Without law 11, p.8
Without Law 11, page 8
“You didn’t hear shit,” another of the men in the jeep called.
“Fuck you, Carl!” cowboy boots yelled.
“Just get in the goddamned jeep,” the driver reiterated. “There’s nobody here. We checked it out and there’s nothing.”
“Even if you heard something, they’re gone now,” another guy called out.
Cowboy boots sneered and looked around once more, but then he snorted and hocked a loogie mixed with dip onto the pavement and muttered to himself as he walked back to the jeep and hopped in.
They headed back into town, and I waited until they were out of sight to go back to the jeep. The girls met me there, and they eyed me carefully.
“That was close,” Bailey said.
“Yeah,” Anna agreed. “Why didn’t we just take them out, though? We had the shot.”
“We just took out three of their jeeps,” I said.
“Right,” Paige said with a nod.
“Right, what?” Tara asked.
“It’d be suspicious for guys to disappear two days in a row,” Paige said. “That close together might mean they send people out to look for whoever did it.”
“Oh,” Bailey said with wide eyes. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It’s alright,” I told her. “But we need to play this carefully.”
“You think they’re patrolling the roads around here, too?” Paige asked.
“Probably,” I said. “But it seems like their attention is on the towns.”
“What’s so special about these towns?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Strange,” Paige said. “Well, let’s get out of here, that suspense got my adrenaline going.”
“We’ll give it a few more minutes,” I said. “That guy heard us earlier, I don’t want to risk that happening again.”
“He’s probably too busy yelling at Carl now to hear anything,” Tara snickered.
“You’re probably right,” I chuckled. “But we’ll still give it a few minutes. Paige, can you pull out your maps for a second?”
“Sure,” she said, and she reached into her bag. “What do you need?”
“I want to see something,” I said as I laid them out on the hood of the jeep.
“What are you looking for?” Anna asked.
“I want to see if there is anything linking these towns,” I said as I scanned the map.
“Let’s see,” Tara said, “we first saw these guys at the Fort.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Then in Montpelier.”
“And now, here,” Bailey added.
“The fort and the refinery are quite a ways away from up here,” Anna said.
“Is there a central location?” Paige asked.
“If we use the fort, Hinesburg, and Monteplier,” I said, and I drew a line with my fingers, “then we get a triangle that should show us a very rough idea where these people could be.”
“That puts them near us,” Paige said with wide eyes.
“It does,” I said, and my eyes narrowed as I looked at the map. If we followed the geographical locations and triangulated them, then it would mean that these guys had a hub near us, but somehow I didn’t think that was the case. We hadn’t seen anybody around us yet. That didn’t mean they weren’t coming, but I didn’t think their hideout was near us.
“Could we be missing spots?” Anna asked.
“Definitely,” I agreed. “This is just based on our experience, and I don’t think it’s completely accurate.”
“I hope not,” Bailey said. “It’s scary to think their outpost could be so close to us.”
“I don’t know where it is,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s near us. We would have seen or heard them. For now, we’re okay. We just have to be careful.”
“These guys really are popping up everywhere,” Anna said after we got back into the jeep.
“Spring has come,” I said. “These guys were probably around throughout winter, too, but now that it’s spring it’s easier to get around.”
“If they had fuel, they could have been wandering around during winter even,” Paige pointed out.
“Yeah,” Bailey said. “We didn’t leave the campus, though.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “That could be how they got established if they all needed shelter during winter. That could be how this group of guys got together.”
“Brody said the ones at the refinery were ex-national guard and former cops,” Anna said. “You think these guys are the same?”
“Probably some of them,” I said, and my eyebrows pinched together as I thought. “But not all of them, to be sure. Cowboy boots seemed more like a criminal than a soldier.”
“Totally got that vibe, too,” Tara said with a nod. “He definitely looked like he’d been to prison.”
“That’s rude,” Anna said.
“How is that rude?” Tara scoffed.
“It is pretty judgy,” Paige added.
“Tav said he looked like a criminal first!” Tara exclaimed with a point at me.
“Way to judge a book by its cover,” Anna tsked.
“You guys know he would have tried to kill us, right?” Tara asked.
I busted out laughing at the girls teasing the platinum blonde, then I turned the jeep on and pulled out onto the road once more.
When we arrived back home, the women’s group was there, and some of them were outside of the gym. I guessed they were waiting for their physicals.
“Oh, shoot,” Paige said. “I told Marla I could help with the physicals.”
“I’m sure she could still use you,” I told her. “You go, we’ll offload this stuff after she’s done.”
“Alright,” the brunette agreed, and she headed to the gym.
“I’m going to go say hi,” Bailey said.
“Offer them something to eat and some water,” I told her. As much as I wanted to go over myself, I knew it wasn’t a good idea. These women already didn’t trust men, and I wasn’t exactly slight in stature. I’d never hurt any of them, but they’d never trust that, and I couldn’t blame them for that. They had obviously been through a lot to get to this point.
