Ever Onward (35 page)

Willard smiled. Through the blood it
looked like a grimace. “Here’s what were going to do, Saddy. When
they’re heading away from us, we both jump up and let go a few
rounds, then run like hell for the truck!”

“Why not just sneak away now?”, the
little man demanded.

Willard’s friendly eyes narrowed.
“’Cause I aint going to run till I get me one more lick at ‘em!”
Sadat swallowed, then nodded agreement.

This time Willard’s smile
reached his eyes. “We’ll learn ‘em to come snoopin’ around our town
shootin’ at peaceable folk!”.

Rambo pulled the tab that extended the
Laws Rocket and flipped up the sight. The whole thing was less than
a yard long. Built as a one-shot disposable bazooka, it launched a
mini-rocket a quarter of a mile or more.

“Jesus wept!”, Pete intoned as he
looked on, his shell-shocked mind dredging up a quote from a youth
spent in revival tents and pool halls.

Rambo placed the tube on his shoulder
and peered through the sight. As the yacht cruised around in its
slow circle, the cross hairs lined up on the largest boulder less
than 50 yards away.

“Better stand to one side, ladies.
This baby blows out both ends.”

Straw and Pete almost tripped over
Doug Snelling’s body jumping out of the way. One Arm, now at the
controls, a blood-soaked bandana tied round his forehead, giggled
like an old maid on her first date. The three remaining women were
nowhere to be seen.

As the yacht came abreast of the
headland, Rambo pressed a red button on the side of the stubby
tube. “Fire in the hole!”

A
‘whoomphing’
sound like a
lion’s cough followed and the mini-rocket streaked out over the
water. A moment later the large rock that sheltered Willard and
Sadat went super-nova. The earth trembled. On the side hit by the
Laws Rocket, ancient granite formed millennium ago vaporized in a
heartbeat. What didn’t turn into gas was transformed to lava. The
great rock shuddered and cracked. The shock wave spread out,
dragging dust, smoke and rock with it. Sadat, crouching at the base
of the huge rock, was protected from most of it. Willard was
not.

The farmer had been on his feet,
leaning against a split in the rock when the rocket hit. Blinded by
the blast, the shock wave had pushed the large older man back like
a leaf in the wind. Luckily the bows of a downed pine twenty feet
away broke most of his fall.

“Willard!” Sadat yelled. Still
clutching the shotgun, he scrambled over to the still form. Acidic
smoke from the dozen or so small fires filled his lungs and stung
his eyes.

“Willard!”, Sadat repeated, cradling
the older man’s bleeding head.

No response.

“Willllarrrd!”, the little Turk
screamed.

The farmer’s graying head rolled to
one side. His eyes remained closed.

Slowly Sadat looked around. Less than
a hundred feet out into the lake the bow of the yacht was slowly
coming into view. Snapping off the safety of Willard’s daddy’s 12
gage, the mild little man stood up, a look of intense anger in his
bright blue eyes.

“Bloody bastards! Bloody, stinking
bastards!”

He raised the heavy gun and fired the
first barrel. The stock kicked him like his grandmother’s donkey.
He grunted and fired the second. Dropping the now empty gun, he
grabbed Willard under the arms and pulled. One of the farmer’s
boots had become wedged in a fork in the tree. Sadat yanked with
all his might.

Willard groaned and opened his eyes.
“Jesus Christ, Sadat! I aint a bloody wishbone!”

The little Turk sank down behind
Willard, still clasping the heavy farmer to his breast. All about
them smoke and fire raged.

“I...I thought they had killed you!”,
he said, trying in vain to hold back his tears.

“Not bloody likely!”, Willard grunted,
painfully freeing his foot. His head still ringing and blinded in
one eye by his own blood, he staggered to his feet. Sadat helped as
best he could. Willard had the Turk retrieve both his weapons,
then, using the shotgun like a crutch, both men hobbled away into
the swirling smoke.

“You want me to drive?”, the smaller
man asked.

“Hell no!”, the bigger
laughed. “We might have an accident!”

