Joshua (Book 2): Traveler (13 page)

From the look on Alton’s face he had now heard it all. “I don’t know what to say, James. I think there has been some kind of mix-up. I think maybe Rob was teasing you ... or maybe playing some kind of joke. No one wants to do that to you. You’re our friend and we wouldn’t ask you to do that, any of us, well ...” He stopped and brushed his short hair down with his hand, “I don’t think I’ve told you about Rudd, have I?”

“No, what about Rudd?”

“Nicky has known for a while now, I guess we just forgot to tell you.”

“Tell me what? What about Rudd?”

“You don’t ever want to go anywhere alone with Rudd, especially if he’s been drinking. You understand what I mean? Do you understand what might happen to you if you and Rudd are alone together? So don’t take that chance. Don’t go anywhere with him by yourself.”

Suddenly Nicky was in on the conversation, “Oh ... that’s what you were talking about.”

Alton ignored Nicky and continued to address James, “Do you understand me, James, I mean about Rudd?”

“Yes ... okay.”

“As for your ‘job offer,’ I’m sure this is all just a misunderstanding. No one would expect that of you. The next time we see Rob we’ll get this all straightened out.” He bent down, patting James on his head, “Do you feel better, now you’ve got this off your back?”

“Yes ... I guess I do.” The boy had another laugh and wiped his eyes again. Maybe it was simply a misunderstanding after all.

The sun was setting as they arrived at point Echo, and by now the temperature dropped some and it began to snow, the first one of the season.

They were the first group to arrive and quickly set up camp inside the derelict structure. It had no glass in the windows and the doors were gone, but the roof did keep the snow off of them. There were no trees nearby so they tore the wood studs out of a wall to start a small fire right there on the cement floor. Without their sleeping bags and blankets, it was a long, cold night as the winds blew through the hollow structure. They huddled together under the light of the fire, trying to stay warm and get some rest if they could.

Early the next morning, Alton was on guard duty and woke them as two figures approached.

It was McCain and Rudd plodding along in the snow covered road, both were covered with numerous small cuts and abrasions and Peavey was nowhere to be seen.

Alton came out and met them halfway. “Where’s Peavey?”

Both of them gave him awkward looks and finally McCain spoke, “Peavey didn’t make it.”

“Peavey is dead?”

“Probably ... yeah, he’s dead.”

“You don’t sound very sure. Is he dead or not?”

Rudd spoke up, “We’re not sure. We think he’s dead.”

Alton couldn’t believe he was having this conversation, “So, you really don’t have any idea whether he’s dead or not?”

Both of them answered this time, “No.”

Alton was getting angrier by the second, “McCain, you were in charge, explain it to me. Explain to me how you don’t know if one of your men is dead or not.”

“He couldn’t keep up, and as we were running we got cut off from the planned escape route. We had to improvise and Peavey just wasn’t fast enough.”

“So they caught him?”

“Yes, I assume they killed him when he was captured.”

“But you don’t know.”

“No.”

Alton walked away, sure if he stayed in this conversation any longer he would be throwing punches in mere moments.

Rudd and McCain both said, “We’re sorry” as he was walking away.

At about 09:00 hours, Rob, Martinelli, and D’Cruz were spotted coming over a hill. D’Cruz had his forearm bound up resting in a crude sling made out his shirt. Rob and Martinelli were helping him along and Rob had a limp of his own.

Alton was waiting at the front door of the structure, “Has D’Cruz been shot?”

Rob was the last to come in out of the cold. “No, one of those maniacs tried to take his arm off with a machete. It was buried so deep it was stuck in the bone. Me and Martinelli didn’t think we would ever get it out.”

“Is he going to lose that arm?”

It was obvious Rob didn’t have a clue, “Martinelli?”

From the look on his face, Martinelli didn’t know much more than the boss. “Maybe. It’s a pretty bad cut, it took forever to stop the bleeding, like Rob said he was cut right down to the bone. If he doesn’t get an infection he’ll keep the arm, might even get back some use of it. Will he get it all back? Well, we’ll have to wait and see.”

