2024 Read online

  We finished with the sentries, ten sets of three, at about one o'clock in the morning. None survived, none made warnings to any of the others or to the central command of the militia units. We went on toward town then and seeing nothing of any threat went into the town itself. We saw some new searchlight and high intensity lamp placements but they were not in areas that threatened us yet. We moved through the first couple of streets, found the library and found Eileen's home. It was boarded up.

  We went back to the library which was too highly illuminated for us to chance entry. We saw a woman working at a desk in the library. According to dad, it was Eileen. We saw her turn off the lights, close the door and walk away from the building. We watched, waited and then saw there were two guys moving with her but behind the cover of darkness around several nearby homes. I took one of them with the bow as he came close to me. Dad took the other with his pistol. Eileen heard us and scurried toward me in an attempt to get away from the circumstances.

  I stopped Eileen and shushed her. She was obviously scared half to death of the way I looked. I held her quietly and told her she would not be harmed, and that dad wanted to talk with her. Dad got there in a minute or so. She recognized his voice when he said “Eileen, are you all right?”

  “Oh Gene, it is you,” she said. “I thought it might be you. They tried to get it out of me who it might be but I kept telling them that I had no idea. They only talked to me once. But I think they still suspect I know who it is they are fighting. What can I do, Gene?”

  “Come with us, Eileen. We cannot help your son; he is part of this is he not?”

  “Yes, yes I am afraid he is one of the leaders of the group. He probably has more education than the rest of them put together and he is one of the leaders.”

  “Will you come with us, Eileen?”

  “Can I change clothes?”

  “No, it is a trek to take that we will be lucky to finish before dawn so it is best we go now.”

  “Will I stay with you all the time until this thing is over, Gene?”

  “We will talk about that, Eileen. We have released some State Police Officers that are going to try and help us. We may try to get you out of here by asking their help. We will have to see about that. One question, Eileen. Have you seen your son looking through your stuff lately?”

  “Several times in fact, Gene. Why do you ask?”

  He is a sly old dog. The thought had come to him about the same time as I thought of the potential for a tracking device. What kind of shoes are you wearing, Eileen?" dad asked.

  “Why, I am wearing the only ones they left me, my tennis shoes.”

  “Would you take off the left one for me now please, Eileen?” She did. He found a tracking device in a cut out spot in the area of the heel. When he asked about that she said she thought they had been repaired. There was another in the other shoe. We disposed of both. We searched her purse and found two more. Finally we asked her to look in her bra and her belt to see if there were any others. There were. She was a walking roadmap to wherever. We also asked if she had received any injections since the start of the militia activities. She responded negatively to that.

  We finally felt that we could go on into the forest and did so. We knew there were no sentries left to face so we made haste on the animal trail for a while and then skirted it and went into the forest itself. She was surprised when we taught her how to use the night vision devices we had taken from some of the dead sentries at how well she could see without a light of any kind.

  We arrived back at the house much earlier than usual. It was nearing four a.m. We woke mom up and Ruthie awakened as well. They went into the kitchen and made coffee and chattered as three women will do. We went into the kitchen, had some coffee with them and all of us then went to bed. It seemed we had not had to do the ultimate kind of dirty act that derives from war. We were both satisfied with that. But we also were unaware that we had killed her son that night.

  As we walked into the kitchen, Eileen said to both of us, “My, you two have surely wreaked havoc in the militia in the last three weeks or so. My son told me they have lost over a hundred men. My goodness did you do all that by yourselves?”

  “Before we talk about that, Eileen, I have to ask you how you feel about this whole Army of northwestern Montana or whatever they are calling themselves now.”

  “Well they have provided some security for all of us in the town. I mean we have heard there is a shooting war on in the southern U.S. between the U.S. Army and the Cubans who invaded Florida almost immediately after the nuclear war was over. Or at least it seems like it is over.”

  “So what do you think the overall impression of the militia would be in the town, Eileen?”

  “I think it's mostly favorable. They have been able to keep everyone that needs it from paying exorbitant amounts of money for gasoline. Actually I saw a gasoline truck in town last week. It was colored in the army green but I thought it was probably part of the militia thing. And there are no major food shortages yet.”

  “The banks opened their doors a couple of weeks after the events of the nuclear exchange. They gave us all $ 5,000.00 as a starter fund for us to use for food and gasoline, those sorts of necessities. They promised they would do that every month or that if we needed extra money at any point in time all we have to do is ask. When we have electric power it is from large gasoline driven generators that come from the army also. The militia uses those at night to see to it that there is no crime in the town, that sort of thing. So all in all I guess they have been doing a pretty good job. And I expect that is how most of the people in town would see it. I don't think you folks should count on any help from anyone there.”

  “Thank you for your candor, Eileen. How do you feel toward us personally?”

  “Well, I love Mrs. de Young, you know that my dear, and I have always thought well of Mr. de Young. I think maybe you ought to try and talk to the leaders of the militia and see if you can't work something out.”

  “Have you seen any cars around town with license plates from Nebraska, Oklahoma, states other than those which are not from Montana, Eileen?”

