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  The men we had encountered and dispatched seemed to be carrying a lot of MRE packets. So we had begun to gather quite a supply of MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat) and they were all brand new. We thought it likely they came out of the armory up the road.

  The events of that night seemed to make it imperative that we adults all sit down and see if we could come to some conclusion about staying for a while, leaving right away, where we would go if we could; all kinds of options that might be available to us. We started that discussion in the late morning after dad and I awakened to the sound of Radio United States. “To all citizens. There has been an invasion of the United States soil for the first time since 1812. We are asking all able bodied men to join our military now!”

  This message repeated several times, then the station went off the air. We kept one of each type of the radios we had captured from the militiamen on at all times now. Just after the RUSA announcements the voice came on that had previously identified himself as M-1.

  And he said “This is M-1. You heard em soldier boys, whoever the hell you are. Why don't you go enlist? Then we can all live in peace for a time anyway.”

  He had broadcast on both radios that time. After a pause he said “We would guarantee your safe passage out of this place and good riddance to you. But this offer is only open for the next 24 hours.”

  That put an alteration into our family discussion right away. Dad and I both told the women that we could not trust the militiamen under any circumstance. We had not discussed their atrocities before that with mom or Ruthie, but we did now. Ruthie said “Surely there must be some humanity left in those people.”

  I told her “One of the boys that we came on last night we left for interrogation. I talked to him about fifteen minutes. The last question I asked him was a question to bait him about four young college girls that dad and I found dead in their car, mutilated, raped and killed. I asked him, hey did you ever have any as tight as those college girls before? I bet not. He made it clear he had been one of the rapists until he realized he had been tricked. These people are involved in a mass killing frenzy that includes degradation, rape, mutilation, every form of nastiness the two of you can imagine. And they are educating their youngest, like the boy I told you about, to be just like them. And these young kids are going along with that program all too willingly.”

  Dad said nothing. He looked at mom, squarely at her in the eyes, just nodded his head in agreement with me. Ruthie was crying. I remembered the old movie “RED DAWN” where the boys saw their parents being executed by invaders. I remembered where one of the boys told another to let his tears turn to hate. I mentioned the movie to Ruthie and mom.

  I said “I don't want to hate these people. I would rather turn tail and run than kill them all. But if we start running they will pursue, and the probability is that there are more of them of different groups toward the coast. So if it is up to me I want to stay and fight for as long as it is necessary to eliminate this group of murderers and rapists. Then maybe we can move on and do so at least without a pursuing militia of killers.”

  No one disagreed with that any further. Mom said, “Well, now that we have that settled, let's entertain ourselves a little each night, play some cards, go down into the cave below where we can maybe play some music, dance a little, do something different than just fight and kill every night. Can we do that? Also you men need to teach us all about how to move in the forest, how to be quiet and invisible. If something happens to both of you we will try to get out of here and get back down toward Idaho Falls. Maybe if we travel in the daylight and if we are armed well enough we can make it that far safely. And the last thing is guys you need to teach us to shoot, no, not just to shoot but to shoot well so that we don't miss.”

  “Dad has pellet guns, doesn't he, mom?”

  Dad nodded his head and mom said “Sure. I can shoot with those, okay. But I want to know how it feels to shoot a military weapon also.” Ruthie chimed in at that point and said she too wanted to learn how to shoot the rifles and pistols we had been gathering. The house was full of them in fact. But none of them were loaded, ready to fire. We would not take that chance around the boys until we knew they were trustworthy with the idea of guns laying around loaded.

  Instead of going on killing missions for the next few nights we worked with Ruthie and mom. We knew the area around the house was relatively safe. We knew we could travel into the woods for at least half a mile or so and not have to fear the militiamen. I think by that time they were as afraid of us as we were of them. I wanted to keep going back and killing more of them but dad thought we should take a break and work with the women.

  We taught them to slide their feet just above the ground, and if they met any obstacle while doing so, move away from the obstacle, move a different direction. Ruthie got good at silent walking right away. Mom had a bit more of a struggle with it but she was learning. We taught them to move from tree to tree, slowly, watching, seeing all the critters of the forest as well as any humans that might be there. One night Ruthie and I went a little too far. We found ourselves in the outer edges of a search grid. I could tell by the way the guys in the grid were moving that they were working that part of the forest in a way to try and discover any hiding places.

  We waited. We moved away very slowly. When we got Ruthie to a safe spot I decided to take the nearest one to me down. It was easy even though he was wearing night vision. He was clumsy, loud, couldn't get out of his own way. I killed him with my knife, took his weapons and we left. When we were returning to the house I found Ruthie crying. I asked her what was wrong. All she could say was “I had put out of my mind what you and dad were having to do out there.”

  When we got back to the house Dad and I geared up and went back. We could not leave the body there. That would be an open invitation to search further in that direction. The others in the group had decided to make a camp for the night. We could hear them for a long way. We could see their fire for a long way. They never saw us. The sentry they posted was half asleep when dad cut his throat.

