Betrayal: Society Lost, Volume Two (17 page)

Leina couldn’t help but smile at how a man who liked to seem so in control, so calm, and so collected, was coming apart over the radio.
That psychotic coward is shaking in his boots,
she thought.
You
can hear the trembling in his voice, disguised as rage.

Hearing Peronne’s angry voice once again, she heard him shout over the radio:

Show yourself, you coward. Come out here and fight me like a man.

Is it manly to kill the innocent?
the strange man who had attacked Peronne and his men replied.
Is it manly to surround a house with overwhelming force to attack a woman? A woman who you kidnapped, killing all of her friends and taking her children? Does that make you a man? All it makes you is a tyrant and a coward, and for that, you will pay and pay dearly. As for the rest of you, drop your weapons and walk away. It’s your only chance.

In an increasingly frustrated and angry tone, Peronne responded,
If you want to defend that woman, you’ll die with that woman. I’ll kill her in front of you, you son-of-a-b—! I’ll give you a front row seat. I may even make you kill her yourself.

I think your men need an example to follow,
the voice said in a bone-chilling manner.

The only example they need is to watch how I kill you with my bare hands!
Peronne shouted.

Mustache...
the strange voice said, followed by the supersonic crack of a rifle as one of Peronne’s officers in the perceived safety of their offensive position against the house violently fell forward onto the hood of his own SUV, as his forehead exploded from being shot squarely in the back of the head.

As Peronne’s men began to scatter, Leina ran to the living room of the home and opened fire on them as they broke cover, realizing that the offending shot had come from directly behind them. Striking one of them in the side, dropping him to the ground, the man began flopping around like a wounded animal while screaming in agony. Leina cycled the bolt, chambering another round, this time aiming through the glass of one of the patrol vehicles. Taking the shot, her bullet struck a man squarely in the back as he tried to get a fix on the unknown shooter.

As return fire began shattering the ground-floor windows of the home, Leina dove to the floor, taking cover behind the old, leather sofa while she covered her head with her arms, shielding herself from the flying glass and debris that now filled the room.

As the gunfire subsided, Peronne’s voice once again came over the radio in a fit of rage, now bordering on madness:

G— damn you, you son-of-a-b—! Tell me your name so that I can mark your grave when I bury what’s left of you. I would feed you to the animals, but I need a gravestone with your name on it to piss on every day when I think about how much fun I had killing you!

In a calm and collected voice, Leina heard the strange man reply:

I’m just a simple shepherd who lost everything I held dear because of the betrayal of men like you. And as a shepherd, one thing my life revolved around was killing any predators that threatened my flock. Killing you will be no different. You’re just a predator, preying on your fellow citizens. Nothing more, nothing less.

Taking advantage of the lull in the fight while Peronne’s men regrouped, Leina slipped out the back door of the home under the cover of darkness. Working her way around the block, she set out in an attempt to try to gather any intel she could on the current positions and the state of Peronne’s men, considering the recent turn of events. She had no idea who the mysterious man wreaking havoc on Peronne and his men was, but she knew the chaos he was causing was an opportunity for her to inflict as much damage as she could, as well.

Noticing that Peronne had divided his men up into two distinct formations, one facing the home that she and the woman occupied, while the other covered their rear and flanking positions in an attempt to counter the strange man’s harassing fire.

They’re not gonna be able to make an aggressive move on me so easily with their attention divided like this. All we need now is for dissension in his ranks to create even more chaos,
she thought as she looked back toward the home.

To her horror, Leina saw glowing orange flickers of light that appeared to be growing rapidly from within the first-floor living room of the house. She then saw a burning object being hurled into one of the shot-out front windows, intensifying the brightness almost immediately upon impact.

Her heart racing as thoughts of the woman in the hidden underfloor compartment flashed through her mind, Leina began to sprint back toward the home, no longer attempting to remain unseen by Peronne and his men. As gunfire erupted around her, she ran directly into the side door of the home, which was now engulfed in flames. The intense heat and overpowering fumes forced her to the floor, where she crawled in an attempt to reach the bathroom where she had left the woman beneath the floor.

Pulling her shirt up over her face, Leina tried her best not to inhale the noxious fumes as she began coughing uncontrollably. With only feet to go to reach the bathroom, Leina could see the growing flames flickering as a reflection in the drying pool of blood on the floor, blood that had been flowing out beneath the bathroom door.

