Ashes of the unspeakable, p.10
Ashes of the Unspeakable, page 10
“Help me find water. I need to rinse my eyes.”
Randi dug around in his pack and found a bottle. She poured it across his open eyes and it washed the remaining ashes and grit free. He now realized how lucky he’d been. Someone out there in the dark had taken a head shot at him but missed, hitting the embers.
When she was done, Jim’s eyes still burned, but he could see a lot better. They searched their attacker’s body, finding some 9mm ammunition and a pistol to go with it. There was a hunting knife, a lighter, and that was it.
“He must have stashed the rest of his gear somewhere else,” Jim said.
“We need to find Gary,” Randi said.
“We will. I’m hoping he remembered his light stick, like you did.”
“Sorry about that. I think I broke mine.”
“I’ll forgive you this once.”
Jim dug into his pack, feeling a rush of panic that the night vision monocular might have been hit by the bullet that struck his pack. Thankfully, it was safe and secure in the nylon pouch that he stored it in. He held the device to his head, pushed the On button, then the second button that powered the IR spotlight attached to the device. The IR spotlight increased the range greatly.
“Holy shit,” Jim whispered.
“What?”
He handed Randi the night vision device. “Look at the body.”
In stabbing the chemical light stick into the man’s ear, Randi had successfully broken the small glass vial inside it and activated the IR chemical reaction. The light stick had been jammed so violently into his ear that the plastic capsule inside had ruptured, leaking the chemical all over the side of the man’s head and allowing it to run into the gaping wound of his slit throat. In the green glow of the night vision device, all of this glowed brilliantly and ghastly.
“Holy shit is right. I could have gone all damn day without seeing that. Thanks a lot.”
Jim took the device back and scanned the surrounding woods with it, seeing nothing. “Logic tells me that we should hide out, but I think we need to try to find Gary tonight. If I can spot the glow of his light stick, it will make finding him a lot easier. If we have to search for him in these woods in the daylight we may never hook back up. What do you think of hanging out here and letting me look for him?”
“What do you think of kissing my ass?” Randi countered. “I am not being left here with a glowing corpse.”
“Without the night vision you can’t see that he’s glowing.”
“I’ll still know he’s glowing, even if I can’t see it. I’m not staying here alone.”
Accepting that he couldn’t win this argument, Jim walked down the trail with Randi in tow. He had the night vision monocular glued to his eye and the heavy Gregory pack strapped on his back. Randi had been forced to abandon her gear at the campsite, but there was nothing critical in there. If they found Gary, his pack, along with Jim’s, would have enough food and supplies for the three of them.
After a couple of hundred feet, they crept out of the woods and the valley opened up before them. They could see the corral below, their fire still blazing as several men heaped their firewood upon it. Jim lowered his monocular and watched the men go through the gear they’d left behind. Some of it was gear they’d planned to abandon. The rest of it was gear they’d planned on taking with them on the back of the ATVs – the coolers, their boxed food, extra ammunition. Jim counted three men and assumed there could be others out there looking for them. There was no gear down there worth dying for. Not even the ATVs. Those men could have it.
He raised the monocular back to his eye and began scanning the darkness. To their left, at a distance of around fifty yards or so, he saw an IR light stick hanging from a tree. He felt a wave of relief that Gary had remembered to use it.
“I see the light.”
They made their way to Gary as quietly as possible, announcing themselves as they approached to avoid being shot. They were pleased to find Gary intact and uninjured. He had his bug out bag and his weapons, although he’d not been able to get any of his extra food or gear from his ATV.
“I say we leave it,” he said. “Let’s start walking and walk through the night. This place could be crawling with people tomorrow. We don’t even know how many there are. If we keep going we can hole up in the morning and get some sleep.”
Randi and Jim agreed.
“You know that was stupid of us, Gary,” Jim said. “We thought we had the world to ourselves up here. We should have known better. We can’t assume any place is safe anymore. We need to remember that and make sure we don’t get caught off-guard again or we’re not going to make it home.”
Chapter 8
The Cave
Russell County, Virginia
Ellen was making an after dinner cup of tea when Pete approached her with an unusually serious demeanor. “I want to talk to you about something.”
“Then talk,” she said, smiling. “I’m listening.”
“Not like this,” he said. “I want us to go outside and sit down and talk. Just us, with no interruptions, and I want you to listen.”
Impressed by his seriousness and mature approach¸ Ellen agreed. “Let me finish making this tea and I’ll join you at the picnic table outside.” She looked around. Ariel was playing a game with Pops. Nana was laying down on her cot. She’d been feeling under the weather today and had spent most of the day in her sleeping bag.
Pete was waiting for her when she went outside a few minutes later. “I want to help protect the camp.”
About halfway through the sentence she knew where he was going with this and was already turning off her ears, preparing her rebuttal.
“Listen to me, Mom,” he pleaded, sensing it. “Don’t say no yet.”
She folded her hands in her lap, forcing herself to bite her tongue and listen. “Okay.”
“I’ve been helping out a lot, haven’t I?”
She nodded. “You have.”
“I’ve been building the fire in the woodstove each morning.”
