Dark Days Rough Roads (37 page)

“We never
heard of you.”

“Well, we
never heard of you either until this morning. Let’s cut to the chase. I don’t
care if you know me or not, but all we are looking for is some info. We had a
citizen give us this frequency after they said they called for help and you
answered.”

“Go
ahead, what do you want?” the minute man asked.

Howe
continued. “We had some problems last night and this evening. We have some kind
of gang causing problems. Lighting fires and shooting at people to scare them.
We had a few trucks come through yesterday afternoon, but we lost track of
them. The worst part though is they have some motorcycles causing troubles. You
guys have any information on them at all?”

“No we
don’t. We haven’t had any problems at all up here except for some local people
looting. But the police are handling it. If we have any other information, we’ll
call you on this frequency. We monitor it, but that’s all. We wish you luck.”
Haliday shook his head. These guys are some cool players. Protecting their
little country, lying through their teeth, they really are something else.
Tomorrow night they’d be put to the test.

Haliday
called the group before they settled in for the night. “Make sure you guys go
over everything again and again. I can’t tell you guys enough how important it
is. There are going to be a lot of people depending on us, but what you have to
consider before anything else is your safety and the safety of everyone around
you. Ok, we’re getting some sleep. Talk to you in the morning.”

This
morning was a busy one. Rob had taken the scooter and made his rounds to make
sure everyone was going to be ready. Haliday and Blake double-checked
everything and loaded up the bikes to get ready. Rich, Bev, David, Dawn, and
Randy got the Cherokee and Tahoe ready. They too were packed and ready. Kayla
helped them go over everything and then made sure the house was ready. She
would be staying with Sarah, Kevin, Bobby, Karen, Diana, and Elizabeth at the
house.

Rich was
driving the Cherokee and David the Tahoe. They headed out and northwest toward
the western shoreline of the Thumb. They had with them quite a few little
packages. Their main area of operation was going to be the Caseville area and
along that shoreline. As they approached the area, they would stop on occasion.
Timed surprises to help keep the militia on edge.

It was
early afternoon and over at the airport, a crowd started to gather near the
front gate. The militia warned them to leave and they did. They went about a
quarter of a mile down to a feed store. They lit up a couple of burn barrels
and stood around. The crowd increased in size, drawing the attention of the
militia. They had a patrol drive by about every 10 minutes.

*****

Over in
the Caseville area, the two vehicles pulled into the parking lot of a small
grocery store. A militia patrol pulled in behind them. They got out and
approached the vehicles with their weapons at the ready. A few minutes later
another patrol pulled in to assist them. They ordered the group out of the
vehicles.

David and
Dawn got out first. Randy got out of the Cherokee and walked over to the
driver’s door. He opened it and Rich got out. Rich leaned up against the fender
playing the feeble old man. Randy went and opened Bev’s door and helped her get
out. He pulled out a small stool and she sat down. The militia approached them.

“Who are
you people?” David explained that it was his wife and son, and his parents.
They lived in Warren and came up here to bug out.

“Where
are you planning on going exactly?”

“We have
a small cabin on Rose Island. That’s where we are heading to.”

“You guys
have ID?” Rich walked over slowly and gave him his drivers license. The address
was in Warren.

The man
from the militia looked over at Randy and the rest. “You guys have ID?” Dawn
said no, David pulled his out.

The guy
said, “This says Roseville.”

David
spoke, “Ya, my parents live in Warren. We live in Roseville and Randy lives in St. Clair Shores. We all made it to my parents’ house where we stayed until it started
getting bad with riots and looters. Look at my truck, they were shooting at
everything just to shoot, it’s loaded with bullet holes. We decided to head to
the cabin.”

Over by
the airport the crowd had grown to almost 50 people. They started walking back toward
the airport’s main gate. When they got there, the militia doubled up the
manpower at the gate and told them to go away. Rob demanded that he talk to the
militia’s leader. The crowd called the militia Nazis, criminals, thugs, crooks
and a few other choice words. There were men, women and older teenagers.

Back in
the parking lot the militia told David and his group that they were the
authority for the Thumb Region. They insisted on searching the vehicles. David
and the group protested, but the militia convinced them by raising their
rifles. The militia pulled everything out of the vehicles. They just tossed it
all on the ground.

Sleeping
bags, camp stove fuel, clothing, food and some odds and ends. One of the
militia opened up a blanket and laid it on the ground. He placed a small .22
rifle on it along with a couple of Mosin Nagants and an older 12 gauge shotgun.
Another guy put down two ammo cans filled with various ammo for the guns and
opened it.

“I see
boxes of 9mm. You guys have any pistols on you?”

David
said, “Yes, I have a 9mm under my coat.” They told him to raise his hands which
he did. One of the guys went and took the gun from him and then patted him
down. He told everyone else to stand up as well. They completed the search and
didn’t find anything else.

“Here’s a
list of rules of the area. I suggest you go to your cabin and stay there. Check
in once in a while in case we have information for you. We post bulletins
regularly. You damn vacationers think you can just come up here and do whatever
you want and it makes me sick. If I had it my way, we’d be shooting all of you
useless assholes.

“We’re keeping
the guns, that’s our law. You might want to think seriously about how long you
plan on staying. Spring would be a great time to move the hell back to wherever
you guys came from.” A third patrol had approached and watched the activity.
David saw them talking on the radio. They heard him say that they didn’t find
any truck tracks at the marina, just the bike tracks. They got another call and
then they left. The other two patrols stayed behind, but David could tell they
were getting anxious about something.

*****

Haliday
and Blake started to head toward the airport. They were following the path they
previously had taken. Haliday would be taking a different path and he split off
from Blake. Blake continued on for about half a mile. He stopped and waited. As
he was sitting there the patrols quad came up along the wood line. Blake took
off to try and avoid the quad.

