Shortage (Best Laid Plans Book 2) (17 page)

He hunched and twisted, and as Razor stared at him through bloodshot eyes Matt plunged the man's namesake into his throat.

The gang leader let him go and began thrashing and gurgling in his death throes. Matt scrambled away, not quite believing what had just happened, and went after his .45. His fingers had just closed around the grip when he heard a scream from farther down the street.

“Razor's dead! They got him!”

Matt heard some yells and cursing from the other side of the fence he stood beside, farther down near the street ahead, then the four members of Razor's gang he'd seen earlier vaulted over it and fled south down the street, outright running in panic. Without their leader it looked as if the fight was over.

Relieved, he dragged himself to his feet with his pistol clutched in his hand and limped along the sidewalk to follow the thugs and make sure they didn't stop running until they were well out of town.

He was almost to the street when a knot of Aspen Hill residents burst past him, Catherine in front. The councilwoman whirled towards him, lifting her weapon, and Matt froze, expecting to be the target of friendly fire for the second time in less than fifteen minutes. Luckily she recognized him and stopped. Then her eyes widened as she looked past him to where Razor lay.

“It's true, he's dead!” she called, lowering her weapon and rushing towards Matt. She dropped into a crouch, tearing off the sleeve of her shirt to wrap around the deep cut Razor had made just above his knee, and called over her shoulder. “Someone go get Terry and tell him we have wounded, including his brother-in-law! The rest of you keep chasing those monsters out of our town!”

Chapter Eight

Aftermath

The fighting that started so brutally had a grim ending. Some of Razor's thugs ended up running after their leader died, others got surrounded and fought until the very end or surrendered. More skulked from house to house looting and committing atrocities and then vanished through the outskirts of town when a group was assembled to flush them out.

All in all 31 refugees were killed and 11 wounded, while 7 had been taken prisoner and were being held in the back of the storehouse until the rest of the town could be completely secured and they could be transferred over to the cells beneath the town hall.

Among the townspeople the numbers were nearly reversed, with 26 injured, 14 killed, and dozens unaccounted for who had likely fled the town to escape the fighting. Matt was saddened to learn that three women hadn't been as fortunate as Sam and Alice, and a dozen more would've faced the same fate if their attackers had found the time during the chaos. A small group of teenaged girls had been kidnapped, tied and gagged and kept under guard by a few members of Razor's gang who ended up running away after his death. If the thugs could be said to have any saving grace, it was that in spite of their barbarity at the very least they'd left the terrified girls unharmed when they fled.

Another sad loss that struck the town hard were the newlyweds Andrew and Kristy Metford, married only a few weeks before the Gulf refineries attack. The town's defenders going door to door to make sure everyone was all right found the young couple on the couch in their living room, their house one of the first the looters visited. It looked as if neither one had even realized there was any danger until members of Razor's gang broke through the door and murdered them in cold blood before going on to loot the house.

Andrew's father Abel arrived too late to save them, although Matt heard he'd gone after the looters on his own and played a big part in driving them out of town. Those that escaped his wrath, that is. He would've pursued any who fled out beyond Aspen Hill's borders if one of the groups Catherine had sent out to secure the town hadn't convinced him to come back with them.

In the aftermath the townspeople were stirred to a boil by the atrocities committed in the attack, and many of those who'd gathered in front of Tillman's Sporting Goods were shouting that they should go out to the refugee camp and drive the rest of the refugees away, then resume the roadblocks and patrols to make sure they
stayed
away.

For his part Matt's own blood was still boiling at what had been done to his mom and Sam, and even worse what his beloved almost suffered. The thought of it was enough to make him want to lead the charge to the camp.

Not that he was in any shape to charge anywhere at the moment, laid down on one of the cots Ferris's soldiers had slept on inside the store when it had been their headquarters. Terry had his hands full trying to help the more seriously wounded, including Carl Raymond. He was helped by April, Chauncey, Sam, and a few others. Matt's mom was there as well, seated on a camp chair near where Terry worked and reading to her grandsons through puffy red eyes. To his relief she looked much recovered from the pepper spray, although she blew her nose often and frequently dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

After a quick look at Matt's cut Terry had told him to rinse it out thoroughly with mild soap and water, then bind it tightly again until he found time to stitch it up. Bad as the wound was it wasn't life threatening, which put Matt low on the list of people who needed his immediate attention. With that advice his brother-in-law went back to the more seriously wounded.