  The other six of them, gathered around the fire with their weapons laid on the ground in front of them, died one by one with a bullet in his head. Two of them actually got their hands on their weapons before they died. We couldn't lug all of them to the canyon so we tied their legs together and drug them back the way they came. They had come from the roadblock.

  We were making lots of noise as we came toward the roadblock. They had not posted any other sentries as before. There were four of them again. We shot them, stacked all the bodies in the back of the pick-ups and lit all of them afire.

  We took everything from them we could carry, but ten rifles were too many. So we booby trapped several rifles of the older variety AR-15 and left them there. We were home well before dawn. As we were walking back it started raining. We thought that was a good thing. It would help obscure the drag marks. The others would find the locale where their buddies died eventually but by that time it would tell them little. The rain would make sure of that.

  When we got home I said to dad “Those silencers on the MP-5s are breaking down. Either we will have to use the pistols for a time or our knives more often. Or maybe we can fix the silencers. What do you think dad?”

  “Nah. Once they go they cannot be fixed. We might as well take them off the guns now for all they are worth. And the nines, the pistols, will go the same way. I can try to add some materials into the silencers on the pistols but I don't think those on the MP-5's can be altered.”

  I left him to that task and went looking around in the cave. I found what I was looking for right away. It was a crossbow. Dad had several of them as I had recalled. I wondered if I still could shoot it. He came in while I was looking at it, trying to remember everything quirky about it and not doing that very well. He said “It still works and it is a very silent weapon if you hit in the head. But that can only happen from a very close distance, Will.”

  “Well if we go out tonight I think I w
ill carry one and see what it can do if I can get close enough to one of those guys.”

  “You can bet they will be back out looking again, Will. They have decided that this area must be where we are located. I am sure of that. The only question I have is how many of those fools can be left. Hell we must have killed at least thirty of them. If that kid was right that we talked to there cannot be more than ten or so of the original group left.”

  “Some of that recent group that we put into the pick-up tuck and burned, dad, were dressed in regular army fatigues, not camo but just army clothing. I wonder if they recruited some of the National Guard people. And there were a couple of those guys that had night vision. One of them you took care of had night vision on. Of course he was an idiot too.”

  “Well if they are National Guardsmen they are incompetent assholes,” my dad said. “What kind of a soldier would let an old man like me come up behind him with a knife standing in a clearing watching the area with night vision glasses?”

  “I would say they just don't have much training or leadership, dad. And in a perverse kind of way that is a really good thing for us. Okay. It's getting late so let's get geared up. I am going to take the bow with us tonight as well as the silenced pistols and MP-5's as usual. One more thing. What do you think about taking one of their trucks, after we are done with them, driving it close enough to town to get in the woods and skirt around town and then head back here after we do a little recon work?”

  “Sounds good to me but let's see how alert they are after losing those people in the rainy night a couple of nights ago. I think we had better begin to try and find out if any of the people in town are antagonistic to this militia group as well. That might mean a raid on the police station to see if they are holding any townies as prisoners. We already know that they are killing all the out of town people that come this way.”

  “Yeah. We need to begin to get enough information to know our enemy a little better, and the only place we can get that is in town. So let's see what comes up tonight and whether we can get a little closer before heading back here.”

  We knew that they had an idea of the route we had been taking to the roadblock area. We could tell that by the sentries they had posted in the forest. We killed them all out of necessity in order to deal with those in the roadblock. Again we thought it might be good to question one of them and we chose one of the sentries this time. There were many of them. Dad took the first. Another heard dad and came toward the first guy, yelling his name. I took him with the bow, shot him through the forehead. He dropped instantly and quietly. There were others. We could hear them easily. We took each of them out, one by one. All totaled we took out ten sentries that night and four blockade guards. We did the same thing with the bodies we had done before.

  Before we took out the last of the sentries he was scared half to death, firing rounds all over the place, yelling into the radio. Nothing happened. The helicopter pilot must not have been available. No one came screaming out of the town to “deal” with us. I knocked the guy out. I propped him up against a tree and trussed him up for the moment while dad took some of the dead toward the trucks. Dad would kill the guards on the road block by himself tonight. I was tasked with the prisoner.

  “What is your name?”

  “I am Staff Sergeant James Miller, my number is…” I interrupted him with a slap across his mouth.

  “What army do you serve in Mr. Miller?”

  “The Army of northwestern Montana, sir.”

  “There is no such army boy. You are just a bunch of murdering rapists who cannot handle real military people.”

  “Yes, sir, you are certainly right about not being able to handle you. How many people do you have,” he asked.

  “That was my next question to you Mr. Miller. How many people do you have in your army?”

  “We have over a hundred now. There are some of us up the road in Arlee and St. Ignatius and some in Superior as well. We are growing every day. You should join us.”

  “How many people do you have right here in Frenchtown, Mr. Miller?”

  “I'm not sure, sir. All I know is there are a lot of us in the police station and the State Police barracks.”

  “Are you holding any prisoners in Frenchtown, in the jail, Mr. Miller?”

