Broken Ground
Copyright© 2026 by Lumpy
Chapter 5
While there were still ten properties along this stretch of river that had been sold to Mountain Vista, Taylor had a feeling he was going to get roughly the same information from them as he had from the two he had just seen.
No trespass signs, survey markers, and people leaving in a hurry. What he wanted to see now were the outliers: properties in that stretch that had not been sold.
There were only three in total, and he wanted to see what kind of approaches had been made to them, or if anything else had happened.
The three properties that had not sold yet included Roy’s, a property owned by Noah and Carmen Fuller, and one owned by a guy named Pete Kowalski. All three had owned their properties for some time.
There was no reason to visit Roy’s. He’d already looked the house over when he first got here, and there was nothing there of note, and Milly would tell him if she was approached to sell.
The Fullers’ was the next closest. He pulled out of the Hendricks property and turned west, following the river and moving away from the hills and toward more open country.
The property sat back from the road off a gravel drive that needed grading. Taylor turned in and rolled up to a house that looked lived-in but empty. No truck in the yard. No lights on inside. He killed the engine and sat for a minute, watching the windows.
Nothing moved.
He got out and walked to the front door. Knocked. Waited. Knocked again.
Still nothing.
Taylor walked around the side of the house. The barn doors hung open. Inside, he found stalls but no animals. The feed bins were empty. Dust covered everything. He walked back to the house and looked in a window.
He checked the mailbox at the road. Stuffed full. He pulled out a handful. The postmarks went back two weeks.
It was possible that their property had sold and they had not had a chance to update the records, although there were no survey marks or no trespassing signs.
It was possible that something else had happened, but this was something he would have to look into. Either way, the Fullers had clearly left, which was notable, but did not give him the extra information he actually needed.
He turned and drove back east, toward the hills but still following the river.
As soon as he got to Kowalski’s property, he knew this one would be different. The fences were in good repair, and this was the first place he’d seen livestock, with a few cattle visible in the pasture, and there was smoke snaking up from the chimney.
Someone lived here.
He made it thirty yards up the driveway before the first shot kicked up dirt ten feet in front of his rental car.
Taylor hit the brakes and threw the transmission into park. He stayed in the seat, hands visible on the steering wheel. It had been a warning shot to get him to stop. The car was big enough that if they were a threat, the bullet would have at least hit the vehicle.
The shot had come from the direction of the house.
“I am not here to cause trouble,” Taylor called out the open window.
Another shot. This one closer. Maybe five feet from the front bumper.
“Turn around and get the hell off my property,” a voice yelled from the house.
“I’m looking for Pete Kowalski,” Taylor yelled back.
“You found him, now get.”
“I’m a friend of Roy Breyer.”
Silence. Taylor waited. The car engine ticked as it cooled.
“Roy’s dead,” the voice said.
“I know, that’s why I’m here.”
More silence. Then, “You’re not from Mountain Vista?”
“No.”
“That is what they all say. The last one said it, too. Sure, he wore a fancy suit and had a briefcase, trying to look like a real estate agent, but he didn’t fool me. I saw the earpiece and the bulge under his jacket. I know a government operative when I see one.”
That was confusing. Nothing Taylor had found suggested Mountain Vista had anything to do with the government.
Taylor kept his hands on the wheel. “I am not with the government.”
“A contractor then. That is even worse.”
“I’m not that either. I’m a friend of Roy’s; I served with him in the army.”
“Prove it.”
Taylor thought about that. “I am not sure how I can prove I knew Roy twenty years ago.”
“Well, then you should just turn around and go.”
“Not until I ask you some questions about what is going on around here. I need to find out what happened to Roy and the other people who were killed. Shoot me or talk to me.”
That was a risk. The guy sounded kind of unhinged, and he just might shoot him, but he had fired warning shots and talked to him this long, so Taylor was banking on him not actually wanting to shoot anyone.
Taylor had picked out where the guy was, up in a second-floor window. It was a good spot. He had good position, height, and a clear field of fire.
“What is your name?” the voice called.
“John Taylor.”
“Are you armed?”
“Yes.”
“Of course, you are. They are all armed. Step out of the car. Hands up. And I mean up, not that half-assed shoulder-height nonsense.”
Taylor opened the door and got out. He raised his hands over his head.
“Turn around. Full circle. Slow.”
Taylor turned.
“Stop. Now walk to the porch. If you reach for anything, I will put one through your chest.”
Taylor walked forward. The front door opened, and an old man came out holding a bolt-action rifle. He was seventy if he was a day, with wild gray hair that went in about ten different directions. But the rifle was as steady as Taylor had ever seen.
“Stop there.”
Taylor stopped at the bottom of the steps.
Pete Kowalski came down slowly, rifle trained on Taylor’s center mass. “Lift your jacket. Both sides.”
Taylor did. The Glock sat in its holster at his hip.
“What do you want, G-Man?”
“I’m not with the government.”
“That’s what they all say.” Pete gestured with the rifle. “Inside. Move.”
Taylor climbed the steps. Pete stayed back, keeping distance between them so that he could not grab the barrel of his rifle.
They went through the door into a living room that looked like a command center. Papers covered every surface, with maps and newspaper clippings tacked to the wall. There were even a few red strings connecting things.
