ExplicitNovels

Quaranteam-Northwest: Part 19

Listen Later

Quaranteam-Northwest: Part 19
Major Chaos

Based

on a post by Break The Bar. Listen to the
► Podcast
at Explicit Novels.



Once I was inside, I let out

a deep breath and closed my eyes while she couldn't see me. I wanted to tell
her I could get her a dose right now. I wanted to tell her I would love her
just like I did when we were teenagers, and we could pick up where we left off.
For all that Erica was judgmental of her, I knew they would get along after
things got settled. They were similar in a lot of ways, but different in other
important ones.

I wanted to tell, but I knew

what it would mean for me to offer it to her right now. It would mean, in her
eyes, that I was giving up on the rest of the people in need. It would look
like I was just trying to scoop her up like the hand of God and deus ex machina
her survival.

I needed to trust Miriam and

hope that she could shake something loose. That was the only way I could do
what Kara would want and what she needed.

And even if I did offer, and

even if she said yes, and even if she chose me and not to save
a man from the community, that choice would haunt her. Maybe I should have let
it be hers to make anyway, but I couldn't put that on her. I would carry it.

I pulled away slowly and saw

Kara give a little wave and head back into her house, the door shutting behind
her.

"Fuck!" I shouted

in the closed cab of my car. I pounded the steering wheel with my fist.

I followed the dirt path down

around a dozen more properties before it let out onto a road, and I started
tracking back towards the main street and the exit from the Rez. Already
frustrated and feeling a tightness in my chest; the muscles, not my heart; I
tried to block out the horrible little things that dotted the homes and shops.
There wasn't anything I could do, and I hated feeling that way.

Unfortunately, blocking

things out wasn't helpful when it came to avoiding trouble. I made a turn that
should have brought me one road over from the main drag and I slammed on the
brakes as I came within ten yards of a crowd. It was maybe thirty people and
they looked.... Crazy. They were hooting and cheering, and a lot of them looked
like they were dressed in the ceremonial garb that was usually kept for
festivals and cultural events. The few men in the crowd were bare-chested, and
everyone had daubs of paint on their faces and bare skin. It took me a moment
to realize it was supposed to be war paint. Plenty of them turned at my
approach, but many of them were still focused as a few people were putting more
paint on a man who was on his knees in the front yard of a house. He was a
little gaunt, and his bare chest was heaving as painted hands were slapped on
his chest and back. His face already held streaks of blue and red, and he was
wearing a feathered war headdress.

"What the fuck?" I

muttered.

I grabbed the microphone from

my dash and brought it to my lips, my eyes narrowing as I looked at the
assembled crowd. They were all dead people walking, congregating during an
outbreak. I triggered the mic. "For your own and public safety, disperse immediately,"
I said, my voice echoing out from the speakers built into the light bar of the
truck.

Then Feather turned from

painting the man on his knees, snarling at my vehicle as she narrowed her eyes.
"A false warrior of the white devil!" she cried, pointing at me
accusingly with a hand dripping with red paint. "You have no authority
here, pig! The earth rises up to send you back across the seas, and we shall
inherit her protection once more."

Well, now I knew where

the crazy was coming from. She'd always been particularly
nasty at any protest over the years, but this was something else.

"You are all risking

your lives by congregating like this," I said into the mic. "The
virus is contagious for two weeks with almost no symptoms before two days of
brutal death. Many of you are likely carriers and causing the deaths of your
friends and neighbors."

"He speaks with the

false promises that destroyed our ancestors!" Feather shouted. "Drive
him out!"

A brick came flying out of

the crowd and panged off the hood of my truck heavily. Then I noticed other
people in the crowd raising things that they'd been carrying. Some had rocks
and bricks and sticks. Others had bows and arrows, and hatchets, and I spotted
at least one shotgun.

"Fuck this," I

grunted, dropping the mic and slamming the truck into reverse, turning in my
seat to look out the back as best I could as I peeled away. More rocks and
bricks came flying my way, and I jerked when someone shot a fucking arrow at my
truck and it glanced off the windshield with a sharp crack, leaving
a jagged scar across it. I rounded the corner before anyone took a shot with a
firearm, burning it back to the next intersection and then putting it into
drive and speeding down the street. I whipped by abandoned cars, circling
around the insane mob, and found myself in an area that I remembered. It took
me another minute of fast driving before I reached the barricade.

I slowed to go around it

then, muttering to myself, I threw the truck in reverse again and backed up
into the car that had been moved. I pushed it back into place, then drove off.

It wouldn't stop anyone

determined, but it was something.

I thumbed open my phone,

keeping one eye on the road, and called Kara.

"Harri?" she asked,

surprised since I'd just left.

"Yeah, I'm out," I

said. "But I figured out the ringleader of your 'people going insane
during a quarantine' problem. It's Feather."

There was a moment of

silence. "Shit," she sighed. "Did she see it was you?"

"I don't think so,"

I said. "But if she asks around, people might be able to pinpoint that I
was in your area just by my truck. They shot fucking arrows at me. Are you
safe, or should I try and find a way to get you ladies out?"

"We should be

fine," Kara said. "Feather is... she's always been a lot, and all of
this must have pushed her over the edge. She might threaten us, but I don't
think she'll actually try to attack us."

"That's a pretty thin

line, Kara," I said.

"I know, but I can talk

her down," she said.

"Tell me if something

changes."

"I will," she said.

"Be safe."

"Be safer," I

countered.

The drive away from the Rez

was way less full of anxiety and much more frustrating. People could be real
tea-bags.

Showering at the compound was

an unpleasant affair as I stretched and saw the bruising on my side, along with
the aggravation to my leg. My headache, thankfully, had faded and the other
bruises weren't so bad that I couldn't play them off. I also hadn't gotten a
broken nose, which I'd left two of the bikers with, so that was a good thing.

Adding the trip to the Rez

onto my timeline, not to mention the black market, had me a little worried
about the frozen and dairy items in the truck, so I washed myself as fast as I
could before wiping down the inside of my truck in case I'd pulled anything in
on my clothes. Once that was done, I headed over to the Falls to make the
delivery.

"What happened?"

Erica asked me as soon as she saw me in the parking lot. Several of the ladies
were there to help carry in the groceries. "And don't tell me it was
nothing, Harrison Black."

Erica, apparently, was

getting used to her Matriarchal role. I hadn't heard my last name said like
that since my Mom had passed, but I'd definitely heard it throughout my
childhood when she had a bone to pick with my father.

"A couple of

things," I said.

"Well, you can start

with the arrow sticking out of the side of your truck."

"What?" I asked,

rounding the truck with a frown. Right there, stuck in the passenger side door,
was an arrow. "Fuck me."

I told her about the drop off

at the Rez, all of it, as we sat outside on the grass next to the parking lot
and she held my hand and looked into my eyes. She was frowning and nodding as I
told her how frustrated I was with the whole thing.

"You did what you could

reasonably do, babe," she said when I was through. "Other than going
all caveman and throwing all three of those ladies over your shoulder and
carrying them out by force."

"You know,”

"I know," she

stopped me. "I know. Now tell me what else happened."