Things were far from well on board the
not so good ship Sadistic. In fact, all was bloody chaos. Sadat’s
first shot had missed by a country mile. The second one, however,
had been dead on. Loaded with # 9 birdshot, the tiny pellets from
Willard’s granddaddy's old gun had raked the wheelhouse. Made years
before the modern invention of Cylinder or Invector chokes, the 585
pellets per ounce, each one .08 inches in diameter, spread out in a
vast inverted triangle to blanket the entire ship. The lion’s share
of these tiny led balls however, had entered the wheelhouse.
Stinging like red-hot hornets, they pierced cloth, skin and
flesh.

Straw has hit seven times. Twice in
the legs, thrice in the arms and the rest in the side of his head.
One pierced his ear, another pierced his eardrum. To the day he
died he would be deaf in one ear.

Pete was hit by thirteen little
devils, all in the upper thigh and groin. It would be many days
till Peter Piper would be up to using his pecker.

One Arm, partially shielded by the
wheel, was struck only twice on the chest, yet one of the stinging
little balls did score a bulls-eye on his right nipple.

Standing in the centre of the
shattered window, Rambo took over two dozen tiny hits. Starting at
his left shoulder and ending at his right temple, his once handsome
face looked like Queequeg, the tattooed harpooner in Melville’s
‘Moby Dick’. Small oil wells of blood sprouted from his chin, lips,
cheeks and brow. Several led pellets tore off the lobe of his right
ear, while several more put out his right eye.

One Arm, surveying both the physical
and human wreckage about him, swung the large wheel around and
slammed the throttles all the way forward. The purring lions
beneath the deck roared to life and the once sleek yacht leapt
forward, seeking the safety of open water. Over the sound of the
motor, One Arm’s maniacal laughter could be heard. Mixed in with
the laughter were curses, moans and a promise that set him on a
collision course with his own dark destiny.

“I’ll be back, you fuckers! I’ll be
back! And when I do you’ll curse your mothers for ever giving you
birth! I’LL BE BACK, I SWEAR IT!”

Chapter 27
: ‘THE TEXAS
RANGERS’

Lake Champlain

New York August
10

Driving back across New Hampshire and
Vermont, Josh and his people came across several small communities.
At Concord they met people living as an enlarged family in a
town-house complex. On a large farm outside the town of Lebanon
they found a religious group living as Orthodox Jews. Passing
through the Green Mountain National Forest, they stopped at the
village of Brandon Gap where they came across a number of people
who were already reverting back to the days of Daniel Boon ---
complete with flintlock and muzzle loading weapons! In Middlebury,
Vermont, they found people who had taken up residence in a shopping
centre and refused to venture outside!

Josh brooded over the diversity they’d
found. Each one of these groups were struggling to rebuild their
lives as best they could, yet it seemed to him that each was taking
on a flavor of its own. What would these small communities look
like in ten or twenty years? In fifty years? Would they hold to the
democratic, North American view of society, or would each
individual sect take on a way of life unique unto
itself?

Being a student of history, he was
well aware of just how fast a society could slip backwards once
central authority had been lost. It had happened in Egypt, Greece
and Rome. Christ, the whole of Europe went down the tubes during
the Dark Ages! His thesis, entitled ‘A World in Decline’, had
searched for the real man behind the legendary King Arthur. What he
had found was a 6
^th
century war-lord struggling to hold
back the inevitable. The all encompassing power that was Rome had
vanished, leaving half-Celtic, half-Roman Britain to fend for
itself. The ‘Arthur’ character had managed to hold it together for
a short, glorious time, but with his passing, Celtic Britain had
soon tore itself apart.

Was that about to happen
here?

All over the world, both figuratively
and literally, the lights were going out. Darkness seemed to be
creeping in from all sides. Brave little islands of light were
struggling to shine forth, but like Arthur’s fabled Camelot, for
how long? How long could good people like Maybelle Smith in Bangor,
Granny and Buz in the Lighthouse commune, even Doc Gruber and the
folks back at Mount Hawthorn, hold out against the growing
dark?

