The Shelter: Book 1, The Beginning (37 page)

Saturday, October 17 started with a cold rain falling from a cool gray sky, but it wasn’t hard enough to keep us out of the fields or stop patrolling. In fact, the rain felt good on our faces. The cool rain is projected to continue for another two days. We’d agreed to meet at my house this week. We laid out extra mats to catch the rain and mud on everyone’s sneakers and boots. Everyone was happy to get together once a week. We had a long table set with coffee, tea, soft drinks, wine and, of course, the bar was fully stocked, but our custom was not to consume hard liquor until after the meeting concluded. Tony and Nancy were in a very good mood, they hugged everyone as they arrived, I guess we’ll find out why soon enough. The kids were in the home theater watching some movie Tony was able to get on the black market before its official release on DVD. They had plates of cookies and popcorn to keep them happy and out of the adult meeting. Everyone took off their rain gear, most were holding an umbrella which they left leaning against the corner by our front door. It must have been a very good week, everyone looked genuinely happy.

We’d just sat down in our family and dining room and gotten comfortable. Tony asked to go first which was fine with all of us, he stood smiling, but just as he opened his mouth to start speaking, our intruder alarm sounded. Our heads went up, we nodded to each other. I said, “No time for everyone to get home and return, hit the gun safe downstairs, grab a rifle and ammo, let’s go! Lacy and I grabbed our personal weapons, our neighbors followed me downstairs. I opened one of our gun safes handing out AR15s and M4s, each person also got a bag of ten or twelve 30 round magazines, some of the bags held a mix of 30 and 42 magazines, mine held ten of the new PMag 60 drum style mags. I sent Todd to the armory to get some grenades. Opening the front door, we run for the trenches through the rain and wind. A cold front was moving in, we felt the temperature dropping. The wind is driving the rain almost horizontal at us. I’m happy we had the time to line the trench with cement and install water runoff drain holes so we weren’t standing in ankle deep muddy water. We heard the motorcycles and a truck before the second alarm sounded, Fred said, “Sounds like a hell of a lot them.”

Randy responds, “Sounds like Harley’s, lots of them. Must be a biker gang from the city or south of Nashville.”

Before Randy finished speaking, John’s voice came through my radio, “RED ALERT, a biker gang, fourteen bikes, two pickups, they’re ARMED, SAY AGAIN ARMED.”

Our motion-activated lights turned on when the bikers got close, the lights illuminated the street and driveway for us while at the same time blinding the attackers. Unfortunately, our lights became the gang’s first target. Each of our construction lights was shot out. The alarm connected to our gate sounded a moment before the sky in front of us was lit by a large flash of light, we were shaken by the explosion’s overpressure blast wave. The few of us who were wearing night vision yelled, pulling off our NVG’s. The explosion’s flash overloaded the NVG’s sensors hurting our eyes. After our lights had been shot out, everything went quiet. We don’t hear or see our attackers. They’re acting very smart, they shot out our lights, then they paused or they’ve figured out a way to advance very quietly. We don’t have any idea what they’re planning. I’m just about to say something when we hear a single gunshot and Fred screams, falling over. I yell, “SNIPER, get down.”

The bikers came prepared with tools and C4 or something like it to blast open our front gate.

“John, please tell me the driveway trenches are uncovered.”

Jay, they are. The steel covers have been removed.They are covered with thin camouflaged sheets, a step will cause anyone to fall into the trench, we’ve added some surprises for anyone who lands or steps in the small holes.”

“What did you do?”

“We turned them into punji pits. We have lined the bottom of the trenches and small holes with plywood holding large spikes, they will cut right through sneakers and boots. Once in, the heads of the spikes open like hunting arrows. They’re going to be very painful to remove, plus they’ll leave a very nasty infection behind. Anyone who steps into a trench will be out of commission for a very long time. They’ll most likely die a very painful death.”

“John, you’re a cold-hearted bastard, I like it.”

Smiling an evil leer, John says, “Wait, I have a few more surprises waiting for anyone who breaches our walls meaning to do us harm.”

Looking at the driveway, I see a white shirt in the air, “Look.”

Two bikers walk a few yards up our driveway, they’re holding a large white T-shirt on a pole. “You up there on the farm. We know you’re there. Here are your options, we want 300 pounds of food, 250 gallons of clean water, all of your beer and liquor, and any pain medications you have. We also want two of your women, they must be under the age of 40. If our demands are not met, we’ll kill all of you and take what we want. We’ve done it before. We’ve been raiding farms and subdivisions between Nashville and here. You have five minutes to decide.”

John replies, “If you kill all us, you’ll never find the fuel tanks, which are diesel.”

“Don’t care, our truck uses diesel, you have less than five minutes to decide. If you agree, send a child out with a white flag, if we don’t see the white flag, we’ll attack and kill all of you. We’ve wiped out many other small farms and housing developments, in the end, we always get what we want. Some of us have military training. A bunch of farmers aren’t going to do shit to us. Your five minutes is slipping away as you try to bullshit us.”

I whisper, “John, what do you think?”

“If they do have members who are ex-military, they’re going to try to surround us, take us out in one hard, fast attack. Some will most likely have NVG.”

“What do you suggest?”

“As quietly as possible, spread our people out in the trench. The gang has to work their way through our traps and booby-traps, we have the explosive targets sitting along their most likely path to us. We can negate their NVGs with flares. I suggest we open fire at 4 minutes 30 seconds, they will most likely wait till the clock runs down. We need to use whatever surprise we can against them. When I give the word, fire four flares, I’ll set off the exploding targets, everyone else should take down anyone they see. When we start firing, turn on the lasers mounted on the poles, it’ll confuse them as to where we are. Make sure everyone has a silencer mounted.”

