American Blackout (Book 2): Slaves Beneath The Stars Read online

  “Why didn’t they just hang out in Cincy?” Cricket asked. “There’s more product for Ajax.”

  “They’re practical monsters. Wanted to get their act together, get some practice under their belts and a lot of big guns first. So they’re starting with smaller towns. We’re hearing Cincy is pretty civilized—safe, well-protected. Police force intact.”

  Cricket addressed Predator: “Fritz is taking the P-51 to Wright Patterson tomorrow, maybe returning with a gunship. I’ll go with you in the Cub.”

  “Cricket, please stay put until you hear from me by midmorning.” Fritz’s play-as-a-team pitch made his wife frown.

  Predator Jones jumped in. “That we can do.”

  “If we hear nothing by ten thirty, we’re aviating.” Cricket was anxious to start now and felt every nerve on fire for retribution.

  “We need protection right here,” Sister said.

  “And you’ll have it,” Fritz said. “A little while ago I talked with one Hilltop family who’s going to move in here for a few weeks. The Breyers. Parents have three big teenage boys, youngest fourteen. Whatever we coordinate for tomorrow, you two be sure to make it back here by nightfall. We don’t have the ability to fight at night, at least with airplanes.”

  “Then telling the two Bobs to get their asses here by first light was good planning?” Predator Jones grinned.

  “Yes it was,” Sister Marie replied.

  52

  Serpents

  Lawrence and his sons had been sharing the same bathroom with Sister Marie on the first floor. But with Caleb withdrawn and angry, Sister decided to spend the next few nights in the bunkhouse, where there was a small extra bedroom. Cricket wasn’t happy with the arrangement. She liked Sister in the same house with her and Fritz. When Cricket saw Caleb coming from the bathroom, she dragged him outside. “I got this, Fritz.” Her husband nodded and winked at Caleb. “Good luck, kid. I’m headed to bed.”

  Caleb didn’t resist Cricket. His arm actually had gone limp when she took hold of him. By the stone barbecue she dragged a chair over for the boy, and she sat on the ledge of the fire pit. She looked up. Stars and a clear night. No moon.

  “You want a fire?” Cricket asked.

  “No.” Caleb sat in the Adirondack chair, arms folded.

  “Without clouds holding in the day’s heat, it’s gonna get chilly.”

  “I’ll go inside.”

  “No you won’t. Not until we find a way to heal whatever bullcrap is going on in your head and you apologize to Sister Marie. That could take some time.”

  “My dad—”

  “Your dad knows you’re out here.” Through Fritz, Lawrence knew that Cricket had stolen his son for a few minutes. “He needs you and your brother in a big way after losing your mom.”

  The boy seemed to be holding his breath to stop the tears. He put up a good fight for about ten seconds and then sobbed. Caleb looked to the kitchen window and didn’t see anyone peering out.

  Hank, also on the first floor, was already asleep and had thankfully missed the earlier encounter with his buddy Claw, and now Caleb’s ordeal.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked.

  “For my mom,” he said.

  “Your mom would never have wanted you to hurt Sister Marie like that.”

  “My mom didn’t like religion.”

  “But your mom wouldn’t throw her food across the room because she didn’t like it. That’s no excuse.”

  “Mom didn’t want us taking classes with Sister.”

  “I know. But your brother did. And your mom honored that. She told me a few days ago.”

  Caleb wouldn’t look at her. More tears came.

  Cricket said, “You hurt Sister Marie, not only her hand. You understand what I’m saying? You have to apologize to her and treat her well.”

  “Why? Why do I have to treat her well?”

  “Because she’s an adult, a woman, a Sister, who has spent a lifetime helping people. You don’t have to love her, but you must respect her.”

  “Doctor Claubauf says that people have to earn our respect.”

  “I just told you why she’s earned our respect. I don’t care what Claw believes. He’s wrong.”

  “He said it didn’t matter who people were, how important, how old; if I decided not to like somebody, I could treat them however I wanted.”