Feeling her strength begin to fade, Leina started to lose all control as her coughing intensified and her eyes burned from the smoke and fumes. Screaming, “Noooooo!” as the fire grew around her, Leina’s world faded to darkness as the smoke and fumes overtook her.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Coughing herself awake, Leina awoke in a panic, her last memory being that of the light of flames from within the bathroom she so desperately tried to reach in time. Frantically looking around the room, she heard the familiar voice of the man on the radio, who said, “Shhhh. It’s okay. You’re safe. Peronne doesn’t know where we are at the moment, though they are searching house to house, so it may only be a matter of time.”

Coughing and attempting to clear her throat to speak, he handed her a glass of water, saying, “Here, drink this. Your throat is probably quite irritated from the smoke.”

Swallowing a drink of water, she struggled to speak, saying only, “Who...?

“My name is Jessie. Jessie Townsend,” he stated in a calm and reassuring voice.

Speaking softly, she replied, “The radio... You’re the man from the radio.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As memories of the night began to flood back into her mind, her heart raced as she thought of the woman. “The woman!” she shouted. “Where is she?”

“Woman? What woman? You’re the only person I could get to in the home. You were trying to get to the bathroom, which was fully engulfed in flames.”

As tears began to roll down her cheeks, Leina sobbed and said, “She helped me. She was a total stranger and helped me when I was on the run. Peronne’s men killed her son and beat her severely while trying to find me. She had hidden me in a hidden underfloor compartment in that bathroom. That’s where I had left her during the fighting. She was too weak and injured to get away, so I had resolved to stay with her until the end, helping her as she had helped me.”

“I... I’m sorry,” Jessie replied as he bowed his head for a moment to give her time to take it all in.

After a few moments, Leina asked, “Why? I mean, what brought you into my fight?”

Sitting on the bed next to her, he said, “This should be everyone’s fight, not just yours. That’s the problem. That’s why men like Peronne are able to take control of an entire population of people who could and should be able to stand up and take their town back. Everyone is just afraid to be the first one killed, or they’re afraid to be the only one in the crowd who stands up. It’s easy to be a patriot when the battle lines are formed. It’s not so easy to be the first to make the call to arms.”

“Is this your town?” she asked, still confused.

“No, ma’am,” he replied. “Before everything went down and the world quickly spiraled out of control, I was the sheriff of Montezuma County, Colorado. Before it got ugly, I moved onto a mountain homestead with my family to hide from it all. That worked for a while, and we had a great life, but eventually, the evil in the world will find you. You can’t avoid it forever. Choosing to sit something out simply doesn’t work, at least not in the long run.”

Bending and unwinding a paperclip he had found lying on the floor in a nervous fashion, Jessie tossed it aside, and continued, “To make a long and painful story short, my family was killed, and everything I held dear in this world was taken from me. Even my horse. After I had set out on a mission to find my sister, whom I haven’t seen or heard from since long before this all started, I swore to never sit something out again. As I traveled east, just north of here, I heard a barrage of gunfire one evening as I made camp a safe distance from town. The next morning, I investigated and found what appeared to be an ambush site. There were signs of children, so I simply couldn’t keep going without looking into it further.”

Pausing, noticing that his observations were bringing Leina’s memories back to the forefront of her mind, he said, “So, anyway, once I started surveillance of the town, I encountered one of Peronne’s men who had slipped away in the middle of the night to escape the goings on in Fort Sumner. He wanted nothing to do with it, yet after speaking to him long and hard about it, he realized that he couldn’t just run away, either. He knew it would eat at him for the rest of his life if he didn’t try to right his wrongs.”

In an attempt to break her trance-like state, he asked, “Were you held by Peronne and his men at his home?” he asked.

Pausing for a moment before replying, Leina said, “Yes. Yes, I was. How did you know?”

“Did you encounter a woman of Hispanic descent, named Rosa?”

“Uh... yes, yes I did. How did you know that?” Leina asked inquisitively.

“The man who fled Peronne knew quite a bit of the goings-on in town, and he knew some people who he thought might have been able to help. Help they did, which led us to Rosa.”

“Is she okay?” Leina asked, worried that the woman’s involvement in her escape may have led to something horrible for her.

“She’s okay now,” Jessie replied. “T. R., he’s the man who fled and then teamed up with me, died as we made a move on one of Peronne’s assets where they kept her.” Looking to the floor to gather his thoughts, Jessie solemnly said, “I guess you could say he made good on vindicating himself. Anyway, she was safe when I left her to come here. She told us everything she knew about your situation, and putting two plus two together, I assumed you were a victim of the ambush.”

Nodding in the affirmative, Leina wiped a tear from her eye and said, “Yes, that was us. They killed all of the other adults, but took the children and me. I haven’t seen them since I got here. Peronne kept promising to return them to me, but it was all a ruse to get me to...” Pausing to search for the words, Leina changed the course of the conversation, saying, “So, where are the others? The others that helped you rescue Rosa. Are they out here with us somewhere, also?”