Erica could read me as easily

as Kara did. I had a moment where I could have chosen to play it off, but
looking at my fiancée I knew that was the wrong choice. I could also tell that
she had something she was holding back. So I told her about
the black market but downplayed the fight and how I got out of it. She narrowed
her eyes slightly and I could tell she was stopping herself from either
criticizing my recklessness, or calling me on the downplaying. Probably both.

"Well, at least people

are getting food," she said. "The news said that shortages are going
to get worse. We might end up needing that black market sooner
than later."

"Doubtful," I said.

"We can eat with the construction workers if we need to, and between
Vanessa and Miriam we can probably syphon off resources for here."

"Still, it's good to

know it's there for now," she said.

"So what do you have to

tell me?" I asked.

She frowned, but blushed,

which was a weird combination on Erica. "Well, I figured out why I've been
freaking out so much lately when things have gone wrong."

"Okay," I said

dubiously. "Why is that?"

"My hormones are way out

of whack," she said. "I'm told that comes with being pregnant."

"That; I,” my eyebrows

raised as my brain took the extra second to click on what she was saying.
"Really?"

"Yes, really," she

grinned. "I grabbed a bunch of tests a little while ago because Kyla and I
are both trying, and I took one last night and one this morning and they were
both positive."

I tackled her, softly, to the

grass and kissed her as she laughed and hugged me.

I was going to be a father. I

was going to have kids with the most wonderful woman.

"You'll be an amazing

mom," I said in between kisses all over her face.

"And you'll be an

amazing,”

"Guys!" Josie

called, jogging through the parking lot towards us.

"Little busy, hon,"

Erica called to her.

"No, you need to come

inside," Josie said as she got closer. I sat up from leaning over Erica at
the tone of Josie's voice.

"What is it?" I

asked. "Something happened."

"It's all over the

news," Josie said. "It's; I don't know what's going to happen
now."

The President of the United

States collapsed and fell into a coma shortly before 3:30 PM on July 7th. We
watched the next hour on the big TV in the rec room of the Falls with all the
ladies. As the reports went on we switched from channel to channel. Faces we'd
never seen on major stations were covering the events. No one was contradicting
the other stations, though plenty of different narratives were spinning out of
it.

I made eye contact with Leo

when they announced that, with President Trump in a coma and unresponsive, Vice
President Pence was going to be temporarily sworn in under the 25th Amendment.
Leo was a lot more liberal than I was and had been staunchly disgusted by
Trump, as had Erica. I had been a lot more... forgiving wasn't the word, but I
respected the Office and I respected the democratic process. He was the
President, and while he was something of a garbage fire when it came to his
personal life, he was still duly elected. The fact that it was two equally shit
choices between him and his opponent hadn't helped matters.

Leo, and Erica, both thought

Pence was even worse than Trump because of his religious dogma. I didn't have a
care either way on that, having grown up without religion really affecting me
at all. He seemed a lot less turbulent at least, so maybe he'd
be a steady hand at the head of our country when it needed steady badly.

The Vice President of the

United States collapsed at 4:15 PM as he was stepping up to take his oath and
assume the mantle of President.

After that was some chaos.

Many of the ladies were frightened, and some were vindictively pleased if they
were in the anti-Trump camp. I comforted people as I could, trying to assure
them things would be fine even if I didn't know what came next.

In the middle of all that, as

the commentators on the news were pointing out the line of succession put the
Speaker of the House as next up, I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. I
stepped away from the rec room and pulled it out, seeing it was a text.

Grierson: Have a job opening if you're interested. Super

stressful but great benefits. Comes with a big house and staff. Interested?

I raised my eyebrows high at

the gallows humor. I also had no fucking idea how I had his contact in my
phone. Before I could even reply, I got another text.

Grierson: Too soon?

I snorted and shook my head,

smirking. It was a historical tragedy in the making and Agent Grierson, big
shot in the shadowy OGA world, was texting me quips. I was a military man, and
I understood gallows humor well, so I sent him back a crying-laughing emoji as
I shook my head again. Then I sent another message. You're probably a
little busy, but I could use a favor.

Nothing came back within a

couple of minutes, so I headed back in. There was no telling what kind of shit
he was dealing with at the moment.

Speaker Pelosi was sworn in,

and I couldn't help but scoff a little. She was the US's first Female
President, even if it was starting out as temporary, but that didn't matter so
much to me as the fact that she'd seemed so damned out of touch and made that
stupid Late Night show bit where she showed off an entire freezer full of
expensive ice cream while the country was in lockdown and people were already
dealing with food scarcity.

Politicians, as I'd pretty

much always believed, were fucked no matter what side they were on.

Things started to calm down,

and I found my hand in Ivy's as she smiled and pulled me towards the door. She,
along with Dani, had the least care for the happenings of American politics in
the short term, and I'd already sat with Ivy through multiple sessions of her
cursing in French at the computer screen as Trudeau up in Canada seemed to put
his foot in his mouth as often as Trump had. Dani often had few good things to
say about the leadership back in Australia, either.

We had a new President.

I had more pressing concerns.

I celebrated again, more

thoroughly, with Erica alone in her room. We were both a little giddy about the
idea of being parents, but we decided to keep it just between us for the time
being. Not long, we both wanted to tell the others and especially not make it
seem like we were hiding it from them, but with us all being split on where we
were living and the investigation and the stuff on the Rez it didn't feel like
the right time. Erica also assured me she could do all the early research we
needed to do in terms of finding a doctor and getting her set up properly for
what came next.

Keeping it from Kyla was

especially hard for me when we had our time together, though she was distracted
from reading me by my latest injuries and what had happened on the Rez. She,
more than the others, had the least experience with Kara and the tribe in terms
of the legal and protest issues since she'd joined us later than that.

"Why didn't you just

offer it to them, Harrison?" she asked me with a sigh, softly shaking her
head. "She wouldn't have said no."

"I don't think she would

to save herself over others," I told her. "And if she did, she would
regret it."

"Sometimes I forget how

long you were alone," she said, looking at me intently as she lay next to
me in her bed. I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but she kissed me
and soon she was fucking me and I was entranced by her as she rode me with
languid grace, staring her love down into my eyes.

Vanessa, once I was back on

the site and she came home after work, was just as upset with me for the biker
incident as Erica and Kyla had been. The fact that the story of a fistfight
with some bikers also seemed to turn her on, she swore, was not a reason to do
it again. She also needed a good amount of quiet time between the two of us,
cuddling as she decompressed. Her father and a lot of the male crew on site
were Trump supporters or at least 'old school' Republicans, so the events of
the day had brought on a lot of friction among the crews, the upper staff, and
the Imprinted ladies who leaned more Democrat since most were from the city.

Politics, it seemed, often

wasn't that important to most people until it was thrust right up in their
faces. Surprise, surprise.

Agent Grierson didn't text me

back again until later that night, and when I asked if he could help with the
Rez issue he told me he wasn't in a position to shake loose anything,
especially when similar situations were happening all across the country. It
had been a long shot anyway, but I still felt a little more defeated at the
possibility getting cut off.

The next few days, thank God,

calmed down and I didn't get shot at or find myself in any more fistfights.
Most of my time was spent piecing together a timeline for the whereabouts of
the recently deceased Poole brothers and their unidentified fellow raider. With
all my other leads played out, and the serial number for the pistol not looking
like it would lead me anywhere without showing up with warrants at every
firearms dealer in the State (which could still end up being a dud), the
receipts were my only real clue.