“You have.”
“I’ve been bringing in a supply of wood, splitting kindling, and I’ve even got more firewood piled up outside in case we can’t go get any for a few days.”
She took a controlled sip of her tea. It was still too hot. “Yes, that’s all true.”
“I’m trying to help out with Dad gone,” Pete said. “I’m trying to think about the things he would want us doing.”
“That’s what we’re all trying to do. He left us that manual and I’ve been trying to follow it.”
“Yes, but he told me things,” Pete said. “I’m remembering more and more stuff all the time that he taught me but didn’t write down in that book. I didn’t always pay attention because it seemed farfetched. You know how Dad was about all this stuff.”
Ellen felt a pang. She did remember how he was and it hurt. “Like what? What do you remember that we’re not doing?”
“Like we need to be keeping a better eye on things. We’re holed up in this cave and we’re safe, but everything else is unprotected.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care about the house, I care about you and Ariel, and Nana and Pops.”
Pete’s look made her uncomfortable. He was pleading. “I care about them too, and that’s part of why I need you to let me start keeping an eye on things.”
She gave him a wary look, certain that she would not be ready to hear whatever he was proposing. She had to admit, though, that he’d been demonstrating more and more maturity. She owed it to him to hear him out. “Okay. Continue.”
“We need an observation post,” Pete explained. “We cannot see our house. We can’t see our driveway. We can’t even see the main road to see what’s going by. That’s not safe. People could be moving in on us right now and we wouldn’t know they were coming.”
“I will not have you walking the property looking for trouble,” Ellen said. “I told you, there’s nothing out there that’s worth your life.”
Pete sighed. “I’m not talking about walking around. That would be a patrol, anyway, not an observation post. I’m telling you that we need an observation post, a concealed location where we can see around us and I can keep an eye on things. If trouble is coming, we need to know about it. The only way we can make sure this cave stays secret is by not letting people close to it. We don’t know if people are on our property or not. What if they are and they see the tire tracks coming down here? What if they follow the tracks and they pen us up in here for a long time? Or what if they just watch for us and pick us off one-by-one?”
Ellen looked Pete in the eye. “I’m not sure I could handle you doing that. I’d worry constantly.”
“We can use the radios. We can check in together as often as you want to.”
She thought about it, turning it over in her head. “Did you have a spot in mind?”
He nodded. “There’s an old fallen tree on the hill above us. It’s surrounded by tall grass and those wild rose bushes that Dad hates. I could get in there with a small spotting scope and see what’s going on all around us. I could pile up more grass and branches and build a nest up there that would keep me hidden. No one would know I was there.”
“Did you come up with that idea all on your own?” Ellen asked, genuinely curious if he was thinking that strategically now.
“No. Dad talked about it once. He wanted to build something permanent up there but hadn’t got around to it yet.”
She had to admit it did sound like a good idea. “There would be rules. You would only be up there to look, not start shooting at anyone, not without my permission.”
“I know that, Mom,” Pete said. “I want to have guns in case I need them. I’ve already thought that I want to carry that Smith & Wesson M&P 22 pistol because I’ve shot it a million times and I know how to work it. I want to take my deer rifle because I’m good with it. It’s got a scope so I can see a good distance with it.”
Ellen was impressed that his choices were so practical. She had expected him to want a .45 caliber pistol and either the AR-15 or Mini-14. His choices displayed forethought and planning, displaying the same maturity that he seemed to be showing every day now. Still, he was her child and sending him outside the cave on such a mission scared the hell out of her. She acknowledged, however, that it was something that had to be done. They’d been lucky so far, and that streak might not continue.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll try it.”
*
The next morning, Pete finished his chores around the cave, restocking the firewood they’d used the previous night. He emptied the ashes from the woodstove, took them outside, and scattered them. When his mother agreed that he’d done all he needed to do, he announced his intention to go start setting up his observation post. Ellen assisted him with preparing his gear. She pulled the .22 pistol from its case, placed a loaded magazine in the weapon, and chambered a round. She made sure the safety was on, then placed the weapon in the holster on his – Jim’s – tactical vest. She dug extra magazines, loaded the previous night, from the pistol case and gave them to him, letting him stow them as he preferred. She knew he’d organized the vest meticulously and would not want her tampering with his system.
Next, she got his .270 hunting rifle. It was a Ruger American rifle. She pulled a box of ammunition from a storage tote. “Go ahead and load it,” she told him. “Don’t chamber a round until you’re outside the cave.”
Together, they loaded a backpack with a short tripod, a spotting scope, a fleece camping blanket for him to lie on, and a cheap set of binoculars. He picked up his radio and hung it in a chest pouch beside the pistol. Even though the radio was rechargeable, it worked on AA batteries, and Pete pocketed a spare set for when the rechargeables ran down. When he was geared up, Ellen hugged him long and hard.
“I love you, Pete.”
“Love you too. You don’t have to say it like I’m marching off to war.”
She hoped that was true – that he was not marching off to war.
