Without law 11, p.7
Without Law 11, page 7
I grabbed the buckets first and followed Paige and Bailey outside.
It didn’t take us long to clear the shelves that Paige had found, and the truck was about a third of the way full in the back. After that we headed to the supply room and started to grab everything that we could.
“That’s the last of it,” I said as I handed a bucket to Paige.
“We’ve still got some room back here if you want to look around,” the brunette said.
“There’s some stuff I think we should grab,” I said. “There are a few hoses, and I saw some gloves and individual tools that will help with planting.”
“Perfect,” she agreed. “Let’s get them.”
I led the girls to the garden section, and we started to fill up some barrels and boxes I had grabbed from the stockroom.
“Some of these gloves are so cute,” Tara said as she filled up a box. “I can see why people would like gardening.”
“They don’t do it for the flower print gloves,” Paige laughed.
“I would,” Tara chuckled, and she held up a pair of pink gloves with purple flowers on them. “Totes adorbs.”
“Why don’t you keep those,” Bailey suggested. “You’re still going to help me with the little garden on campus, right?”
“I thought you said I got too mouthy with the tomatoes last year,” Tara said with a playful smile.
“Well, yeah,” Bailey chuckled. “We’ll try to avoid telling the fruit we’re going to eat it, but still, I liked having your help.”
“Okay, then,” Tara said. “But tomatoes aren’t a fruit.”
“Yes, they are,” Paige piped up.
“No way,” Tara scoffed. “Tomatoes are a vegetable.”
“They taste like a vegetable, but they’re definitely a fruit,” Anna said.
“I don’t believe you,” the platinum blonde said.
“Believe it or not,” I laughed, “they’re right.”
“Well, that’s gross,” Tara said, and she put the pink gloves into her back pocket and continued working.
After we got the rest of the supplies boxed up and put into the truck it was only mid-morning, and the sun was still bright in the sky.
“Should we look around the town a little bit?” Paige asked. “There’s not a whole lot of room in the back, but as long as we don’t find anything huge it should be alright.”
“We may as well,” I said. “This place looks pretty well intact still.”
“Yeah,” Anna agreed. “Most of the stuff in the supply store was knocked over, but not a lot was missing.”
“I’m guessing mostly the weapons and perishables will be missing,” I said. “That’s what I would have taken if I came through here.”
“You’re probably right,” Paige said. “Those seem like the most obvious choices.”
“This place isn’t too big, though,” I said. “And we have some time, so let’s take a look around. What else do we have around here?”
“An auto parts store,” Paige said as she looked at the map she had pulled from her pocket, “a few restaurants, a flower shop, houses.”
“So, basically just small town stuff,” Anna chuckled.
“Looks like it,” Bailey said. “Should we split up?”
“Sure,” I said. “Anna, Tara, and Bailey, you guys take the right side of this street, Paige and I will take the left side.”
“Alright,” Anna agreed. “Come on, ladies.”
“Of course she thinks she’s in charge,” Tara whispered to Bailey.
“I am in charge,” the redhead replied. “Now hurry it up, maggot.”
“This,” Tara told me, and she pointed at Anna. “This is what you did when you made her second in command.”
“I think you’re sassy enough to handle it,” I said with a wink.
“Whatev,” she laughed.
Paige and I headed down to the left of the supply store and cleared the first shop. It was a small restaurant, and we were able to find a few utensils and pans, but not much else.
The next place was a post office, and while I wasn’t sure what we would find in there, Paige insisted that we check it out.
“Clear,” I called out after we had gone through the small building.
“All good,” the brunette said, and she started to look through the office supplies that hung on a shelf nearby.
“Is this why you wanted to come in here?” I asked with a gesture at the pens and tape.
“You can never have too much tape,” Paige said.
“That’s true,” I agreed.
I filled my bag with tape, pens, and sharpies, then I went behind the counter to look for more supplies.
“It’s almost like going back in time here,” Paige said softly as she looked around.
“It is,” I agreed. The small building was dirty and covered in dust, but practically everything else had been left alone. The Hallmark cards still sat on a rotating shelf, and the priority mail boxes were still laid out for people to take. It looked like this place hadn’t even been touched since the EMP.
“I wonder if this town has a library,” Paige said.
“What could you possibly find in a library here that we don’t have on campus?” I chuckled.
“I don’t know,” Paige laughed. “But there’s bound to be something. The college has a lot of resources, but they don’t have everything.”
“We’ll make a special trip sometime soon to find you a bookstore,” I assured her.
“That would be amazing,” the brunette said, and she smiled wide.
“Is there anything in particular you want to look up?” I asked as I went through the shelves behind the register.
“I want to get a copy of the anarchists cookbook,” she said, then she bit her lip.
“Why would you want that?” I asked, and I was genuinely confused.