The three of them laid D’Cruz out on the cleanest bit of floor they could find and tried to make him comfortable. Alton started questioning Rob again. “How bad are you hurt?”

“Not bad at all, actually I was real lucky. One of them shot me but hit my radio instead. I’ve got a good-sized bruise on my hip, the radio is totaled though. Did you bring the other two radios?”

“Yeah, we’ve got them.”

“Please tell me you got the charger, too, I didn’t see it on the mantle when I was leaving.”

“Yeah, that was the last thing I grabbed before we went out the door.”

“Good. I want to do an immediate inventory of our supplies and equipment.”

“I already did ours.”

“And?”

“We’ve got the two radios and the charger. Four rifles ...”

“Four?” Rob turned and thoroughly scanned the room, “Where’s Peavey?”

“He was captured.”

“I hope they killed him quick.”

“Why would you say that?”

“You didn’t get a good, up close look at these monsters; I did. I’ve never seen anything like them. They were out of their minds. I don’t know what they were on but it must have been something. They were even killing their own men ...”

“Their own men?”

“Yeah, when they were charging the house, there were several of them that got hurt and were slowing the others down. They got gunned downed or clubbed, and stepped over. Like I said, I’ve never seen anything like that. What else you got?”

“Let’s see, I have the Beretta nine millimeter and three full mags, forty-five rounds of ammo. Between us we have the four rifles and seventeen magazines, most nearly full, four hundred ninety-one rounds to be exact. We all have five days’ supply of food on us, and one canteen each. We’ve got some medical supplies and a few other odd items. What’ve you got?”

“We have three more M4s, twenty-four mags with exactly six hundred ninety-nine rounds. I have the Python and two boxes of ammo, one hundred rounds. Martinelli managed to save the Remington but we’ve only got one box of ammunition for it, twenty rounds. And we’ve got five days’ supply of food too.”

Alton tried to laugh, but couldn’t, “Not much, is it?”

“No, not much.”

Martinelli interrupted, “I need to change D’Cruz’s dressing. I hope somebody has some more medical supplies.”

Cornwell handed him a bag off the floor while Alton let him know, “That bag is all we’ve got, only use what you have to.” Then he went back to his and Rob’s conversation. “What’s your plan?”

“My plan is to get the hell out here. I think we should head west ...”

“We’re not going back?” Without warning, McCain was now in the discussion.

Rob turned to him, annoyed, “No, we’re not. Why would you think that?”

“They kicked our asses, they killed Peavey, it’s time for some payback.”

Robert didn’t think this needed to be explained. “McCain, even after all of them we killed, they still outnumber us at least four to one. They’ve got the rest of our guns and most of our ammunition. They have the house and will be watching for an attack, there’s no way to take them by surprise. And ... and this is a good enough reason all by itself, they are just plain nuts, there is no way to predict what they might do. The last thing I want to see is thirty or forty of these wackos coming at us, every one of them on a kamikaze mission.”

“Fine, I just want to note for the record that my vote is to go back and kill all of them sons of bitches.”

“Fine, we’ll note that, but I’m assuming the rest of you guys would like to live a while longer. We’re not the toughest guy on the block anymore, McCain, you’re just going to have to get used to it. Now, what was I saying?”

Alton started the discussion again, “You were saying you wanted to go west.” But it was stopped once more when he felt a tug on the back of his coat.

It was James behind him, “You said you would talk to Rob.”

“I will, James, I promise, but this is a little more important right now.”

Rob wasn’t sure what that was about and didn’t have the time, “Yeah ... I want to head west, maybe Radley and the surrounding area, that looks like a good place to start again. There might be some good hunting down there.”

“That’s a good walk from here, especially this time of year.”

“You’re right, but I want to put some distance between us and them. This new group, they’re going to be like a cancer on all of the surrounding area. They’re going to consume everything around them. We can’t fight them so we’ve got to go somewhere else. I don’t like it, but we’re going to have to start over again.”

Alton reluctantly agreed, “Yeah, I don’t see any other choice either.”

“But we have a more immediate problem, winter is here, well, not ‘officially,’ but at least the weather, and all we’ve got are the clothes on our backs. We only have enough food and water to keep going just a few days.”