She followed Pete outside and watched him stride off. He seemed excited, anxious to assume the role he was carving for himself. From the back, without the face of her child visible, he looked like a man determinedly setting about a task. He walked across the field, coming and going from view as he followed the contours of the land. When he reached the hillside below his destination, Ellen thought of when she dropped him off at school when he was little, waiting to see that he reached the door safely. When he reached the top, he dropped from view and began laying out his gear. She could see this from where she sat, but as he settled in and built the walls of his nest she gradually lost sight of him. He was disappearing in plain sight.
Ellen turned to go inside. Nana had been coughing a lot and Pops was concerned that the damp air of the cave was causing her to develop some type of respiratory infection. They’d kept the stove going nearly all the time, trying to make sure their chamber stayed warm. The stove did dry things out slightly, but a cave with an open water source running through it could only get so dry.
“Mom?”
She frantically pulled her radio from her back pocket.
There was a note of something in his voice but she wasn’t sure what it was.
“What’s the matter, baby?”
“There’s something at the gate.”
There was definitely something in his voice. Something ominous. “What is it?”
Silence.
“I’m not sure,” he finally said. “It might be something we need to go look at.”
“Let me get Pops. He and I will drive down there and look at it. You stay up there to provide cover in case anything weird happens.”
In case it’s a trap, she thought.
*
Descending the driveway in Ellen’s Suburban, she and Pops could see shapes at the gate but could not tell what they were. It almost looked like two people were hunched down in front of the gate, peering through it. This angered Ellen. She thought she’d made herself clear to the folks that had been bothering them, but apparently they weren’t getting the message. She was becoming exasperated with them. Though she was not a cruel, heartless person, Jim had made her read several books where people in disasters shared their food with someone or disclosed that they had made some level of preparation for disasters. It always turned out the same way. Those people ended up on your doorstep wanting your supplies and ready to take them by force. If that didn’t work, they kept coming back with more and more people until things ended badly. She could not soften her resolve. She could not weaken.
She wove through the maze of steel beams that Pops and Pete had left in the road as obstacles. The idea wasn’t to completely block their driveway, but instead to slow down anyone trying to rush toward their house. It worked, because it took her several minutes to make her way close to the gate. She neared it and stopped the vehicle about thirty feet away. She stared out the windshield at the sight before her, words temporarily failing her. She started to get out but Pops put his hand on her arm. It was a light touch, reflexive on his part, but she knew that the intention was to prevent her from getting out. He apparently had no words either.
In front of her, their dear friend and neighbors, Henry and Kathy Sullivan, hung dead from the gate. The bodies were inside the gate and facing her. They were about five feet apart, their arms extended as if they’d been crucified, their fingers touching almost poignantly. Barbed wire bound their arms to a cross-member of the gate, tracing Kathy’s, wrapping her neck, following the opposite arm, then jumping between the bodies and binding Henry’s arms to the rusty red gate in the same manner. The gate was not tall enough for them to be truly suspended in crucifixion, and their legs were bent at the knee, their feet extending back through the gate. Either to prevent the feet from dragging or to hold the heads up, a strand of barbed wire was wrapped around their ankles and then stretched to their heads, wrapping around the forehead of each corpse. The heads gazed upward as if staring at the sun. The pose left them with a ghastly bearing, their faces void of familiar characteristics due to swelling and injury, the tangle of wire making their bodies appear to be the bloated fruit of some encroaching thorny vine.
It was not clear how they’d died, but each wore a mask of clotted encrustation that bespoke violence and horror. If Ellen had to guess, she would say that the pair had been shot in the face or beaten to death. Her heart broke for the sweet, thoughtful neighbors who had been so kind to her family. She wondered if their son had been killed. She would have to try and raise him on the radio. If he were alive he would need to know about this. “Who would do something like this?” Pops asked.
Ellen considered the question for a long time. “It’s a what,” Ellen said, her voice sounding too loud in the insular environment of the car. “Not a who, but a what.”
“Surely you don’t think an animal…?”
“A human animal,” Ellen finished.
Pops turned this over in his head. “Why?”
“They want us out of here,” she said. “If they wanted to kill us, they would probably be trying harder to do so. I think they want us to leave so they can have our stuff.”
Pops shook his head, unable to take his eyes from the bodies before them. He’d once been a high school principal, and Henry Sullivan had been one of his students. “How can we ever survive in a world like this, Ellen? How can the kids survive this? If people can do something like this just to send a message, then how do you deal with it? How can you possibly interact with people who have gone so far beyond the boundaries of what’s acceptable in civilized society?”
“You can’t interact with them, Pops. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. It’s what Jim tried to drill into my head. In every disaster, morality behaves like floodwater seeking a new level. It establishes a new normal – a new morality. Like with Hurricane Katrina, the new morality for a nurse may be that she feels she needs to euthanize her critical care patients so that they don’t die a miserable death from lack of oxygen. A cop in the same disaster may decide that the new acceptable punishment for theft is immediate execution because there is no longer a functioning system for arrest, detention, and trial. Every person has to determine their own new morality and sometimes it revolves on hairpin, split-second decisions. What is acceptable to me now is a whole lot different than what was acceptable a few weeks ago.”
