Hard Rain Falling (Walking in the Rain Book 3) (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

We ended up spending a week enjoying the hospitality of the revitalized Fort Chaffee facility, waiting to hear back from the Guard command in Oklahoma City. During those seven days, all four of us tried to pitch in wherever possible. Our barracks continued to steadily fill up as Guardsmen from all over the northern section of the state dispatched their families to the presumed safety of the base.

Every morning, our little group joined the volunteer labor pool waiting for assignment. Before I agreed to do this, I laid down two ironclad rules. First, none of them went anywhere without a pistol. Back at the farm, Lori and Summer opted for 9mm Glocks, while Amy selected a Browning Hi Power, also 9mm. No one complained about me being pushy in this regard. Going armed became as normal as putting on shoes in the morning.

All three also owned good quality AR-15 rifles, which were tagged with their names and secured in the base armory. All of these weapons came from my own stash, and the remainder stayed sealed in the footlocker I’d appropriated from Darwin Keller. I’d swapped him all the random non-standard caliber firearms and ammo I had for a supply of 5.56, 7.62x51, 9mm, and .45 ACP.

Initially, I’d just planned to donate those weapons to the cause but Darwin would not accept the gift. He made up the difference that he insisted he owed in gold and silver coins, so despite cutting back my stock of firearms to a more reasonable level, I still need help moving the footlocker. I’d guess it weighed over two hundred pounds.

The second requirement was that the three of them could volunteer for whatever chores they wanted, but I wanted all three of them together at all times. If one had to take a potty break, I said, then I had better hear about that goofy group of girls that always goes to the bathroom together.

This was on the first night after our arrival as we all sat around on our bunks getting ready for bed. At this point, the only other guests in the large barracks structure had chosen to bed down at the other end of the building. Not out of fear of us, I didn’t think, but courtesy since they had several small children and infants in their group.

Summer wanted to complain, but Lori shut her down fast. She waved in my direction as she spoke.

“Honey, Luke is just making a point. You haven’t seen the worst of things out here yet. I think we’re somewhat safe here behind the fence but even that’s not certain. Lots of fence and not enough guards. Plus, there are people outside who would kill us simply for being here if they could. Then there may be some folks already inside who might not be opposed to getting a little action going with one of us.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t have to say it that way. Of course we’ll look out for each other.”

“And if I need to go to the restroom, are you coming with me?” Lori asked.

“Well, of course. But he still doesn’t have to say it that way. We’re not goofy,” Summer said with as much wounded dignity as a thirteen year old could muster.

“I’m sorry, Summer. I didn’t mean to say it that way.” Which was true, I wasn’t looking to alienate these two young ladies; for a lot of reasons. They were here because they could somewhat take care of themselves and for their contacts in McAlester.

“I don’t mean you or your sister, or, heaven forbid, Amy is goofy. What I meant was, if one of you is working in a warehouse on one row, then the other two needs to be there within sight as well. Anything they have you do, stay together. Just try not to be obvious about it. I was only talking about the old cliché about ladies always going in groups to the restroom so they could talk about the boys.”

“Oh. Well why didn’t you just say that?”

I had gotten to like Summer and her sister, Lori, a good deal. Summer was a generally pleasant girl, smart as a whip, and fun to be around. She reminded me of my sister Paige a bit, except without my sister’s snarky remarks. I felt Amy was thinking of her as a younger sibling as well.

One night not long after I’d returned from the school in Bentonville, we were sitting around an outside fire-pit at the farm enjoying the flames even in the summer heat. Amy, her voice no more than a whisper in my ear, confided in me that as an only child growing up she’d been jealous of her classmates who had brothers and sisters. Since Amy was even more reluctant than I to speak of her family, or even her life generally before we met, I took her words as a good sign.

At seventeen, Lori was actually older than me, which came as a surprise. Her size fooled me. She was small and compact, but with dense muscles like a gymnast—or at least she was before her sudden crash diet. Chatting with her back at the farm, Amy and I found out the only reason she was at the cheerleading camp for the junior high crowd was to work as an unpaid assistant coach.

“Yeah, getting a cheerleading scholarship is really hard work, but I had a better shot there than with basketball. Not many five foot two inch guards get a full ride. Volunteering to help with the youngsters got me brownie points with the head coach.” She’d been very open about the fact her parents couldn’t afford to send her to school. Even with both parents working decent paying jobs, they could not afford to pay full tuition, books, and housing for three children.

