Read Betrayal: Society Lost, Volume Two Online
Authors: Steven Bird
Jessie’s thoughts raced through his mind. He thought of the vehicles he had found east of town, and how the scene was eerily reminiscent of the scenario painted by T. R. Had the people who were ambushed on the road been lured into a trap set by Peronne? Were there children in the minivan, as it had appeared? Where are they now? All of those questions begged to be answered. The only thing Jessie was certain of was that he couldn’t live with himself if he simply moved on and let other unsuspecting travelers face the same fate. Desperation in this wretched new world would lead others to follow such false hopes. No, he just couldn’t let such a thing stand.
Turning to look at the small, isolated, and abandoned house where he had found shelter the previous night, Jessie walked back onto the porch and entered through the front door, where he found T. R. emotionally distraught, sobbing like a child.
Looking at T. R., Jessie said, “Are you thirsty?”
Nodding in the affirmative while trying to regain his composure, T. R. asked, “What can I do?”
“What do you mean?” Jessie replied as he retrieved his canteen from his saddle, which he had brought inside the previous night.
“You’re right. You’re right about everything,” he said, looking Jessie directly in the eye.
Reaching out to him with the canteen, Jessie helped T. R. take a sip of water from the container, as his hands were still tied securely behind his back.
Swallowing the water, T. R. cleared his throat and said, “What can I do to make things right? There is nowhere to turn to for help. It’s not like I can call and have the FBI arrive on the scene to deal with Peronne. It’s like the Wild West out here now. What no one sees, no one knows. As if there is anyone out there who would care, anyway. They’ve all got their own problems.”
Dragging a small, wooden desk across the room, Jessie placed it directly in front of T. R., put a pencil and scrap of paper in front of him, and then walked around behind him and began untying his hands. Pausing before releasing the knot, Jessie said, “You’re going to write down everything you know. You’re going to write down every asset they have at their disposal. You’re going to write down how many men they have. You’re going to write down their schedules and routines. Everything you can think of. And if you try to make a move that makes me question your intentions, you’ll die in that chair. Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course,” T. R. replied.
His hands now free, T. R. rubbed his wrists, looked at Jessie, and took the pencil in hand. Walking around in front of T. R. in plain view, Jessie eased his Colt revolver out of his holster, flipped open the loading gate, half-cocked the hammer, and began to slowly and methodically rotate the cylinder, inspecting each cartridge as it turned.
Closing the loading gate and holstering his weapon, Jessie said, “Well, get started.”
Nodding in reply, T. R. began to write. Watching for a few moments as T. R. worked his way down the piece of paper, Jessie nudged the curtain slightly to the side and looked out in front of the house, just in time to see a dark figure rush by the window. As he reached for his Colt, the window shattered as bullets began to fly into the room. Diving toward T. R., Jessie shoved his chair backward, knocking him to the floor and removing him from the direct line of fire as wood fragments filled the air from the impact of bullets on the wall behind them.
As the gunfire from outside the home ceased, a voice shouted, “Did you think you were just going to walk away from it all, Robertson? From everything we’ve done for you? From everything you’ve done? From everything you know? I always knew you wouldn’t last, but I always thought you’d be weak and get yourself killed. I didn’t think we were gonna have to do it for you. But here we are. You know how it works. Come on out and we’ll let your friend with the horse live. If you make us come in and get you, we’ll kill you both.”
“They’re gonna kill us both, no matter what,” T. R. whispered to Jessie.
Lying on the floor next to him in a position of cover from the windows, Jessie reached over with his knife and cut T. R’s feet lose, and said, “If you double-cross me, I promise I’ll kill you, and I’ll take my time doing it.”
Nodding that he understood, T. R. pulled his legs off the chair and lay flat on the floor, saying, “Now what?”
“Keep them occupied for a moment,” Jessie whispered in reply as he began to look around the room for an idea.