“I’ll come with you,” Tara offered.
The two women headed over to the group of females that sat on benches that Rolly had built the year before. The women watched me from around them, but they smiled at my girls, and that was all I could ask for at the moment.
“You think they’ll ever get used to you?” Anna asked from beside me.
“I can’t blame them if they don’t,” I told her.
“That’s true,” the redhead said. “They’ve obviously been hurt more than once.”
“We’ll do what we can to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” I said.
“I know,” Anna said, and she smiled up at me, then stood on her tiptoes to kiss my chin.
“What’d they say?” I asked Tara and Bailey as they headed back over to us.
“Betty made them some lunch already,” Bailey said.
“Yeah,” Tara agreed. “And they said that they were good on water.”
“I wonder if they already got showers,” I said.
“Most of them,” Bailey said. “But there’s still a couple in there right now. I figure we should probably wait out here until they’re done.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said. “I don’t want to make them uncomfortable.”
“I think the rest of the guys are down with the cows,” Tara said.
“Why do you think that?” I asked.
“They said they went down that way,” Bailey said with a point.
“I’ll go check in on them,” I said.
“Alright,” Bailey agreed. “We’ll see how much longer the physicals will be.”
“Someone find Betty and have her come look at what we got, too,” I instructed.
“Aye, aye, captain,” Anna said with a sloppy salute.
I headed down the small driveway that led to the barn where the cows were, and before I was even halfway down I could hear the men talking.
As I got closer, I could see that they had the cows out and they were grazing on the grass that had grown in the yards of the abandoned houses that were around.
“Hey,” I called out as I approached. “How’s it goin’ down here?”
“It’s goin’ alright,” Rolly said, and I looked around to see that he sat on a wooden fence behind a few guys.
“Hey old timer,” I said. “I didn’t expect to see you down here, too.”
“Just because I’m old doesn’t mean my thing fell off,” he chuckled.
“I’d hope not,” I laughed. “You all didn’t have to come down here, you know.”
“Yeah, we know,” he said, and he rubbed his neck. “We wanted to give them some privacy, though.”
“They looked so scared of us,” Jeff said with a shake of his head. “We didn’t want them to have any reason to feel threatened. Besides, the cows needed some grazing time today.”
“I appreciate the work,” I told him with a smile. “And the understanding.”
“We all have women that we love,” Rolly said. “I’d never want them to feel the way those women do.”
“I know,” I told him.
“I just wonder how it’s gonna work when we’re out planting,” Jeff said, and he tugged on his red beard.
“We’re going to split everyone up,” I said. “And the women will have their own groups.”
“Alright,” Jeff said. “We’ll all need to be really careful, though.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “And again, I appreciate you all taking the consideration. Just try to avoid getting too close to them, especially if they happen to be alone. I don’t think they’d hurt you--”
“They’d think we’d hurt them,” Jeff interrupted.
“Right,” I said softly. “They’ll warm up to us, though. At least, I hope they will.”
“I’m hoping that we can show them that not all men are assholes,” Rolly told me with a grin, and he passed me a flask.
“Cheers to that,” I chuckled and took a swig.
I stayed down with the men and drank and watched the cows graze. We had some babies now, though a couple were still pregnant, and the babies played and nursed and were absolutely adorable. It’d been a while since I’d spent some quality time with the livestock, and I had forgotten that we’d had so many give birth.
Eventually some of them would become beef, but for now they were safe, and we were focused on building up the herd. There was plenty of grass around now, and Briar’s alfalfa fields would grow back on their own, so we’d harvest them come fall, all we had to do was water them throughout the summer.
I smiled and chatted with the boys about the planting we’d do, and we traded some fight stories, as men tend to do when they’re left alone, but I didn’t bring up our encounter with the druggies. I didn’t want anyone to worry yet. Rolly was the only one I trusted with that information, but it would have to wait until later when we were all alone.
Eventually, the girls came down and said we were clear to come back to campus, that the women had left. So, we put away the cows and made the trek back up to the dorms. It was late afternoon by then, and the day had grown cool, so I thought it might be a nice night for a fire.
“Let’s eat outside tonight,” I suggested.
“Sounds good to me,” Rolly said. “I’ll get a fire going.”
“I’ll help,” Bailey offered.
“Anna,” I said, “did you find Betty?”
“Yeah,” the redhead confirmed. “She looked at the stuff we got and said it was what we needed, and that we should have more than plenty.”
“Great,” I said. “We need to offload it now.”
We headed over to the jeep to start offloading the pesticides, but Marla came out of the gym just then, and I called her over to me.
“How’d they all look, doc?” I asked with concern. “Did you have enough supplies?”
“Oh yes,” Marla told me. “Most everyone was perfectly fine.”
“Most everyone?” I repeated.