Creating the timeline was

fairly simple, though it wasn't exactly comprehensive. There were days between
them pretty frequently, and they jumped up and down the state. I tried mapping
them out with pins and running a thread to track the timing, but I wasn't able
to get a clear picture of a home base area. They were definitely more active in
the northwest of the state, but weren't limited to it. There were even a couple
of trips up into Washington State, though not particularly far based solely on
their fast food stops.

In between that work, and

starting to call up the fast food locations to ask for any security camera
footage they had for the dates and times on the receipts, life seemed to settle
into a little routine.

Vanessa was working hard. The

second bunkhouse was getting filled up since the renovations were finished to
make it Partner-friendly, which brought even more unskilled (in the trades)
hands and mouths to the site. She was doing her best to divvy out what jobs she
could if they made sense; they had a full-time medical response team with the
nurses, and she proved to me that their cafeteria was putting out some pretty
impressive food now that several ladies who had been in a Culinary Arts college
program before being offered a spot in the testing program were on site. The
offices got filled out more as well; accounts needed to be managed, and
shipping and receiving had records to streamline and organize. Brent had almost
too much of an office staff and could pick and choose the most experienced
potential staffers for any role.

The rest of the ladies were

getting crash courses in site safety, and then crash courses starting trades
apprenticeships. With the third bunkhouse going up as planned, and in record
time, I had a feeling Vanessa could put 'Trade School Headmistress' on her
resume sooner than later, she'd be managing so many students at once.

Unfortunately, or maybe

fortunately for my feelings towards Miriam, none of the women coming onto site
were newly imprinted; they'd been partnered up back in the aftermath of the
outbreak on the site, and had been living with their partners in hotels and
motels since then. That meant that Miriam wasn't ignoring my request for help,
but it also meant she still didn't have the vaccine doses that would be needed.

In between my murderboarding

and the occasional trips around the site, ostensibly to check on security but
mostly to stay up to date on how the roads were working out, I found myself on
the phone a lot. I spoke with Erica a few times a day, usually a couple for only
a few minutes, but for at least an hour each afternoon. The initial excitement
about our future child was still there, but all of the other little worries and
anxieties were starting to set in, and we had a lot to talk about.

I also got daily calls from

Kara as she updated me that she and the ladies were safe, and of what they
could tell was going on, on the Rez without leaving the house. Things had
gotten worse; people were still dying, but there were less of them wandering
the streets. They'd had a couple of people come by begging for help, but it was
obvious they were on their last legs. She'd risked a bit of time outside to
splash some bloody handprints off of the front windows of her house with a
bucket from a distance.

We also talked. Not about big

things, but just reminiscing about high school. Telling each other stories we
remembered of the people we'd been back then. Of the silly adventures we'd had,
and how important they'd seemed back then. I told her about running into Mary
and her kids and helping her out. She told me how she'd been invited to Stacey
Duncan's wedding almost a decade ago; the two had hated each other in high
school, so the invite had been out of nowhere. She'd gone, more out of
curiosity than anything, and Stacey had acted like they'd been the best of
friends.

She told me about college,

and how she thought I would have loved it, and asked me about the military. I
told her my funny stories, and promised to tell her some of the harder ones
when we could hug each other.

Gerty asked to talk to me on

the third day as well just so she could interact with someone else for a bit.
We traded stories about Kara that had her laughing and yelling in the
background. Then Gerty walked away from the others and asked me about how
things really looked outside the Rez. I didn't hold back, respecting that she'd
been a Rez cop, and told her about the looters and the black market and the
deaths. She admitted she was worried, and I did my best to console her as she
broke down a little on the phone with me, not wanting to show anything but a
smiling face to Tanaya and Kara. Once we were back onto happier, lighter things
I told her that I'd be happy to talk to her again any time she wanted, and that
one of these days I'd need her to give me some Policing tips. That got me a
laugh, which was warm and rich.

The afternoon of that third

day, frustrated with the murder board and receipt trail, I got dressed up,
borrowed the unmarked truck from the site motor pool again and drove down to
the Golden Beaver. Nothing useful came out of it beyond having a reason to fuck
my girls, at least for the short term, but I needed to maintain my 'cover' and
put in time with the sovereign citizens if I was going to have a chance at
using them to leapfrog up the unofficial cell structure their loose
organization used. There were fewer people there this time, and I wondered if
the virus was catching up with them.

If it did before I made

contact with whatever their militant arm was, they would be a literal dead end.

I couldn't help myself and

texted that one to Grierson with almost no context, but he seemed to appreciate
the pun when he replied almost ten hours later.

It was on the fourth day,

still relatively early in the morning, that I picked up a call from Erica.

"Hello, wifey," I

said, already smiling as I stood up from where I'd been sitting and sorting
through emails.

"Hey, Harri," Erica

said, the tone in her voice immediately making my smile slip.

"What's wrong?" I

asked. Immediately my mind was jumping to worst-case scenarios, and now there
was only really one; something was wrong with the baby.

"It's not an

emergency," Erica said quickly, hearing my immediate tenseness. "You
just need to come out here, sooner than later."

"Okay, I'm on my

way," I said, starting to cover up my murder board with the tarp I used to
keep any rain off of it. With so little room in the RVs, I'd set it up by
epoxying some corkboard to the side of one of the shipping containers that formed
our compound walls. Vanessa had helped me hook up the tarp with some rope so I
could cover it without much effort. It was janky but it worked, and I figured
once the investigation was complete we could use it for more entertaining
activities. "What's up?"

"Josie just got word she

lost a friend, and she's taking it really hard," Erica said.
"Everyone is trying to comfort her, but it's not helping. I think she
needs a calming male presence."

"Erica," I said.

"I don't think,”

"I'm not asking you to

fuck her, babe," Erica said. "Just be there for a friend."

"Okay," I agreed.

It didn't take me long to get

there, and Kyla met me in the parking lot with a quick kiss. She gave me the
fast rundown; Josie hadn't been able to get ahold of an old friend for a while
now, and she got a call from another friend confirming he had passed from the
virus a few weeks ago. Josie had broken down, and no one had been able to get
through to her as she locked herself in her room. That had been early in the
morning, and it was already the middle of the afternoon, and the ladies were
getting worried.

"I think Josie isn't

used to being vulnerable," Kyla said quietly, and I could tell she was
speaking more from her training as a spy as she analyzed the situation.
"At least with women. Based on her background, and her mannerisms, she's
friendly and joking with other women but doesn't let them in. I would bet there
was bullying and mean-girl shit in her background, and falling into a
male-dominated sport like wrestling was a comfort."

"Have I mentioned lately

how much you amaze me?" I asked Kyla, which brought out a smile. I hugged
her and kissed the top of her head.

Inside, several women said

hello and asked me quick questions in passing, but everyone seemed to know why
I was there. Ivy, when she saw me, leapt into my arms for a big public kiss
before sending me in the direction of the stairs. Leo stopped me briefly,
looking frustrated that he wasn't able to help. We hugged each other tightly,
the silent message that we were glad that we were safe passing between us. I
wasn't sure what I would do if I lost him, or if I'd be in any better a state
than Josie sounded like she was in.

