American Blackout (Book 2): Slaves Beneath The Stars Page 8

  “The majority of us stay right here. Guard the Hilltop. Get the other neighbors involved. At least have communications daily. A runner system—on foot, car, the Cessna. Cricket, you and I take the Mustang. I’m thinking through two-way radio we communicate with ground forces and give our assistance when needed.”

  “It’s a solid plan,” Claubauf said. “But what if they hunker down? Don’t go away, don’t attack.”

  “Then we still bury our dead.”

  “After we leave?”

  “I’ve requested fifty soldiers stay through winter. If the jihadists move about quietly killing, so will we. And when we get them all in one place, whether it’s this week or six months from now, we’ll rain down hell. We’ve got the C-130 gunship up and running.”

  Cricket raised her hand, like she was in class.

  “There’s something else. A pilot in a J-3 Cub rescued us today. He bombed the first car, and the explosion took out the pickup behind it.”

  “I guess you Catholics would call him a guardian angel,” Claubauf stated with a smile.

  “I’m not Catholic, but ‘guardian angel’ sounds good to me.” Lawrence rose from the table. “After getting back my family, this qualifies as the second-biggest miracle I’ve ever witnessed.” Lawrence moved toward the entrance, facing the expanse of pasture and woods. It was dark now, and Cricket felt his restlessness, knew he was anxious to get back to his family.

  Cricket eyed Doctor Claubauf, who was mostly in shadow, farthest from the single lantern.

  “Well, Doctor Claw”—he raised his eyebrows, widened his grin, hearing Hank’s nickname now on Cricket’s tongue—“had you taken that shot the other night when the Cub flew overhead, some of us wouldn’t be here now.” She pointed to Marty: “He knows when to shoot. Nice shooting, Mr. Kain.”

  “Cricket, Lawrence, thanks for what you did today,” Marty said. “What a mess the world’s in.” He said something else under his breath Cricket couldn’t catch, shaking his head, revisiting the incomprehensible. Betty took a painful step toward thawing when another wave of tears hit.

  19

  Travel by Dream

  Cricket sat up in bed and drew her legs ups, resting her chin on her knees, watching her husband, who was standing by the window bare-chested in dark running pants. A kerosene lantern on the dresser made his skin softly glow but left his expression in shadow. The room had been finished in the fifties, making it the sixth bedroom for the Holaday children. Hank and his wife had five kids, and except for Fritz’s dad, all lived in other states.

  Cricket stuffed a pillow behind her back. “I want to take the Mustang back to the Kains’ tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think so. We need to stay close by, make sure no one’s crawling up our butts, like on Halloween.” He stepped away from the window, and the soft light revealed his cold glare and the coming storm. “How do you plan to recognize a car full of ex-cons? Its speed, color going tell you something? Shoot it up if it looks suspicious using your X-ray vision? Or maybe just wing them? Let them suffer?”

  “That’s not fair,” Cricket yelled, loud enough to wake up the entire house.

  “Revenge is more important than justice.”

  “Fritz, I’d call it payback for those monsters murdering two children. There’s a slave operation going on, and we have to stop it. You want justice to be clean, black and white. That’s why you were slow picking up on the Brazilian’s savagery, wanting to be sure one hundred percent. Our world is going to be lacking secure prisons and courtroom dramas for a long time.”

  “Obviously not torture chambers.” He faced the window.

  “You’ve had some wild moments.”

  “I work hard on controlling those emotions. We go to the dark side, we’re finished.”

  While hunting, they had stumbled upon a strange beast roaming the woods.

  Cricket said, “I had to call you off that monster.”

  “Don’t want to think about it.” He was reliving that afternoon, evident by a pained sigh and lowered voice. “It’s done.” Cricket moaned something about being sorry, and flew out of bed and wrapped herself around him. It took a moment but he forgave her with a hug, a long few minutes of quiet, and a very long kiss. She shook and sobbed at the horror they had witnessed that day and the evil she was capable of inflicting.

