John was heading for the door when Peter said: “What do we do with him?” He was pointing at James who was doubled over in pain.
“Keep him here and make sure a deputy’s watching him at all times. We may have some more questions for him.”
The committee meeting which followed was frantic. The entire community was justifiably frightened and John felt a need to balance telling them the dire truth of their situation with the risk of inciting panic. Luckily, Susan Wheeler, perhaps the most excitable of the bunch, was off with her team restocking the water supply.
The most important facts were that Cain was a dangerous man and that he meant business.
“He’s a local drug dealer who’s using his street thugs to claim Sequoyah Hills as his own,” John explained.
Al looked positively beside himself. “I’d really hoped he was just bluffing this whole time.”
“Where’s the National Guard?” Arnold moaned, his mouth locked in an expression of disbelief.
“I’m sorry to say we’re on our own here,” John told them starkly. “If the Guard or even the army still exists, I’m sure they’ve got bigger fish to fry. And that’s exactly why a lowlife like Cain is taking advantage of the situation. We got four more weapons from his men. Two Chinese AK-47s and two Beretta 9mm pistols. They’ll come in handy, but each of us needs to be extra vigilant. I suggest everyone who has a weapon in their home for self-protection keep it on their person at all times.” John wasn’t done yet. “If we’d taken in those refugees earlier, not only would they still be alive, but we’d have a larger defense force to draw on.”
“I hope you’re not holding us responsible for the deaths of those people,” Curtis exclaimed. “We weren’t the ones who pulled the trigger. How were we supposed to know that would happen?”
John wasn’t buying it for one second. “Fact are facts. The night before we all heard the gunfire. What did you think was going on? You chose to save yourselves and now we’re in a tougher spot because of it.”
“You’re not being realistic, John,” Arnold said. “As it is we’re low on food. We would have all starved to death.”
Patty clapped her hands together, making the bracelets on her wrists clang together. “And how do we know what chronic medical conditions they were bringing in with them? We already have one young girl with diabetes and we’re struggling to keep her going.”
“I’m not saying the choice was an easy one,” John told them. “What I’m saying is that with a breakdown of law and order, security is always a grave concern. Gangs forming to prey on the weak is a fact of life in every country where the police aren’t there to help people. We need to stop thinking that we’re any better, or any different.”
Just then, Peter burst into the room, startling the committee members. The look on his face spoke volumes and none of it was good.
“What is it?” John asked, his pulse quickening.
“There’s been an accident.”
Chapter 31
The wounded were being carried in from the park by deputies. Two men and one woman. Their clothes were soaked in blood. A gash across the woman’s head was bleeding badly. Diane, Emma and other members of the medical team were there to receive them.
“What happened?” Patty asked, checking their wounds as they came in.
“We were ambushed at the river,” the man said. His name was Tray Lynch—he was an insurance salesman who lived in a house by the park. He was on Susan Wheeler’s water management team.
“What about the others?” Diane asked.
Susan was nowhere to be seen, along with two men from her group and the two deputies who’d gone with them to provide security.
The crush of residents rushing in was making it hard to get them to safety and John ordered some of his deputies to form a barrier so they could get to Patty’s living room which had recently been converted to a triage center.
John followed them in and closed the door behind them. He needed to find out what had happened, who had done this and where Susan and the missing residents and deputies were. In all, Susan normally went to fetch water with five other members of her group. Each of them rode bikes with baby trailer attachments they used to pull the water they’d collected. Two or three armed deputies normally accompanied them during these excursions. The Tennessee River wasn’t far, but given the state of the neighborhood, the trip could still be dangerous.
One of the deputies who had helped bring Tray in told John he’d been there and seen the whole thing. “We were parked by the river’s edge and they were filling buckets of water when the shots rang out. Susan was the first to get hit and she fell into the water. We tried to return fire, but we just couldn’t match them.”
He was talking about the pistols and deer rifles they were using against semi-autos.
“All I know is four people are dead by the river and one of them is Deputy Alex.”
“Alex Winters?” John asked.
The man nodded.
Alex was from the very first training class. A nineteen-year-old kid who might have made it to the NHL if the EMP hadn’t hit. Now he was dead and Cain and his thugs were likely to blame.
Susan Wheeler was another loss they couldn’t afford. In spite of her high-strung personality, she’d run the water retrieval operation like a well-oiled machine. Now someone new would need to take her place and John wondered if they’d be nearly as efficient.
While the wounded were being patched up, John took eight well-armed deputies and went to retrieve the dead. Part of him hoped Cain’s men were still there. As much as it was against his better judgment, he couldn’t help wishing for an opportunity to seek out vengeance for what those animals had done.
By the time they got there, only three bodies were visible. Deputy Alex and the two members of Susan’s team. All were dead. Susan herself, who the surviving deputy had said had fallen into the river, was nowhere to be seen. More than likely her body had been swept downstream and left to snag on some jagged outcropping of rock or an overhanging tree branch.
It was becoming crystal clear that a war had started. Abraham Lincoln had once said that God could not be for and against the same thing at the same time. The thought was at once sobering and heartening since it was difficult to believe He could be on the side of Cain and his gang of criminals. How all of this would turn out John didn’t know, but one thing was becoming clear. When the smoke finally cleared, only one group would remain standing.
Chapter 32
That evening, John had descended into the pod with Diane, Gregory and Emma to say goodnight. For them, sleeping down here was now more important than ever following Cain’s attack on Susan and the members of the water retrieval team.
There would need to be some kind of funeral in the morning. Right now the community was on high alert until further notice. Going down to the Tennessee River for water was now off limits. The committee would elect a new resident to take on Susan’s responsibilities and additional hands to replace the folks who had been killed. From now on they would stick to draining the water heaters from houses on nearby streets. Those were supposed to be their last-ditch reserves in case of emergency. Well, the emergency had finally arrived.
John kissed Emma’s forehead as she lay in her bunk. He then went to Gregory and did the same. The frailty of a human life had been driven home several times today. From now on, he would kiss his wife and children whenever he got the chance, knowing it might be his last.