Shouting toward the now broken window, T. R. said, “It’s not what it looks like, man. It’s the guy we’ve been looking for. The one that killed the crazy old-timer. I caught him. I had to hole up here for the night, but I was going to bring him back to the chief today.”
Looking back at Jessie, seeing his concerned and angry look, T. R. motioned to him in reassurance that he could trust him.
“Bull!” the man outside shouted. “Your tracks met up just over the hill from town. You came this way together.”
“No, I followed him here from where I saw him on the ridge. I caught up with him just before he got to the house. You’ve got it all wrong, man.”
As the men outside paused to discuss what T. R. had said, Jessie found a door hidden among the planks in the old, wood floor. Prying it up with his knife, he saw that it gave access to a crawlspace below the house that had apparently been used to store canned food by the previous occupants of the home. Motioning for T. R. to continue trying to reason with them, Jessie slipped beneath the home, closing the door above him as he disappeared below.
Seeing light shine through a screened ventilation opening on each of the foundation walls beneath the home, illuminating the dust particles dancing around in the stale air beneath the house, Jessie crawled over to the block foundation wall that faced the man giving the orders outside. Unable to get a complete view of the threat due to the limited line of sight offered by the opening, Jessie scanned the area as best he could, assuming their attackers were positioned behind the shed next to the house.
Hearing the shuffling of boots on the opposite side of the house, Jessie crawled through the dirt and dust beneath the home, occasionally feeling the crunch of an insect hidden in the darkness beneath his elbows. Looking out the screened vent on the back wall, he found a man dressed in the same tactical gear as T. R. standing just above the opening, his lower legs and dusty black books being the only thing visible from Jessie’s vantage point.
In a static-filled and nearly unintelligible hand-held radio transmission, Jessie heard the words, “Take them out.”
The man quietly replied that he understood by keying the mic twice.
Knowing that T. R. was in the room above, unarmed and alone, Jessie angled his rifle up toward the man with his stock held firmly against the ground, slowly pulling the trigger as the powerful .308 round discharged, nearly deafening Jessie as the shot was fired in the small, enclosed crawlspace. Disoriented from the intense ringing in his ears, Jessie saw the man writhing on the ground in pain with his hands on his groin as blood gushed from his body, his movements soon coming to a stop as his he bled out from his severe wound.
Gunfire now erupting from the opposite side of the house, tearing wildly into the wooden wall above the foundation, Jessie scurried back to the far wall, trying his best to get a view of the shooter. Seeing a muzzle flash coming from just around the corner of the shed, just out of sight, Jessie estimated the position of the shooter and began emptying the remaining contents of his twenty-round magazine into the flimsy structure. His bombardment of the thin walls of the shed with his powerful .308 rounds repeatedly penetrated the building, bringing the attack to an end. Scanning the area intently as the dust settled, he could see the barrel of an AR-15-style rifle on the ground, barely visible from around the corner of the structure where the shooter lay dead.
Cover and concealment are two different things there, officer
, Jessie thought. Pausing for a moment, he attempted to listen for more movement as he quickly realized his attempts were futile as the shots fired from the enclosed space had left his eardrums throbbing with sharp, intense pain. Crawling back over to the crawlspace access door, Jessie forcefully pushed the door open and scanned the room with his rifle as he saw T. R. lying with his back to the far wall, behind the desk that he had positioned in front of him for cover.
“You okay?” Jessie asked, as he worked his jaw, attempting to alleviate some of the pain in his ears.
“Yeah... yeah, I'm all right,” T. R. replied.
“Do you think there were more than two?”
“No. No, that’s probably it. Unless it’s a pretty big operation, the chief doesn’t like to spread his resources too thin back in town. If they were just coming after me, two is all I would have imagined he would send. We’ve got to get out of here, though. They run a pretty tight ship and will notice when these two don’t return when expected. That’ll send up a red flag for sure. Chief Peronne will send more next time. If he feels like there is a chink in his armor, he’ll deal with it swiftly.”