  “Caleb, you know your parents never raised you to think like that.”

  Caleb looked down. The tears had stopped. At this moment Cricket felt a great affection for the boy and wanted to hug him and say great things about his mom, soften him so that he’d understand his mistake and apologize to Sister Marie. By force of will she remained aloof.

  “Did Doctor Claw turn you against Sister Marie?”

  “He said that she was not on my side. She’d stop me from being happy. That I could make my own story in life, fill my story with characters that I liked, and they liked me. He said if you believed in God that you always had to pretend that God would make things better. I wasn’t sure about what he said until my mom died. When I heard Sister talking about God loving my mom, I hated her for talking that way, because God wouldn’t allow my mom to die if he really loved her so much. I love my mom. I wouldn’t let her die like that.”

  Cricket understood. It was only a short time ago that her losses had made her doubt God’s love of His creation. Yet today, she had felt love for a young boy bleeding out in the woods, and she’d prayed for him and hadn’t run from God. Even the difficult Bible passage she’d read last night on Job was a prayerful step forward.

  I have no peace nor ease; I have no rest, for trouble comes.

  A rough summation of much of their new existence. Cricket knew it took work to get back on a prayer footing. Of course, she had Sister Marie, but Caleb’s distance from God had come not only from his mother’s death but from Claubauf’s lousy ideas. The children needed affirmation of a good world, of a God of love transcending all the daily pettiness and slaughter.

  Cricket leaned close. “Can we make a deal for now?”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Start praying to God and wait for Him to answer you.” Even here Cricket felt the weight of Job’s plight: What strength have I that I should endure… Have I the strength of stone…?

  She pressed on: “You’ve got good questions and you’ve been hurt terribly. The reason why I say this is because men like Doctor Claubauf don’t see the bigness, the mystery in life, especially when terrible things occur, like you losing your mom. The mystery’s there, and Claubauf can’t joke or belittle it. Go ahead and keep asking God, ‘Why my mom?’ There’s an answer, and the answer builds over time. Caleb, God has so much to offer you at every stage of your life, if you pay attention and pray.

  “Not long ago, I almost walked away from God. My dad fell from the sky. Shot down—burned in the crash. Like you, I couldn’t believe God’s indifference. But I was wrong. God taught me through Sister Marie and a young girl who had lost her entire family and, within weeks, her own life. The young girl—Grace was her name—felt life deeply, lived deeply, in the hours and days she had left. She knew life to be touched everywhere by God. And yet she died horribly. But I know now that if I stop believing in God, I stop believing in her, stop feeling the love that connects me to her.”

  Another darkness swamped Cricket, her own abortion. Remembering the many times feeling broken and afraid, Cricket knew she wasn’t in any better shape than Caleb. Yet she prayed that Caleb would still hear something of her words. She didn’t have long to wait.

  “Cricket, I’m sorry about your dad.”

  She placed both hands over her heart. “Caleb, thank you. You just flew outside yourself, flew beyond your own pain, your own fears. I felt your words right here.”

  “Right after I hurt Sister, I felt bad. But I couldn’t do anything.”

  “That’s pride. We all have it.”

  “Is Sister asleep?”

  “I don’t think so. I can ge
t her. I know she’d like to talk to you.”

  Cricket rose and gathered some kindling alongside the fireplace and started a fire. She placed a medium-size log on top and went to the bunkhouse. Caleb sat in the Adirondack chair staring at the fire. A few minutes later, from the kitchen window, Cricket watched Sister Marie walk out and pull up another chair alongside Caleb. In the fire’s glow the two talked and held hands.

  53

  Sunny-Faced Atheist

  The morning was cold but above freezing. The Mustang idled strongly. The fighter and its pilot looked handsome, determined, fierce. The beauty of taildraggers, sitting on their tail, was that they were always pointing at the sky. With the plane’s canopy open, Fritz gave Cricket, the mechanics, and Predator Jones a short salute and taxied for takeoff. Besides reconnaissance, he was flying to Wright Patterson to coordinate the attack on the escaped cons.