  Cricket knew that her husband clearly saw the line between the good and bad guys, and she did as well, but she had also experienced good and evil bleeding into one another and was capable of momentary explosions of murder, torture, and mayhem just like any of the animals she killed. However, she hadn’t lied when she told Sister Marie that hatred had been absent the moment she shot the Brazilian in Little Falls. She had acted out of the desire to end a one-woman terror campaign. Other killings, she had enjoyed: taking out the slavers in the woods and slitting the monster’s throat after pinning him to the La-Z-Boy. Her energy had soared as these men dribbled into nothingness.

  She thanked God for her husband and his kisses. She had a fine man and Sister Marie to keep her in check. Her father would never have opened the door on terrorizing the enemy, losing oneself in bloodlust. He would have counseled bravery, doing the right thing, just as he had taught her years ago in hunting: calm hands, clear heart, clean kill.

  But her dad had left this world just as the savages were storming it—the very world she had grown up to love. Would he have cautioned her to simply keep her head on straight with anarchy in full bloom?

  Hours later, the night dominating a world asleep, and after some of the best lovemaking since the beginning of their marriage, and a passing concern that they had kept everyone awake on the floors below, Cricket began dreaming.

  In one dream she stood in a field similar to the one where she had found Grace. In life the girl’s parents had been murdered and the child was left to roam the countryside before being attacked by yellow jackets. In this dream, sadness was an element of the pale blue sky above. Grace and the wasps were absent, but not the disturbing quiet Cricket had experienced when she made the emergency landing and climbed down the wing into a lonely place that had vanquished God. That day she had the waking horror of a saber-toothed tiger lying nearby in the grassy meadow.

  What came in a twilight dream was much larger and started as distant thunder. Soon, monsters from the Jurassic period appeared above the treetops. She looked around once more for Grace and jumped into the Mustang as the creatures thundered onto the field.

  She took off, escaped the monsters, and never saw Grace. She had been unable to save her in life and so too in the dream. The whole meadow and forest became the mouth of a volcano: no return, no possible rescue, and she cried, her sobs matching the thunderous beats deep in her breast.

  She awoke looking up at the ceiling full of moving shadows and instantly saw herself in bed with Fritz. She gasped and scrambled toward her body and felt the threadbare connection to her physical self that was wrapped around her husband. She didn’t particularly like her body; everything was slightly elongated, freakish, bony-looking.

  When she slammed back into her body, she was wide awake and couldn’t move. Paralyzed. No sound came from her. She could only stare at the ceiling, and a mist filled the room, an opening to another place she’d rather not visit. She struggled to move either arm and screamed internally at her paralysis. She finally moved both and sat up, drenched in sweat, trying to catch her breath like she had just finished a marathon.

  She went to the window and opened it, and the night’s air cooled her but her chest remained tight with fear.

  The camp was quiet even though dozens of new captives were bound and kept inside pup tents, headed downriver before dawn. More than a hundred of Ajax’s men, including newly escaped prisoners, moved about bringing food and water to their catch and quietly conversing amongst themselves. Some prisoners wore Halloween masks.

  Ajax hated chaos and noise and loved the peace of the night, the witching hours between midnight and three, he had only minutes ago r
eminded Big Phil. The small army of slavers knew this as well and hours ago had imparted this knowledge to their catch. The slavers also knew Ajax’s generosity, especially the escaped prisoners, who during their confinement had enjoyed his gifts of women and drugs.

  20

  A Bowie Knife with Wings

  The P-51 Mustang was ready for flight. Fritz was talking to the mechanics, and Cricket made a final pass around World War Two’s “Cadillac of the Skies.” One pilot she knew from her old airport called the Mustang a bowie knife with wings—which, given its samurai belly and ability to cleave the air with its speed and shred the enemy with its row of Browning .50 caliber machine guns—made it an awesome plane worthy of that description.

  She hadn’t told Fritz of her dream and the out-of-body experience, but did tell Sister Marie that morning on the patio, the two of them alone, having coffee, both dressed warmly. Sister Marie confessed that she had had the experience for most of her life, starting when she was a teenager.