“It tells you how to make homemade bombs, and all sorts of stuff,” Paige said. “I figure, we go up against enough bad guys, we should know what they know.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “I’m sure I know some of what’s in there already, but it could be a useful resource.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I think we’re done in here, did you find anything else?”
“Just more of the same,” I said, and I followed her out to the street once more.
“Is that a convenience store?” Paige asked, and she pointed to the store on the corner.
“It looks like it,” I said. “Let’s check it out.”
We cleared the store quickly since it was fairly small, but it was still obviously ransacked, and all of the food items had been picked through. Only empty cans and chip bags were left.
“I found a few lighters behind the register,” I called out with a laugh.
“Um, you might want to see this,” Paige said.
“What is it?” I asked as I rushed over to her.
“This is where the medicine was,” the brunette said.
“Alright,” I agreed. “It looks like there’s still some here. Some Tums and anti gas medicine, but I don’t see any ibuprofen or Tylenol. That makes sense. Why’d you sound so alarmed?”
“This,” she said, and she pointed to an empty spot on the shelf.
I leaned down and read the description of what should have gone there. Paige had wiped the dust away, but the words were still hard to read and it took me a moment to realize what they said.
“Sudafed,” I sighed.
“Yeah,” Paige said, and she looked at me and bit her lip. “Someone came and grabbed all of it.”
“And sudafed is one of the key ingredients to making homemade meth,” I said.
“It could have been gone for a long time,” she said.
“Or those druggies could have come through and taken it,” I said. “That’s something we weren’t on the lookout in the other towns we’ve been to, but I bet it’s the same way.”
“Do you think they’re patrolling around here, then?” Paige asked.
“It’s possible,” I said. “But we’re not going to stick around to find out. We got what we came here for, I think it’s time for us to head out.”
“They would need another means to make meth,” Paige said. “They can’t use sudafed forever.”
“You’re right,” I said. “But since it’s missing we know they’ve been here. We don’t know when, but they could still be patrolling for it.”
“Yeah,” Paige agreed. “And the back of our truck is filled with pesticide right now, and it’s all flammable. We can’t get caught in any crossfire.”
“Let’s go find the others,” I said.
We hurried out of the convenience store and headed down to where Anna, Tara, and Bailey had gone.
“Anna,” I called out once we were far enough down the street.
“We’re in here,” the redhead called out from a house across the street.
Paige and I headed inside to see that it was a little dirty, but mostly well off considering the rest of the town.
“What’d you guys find?” Anna asked.
“Nothing good,” I told her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, and she set down the dishes she had been fiddling with.
“We found a convenience store with all of the sudafed missing,” Paige explained.
“That’s how you make meth, right?” Anna asked. “I’ve seen that show Breaking Bad.”
“Yeah,” Paige confirmed.
“I remember seeing that on the news a long time ago,” Bailey said. “You had to be over eighteen to buy it, and you could only buy like one box at a time because people were abusing it.”
“So what does it mean that it was all gone?” Tara asked.
“It means that druggies of some sort have come through here,” I said. “We need to head out.”
“Alright,” Anna said. “Let’s gather what we have and go.”
“You think they’re patrolling around here, too?” Tara asked.
“We’re not that far from Montpelier,” Paige said, and she bit her lip.
“They could be,” I said. “I can’t be sure, but right now we need to focus on getting our supplies back home.”
“The back of our truck is full of flammable pesticides,” Paige said.
“Let’s go,” Anna said, and she grabbed the dishes in front of her and headed outside.
We rushed outside and put everything into the back of the truck, secured it, and hopped in. I hadn’t seen anyone since we’d arrived, but I had no guarantee that those druggies weren’t around somewhere, or that they wouldn’t show up at some point, and that was enough for me. I didn’t like to run from conflict, but like Paige had said, we had a whole back of the truck filled with flammable materials, and I didn’t want to take any risks with it.
We already knew these guys were on patrol, and typically with more than one jeep full of guys. While I knew my team could take out another caravan no problem, we were also closer to home, and since we just took out the guys in Montpelier a day ago, it didn’t look good to have another group go missing. Whoever was in charge might get the sense that someone was after their guys, and if that was the case they could send groups out to search for them. That could lead them toward the campus, and I couldn’t have that. I didn’t know much about these guys yet, but I knew they had supplies and plenty of men, and that alone made them dangerous.
I headed out of town slowly in case anybody was around. I didn’t want to rev the engine and attract unnecessary attention to us, so I took it easy until we reached the treeline at the edge of the city, then I sped up and headed toward home.
“These guys seem to be showing up everywhere,” Anna said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We’ll need to be extra careful on our trip to Port Henry.”
“We already knew that,” Bailey said, “but this just makes it even worse.”
“We don’t know for sure it was the same guys,” Paige said. “Or how long that medicine has been missing. It could have been taken just after the EMP.”
“Paige is right,” I said. “But from now on whatever town we’re in we need to keep an eye out for drugs like that that are missing.”
“You think that will tell us where they’ve been?” Tara asked.