  Predator Jones’ Cub sat closer to the tree line, and Predator’s pards, the two Bobs, would soon arrive in the Citabria.

  Before Fritz climbed into the Mustang, Predator had shown him the three bombs he had constructed to drop from the Cub. Fritz and Cricket had obtained the plastic explosive in midsummer in Little Falls when one of the Brazilian’s crazies was intercepted with a knapsack of C-4 planning to blow up the P-51s outside the town.

  Cricket felt a rush of excitement as the Mustang lifted off. The plane banked east, above the treetops, before picking up a westerly heading.

  Still looking at the sky, she heard gunfire erupt from the woods, and her heart accelerated watching the Mustang climb. She screamed for Fritz to keep climbing, and he did. The shots kept coming after the plane was well out of reach of small-arms fire. Cricket knew that the target hadn’t been the Mustang.

  “Predator, you coming with me?”

  “Yes ma’am!”

  Oakley and Forrest were armed and stayed with the Cub. They were the first line of defense for all the precious souls at the farm.

  Cricket took a path she had used often to jog, but now ran. Predator kept the pace with her effortlessly. She had the Remington slung over her shoulder and the Colt on her hip. Another burst of gunfire and she headed north, off the path and deeper into the woods. She aimed for a stand of pines that had bordered a cornfield planted decades ago and were now the elder statesmen amongst young hardwoods.

  “Cricket, slow down,” Predator said.

  They both stopped.

  “Hey, let’s not run full blast into the enemy here. Some caution.”

  She agreed and they scouted the woods. They had to be close. She pointed to the pines, and he grimly nodded his head in the affirmative. They walked side by side. All the animals and birds, if they hadn’t run off, were quiet, waiting for the humans’ next move.

  They both raised their guns simultaneously when they spotted a bent-over figure rummaging through something on the ground: Doctor Claubauf.

  They moved closer, soundlessly. Predator Jones was the first male since her dad who glided noiselessly through the forest. They glanced all around in case Claubauf had supporters or enemies arriving on scene. They were a few yards distant when the doctor raised his head and smiled like he had been expecting visitors for lunch.

  “Are you going to shoot me or thank me?” the Doctor asked.

  “Maybe both.” Predator Jones kept his gun on the man, who was going through the pockets of someone quite dead.

  Cricket lowered the Colt and took in the surroundings. She was focused on Claubauf when Predator uttered: “Sonofabitch.”

  They walked into a campsite where they counted eight men dead—in and out of sleeping bags, some with guns in their hands and one sitting against a tree, head hanging to one side, probably on guard duty. A small fire, gray ash and a few red-hot coals, was still smoking. Cricket kept her gun trained on the dead. About half were headshots; the rest of the bodies were torn up like Doctor Claw had been performing surgery with his .357 Colt Python. Twisted bodies half out of the sleeping bags attested to those who had been awakened with zero time left to live.

  Doctor Claubauf calmly went through a man’s pockets. Guns and knives went into a backpack. Items of less interest he tossed over his shoulder.

  “I couldn’t sleep last night with all the attacks on my sunny-faced atheism. I took a walk, and near the end of the north pasture, I smelled a campfire. I took my time; the witching hours would be on my side. Unfortunately, these animals got a boost from the witching hours and didn’t hit the hay until about an hour ago. So, I waited.”

  Predator Jones and Cricket examined the carnage, and Cricket eyed Claw at the mention of the witching hours, the devil’s playtime.

  “No, Cricket, I’m not a Satanist or even a warlock, but the term has always made me smile. I’ll give that to Christianity and its opposite, a lot of wonderful imagery.”

  “Who are they?” Cricket asked.

  “Escaped prisoners,” Predator answered.

  “From the prison break downriver,” Claubauf added.

  No matter the size of the men, they were all muscular, tatted, prison buff. On one knee Cricket kneeled and lifted up a man’s T-shirt, and saw the full swastika tattoo centered on the breastbone and, below it: “White Power.”

