Jernigan's War
Authors: Ken Gallender
KEN GALLENDER
KEN GALLENDER
JERNIGAN’S WAR
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents and places are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2013 by Kenneth Joe Gallender
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information you may contact Jernigan’s War by sending an email to:
[email protected]
Special thanks goes to Betty Dunaway Gallender whose devotion and collaboration help make this and subsequent books possible.
Special mention goes to Billie Emrick Gallender who was born in 1930 and raised in the depths of the Great Depression. It was Billie who instilled the fear of being unprepared, having been raised in abject poverty in the Louisiana Delta. She lived in fear that America would return to the desperation that existed in her youth. She also envisioned and feared what we are beginning to witness in America and the world.
ISBN: 1482634457
ISBN 13: 9781482634457
eBook ISBN: 978-1-63001-952-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013903995
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
BIOGRAPHY
Ken Gallender has always been able to spin a yarn. As all good southerners do, Ken likes to “visit” with people putting them at their ease with his warm personality and subtle wit. Ken lives in Gulfport, MS, with his wife, dog, two grand dogs and three grand cats. He is an avid outdoorsman having spent countless days on his Grandfather’s farm in the Louisiana Delta, walking turn rows, hunting and fishing. His great love for his family and country has guided his entire life. Ken’s motto has always been “Family Comes First, Take Care of Family.” His greatest fear is having his country descend into chaos at the hands of witless voters and corrupt politicians willing to take advantage of them.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 7: THE ENEMY APPROACHES
CHAPTER 9: MORE MOUTHS TO FEED
CHAPTER 14: THE JOURNEY CONTINUES
CHAPTER 19: HELL COMES TO THE RANCH
CHAPTER 21: QUIET BEFORE THE STORM
CHAPTER 25: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT
CHAPTER 1
1
ST
BATTLE
D
ix Jernigan woke with his face in the leaves and dirt, a terrible pain radiated from the back of his head. His mouth was dry and gritty from lying in the dirt and his right knee was aching. He could hear voices coming from inside his house and the sounds of chairs being thrown around. The sounds grew louder and then quiet again as though someone was fiddling with the volume control. He soon realized that the change in volume was in time with the throbbing pain in his head. He looked around as he crawled on his hands and knees over to his Jeep and pulled up on the wheel and fender to get to his feet. He ran his fingers over the back of his head, feeling that his hair was sticky and wet from fresh blood. His fingers slipped into the gash and he felt the bone of his skull deep in its recesses.
Dix wiped the blood off his hands onto his pants, eased the back door of the Jeep open, and unzipped the bugout bag that was on the floor board behind the seat. He pulled out an army 1911 .45 and paused as he let his head clear a moment. A piece of pipe with blood and hair encrusted on the threaded end lay up against the wall in front of the Jeep where it had been discarded. Dix pulled back the hammer on the .45 hearing it click into the cocked position. It was at that moment his son drove
up and stopped behind the Jeep. Before Dix could warn him, a large dirty man with dread locks walked out of the back door with a shotgun. It was the shotgun that Dix kept in his den. The large man was concentrating on Jake, Dix’s son, and didn’t see Dix level the .45 across the seat of the Jeep. Dix shot through the open window on the driver’s door. The .45 slug tore though the man’s left arm just below the shoulder shattering the bone in his upper arm and continuing on into his chest cavity where it turned his heart and lungs to jelly before exiting and lodging in his right arm. He hit the wall hard as the momentum of the bullet was absorbed by his body. The shotgun bounced harmlessly on the floor of the carport.
Dix walked around the front of the Jeep as his son came up with his pistol drawn. Dix whispered, “Get your rifle, there are more of them in the house, run to the south yard and set up a position on the opposite side. Your mother’s in the house, I’m going in. They’ll probably try heading out through one of the back windows. Kill them; don’t shoot through the house unless you can hit one through a window. No matter what happens, kill them.”
Dix gave Jake time to get into position then eased up to the door so that he could peer inside the house. The walls wouldn’t stop a bullet; but Dix was counting on the fact that most thugs couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn and wouldn’t realize that the walls in the house wouldn’t stop a bullet. He figured they would be hyped up on an adrenaline rush or on drugs. If these were ex military guys, he would have been dead already.