At the top of the stairs, I

almost collided with Spencer as she was rushing to head down in the opposite
direction. She flushed immediately, but her smile was big as she gave me a hug
and; since I was a couple of steps lower than her; she took the opportunity to
give me a kiss on the cheek. After an assurance that I wouldn't leave without
checking in on her before I left again, she shooed me up into the hall.

Abi and Erica were talking

quietly in the doorway to Erica and Ivy's room, clearly keeping an eye and an
ear on Josie's room one door down the hall. Erica immediately stepped into my
arms, hugging me tightly and kissing me. "Thanks for being quick,"
she said.

"Of course," I

said.

Then Abi surprised me by

hugging me as well. We'd had little hugs before, but this one was a full-armed
one. It felt a little strange, being hugged like that by a woman who was an
inch taller than me. Her grip was strong, but I still felt all the physical
markers of hugging a woman. "Thank you," she said as we hugged.

"You alright?" I

asked as I hugged her back, matching her firmness.

She nodded. "We've all

been receiving bad news here or there, and helping each other through it.
Focusing on workouts was also helping, that's why all the ladies have been so
dedicated even if the world is falling apart. Your family has helped since they
arrived, and the classes have been good for mental health."

"I'm glad," I said.

"I wish I could do more."

She smiled sadly, pulling

back from me and shaking her head, then glancing at Erica with a little smirk.

"What?" I asked.

"She said you would feel

that way," Abi sighed. Then she surprised me again by giving me a peck on
the lips. It was friendly, not romantic. "You do more than enough,
Harrison."

I just sighed, and she hugged

me again before pulling away. "So what's the latest?"

"She's still locked in

her room, and tells people to leave her alone," Erica said. "She's
isolating herself, and that's not good right now."

"Alright," I said,

keeping in mind what Kyla had said. "I'll see what I can do."

I went to Josie's door and

waited one beat before I knocked firmly.

"Go away," Josie

called from inside.

"Open the door,

Joss," I said firmly. "It's me."

There wasn't an answer.

"I'm coming through this

door whether you open it or not," I said.

There was movement on the

other side of the door, and then it opened. Josie looked a little pitiful. Her
eyes were red and puffy, and her cheeks were streaked with tears. Her hair was
wild, and she was just wearing a basic bra and panties.

I stepped into the doorway

and wrapped my arms around her, and she immediately started sobbing as she
buried her face in my chest and clung to me. Shifting us a little, I let the
door close behind me, and I just held her there in the dark as she cried. After
a few minutes like that, when her tears softened, I hefted her up and held her
with one hand on her ass and one on her back as she wrapped her limbs around
me, clinging so tight it was almost painful. I walked us deeper into the room
and found her bed, kicking off my boots before laying us both down on it and
encouraging her to shift until I was spooned behind her and she was hugging my
arms to her stomach and chest.

She cried again, burying her

face in the pillow as I held her.

For a woman with such a ready

smile, flirt or joke, I was shocked at how deep her sorrow could reach.

"He was my person,"

Josie finally said, panting a little as her body tried to come back from the
exertion of her sobbing.

"Boyfriend?" I

asked.

She shook her head. "Not

since high school. Not really. He was my best friend. We tried dating a couple
of times, but it was always awkward and we ended up friends who fooled around
once in a while if we got extra tipsy and horny. But I loved him. We met at
wrestling camp the summer before our junior years. After high school we went to
the same wrestling school, and we worked the same promotions. He was the only
person in my life from back home who got it, who understood why I did it."

"He sounds like he was

really special," I said softly.

"He was," Josie

sobbed softly. "Chris was... he was a light. No matter what was happening,
or where we went, I knew he was on my side. We didn't work as a couple, but
that didn't mean I didn't need him or love him."

"I'm sorry," I

said, hugging her tighter.

"God, I'm such a

mess," she said, wiping at her face. "I'm being such a little
bitch."

"Shush," I shushed

her. "Say that again and I'll pile drive you into this mattress."

She snorted and gave one

little chuckle, and then we let the silence and the darkness in her bedroom
settle as I held her.

She told me more about Chris.

About her earliest years of wrestling, and the two of them struggling to make
ends meet after high school as they tried to find a way to break into the
business. She told me about the little things he liked, his favorite foods and
how he would make cinnamon buns on his cheat days. She showed me pictures of
them on her phone, both casual and professional. Clips of him wrestling. Clips
of him when he'd done a six-month stint being her ring-side 'manager.' Even
clips of when they had an in-ring feud at one small promotion and he slammed
her through a table with a frog splash from the top turnbuckle, followed by her
smashing him with a barbed-wire-covered baseball bat.

"You loved him," I

assured her. "He knew it."

"But I should have done

more..." she gasped pitifully.

I comforted her, trying not

to consider how much those words haunted me. And how much I didn't want them to
haunt me in the future.

It must have been two hours

since I'd gotten to the Falls that Josie sat up, taking a deep breath and
rolling her shoulders and then her neck. She turned in the dark and laid back
down, but this time she was cuddling against me. "Erica said blowjobs
don't count," she whispered as her hands started to feel around my belt.

"Joss," I said

quietly, stopping her hands with mine and pulling them away. "I can't tell
you how much it would thrill me to fool around with you, or even more, but we
can be close without being sexual. The first time we do something... alone,
like this, I don't want it to be because of something like this. I don't want
you to have any regrets."

She pressed her forehead to

my chest, breathing deeply. And then her stomach grumbled loudly, making both
of us chuckle.

"Hungry?" I asked.

"I didn't even eat

breakfast," she said, then took another long breath and shifted up the bed
a bit. "Can I at least kiss you?"

"I think that would be

Okay," I said.

We kissed, tenderly, in the

dark for a few minutes before her stomach grumbled again. That made me smile
and I sat up, manhandling her a little as I got her on her back and I leaned
over to kiss her bare stomach. Her abs were firm against my lips, and a part of
me wanted to just do it. To give Josie what she wanted, and take what I wanted.
But I didn't, and I blew a raspberry instead, making her chuckle some more.

"Come on, babe," I

said. "Let's get some food. I'm sure the ladies would be interested to
hear about Chris and maybe watch some of his matches with you. They were
worried as hell."

Josie sniffed and wiped under

her eyes, then kissed me again as she sat up. "Thanks, Harrison," she
said quietly.

"Whatever you

need," I said, rubbing her arm comfortingly.

She got herself cleaned up

and dressed in some comfy sweats before we headed down to get dinner, and soon
she was getting passed from hug to hug until she was sat down in the cafeteria
and Ivy and Spencer planted Macho in her lap, who brought a little smile to
Josie's face as he wiggled half his body he wagged his tail so hard.

The smile wasn't much, but it

was enough. Surrounded by friends, surrounded by support and love, we could
make it through.

Watching my family, and

Leo's, mixed with the ladies of Valkyrie Falls as dinner was about to be served
was heartwarming. After the tough day that Josie had gone through, finding out
about the death of her best friend, and knowing that all of the women both in
and out of my family were going through similar things, it was good to see them
rallying together. That was really the only way we were all going to get
through the shitstorm that was the pandemic.

