“What are we going to do, Mikey, call the BAT-Fags on them?” T.K. asked with a chuckle. After a few moments, he added, “I suppose if they didn’t rob or kill anybody to get them, there’s no law left to say that they can’t have a half a dozen ’lil old M26 frags. What else do they have in those packs?”
Mike let out a slow whistle as he poured out a large jumble of coins, wristwatches, gold chains, rings, and bracelets from a heavy sack. He gave a brief, matter-of-fact inventory. “They’ve got the whole gamut here. Silver dollars, Krugerrands, Pandas, Maple Leafs, a couple of Platinum Isle of Man Nobles, and a Platinum Koala. The watches look like they are mainly Rolexes and Tag Heuers. A lot of ’em still have price tags hanging on them.”
With an odd lilt to his voice, T.K. asked, “I suppose that you’re going to tell me that you owned all that stuff before the Schumer hit the fan? Let me guess… you were in the jewelry business.”
“Look, look, we can explain, we found all that….” Larry said, peevishly.
T.K. frowned.
“Shut up, Larry,” David muttered under his breath.
In a sharper voice, Kennedy mocked, “Oh no, let’s let Larry tell us where you ‘found’ all those valuables.”
Silence.
“Where were you two heading?”
More silence.
“All right, step back from the road toward me five paces and sit down. Leave your hands on your heads. We’re going to have us a little talk,” T.K. said.
The two strangers did as they were told. T.K. backed up at the same time, so that the strangers would not close the distance that divided them. After the two men had sat down on the ground, T.K lowered himself into a squat, with his CAR-15 resting across his knees. Watching these proceedings, Mary leaned over to Todd in the hole next to hers, and commented, “There’s nothing lower than looters.”
Todd replied with a nod.
Mike, still digging through the two strangers’ packs, started reeling off an inventory of ammunition that he had found:“Two and a half boxes of .270, a bandoleer of 5.56 mm ball, about forty rounds of .357 magnum, ten rounds of .38 special bird shot, and six loaded twenty-round mags for the Mini-14.
Three of them are loaded with ball, the other three are loaded with hollow points.” Next, he held up and waved six English copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Nelson commented dryly, “Looks like these two are a little leftward leaning.”
“Are you communists?” T.K. asked.
Larry nodded yes, while David nodded no.
T.K. spat out, “Let’s get our act together, shall we? If you can’t give me straight answers, we might just have to trade off and question you in continuous shifts. It might get a bit cold out here tonight.”
“We’re both party members,” Larry announced. “We joined in college….”
“Shut up, Larry,” David cursed again, louder this time.
“Oh no, let Larry talk. If you can explain yourselves satisfactorily, we’ll let you go on your merry way, or on your Long March, or whatever it is you want to call it. We aren’t interested in your politics. That is your own business and none of ours. It has no bearing on the determination that we are trying to make,” T.K said.
Both David and Larry got perceptibly more nervous when Mike shifted his attention away from the backpacks to the cart. It was a typical two-wheeled garden cart, much like the Grays’, equipped with bicycle tires. It was covered by a small blue plastic tarp held down with bungee cords.
Looking at the cart, David said anxiously, “That’s just our food. You don’t have to search that.”
Undaunted, Mike continued his task, taking off the bungee cords one at a time. “They’ve got a lot of canned food.” Mike stacked the cans into a growing pile on the ground. He described:“Beef stew, chili, peas, pork and beans, string beans, and some dog food.”
Todd joked with Mary, “I wonder if it’s Dinki Dee?”
Mary gave him a puzzled look.
“Don’t you remember, Max and his dog from The Road Warrior?”
Mary flashed a grin of recognition, and then giggled, “Oh yeah, now I remember. All that he had to eat was cases of dog food.”
Mike spoke again, “What, did you sweet guys shoot a poor little Bambi?” he queried, holding up a plastic bag of raw meat. “Or did you just pick out some farmer’s fat little calf to shoot?”
Larry started to cry.
Nelson continued unloading the cart, pulling out a large sack of potatoes.
“It’s a good thing that it’s so cold, otherwise all your fresh meat would have spoiled in a heartbeat.” Mike stopped talking abruptly, and doubled-over, vomiting uncontrollably.
“What the…?” T.K. exclaimed. He got up from his crouch, and walked toward Mike and the cart. Mike could not talk while retching. T.K. looked puzzled, and then glanced into the bottom of the cart. There, he saw that Mike had just uncovered a clear plastic bag containing three small human legs and four small human arms. He turned back toward the two strangers with an iron look on his face and walked toward them. T.K. flipped the selector switch of his CAR-15 past the semiautomatic position and around to the full-auto position. Still walking toward them, he fired two long bursts, emptying the magazine in his weapon. Both men toppled to the ground, stitched with bullets.
With a glazed look in his eyes, T.K. punched the magazine release on his carbine, dropping the duplexed pair of magazines from the magazine well into his waiting hand. Shifting the magazines to the left, he inserted the still-loaded magazine of the pair, and slapped the bolt carrier release with the base of his left palm. He took two steps forward, and again fired another entire magazine on full auto in long bursts, the muzzle pointed almost straight downward.
“Save your ammo, Tom, they’re already very dead!” yelled Mike.
Kennedy replied with his lower lip quivering, “They’ll never be dead enough, damned murdering cannibal looters.”With that, he turned and began walking unsteadily back up the hill to the house, leaving the others in stunned silence. Instinctively, T.K. reloaded his now smoking carbine from one of the thirty-round magazine pouches on his web gear as he walked. Mary was the most startled of them all. Even with all of her experience in the medical field, she had never actually watched anyone die, much less blasted into oblivion only a few yards away. It was also the first time that she had ever heard T.K. curse.
The members of the group drew lots to determine who was going to clean up the mess. The unlucky pair of short dowels were drawn by Jeff Trasel and Kevin Lendel. They spent most of the afternoon hauling the dead strangers’ gear up the hill, inventorying it, and cleaning and oiling the captured weapons.
The looters’ equipment, with the exception of the garden cart, fit into one wall locker that Todd and Mary emptied out.
Kevin volunteered to dig a hole and bury the looters’ cargo of “meat.” He felt queasy when handling it, but managed not to vomit. With Todd’s okay, Jeff and Kevin went ahead with their idea of displaying the bodies. With considerable effort, they used a come-along to hoist the bodies onto two adjacent power poles, securing them with wraps of WD-1 commo wire. They wore surgical gloves when handling the bodies and the “meat.” Mary painted signs on scraps of plywood to hang around their necks. The signs read, “Murdering Cannibal Looter.” They left the frozen bodies up for five weeks before cutting them down and burying them beneath the garden plot.
In a meeting that evening, the Group first said prayers for the victims of the cannibals. Then they were confronted with the dilemma of what to do with the dead men’s equipment. Lisa Nelson pointed out the fact that much or nearly all of it was probably stolen. The options suggested were: one, keep the gear and divide it equally among the group; two, wait until order was restored and donate it to a charity, preferably one dedicated to refugees; and three, distribute it as charity to refugees as they passed through the area, based on legitimate need. Todd called for a vote. T.K made an objection to a voice vote or a show of hands. He called for an “Australian ballot,” the term typically used by the Group when referring to a secret, written ballot.