Rise From The Ashes: The Rebirth of San Antonio (Countdown to Armageddon Book 3) (18 page)

     David spoke up for the first time.

     “And we’ll make sure they have plenty of drinking water and firewood. If they start to struggle, we’ll bring them over to stay with our group for the winter.”

     “That’s nice of you, guys, and thanks.”

     “No thanks are needed. Helping each other through this mess will make us all stronger as a community.”

     By the time they’d finished that evening, it was dark and Scott and Randy were exhausted.

     “I’ll tell you what, Randy.
I’m too exhausted to drive you all the way across town to drop you off. We’re only a few blocks from John’s. We’re all off tomorrow, so there’s no need to get up early. How about if you just crash on John’s couch tonight and I’ll take you home in the morning. And if the other guys start giving you a hard time about anything, I’ll kick their butts. It’s the least I can do for you, for what you did today.”

     Randy’s first impulse was to object. But then he thought about it. He was exhausted too. He just wanted to lay down somewhere… anywhere, and crash. After all, he wasn’t used to doing hard labor, and the work he’d done that day wore him down.

     Plus, he knew Scott. The half hour drive back to Randy’s house could easily turn into an hour and a half. Scott was a hard core Good Samaritan. Randy knew that if they passed anyone along the way that looked like they needed assistance… an old lady struggling to keep from falling… a kid with a broken bicycle… anyone carrying heavy boxes… Scott would stop to help. He’d done it many times in the past and it had always driven Randy crazy.

     But perhaps not anymore.

     “Sure,” Randy found himself saying. Even he seemed a bit surprised. “Why not?”

     Randy was still a bit apprehensive when they walked into John’s house that night and Scott announced that he’d be crashing on the couch.

     But Scott took John aside, and then Robbie, and asked each of them to play nice and dispense with the usual pranks and jokes at Randy’s expense.

     “This is the closest I’ve ever seen him to being human. I don’t want to spoil it.”

     Randy did indeed crash on John’s couch while the others drank tequila and played poker in John’s den.

     About three a.m., Randy awoke and wandered in to join them.

     “I’m sorry, Randy,” John quickly said. “We were trying to keep the noise down. We didn’t mean to wake you.”

     “You didn’t. I had to get up to go to the bathroom, and it sounded like you all were having fun in here.”

     “Fun? No. These guys cheat like used car salesmen. They’ve taken almost two bucks in nickels from me and now they’re working on my pennies.”

     Robbie spoke up.

     “Oh, quit your whining, you big baby. You should have stuck to something you know, like Old Maid.”

     John continued
, “Why don’t you join us, Randy? With four, we can play spades instead of poker. You and I will partner up, and we’ll kick these punks’ butts.”

     Randy hesitated, a bit suspicious. John had never offered an olive branch before. Randy had always been the odd man out, the butt of everyone’s jokes. But then, Randy had to admit to hi
mself, he probably deserved it.

     What Randy didn’t know was that while he slept, Scot
t filled the others in on what Randy had done that day, helping the women directly and giving up his MREs to pay others to help as well. They hadn’t finished bringing in the crop before the darkness made them quit, but the two men Randy had hired to help agreed to come back the next day to finish it up.

     Thanks largely to Randy’s help, the two old women and the boy would have enough to eat to get them through the winter. And two neighbors who agreed to watch out for their other needs.

     Randy’s good deed would not go unrewarded. Despite Randy’s initial apprehension, John was sincere. He was willing to bury the hatchet and welcome Randy as one of their own.

     Randy took
the olive branch and sat down to play cards. He and John trounced the others, but it wasn’t because karma stepped in to punish the poker cheats.

     Rather, it was because Randy had the only sober head in the room. The others had been plying themselves with tequila and whisky shots for hours and were fee
ling no pain. And Randy had been playing internet spades for years before the blackout. He was darned good at it.

     The group played six games of spades that night and didn’t stop until the sun
started peeking into the eastern windows. As John blew out the candles that had been lighting the table all night, they finished their very last hand and called it quits.

     By the time that happened, they’d accomplished much more than a drunken night of playin
g cards. They’d gotten to know Randy and bonded with him.

     And John had gotten Randy to agree that it was stupid to live so far away from the men he worked with, and really the only ones he ever associated with.

     Before dawn broke, John convinced Randy to move into the fourth unused bedroom and join the group permanently. Or, at least until Hannah came back and John kicked the others out.

     And the three musketeers had become the band of four brothers.

-34-

     The morning after the two men had scouted out the compound, Tom had gone out to see how they managed to get in. He’d noticed the mesquite tree that had been dragged out of the way between his property and Scott’s.

     He’d muttered to h
imself, “Now how in heck did they do that?”

     Then he went to the other side of the tree and saw how Tony and
Kevin had used Tom’s clothesline to tie up bundles of branches and give themselves a way to drag the tree.

     Tom had to admit it was pretty genius.

     But genius or not, it was an intrusion that would not be tolerated.

     He used his pocket knife to cut the clothesline from the tree. Then he went to the back of his ranch house and cut the other three strings of line from the clothesline poles.

     If they were going to try this stunt again, he
decided, they’d have to bring their own line.