“There was one woman with a nasty gash on her leg,” Marla said.
“It was infected,” Paige added.
“She’s lucky she got here when she did,” Marla sighed.
“You had antibiotics to give her?” I asked.
“Yes,” Marla confirmed. “And we gave her some topical antibiotics as well. She should be good as new in a couple of weeks, but I told her that I want to check up on her periodically, and that she might have to sit out a few days of work at first.”
“Whatever she needs,” I said with a nod. “And the kids were healthy?”
“Really healthy,” Paige said. “They’re doing great.”
“She’s right,” Marla said. “Aside from that one injury, everyone looked fine.”
“Did she say how she got it?” I asked.
“She said that she cut it while out in the woods,” Marla said. “I don’t think she was lying.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Marla.”
“Anytime,” she told me with a clap on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Anna said after Marla had gone. “I just thought of something.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We keep all of our food in the gym,” the redhead said. “Should we really put the pesticide in there, too?”
“You’re right,” I agreed. I’d thought to put it in the gym as a force of habit, but I should have considered that earlier. “We’ll see what we can fit into Rolly’s shed.”
“Or the science building,” Paige said. “It’s available.”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “Let’s put it in there.”
“Let’s do this,” Anna said, and she grabbed a couple of buckets of the stuff from the back of the truck.
Everyone pitched in to help, and soon we had everything offloaded and put into the science building. The place was barely used, and we had taken out part of the insulation the fall before to get our water pipe run, so it was kind of a mess. Still, we had a lot of space on campus, so we might as well use it.
After the pesticides were put away, I headed over to the fire pit to find that Rolly had already got it going. I sat down and extended my feet toward the flames. The sun dipped low below the horizon, and I knew it would be dark soon.
Everyone gathered around slowly. Some people still sat in the grass in the courtyard and talked, others played card games or sat around the fire, but it was nice to see everyone together, especially with the work we would have to put in soon.
The farmers and civilians already worked hard every day, but planting would probably be the most difficult thing they’d done in a while. I didn’t have much experience with it, but I knew that it was strenuous labor, and that it involved being on your feet for hours on end. I was confident that everyone could handle it, but we’d need to keep their spirits up so they didn’t get too fed up with the work.
“Hey, everybody,” I said, and I stood up and watched their eyes turn to me as they grew quiet. “I just wanted to say thank you for all your hard work. You do so much every single day, and it’s going to get harder once we start planting, but I just wanted to say that I believe in us as a family, and I believe in all of you, and I appreciate everything you do.”
“You’re gonna make us blush!” Jeff called out, and everyone laughed.
“Sorry for the sentimental intrusion,” I chuckled. “Go back to what you were doing, I’ll start dinner.”
“You’re going to make dinner?” Rolly asked me as I sat back down.
“I think I could figure something out,” I said. “It’s not fair to make Tara and Betty and Kimmy cook all the time.”
“You know what,” the old man said with a smile. “I’ll help you.”
“That sounds like a plan,” I told him with a grin.
Rolly and I headed to the gym to pick up some supplies for dinner, but once we were in there, it was quiet for several minutes before he spoke.
“You gonna tell me what got you riled up earlier?” he asked.
“You noticed that, huh?” I responded.
“I’m old,” he chuckled. “Not blind.”
“I know,” I told him. “We just had another run in with some druggies.”
“Another one?” he asked, and he looked at me with wide eyes. “That’s pretty soon.”
“It is,” I agreed.
“So, what happened?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “They didn’t see us, so we waited for them to leave. I don’t want anybody to come looking for the guys who keep taking out their men.”
“Wouldn’t they be surprised with what they found,” Rolly chuckled.
“I suppose they would,” I laughed.
“I think that was a good call,” he said. “Not engaging if you didn’t have to. Sometimes it's better to play the long game.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here to hold the fort down for us. We miss you on the road, though.”
“I miss it, too,” he sighed. “Somewhat at least. Mostly, though, I’m just happy to be here with Betty. Things feel right with her.”
“I can tell,” I told him.
“That doesn’t mean I want to be out of the loop, though,” he said. “I still want to know what’s going on. I know it’s more difficult since you all are out and about.”
“I always try to make sure you’re in the know,” I assured him with a clap on the shoulder. “You’re one of the people I rely on most to give me insights. I can’t lose that.”
“Thanks,” the old man said, and he put his hand on mine.
“So, what are we making for dinner?” I asked.
“Donna bagged a deer just two days ago,” he said. “We’ll need to use up some of that meat. It’s guys’ night to cook, so I’m thinkin’ we break out the grill.”
“Barbecue,” I said. “I like it. You think we could get Betty to make some buns for us, though?”
“I’m sure we can,” he said. “It’s a nice night, and if Tara helps, it shouldn’t take too long.”
“The only thing that could make it better would be a cold beer,” I said.
“I’ve been drawing up some designs for that,” the old man told me with a grin.
