Last Stand: Surviving America's Collapse (17 page)

T
he sounds from the whistle came streaking up the path from the road. Tim and Brandon dropped the wood they were piling and ran in that direction. John rushed to the cabin and grabbed both AR-15s and three extra magazines. When he emerged from the cabin Diane, Kay, Emma and Natalie were moving toward the gravel path. Diane had her Beretta 9mm unholstered and in the low ready position.

“Where’s Gregory?
” John asked.

Diane shrugged fearfully. “I thought he was with you.”

“Listen, you three stay in the cabin and lock the door. If anyone you don’t know approaches, shoot them.”

John then hurried toward the road.
Two short blasts meant a large group of individuals were moving toward the property.

There was shouting up ahead and John picked up speed. When the scene came into view his heart leapt with fear. Swallowing hard, he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

A large group of people on foot, some of them dragging carts and small wagons, were approaching the fallen tree that blocked the path. Gregory, Brandon and Tim were on this side of the tree, telling them to turn back. For all the security work they’d done, there was only a single pistol between the three of them. If John hadn’t brought the ARs they could very easily have found themselves outgunned.

The crowd
wasn’t listening to Tim’s demands that they leave. John shouldered one of the ARs and fired the other one into the air. The crack drew everyone’s attention. A second later the rifle was in the high ready position, John’s finger beside the trigger guard. The next time he touched the trigger, people would be dying.

Tim
spun in time to catch the AR that John tossed to him. The ragtag group frozen now on the gravel path didn’t look all that dangerous. If anything, John guessed they were part of the massive horde they’d seen lumbering down the interstate a few days back.

“This is private property,” John
warned them. “I’m giving you all three seconds to turn around and leave before I open fire.” Even though they didn’t look particularly dangerous, this was a big group and in a moment like this John’s charity had its limits. He’d seen plenty of selfless acts repaid by more hungry mouths when word began to spread that a veritable soup kitchen had opened up. The Applebys were the only tenants he was willing to take at the moment.

“They’re gonna kill us,” a
little girl said.

“I won’t harm anyone so long as you turn around and get off my property.”

“She didn’t mean you,” a woman with dark stringy hair told him.

“What’s she talking about then?”

The woman picked the little girl up and began walking away at a brisk pace.

“Hey,” John called out after them, but they didn’t turn.

He handed his AR to Gregory. “You boys keep an eye on me. If any funny business happens, start shooting and I’ll cut left to avoid your fire.”

Tim and Gregory nodded.

John then hopped over the fallen three and jogged down the path toward the woman.

“Miss, I can trade you some water and a tiny bit of food if you tell me what happened to your group.” John wasn’t just being a concerned citizen. If a group of bandits were in the area, this was something he needed to know about.

“Thank you, but please hurry, we need to find a safe place before they return.”

John made a hand signal to Gregory who
gave his rifle to Brandon and took off running up the path to the cabin.

“They?”

“We were in a large group heading for Oneida when we were attacked by men in pickup trucks. They stole our food and water and killed dozens. Everyone fled in a panic, running in every direction. I don’t know how many survived.”

“
Those men who attacked you. How many were they?”

The
woman blinked hard, as though reliving the horror. “I couldn’t tell. More than fifteen. It all happened so fast.” She started to cry and John tried to comfort her. Gregory showed up a minute later with a plastic bottle of water and half a loaf of bread. He handed it to the woman who thanked them both.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” John asked.

She clutched the young girl to her chest. “Whenever my mind settles his horrible face is all I can see.”

“Face?”

“Their leader. One side was horribly burnt.” She ran quivering fingers down her cheek. “The other had the tattoo of a skull.”

“
A
re you sure it’s him?” Diane asked, wringing her hands.

They were all in the cabin as John briefed everyone on the situation. The tension in the tiny space was pal
pable. Both families had had their own run-ins with Cain. Now it looked like he was back.

John stood before them. “I don’t know of many people with skull tattoos on their faces. Plus, he was surely burned falling
through the floor when the Hectors’ house was on fire.”

“What do you think he’s doing this far from
Knoxville?” Tim asked.

“I think he’
s come to even the score. We defeated him at Willow Creek, decimated his army and fried half his face off. Wouldn’t you want revenge?”

The others didn’t seem convinced. They wanted to believe Cain’s appearance was
nothing more than a coincidence rather than another horrifying attack.

“I don’t see how he could have found us,” Tim started to say before he stopped himself.

The sudden look of guilt on Emma’s face was unmistakable. However Cain had found out, it had begun when she first spilled the beans.

“Look,” John said. “We don’t know whether that’s
even Cain or why he’s here. If he’s somehow found out about the cabin, our only choice is to finish this once and for all. Blood is going to be spilled. Each of you needs to take a moment and make sure you’ll be capable of performing your duty. If not, let me know now.” No one said anything. He then reached out to Emma. “Stop beating yourself up, honey. What’s done is done. At this point, I need all of you sharp. Guilt at this stage will only cloud your judgment and dampen your reaction times. We were lucky today. Our security procedures were tested, which gives us time to make improvements.” John turned to Gregory. “Great job alerting us to a possible threat, but staying in the area unarmed isn’t good. Coming to get you at the fallen tree exposed us all to danger. Next time, sound the alarm and retreat at once back to the cabin. This is our castle keep.” Then John turned to Tim. “It was brave of you to head toward the threat, but you went in armed with nothing more than a pistol. If that had been Cain and his men, he would have cut you down for sure.”

Tim shook his head. “Got it.”

“We also need to hand-drill more gun ports so we have three-hundred-and-sixty-degree coverage in case the cabin is surrounded.”

Gregory stood up and buried his fist into the palm of his hand. “If we had a tank we could blow them all away.”

