Holding Their Own: A Story of Survival (23 page)

He was out of options and beginning to think it was over. They had his back to the riverbank with one sniper on his left and the other to his right. If he retreated any more, he would be completely exposed on the open sandbar. He figured he had one option left. He reached in his rig and found the pouch with the smoke grenade, pulled the pin and threw the device a few feet in front of him, waiting until it started billowing white smoke. The smoke trailed south along the river, and Bishop crawled along underneath it. As soon as the white smoke had shielded him a reasonable distance, he turned and moved quickly away into the woods.

He didn’t know if the snipers were going to continue their hunt after losing him in the smoke. Their side had lost at the bridge, and he hoped self-preservation would override any desire to continue after him. He slowly retreated back into the woods and headed for the old barn.

Terri picked him up on the road as planned. He was covered in sweat and still breathing hard. He drank a full bottle of water without pausing and wouldn’t look at Terri.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. We need to get out of here.”

“You were late. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you about it later
, Babe. Let’s just go.”

They returned to the farmhouse. Bishop washed himself off and cleaned his rifle in silence. Ben and Terri both tried to strike up a conversation, but it was clear Bishop just wanted to be alone with his thoughts.

It took him several hours to settle down, and when the rush had worn off he suddenly felt exhausted. Despite feeling weary and knowing Cooter was on guard, his sleep was troubled that night – his mind flashing images of men’s bodies jerking and falling in the crosshairs of his scope. He didn’t know it at the time, but those images would never leave him, always seeming to return in the dark of the night.

Head for the Border

After their successful bank robbery, The Force left Cleveland, always traveling south and west toward Mexico. They waited until reaching southern Indiana to take inventory of their haul and found they had done very well. They used pawnshops, gold buyers and other below the radar exchanges to slowly dump their gold and other loot for traveling money along the route. For the most part, they had kept to themselves and as far away from the law as they could.

When the terrorist attacks occurred, they had been trapped on the east side of the Mississippi in Memphis for almost two weeks. They had slowly converted part of their booty to cash at the city’s
pawnshops, allowing them to stay in upscale hotels where they ate very well. When the bridges opened, they worried about trying to cross with the van and being inspected by cops, so they sold it to a junkyard and purchased the nicest 4x4 pickup truck they could find for cash. The five big guys of The Force could not all fit comfortably in a single truck, so a cheap, but reliable sedan was added to their convoy. The heavy loot was put in the back of the pickup, and they purchased a hard cover to secure it.

As they made their way across the heartland, they ran into trouble several times. They almost lost their treasure twice, with one episode resulting in two dead men in Arkansas. Spence was not stupid, and he knew that civilized society was crashing around them. They were in a small town when they
decided they needed more equipment and much heavier firepower than they were currently carrying. Spence, being an ex-Marine and former policeman, knew his weapons. In addition, three of the four crew had seen combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. They used a technique, similar to the one they used at Fort Knox in Cleveland, to crack the gun safe of a large sporting goods store in Oklahoma.

The Force wanted to get to Mexico and retire with their riches on some sunny beach where women and booze were cheap and plentiful. They had been tracking across northeast Texas when they saw an old man driving alone down an isolated road in a farm truck.

“Turn around – I just saw gasoline go by!” Spence yelled.

The driver of their truck braked and turned around quickly
, leaving their comrades following in the sedan wondering what the hell was going on. The truck accelerated and began to close the gap. The old farm truck was a heavier vehicle than The Force’s pickup, so running it off the road was not an option. Spence had his driver pull up beside the old man so he could stick his pistol out the window and wave for him to pull over. It eventually took a shot across the farm truck’s windshield before the frightened man pulled over and stopped.

Spence got out of his pickup and waved his pistol, motioning for the old man to get out. As he opened the door and slowly climbed out, Spence noticed that the license plate on the truck was from Mexico and decided to find out what he could from the old guy.

“Good afternoon. We were wondering if you had any tequila to trade.”

“No hablo ingles,
” he replied, raising his arms.

“Oh, come on now, we don’t want to hurt you, we just want to trade. Are you hungry? Need anything?”