  “Yes, I have seen some of those. I supposed that they were on their way toward the coast which seems relatively safe for everyone.”

  “You had better get hold of yourself, Eileen. We have a lot to tell you about your militia group,” said dad. “I am going to have Will here start.”

  “I headed up here when I knew there was a really good chance we were going to have a nuclear war, Eileen. I know we have not met before but I hope you won't mind my using your first name.”

  She nodded. I continued. “The day I arrived in Missoula I had been warned that some militia people had been doing some strange stuff up in this area. I stopped on my way up Hwy. 93 and pulled into a home site there just about a mile before the turn off for Frenchtown. It turned out my parents knew the people that lived there very well, Eileen. You might have known Charley and Berneice also. Apparently they were quite popular in the area.”

  She nodded. I continued. “I found them dead in their dining room. They had been tortured quite evidently. She had been raped and probably repeatedly. They were shot to death after all these things occurred.” She began to cry.

  Mom patted her on the shoulder, gave her some tissue to wipe her eyes and I continued. “That is far from the worst of it, Eileen. That first night I found some things in Charley's place that enabled me to walk through the forest toward Frenchtown. As I came to the edge of town there was a roadblock on the highway. I watched while four men raped a young woman. Her husband had been shot dead on the street. I could do nothing at that point except go on toward town unless I shot and killed the woman. But I had no idea of what was going on. So I walked further. I was shot at just as dusk fell and some began to chase me. I was able to get away and after two days of being chased by a series of pick-up trucks, hearing the men talking about torturing me to find out what I had seen, and having to kill two men I made
it home.”

  “Oh my God,” Eileen said, sobbing, “I was so afraid those sorts of things were being done. Do you know where the money came from, Will?”

  “Of course it came from hundreds of travelers who were headed north or to the coast who have been killed by the militia. That came along with their gasoline, their cars, children, young people. I saw one car with four dead girls in it that could not have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old each. They were naked, cut up, dead, raped, disfigured and killed. Sure the money, everything came from the people those militiamen are killing at the roadblocks.”

  “Oh God can you get me out of here, out of this area?”

  “Well, we can try, Eileen. We will see what we can do as soon as it is possible,” dad said. “But for now you will have to stay here. Oh, and I have to warn you there are booby traps all over the area that if you do not know are there would probably cause you to be hurt very badly or could even kill you. So trying to get out of here and going back to town is not a good idea.”

  She put her hand to her face, looked at dad and asked, “Oh, Gene, you are not threatening me are you? That is beneath you.”

  “Eileen, I am not threatening you. I am telling you that we had a choice to make when we went to town tonight. The choice was to bring you back or kill you. We brought you back in hopes we might get you out of the area and have you tell our story to the authorities that we hope still exist in Missoula or elsewhere. No, Eileen. I am not threatening you. I want you to live to be able to give the authorities the information we have given to you. It might not result in anything at all but maybe, just maybe there is someone who can marshal enough forces against these militia idiots that we can stop having to kill them one by one. That would be good, wouldn't it?”

  She agreed with that. We asked mom to take her to the bathroom, give her a shower and check her clothes for any more tracking devices. Mom came out in a few minutes and shook her head. We decided, since there was still a couple of hours of dark left, to take a look at what was going on around our “compound.” I set the machine gun up in one of the spider holes. We had a total of ten spider holes.

  We had SAW weapons in four of those, a machine gun in one other and the MP-5's that could be used in two others. And in addition to that we had many M-16's with selector switches that we could fire full automatic if we wanted. The tunnels that ran from one spider hole to another would, if necessary, give us one hellatious advantage over anyone coming toward our home. And we had ammunition stored in each of them in copious amounts that we had confiscated from the militiamen we had killed. We checked each of those spider holes and made sure ammunition and weapons were at the ready. Then we went out and checked various devices that would discourage anyone from coming there which Dad had put up through the years, among those the Claymore mines which he had mounted in the crotch of several trees with full field of fire across the most obvious avenues of approach to the house. It seemed like everything was quiet, all was as it should be and we went back in and went to sleep.

  Through the next day, in the time when the militia owned the hours, we could see and hear helicopters, now more than one, and trucks and ATV's running all over the forest. They were making their own trails, tearing the floor of the forest to pieces, probably insuring that the next rainfall of any substance would create some flooding somewhere.

  It was all sound and fury with nothing accomplished though. So we waited for our time, for the night. It was one of the nights that we were supposed to be at the rendezvous point to meet the State Police near to 8:00 p.m. so we left the house early. We left Eileen with mom, Ruthie and the kids.

  When we were getting close to the rendezvous point we started to see some movement in the trees along the right of way to the highway. It was clear that these were not typical militia people but we could not identify them yet. I had the radio we had exchanged with the State Police on the appropriate channel and an ear bud in so no sound would come out of the radio. Over the radio I heard “Where the hell are you guys?”

