Last Stand: Patriots (Book 2) (11 page)

By the time
he reached the edge of the forest, hot lead was already pouring in, striking the ground and trees, filling the air with bits of dirt and bark. Laying down more fire would only get him killed, so John kept on running. No more than a few yards into the forest, he was already sucking in deep lungfuls of air. It wasn’t just his tactical vest and ammo that was tiring him out, it was double-timing it with his AR and Mossberg Chainsaw over uneven ground.

His
Blackhawk Serpa drop-leg holster proved to be a real blessing. Most flopped around when running, which had the unbalancing effect of slowing one’s movement. The Blackhawk was solid and adjustable, which kept all twenty-six ounces of his S&W from getting in the way. Seemed like such a minor consideration, but any soldier who’d ever needed to dash for cover understood the importance.

Now that he was
a hundred feet in, John swung around, rifle perched against a low-hanging branch, scanning the horizon. Movement in the distance caught his eye and he put his eye to the mouth of his scope. Not seeing anything, he decided to keep low and continue moving. With several of their own already dead, the men after him knew he was no pushover. Surely now they would approach with caution, an advantage which would buy him extra time to disappear.

Navigating by the
position of the sun and the moss growing on the trunks of trees, John continued moving southeast. He was still a ways from the Patriot camp, although he knew the general direction he needed to head in. At some point he would cross back over the highway or else he would end up in Oneida.

To his mind, helping the Patriots gear up for an assault seemed to offer the greatest chance of success. Shortly before the attack, Rodriguez would send out a coded message to his contact in the city. H
is contact in turn would advise John’s family along with anyone else the Chairman’s men had imprisoned to keep low when the shooting started.

John stopped again and scanned the
forest behind him. A squirrel perched on a nearby tree watched him intently while nibbling a nut. Otherwise, there was no sign of anyone or anything nearby.

They
would be tracking him, that was certain, which was why circling back toward the highway would be important. He would be exposed, yes, but with a stretch of straight road, it would be difficult for any vehicle patrols to spot him before he spotted them.

John changed direction and cut east. Within a matter of minutes the edge of
Route 27 came into view.

After
reaching the treeline, he scanned for any sign of the enemy. Seeing none, he ran across the open ground as quickly as he could. The lactic acid in his muscles burned his already wobbly legs. With a burst of willpower, he ordered himself to push on.

Once safely across, John
made some headway through the dense foliage before stopping briefly to drink some water and eat a power bar. As he took cover behind a birch tree, he became aware of the sting from early blisters forming on the heels of his feet. In a back pouch was a small roll of duct tape. When he’d purchased it all those months ago back at the Home Depot in Knoxville, it had come in a large spool, so John had wrapped some around an old credit card—might as well put the plastic to good use—enabling him to keep a discreet amount in his rear tactical pouch.

He removed his boots and socks and examined the young blisters.
They were red and a little puffy, but that characteristic bubble hadn’t yet formed. John tore off strips of duct tape and stuck them anywhere he saw chafing. This wasn’t a permanent solution by any stretch. But with a long walk ahead of him, his feet were likely to be his only source of locomotion and it was important to keep them working properly.

The sun was low in the sky when John found a place to make camp for the night. There’d been no sign of the men who’d ambushed and chased him into the forest. Whether any of the Patriots in the convoy knew they were under attack he wasn’t sure, although it was hard to believe they hadn’t heard the gunfire coming from the rear of the column. If they didn’t know at the time, they would certainly have found out when they arrived back at camp. It was also more than likely they would send someone back to look for him and Sullivan. John had also weighed the chances that the Chairman, upon discovering his convoy had been taken, would send whatever men he could spare to retrieve it. The threat of roving bands of militia had encouraged John to avoid the roads.

Sure
, the trek back would take longer, but his bushcraft was more than enough to keep him alive between now and then. All he needed was stay out of sight and if that proved impossible, he needed to be the one to shoot first.

Before starting his shelter, John searched the a
rea for possum burrows. When building snares, he preferred using picture wire since it was cheap and reusable. With the BK9 he sharpened two sticks and drove them into the ground forming an X, then tied them together with a length of paracord. A young, bent-over sapling would act as the engine, snapping the possum into the air once the trigger was sprung. For the noose itself, he used a bowline knot, reciting the mantra he’d learned as a child in Boy Scouts to help him remember the sequence: the rabbit comes out of the hole, around the tree, and back in the hole. With the trap in place over the possum’s burrow, John could then begin building his shelter.

