all expected back? What happens when you’re late?”

“We figured to be back by dark. No one talked about what to do if we didn’t come back, so I don’t know what they’ll do. Wait ‘til morning and go looking for us, I expect. They knew where we were headed.”

Roman asked, “Did you fellas scout this place out or just waltz in?”

“We didn’t scout anywhere. We just walked down roads looking for signs of life. This road looked like it headed back to the river and we thought there might be folks on the river bank. We thought we might find a cow if no people, but no, sir, we didn’t do no scoutin’.”

When he finished speaking, Roman shot him in the back of the head. Roman had never had any notion of turning an enemy loose; he would only sneak around and ambush him later. Only a fool would do that; never leave an enemy alive to come after you at his choosing of time and place. That would be suicide.

He put away the guns and the ammo he found on the men. Each had a wallet, and inside were driver’s licenses, credit cards, cash. All were from Texas but there was nothing remarkable about them—other than all of them had extensive tattoos. One at a time, Roman tied a rope to their ankles and dragged them into the river and watched them float off. Then he found Sarah and told her what had happened.

“I don’t know, Sarah. Something in me just snapped. Those cretins walked in like they owned the place. They looked at me like I was nothing, like I was already accounted for. They intended to take all our food. I shot them so fast they didn’t have time to blink. I thought I might feel bad, but so far I feel I killed snakes, nothing more. Tonight I’m going to their nest and kill the rest of them before they come after us again.”

Sarah gave Roman a long hard hug and told him, “Darling, this is a hard new world and you did the right thing, exactly the right thing. Even if you had been wrong, I would still be behind you one hundred percent—and I always will be—but you did right.” Roman found great comfort in her words, and in her soothing touch.

That evening Roman took the pump shotgun, the AK-47 and a garden wagon, and walked to the house the man had described. He reached the turn off onto the county road just after dark. Slowly and quietly he continued down the county road until he was close to the house. Parking the trailer by the roadside, he approached the mailbox slowly, shotgun cocked and loaded in his hands. “Campbell” was printed on the side.

Roman could see the dark outline of the house. There was faint candlelight showing through one of the windows. Most likely, they didn’t have a guard posted, but Roman was in no particular hurry, so he took plenty of time to check the outside area. Ghosting from dark spot to dark spot without making noise, Roman circled the entire house, looking, listening, and smelling. He had noticed the four men he shot had not bathed in a long time and were rancid. Roman and Sarah bathed every day. Roman knew that he would smell them, probably before seeing them, in the dark.

Moving to the window next, he peered in. Two men were sitting at a small table playing cards, a candle between them. They were ten feet from the window. Roman watched a moment, then circled the house once more. He saw no light anywhere else in the house. That didn’t mean that there couldn’t be someone else in there sleeping, but there was no good way to find out either.

Roman returned to the lighted window. The men were still playing cards. They were talking but Roman couldn’t make out the words—and anyway, he didn’t care what they were saying. He raised the shotgun to his shoulder, drew a bead on the man to the left, fired, racked the slide as he swung to the right and fired again as the bead centered on the second man’s head. Headshots with a shotgun at that range were well within his capability. The double-ought-buck-shot took both men’s heads off, leaving only ragged stringy messes above their shoulders. Unlike their buddies, these two went down without a twitch.

Roman faded back into the brush at the perimeter of the yard and waited. If there was anyone else in the house, he wanted to give them a chance to give themselves away by moving around. No one could have slept through that uproar. After ten minutes of absolute silence, Roman walked back to the house and opened the unlocked front door quietly. Using his flashlight, he checked the house from end to end. There was no one. After that he checked the outside, but still found nothing.

Bringing the trailer up to the house, Roman went into the kitchen and checked the pantry. As the man had said, there was a good bit of food here. A lot of it home canned food. Roman loaded all the food onto the wagon and searched the house for anything else useful. He found clothes and shoes, which he put in the wagon, and took the dead men’s guns and ammunition and added them to the trailer. He didn’t hurry; he still had plenty of time before daybreak.

Just as before, he felt no different. These men were just snakes. There was satisfaction in knowing that these snakes would never bite Sarah.

Jerry froze, then reached out and touched Karen on the shoulder, gently guiding her to follow him by touch. They felt their way to the back of the store. By now their eyes were more attuned to the darkness and they had learned where things were at, so they moved more freely. As they retreated, they could hear someone moving around the front of the store. Whoever it was did not act as if he knew anyone else was there.

Jerry could make out the rear door as a rectangle of slightly lighter color. When they reached it, Jerry held Karen still with a touch. He wasn’t anxious to just barge out the door, in case someone was waiting for them to do just that. It wasn’t impossible that the person moving around up front was trying to get them to leave by the rear in a panic. They could be walking into a deliberate trap. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Jerry exited first, moving out by slipping around the doorjamb, keeping his back in contact with the wall. He stood outside the door a long time. He didn’t see or hear anything. Finally, he guided Karen out. They waited a bit longer, then began walking away from the store, staying near fences and walls so not to outline themselves. At the end of the alley, they again stopped, waited, watched and listened. Jerry heard faint sounds from up ahead.

He couldn’t see anything in the dark, but there was just the faintest of stirring noises ahead so he and Karen continued to wait. They both had their guns cocked, loaded and safeties off. The waiting paid off. They heard whispering a dozen feet away. One voice said, “They should have come out by now. Maybe they climbed the back fence.”

A second whispered voice responded, “Or they’re in the alley waiting for us to come in after them.”

Jerry put his lips to Karen’s ear and said in an extremely quiet voice, “We have to come out shooting and moving fast to clear the area. When I shoot, you start shooting too. We’re going to fire four shots each from left to right, covering about twenty feet, then we’re going to run for the other side of the street and down it a hundred yards. Then we’ll stop, turn, and listen. Ready?” He felt her head nod yes.

“OK. I’m going to count to three silently and open up, stay with me on this.” He counted—and then swung, firing. Karen did the same with her shotgun a half second behind. They sprinted as fast as they could across the street.

After a hundred yards, they stopped, held their breath and listened. Moaning came from the alley—but just one voice. Then a death-rattle-cough, then silence. Then, from the store: “What happened? Where are you guys? Lonnie? Joe?”

A flashlight winked on, illuminating two bodies on the ground. The light quickly went out and they heard panicky footsteps running away in the opposite direction.