  “Forward scouts,” the Doctor said confidently.

  “More to come,” Cricket said. “You gave us some breathing room wiping out these savages today.”

  “Glad to hear my services are still appreciated. Is Fritz bringing in the big guns today?”

  “We’re praying.” Predator elicited a smile from Doctor Claw, who refrained from commenting.

  Claw walked over to a blonde man, who could have been Dolph Lundgren’s younger brother. The man looked like a Saturn rocket on its side. Reaching for an AR-15, his thick, muscled arms were outstretched like he was ready to launch.

  Claw pulled the .357 from its holster and shot the already dead man in the head.

  Cricket jumped. Predator swore. Both continued to lambaste the indifferent doctor as he kneeled and removed several items from the back pocket of the man’s jeans. “There’s something about this one that is truly chilling. Sorry for my preference to kill him several times over—you know”—he looked to Cricket—“the deep-seated fear that the monster might come back to life. I guess if I was really paranoid, I’d cut off his head.”

  “What the hell game you playing here, Claw?” Predator Jones was pissed and got in the man’s face, and Claw held up a small red copy of the New Testament.

  “Belongs to the dead minister from Marietta. Name on the inside.”

  Cricket approached him. “So, you neatly solved the minister’s murder?”

  “Look closely at the back pocket. You think I created that condition in the last twenty minutes?”

  Cricket found the jean material puckered in the size and shape of the small New Testament. “Wipes out your oldest-son love-triangle theory.”

  “I’ve been known to make a mistake every once in a while. ‘Nobody’s perfect’ goes the saying.”

  “Doctor Claw, you’re a strange duck.” Predator Jones stepped over a dead inmate and walked beyond the carnage, looking up through the trees as the rain began forcefully, without warning. “I think we need to get the hell out of here. Get back to the farm.”

  Part V

  NEW BLOOD

  54

  Lucy

  Cross-legged, just inside the open flap of her tent, Lucy took a drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke into the night’s pounding rain. A campfire fighting for its life against the storm briefly illuminated the cigarette smoke before it disappeared. The thunderous downpour had also affected dozens of the day’s catch, who momentarily stopped their complaints, shout-outs to the universe, or simply crying for their mothers.

  Lucy reached back and grabbed the ankle of a bound, gagged man, who instantly grew rigid at her touch. Earlier she had told him she didn’t bite, before aiming a knife at the center of his left eye, cautioning him to behave and to always listen closely to her
instructions. She smiled in the dark, knowing the other captives that night were receiving similar lessons from the captains and their men.

  She dug her nails into the man’s skin, and she answered his whimper by releasing her grip and gently patting the ankle that now bled freely.

  The man pressed against the side of the tent and shivered. Her recommendation was that he’d best control himself, since the boss, Ajax, was directly across from them and didn’t like being disturbed at this late hour by pitiful sounds or unusual odors.

  She explained that Ajax was the only real man left in her universe, and that the boss was moving on to bigger and better things. Without fanfare, she told the man that she would be taking over the camp in the next few days and that he should wish her well.

  The man let escape a muffled howl that made Lucy laugh. She removed the gag, saying that Ajax made exceptions for an honest-to-goodness, soul-wrenching howl. The man’s cries were magnificent, and she said Ajax occasionally talked about the children of the night, and what music they make. Hours later, talking with another slaver, she learned it was a line from a movie, a strange one she had never seen…

  55

  A Strong Heart

  As promised, the Breyer family arrived, including the three beefy teenage boys, the next morning to bulk up the Holaday homestead. The children had an instant attraction to the easygoing teens: Ethan and Caleb were impressed with their size, and the girls giggled at the attention these alpha males effortlessly bestowed. They all took turns giving Diesel rubs and a few minutes of roughhousing. Hank was helping Sister Marie make lunch for the newcomers, and Cricket was sitting outside with Predator and Lawrence. Claubauf had decided to get some sleep in the bunkhouse and join guard duty later. Cricket and the two men planned their day, checking their radio every few minutes for a call from Fritz.