He kept going, holding to the south bank, backed off a couple meters from the water, moving quietly, looking down at each step, and then around him. Every few minutes he would stop again to listen, usually pausing behind a bush or a tree trunk. He was back on patrol, albeit without his battle gear, without a rifle. He felt the weight of the .45 in the small of his back under his long shirt.
Turnbull counted his steps, as he had been trained to do, knowing his stride was exactly 33 inches in the open, but adjusting for the smaller steps he was taking in that confined space. It was slow going, moving around trees, avoiding roots, and stepping over logs after peering down on the other side to make sure he didn’t step on a copperhead.
No copperheads. That was a relief. But he kicked up a garter snake, which slid off of the bank and into the water and swam away like a big green “S” with a yellow stripe running down its back.
Turnbull figured he was a half mile in, then about a mile. Now far out of town, the sounds of the cars rumbling along the roads had faded. He was in the deep woods. He was in his element.
Did he smell smoke?
Turnbull dropped and listened again. Nothing, but there was something more going on. He felt it somehow. He was getting close.
“Y’all just hold up now,” he heard a male voice say, and Turnbull dropped and rolled, taking cover behind a log, his weapon now ready.
“The pastor says you’re an okay guy, and I want to believe him, being a man of God and all, but if you’re gonna start pointing guns at me, you and I are going to have a problem, mister,” said the voice. It was coming from up ahead, but Turnbull couldn’t place it. The guy was well-concealed.
“How do I know you’re not pointing a gun at me?” asked Turnbull.
“Well, I am, but then this is my house, and I figure I got a right to point a gun at anybody who comes in to my house, if you know what I mean.”
“Maybe so,” Turnbull said. Damn, where was this guy? “So how about neither of us point any guns at each other and we can take it from there?”
“Okay sir. That sounds fair to me. Why don’t ya stand up, let me take a look at you?”
“How about we both stand up and take a look at each other?”
“That seems fair to me too.” There was a rustle about seven or eight meters to his front. A shape was rising out of the brush. Turnbull stood up too, slowly, careful not to do anything that could possibly be interpreted as hostile.
The man in front of Turnbull was skinny, wiry and weathered with a scraggly beard. He didn’t seem afraid. Instead, he seemed rather confident, totally at home, and he had a big .357 silver Colt Python revolver slipped into the belt at the front of his jeans. He wore a black T-shirt, a little bit tattered, with an eagle rampant over an American flag. Not exactly consistent with the PR’s evolving fashion sensibilities.
“My name is Kelly,” Turnbull said.
“I’m Larry Langer. Pleased to meet you.”
“Langer,” said Turnbull. “You’re the one that got away.”
“Yes, sir. I got away. But I ain’t going away, if you get my meaning. I’m just biding my time. I got accounts to settle, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I do. And I can’t say I blame you.”
“Pastor said I needed to meet you. Said you and I might share some common interests.”
“We might. But I’m not exactly interested in settling any scores.”
“Pastor said that too. Well, we still might have some common ground. But I’m not done with the sons of bitches who murdered my family quite yet.”
“You’ve been living out here?”
“Sure have. It’s my second home. Been running around these woods since I was four years old. Hunting, fishing. Got a little tent and a cook stove over there. Dug a nice privy too, back from the creek of course.”
“Of course.”
“I’m pretty comfortable. Like to have a big fire, but if they see smoke then they’d get all excited and send somebody else to give me a citation for climate violations. And if they did that I’d have to shoot the son of a bitch, and that’d attract even more attention. When the shooting starts, I intend to be the one starting it, and when I’m good and ready.”
“Seems to me you want to get your own private war going on,” Turnbull said.
“Guess I do. Are you here to start your own?”
“Just here to be difficult. I don’t intend to do any killing unless I have to. Though these PR bastards seem intent on pushing things that way.”
“I gotta say, I liked being part of the United States. This Split’s been nothing but trouble. You think you’re gonna be able to deal with these people without killing a few of them?”
“I’m not optimistic,” Turnbull said. “I have experience with these bastards too.”
“All we ever asked for was just to be left alone,” said Langer. “We just want to keep doing what we’ve always been doing. Never hurt anybody. Never stole anybody’s stuff, never got sideways with anyone who didn’t get sideways with us. But they just couldn’t leave it be.”
“They can’t, because if they see you doing what you want to do, then other people are going to want to do what they want to do, and then pretty soon our People’s Republic friends are not going to have anyone to boss around anymore.”
“Yep,” Langer said, walking slowly forward. “So where do you come from anyway? Down in the red?”
“I came from where I came from. It’s not important.”
“Oh yeah, OPSEC. You know, I was a Marine. And a good one. I did one tour and made Lance Corporal three times.” Langer smiled. His teeth could have used some work. “Fought in Falluja. Never occurred to me I might have to fight here at home.”
“Maybe it won’t have to come to that. I just think maybe that, since you know the area and the people and have some training, maybe you can help me make things a little more difficult for these folks.”
“Maybe I can. But that’s not saying that I’m not going to expect some payback at some point. They killed my family, and that’s got to be answered.”
“I hear you. And I—”
Shots, in the distance, to the east. A lot of them.
Both men froze,
A burst, then more shots. Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam.
“AKs,” said Langer. “You don’t forget what they sound like.”
“PSF or PVs,” Turnbull said.
“It’s back in town,” Langer said.
“Back from where I came,” said Turnbull.
“The church,” Langer said.
“You coming, Larry?”
“I’m with you.”
“Let’s go.”
They began running through the forest back the way Turnbull had come. There was no deliberation now – they were moving full speed.
Pastor Bellman looked out over his congregation and observed that nearly every space in the pews was filled. Before the Split, he’d have been overjoyed. But the fact was that First Baptist had inherited a lot of families from the other churches in and around town that closed since the Split. Pretty soon he was going to have to add another service at 11 a.m. to handle the attendance – people just wouldn’t all fit in the 9:30 service. And it seemed to him that people are paying more close attention to his sermons. In times like these, people looked for the comfort of God.