What got Lori and Summer added to our itinerary was the cautious invitation extended by Lori after she’d had a little time to feel us out. Amy and I both got the same treatment, and no, not in a sexual sense. She simply asked seemingly innocuous questions and seemed to be weighing our responses. Amy just answered honestly, without hedging, and my answers, while vague, did amount to straight responses. From her questions, like my dealings with Ruth, I sort of figured out where she was headed.

In the end, Lori revealed that her parents worried about something like this happening and had taken precautions. In short, they were preppers; like the Kellers, but on a smaller scale. So, just before our scheduled departure from the Keller farm, we temporarily added two more to our group. Since Lori knew all of the girls from the cheerleading camp and, more importantly, had obtained the latest contact information from the girls, she was an obvious choice to head out early to help speed the process.

“Look,” I said, getting us back on point, “when we get to McAlester, I don’t know if… well, things might not be what you expected.”

We sat with our heads close together and when I paused to let my words soak in to Lori and Summer, I looked to Amy for support. Any other teenaged girl might have looked at the older, more mature Lori and mistook her as a potential rival for my affections. Though my devotion to Amy was unwavering, I could see the threat of conflict; even if only in the abstract. But Amy just winked at me, letting me know she was still on-board.

“What I mean is; if you need a place to go, we would be glad to have you come with us to my parent’s place in northeast Texas.”

Lori went still, studying first my face, then Amy’s. She addressed her response to Amy instead of me, which just went to show how smart Lori really was.

“And you’re okay with this? Seriously okay?”

“Yeah, Lori. Seriously okay. If Luke feels like his family can accept more of us strays showing up like cats at a milk bucket, who am I to say no?”

Amy reached out and touched Lori’s face, brushing back her short, spikey hair. The move was friendly, even affectionate, but not sexual as I have mentioned. Then she continued,

“Lori, Summer, I know both of you have seen some shit, but I’ve been working with Shay and Delilah almost since they came to the Farm. Talking them through the hard nights and holding their hands when the Doc needs to perform another exam. Did you know Doc Cass doesn’t think Delilah will ever be able to have kids of her own?”

I stared at Amy, wide-eyed. Not about helping the girls or Doc Cass, since I knew she was trying to soak up as much first aid training in as short a time as possible. No, it was the stark, raw pain in her words as she spoke.

“Delilah didn’t even understand what sex was before being raped that first time. Her idea of intercourse was hugging and kissing with boys, that was all. Now she is so damaged inside from the repeated rapes that she still has trouble walking at times.”

As Amy spoke, she began to shed tears. Not crying for herself, but mourning the lost innocence of those two girls and all the others like them.

“Are you sure you can talk about this?” Lori asked; her eyes wide with shock.

“No, I’m not. But you two will need a safe place to stay, no matter what, and I can’t stand the thought of the same thing happening to you as what those two little girls went through. Luke has been hell on rapists literally from the moment I met him, and all I can say is we need to keep weeding them out of the gene pool.”

With that, she wiped her eyes and tried to smile at me.

“And, that goes back to what Luke said before… cut him some slack. He’s only sixteen, which on the maturity scale for boys puts him slightly behind you, Summer. Even though we can take care of ourselves, he’s just worried about us, and rightly so.”

Leaning over, I gave her a little kiss on the cheek. I think we both managed without blushing.

“Honey, I know you can take care of yourself. But if the three of you stick together, none of you may have to use those pistols. I’d like to spare you—any of you—the pain of taking a human life for as long as I can.”

Lori looked at me curiously, but also with another expression I couldn’t place.

“When it comes time, I won’t hesitate, but I appreciate the concern.”

“What… does it feel like?” Summer asked; her question out almost before her sister’s words hit my ear. “Killing somebody, I mean?”

I just shook my head; not in refusal, but because I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t remember exactly how it felt the first time. I don’t mean the emotions, those remained crystal clear. If I closed my eyes I could still feel the clenching fear and disgust, all bound up with a nearly overpowering rage. My life changed forever in that rest-stop and I still could see the bodies.

But, how did it
physically
feel to slash a throat that first time? To ram nearly two feet of steel into someone’s gut and brace your foot against their chest to pull the blade free? Hell, I still couldn’t remember how many I killed in the frenzy to win my freedom. What I don’t remember, ever, was feeling any remorse or regret for what I had done. Plus, I feared that part of my soul had become too calloused to the act since then. Finally, I decided Summer deserved some kind of answer, a reward for mustering up her courage to ask the question.