“One of them was injured pretty bad. Rosa is caring for him now. The man’s daughter helped us also. She’s safe as far as I know, but I haven’t had reliable enough contact to know her exact whereabouts or intentions. For all practical purposes, we have to assume it’s just you and me for now.”

“That suits me just fine,” Leina replied. “I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will die killing him if need be, and I’m at peace with that.”

“Neither of us will die if I can help it, but I agree with you. A life not lived to the fullest is a life not worth living, and that doesn’t just go for the pleasures in life. That’s another one of the things that led the world down the path it was on. Everyone was so consumed by their own personal gain, happiness, and comfort, that none of us stood together to do the hard things. The wicked and the corrupt took full advantage of our brain-dead, reality-TV-consumed, self-centered society and pushed our once-polite society to the breaking point and beyond. Sadly, they did it before our very eyes, yet no one hardly even noticed.”

“My husband, Cas, used to say the same things,” she said, smiling at the warm memories she still held of her late husband.

“Where is he? If I may ask,” Jessie asked carefully.

“Let’s just say you and I have similar pasts,” Leina replied as she looked around the room. Changing the subject once again, she said, “So what’s the plan?”

“I’ve had a pretty simple plan so far,” Jessie replied, “but the usefulness of that plan is about to end. The sun is almost up, and it’s going to make being a ghost that pokes at Peronne’s men until his ranks start to crumble a little harder. There’s no way to take on their numbers head on, but if we can chip away at his men’s morale, and cause them to question their allegiance to such a tyrant and a monster, then we might have a chance. As long as we can stay alive in the process, that is.”

“We’re gonna need a better plan than that,” she said. “Unless, of course, we can lie low until tonight.”

“I doubt that would work very well,” Jessie replied. “With the cover of darkness gone, Peronne will be emboldened to tear this town apart until they find us. No one has ever hit him so hard or embarrassed him so much. He’s not gonna let this stand. He’s not gonna just let it wash away. No, he’s gonna need to make a point, and strong point, with us, to keep the rest of the people in town at bay. A tyrant who feels that he has had a chink in his armor revealed will be quick to make a show of force, and more than likely, he will do it in a very brutal way.”

Interrupted by an incoming radio transmission, both Jessie and Leina stopped to listen, hearing:

Hello, there, shepherd. You may think you’ve put yourself in a position of power, but you’re wrong. All you’ve done is endanger your flock. I’m going to start preying on your sheep if you don’t show yourself soon. Baaaaaa baaaaa baaa...

“What? What’s he gonna do?” she asked.

“I imagine he’s threatening to do people harm in an attempt to lure me out. That’s not a wise move. If he inflicts acts of brutality against the innocent, the population he’s trying to control, he could lose his most important aspect of control—their willingness to continue to sit on the sidelines to preserve their own safety. His desperation is setting in quicker than I thought,” Jessie replied. “That’s not good. Things are gonna get real ugly, really fast.”

“Are you going to reply?” she asked.

“No, I’m done with the radio for now. They’ve had time to gather themselves together and get their hands on radio direction finding gear that I would imagine a department such as theirs would have been before the collapse would have on hand. He’s probably taunting me to reply so that they can DF our position and move in. No, we’ll hold off on using the radio again.”

“What do you have for weapons?” she asked. “I had a rifle, but it was lost in the home. All I have is this...” reaching for her sidearm, she realized it was no longer there.

“Relax,” Jessie said reassuringly. “Your Glock is right here. I merely removed it because I wasn’t sure what state you would be in when you awoke. I didn’t want you to think I was one of them and get myself shot.”

Reaching the duty belt with the holstered Glock to her, he added, “I’ve got an AR-15 I picked up from one of Peronne’s men. I lost my personal rifle in the insanity of the night as well. Other than that, all I have is my old Colt, here,” he said, patting his open hand on the side of his old leather cowboy-style holster. “Oh, and a compound bow and several broadhead arrows I found in one of the closets upstairs. You never know when something like that will come in handy,” he said, pointing to the bow he had securely tied to a small pack he had found as well.

“We’re gonna need to do better than that,” she replied. “Two pistols and a rifle aren’t gonna get us far against these guys.”

“They’ll get us far enough,” he replied with confidence. “Now, you get some rest while I stand watch. You’ve had a rough night, and I can’t imagine today being anything other than a rough day. Let’s take advantage of the remaining darkness to sit and rest for a while, because with the rising sun, trouble will come.”