"Did it go Okay?"

Erica asked me, sliding in to lean against me as I stood back at the edge of
the cafeteria and watched as the ladies doted on both Josie and Macho. The fit
blonde was holding him against her chest and smiling in a way I didn't think
anyone but a puppy could make happen.

"Yeah. She just needed

to feel safe," I said.

"You're good at doing

that," Erica smiled. "I texted after an hour went by but you didn't
respond. I just wanted to make sure she hadn't choked you out or something with
one of her wrestling moves."

I snorted and shook my head.

"No, nothing like that. I didn't get the text though." I patted my
pockets and realized I didn't have my phone. "I must have left it in the
truck. Hold on, I should get it in case there's an emergency."

"If there was, Vanessa

or Miriam would reach out to me next," Erica said. "And I haven't
heard anything."

"Mary or Kara might try

me though," I reminded her. "Or my sister. Or the Staties."

"Go," Erica said

with a little smile and a roll of her eyes. "My hero-husband."

The sun wasn't setting yet,

but the trees outside the retreat center cast deep, cool shadows across the
parking lot that late in the day. The air outside had that crispness that told
me we were probably going to get a good rain in the next day or so, and I
figured I should probably move my murder board inside when I got back to the
compound. The tarp contraption could handle the light drizzle that would appear
at any moment in the Pacific Northwest, but I doubted it could take a full
storm.

I found my phone in the cup

holder of the center dash right where I'd left it; seeing Kyla waiting for me
when I pulled in had made me forgetful. With a sigh, I picked it up and felt it
vibrate with the notification of a waiting message. I opened it as I started to
walk back to the cafeteria, checking the first message.

'Harri, we're hearing

multiple gunshots.'

"Fuck," I grunted,

thumbing the call button. It rang as I stood stock still, every muscle in my
body tensed as my chest felt like it was trying to squeeze my heart while my
heart was trying to batter out of my rib cage.

It rang, and rang.

No answer.

I broke into a run.

"Kyla!" I shouted

from the entryway into the cafeteria. The tone in my voice had my gorgeous
girlfriend immediately looking up and around rapidly, scanning for danger, as
she got up from her seat at one of the tables. The big room had gone quiet.
"Erica, is your car open?" I asked.

"It should be," she

said. "What's,”

I didn't have time to answer

her as I sprinted back towards the parking lot. Erica's car was parked about
halfway down, one row over from my truck, and I yanked open the driver door and
thumbed the trunk open, then rounded the back and started pulling out the
firearms that were stored there. When the girls had moved into the Falls, Sara
and Abi had Okay'd a few handguns to be kept inside the building, secured in
Kyla's room, but had asked that the rest of the gear be kept in Erica's car. It
wasn't ideal, especially if something had happened at the Falls, but it was
better than nothing.

"Keys," Kyla called

to me and I turned and tossed my truck keys to her. She didn't ask any
questions yet; she didn't need to. She knew something bad was happening.

"Harri, what's going

on?" Erica asked as she jogged out to me. A bunch of the ladies were
following but holding back near the building courtyard and watching.

"Kara started hearing

gunshots two hours ago," I said. "And they've been getting closer to
her." I slung the two MP5s that Miriam had gifted to me over my shoulders,
scooping up the loaded mags that went with them, and then picked up the wooden
box that held the four flash grenades and two smoke grenades that Miriam had
sworn she would kill me over if I used them without proper need.

"Fuck," Erica said,

her face going a little white. I knew she was feeling guilty that she'd
downplayed me not having my phone. And calling me to help with Josie in the
first place. If I hadn't been here, I could have been that much closer when Kara
had first texted. "Harri,”

I turned and kissed her. It

shocked her, and she didn't have much time to respond. I didn't have a hand
free to pull her to me tightly like I wanted. "I love you," I said.
"I'll be careful." Then I turned and jogged towards my truck where
Kyla already had the tailgate open and the safe compartment under the bed
unlocked as she was pulling on her bulletproof vest. I'd swapped out the
lighter ones for the heavy ones after the Raider incident.

"Ivy!" I called,

and she came running for me. I set down the crate of grenades and the mags I
was carrying and turned in time for her to leap into my arms. She kissed me
fiercely. "I love you, and we'll be careful," I promised her just
like I had Erica. "I need you to do me a favor and keep everyone calm,
Okay? It's trouble on the Rez, not near here. Can you do that for me, mon
coeur?"

"I will, mon amour,"

she promised, holding my face in both hands for a moment and then kissing me
again briefly. "Now go and rescue her."

"It's,”

"It's about her,"

Kyla broke in. "You would do this for anyone, dear, but you wouldn't be
running on pure adrenaline if it wasn't for her."

I had to swallow hard as I

started putting my own bulletproof vest on. When I was finished Erica had
joined us and she pulled the side Velcro extra tight. "You kiss me like
that and don't even let me say anything?" she demanded.

"Sorry, babe," I

said. "I'm in a bit of a rush."

"Then get your ass

moving, cowboy," she said, moving past me and opening the driver's door
for me. Kyla and I slammed the tailgate shut and piled into the front along
with our M4s and MP5s. It was a bit much and we had to do some shifting, but I
wanted as much firepower as I might need.

"Erica," I said

through the open window after I turned over the truck engine. "Ivy is
going to handle calming everyone down. I need you to be a lot quieter and get
Dani and Leo to keep an armed watch. Nothing should happen anywhere near here,
but I'll be able to focus more if I know you three are being vigilant."

"It's done," Erica

nodded. "Now go."

I reversed the truck out of

my parking spot and turned towards the driveway, already thumbing the remote to
open the gate.

"What do we know?"

Kyla asked me. I handed her my phone and she quickly unlocked it, grimacing as
she started scanning through the messages. "First heard shots two hours
ago. Semi-regular timing. A few outbursts. An hour ago they realized the shots
were getting closer. She tried calling a few times after that." Kyla
stopped and swallowed. "Did you read all of these?"

"Just the first

couple," I grimaced. I yanked the steering wheel hard and the rear tires
spat gravel as I veered onto the highway. I flipped the lights but not the
sirens and pressed the gas to the floor.

"Thirty minutes ago she

said they left the house to investigate and found a convoy of trucks one street
over. Men were going door to door, no uniforms and not from the Rez. The
gunshots were coming from inside the homes. The men were; Fuck, Harri. The men
were carrying out valuables and supplies, along with women and children."

I had to force myself to suck

in a breath.

"Call them again,"

I said.

Kyla tried but there wasn't

an answer. She went back to the texts. "They went back to the house but
weren't sure if they should try to fortify it or if they should try to run and
hide. That was the last message."

I punched the center of the

steering wheel hard enough to hurt my knuckles, and the bleat of a honk wasn't
nearly as satisfying a sound as I wanted to make.

"Call Miriam," I

said.

The truck speaker system rang

twice before she picked up. "Hey, Harri. Can I call you back in,”

"I need a heavy QRF

immediately to the High Hills Chinook reserve. I am en route and have
actionable intelligence that the domestic terror group who struck Valhalla
Hills is on-site and actively engaged in acts of ethnic cleansing including
executions and kidnapping of an unknown number of civilians focusing on females
and minors."