“I just don’t want killing to become too easy for any of you. Don’t confuse that with your willingness to defend yourselves. In the moment, with your life on the line, do not hesitate. Do. Not. Hesitate.”

“I’m not sure I understand the difference,” Summer replied meekly.

“Fair enough. Someone is pulling a weapon on you. What do you do?”

“Draw and fire,” she said immediately.

“Someone is pointing a weapon at your sister. Is it okay to shoot?”

“Yes,” she replied instantly.

“Someone calls your sister fat and ugly. Shoot?”

“What? What the heck? No, of course not.” Summer gave me a little glare and I had to fight laughing because this wasn’t a joke.

“There was a gunfighter in Texas, made a name for himself back in the late 1880s. Guy’s name was John Wesley Hardin. He killed a bunch of people. I think the total most agreed to was forty-four men. Some might have had it coming, others probably didn’t. All I have to go on is what I read in the history books. The thing is… he was infamous for shooting a man who was staying at the same hotel he was in. I don’t remember the details but the bottom line was that someone accused him of shooting the man for snoring.”

“And what…?” I could see the confusion in Summer’s eyes and caught a curious glance from Lori as well, wondering where I was going.

“When he killed his first man, Summer, I’ll bet John Wesley Hardin never thought in a million years he might be capable of killing a man for snoring. For what it’s worth, I think his father was a preacher, too, and by all accounts he was well educated for the times. But trust me; after you do it enough times, pulling the trigger gets to be a lot easier. You just have to make sure killing never becomes too easy or becomes a reflex. And most importantly, not something you do for fun.”

Amy nodded. “Anybody who gets to that stage is not really human anymore.”

We’d had this discussion already. I’d confided in Amy a little about what happened to me sometimes. The berserker. The conversation was uncomfortable on my part, but she needed to know. Know what kind of man to which she was committing herself. Amy took the news in stride, having already figured out some of it from my fight with Gary Keller, and what others let slip about the shootouts at Saw Creek.

As I went to sleep wrapped around Amy that night, I wondered how much of my humanity remained.

Then I awoke in the dark with my finger tightening on the trigger, preparing to squeeze a round into the melon of Lori as she jumped down from her bunk to visit the latrine. I didn’t fire, drawing back at the last possible second. So I must have a little bit of myself left in the tank for the time being.

Good thing Amy didn’t snore, though.

CHAPTER THREE

Every morning, our little group made use of the old bathroom facilities we shared with a growing crowd of people, and then headed out to join the volunteer labor pool after a quick breakfast in the small dining hall. The base had several housing facilities scattered about the main complex and I heard some of the barracks dated back to the Second World War. The same source, a talkative younger teen who sat near us in the breakfast service, explained that Fort Chaffee used to be a major Army base. The military reservation used to train thousands of soldiers before being turned over to the Arkansas National Guard and the Army Reserve.

We were picked for different projects each day, all somehow related to maintaining the base or bringing unused sections back into service. I learned that the base was actually a military reservation covering over 65,000 acres, so what we saw was only one small part. Much of the infrastructure and many of the service facilities had been mothballed by the Arkansas National Guard, but now Colonel Hotchkins wanted to see what could be salvaged. As I saw it, the man wanted options.

The ladies split their time between working in the kitchens and assisting the supply personnel, apparently helping to inventory old, unused warehouses. Summer and Lori seemed to prefer kitchen duty but I could tell Amy enjoyed working with the supply people. I couldn’t tell if it was because she liked counting things, or if she enjoyed hunting for treasure. I guessed just about anything could be buried in on those old concrete bunker-style storage buildings. Maybe she liked both.

Nothing was said, but I knew they were sticking close together, including those times when they trekked off for their restroom breaks. The base was full of unfamiliar faces, and newcomers continued to arrive every day. They’d all three had enough of dangerous strangers.

I usually ended up volunteering for the motor pool, mostly helping resurrect old trucks referred to as ‘five tons’ by the more knowledgeable mechanics. These trucks appeared to have been mothballed, and early tests showed the older vehicles were very resistant to the EMP-like effects of the pulse. Not much was computerized on trucks that were last used by the U.S. Army at the end of the Vietnam War.

Some of the newer vehicles still worked, but it was random that way. Since, as the stories suggested, the National Guard units did receive the Regular Army’s castoff—or at least, outdated—equipment, the mechanics were proud to say their stuff might be old, but more of it still worked than what might be found at a Regular Army base.