“What are we going to do about that?”

“We’re going to start towards Radley, but we’ll also have to hit any refugees we see along the way. Take whatever we can use from them, but more importantly we’ve got to get some good intelligence; we’ve got to find some people worth robbing. We need ...” Rob looked around again, “a lot, some tents or sleeping bags, or at least blankets, we need more food. We’ll be needing ammo. Without at least that much were not going to get very far.”

Just then a shout came from Rudd who was watching from a window, “We’ve got company!”

Rob went right to the door, “There’s six of them, two are trying to flank us from the south. Everybody get to a window! You boys get down!”

The attack lasted only a minute and by the end all of their would be conquerors were dead.

Rob stood over the body of one of the fallen soldiers. “They look like the same ones that attacked the house. They must have tracked us in the snow. Do you see what I mean about being crazy? Six guys, only two armed with guns, the rest with clubs and knives, and they attack a building they know has several men with automatic weapons inside. In broad daylight too! These guys are just plain nuts! We’ve got to go before more show up. If they came at us a few at a time we could take them. I’m just afraid they’re all going to come at once ... and we couldn’t handle that many. Everybody go grab your stuff, and somebody get D’Cruz on his feet. COME ON! LET’S GO!”

They all marched along a snowy road until hours later they came to a lone house at the intersection of two highways. Martinelli, D’Cruz, Rudd, and the boys stayed there while the rest broke up into two groups and went their separate ways. Coyote, Alton and Cornwell, took the north highway while Wolf, Rob and McCain, took the west hoping to find anything worth stealing.

At the top of the hour, Coyote had something to report. “Wolf, come in.”

“Come back, Coyote, we hear you.”

“We’ve got something, head back to the house, we’ll meet you there.”

“What have you got?”

“Something you’re not going to like.”

“What have you got?”

“We’ve got Peavey and a couple of refugees.”

“We’ll be back at the house in half an hour.”

Team Wolf was the last to arrive, Alton sat waiting for them on the front step and he had nothing good to say. “We found Peavey wandering beside the road, two refugees were trying to help him.”

Rob was surprised to say the least, “I was sure they would kill him.”

“It probably would have been better if they did.”

“What do you mean?”

Alton reluctantly stood up, “Come on inside.”

They came into the front room and Peavey was lying on the floor, naked and wrapped in a dirty blanket. His face was heavily bandaged, so were his hands. Two strangers were against the far wall. All the other men stood around solemnly watching while the sound of both boys’ crying filled up the empty room.

Rob had more questions, but he was sure he didn’t want the answers. “How bad is he?”

Alton went on with his grim report, “They gouged out his eyes. They’ve cut off his thumbs and all his fingers too, except the middle finger on each hand.”

“You think that’s some kind of message for us?”

“I don’t know, but now I agree with you ...”

“Yeah?”

“These guys are just plain nuts.”

“Has he said anything?”

“This couple found him near the road without a stitch of clothing, they stopped the bleeding as best they could ... they said we came along about an hour later. They say he never spoke one word.”

Rob looked at the couple, an older man and women that looked familiar in their ragged clothes. They could have been the couple they gave the pineapple to but he couldn’t say for sure, they all looked the same anymore. “You found him?”

The old man located his voice, “Yes.”

“You helped him?”

“Yes.”

“Is that your blanket?”

“Yes.”

“We need it.”

“You can keep it.”

Rob turned to Alton, “Give them some food and let them go.”

But Alton still had something to say. “There’s more. They know of a place we might want to look at.”

“You’ve already got the info from them?”

“Yes.”

“Then give them some food and let them go.”

It was too late in the day to do anything but wait out the night. They took shifts, half stayed up on guard duty while the other half tried to sleep with little success. In the morning the sun arose, a new day was beginning, but not for one of them.

Martinelli checked on Peavey, his diagnosis was right to the point, “Peavey is dead.”

Rob got up, hovering over the body that appeared exactly the same as the night before. “What killed him?”

“I’m guessing, mostly likely it was blood loss. He lost too much and his body couldn’t overcome the trauma. Or ... maybe he just decided he didn’t want to live anymore.”