  “Oh, yes sir. We have quite a few actually. There are a couple of guys that used to be State Police that are still there, I think the former Mayor is there along with his wife and children, and there are several teachers and lawyers there as well.”

  “Mr. Miller you have been very helpful. For that you get to live at least until another moment. Get up,” I said, “we are going down to the roadblock.”

  “We have people down there, sir.”

  “No, you don't have people down there any longer Mr. Miller.” I whistled so my dad would know we were coming and went on down to the pick-up trucks which were now filled with bodies and covered in gasoline out of the tank from each vehicle. “All right Mr. Miller, get inside the first truck and put your hands on top of the wheel. Are you carrying any kind of a knife?”

  “Yes.” He started to reach for it and I sapped him. He fell across the seat, unconscious. I pulled him up, tied him to the wheel and put his little Buck knife in his left hand. I waited until he was half awake, whistled and went back into the woods. Miller was free faster than the other boy and died in the same way when he tried to start the truck. The other lit fire as a result of the explosion.

  It took about ten minutes for two more trucks with six men in them came racing down the highway toward the fire. We had them in a cross fire. We killed them all before they ever stopped their trucks. Each of those trucks kept rolling on across the road to the freeway. We saw two more coming and did the same thing in the same way, this time using their SAW weapons that we had taken that night and one RPG. All in all that night we killed over twenty-five of them. And then we melted back into the forest and found our way home.

  Ruthie asked no questions after I had cleaned up and came to bed. She held me tightly and we made love silently, but very passionately. I think probably my mother and father did the same thing. I know she loves him and I know he worships her. And they are both attractive people that very easily could still be sexually active in their late fifties or early sixties, and well beyond in all likelihood. All Ruthie said to me throughout the night was “I love you my darling.”

  Chapter 5

  Frenchtown, The War Continues

  Once we had made the break from Guerilla warfare and taken a bunch of them down at once we had them on the defensive. We owned the night. They were afraid to sortie at night any longer. It was too dangerous for them. They thought their numbers increasing in their searches would insure them some level of safety. And they thought more and more military equipment would give them an edge, a moment where they might be able to see us.

  In Vietnam we learned that the enemy owned the land at night and we owned it by day. That was what the circumstance had boiled down to in the area around our home and in Frenchtown itself as far as we could tell. But we needed to know more of who they were, what they were planning if we could steal some of that information, and who was on their side, if anyone, from the town. So we packed food and ammunition carefully. We took a SAW each in case we got involved in a really serious firefight, and an RPG each to give us some artillery as well as the usual MP-5 and the silenced Beretta pistols.

  We packed some dehydrated fruit, some small cans of chicken and a couple of MRE's each. We took a couple of small canteens each and water purification pills for when we would have to drink water from the streams in the area. We were armed for bear, packed as much weight as we could, and set off into the night via a route that dad told me would shorten the distance to the town perimeter by about two or three miles from the trip I had taken earlier.

  God, it had only been three weeks since I arrived. It seemed like we had been at war forever. We moved with extreme care and moved slowly. We figured if it took us two day
s to get in and two days to get out that would be fine. We were prepared to stay longer given the right set of circumstances but we didn't want to be in the open spaces of the town itself for long. As always we carried a small amount of Semtex, an all purpose plastic explosive that is easy to use and always gives good results.

  Now and again as a person moves through the forest, if you do it slowly and alertly you will run onto animals. We saw a doe and its newborn fawn bedded down in a small copse of trees. She didn't bother about us because we seemed to be part of the natural surroundings. We did see a bear and he took off the opposite direction which was fine except that spooked animals are often a key to finding someone in the forest. We left the area he had been in with some additional haste but not movement that would be noticed as hasty.

  As we came closer to town we began to smell the smoke of campfires. The first of those was a two man outpost with a radio. The radio was turned off. They were asleep in their bags. We dispatched them silently with our knives, left them rolled up in their bags, hid their weapons quite a ways off from where they were laying dead and went on. We decided to branch out right and left for an hour and then return to the spot we were in. I found two more sleeping sentry posts, dispatched the men in them and then went back. Dad had done pretty much the same. We whispered quietly. He said “They seem to have a perimeter set about two hundred yards into the forest. I would guess based on the guys we have taken out already there must be at least four or five more campsites like this. I think we should do them and then see if they have an inner perimeter.” In about two hours that was done and we were back together again. We had each done five more camps. Time to move a little closer.

  We crawled the last two hundred or so yards to the perimeter road of the town. There were trucks patrolling. There were three of them and each truck had two men in it. They seemed to be communicating with each other since we could see them using the radios as they drove by us. We took the first one and parked it next to a house which was totally darkened and in which the windows had been boarded up. The second one came along, stopped and pulled over to see what the other two guys were doing when we took them. The third was just driving along, listening to music. We pulled that truck in beside the others, dumped the six bodies in the bed of one of the trucks, booby trapped one of them and then donning one of their hats and keeping it down low drove the entire perimeter of the town.