“Yep, I imagine so,” Jessie said as he looked out the window in the direction of town. “Let’s get what we can from your friends and get the hell out of here.”
Having stripped their attackers of their AR-15 patrol rifles, several loaded magazines of 5.56 NATO, two Smith & Wesson M&P .40 pistols, and two duty-belt-carried radios, Jessie looked at T. R., and said, “If you want to get to your family up north, you’d better get going. Take with you what you want for the journey. I can’t carry all of this, anyway. I just want to get it out of their hands and stash the extra somewhere in the event I need to come back for it.”
Looking down at the ground, pausing for a moment, T. R. responded, “I’ll go, but not yet. If I continue running away from the things I’ve done, the things I’ve been associated with, it will always haunt me. It will always be there. Even I am lucky enough to simply blend back into my family as if it never happened...I...I just wouldn’t be able to live with myself. No, I need to do what I can to make things right before I go. I need to get rid of my old life before I start a new one. I’m staying with you.”
“I didn’t ask you to stay on with me,” Jessie replied sharply. “Quite frankly, I’m not sure I want or need your help. You want to make things right? I respect that, but if you couldn’t get past me, you probably can’t get past them. You’d be a liability to me.”
“No. No, that’s not true,” T. R. protested. “I can help. I know a few people in town who can help. There are a few good men that, if given the chance, I am certain would stand up to Peronne and his men.”
“But you are one of Peronne’s men. How would you know what those you have helped to oppress are willing and able to do?”
“Before I started working for the police—before I knew Peronne’s real goals—I had a few close friends in town. Jack McGuigan was one. He and I were shooting buddies before... uh, before I joined the police department. After that, he just faded away as if he had no interest in me anymore. Then, once I realized what I had gotten into, I understood. But anyway, he is a real stand-up guy. Chief Peronne banned the private ownership of guns...”
“Like every good dictator,” Jessie interrupted.
“Yeah, exactly, for the safety of the citizens, of course. As I was saying, Jack turned in a few rifles and pistols, but I knew he had more. I knew he must have squirreled a few things away, somewhere we couldn’t find them when we searched his home.”
“Wait, hold on...” Jessie said, holding his hand in the air to stop T. R. from continuing. “You mean to tell me you were one of the officers who searched your former friend’s home to confiscate his weapons?”
In a deflated tone, T. R. nodded and said, “Yes. Yes, I was.”
“Peronne isn’t the only treasonous scumbag in town,” Jessie said with disgust in his voice. “And before you say it, I know, I know, you were just following orders,” he said as he shook his head. “And now you think a goose-stepping NAZI who ‘was just following orders’, such as yourself who betrayed his friend, can just walk in there and convince him you’re one of the good guys now? Hell, if he has half a brain, he’ll think you’re just setting him up on behalf of your former boss. I’d never trust you again. Hell, I’m not sure I can trust you now. I’ll let you in on something,” Jessie said as he squared off on T. R. with a hate-filled look in his eyes. “In my previous life, I was a sheriff before it all went down. I took that job very seriously. I took my oath very seriously. I would have gladly given my life for anyone in my county. You have no idea how badly I want to just kill you right now and move on with this on my own. What you’ve done, what a snake like Peronne has conned you into doing, is nothing less than a complete betrayal of your oath, and a complete betrayal of your fellow man. In America, at least as it was intended to be, the power is derived from the people. The people gave the government the right to enforce the laws that the people, through their representatives, put on the books. To take the role of a servant of the people and turn it into the role of a tyrant over the people disgusts me beyond belief.”
Shaking his head and waving his hands in protest, T. R. replied, “Trust me, I see your point clearly. I agree with every word you’ve said, but, I can’t turn back time. I can’t undo what I’ve done or remake the decisions that led me to where I am right now. But if you want to do something about this, you can’t do it alone. This is all we’ve got. We can’t take down Peronne without help from inside the town. He’s got an army, and most of them are all-in. They thrive in this new world, being the predators instead of the protectors.”
