Charges (41 page)

“Why didn’t you shoot them before they killed the kids’ dad?” Forrest asked.

“Didn’t see them until after the guy had already been shot.”

“We knew this guy,” Forrest said. “Or actually, we knew
of
him.”

Vincenzo was confused. “Sorry? You knew Tolson?”

“We’ll get to that. Tony, maybe you should just tell us your story,” Missy said. “I guess you started out from New York?”

“Yes.”

“Then start there. Start the night of the event, I guess.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and leaned back in her chair, her hazel eyes locked on him like heat-seeking missiles.

Forrest leaned forward on his elbows. Terrell lounged back in his chair, appearing not to be terribly interested, but Vincenzo thought he was probably a very dangerous man.

“Okay. I will.”

###

It took an hour for him to get everything out. He detailed his walk across the bridge, his fight with the black man, and his separation from the family from TriBeCa. He told them about the Ackermans and the men at the firehouse and Captain Guardino and pointed to his card in his wallet as proof of the encounter. He told them of the heat and humidity and the dangers of the road, and of the gunfight below the trailer park. He spent a great deal of time detailing his finding the Blazer and the deceased Mr. Scott, then he recounted his encounter with the three men, taking on the kids, and his escape from the other men at the end of the trail. He mentioned that even though he had been warned to avoid Washington, Pennsylvania, he had misjudged just how far south the marauders had come. He described his arcing transit through the backwoods of Pennsylvania until he made it to West Virginia, then he talked about his trip across the bridge into Ohio. He ended his tale with meeting Missy, Terrell, and the others in the woods.

“So you don’t actually know anything about Charity Point?” Forrest asked.

Vincenzo shook his head. “No. Other than that the kid’s mother and some guy named Felix is there. But I am curious about how you guys know Michael Tolson?”

“It’s not really him we know about,” Missy said. “It’s his wife, Dolores Tolson. She’s one of the wheels that put together Charity Point. She’s a medical doctor and a respected name in the prepper community.”

“Um... okay. So you’re saying she’s a VIP, and I happen to have her kids?”

Missy nodded. “Basically, yes.”

“And Charity Point is”—Vincenzo waved his hand around the room—“like this?”

Forrest snorted. “Charity Point is
nothing
like this. It’s a converted nuclear missile silo bought with money from the Charity Point Church down in Missouri. Big evangelical church, very wealthy. Dolores Tolson is from there, I hear. That’s why she was still plugged into it, but her practice and her husband’s practice were in Pittsburgh.”

Vincenzo raised his brows. “So a bunch of church-goers bought a nuclear missile silo?”

“The silo is just the nucleus of the community they have down there,” Forrest said. “Think of what we have here and multiply it by fifty. There’s basically an entire town built up around the silo. Took ten years to build—might not even be finished, yet. The location was a full-on secret for a while, but eventually, word got out. I imagine they’re doing more than just putting up wire fences and razor wire, though. Those people were talking about building reinforced walls and stuff.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“Sixty million or so, I’d say,” Forrest replied. “But if they’d had to build an underground structure like the silo, it would have been double that.”

“So who’s Felix?”

Forrest exchanged glances with Terrell and Missy. “I’ll ask around about that, but I don’t think anyone knows who he is. Or if he’s even a he.”

“Okay,” Vincenzo said. “So, uh... any other questions for me?”

Forrest sighed and looked at Missy and Terrell again. “Guys?”

“I don’t like the fact that he’s driving around in someone else’s truck, eating someone else’s grub, and using someone else’s weapons,” Terrell said. “That just isn’t right.”

“It’s not our business,” Missy said. “The story sounds right. And if he wasn’t serious about it, why carry a dead man’s ID and registration? No one’s going to be able to run a plate number or VIN to see who owns the truck. He could’ve tossed it all, and no one would have been any wiser.”

“It stinks.” Terrell glared at Vincenzo. “I’ll bet you’re one of those United Nations lovers, right, Vincenzo? One of those one world government people?”

Vincenzo looked at Forrest then at Missy. “What’s he talking about?”

“The United Nations has it in for the US,” Forrest said. “We all know it. There’s a chance the EMP event could just be a ruse, setting us up for an invasion by foreign forces. Can’t prove that, but it’s possible.”

Vincenzo didn’t know what to make of that. “Seriously?”

Forrest nodded. “For all we know, our own government could be in on it.”

“Damn straight,” Terrell added. “Those fat, entitled cats in Washington could finally get their way. Come in, take all our wealth and possessions, and especially our
guns
, then we’d all be in a pretty tough spot.”

