The Siege (12 page)

     He finished the feeding and went to the greenhouses to survey the damage.

     Bennett had done a half-ass job of caring for the plants. It was obvious which berries and vegetables he personally preferred. They were the ones still succulent and well watered. The things he wasn’t fond of, like the squash and cucumbers and lettuce, were dry and parched. Some of the plants were withered and dead.

     He had faith that Karen could repair most of the damage. She was a magician when it came to plants.

     He gave everything a good soaking, and then went back into the big house to retrieve some white sheets.

     By the time Brad finished digging the grave, Mark was finished wrapping the bodies in sheets. The easiest way to do so was merely pulling each man’s feet until the body was straight, and then laying each arm by his side. Then he laid the sheet next to the body and simply rolled it, collecting the sheet as he went, until the body looked like a large cocoon.

     Brad called on the radio.

     “Mark, this is Brad. Where are you?”

     “On the roof. Come give me a hand, will ya?”

     Five minutes later the two were standing side by side on the roof, looking down at what used to be
Toby Hance.

     Mark said, “I’m at a loss. This guy must have
been lifting weights in prison for years. He’s got to be close to three hundred pounds, and it’s all muscle. How the hell do we get him down?”

     “Do we have any equipment that’ll reach this high?”

     “Nope. Even the big forklift only goes up to the second story.”

     “Can we drag him down the stairs?”

     “If we want to use every last bit of strength we have left, and waste an hour or more.”

     For several more minutes, they stood looking at each other, and at the body.

     Finally they formulated a plan.

     Brad ran down to the workshop and brought back a roll of duct tape. They used it to wrap around the body at the neck and feet so that the sheet didn’t come off while they were moving it.

     Then they struggled to drag Hance to the edge of the roof. Mark even tried to find a bit of humor in the situation, grunting, “Man. This gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘dead weight.’”

     “Shut up and lift, funny man.”

     They got Hance to the short wall which surrounded the edge of the roof, and managed to prop his back up against it.

     “Now remember, don’t ever tell the girls about this. They would freak out big time.”

     “You got it. I’ll never tell a soul.”

     With that, they both reached their arms beneath Hance’s knees, locked their wrists together and lifted, tossing Hance’s body over the wall and to the ground three stories below.
He landed with a sickening thud.

     “Just tell yourself he didn’t feel it.”

     “Hey, it wouldn’t bother me if he did. I have no pity for any of the bastards.”

     Back downstairs, Brad took an all-terrain forklift from the back of the pig barn and used it to pick up an empty wooden pallet outside the barn. One by one, they used the forklift to carry the bodies to the trench he’d dug, and then rolled them into it.

     The Bobcat didn’t dig deep trenches. It maxed out about four feet deep. There was no way they could have stacked the bodies on top of each other. So Brad had done the next best thing. He dug the trench long enough to accommodate all of the bodies, laid end to end.

     It was a grisly task, made ten times worse by the stench the two decomposed bodies put off. The flies
followed them every step of the way, buzzing around their heads and landing on them covered with all sorts of disgusting bodily fluids.

     Finally, when the bodies were in place, Mark said, “Why don’t you cover them up, and I’ll hose everything down?”

     “No problem.”

     Brad used the second Bobcat, which had a blade attachment on the front, to shove the piles of loose dirt into the hole. It was a lot faster than digging the trench, and he actually finished up before Mark did.

     They met back at the big house. Brad said, “I need a shot of whisky after that. You want one?”

     “What I wan
t is a hot shower. My hands are covered with blood and God knows what else. Then I’ll come back and down a couple.”

     Both men went to the respective apartments and tried to clean themselves of the disgusting thing they’d just had to do. When they finished and met back in the lounge, all the grime was gone. The memory, though, would be with them forever.

     Especially, Mark suspected, the sound of the awful sound that Hance’s body made when it hit the sidewalk after being tossed off the side of the building.

Chapter 25

     “How big of a mess did they make in your apartment?” Brad asked after the two met back at the control center.

     “Oh, it’s trashed. But Hannah will have it back together in no time. She’s a real clean freak. Which, in this case, is probably a good thing.”

     “I wish my girlfriend was a clean freak. Mine’s a real slob.” He smiled and winked at Sami, who was sitting in the controller’s chair behind the console.

     “You better watch it, Buddy. I’ll come over this counter and kick your little ass. And I won’t even feel bad about it.”

     “Oh, I’m not afraid of you. You hit like a girl.”

     “I’ll show you who hits like a girl, tonight, when you’re laying in bed thinking you’re gonna get lucky. Then, wham! To the moon,
Alice!”

     Mark looked at Brad and smiled. Then he observed, “That’s a real tiger you have there. Maybe you better quit poking her with a stick.”

     Brad blew Sami a kiss and said, “Hey, a guy’s got to have a little bit of fun. Especially after what we’ve all been through lately.”

     “True
. I just hope it’s over now.”