The spot he chose
for the night was on elevated ground. This was important to reduce the chances of water saturating his camp site. There was also a tree nearby with a low, but thick branch. This would prove important for the A-frame debris shelter he would build. Most survivalists tended to teach themselves how to build a single shelter type, but more often than not this could get them into trouble. The shelter one chose often depended on the available resources. A lack of thick pine tree bows would make building a lean-to shelter difficult. If that was all someone knew, they’d likely be in a real jam, especially if storm clouds were brewing.

The process
for the A-frame shelter wasn’t terribly difficult. John started by searching the forest floor for a five-to six-inch-thick piece to act as the main support. This would need to be taller than he was so John’s entire body would fit inside the shelter. The end of the main support beam would rest against the tree stump and be secured with a length of paracord. Shorter branches would form the sides, overlapping like fingers steepled in prayer. Next he piled up dead leaves against the frame, making sure to start at the bottom and work his way up. A final layer of thin branches on top helped to keep the dead leaves in place. Finally, John collected dead pine needles and more dead leaves to form the bedding inside. He wasn’t expecting the Taj Mahal, but this would do just fine.

While
he was gathering wood and tinder, a whoosh nearby followed by rustling told John that his trap had sprung. Hopping to his feet, he rushed to find a possum hanging off the ground with the picture wire cinched around its neck. He put the creature out of its misery quickly with the BK9 and then skinned and gutted it on the stump of a fallen tree. He took care to do this a few meters away from his camp to avoid attracting scavengers. While most people tossed the entrails into the bush, John kept them to use as bait for fishing and future traps.

A
stagnant pond sixty meters to the west of his camp would provide his drinking water. Usually that would be arduous work, building a filtering system and then something to boil the water in. This was where his Lifesaver water bottle would come in handy. John normally liked to keep things as natural as possible—relying on gizmos in a survival situation was all too often a recipe for disaster—but after watching murky, undrinkable water at the Patriot camp go in and clean, safe water come out, he’d been convinced. The other advantage was the ultra-fine fifteen-nanometer filter that kept out all waterborne pathogens. So far as he could tell, the major drawback to the thing was the inability to tell when the water filter was nearly done. Given that it could treat over a thousand gallons and he’d only just started using it, he was confident he had all the water he would need.

After build
ing a small fire and cooking the possum over a spit, John removed the duct tape from the heels of his feet to let them breathe. He was listening to the sounds of the forest, his AR by his side and his shotgun waiting for him in the A-frame shelter.

There was something about the trees here that reminded him of the lush hilly forests in
Rwanda. The vast majority of folks might have had difficulty placing the tiny country on a map before the genocide of 1994. That was when the whole world saw horrifying images of gangs of machete-wielding men hacking at anyone they could find. The war had started as a tribal conflict between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis. But it wasn’t long before the lust for blood on all sides had turned into a killing free-for-all.

At the end of
’94, John had entered the ravaged country as part of the humanitarian mission, Operation Support Hope, and the sights he’d seen there were nearly beyond description. That was when he’d fully understood how sheltered they were here in the West. For John, however, this wasn’t a reason for condescension. Rather, it was a hallmark of how safe life was in America. At least, the way it used to be.

John recalled searching
in the village of Gahini for a local doctor named Mutsinzi. There was a young girl with gallstones who needed treatment and the doctor there was reputed to be the best in the area. When he’d arrived, John had discovered the man had been killed in the final days of the genocide. In the hospital where he worked, he’d treated both tribes without discretion and so in retaliation he was taken one morning by a gang of Hutu extremists, sat in a chair and disemboweled, his guts dragged across the road to form a macabre checkpoint.

The story itself had been sh
ocking enough to John that he’d never forgotten it. These sorts of acts were beyond Western understanding. It wasn’t since the Indian wars in the eighteenth century that Americans had witnessed such barbaric atrocities. But with local warlords springing up, laying claim to first neighborhoods and now entire cities, it was anyone’s guess how long it would be before the nastiest side of human nature would rear its ugly head.

John came awake, wondering for a moment if he was
still in the mountains of Rwanda. The sound of a woodpecker knocking away at the trunk of a dying tree told him otherwise.

He stretched, feeling the stiff muscles in his back ache with pain.
The shelter he’d built yesterday had kept him warm, although it certainly hadn’t done wonders for his spine. The mattress he and Diane shared at the cabin had been harder than their king-sized pillowtop back home. That was a transition he’d been fine with. Even dozing off in the front seat of his Blazer, while not ideal, had also been better than his current bed of pine needles and dead leaves. To make matters worse, by the time he woke up, the mound he’d collected had been pushed to the side so that John’s back was digging into the hard forest floor.

