“Who are you people?” David explained that it was his wife and son, and his parents. They lived in Warren and came up here to bug out.
“Where are you planning on going exactly?”
“We have a small cabin on Rose Island. That’s where we are heading to.”
“You guys have ID?” Rich walked over slowly and gave him his drivers license. The address was in Warren.
The man from the militia looked over at Randy and the rest. “You guys have ID?” Dawn said no, David pulled his out.
The guy said, “This says Roseville.”
David spoke, “Ya, my parents live in Warren. We live in Roseville and Randy lives in St. Clair Shores. We all made it to my parents’ house where we stayed until it started getting bad with riots and looters. Look at my truck, they were shooting at everything just to shoot, it’s loaded with bullet holes. We decided to head to the cabin.”
Over by the airport the crowd had grown to almost 50 people. They started walking back toward the airport’s main gate. When they got there, the militia doubled up the manpower at the gate and told them to go away. Rob demanded that he talk to the militia’s leader. The crowd called the militia Nazis, criminals, thugs, crooks and a few other choice words. There were men, women and older teenagers.
Back in the parking lot the militia told David and his group that they were the authority for the Thumb Region. They insisted on searching the vehicles. David and the group protested, but the militia convinced them by raising their rifles. The militia pulled everything out of the vehicles. They just tossed it all on the ground.
Sleeping bags, camp stove fuel, clothing, food and some odds and ends. One of the militia opened up a blanket and laid it on the ground. He placed a small .22 rifle on it along with a couple of Mosin Nagants and an older 12 gauge shotgun. Another guy put down two ammo cans filled with various ammo for the guns and opened it.
“I see boxes of 9mm. You guys have any pistols on you?”
David said, “Yes, I have a 9mm under my coat.” They told him to raise his hands which he did. One of the guys went and took the gun from him and then patted him down. He told everyone else to stand up as well. They completed the search and didn’t find anything else.
“Here’s a list of rules of the area. I suggest you go to your cabin and stay there. Check in once in a while in case we have information for you. We post bulletins regularly. You damn vacationers think you can just come up here and do whatever you want and it makes me sick. If I had it my way, we’d be shooting all of you useless assholes.
“We’re keeping the guns, that’s our law. You might want to think seriously about how long you plan on staying. Spring would be a great time to move the hell back to wherever you guys came from.” A third patrol had approached and watched the activity. David saw them talking on the radio. They heard him say that they didn’t find any truck tracks at the marina, just the bike tracks. They got another call and then they left. The other two patrols stayed behind, but David could tell they were getting anxious about something.
Haliday and Blake started to head toward the airport. They were following the path they previously had taken. Haliday would be taking a different path and he split off from Blake. Blake continued on for about half a mile. He stopped and waited. As he was sitting there the patrols quad came up along the wood line. Blake took off to try and avoid the quad.
The quad was following Blake as he tried to lose him. The quad was catching up to Blake slowly. Blake tried to get into the woods, but he couldn’t find an opening. He looked back and the quad was even closer. He laid on the throttle, but the bike became unstable and bounced around too much, so he slowed down.
He spotted an opening in the woods and shot toward it. Just after he entered the woods, he hit a patch of leaves and dumped the bike down sideways and slid. He got up and started running down the path with the quad behind him. The quad gunned it and blasted into the woods.
The rider’s arms were whipped backward and the pressure on his chest tore him from the quad. He landed on his back and rolled around in pain. Haliday had wrapped a piece of small coated wire cable around one tree and anchored it. Then he had fed the end through an eye bolt on another tree. As soon as Blake had laid down the bike, Haliday pulled the cable and wrapped the end around the eyebolt for strength. It knocked the rider of the quad off.
Haliday walked up and stepped on the man’s arm as Blake ran up. He pointed his .40 at him. “You guys don’t learn do you? Still out here playing army and trying to run your own little country?” The guy just looked up at him. He had to be only 18 or 19 years old. Haliday bent down, flipped him over, and applied some flex cuffs.
He searched the kid and pulled off a pistol, a couple of magazines and a knife. “Blake, gather all the rest of his gear, that rifle and everything. Take the quad and run it back to where we came from. I’ll be right there after I finish with this kid.” Blake did as he was told. He put everything in the pole barn and threw an old tarp over it. Haliday swung by and picked him and took him back to his bike.
The kid was sitting up against a tree and was tied to it. He wouldn’t be going anywhere at all. This kid was probably patrolling the wood line and east side of the airport where they would need to be. He looked at the kid. “I’m going to let you sit here and then have someone come get you later. Find Jesus while we’re gone. Find Allah for all I care. But get right with your Maker.”
“You aren’t going to shoot him?”
“No, he can stand trial with the rest of them or they can do whatever they want with him, but I’m not going to do it. I should, but he didn’t fire on us or try, at least not yet. Rules of engagement in a sense, a twisted sense though. I did talk to him for a few minutes though.
“The kid basically told me to screw off. He told me they were the new government in the area and they applied new laws to the area. That’s about all he said. Kept repeating it over and over along with saying how we were going to get what we had coming to us. Not a very smart kid either. No understanding of what the law really is.
“Let’s go, we’ve got to be in place very soon.” They made their way back to the northeast corner of the airport where they had been before. It was completely dark out now. They got busy getting ready. This would be more interesting than just watching what was going on.
The crowd at the airport gate had grown to almost 80 people now. They were still demanding to talk to the militia leader. They were still calling them names and such. Someone dragged over a barrel and lit a fire in it. The militia had called in half of their patrol units and everyone in the airport compound was on alert and ready.
David and everyone had started packing up their gear slowly. They tried talking to the militia, but the responses were short and rude. Randy came from the Tahoe, “Hey Uncle David, the Tahoe has a flat. Can you help me change it?”
“Ya, give me a minute. Mom, Dad, you guys wait in the Cherokee where it’s warm. Dawn, pull it up next to the Tahoe so we can change the tire. I need the jack and lug wrench out of the Cherokee.”
“Randy, can you get under there and get that spare loose?” Randy laid down and worked on the tire. Off in the distance, they heard a series of small explosions. Randy sat up. The militia sent one of the trucks down the street to check it out.
One of the two remaining guys yelled at Randy, “Get the damn tire changed already.” Randy got back under and worked on getting the tire down.
Rich got out of the Cherokee. The militia man asked him, “Where you going?”