“Is there anyone else within the department you can trust?” Jessie asked.
“Not really. It seemed that every time someone developed a conscious, they were the next to have an
accident
.”
Looking off into the distance, Jessie paused for a moment and said, “Don’t give me a reason to regret this. You’ll end up like your buddies over there,” he said, motioning with his head in the direction of the dead officers. “The only thing that keeps me going in this world is a glimmer of hope, a faint little glimmer of hope that my future may bring. A hope that I know deep down inside is likely never going to come to fruition. But I keep going. I keep pressing on each day in search of that one thing. I’ve lost everything in this God-forsaken world. Don’t you for one second make the mistake of thinking that I will allow myself to be double-crossed.”
Feeling the tension in the air, T. R. replied, “Understood. So what is your hope? What are you searching for?”
“You’ll have to earn my respect before I share something personal with you, and that’s probably not going to happen. For now, it’s all business. You work for me. You do what I say, when I say it, and how I say it. I’m not your partner. I’m not your friend. You’ve got to earn those positions as well.”
“So you don’t think people can change?” T. R. asked in a frustrated voice.
“Yes and no,” Jessie replied. “A lot of people talk about being a changed man. It takes a lot more than words and good intentions for that to happen, though. You’ve got to be able to dig deep and stand up to whatever it is that led you astray. You can’t just wish it away. You can’t just say ‘I don’t do that anymore.’ You’ve got to set things straight in reality, not just words. Can people be forgiven, though? Of course. God knows who you really are on the inside, not just who you were in the past or the character you portray on the outside. It’s the rest of us that need proof.”
After a moment of awkward silence, Jessie said, “That’s enough babbling on about redemption. Let’s get a move on. We need to get somewhere safe where we can regroup, plan and observe. Got any ideas?”
Thinking to himself for a moment, T. R. replied with a grin, “Actually, yes, I do.”
“And?” Jessie queried.
“Back home, when I was in my early twenties, some buddies and I would float down the river on a sunny Saturday afternoon on old dump truck inner tubes. We’d lash a cooler onto an extra tube and just drink beer and drift all day, waving at folks who lived on the riverbank as we floated past their backyards. We would use two pickup trucks. One to haul us upstream several miles, where we would begin our day of drinking beer and aimlessly floating, with another empty truck waiting for us at a selected location downstream. We would simply float from one truck to another and then drive back to get the first truck, if we were sober enough, that is.”
“Go on...” Jessie said, interested on where the story was going.
“Anyway, Peronne has the roads and all of the main entryways into the city pretty well controlled. However, the Pecos River, especially at night, may be a good way in. They watch it from a distance when doing patrols, but no one actually walks the bank. If we can work our way around to the northwest and intercept the Pecos River, and if we can find something that will work as a float, we can drift into town under the cover of darkness. The Pecos River heads directly into town from the west until it reaches a point where it makes a turn to the south. On the north bank of the river at the bend, there’s a narrow strip of land between the canal and the river that is mostly brush and trees, with only one house I can think of. We can beach our tubes and hide them in the brush. With their eyes on the roads and traditional access points, we may be able to slip into town and work our way to Jack’s place.”
“How far into town is Jack, and how far from the nearest concentration of police assets is he?” Jessie asked, intrigued by the idea.
“City Hall is a good distance away, but he’s basically just a block from the post office. They use that building as a storage facility due to the fact that it was built to be naturally secure. They keep assets taken from the ambush sites there.”
“Sounds like that’s Peronne’s bank.” Jessie snarled.
“Yeah, basically,” T. R. replied. “On the bright side, any of the officers at the Post Office will be there for the primary duty of defending the facility. It’s not a launching point of patrols or operations. It can be a good indicator of their current protective posture, though. Also, I can estimate how many officers are potentially on patrol based on how many are guarding the facility.”