"I,” Miriam stuttered,

clearly caught off guard. Not that I could blame her, but I'd worded it as best
I could to give her as much impetus to act as possible. "Clear out,"
she ordered someone in whatever room she was in using the sort of harsh tone
that demanded immediate action. Then she was shouting, though it was muffled
and I had to guess she'd pressed her phone to her chest for a moment before it
cleared up again. "Repeat actionable intelligence," she said, her
voice heavy.

"Eyes-on report as of,”

I glanced at Kyla.

"Twenty-three minutes

ago," Kyla filled in.

"I am en route with one

additional operator, but a witness reports a 'convoy' of civilian vehicles in
use. Unknown number of hostiles, but positive presence of small arms in
use."

There was a long moment of

silence over the phone, and then Captain Bloomberg was speaking instead of
Miriam. "Who is your eyewitness?" she asked.

"Kara Swiftwater, a

former member of the Reserve Leadership Council. And Gertrude Swiftwater, a
former member of the Reserve Police Department," I said.

"Are you sure,”

"Yes, I'm fucking

sure!" I growled. "This isn't a stunt."

"You're asking us to

deploy the Air Force on US soil, Harri," Laura said tightly.

"Women and children

getting rounded up, and the sick being shot in their homes," I said,
trying to keep from shouting. "They witnessed it."

"Why is the report over

twenty minutes old?"

"Because I forgot my

fucking phone in my fucking truck and missed their texts and calls while I was
trying to comfort a woman who had lost her best friend today," I broke,
shouting. "And now I'm another... fifteen minutes out at least from
reaching them." I was driving like a fucking maniac. If the road had been
slick, or there had been any traffic whatsoever, there likely would have been
an accident.

There was a long minute of

silence and I had a feeling we'd been put on mute. Kyla reached over and put a
hand on my arm, squeezing it as I gripped the steering wheel tightly. She
didn't tell me to calm down, didn't ask me to slow down. She just let me know
she was there.

"Harri, I'm sending you

the off-duty Airmen from the site security detail," Miriam cut back in.
"I can't get anything else to you faster than that. The next best I can
get you is scrambling a unit of the National Guard. I'll have an ETA on them
ASAP, but they'll be coming in behind you and I need to know if I
should call them off. If this intel is off we can't have the National Guard
storming a reserve, Duo Halo outbreak or not. It'll be all our fucking heads if
that happens."

"Understood," I

grunted. I knew what she was saying was true. Even if this was
fake, and the National Guard rolled up and Feather's crazy cult was still alive
and opened fire on them and everyone died, there would be no covering it up.
Someone, somewhere, would find out purely from the mobilization.

But it wasn't fake. Kara

would go to almost any length to try and help her people, but this wasn't a
false flag report. The fact that there was a big part of me that wanted to pull
up in front of her house and see her smirking, knowing she'd pulled one over on
the US military and forced their hand, didn't help.

"Do I have permission to

track your phone to give my soldiers your live location?" Miriam asked.

"I figured you already

were tracking me," I said, managing a slight smirk through my
currently permanent grimace.

"I don't know what

you're talking about," Miriam said. "Oh, look, the tracking kicked in
really fast."

"What sort of ETA on the

Airmen?"

"They'll be... seven to

eight minutes behind you," Miriam said, and I could tell she was
communicating with Captain Bloomberg off the phone as well.

"How many?" Kara

asked.

"Seven. One military

jeep, one civilian panel van," Miriam said.

"Alright. I need the

phone back," I said. "See if I can get a hold of my asset."

"Be careful,"

Miriam said. "And Godspeed."

Kyla hung up for me.

"Everyone tells you to be careful," she said. "No one ever tells
me to be careful."

"It's because I'm a

bigger target, hon," I said.

She smirked and tried calling

Kara again but it rang through to her voicemail.

"Keep trying," I

said, and she did.

We whipped past landmarks at

reckless speeds. "Five minutes out," I said.

Kyla texted that to Miriam,

who would forward it to her team. Then, without asking me, she fiddled with my
phone a bit and then music started blaring from the speakers of the truck.

The chaos of a fast guitar. A

guttural shout. The kick in of fast rhythm guitar and smashing drums. Another
scream, isolated, and then thick and almost operatic vocals over a speeding
rhythm.

She'd picked perfectly. Not

trying to calm down my adrenaline, and nothing too on the nose. The song
transitioned into almost a groove, then picked up again quickly. The organized
chaos of the song was a match to how I was feeling. To the spiking of my
emotions, but bringing me back to that central groove that let me think
clearly. It was the same way a firefight was going to go. Moments of extreme
violence interspersed with strange, almost uncomfortable calm.

I drove through the song, and

it descended into its final driving beat that had me bobbing my head lightly as
I glared out the front window. The final beat cut off into silence.

"God, I love you,"

I said.

"I've got another

one," Kyla said.

I shook my head. "We're

here."

The cars that had been

blocking the entrance and exits of the barricade looked like they had been
smashed aside and we drove right through. I flicked off the overhead lights,
not wanting to warn anyone that we were coming.

The smart thing to do would

be to get out and hoof it on foot. It would give us more forewarning as we came
up on anyone, and if there was a caravan worth of people we'd probably hear
them. But in the last few weeks, I'd been making choices based on need, not
what was smart. Speed and violence had been serving me a lot better than trying
to be sneaky and smart. Every time I was cautious, someone got hurt. Oftentimes
it was me.

Every time I went with my

gut, shock and awe worked wonders.

I rolled down my window,

trying to hear anything, as I jumped the truck over the low grass berm that
separated the main road into the reserve from the residential area, saving us a
minute of driving around to the main entrance and skipping the small 'downtown'
near the burned-down community center. Kyla checked her MP5, racking the slide,
and then rolled down her window to listen as well.

My head was on a swivel as we

sped past roads. I was looking for signs of the caravan. The number of bodies
around had grown over the past four days, dotted here and there, and the
abandoned vehicles made it hard to be sure sometimes of what I was looking at.
Still, I wasn't seeing anything like the caravan, or worse.

I bypassed Kara's street,

riding the cross-street down to the end to try and find the fucking trucks, but
I didn't hear anything. No gunshots, no engines, no shouting. No screams. I
pulled us back around and peeled onto Kara's street before realizing that I
didn't know what her house looked like from out front. I had to mentally count
about how many lots in she was and pulled up in front of a house that looked
right.

Kyla and I burst out of the

truck. She had her MP5 up and scanning while I defaulted to the M4 as I checked
back behind us. I could hear my heart in my ears and feel the sweat on my brow.
No movement. There were a couple of bodies two lots over, one next to the
other, and I grit my teeth.

I looked at Kara's house and

saw that the front door was kicked in. "Going in," I said quietly to
Kyla. I could hear her following me with quick, sure steps as I approached the
gaping open front door. "Kara," I called. "It's Harri. Gerty,
Tanaya, friendly-friendly-friendly. I'm coming in."

The inside of the house was

ransacked. I could see bits of Kara's life spread out in shattered fragments of
physical memories. Colors she favored, keepsakes I could see her collecting. A
picture of her and her parents on the wall, askew but unbroken.

No blood, no bodies in the

front room. "Clear," I said, pushing in further. "Hold the
door."