“Maybe we have a more immediate problem,” Missy said evenly. “Tony, what about these raiders you mentioned were working over Washington?”

“I only saw a few of them, but they look like tough hombres. I don’t know what their overall plan is, but sack, pillage, and rape seems to be their preferred method of attack.”

“How many of them are there?”

Vincenzo shrugged. “How much does it take to overrun a small city and then a refugee camp on an airport? A few hundred? A few thousand?”

Forrest stroked his chin. “Yeah. That could be a big problem. We have a few dozen people here, and we’re well armed, but standing up against a militarized force could be kind of tough.”

“You’re a bit off the beaten path,” Vincenzo said. “I don’t know what these guys are after, but it doesn’t seem very likely they’d be interested in coming up this way.”

“Could be right.” Forrest took off his cap and ran a hand through his mop of dark hair. “But we’d better keep an eye on the interstate. If they’re big enough, they won’t have any problems using that to travel. No one will mess with them unless they encounter a military unit.”

“Is there any National Guard in Ohio?” Vincenzo asked.

Terrell made a dismissive noise. “Weekend warriors won’t do a damn thing for anyone. They’re just like the government, taking it all for themselves.”

Vincenzo checked his watch. His stomach was grumbling. It was twelve minutes after noon.
It’s been more than six hours already?
“Listen, if we’re done here, I’d like to get the kids and get back on the road. If you guys can give me an idea of where this Charity Point place is, I’d appreciate it.”

“Not exactly sure, but the Charity Point Church was outside of Kansas City,” Forrest said. “Lots of old bases out there.”

“I know where it is,” Terrell said. “Pettis County, outside of Kansas City a dozen or so miles. Off High Point Road.”

Missy turned to him. “How do you know that?”

“The base was advertised on the internet,” the old man said. “Once the word started going around the community about the Charity Point scoring a major deal, that property started rolling off the sites. I looked into it a little bit on the side, and some folks in the community agree.”

“High Point Road, Missouri,” Vincenzo said. “Okay. That’ll do. I appreciate the information. It’s a damn sight better than what I had before.”

Terrell grunted. “I’m doing it because of those kids, not because of you. They need to be with their family, not riding around with some thief.”

“You guys should stay the night,” Missy said.

Forrest scowled. “Melissa—”

“It’s the Christian thing to do, Forrest,” she snapped. “The kids just lost their father. Give them some time to rest.”

“You mean give
you
some time to feel useful again?” Forrest asked. “Give you someone to play mother to? Hell, Missy, why don’t we just keep them here?”

Yeah, that’d be great!
Vincenzo thought, his spirits practically leaping at the notion. Shame hit him a moment later.
Yeah, right. Just desert the kids.

Why not, champ?
the little niggling voice asked.
With you, the way your luck has been, they won’t last another couple of days.

“They’d be safer here than out on the road,” Missy said. Her shoulders slumped. “But they also need to be with their own mother. I know what she must be going through. She probably doesn’t know where they are. She doesn’t even know she’s a widow.”

Forrest frowned sadly and reached across the table to put his big hand on her shoulder. Even Terrell looked downtrodden at the sudden change in the woman’s mood, and he regarded her with heartbreak in his eyes.

Forrest patted her arm. “You can look after them for a while, but it’s up to Mr. Vincenzo here for how long.” He looked down the table at Vincenzo. “You could stay here for the night. Get cleaned up. Get some clothes washed. Clean your weapons. Get a good night’s sleep. We have enough people to provide protection. And it might be good for the kids, too.”

Vincenzo didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t been expecting the meeting with the confrontational survivalists to suddenly swerve into
The Guiding Light
territory, and the change in tack left him wondering just what the hell what was the right thing to do. Then, Missy looked at him with mournful hazel eyes glistening with unshed tears.

Vincenzo sighed inwardly and nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

33

Along with fuel, Taylorville had yielded some food stores and two functional vehicles that Roth added to his fleet of rolling stock. The old Packard sedan and 1970s-vintage armored truck had been parked behind Sylvester’s gas station. Roth was excited to have his first armored vehicle.

The assault on Washington had produced even more, along with another hundred or so shiftless persons who joined the cause. Roth’s army was growing by leaps and bounds. With every conquest, not only did they obtain more goods—food, weapons, ammunition, vehicles, people—but more experience, more cunning, and more lethality. Defenders fell before them like bowling pins, and those in uniform found themselves almost always the direct recipient of Roth’s type of lethal care.