One of The Force walked up and said, “Queremos comercio?”

The old man smiled and relaxed just a bit. Spence told him to lower his arms and that helped even more. He motioned to the back of the truck, and with Spence’s nodded approval, he proceeded to dig a
round and pull out a bottle of tequila.

Spence laughed and told one of The Force to go get some of their food. He looked at the old man and rubbed his stomach in a circular motion as if to inquire, “Are you hungry?”

The old man smiled again and nodded his head rapidly up and down.

Between their limited Spanish and their new friend’s broken English, they found out that civil war had broken out in Mexico. The old man described drug cartels, remnants of the Mexican Army and a few police forces fighting for control. He described situations that made the
US look like Disney World.

After they had extracted as much information as Spence thought they could, he gave the man a bag of food and motioned that he could be on his way. Happy to
be released, the old man smiled and started walking back to his truck. Spence raised his pistol and shot him twice through the chest.

One of The Force commented under his breath, “Spence, man, that was some cold shit right there
, dude.”

“Fuck it – we need the gas. Somebody get the siphon hose, and let’s see how much is in that piece of shit - get the food back
, too.”

Spence was mad. They had gotten this far, and now he was thinking their plans would have to change. Maybe the man was exaggerating? Maybe he was just telling them all of that stuff about Mexico to keep them out of his country?
No
, he thought,
I believe him
.

As they drained the gas out of the farm truck, Spence moved to the side of the road and stared across the landscape.
We need someplace to hole up and find out what is going on.

West of the Brazos

Bishop and Terri stayed at Ben and Maggie’s the next day and started west just before the sun went down. They crossed the river with just enough daylight left
for Bishop to examine the bloodstains on the bridge. The evidence of the previous night’s battle only added to his melancholy state of mind.

Something seemed wrong with Terri this morning, and he was worried about her as well. She had been vomiting, and he was concerned about some type of stomach bug
, given all of the different sources of water and food they had consumed. She thought it was just nerves, but agreed to let him know if she experienced any other problems.

As soon as they could, they got off of the two-lane highway and started making good time on country roads. They were headed almost due west, a course that
pointed them straight at the high population areas of Austin and San Antonio. Bishop wanted to avoid these regions at all cost, and after the events of the last 30 days, Terri understood why.

When they were approximately 80 miles east of Austin, they ‘hung a lewie’ and headed straight south. They hadn’t seen any other cars, and as they traveled up the rare hill in that part of the state, Bishop was
always looking for lights in the distance.

Houston had been without electricity for several days before they left, but there was no way of knowing about other cities. If other
towns still had electrical power, it could mean less desperate people, and probably some level of government law enforcement or security. Maybe even gasoline. Bishop kept hoping to see lights in the distance.

Ahead, he noticed a
mailbox and power lines, branching off the main line running above to the road. They had been passing the occasional rural home without incident, and Bishop didn’t think anything of it. More out of curiosity than concern, he always scanned the properties as they passed. When he looked over this time, he noticed a flashlight beam moving sporadically in the front yard. Terri saw it as well, and slowed the truck as a precaution.

Bishop, peering through night vision, could s
ee what appeared to be a middle-aged woman in a nightgown with her back to a tree. She held the flashlight in one hand and had a large butcher knife in the other. In front of her were two good size dogs and while Bishop was watching, one of animals jumped at her as she slashed back with the knife.

Purely out of instinct, Bishop raised his rifle and shot one of the dogs. Terri, unprepared for the noise from the gun, jumped and exclaimed “Shit!” Bishop saw the other dog run off. The lady looked
toward the truck, shone her flashlight in Bishop’s direction, and he waved. She waved back, and then took her knife and moved toward the dead animal at her feet. Bishop’s jaw dropped at what he saw next. The lady dropped to one knee and began to skin the dog. Bishop shook his head and then watched as she expertly began to remove the hide.

“Terri, let’s go.”

“Is she all right, Bishop?”

“Yes, she is fine. I think she might want us to join her for dinner, but I’m not hungry. Let’s get moving.”