“It could,” I said. “But I can’t be sure.”
“Couldn’t someone just be addicted to meth and take the sudafed?” Anna asked. “Would that work?”
“No,” Paige said with a shake of her head. “They’d need to cook it. I don’t know exactly how it works, but taking just the medication isn’t enough.”
“So they had to have some knowledge of what to do,” Bailey said.
“Or know somebody who did,” Anna added.
We didn’t have any proof of who it was at that point, but something told me that it wasn’t random. I didn’t believe in coincidences, and this was too big of one to brush off. Something much larger was going on here with these drug addicts.
For now, though, we had bigger problems to worry about. We needed to head to Port Henry, pick up the others to help with the harvest, and we needed to get the women settled and all of their physicals done. There was plenty to do without worrying about these assholes for the time being.
We’d need to be careful and keep an eye out for anything suspicious on our trip, but our main priority was to get everything planted so we could have a good harvest.
Suddenly, I heard the roar of another engine.
“Is there someone behind us?” Anna asked.
“Shit,” I said, and I quickly pulled off the road and into the trees.
I drove far enough back that it would be difficult to see us from the main road, then I cut the engine off, but I could still hear the sound of another engine coming down the road.
We definitely weren’t alone.
Chapter 6
“Fuck,” Tara said. “We can’t catch a break around here.”
“Get out,” I instructed the girls. “Head to the tree line, we need to scope it out.”
“On it,” Bailey said, and she slung her M14 over her shoulder.
“Nobody shoot until I do,” I commanded.
“Alright,” Anna said, but she eyed me carefully.
“Hurry up,” I said as I ran toward the tree line. “Fan out.”
The girls did as I requested. They knew better than to argue with me when it came to combat. I always only had their best interest in mind, and while they were ready to take out whoever came our way, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, not yet at least.
I needed to know if these guys had seen us, and how many there were. If they had seen us, then we had to get rid of them, but if they hadn’t, then we needed to let them go. I didn’t want to draw any more attention to this area. We weren’t far from Montpelier, and we couldn’t have groups of their guys going missing, not with us being less than an hour’s drive away.
If these assholes came looking for whoever killed their buddies, then that was an issue I really didn’t want to have to deal with at the moment.
I reached the tree line and looked over to see where the girls were.
Anna was on my right, and Paige, Bailey, and Tara had gone to the left. They were all about fifteen feet away from one another, and they crouched down to get a good view of the road in front of us.
We had only gotten maybe two minutes outside of town, and I could clearly hear the engine rumble as it came down the road, but I couldn’t tell if there was more than one jeep yet or not.
Were they patrolling the roads that led to the city as well? If so, there was a chance that they were already patrolling out by campus, though from what I’d seen so far I would bet their patrols were centered around cities.
A jeep came around the bend. It was the same tan color as the others, and there were four men inside, each well armed. They stared out the windows and looked around. The driver took it slow, and they crept down the highway at a snail’s pace.
I waited to see if another jeep would come up behind them, but nobody seemed to be there.
It was possible that they hadn’t seen us, but maybe had heard us and were checking out the noise.
I eyed them carefully as they went along. If they got much further then they would be able to see where I had pulled off the road. Luckily, there was only one jeep this time, but I still didn’t want to display a pattern of missing jeeps that might get the boss interested.
The jeep stopped then, and the men looked around.
One of them hopped out and took a few steps down the road, then he spat some dip on the asphalt and scanned the area.
I could hear the low rumble of the engine as it idled, but I didn’t hear anything else, so I was confident that this was the only jeep patrolling this area. The town was very small, so it would make sense to only have one unit, but the guys that showed up at the Fort, and the ones we’d seen in Montpelier had all had more than one jeep with them. I had to wonder why they would only send one here, and not Montpelier. That town was smaller than this one. Was there something about Montpelier that made it more special? Was it closer to their hideout?
I looked over and saw Bailey laid beside her M14. I knew she had a shot, but I couldn’t let her take it, not yet at least. I had given my girls the order not to shoot until I did, and I knew they would oblige.
I set my scope on the driver just in case things went wrong, and I kept it there while the man who had gotten out looked around some more. He had on tight black jeans, cowboy boots, and a black shirt. He looked like he had been a hard ass at some point in his life, but he was in his thirties at least, and, as an old Captain of mine used to say, he looked like he’d been ridden hard and put up wet.
“What’s the hold up?” the driver called out the window.
“Hang on,” cowboy boots hollered back.
“Get back in the jeep,” the driver said. “There’s nobody here.”
“I swear I heard somebody,” cowboy boots insisted, and he kept looking around.
I kept my rifle locked in on the driver. If cowboy boots saw something, he was going to shoot, I knew that just by looking at him, and I’d need to be quick. Bailey had her sights on him already, but if I could get the driver, then these guys wouldn’t be headed anywhere and the fight would be over quickly.