However, with the brisk operations tempo—a phrase I learned from Master Sergeant Warnecke—the Guard was also saddled with newer, cooler systems that just did not work now.

“I thought this stuff was supposed to be hardened against Electromagnetic Pulse,” I complained to the master sergeant. We were sweating buckets in the confined spaces of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Warnecke grunted and used a pair of needle nosed pliers to remove a fused circuit board from the open control panel. I couldn’t be certain whether the damage was related to the pulse or not, but the carbon singed chunk of electronics looked barely suitable to serve as a paperweight.

“Yeah, well, there’s protected… and then there’s really protected. I’ve seen this same relay on other Brads working just fine. The damage is actually more trouble that way. We have to check everything because of that. Add this to the list. We’ll strip one out of the boneyard and see if it works.”

Truthfully, I think the master sergeant was still gathering data on what absolutely had to be replaced every time, and what was just a random breakdown. I jotted down the part number as Warnecke recited it from memory. He seemed to know the ins and outs of these massive tracked vehicles like he’d written the book on maintaining and repairing them. Maybe he had.

This time when I volunteered to work in the motor pool, Warnecke asked for me by name, and I figured it would be more work on the transport trucks, since I’d been getting trained on them. I’d tinkered enough with my dad back home repairing diesel engines on tractors so I knew a bit, at least enough to qualify as a helper or gopher to the actual mechanics.

Instead, Warnecke led me over to the three monsters hibernating in one of the maintenance buildings, one each nestled in what I later learned were dedicated repair bays. Working in the bowels of these Bradley Fighting Vehicles turned out to be an education… a sweaty, filthy education.

At first, I couldn’t figure out the reason or logic behind our work as Warnecke dug into the dead-lined armored vehicles, and the master sergeant ignored my questions. After a while, his plan became clear.

The savvy mechanic focused first of identifying and then, if possible, repairing mobility issues with the Bradleys. Ignoring the peripheral systems for the time being, he directed our labors towards bringing the engines and drive trains back to life. He finally gave a partial explanation when he commented in an off-hand manner that an armored vehicle that couldn’t move was just a pillbox, after all —then I got it.

After the master sergeant taught me this lesson, we continued to talk as we worked. Well, I’d been talking and asking questions all along, but now Warnecke would respond, or not, as we continued. I learned the master sergeant was married with two teenaged kids, a boy and a girl. His wife and the two youngsters worked in the gardens; or rather fields that were planted in cleared tracts in the fenced areas around the base.

The planting went in late, of course, but already I could make out the green shoots poking up through the freshly turned earth. This was the colonel’s doing, Warnecke declared. Not the actual clearing and planting, but Colonel Hotchkins had gotten the men and women working on the project immediately.

Fortunately, the Guard attracted plenty of recruits from rural backgrounds, and enough of them knew about growing crops that the deed was done. I joked about the Humvees being attached to plows must have been a sight. With a sniff, Warnecke went on to explain tractors were the first thing Colonel Hotchkins had his mechanics working on after the Humvees. Warnecke didn’t know where they got the seed or fertilizer but there were plenty of sources available in the area.

“That man, he’s a thinker. Heard he was an up and comer in the regular Army, but went for the Guard for the sake of his family.”

“Why would he do that? No offense. The Guard does a lot of good. Even before the lights went out, I mean.” I asked while using the moment to grab my canteen for a sip of lukewarm water. The temperature had to be well over a hundred degrees in the metal clad building. Dehydration was a real concern. Personally, I was still enjoying the clean water that came out of the taps in the barracks; another project of the colonel’s, no doubt. He’d managed to get a cobbled-together power network up and running as well, but usage was carefully controlled.

“His boy has leukemia is what I heard through the grapevine. His wife was trying to do it all by herself, but they had two other kids as well. She was working herself to death, I imagine. The colonel—he was a major back then—stepped up and made the move over to the Guard. This let them be closer to family, and Fayetteville had a pretty good medical center back then.”

That little tidbit kept me thinking as we continued to work. If anybody would know the colonel it would be Warnecke. He was permanent cadre, like Hotchkins, which meant the National Guard was his fulltime job and Warnecke was proud of the fact he’d spent nearly twenty years in the Arkansas National Guard after doing a stint in the Army. He’d been to just about every school the military had when it came to repairing and servicing armor and armored vehicles.

Warnecke seemed to be well tied in to the rumor mill too. For instance, he knew who I was and even knew some of the details about what went down at the school in South Bentonville. Not direct knowledge, but he’d heard the talk. After a while, he proved willing to ask questions to fill in the blanks too.