Dix eased through the back door and into the kitchen holding his pistol at eye level. He glanced into the breakfast area and living room and found them empty. He heard his wife gasp in the den as he eased his way around until he could see into the room. She was sitting in his chair with a busted lip and a cut over her right eye. A wiry, unkempt man with a cap on backwards held a gun to her head as he knelt behind the chair. His pistol was
a revolver, and Dix immediately noticed that it wasn’t cocked. Dix’s wife, Mattie, sat very still with her eyes closed. This was a scenario that they had practiced and discussed at great length. Dix took careful aim at the man’s head. The man said, “Drop your gun or I’ll..........................” He never finished his sentence. The .45 slug took the right quadrant of his head off. Dix touched his wife’s shoulder and asked in a whisper, “Are there any more?” She nodded, “One more in the back.” As he turned his attention to the rear of the house, he heard Jake’s AR-15 open up. The three loud reports were spaced about a second apart. Jake was shooting as he’d had been trained, every shot was accurate and deliberate. Dix knew there would be three holes in the bad guy. One final shot told him that Jake had finished off the last of the intruders.
As he looked through the house for more intruders and damage, Dix thought back to the events of the last three days. He had not seen this one coming. He should have been more alert. The two outside dogs had died three days earlier; Dix guessed they’d been poisoned. The dead men had evidently wanted them out of the way.
Before cleaning up the bodies, he walked back through the house and found that the little inside dogs had been kicked into the media room. Other than being kicked and terrified they were ok. Dix called outside to Jake, “Drag him behind the house, out of sight.” The adrenaline was starting to wear off and he was in tremendous pain. He grabbed a bottle of aspirin and chunked four in his mouth, chewing the bitter pills as he dragged the body from the den out onto the rear patio. He walked around the back of the house, cranked the four-wheeler and hooked it to his large garden trailer. He and Jake loaded the three bodies and drove them back into the wooded portion of the property. On the bodies they found two pistols, one was a Ruger twenty two, and the other was a Smith and Wesson .357 magnum. There was some
cash on the bodies, which Dix took. They could always use more cash; their toilet paper was running low. The only other things of value besides some jewelry in their pockets were their weapons and leather belts. These idiots were amateurs; either scavenging the area, staying in one of the neighboring abandoned houses, or possibly living out of a car. He and Jake pulled them into some thick bushes and left the bodies to rot. Animals and bugs would make short work of the corpses.
By the time Dix had hosed off and put away the four-wheeler and trailer, Jake had the blood cleaned up in the house and Mattie was sitting with an ice pack on her face. Dix examined Mattie’s face carefully, “The last thing I remember was stooping over to pick up a screwdriver I dropped by the dog food bowl. They must have knocked me in the head with the pipe when I was stooped to move the bowl. How long was I out?” Mattie thought about it, “Not long. The first one you shot was going out to finish you off when Jake drove up.” “Alright,” Dix told them, “From this moment on, everyone will be armed 24 hours a day.”
This was the third time their home had been attacked. Prior to this, the dogs had warned them, and they were able to confront the bad guys before they got to the house.
Dix retrieved his glasses from the ground on the other side of the Jeep, went back into the kitchen, mixed himself a strong drink and took a Loritab. Jake and Mattie shaved the back of his head, filled the gash with antibiotic cream, and stitched the wound closed with sterilized cotton thread. Dix got up and loaded pistols in shoulder holsters for Mattie and himself. Jake was already in the habit of wearing his because he and his friends were still making foraging and trading runs around the community.
Jake gathered up the spent hulls and threw them in the spent hulls’ bucket for reloading or trading. The family motto was “waste nothing.” “We need to get some more yard dogs,” Dix remarked to Jake. “It’s already covered, Dad. Daniel’s Catahoula Cur dog just had pups. I put our name on two already.” The Catahoula Cur is a very old breed from the area around Catahoula Lake in Louisiana. They trace their ancestry back to a cross between the Spanish war dogs and the local Indian dogs.