As they traveled through the night, they didn’t see another light or vehicle. Bishop considered moving over to a larger, faster highway that was paralleling them south, but decided against it. They had developed a routine that they used at every intersection and rise. Terri would stop the truck, Bishop would dismount and scout over the rise or around the intersection. It was becoming more and more difficult to maintain their discipline since they never yet encountered anyone else.

It was almost 4:00 a.m.
, and the GPS indicated they were approaching another intersection with a county road. Terri started to slow down, and Bishop said, “Blow through it. Don’t stop.” She gave the truck a little gas, and they went right through. Bishop turned and watched the road behind them, immediately dreading his decision. Nothing happened.

“You are so reckless!” Terri teased him.

“Hey, sometimes you have to live on the edge and take risks.”

“Well, I for one am glad to see you come out of that conservative shell of yours. Let your hair down, and party a little.”

“We do live such a boring, mundane life, don’t we, hun?”

They drove another 20 miles when Bishop started getting that serious look on his face and asked Terri to slow down. In a short time, he saw a farm lane leading off of the road and asked her to stop. He got out and scouted the lane before waving her in.

There was no gate, but he didn’t mind as he was not planning on staying long. The next big obstacle on their route was only a few miles ahead of them, and he wanted to regroup and make sure they were ready. Stretching, eating, and visiting the “facilities” were all taken care of.

Interstate I-10 was a coast-to-coast freeway. It ran from Florida to California along southern portions of the
US. In this part of Texas, it was a major traffic artery and the fastest way to head west from Houston.

Because of the sheer volume of traffic, almost every exit had
sprouted truck stops, fast food joints, and hotels. Bishop wanted to cross under I-10 using one of the few roads that was not an exit, but that was impossible, given their route and direction. What concerned him most were the gas stations. During the evacuation of Houston for Hurricane Rita, I-10 had become a 120-mile long parking lot – primarily because gasoline had run out, and fuel trucks could not get to the stations to deliver more.

During those crazy three days, people had basically lived at gas station parking lots or on the freeway itself. Police had to be called in to manage the lines at the restrooms
, even after the fuel was long gone. Bishop remembered seeing pictures of convenience stores with their shelves completely bare.

It was only natural that as Houston fell apart, evacuees would head west via I-10 and now would have been stuck at the exits
, perhaps for weeks. One of the things that surprised Bishop the most about the Rita situation was the lack of planning by so many evacuees. They had
always
been able to put a debit card in a gas pump and fill up, and there was
always
fuel and food at the next exit. After Rita was over, many of them appeared on local news stations telling their horror stories:  “We left Houston and were heading to my cousin’s house using I-10. We had half a tank and a couple of cold sodas in the car, so we thought we would be able to make it out of town and fill the car up once we were away from the crowd.”

Bishop believed there would be hundreds of thousands of such people on I-10. By now, they were going to be very hungry and very desperate. It would not surprise him at all if societies had formed, complete with rules and leadership. The real victims would be the small towns within a few miles of the interstate.

During Rita, when the roads had completely closed, the small towns near I-10 had become saturated with thousands of hurricane refugees looking for food, water, and shelter. One small town resident said it best. “The locusts of Houston descended upon us in biblical proportions and consumed everything.”

Bishop knew that the Rita locusts were still in a mental state that
retained some measure of hope for a return to a normal life. They were running from a storm and at worse, would return to a flooded or damaged home and have to deal with FEMA. Now, people would have little hope left in them, and that would make them even more of a threat.

The
biggest problem facing Bishop right now was how close to approach the freeway before scouting on foot. Were the people like those they had seen at the Brazos River Bridge and packed together tightly? Had they spread out? How far?

Another dilemma was how much gear to take with him. A rifle might attract attention he didn’t want. It could also be common. One thing was for sure, a moving vehicle meant gasoline, and he would bet dollars to doughnuts that gasoline was more valuable than gold. If he let Terri get the truck too close, all hell could break loose.

He looked at his watch – it was 4:30 a.m. He had two and a half hours before daylight. He could quickly walk with a light load about six miles per hour, so he decided they would travel to within five miles of I-10. He looked at the atlas and could not find any roads close to the five-mile mark, so he decided they would proceed slowly and chance it.