  My answer was a simple one. “Fi,” I said. The password we had worked out with the State people was Semper Fi in return. “What the hell are you doing,” was what I got in return. I had been moving closer to the guy that was talking all the time. I saw him standing next to a tree, three guys around him. He was badly cut up and it became evident to me that he was to be of help to us but had been spotted and caught by the militiamen. Dad and I exchanged looks and signs of our own. I waited. Dad was in position by my count of twenty. I killed the one on my end, he killed the one on his end and I killed the third one in that order. The first two went down by bow. The last by silenced pistol. We waited.

  Our boy, the one who had been tortured, said “Semper Fi.” We moved toward him very slowly and carefully. I saw one more that was hiding behind him, trying to peer out between our guy's legs and from behind a tree. He never saw or heard dad. I heard the sound of a throat being cut. Our guy sank to the ground. Dad walked around and looked at him. Our guy was dead. They had cut him up too badly, too many places and too many times. I heard a radio squelch on the radio he was holding. I spoke into it and said, “Fi. Semper Fi is no more.” The squelch answered and a car took off toward Missoula.

  While dad stripped the weapons and night vision gear off the four dead guys I checked for I.D. on the body of our dead colleague. I found none except that on his right wrist there was tattooed the insignia of a Seal. In one pocket of the guy that dad had snuck up on, we found the I.D. His name was Ken Stills. He was gone and we never got to talk with him at all. Ken had brought with him another set of night vision gear. That was evident by the number of items we found. There was another MP-5 as well with a large number of extra clips in his vest. And behind one of the clips in his vest I found a note. It would wait until we got home. I was pissed and wanted a little payback. One of ours for four of theirs was not enough. Dad said “Whatever you want to do, son.”

  We went toward the roadblock. We moved even more carefully now because of capture and death of Ken Stills. We found a series of sentry posts. They seemed more alert but the result of their being there was the same as those of their brethren that had gone before them. There were twelve more of them before the night was over. Since it was only a few hundred yards from where we found Ken to the roadblock we took his body there and put it into the fire we lit to burn the other sixteen that we had killed that night. The only thing other than the loss of Ken Still which was negative about the night was that the militiamen seemed to be getting some training from someone or somewhere.

  When we got home we took the note out and I read it to the family. It said simply, “We will come every other night now. If we hear from you tonight that there is a problem we will go to the alternate location on the next trip. We hope to bring another man with us the next time. We will try to bring more and more reinforcements as time goes along. We have word out to the proper locations and people and we are assured that they will get you some help.”

  Eileen asked after I read the note, “Did they bring you some help tonight?” Dad, at whom she was looking and to whom she seemed to be directing the question, just nodded.

  She asked, “Where is he, who is he, where are they coming from? What is going on?”

  “He is dead,” my father said. “His name was Ken Stills. I don't know where he came from, only that he was an American sailor, a Navy Seal, but somehow they got onto the meeting place or they figured it out because we went there too often, I'm not sure what happened. Whatever it was Ken is dead along with a few others.”

  “Oh my God, Gene, you didn't kill my boy tonight, did you?”

  “I don't think so unless he looks a lot different than he did the last time I saw him Eileen. But why would he have been there?”

  She was crying again, and said “I overheard him talking to one of his men two days ago and telling the guy they thought they knew where we were meeting people from out of town. Was that close to the drive in to Charley's propert
y?”

  “Yes, Eileen, it was. But we will not be there the next time.”

  “But where can you go,” she asked?

  “Don't worry, Eileen. We already have another meeting place set up and we will all go there tomorrow night so you can get down to Missoula. From there you will be on your own. How much money did you have in your purse by the way?”

  “The $5,000.00 they gave me at the bank.”

  “Okay. We have been gathering a lot of money from the militiamen so we will give you another $50,000.00 to take with you in case things are more expensive than they should be. The three of us will leave here tomorrow at dusk. You will have to learn to follow our lead, to be quiet and to say and do nothing at all when we tell you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I know they will be looking for you. And I know that they believe you are meeting other people down toward where Charley and Berneice lived. But I can be quiet.”

  “Even if we have to do some killing? And the likelihood of that is very strong, Eileen. Can you keep quiet then?”

  “Oh my. That will be hard but I will have to, won't I.”

  “Unless you want the militiamen to shoot you down you will have to be quiet no matter what. They will not hesitate to kill you after the trackers were found and your tails were killed.”

  “What do you mean my tails were killed?”

  “When you left the library night before last you had two men following you. Didn't you know that?”

  “No.”

  “They died. If we were going to get you out of there that had to take place.”

  “Oh my God, Will, I'm sorry you had to do that.”

  “Are you sorry for the girls who were raped, Eileen? Even if it was your son doing it?”

  Dad stepped in at that point. He knew I was pissed. He also knew that if she tried to give us away she would die and I would not hesitate to kill her. I showed her how we walked in the forest. I told her she would be between dad and I and she would not know how far I was behind her so follow dad, do what he says to do and everything will work out fine. Mom was looking at me the entire time. At one point, standing behind Eileen, she shook her head and walked into the kitchen without saying anything.