     He searched the ranch house and the outbuildings for any other type of rope or wire that
the pair might be able to use in place of the clothesline.

     Satisfied that there was
none, he grabbed the ladder that the intruders had used to peek over the wall and returned to the compound, where he went to the workshop and fashioned a sign.

     Tom was a man of few words. His philosophy was old school: why use fifty words when four will do? So he kept his sign simple:

STAY OUT

OR DIE.

     He made the sign with black letters on a white background. Even without night vision goggles, the invaders would be able to make it out with a bare minimum of moonlight.

     Tom figured anyone smart enough to figure out how to move the thorny mesquite tree should be able to understand his short message.

     He didn’t expect it to keep them away, but at least they couldn’t say they weren’t warned.

     It would also give him an argument to use against Joyce and Linda next time they begged him not to shoot the men. He’d be able to say with conviction that they didn’t just wander onto the property by accident, or to shoot the breeze. If they were there, they were up to no good.
And that they’d been warned of the risks.

     He threw the sign into the back of a Gator and then tossed in several wooden stakes, a sledge hammer, and two spools of sturdy rope.

     Jordan called on the radio.

     “Hey, Tom?”

     “Yeah, buddy, go ahead.”

     “Mom is relieving me at the security desk. I’m free to give you a hand now if you need it.
”

     Tom and Jordan had been bonding quite well lately. In Scott’s absence,
Jordan had stepped up to pull more than his share of the heavy lifting. It eased the burden on Tom, and Tom appreciated it.

     “Your father
will be proud of you when he comes back,” Tom had told him a few days before. “His being gone is not a good thing, but some good did come out of it. It’s given you a chance to prove to everybody that you’re a man now.”

     “
Sure thing, Jordan. I’d love some help. Bring a thermos of coffee out with you. We’re gonna be out there for a couple of hours.”

     Five minutes later the pair drove through the compound’s tall gate and out to the fence line where the intrusion had taken place. Tom selected a good spot for the sign, on his property just in front of the tree
they’d dragged, and hammered it into place while Jordan kept watch with an AR-15.

     Once the sign was in place, they returned to the other side of the fence line and tied rope around the tree’s trunk. Then they used the Gator to drag it back into its original position.

     But they weren’t done. Not by a long shot.

     “Let’s go back and get the Bobcat. I need you to help me take the tree cutting attachment off and put the bucket on.”

     The bucket weighed over three hundred pounds, and would essentially turn the Bobcat into a miniature excavator. It would allow the Bobcat to dig a trench about two feet wide and five feet deep.

     It wasn’t quite deep enough to trap a man who might fall into it in the darkness. But that was okay. Tom didn’t necessarily want to capture the invaders.

     He mostly wanted to send them a message.

     It took them half an hour to manhandle the heavy bucket into place and bolt it onto the Bobcat.

     Then Tom gave Jordan his choice.

     “Would you rather use the Bobcat or hammer stakes?”

     “If you don’t mind, I’ll drive the Bobcat. I’ve never used the bucket attachment, and I’d like to learn.”

     “It’s easy. Drive it out to the fence line and I’ll get you started.”

     Tom drove the Gator back to the row of dead mesquites laying on their side next to the fence. It took Jordan, in the slower moving Bobcat, a couple of minutes longer to arrive. Once Jordan got there, Tom had already figured out where he wanted the trench to go.

     “Okay, start here. I want you to dig a trench about fifty feet long and as deep as the attachment will go. It should be about five feet or so. All you do is reach the attachment out and place the bucket on the ground. Then drag it toward you. The teeth on the bucket’s edge and its weight will work together to scrape up the ground and fill up the bucket. Then you just lift it, swivel to your left, and dump it.”

     It seemed like an easy concept.

     “Okay. Got it. What are you going to be doing?”

     “I’m going to stake some of these trees down. Next time they try to drag one, they’ll find out it ain’t gonna be so easy.”

     “When you get tired, holler and we’ll switch off.”

     “Okay, sounds good.”

     Tom didn’t expect to get tired. He was in his sixties, but still quite capable of a day’s worth of hard lab
or. And there was nothing really hard about pounding stakes into the ground with a sledge hammer.

     Still, he was impressed that
Jordan made the offer to trade out at some point. It told him that Jordan wasn’t afraid of hard labor either. And even more, he was watching out for the well being of the others in the group.

     He had Tom’s back. Yet another sign that
Jordan had become more a man than a boy.

-35-

     While Jordan was digging, Tom hammered a long line of wooden stakes into the ground. One stake on each side of each trunk. Then he cut sections of rope, tied one end to one of the stakes, ran the rope through a lower branch of the tree, and then tied the other end tightly to the second stake.

     When finished, he stood back and admired his work.

     “Now try to drag these trees, you sons of bitches.”

     Once finished, Tom went back to the trench line to check on
Jordan’s progress.

     The trench was looking pretty good.
Jordan was a fast learner. He had a tendency to bump the sides of the trench with the bucket occasionally and knock some extra dirt into the bottom, but neatness didn’t count for this operation. As he got more practice and was better at finessing the touchy controls, he’d get much better at digging trenches.

     For now, his work as good enough.