Matt complied, although he wondered if he shouldn't be using stronger antiseptics considering the weapon used to cut him. There was no telling how many other people that razor had tormented, and who knew how well or how often it had been cleaned. As Matt worked on cleaning the cut Sam broke away from helping Terry whenever she had a spare moment to come over and help him, and then once he finished that and bandaged it again she'd sit lightly on the cot by his head and stroke his hair, whispering comfortingly.

Her soothing wasn't completely for his wounds. Matt couldn't help but ask her if she was doing okay every time she came over, and he kept trying to convince her to get Terry to look at her to make sure she hadn't been more seriously hurt than she realized. It made an odd situation, with both of them trying to make a big deal about the other's injuries while downplaying their own.

Finally Sam kissed him firmly on the mouth and left to turn her focus completely to helping Terry, satisfied that if he had enough energy to fuss over her he couldn't be
that
bad off. He still caught her looking at him whenever she had a spare moment, though.

From Matt's place in the store it was a bit hard to see what was going on outside, although he could certainly hear it. He did have a good view of Councilwoman Tillman and the other two remaining members of the City Council just outside the store, doing their best to maintain order as the crowd in front of them grew larger and became increasingly more unruly as tempers flared. To start off they'd tried to distract the townspeople with electing a new Mayor in the wake of Anderson's murder, but that didn't last long since there was only one obvious choice.

The town would have an election to get everyone's vote, of course, but in the interim the crowd had unanimously nominated Catherine Tillman. Not only had she kept her head during the crisis and led the defense of the town, but she'd shown herself to be far more reasonable and levelheaded than her predecessor.

Matt approved of the decision. He just hoped she hadn't taken the office right in time to watch the town disintegrate around her.

The new Mayor was doing her best to prevent that right at the moment, trying to impose order on the chaos of the crowd. But in spite of the respect the townspeople had for her tensions were too high, and most of them wanted to vent their rage at what they'd suffered at Razor's hands.

“We don't have time for this!” she finally snapped. “We've got to chase down the rest of Razor's gang, we've got to restore order in the town and secure our borders as soon as possible, we've got to figure out where our next meal is coming from now that Ferris has emptied our storehouse, and most of all we need to figure out what to do about the refugees!”

That quieted the crowd somewhat. “I say we've been nice enough to those vicious parasites,” Ian Childress called. “Let's do what we should've done in the first place and run them off, make sure they all stay far, far away from Aspen Hill.”

“Why stop there?” Abel demanded. He'd come to get help burying his son and daughter-in-law, but stayed as the crowd gathered. “After what they did to my boy and his wife I say they deserve the same. Let's go in and shoot every last one of them!”

“Every last one?” Catherine demanded, raising her voice to a shout over the murmurs of agreement. “Including all the innocent men, women, and children who had nothing to do with Razor's gang and if anything lived in greater fear of them than we did? We've all heard the rumors of what's been going on in the refugee camp. I agree we need to punish the guilty, and we will. But the others deserve our sympathy, not our anger.”

“We've given them enough sympathy!” Ian shouted. “Thanks to Ferris they got far more “sympathy” than they deserved.”

The new Mayor raised herself up to her full height on the impromptu platform she'd made of the hood of the car nearest to the entrance to the store. “I wonder how much of our anger at the refugees is there to cover our guilt for how we've been treating them,” she said firmly. “For the uncharitable thoughts we've had of them, for how we've ignored their plight when we could've helped.”

An angry roar of protest rose from the crowd and she shouted over it. “I'm not talking about food! I'm talking about all the other ways we could have helped them but didn't because we were jealous of our food and thought giving them anything meant we'd have to give them everything.”

Catherine pointed back at the storehouse. “Well now we don't have any food either. We're in the same desperate plight as the refugees. It's time to forget everything that's happened and do things a new way, go forward instead of looking back.”

“I won't share any more food,” Chauncey shouted from his place at the front of the crowd. “And after Ferris I'm not about to let the town take anything from me at gunpoint, either. If you want to rob me in the name of the public good you'd better be ready to shoot me and have one less mouth to feed.”