  “Did you ever tell anyone?”

  “My confidante, Sister Teresa. She said to determine how it contributes to a God-directed life and use it accordingly. If not spiritually useful, consider it an entertainment, like chess or a favorite TV show.” Sister Marie studied her. “How do you feel about the experience?”

  “Sister, even after the terror of not being able to get back into my body, I feel fantastic. Like I could do a million things and stay up for weeks.”

  “It’s an exercise for the spirit. Energy begets energy, whether working out with weights or having dreams where you fly out of your body.”

  “Sister, did it influence your life as Christ’s bride?”

  Sister laughed warmly. “It’s been pure, wonderful entertainment. Never had to spend much time in front of a TV.”

  Fritz asked Cricket why she was smiling as she climbed the wing ahead of him.

  “Sister and I shared our dreams this morning.”

  “Amusing?”

  “Our talk was, not the dreams.”

  She lowered herself into the seat, and Fritz squatted outside the cockpit. “Is this something I need to hear about before we aviate?”

  She shook her head. “Nah. I got my head on straight.”

  “That’s all I need to hear.”

  His eyes were smiling, and that was enough for Cricket. Dreams, she could figure out on her own or talk to Sister Marie. Her husband was grounded, solid, a warrior who would never be frightened of things that go bump in the night except to grab the bad dream by its slippery neck and throttle it. Neither would he turn into a monster, a killing machine lapping up the blood of his enemies. That was her dilemma.

  21

  Hunting for Savages

  All thoughts of entertaining out-of-body voyages vanished as the P-51’s liquid-cooled, twelve-cylinder engine massaged the airframe and pilots in preparation for a different kind of flight. They taxied to the east end of the field where the Davies boys stood and waved. Cricket had the front seat, the flying seat, and behind her sat Fritz, always the instructor, commenting on the sound of the engine, their mission, her handling of the plane, or making it back by noon for lunch.

  The pasture dipped slightly at about a thousand feet downfield and then roughly leveled off for almost a half mile before the woods started. She had a ten-knot headwind, and it was a cool day, fortyish, all the “virtues” necessary to ensure a short-field takeoff and strong climb.

  Finishing the before-takeoff checklist and hearing a simple “Let it rip” from Fritz, she glanced at the boys on her right and saw two different kids. Ethan, Mr. Always Present in the Moment, shooting before thinking and ready to make any sacrifice for his family and friends. And Caleb, the dreamer, who had a love of the internal workings of things but was afraid to hold and fire a gun or climb into the seat of the P-51. Yet he knew a lot about the Mustang, could tell you about the different models, its history in the European and Pacific theaters, or other factoids picked up only recently from the men at the Holaday farm, who had taken a real liking to the boy, encouraging him to keep a journal, which he did. Caleb had been writing for the last two months on everything from bees to the P-51 to the attack on Halloween night.

  Cricket held the brakes, the control stick back, and slowly moved the throttle forward. The engine gauges pointed to numbers that indicated fourteen hundred horses available for a rolling-thunder takeoff. The plane bounced and danced over the uneven ground and shot into the sky with a fantastic rate of climb.

  Soon over the Ohio River at four thousand feet, she continued the climb to seven and leveled off. They had agreed on starting with a five-mile loop for several passes, followed by a ten-mile circuit. Repeatedly crossing over the same terrain would help them locate would-be attackers on the move. The colors of fall were vibrant on either side of the river, and for a moment Cricket wished for a world where she and Fritz were giving aerial tours of the fall foliage instead of hunting for savages.

  The river was gray at altitude, slowly stretching toward Cincinnati and Louisville and finally the Mississippi River. Cricket thought of Thomas Jefferson’s excitement over Lewis and Clark’s expedition and Jefferson’s belief that they’d find giant men and prehistoric animals. From Jefferson’s perspective, there were definitely giants on the horizon—both to be admired and feared.

  Cricket was tight with the moment, hands controlling the ship at 250 miles per hour, banking, taking a glance at the forested land coming into view, nature dominating until Cincinnati.