The quad
was following Blake as he tried to lose him. The quad was catching up to Blake
slowly. Blake tried to get into the woods, but he couldn’t find an opening. He
looked back and the quad was even closer. He laid on the throttle, but the bike
became unstable and bounced around too much, so he slowed down.

He
spotted an opening in the woods and shot toward it. Just after he entered the
woods, he hit a patch of leaves and dumped the bike down sideways and slid. He
got up and started running down the path with the quad behind him. The quad
gunned it and blasted into the woods.

The
rider’s arms were whipped backward and the pressure on his chest tore him from
the quad. He landed on his back and rolled around in pain. Haliday had wrapped
a piece of small coated wire cable around one tree and anchored it. Then he had
fed the end through an eye bolt on another tree. As soon as Blake had laid down
the bike, Haliday pulled the cable and wrapped the end around the eyebolt for
strength. It knocked the rider of the quad off.

Haliday
walked up and stepped on the man’s arm as Blake ran up. He pointed his .40 at
him. “You guys don’t learn do you? Still out here playing army and trying to
run your own little country?” The guy just looked up at him. He had to be only
18 or 19 years old. Haliday bent down, flipped him over, and applied some flex
cuffs.

He
searched the kid and pulled off a pistol, a couple of magazines and a knife.
“Blake, gather all the rest of his gear, that rifle and everything. Take the
quad and run it back to where we came from. I’ll be right there after I finish
with this kid.” Blake did as he was told. He put everything in the pole barn and
threw an old tarp over it. Haliday swung by and picked him and took him back to
his bike.

The kid
was sitting up against a tree and was tied to it. He wouldn’t be going anywhere
at all. This kid was probably patrolling the wood line and east side of the airport
where they would need to be. He looked at the kid. “I’m going to let you sit
here and then have someone come get you later. Find Jesus while we’re gone.
Find Allah for all I care. But get right with your Maker.”

“You
aren’t going to shoot him?”

“No, he
can stand trial with the rest of them or they can do whatever they want with
him, but I’m not going to do it. I should, but he didn’t fire on us or try, at
least not yet. Rules of engagement in a sense, a twisted sense though. I did
talk to him for a few minutes though.

“The kid
basically told me to screw off. He told me they were the new government in the
area and they applied new laws to the area. That’s about all he said. Kept
repeating it over and over along with saying how we were going to get what we
had coming to us. Not a very smart kid either. No understanding of what the law
really is.

“Let’s
go, we’ve got to be in place very soon.” They made their way back to the
northeast corner of the airport where they had been before. It was completely dark
out now. They got busy getting ready. This would be more interesting than just
watching what was going on.

The crowd
at the airport gate had grown to almost 80 people now. They were still
demanding to talk to the militia leader. They were still calling them names and
such. Someone dragged over a barrel and lit a fire in it. The militia had
called in half of their patrol units and everyone in the airport compound was
on alert and ready.

*****

David and
everyone had started packing up their gear slowly. They tried talking to the
militia, but the responses were short and rude. Randy came from the Tahoe, “Hey
Uncle David, the Tahoe has a flat. Can you help me change it?”

“Ya, give
me a minute. Mom, Dad, you guys wait in the Cherokee where it’s warm. Dawn,
pull it up next to the Tahoe so we can change the tire. I need the jack and lug
wrench out of the Cherokee.”

“Randy,
can you get under there and get that spare loose?” Randy laid down and worked
on the tire. Off in the distance, they heard a series of small explosions.
Randy sat up. The militia sent one of the trucks down the street to check it
out.

One of
the two remaining guys yelled at Randy, “Get the damn tire changed already.”
Randy got back under and worked on getting the tire down.

Rich got
out of the Cherokee. The militia man asked him, “Where you going?”

“I have
to pee. Can’t I go pee?” Rich answered.

The guy
told him, “No, you can hold it.”

Rich
looked at him, “I can’t hold it. I’m 75 years old.”

“Piss
your pants then, old man,” the guy replied. “We ain’t letting you piss all over
the place.”

Dawn got
out now. “Let the man go the bathroom for God’s sake.”

“Shut up
bitch.”

“Don’t
call me a bitch.”

The guy
lowered his rifle and flipped her off. “Screw you bitch.”

Dawn
said, “All he wants to do is go to the bathroom, ok? What if I take a bucket
out for him?”

“I don’t
give a shit. Like I said, let him piss his pants. Should have put on some
Depends, old man.”

Dawn
called him an asshole. The guy by their truck called him, “Hey, we got a big problem,
we have to go.”

“Rich, as
soon as they leave you can go.” The militia man walked up and slapped Dawn.

Rich bent
down a bit and said, “Don’t hurt us.” Dawn cowered down and covered her head.

“You
start to listen to us from now on you stupid bitch.”

“Leave me
alone you bastard.” The other militia man started walking toward them. The guy
called Dawn a bitch again and raised his hand to hit her again.

David
squeezed the trigger five times, hitting the man three times. Randy fired his
shotgun once at the second man, pumped it and then fired again. David walked up
and checked the guy; he wasn’t dead, but just lying there. He kicked away his
rifle and grabbed his pistol from his belt. Randy yelled over that the second
guy was dead. “Uncle Roger was right. Buckshot is good stuff.”

They
grabbed all of the gear that they could and tossed it into the vehicles. Randy
grabbed a can of compressed air and filled the Tahoe’s tire. He walked over to
the militia vehicle and using a knife flattened all four tires. They took
whatever was in the truck and put it in their own. They took off as soon as
they could. They left the injured man just lying there.