It was the wrong tactic for

clearing a building, but we needed to keep eyes outside and on our truck. I
checked the side room, then into the back hall. Two bedrooms and a bathroom.
All empty. Ransacked and looted quickly. Muddy boots marking the flooring and
carpet. Scrapes on the walls from gear carelessly bumping against the paint.

"Nothing," I called

to Kyla, coming back out to her.

My girlfriend was grimacing

but stoic, scanning the street around us. She tossed me my phone. "Call
her again," she said.

I did, and at first got

confused as nothing came out of my phone, but then I heard the ringing in the
truck; it was still connected to the system. I snarled and thumbed that off,
and then I heard the ringtone coming from the front yard. It was the hard
chorus from the middle of Say It Ain't So, with Rivers Cuomo
singing his heart out.

It was one of those songs

that Kara and I had sung a hundred times in my old beater car, the windows down
as we just drove.

I stepped out of the house

feeling like my soul had left my body, following the sound of the chorus as it
restarted with those familiar chords. 'Say it ain't so, your drug is a
heartbreaker.' I found the phone in the grass near the scruffy front
garden, the screen cracked and one corner dug into the dirt like someone had
tossed it hard. 'Say it ain't so, my love is a life-taker.'

It wasn't a happy song, but

damn was it a good one to sing our hearts out to at the top of our lungs. And I
knew she'd set that as my ringtone on her phone for the same memories that it
was pulling out of me now.

My jaw hurt, I was gritting

my teeth so hard. I bent over and picked up the phone, hanging up mine as it
went silent.

"She might have ditched

it in a hurry," Kyla said. "If it was making noise and she was on the
run."

I shook my head. Not denying

her, just knowing it was unlikely.

"We're too late," I

said, my voice thick.

"Maybe not," Kyla

said. "Let me run the lights and siren, see if anyone comes out."

I nodded and took a deep

breath. Kyla went to the truck and got into the driver's seat, hitting the
lights and then the siren. She let it run for about thirty seconds as we both
watched either end of the street as far as we could around the hilly curves and
then she cut it off by turning on the loudspeaker mic. "This is the
police," she said evenly. "We are here to help. If you can hear my
voice, come out of your homes. This is the police, we are here to help."

She let the siren ring again,

then repeated herself.

Movement, five doors down and

across the street, had me snapping my attention in that direction but I managed
not to raise my rifle.

A kid, maybe five years old,

came out of a house and started walking over. His hair was a mess and his face
was streaked with grime and tracks from tears. Kyla cut off the siren when I
waved to her and she stepped out, her eyes going wide as she saw the kid as
well.

"Hey, kiddo," I

said, dropping to one knee as he got closer, shifting my firearms to hang from
their shoulder straps behind me. "We're here to help."

"Do you have any food I

can have?" he asked. "I'm really hungry. My parents went away."

My whole body ached, thinking

of what had likely happened.

"We'll get you

something," I said, glancing at Kyla. She grimaced and went to try and
find something in the truck. "Have you been hiding?"

The little guy nodded.

"It was scary."

"Did you see what

happened?"

He shrugged.

Kyla came out of the truck

with a half-full water bottle and a Slim Jim that I'd stashed in the center
console back when we'd been doing the welfare visits for the Staties. I'd
forgotten it was in there. "Here you go, honey," she said, peeling
the dried meat stick out of its wrapper and offering it to him. "Just
little bites, don't try and gobble it all at once. And take sips of
water."

He tore off a chunk with his

teeth and started chewing.

"What's your name?"

I asked.

"Virgil," he said.

"Alright, Virgil. My

name is Harri, and this is Kyla. We heard there were bad men here. Did you see
where they went?"

The kid shook his head.

"They drove away."

I wanted to ask 'which way'

but that would have been useless. "Did you see them with some women and
other kids?"

"Yeah, they were crying

and screaming," Virgil said. "That's why I stayed hidden
inside."

"Did they drive away

with the women and other kids?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Okay, just stay here,

buddy," I said, standing up. "Chow down, it'll help you feel better."
It would, in fact, likely make him feel worse with all that salt if we didn't
get him something else to eat as well at some point, but that was a later
issue. I pulled out my phone and called Miriam.

"Status?"

"Site seems clear. We

missed them. I have a kid here who witnessed women and children being driven
away, and there is plenty of evidence of forceful entry into the residences. I
have little doubt that if I check a couple I'll find executions."

"My Airmen will be with

you in two minutes," Miriam said. "Handle recon. I'll call off the
National Guard."

"Don't," I said.

"This whole place needs to be searched for survivors. There might be more
kids and they've been spooked and isolated for weeks, getting traumatized; we
need to search for anyone who might have hidden from the raid. Your men will
need the manpower."

"My men? What are you

going to be doing?" Miriam asked.

"Remember when you said

you could find me some special backup?" I asked. "Well, I need the
meanest motherfuckers you've got on speed dial, Miriam. Unknown numbers of
civilian hostages taken by an unknown number of backwoods militia."

"You don't know where

they are, Harri," she said. "Unless you've come up with a new lead
out there."

"Yeah, about that,"

I said. "This just went from a criminal investigation to a hostage rescue,
so I'm less concerned about slow and steady detective work and am ready to
start kicking doors. And faces. I promise they'll deserve it."

"What the hell are you

going to do?" Miriam asked.

"Is Captain Bloomberg

listening?"

"Not anymore," she

said after a moment. I wondered if the blonde Captain had stepped out, or just
pretended to plug her ears.

"I'm going to go see if

I can make a deal with a biker gang," I said. "Enemy-of-my-Enemy
situation. And if that doesn't come up with anything, I'm going to start
shoving my rifle barrel up Sovereign Citizen asses until I hit prostates and
they sing."

There was a long moment of

silence again.

"Do what you need

to," Miriam said. "Every living official in the state is focused on
the cities. No one seems to care what's happening out in the rural areas."

A jeep and a panel van turned

onto the street and came towards us.

"Your guys are

here," I said. "What I do next doesn't land on you, Miriam. It's on
me. Don't stick your neck out. Just let me know if you find anyone who can
help."

"Fuck you, Black,"

she said. "I've got rank on you, I'll do what I want and take the
heat."

"I'm serious,

Miriam," I said. "You need to be where you are. I'm not,” I stopped,
looking at Kyla as she tended to Virgil while watching me out of the side of
her eye. "I'm not responsible for an entire State's worth of people,"
I corrected myself. "But I know I'm important to the people who really
matter to me. And if something does happen, they'll need your support."

"Harri," she

sighed. "You know... you know they might all be dead in a week
anyways."

I swallowed the cloying

feeling. "I know," I said. "But I can't just stop."

"I'll find you

shooters," she promised. "Good luck."

"Thanks," I said.

"And Miriam?"

"Yeah?"

"If you still have them,

set aside some of those discretionary doses," I said. "If I'm going
to save a bunch of women, I'd really rather them not die of the fucking plague
right after."

"I'll have them

ready," Miriam promised.

We hung up. Kyla was

discussing with the Airmen, who fanned out in two teams and started checking
the nearby houses. She said something quietly to Virgil, who nodded as he sat
on the curb, and then came over to me. "You could have toned down the
swearing in front of the kid," She said.