Roth knew it wouldn’t be long before they would be able to attack an actual
city
and help themselves to whatever bounty might lie inside its borders. But at the same time, he also knew that cities would soon empty out once critical supplies ran low, or when law and order could no longer be established. He felt the larger cities would self-destruct sooner rather than later. He’d heard from some of those in his ranks that New York and Philadelphia had already met such a fate, expiring in orgies of violence within days after the event. While the demise of those metropolises didn’t bother him in the slightest, the competition for scarce resources would not be welcome.

That essentially meant his force would have to kill anyone and everyone who opposed them.

Such is life,
he thought, not bothered by the circumstance in the slightest.

He knew that, eventually, he would have to go solo. There was no chance that his army, no matter how bloodthirsty, rapacious, and capable it was, could ever hope to build a new society inside the hollowed-out shell of the United States. Someday, those who found their balance after the event would come together, either community by community or state by state, and start pooling their resources to work toward a common goal. Once that happened, forces like Roth’s would either be hunted down and eradicated or forced to join one of those restored cooperatives. Roth wasn’t cut out to be a small cog in a big machine, or even a big cog in a small machine. He was good at only one thing: being the point of the spear. He had been that before, and he was that now, though being the point at the head of an army was a lot more time-consuming than he had hoped. While he had a mind for details—one did not become a sophisticated and successful serial killer by chance—maintaining the mindset to continually juggle action and reconstitution was a bit much.

That was one of the reasons he missed Harley. Harley had been quite good at those things, though one wouldn’t have known that by looking at him. But the old biker had been around for a long time, and he had spent more than a little time out in the world before joining Club Fed Med. While there were more than a few folks with intelligence in his force, most weren’t uniters through anything other than violence. And while violence was a great catalyst for change, its efficacy eventually wore off. Both the perpetrators and victims grew weary of it. Backbones eroded, and misplaced morality and guilt flourished. Roth didn’t want to be around when any of that happened.

However, his convoy of vehicles took to US 40 like a long trail of locusts, overcoming any obstacles in its path. The snowplows up front shoved dead vehicles out of the way so the rest of the force could pass. Since the event had happened during the evening, there had been few cars on the road, so their progress was good.

They stopped near the small city of Wheeling, West Virginia. Roth sent scouts in to survey the town, while the main force broke up and moved to different areas off US 40. If there was a heavy military presence in the city, he didn’t want to provide them with a fat target. He gave strict orders for his troops to behave, even if approached. If fighting began too early, they would lose the element of surprise. Roth would kill his own before allowing that to happen, and all who served him knew that would be the penalty.

When the scouts reported back, Roth was underwhelmed. While Wheeling had the requisite amount of desperation flowing through its streets and a relatively small police presence, law and order still prevailed. If there were any major supply depots, their locations weren’t easily divined. And there were enough people present that even Roth’s force might be in for some dedicated fighting if they tried to overstay their welcome. He considered all of those things and weighed the value against the potential cost. Roth had no illusions. His was not the most cohesive of armies, and the only thing holding it together was the opportunity to conduct wanton violence. While he wasn’t terribly worried about losing troops, a major defeat could cause his force to break up.

And would that be such a bad thing?
In the end, I’ll be solo, one way or the other. Why not now, instead of later?

He decided they would fight through the small city, take what they could, and press on into Ohio. The plan took some coordination, but since there were only a few suitable lanes of approach, it wasn’t a long and drawn out affair. The army attacked at dawn, overwhelming the police presence on Interstate 70, then used the highway as a jump-off point for raids deeper into the city. As Roth had suspected, the people weren’t completely disorganized, and West Virginia was hardly a gun-free state. Many civilians were well-armed and competent, and there were periods of intense fighting. Also, the police were still a dedicated lot. They did their best, but Roth had been waiting for them. He shot ten himself without even having to leave the convoy of vehicles, and he added five more to the kill chart when he led a raiding party down Sixteenth Street. His army spent the day in and around Wheeling, doing what it did best: killing, maiming, raping, robbing, and plundering. A tremendous food cache was discovered, and it took two hours to overwhelm its defenders. With the new rations, Roth would be able to keep his army fed for more than a month. That was a welcome find, as it gave his force the ability to operate longer between raids without having to worry about bellies being filled.

By the time the convoy slipped across the river and into Ohio, Roth had lost forty-three soldiers. He had killed fifteen police officers and a smattering of other combatants, but he estimated the rest of the force had racked up well over a two hundred kills.

It was a good day.