     Mark turned to Sami and said, “Would you give the others the all clear and tell them to start coming over through the tunnel? Tell the security team to take a head count so they don’t leave anyone behind, and to be the last ones out.”

     “That’s a message I’d be happy to pass on. Do you want them to turn the lights and everything off?”

     “No. Tell them to leave everything on. Bryan and I will go over later and shut down all the systems and the generators and make sure
the water lines are drained. First, though, I want to spend some time with my sweet wife and son, and then get a nap in.”

     Brad looked at the monitor from the utility room where their two prisoners were being kept. It was hard to tell, but Bennett appeared to be crying.

     “I guess it sucks to be them around now. What do you think we should do with them?”

     “I don’t know. John wants to meet tomorrow to discuss it, after we’ve all had a good night’s sleep. If it were up to me, I’d drive them down to the
Gulf of Mexico, put them on a motor boat, lock the rudder, and send them out to sea, still tied up.

     “Whatever we decide to do, I’m glad I’m not in their shoes.”

     Mark went to the feed barn and propped open the false floor that led to the tunnel. Then he walked down the steps and waited, as the refugees began returning home.

     “Welcome back,” he said to each one as they came into view.

     Most of the women and children hugged him as they went by. Some of the men gave him a fist bump or a “good job.”

     Among the last of the returnees were his wife Hannah and son Markie. Markie came running as soon as he saw his father.

     “Daddy!” he squealed.

     Mark picked him up and held him, as Hannah came up and hugged them both.

     She had tears in her eyes.

     “Hey, what’s that all about?”

     “Oh, shut up. I’m entitled. I just sent my man off to war and he survived.”

     “Okay. Should I wonder whether they’re tears of
happiness or tears of disappointment?”

     She punched him in the arm.

     “Yeah, you big jerk. You wonder about that. I so love you. Are you okay?”

     “Yeah, and I so love you too. And what about you? Are you okay?”

     “I am now.”

     Mark put his son down and held Hannah, kissing her passionately.

     Markie rolled his eyes and said, “Ah, come on! Get a room, you two.”

     Hannah was shocked.

     “Markie! Where in the world did you hear that?”

     “That’s what you tell Uncle Bryan and Aunt
Sarah, Mommy. Every time they start kissing and stuff.”

     Hannah looked at Mark and said, “Don’t you dare say a word.”

     “About what?”

     “Exactly.”

     “Come on, gorgeous. Let’s get out of this tunnel and go home.”

Chapter
26

     The following day, school was back in session for the little ones. Karen was back in her greenhouses, trying to fix what she could of the damage done to her plants. David assembled a team of volunteers to start prepping the fields for the crops they’d be planting in a few days, and Joe took it upon himself to give the barns a much needed cleaning.

     Things were beginning to get back to normal again, except for one thing.

     There were two men tied to chairs in the basement, and there wasn’t a consensus on what to do with them.

     Most of the adults not busy with other duties had gathered in the dining room at John’s request.

     “I called you here because we need to deal with the problem at hand in the utility room. I’ll be honest with you. I never thought we’d take them without a fight. I knew we had the advantages on our side. I knew we’d take them. I just didn’t think we’d take them alive.

     “I thought that by now they’d be
in the same hole that their buddies are in out there. And to be honest, it would have been much easier that way. Taking them alive presents a whole new problem.”

     Mark asked, “Well, John, we asked you to head up our security program because you’re the only expert we have in that area. We’ve trusted your judgment before in all matters pertaining to security, and you’ve always been right on the mark. Since you’re the expert in this area, what do
you
propose we do with them?”

     John selected his words carefully.

     “Some of you won’t like what I have to say. Those of you who had a chance to see these men up close and talk to them may share the opinion that they’re a broken and pitiful lot.

     “But that don’t change the fact that they came here to do us harm. They raised weapons against us and would have shot us if they had the chance. One of their group, and I’m assuming it was the
dead man on the mountain but it might not have been, shot my Sami. They could have just as easily shot any of you. Or any of yours.

     “It also doesn’t change the fact that if we let them go, they’ll likely go back to the environment they were in before. They ran with a rough crowd of convicts and criminals before, and they’ll go back to that.

     “Right now, they’re scared shitless. They may be too scared to recruit more people for a second shot at taking the compound. But as time goes by they’ll get bold, and hungry. And they’ll be back.

     “We have no choice but to get rid of them.”

     Sami was aghast.

     “Dad, do you mean kill them? Surely you can’t be serious.”

     “I am dead serious, sweetie. If we set them free, in all likelihood we’ll see them again at a later time. Only this time they’ll have learned their lessons. They’ll come back with a much bigger force. They’ll be better armed. And they’ll have the knowledge they didn’t have the first time. They’ll know the layout of this building, and of the compound. They’ll know about the escape tunnel. If they hit us hard and fast, and swarmed all over us, they might capture the tunnel before we could evacuate next time. Then all they’d have to do is cut our power and water lines and wait us out. Or pick us off a couple at a time, like we did to them.”

    
Bryan was having none of it.