I was initially confused by this apparent change in the sergeant’s demeanor, but then I realized this morning had been all about getting a feel for me. He was doing his own evaluation of me while I was sizing him up. I almost laughed at the realization.

“So, I heard your girlfriend or sister was being held at that school? Is that why you volunteered?”

I did laugh at that. So part of that bull we cooked up still managed to make the rounds? I decided to give him the truth—some of it—and see what the grapevine carried forward. I knew some of the troops at the fort looked at us a bit skeptically; especially with the civilian contractor tag we’d picked up.

“Neither one, Master Sergeant; we found out what was going on at the school from some girls we rescued. The girl that knew the most about what was going on in there had a sister still inside. She’d told us enough that I could go in and pretend to be her brother if we could get the local Guard unit to back our move.”

“Did it work? I mean, obviously you managed to convince some of Captain Devayne’s men to go along, but I heard things went to shit after you got inside. The story got you through the door though, didn’t it?” Warnecke asked, and I could tell he was really curious even though his thick, nimble fingers never stopped working at backing out a hard-to-reach screw.

“Sergeant Conners and Private Borden got us inside. All my story did was make the first guard decide it was a good idea to stonewall Sergeant Conners. Bad idea for him.”

Warnecke nodded. “Yeah, I heard both those guys did good. Earned Conners his next stripe and I’ll bet the other guy will be promoted soon as well. They made the Guard look good, and we haven’t had a lot of chances to shine lately.”

“I beg to differ. You guys are short-handed and the situation is just impossible. They were great and so was the relief force Captain Devayne brought in. Got all those people freed and didn’t lose a man.”

I thought that was the end of it when Warnecke went back to work and it was silent for nearly half an hour.

“I heard it got really hairy there, once you got inside. I heard from someone who talked to Nathan, I mean, Sergeant Conners, that you had to hold the stairs for nearly an hour while under attack.” He asked the question of truth carefully, not wanting to push too far, I figured.

“Closer to half an hour really; still, I won’t lie, it was bad. I’ve been in some scrapes before, but that was just… I can’t see how you guys do it. I was in over my head, Master Sergeant.”

“I heard different. I heard you did just fine. Most of what we do, or did before, doesn’t involve getting into pitched battles. You know, even when we were deployed it was mainly random mortars and harassing fire. Sometimes the hajjis would try to hit us from an ambush, but mostly they just died when our choppers showed up.”

I thought about what Warnecke said, and then I remembered the first guard. The giant named David. The man I executed in cold blood. Funny thing, Conners later admitted—somewhat embarrassingly—was that he didn’t think I was actually going to do it. He was just trying to psyche the prisoner out a bit. Oops. Well, the joke was on him when I slashed the man’s throat open like butchering a hog.

I didn’t really have a problem with it. The man had damned himself with his own words. I was the executioner, and he just died quicker than his boss, Jimenez. When he admitted to raping some of the girls supposedly under his protection… well, he was dead from that point going forward.

Warnecke had a few more questions, clearly not believing me when I admitted my age. Normally I would have not disclosed this information, but I thought it better that people didn’t assume I was a child molester if they caught me holding Amy’s hand. Admittedly, Amy did look closer to her age of almost fifteen now that she’d been eating sort of regularly for the last month, but we were both still sensitive about some things.

That night, I lay with Amy in my arms and thought about what happened at the school. The fight was still somewhat of a blur—sometimes literally because of the white smoke grenade used by the attackers. Like I told Warnecke, I’d been in tight spots and hard places before, but for some reason this was different.

Maybe it was the fact my back was against the wall. Other times, even when I took risks like taking out the group of raiders at Saw Creek, I could have retreated and done something else. Even when I’d been facing death trying to help Stan and Ruth, my actions allowed for the possibility of leading the bad guys away. That the last two turned out to just be better than me at fighting was not something I spent much time thinking about. The school, though, always seemed to be waiting in the back of my mind.

Screw it, I finally decided and tried to stop thinking about anything. Amy, probably unconsciously sensing my mood, moved her head closer to mine. Giving her one last kiss, I gave up on my useless pondering and let sleep take me.

That night, I dreamed of being trapped by dark shadows and ripped at by unseen claws. Apparently, my mind was still wrestling with the memories knocking around in my head. No shocker, but these new nightmares would just have to stand in line with the older ones already haunting my sleep.