This guy could be the poster child for whack jobs.
“Sit.” Pete pointed to a kitchen chair in the middle of the room.
Taylor sat. Pete moved to a position near the window where he could watch both Taylor and the driveway. The rifle never stopped pointing at Taylor’s chest.
“You said you knew Roy.”
“That’s right.”
“When?”
“Eighteen years ago. Before he retired.”
“Before he got out of the military-industrial complex.”
“Before he left the Army.”
Pete’s eyes narrowed. “Roy didn’t trust easily. He knew what was out there, knew what they were capable of. If he didn’t mention you to me, maybe there’s a reason.”
“Maybe he didn’t mention everyone he served with.”
“Or maybe you are lying. Do you know what they do? They study you, learn your connections, your history. Then they send someone who fits the pattern so you will believe them and let them past your defenses.”
“That seems complicated.”
“That’s how they operate. They’re always tricky, using layers on layers full of misdirection and plausible deniability. They think that I don’t know what’s going on, but I do. It all fits, with the patents and shell companies, hiding that they’re really owned by the government. A place for their black budget projects, out here in the middle of nowhere so no one notices.”
Taylor looked at the wall. Photos of helicopters, blurry pics taken of what was probably the completed Mountain Vista facility, and newspaper clippings about the suspicious deaths.
“Tell me about Mountain Vista,” Taylor said.
“Which part? The environmental remediation scam? The land grab? The human experimentation? The extraterrestrial technology they are reverse-engineering up in those hills?”
“Start with the land.”
Pete laughed. “They want it all. Every acre along this stretch of river. They came to me six months ago and made it look like a legitimate offer, trying to give me market value plus ten percent, but I told them no. No way I was going to sell this place to their type. This land has been in my family for three generations, and it’s going to stay that way.”
“Did they come back?”
“Yes, four more times. Different people each time, and the offers kept going up. The last one was for market plus thirty percent, in cash, as long as I could close in two weeks, but I know what they were really doing. They were testing me to see if I could be bought. They were trying to find my price. Like hell.”
“What happened after you refused?”
“The attacks started.” Pete moved to the wall and tapped a calendar covered in red X marks. “At first, it was just some dead fish in the pond. But a few weeks after that, they started going for my cattle.”
“Your cattle got sick.”
“They did. My dairy cows stopped producing milk. They wouldn’t eat right and started losing weight. Then they started stumbling like they were drunk, couldn’t stand on their own. You know what that is, right? Neurological damage. They were putting some kind of chemical weapons in my water, trying to see what worked. Probably put it in my water too, but they didn’t know I keep a separate stockpile of water. Switched to it when I realized what they were doing so they wouldn’t get me too.”
“You had them tested?”
“County vet couldn’t find anything, but he wouldn’t. Not with this government stuff. I sent a sample off to a lab to get tested, but I haven’t gotten the sample back yet. I’m betting they don’t find anything either. Commercial labs can’t check for the kind of military-grade compounds they use. It’s all designed to go undetected.”
“When did the cows start getting sick?” Taylor asked.
“Four months ago. Right after I turned down their second offer. That’s not a coincidence, you know, it’s cause and effect. They made an offer, I refused it, and they applied pressure, trying to find my weak point.”
“Did anyone else report sick animals?”
“Maybe, but no one’s going to tell me. People are afraid and they know what happens when you ask too many questions. It’s why most of the people around here don’t talk to me unless they have to. Well, except for Roy.”
“What do you think happened to Roy?”
“They killed him,” Pete said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I think he got too close and found something they didn’t want him to find, so they eliminated him. Probably made it look like an accident, although no one’s saying yet. That’s how they do it; make it seem like an accident. Car accidents, hunting accidents, heart attacks. They have a whole playbook.”
“You sound like you’ve studied it.”
“I’ve studied everything. That’s how you survive. You learn their methods, document their movements, and prepare for when they come for you.”
Taylor looked at the maps on the wall. Some had red circles marked around the Mountain Vista facility. Others showed the river and surrounding properties. One had what looked like flight paths drawn in red pen, crisscrossing the entire area in an impossible tangle.
“You mentioned black helicopters,” Taylor said.
“Yep, saw them three times in the last month flying over my property at night. No lights, no markings. Stealth jobs that make no noise as they flew, but I knew they were there.”
Taylor had been on hundreds of military helicopters, and the one thing they all were was loud. He’d seen stealth fighters, too, and they were only stealth to radar. If one flew near you, you’d know it.
Pete might be right about the accidents, and his livestock might be getting sick, but Taylor had spent a long time working for the government. Enough to know they were terrible at keeping secrets, and if they wanted his property, they would have just come in with eminent domain.
“What about the men you mentioned? The ones sneaking around?”
“I’ve seen them twice. One time, I caught them creeping around at three in the morning just on the edge of the tree line. Took a shot at them and they ran off into the trees. The other time they were out on the other side of the river, watching me.”
Taylor suspected that the people on the other side of the river were supposed to be there, and that Pete shot at shadows in the forest.
“You said Roy came around a few weeks ago.”
Pete nodded. “Yeah. He came around about once a month to check on me, make sure I was doing alright and had everything I needed. This last time, though, he was asking questions about my water and if people had been around asking about buying my property.”
“What did you tell him?”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.