I opened my mouth in

surprise, then clicked it shut when I saw the look on her face. She was teasing
me, trying to lighten my mood just a little.

"What's next?" she

asked.

"We wait for the

National Guard to get here, and then we're going to go bang some drums," I
said. "If we're lucky we won't be shot at before I can ask some pointed
questions."

Kyla gave me a look.

"What?" I asked.

"We'll find her,"

she said. "Alive."

"You can't know

that," I said.

"We will," she said

with a little smile. "This isn't that kind of day."

"What do you mean?"

I asked.

"I'm pregnant,"

Kyla said, wrapping her fingers around the shoulder straps of my bulletproof
vest and tugging softly like she was trying to wake me up. "I tested
twice, earlier today and while you were with Josie. You're going to be a
father, and our firstborn will not be overshadowed by this."

I went down to one knee, my

eyes squeezed shut. "Fuck," I groaned, hugging Kyla to me as I
pressed my face to her vest-covered stomach. "How could you let me bring
you here?"

"Because I couldn't let

you come alone," she said, weaving her fingers in my hair.

I stood up and kissed her,

feeling our vests and the firearms dangling from shoulder straps clacking
together lightly as I poured my everything into her lips. She did the same, and
I didn't even care that the Airmen were coming out and looking at us as they
moved from house to house.

When we pulled away I was

crying, and Kyla's eyes watered at seeing me crying.

"Stop," she said,

wiping at my cheeks. "Now isn't the time."

"Happy tears," I

assured her. "And stress relief." I fumbled for my phone, bringing it
up and hitting the Speed Dial. "There's something Erica and I need to tell
you though."

It was almost 10 PM and I had

no idea if they would still be at the Black Market, but I wasn't going to wait
until a polite hour to contact the Guns of Thunder.

The National Guard had taken

almost thirty minutes to show up at the Rez, and in that time the Airmen and I
had found another two women and a ten-year-old girl who had been hiding in the
neighborhood. They'd heard Kyla's calls but had been too scared to come out
until they actually saw our uniforms. The ten-year-old joined Virgil under
Kyla's care, and I interviewed the women quickly along with the Airman Sergeant
who was leading the security team. She couldn't tell us much more than we'd
already found out, but a better corroborating witness than a terrified and
half-starved child would help in the long run.

One thing she was able to

tell us was that the men who had come had all been wearing gas masks. Mostly
old military surplus, though from her descriptions some must have been
construction-grade masks with filters and homemade hoods.

That was just great.

Kidnapper militia assholes who were taking the pandemic seriously.

Totally excellent news.

Once the Guard actually

arrived, Kyla and I handed off the kids to a female Lieutenant whose day job
had been social work before quarantine demanded that she be isolated with her
Troop and Battalion. The woman was in her mid-thirties and struck me as a Mom
figure immediately, so I'd felt confident that she'd keep the kids safe and
look after them. The Airmen had handed over command of the operation but
volunteered to stick around and keep searching; finding the ladies and girl,
and the corpses we'd been discovering in the houses and doublewides, had been
upsetting at first but then had steeled them.

"This is the

place?" Kyla asked me.

"This is the

place," I said as I pulled up in front of the old lumber depot, the truck
taking the potholes in the old dirt road easily. The sun was down but the
lights from the nearby grocery store parking lot put a ghostly white glow on
everything like the night couldn't properly settle. I'd almost forgotten that
feeling; it was urban and unnatural, and I'd been living out in the sticks long
enough that it felt weird even with the constantly running construction site a
hundred yards from the RVs.

"What's our

approach?" Kyla asked.

"Will you stay in the

truck if I ask?"

"The last time you came

here you got into a brawl," Kyla said flatly.

"Exactly," I said.

"You're,”

"Coming with you,"

she said, opening her door. "I just need to know how many guns I'm
carrying in."

"Fuck it," I said,

getting out as well and hauling my MP5 with me but leaving the M4 in the cab.
Kyla did the same.

Walking up to their 'front

entrance,' with its empty parking lot, the place looked abandoned. Except the
dull yellow security light illuminating the space wouldn't have been on if it
was, or if they had moved after my encounter with them.

I could have slipped down the

side of the building to check if their bikes were parked in that little hidden
lot they used near the office entrance.

I could have knocked

politely, too.

My fist hammered against the

metal door loudly and continuously, the boom of it echoing inside loud enough
that we could hear it outside. With my other hand I held my badge up in the
vague direction of the security camera I knew was up in the overhang of the
roof. That left me with no hands on my weapon, but Kyla had sidestepped
appropriately and had hers held loosely and ready to respond.

"What the fuck do you

want, pig?" called a voice from inside.

"Open the fucking

door," I shouted back.

"Fuck off," the

voice yelled. "Get a fucking warrant."

"Open the fucking door

or I start spraying bullets into this building right fucking now,"
I yelled, my voice booming with every ounce of command I could channel. I could
practically feel the ghosts of my boot camp Drill Sergeants inhabiting me with
that one.

"Give me one reason I

shouldn't start shooting first!"

"Because if that happens

I'll feed you your own fucking testicles, Chuck," I growled,
guessing at who it was. "I will shoot your dick off, cut those little niblets
you call nuts off of you with your own knife, batter them in a nice panko
breading, deep fry them, and then serve them to you on a bed of fucking rat
poison. Open the fucking door and get me your boss!"

There were more voices from

deeper in the building, and then quiet for almost a full minute.

"Why are you here,

Sheriff?" came a new voice, much more calm, through the door. It was the
boss.

"I need information, and

I think you have it, and it's about your enemies," I said firmly but no
longer shouting.

"We handle our own

business," the boss said. "We don't trade information, we are not
rats. Leave now, or we will open fire."

I grit my teeth and could

hear him backing one step away from the door. "You said you care about
this country," I called. "Once a Marine, always a Marine. You care
about people not getting hurt unless they put themselves in the crossfire.
Well, I'm chasing a bunch of degenerate backwoods murderers and kidnappers who
killed at least fifty people earlier today in their own homes and made off with
an unknown number of women and children. Tell me that isn't
worth a conversation."

I glanced at Kyla, who was

grimacing but nodded. It was the only card we had short of breaking out a
shotgun and shooting the lock off the door.

The sound of the lock turning

was like a Christmas bell in that moment. The door opened about half a foot as
the Biker boss looked at me, his eyebrows furrowed as his gaiter covered the
bottom half of his face. "We would have heard about something like that,"
he said.

"It was on the

Rez," I said. "I was the first up there, and the National Guard has
taken over the scene now and are trying to help find survivors. I'm hunting the
missing people."

His eyes, hard and cold,

flicked over me and I knew he was taking in the legitimate overkill among the
equipment I was currently wearing for a Sheriff. I had mags strapped all over
me, flashbang grenades readily accessible, and an SMG hanging from a shoulder
strap. Not to mention my sidearm.

He opened the door further

and looked Kyla up and down appraisingly as well. "Come in," he said.

I entered and Kyla followed.

He stopped us just inside with a hand out and I found myself looking at a
miniature gunline.

To be continued, Based on

a post by Break The Bar for Literotica

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store
ExplicitNovelsBy Steamy Stories