This spurred another rumble of agreement. “No!” the new Mayor shouted, sounding frustrated. “That's not what I mean at all and you know it. In fact, just to prove that I'm proposing we implement two new resolutions effective immediately. First and foremost no more theft, not by individuals and not by any authority, official or unofficial. I propose Aspen Hill dedicate itself to protecting the personal property of all its citizens with no exceptions. Any theft will be punishable by exile. I want the town to work together to survive, but ultimately it's up to each and every one one of us to see to our own needs and no one has the right to prevent us in that. Charity is one thing, but now that Ferris is gone that charity will be completely voluntary, each person's own decision to make and with no stigma if they keep what they have.”

The crowd quieted. There were no calls of agreement for Catherine's proposal, but at the same time the dissent was dying down. She didn't look especially pleased by the lukewarm response but she stoically continued. “Second, we crack down on crime. Hard. Ferris let Razor and those like him commit atrocities while he looked the other way, but we won't. We'll do our best to follow our country's best tradition of fair and unbiased justice, but since we can't afford to care for prisoners that leaves us with two options: for lesser crimes we can think of some useful punishment, but for major crimes the penalty must be either death or exile.”

This finally drew some approving shouts from the crowd, although from the way the new Mayor was shaking her head she didn't seem to like where the townspeople's thoughts were going. “As I've said theft will result in exile, as will unprovoked violence and a host of similar crimes. The death penalty is far more serious, and we'll have to think hard about what crimes are deserving of it and of each individual case that requires it. But I think it's safe to suggest that we should put any members of Razor's gang we capture on trial with a sentence of execution if they're found guilty, not just for the sake of justice but for the safety of the town.”

Matt found himself nodding, and over where Sam was helping Carl Raymond with a drink of water she was nodding as well. In truth it was almost a relief to have Catherine speaking reason after all of Ferris's insanity.

The new Mayor took a deep breath. “Now I'm going to suggest something that will solve many of our problems, but will require a lot of work and cooperation and above all rethinking a lot of our biases. I'm certain you're not going to like my idea at first, but hear me out.”

* * * * *

Catherine was right, the townspeople didn't like her suggestion. Didn't like it at all.

But they heard her out, and after over an hour of heated debate and more than a little shouting, along with some people leaving in a huff, most of the town agreed to go along with it. Now close to a hundred residents of Aspen Hill were making their way towards the refugee camp, most of them armed.

Matt limped at the head of the group beside Catherine, leg sutured and properly bandaged by a frazzled Terry who clearly hadn't been ready to go from interning as a surgeon in a clean and orderly hospital to what basically amounted to battlefield triage. Sam walked at his side to offer a shoulder when he stumbled, but mostly so she could stay close to him.

He was surprised to find that he'd become the town hero as word spread of his part in the attack. Not only had he broken through the attackers at the back door of the storehouse in his nearly suicidal charge and given the townspeople a way out so they could take the fight to Razor's thugs and retake their town, but he'd been the one to kill Razor himself and effectively end the fight.

Matt was embarrassed by the attention, especially since he felt like he hadn't really set out to do any of what he'd done. He'd just been responding to the situation as best he could. And every time he looked at Sam's bruised face he was reminded that in spite of everything else he'd failed to protect her.

She didn't seem to see it that way, though. When he looked into her eyes there was no blame there, only love and pride. His gratitude that she was in his life was compounded by his gratitude that she was still here with him after the terrifying afternoon they'd had.

When the townspeople reached the camp they found the refugees in a panic. Obviously they'd seen them coming up Main, the same way the people of Aspen Hill had watched Razor coming from the camp, and assumed they were there for the same thing. Many were outright fleeing, while others ducked behind whatever cover they could find clutching rocks, sticks, or other makeshift weapons. Matt could hear children crying and women screaming.

Catherine hurried ahead of the group to try to deal with the panic. “We're not here to fight!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, holding out empty hands. “We're just here to talk! Nobody will be harmed.”

Her reassurances didn't seem to do much to help, but the camp quieted down to tense silence as the townspeople got close enough to be in range if the refugees started hurling rocks, although thankfully no one did. With some help the new Mayor found a table to stand on and climbed atop it.