Some of the possum was still left over from last night and he ate
half of it, washing the tough meat down with a drink of water. He was eager to get a move on. If he kept up the pace, there was a chance he might just reach the Patriot camp by dusk.

After reapplying duct tape to his blisters, John slung the AR and the shotgun over his shoulder and headed out.

Within an hour, he hit Cleamon Strunk Road and crossed to the other side after making sure no one was in sight. Once on the other side and back into the forest, it wasn’t long before moving through the thick brush brought on some serious hunger pangs.

John still had some possum meat left over and intended to keep that for that night’s supper in case he didn’t reach his objective. Reluctan
ce to draw any attention by shooting his rifle or by stopping to build a fire meant that meat was out of the question right now. But there were other options.

Most people spent years trekking through the woods without realizing how many plants were edible. Of course, it was always important to be careful
when eating anything that grew in the wild, but with enough practice at differentiating species, living off the land in an emergency situation became so much easier.

Wood
sorrel was the first plant he found. It looked a lot like clover and was tough to chew with a slightly sour taste to it. Not too far from that was a patch of wild lettuce. They were easily identified by their long spindly branches. John shoved it in his mouth, wincing from the bitterness. As he walked, he collected what he could. Lambsquarter, chickweed, and whenever he came to an open field, dandelion.

Not long after,
he came to another field. This one was larger than the last, but different in one important way. While the open terrain where he’d collected dandelions had been flat, this field had a crop about the height of a man and with thin, pointy leaves. It didn’t take a genius to realize he’d stumbled upon a marijuana farm. Except this one wasn’t a legal operation, like the ones springing up in a handful of other states. Neither Kentucky nor Tennessee had legalized medical marijuana.

On the heels of that realization came another. If this land wasn’
t run by a gutsy entrepreneur eager to exploit lax drug laws, then it meant he was likely on land worked by criminals.

John
planted one knee in the ground and readied his AR.

So far he hadn’t seen a soul
or heard so much as a whisper, but caution wouldn’t take any chances until he saw good reason to lower his guard.

He weaved between rows of
the tall marijuana stalks which smelled like something between lawn grass and skunk. From John’s limited knowledge of horticulture, he believed this indicated the crop was flowering.

Up ahead was a small shack. If
anyone was around, they would likely be near that structure. As much as John wasn’t interested in a confrontation, the last thing on his mind was moving past an unsecured area only to get a bullet in the back. He would do a quick sweep and then decide whether to back out the way he came and circle around or proceed straight ahead.

Approaching the shack, John
paused, his finger next to the trigger. He steadied his breathing, listening for voices, movement or even the telltale sounds of someone snoring.

The first sign that something wasn’t entirely right came when he saw the legs sticking out of
the doorway. Drawing nearer, he caught the buzzing of flies around what was obviously a dead body. Then the odor came and he pulled his shirt up over his nose. That was a smell you never got used to, no matter how many battles you’d lived through. It was more than the psychological impact that came with knowing that someone’s life was over. The stench was just plain bad.

John swung his attention from right to left. A few yards away were two more bodies. Bullet holes riddled the shack.
Blood-soaked hundred-dollar bills led from the hut down to a set of tire tracks.

The place was
eerily quiet. The bodies weren’t bloated, which told John they hadn’t been here long. It would likely be impossible to tell exactly what had happened, but the slaughter here had been over money, probably a lot of it, judging by the hundreds sprinkled on the ground like fallen leaves.

Once he was certain
there weren’t any immediate threats, John made his way over to the shack. Perhaps there was something useful inside. Food, ammunition, weapons. The latter was already a given since rifles and pistols lay next to each of the dead men.

The man in the shack was dressed in blue overalls and looked to be in his early sixties. He’d been killed by a rifle round to the head. Next to him was a
twelve-gauge pump shotgun. Even from here, John could see both of the dead attackers had been peppered by the old man’s shotgun.

Inside, John found some candy bars, a few cans of food and vegetables
but little else of importance. He was about to leave when he spotted two books on the table. Both of them were on hydroponics and hydroponics systems. John picked them up and leafed through each quickly.

If they could use this to r
ig up a system that worked, the Patriot camp could quadruple food production while reducing water consumption by the equivalent amount.

Of course, given their shortage of weapons
and ammo, it would be unforgivable for John to leave all of this for someone else to scavenge. On the other hand, he knew dragging home several rifles and pistols just wasn’t realistic.

Over the next thirty minutes, John carefully hid the weapons and ammo he
’d found several feet into the forest. An old tarp from behind the shack would help keep them dry until he returned at some point to collect the stash.

The books, however, he took with him.