“Is that where he keeps the women and children he takes from the ambushes? Or is that elsewhere?”
“Typically, the people who are taken aren’t kept in Fort Sumner very long. Peronne has to keep up an image within the town, or at least he thinks he does. He tries to keep such things under wraps. He’s living this delusion that if he keeps up the appearance of being the legitimate government of Fort Sumner and with the people’s best interests at heart, that people will eventually start to see things that way. Like I said, though, he’s delusional. Everyone in town knows what he’s done and what he’s up to. They’ll never forget. Some are okay with it because they get something out of it, but most are just biding their time.”
“Biding their time for what?”
“Nothing specific,” T. R. replied as he swatted at a mosquito. “Damn bugs are gonna be thick this year,” he said. “Anyway, they just figure it won’t go on forever. But in regards to the people taken during the ambushes, they are flown out or transported by road within a day of their capture. Peronne typically doesn’t take in anyone he doesn’t put a trade value on, and they definitely don’t get brought to town if they don’t have value.”
“Did you participate in any of the ambushes?” Jessie asked. “And don’t lie to me.”
“No. Not at all,” T. R. quickly replied. “Peronne has a special team for that. They’re his inner circle, and they’re cut from the same cloth as him. No, those guys didn’t care for me much. I was mostly utilized for patrols and watch standing within the town.”
Piecing together everything T. R. was saying in his mind, Jessie said, “On the east side of town. I came across several vehicles that looked as if they had been taken down by an ambush. The previous night I heard an exchange of gunfire from my camp. That’s what led me there the next morning. One of the vehicles was a minivan that appeared to have been transporting several small children. There were several dead adult civilians at the scene and one dead officer...”
“Picoulas,” T. R. interrupted.
“What?”
“The officer that was killed was Picoulas. Dave Picoulas. He was kind of an ass, so it didn’t hurt my feelings any when I heard,” T. R. replied.
“So you know about that hit, then?” asked Jessie.
“I know it happened, but not any specifics. One thing I can tell you though is that Peronne’s Go-team make a run to the airport the next morning. With who or what, I don’t know. I did overhear some of the guys joking about a woman, though.”
“What about a woman?” Jessie asked.
“Barnes... he’s one of Peronne’s lap dogs, was joking about some woman they had gotten the opportunity to have a little fun with while she was drugged out of her mind. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back to me. That’s why I finally left. What those bastards did while they were outside of town was one thing, but the fact that they were now bringing it back to town with them... well, that was my cue to leave. What if they were having their way with some woman and I was around? Could I just look the other way? I just couldn’t deal with the thought of that.”
“I thought you said they didn’t keep people in town?”
“They usually don’t. That was a first that I know of. I don’t know what Peronne has or had in mind, but I didn’t want to be around for it.”
“Is she still there? Is she okay?” Jessie asked.
“I’m not sure. Like I said, that was the first I had even heard about it, and I punched out that night. If we can get into town, though, and if we can get to Jack, he may have a clue. His daughter, Angela, works for City Hall. She’s a clerk of some sort now. She was a driver’s licensing examiner for the state before it all started, so I guess it was an easy transition for her to work in public service. Anyway, I’m sure she keeps him up to speed on the goings on, at least to the extent she is aware.”
Confused by what seemed to him to be contradictions, Jessie asked, “If this Jack guy is so against Peronne and what he does, why does he allow his daughter to work for him?”
“She doesn’t actually work for Peronne directly, just for the City. Granted, it’s a small city, so she does have to interact with him on occasion, but I’d imagine Jack would rather have her in a safe place and in the know. Knowledge is not only power; it can mean security as well. Plus, Peronne generally doesn’t hurt his own people. He needs loyalty to stay in control. Once I began to work for the department, and Jack started giving me the cold shoulder, I never personally spoke with her other than just being cordial in passing.”