  Starting the ten-mile loop that drove them farther into West Virginia, Cricket saw a few scarred hilltops and the cleared-out valleys of coal country. She banked north, heading for the river, when she caught an asphalt airstrip sliced into the top of a broad mountain.

  “Fritz, this strip doesn’t appear on my sectional chart.” She held up the chart at eye level to avoid burying her head in the cockpit.

  “Let’s take a look. Just be ready to add power and stay low if someone starts shooting.”

  Fritz had taught her to not immediately climb. A speeding plane across the treetops—gone in the blink of an eye—wouldn’t make a good target. Speed, distance, and then a rapid climb to ten thousand feet were the plan.

  At twenty five hundred feet they spotted two aircraft alongside the runway.

  “The Cub!” Cricket yelled.

  “Yeah, I see. No buildings, no sign of activity.”

  They made a fast traffic pattern and on base leg slowed to two hundred miles per hour. They figured the runway was at least four thousand feet, and it looked clear of debris. The other plane was a tail-dragger, probably a Citabria.

  On final, Fritz told her to be ready for the “Get the hell outta here” command. He ran checklists for landing and go-around.

  This was the first asphalt strip she had landed the Mustang on, and the main wheels squeaked at touchdown. Fritz decided to deplane and keep Cricket strapped in for an immediate takeoff. With the prop blast chilling her, she zipped up the black sweater under her vest right up to the high-collared neck. Fritz circled the plane and then signaled to cut the engine.

  The quiet of the place swallowed her thoughts as soon as the engine died. Unlike the empty quiet of the meadow where she had found Grace, this place seemed pregnant with a good feeling, with promise. Still, as she stepped down the wing, she touched the Colt in its holster.

  The planes were immaculate. The yellow Piper Cub broke her heart—a Piper J-3 with its sixty-five-horsepower engine like her dad’s, and next to it, a sparkling white Citabria with red trim, an aerobatic delight, also tandem like the Cub and flown with a stick instead of a wheel.

  No owners of the beauties emerged.

  “Hey, the keys are in the ignition,” Fritz said, opening the door of the Citabria.

  “The Cub, too.”

  Cricket turned in time to see a black bear barreling down the runway, like he could possibly take off. She had never seen a bear move so quickly, especially with its winter fat already draping it
s sides. Fritz had his gun out and Cricket cautioned him from using it.

  “Sweetheart, we can’t take it with us if we shoot it.”

  “This is about protection.”

  The bear was abeam of them when they heard the sound of a car. Chasing the bear was an old Jeep Wrangler. Four men were yelling and laughing at the animal.

  Cricket and Fritz heard “Run his ass over” more than once. When the bear angled toward the woods, the jeep aimed for them.

  Cricket hadn’t given the militant Islamist any time to make his case. She knew his role in the executions. But here, either her critical thinking had gone to hell or she really knew these were good guys, just like her dad and Uncle Tommy.

  The man driving was somewhere between seventy and six hundred years old. Tall, with a weathered face and neck, and smiling, like he had been enjoying life for an eternity. The other men—of different sizes and shapes, with wisps of hair, no hair, and in one case a full head of white hair—looked wonderfully ordinary and decent, like the people in line at Home Depot or Walmart when those stores still operated. Fritz kept looking at Cricket, hands on his hips in a show of no nonsense, but these were men of supreme common sense, too. The tall, weather-beaten man in a cracked brown leather aviator jacket waved from the jeep.

  “I’m Predator Jones,” he announced to jeers from his companions, like they, too, happened to be hearing his name for the first time. He swiveled in his seat and faced the Mustang. “That’s a mighty fine ship you got there. How’s the Barracuda doing?”

  “Great,” Cricket said, “and thanks for saving our lives.”

  “Nobody was going to harm that baby.” He turned to his companions. “First met her and the car outside an earthmover showroom!”

  The men started giving their names. Crazy Jack sat shotgun and crammed atop the bench seat were the two Bobs, which Predator Jones admitted was a real pain in the ass: PJ Bob and Cub Bob.