“Okay, I’ll pass the word down the line,” I turn to whisper to Todd next to me, he taps Randy repeating the message. Our people silently start spreading out preparing for the fight of our lives. Lacy, Cheri, and Flo dragged poor Fred out of the trench and into the shelter so the doc could work on him.

At the four-minute thirty-second mark John nods to me, I fire four bright flares into the air between us and the bikers. The flares wash out the biker’s NVG, at the same instant John triggers four of the exploding targets/Claymore mines. The small cans are covered in nails and BBs, when they explode they send a wave of metal out in all directions, catching the bikers completely by surprise. The homemade mini Claymores cut down a number of attackers and while they’re still reeling from the shock of the attack, our people pop up in our trench and open fire with three round bursts. Tony and his sidekick Sal are firing full auto, they are burning through their ammo in seconds. Todd sees their truck coming up the driveway, the driver doesn’t see the trench which cuts across the driveway because it’s camouflaged. The gang’s truck noses into the trench and before anyone can escape it, Todd hits it with an RPG, blowing the truck apart with everyone in it. Tony switched from an M4 to one of the Thompsons, he’s firing short bursts from the submachine gun so he can control the bursts. The heavy 45 caliber bullets are tearing the bikers apart. Two of us each throws a hand grenade into a group of bikers. A group of six bikers stand to rush our trench, five of us open up with M4s, the closest a biker reaches us is twenty feet from our trench. I’m thinking to myself,
We have to do better than this, we have one person down. One I can’t forgive myself for, we’re not going to be the same without Fred. They were able to get too close to us. We have to keep them further away from us. Even with all of our firepower they managed to get within twenty feet of us. Not acceptable at all.

We wait five minutes to see if anyone else attacks us, holding our breath as each of the minute’s counts down to zero. There weren’t any incidents in the five minutes so John sounds the all clear. We start to climb up out of our trenches when a shot rings out, it creases Todd’s leg. Tony and I spin around to where the shot came from, both of us burn through our mags on full auto, we’re rewarded with a scream to our rear. Tony and I nod at each other. We hold our weapons at the ready while we load fresh magazines and begin to check out the bodies of our attackers. Some of the gang are wounded. John says, “Keep two alive for questioning, kill the rest of them.” The quiet of the rainy evening is broken by the sounds of single muffled shots, each shot putting a gang member out of his misery. Some of us couldn’t look the wounded in the eye when we pulled the trigger. A couple of our neighbors couldn’t bring themselves to kill the wounded, I told them, “No problem, I’ll do it.” I walk to each of the wounded where I fire a single round into their heads. I try to make sure no one sees I’m feeling sick with each shot. It's one thing to shoot someone at a distance and another to stand over them, looking into their pleading eyes and pull the trigger. We found their bikes in front of our gate. I said, “Everyone take a bike, we can use them for later, push them into the barn. I need two to help me check their trucks.”

Randy and Matt join me at their damaged truck, there’s nothing left but a burnt out shell. When the truck struck the trench, four teenage girls were throw out of the back of the truck which saved their lives when the truck exploded. All four of them are in rough shape. “Matt, I’ll help the girls, check to see if anything else got thrown out of the truck. Put the truck with their bikes in the barn. Randy, go down to the gate and check out their other truck.”

Matt and Randy nod their agreement, I help the girls, who are in shock. Picking up my handheld, “Flo, need your help by the truck in the driveway, we have some teenage girls in shock or drugged.”

“On my way. Jill’s coming to help me, are any badly wounded?”

“I don’t know. They fell out of the truck, they were lucky, another moment and the RPG would have struck them. All would be dead. Flo, don’t leave the girls alone and don’t show them anything outsiders shouldn’t see. We shouldn’t trust them yet.”

“Okay.”

Randy inspects the gate on the way to get the undamaged truck, “Jay, need to see you at the gate. It took a lot of damage, I’m not sure if we have the parts to repair it.”

My driveway is littered with shell cases and blood, we hear crying and begging for help from locations between the gate and the house,
I think we caught some bandits in our hunting traps. I’m happy its bandit hunting season.
The hinges on the front gate are toast, they were destroyed by the C4 explosion. “John, do we have any other hinges?”

I inspect the gate with Randy, who says, “We can’t repair it. However, we can change the gate. For now, I suggest we just weld it shut. When we replace it, we’ll cut the welds.”

“Do it, no reason to fool with it now. We might as well deal with it in a couple of days.”

Randy nods saying, “OK, I’ll weld it shut, at least no one else will be easily getting in tonight.”

John listens to the crying and begging, “What do you want to about them?”

“Nothing tonight, we’ll check on them tomorrow. I don’t feel like wandering around our own minefield in the dark. If they moved a trap, we could step in one.”

“You know most of them will bleed out.”

“Less for us to deal with. We have three to question. I don’t think any of these assholes is one of the leaders.”

A biker says, “Please, I can hear you, you have to help me. I can’t move, my foot is stuck in a damn hole with spikes through my foot, I’m bleeding, it hurts. You have to help me.”

“Why?”

“It's what you're supposed to do. It’s the Christian thing to do.”

“You mean like attacking people you don’t know, like kidnapping teenage girls? Do you mean those Christian things?”

“You don’t understand. We have the right to live, we have the right to happiness. We’ve got all sorts of rights.”

“You stay there and think about those rights you have, oh, and if a wolf comes by, be sure to tell the wolf about your rights. I’m sure he’ll be happy to listen to you as he eats your leg.”