The room exploded with laughter, offering them a much-needed release of tension.

“A tank would be nice,”
Brandon added.

Diane sipped at a cup of
lukewarm coffee. “If we’re making wishes, why not call in some Apache gunships?”

When they got the nervous laughter out of their system, John spoke. “We can’t let these terrorists or the threat they pose
keep us hiding in the cabin out of fear. Each of us has a job to do, but we need to be vigilant and sound the alarm at the first sign of danger.”

•••

For the next two hours, John and Tim used the hand drill to make additional gun ports in the northern, eastern and western walls of the cabin. They’d already made the holes in the southern wall overlooking the path yesterday and stacked sandbags around the opening.

Armed with a pistol and an AR, Gregory,
Brandon, Emma and Natalie went down to the road to rebuild the camouflage protecting the turnoff that had been destroyed when the large crowd showed up. They added bushes and spread more forest debris to help hide the entrance to the cabin.

Meanwhile, Diane and Kay continued working
in the garden and greenhouse, planting the vegetables and perennials.

When t
he last of the holes were drilled, Tim turned to John.

“I want to thank you for letting us stay here,” he said. “I know we didn’t know each other all that well as neighbors on Willow Creek, so you would have
been justified in turfing us out. But you didn’t and I wanted to let you know I appreciate that.”

John gave him a half nod. He wasn’t sure why exactly being thanked made him so uncomfortable. Maybe it had something to do with one of those unspoken rules
he always lived by. You did what needed to be done, no thanks required. Tim wasn’t cut from the same cloth, although John appreciated he was trying his best to make the present situation work as smoothly as possible.

“Space is ti
ght, I won’t lie,” John said. “But having your family around has been a blessing in disguise, you might say. More hands to help around the property, and to defend it.”

Tim
placed the hand drill on the table. “You don’t think Cain’s here by chance, do you?”

John didn’t mince words. “Not for a second.”

J
ust then the kids came charging into the cabin, frantic and out of breath. They were all squawking at once.

“One at a time,” John said, alarmed.

Gregory worked to calm his breathing. “We were making our way back from the road when we saw five pickup trucks drive by. There were armed men in the back.”

“How many?”

“Hard to say,” Emma cut in. “At least twenty.”

“Did they see you?”

Brandon and Gregory both shook their heads. “No, they just drove by, but it seemed like they were looking for something.”

“They’re searching for the turnoff,” John said. He touched Gregory’s shoulder. “Get Kay and your
mother and tell them to come in right away.”

Gregory ran off.

“The rest of you kids keep filling up those sandbags and pack them as tight as you can. Tim, take one of the ARs and keep an eye on that road. Blow your whistle if you see anyone approaching.”

Kay and Diane entered just then and John filled them in on what was happening. “I’ll need help from
both of you with setting up these last firing positions.”

Over the next few tense minutes, John pulled the kitchen table into the middle of the main room and stacked as much ammo as he could fit. From there, he placed four magazines filled with 5.56 green-tip rounds by the southern loophole for the AR. He then placed boxes of .30-06 ammo for deer rifles by the eastern and western loopholes and three other AR mags at the northern one. The shotgun loaded with double-ought buck and slugs would be kept in reserve in case anyone tried to breach the cabin door.

When
they were done, everyone was on sandbag duty, except for Tim and Brandon who kept lookout.

They only managed to fill
and move half the sandbags before everyone heard two short blasts from Tim’s whistle.

•••

In a matter of seconds, they had all retreated to the cabin. This would be their Alamo. John just hoped the end result would turn out differently for them than it had for Davy Crockett.

The sound of the shotgun tripwire going off was the first sign that
someone coming up the trail had tried to move off into the forest. Then came another blast and the screams of men in pain. More than one and John grabbed a notepad and etched two lines to mark down how many enemies were out of action.

John and Gregory took the southern loophole overlooking the gravel path. Kay and Diane
took the eastern in case the attackers tried flanking the cabin. At the western loophole were Brandon and Emma while Tim and Natalie covered the south. They’d only managed to fill enough sandbags for three of the four positions. That meant the southern loophole was relatively unprotected, except for the cabin’s sixteen-inch log walls.

A voice
shouted out at them from just beyond view. “I know you’re in there, John.”

Hearing it erased all the doubts in John’s mind. It was Cain and he’d returned to settle the score.

“Your friend Bill Kelsaw was very helpful in divulging your location once we provided the proper incentives.”

Cain thought he was being cute, but John couldn’t help
but imagine poor Bill tied up, being slowly tortured to reveal what he knew. The image, even if it wasn’t real, made him all the more determined.

“
I don’t have a beef with anyone other than you, John,” Cain shouted. “Come out and give yourself up and I’ll let your family live. You’ve got my word on that.” He paused and spat on the ground. “You also have three minutes to decide.”

John turned to find everyone in the cabin looking at him, each with a different expression. Acute fear on his children’s face
s. Confusion and curiosity on Tim’s face as he wondered whether John would comply. For a moment John wondered the same thing himself. What if Cain was telling the truth? Was a gun battle worth risking the lives of his family? What if he could trade his life for theirs? Let Cain settle the score and be done with it.

Then John spotted the stubborn scowl on Diane’s face he’d seen so many times throughout their marriage.

“The rat’s lying through his teeth,” she growled. “And you know it.”

She was right. He did.

“Cain’s lied, manipulated and tried to terrorize us from the first second we met him.”

“Don’t do it, D
ad,” Gregory said tearfully.

“If I don’t go out there, they’ll attack us for sure,” John said. “Some of you might get hurt or killed.”

Tim came over and put a hand on John’s shoulder. “Let the bastards try.”