Then there were the wild, roaming
bands. Again, just as it had happened before: barbaric Huns, Viking
Sea-Wolves, looting Vandals. They’d come across several of theses
‘gangs’
on their way back from the coast. Homeless, rootless
people, in search of something they themselves couldn’t describe.
Some were just poor, lost souls, banding together in 2’s and 3’s
for moral as much as physical support. Harmless, haunted survivors
of something they had no real desire to survive.

Others, however, were not so
harmless.

These groups were what
really bothered Josh. Though they came in all shapes and sizes,
they resembled Snake’s group in many ways. Always run by a
loudmouthed male, always armed to the teeth and always deadly.
They’d had two run-ins with such groups on the way back to Crown
Point.

The first had been just outside of
Concord. Heading up I-89, they had passed through the small town of
Davisville. Several motorcycles and a large four-by-four had been
parked outside a hotel. Two men had been sitting outside a bar when
they drove through. They’d taken one look at Flame on her Harley
and started out after them. Luckily these young gallants hadn’t
taken the time to inform their brethren of the manna that Heaven
had just seemingly dropped into their laps.

Leaping on their bikes, they’d raced
by the vans and caught up with the fiery red head a couple of miles
out of town. Driving dangerously close, they’d hassled her for a
mile or so. Josh, his Beretta in his hand, was about to try to
force them off the road when Flame drew her large Smith &
Wesson and blew out one of their front tires. The unlucky biker
suddenly found himself face down in the ditch, his foul mouth
filled with dirt and missing a few teeth. The second biker, finally
realizing that ‘the date’ had suddenly turned sour, wisely decided
to cut his losses and head back to the barn.

The second group had caused them
considerable more trouble. Two days before they came across a
Daniel Boon type bunch in Brandon Gap. They had stopped for an
early morning swim in a lake at the base of Round Mountain. The
tow-truck had been running rough since leaving the Lighthouse
commune, and Brad and Billy decided to try and fix it. Gus had
talked Kenneth into a day of fishing in the mountain lake. Josh and
the rest had left to conquer the 3400 foot summit of Round
Mountain. Though not as high as New Hampshire’s Whites or the High
Peaks in New York, The Round was said to be one of the prettiest of
Vermont’s famous Long Trail.

The five spent the day climbing,
swimming in the streams and enjoying the natural beauty. It was
nearing dark by the time they got back down. Still a quarter of a
mile from the trailhead, they saw Kenneth jogging up towards them.
Og and Princess bounded ahead to meet the panting boy.

“Four men...”, the boy gasped. “in a
big camper...”

“Is anyone hurt?”, Josh
demanded

Kenneth shook his head. Jessie gave
him some water. “No, but Dad told me to get you,” he said after
several swallows. “To warn you. They wanted to know if we had
any...you know, women.” His flushed faced went a shade redder. At
sixteen the ‘facts of life’, though hazy, were still very much
known.

Kenneth continued. “Dad told them we
didn’t. That we were waiting for three more men. I don’t think they
believed him.”

“There’s four of them?”, Josh asked.
“Armed?”

Kenneth nodded.

“How long have they been
there?

“Not long. We just started supper when
they came”.

“How were they acting? Tough?
Friendly?”

Kenneth shrugged. “Sort of both. The
one that did most the talking smiled a lot, but I didn’t like it.
He talked funny too. Dad got me aside and told me to pretend to go
back fishing, then head up here and warn you. He said not to let
Trina and Flame come into camp.”

Eddy moved up to stand beside Josh.
“We could leave our packs here with the girls and run down. It’s
only about a quarter mile.”

“Like hell!”, Flame put in.

Eddy shook his head.

“We’ll all jog down,” Josh said. “But
nobody leaves the woods till we see what’s going on.”

Twenty minutes later they were on a
rise of land overlooking the long, narrow lake. The trailhead was
just below them. A large Winnebago was pulled up behind their vans.
Though the sun was still up, someone had built a fire between
Brad’s new red camper and the tow-truck. Six men were sitting
around it; Brad, Bobby and Gus on one side, three strangers on the
other. The fourth man was nowhere to be seen. Gus seemed to be
casually whittling and Bobby was strumming his guitar.