Chapter 40

I looked at the four remaining for questioning. “What about the four of you?”

One of them looked over at me in response. “Yeah, you’ve selected all the pansies. Now, l you’ll be tough on any real men.”

“We’ll see. We will question you and come to a decision.”

One of the women who were prisoners said, “Give me a gun and I’ll blow his balls off.”

Stephanie said, “You might explain for the rest of us.”

“That son of a bitch shot and killed my husband and then raped me twice. I want to return the favor. If you let him stay, I’m outta here. The other three are just cowardly accomplices. With firm leadership, they won’t be much trouble to anyone.”

I looked at the four and said, “That’s not a very promising set of resumes.”

One of the three said, “You are all pussies.”

Stephanie looked angry. “I think I’ll give you a chance to eat those words.” She removed her pistol and walked forward to the men. “All of you at once or one at a time. It doesn’t matter. If you can get through me, we’ll let you leave here.”

The four men circled around Stephanie. The ringleader said, “We may take you with us after we knock some of your lip away.” When he finished talking, one charged at her trying to grab her. It didn’t work. Stephanie twisted and hit the guy hard. He went down hard. The ringleader grabbed at her and she grabbed his outstretched arm slinging him into one of the others. She moved on the other hitting him repeatedly until he crumpled. By then the ringleader was up again. Stephanie didn’t wait but moved on him kicking his knee out with a loud crack. He screamed. She grabbed his head and gave it a twist. He went limp. The other three stayed down with one of them unconscious.

Stephanie smiled and said, “That didn’t work too well, for them.” She examined the unconscious one. She then said, “He didn’t make it either. Riley, what do you want to do about the other two? I don’t think we want to have them join us.”

I shrugged. “Have someone drag them out and shoot them. You’re right. We don’t want them.” Two men in Stephanie’s or Jack’s squads dragged the two out. They returned after two quick gun shots rang out.

One of the men looked at the women they had rescued and said, “Ladies, I think you can rest easy now. The bad guys are dead. The others will be watched and kept straight.”

The woman who had spoken up before said, “Thank you. It will feel good to be safe.”

“I think you will find that true with us.” I smiled. “If you’d like, it’s mealtime. Join us.”

We all went to eat a hot meal. The women who we had rescued were all big eaters. I don’t believe they had been fed well previously.

Once our meal was finished, we all went about our various duties. In my case, Joe and I walked outside and talked about our next moves. Joe said, “I guess Nashville is next. Riley, do you think it’s time to find a home? Nancy and I are tired of the travel. It’s too big a country for us to be policing it. I think other groups will come forward in other areas who believe in freedom.”

“That would be my hope, Joe. I’m with you and agree that we need to find a home. There’s a lot of usable houses that would work well with minor efforts to fix them up. I’m ready to find a home and make a life. Sheila and I want to return to living.”

“Riley, have you thought about where you two might want to wind up?”

“Joe, Sheila and I are thinking about somewhere around Atlanta. It’s still a central location and the climate is good. Sheila and I aren’t great fans of snow though some are. On the other hand, we do like seasons.”

“Yeah, I think that works for us. What are you going to do about the long-term leadership question? There is some noise wanting you to continue as overall leader.”

“I know. I’m hoping to get beyond that. I’ve led enough and don’t really want another turn at the hot seat. This time, it just sort of developed.”

“Joe, back to business. I liked our method here. I would like to deploy a similar method for Nashville and even, to some extent, while we’re traveling. We have been too casual and very lucky in our travels.”

“We can do that. Let’s mark out a route and an alternate. Then, let’s talk to Margaret and the squads.” Joe nodded and we headed back inside.

Sheila and Nancy were standing at the map table when we entered. Sheila grinned and asked, “Did you two solve the world’s problems?”

“No, Hun, we didn’t even solve ours. We need to look at maps and determine how to approach that area with our new program.”

Nancy asked, “What’s the new program?”

“We’re going to have a stealth scout squad followed by a weapons squad lead the rest of us all the time. Riley and I liked how that worked.”

Stephanie and Jack came up and she said, “Jack and I liked how our squads did with our part of the trip to Huntsville. We went both slower and faster than the main party usually does. We could make extra time at spots where there might be an ambush. When we had good sight distances, we made time.”

I said, “That’s pretty much what Joe and I had in mind. We need to bring Margaret and the other two squad leaders into this discussion.”

Sheila said, “I’ll find them and get them here.”

I said, “The obvious route is straight up I-65 for just over a hundred miles. We’ll have to think through routing and alternates. Alex may have some thoughts about the bad guys’ location.”

A few minutes later, we all gathered together around the map table. The old highway map we had didn’t show much definition but I knew we would be tracking through some mountainous area.

I said, “Alex, do we have any indication where the bad guys might be?”

Alex responded, “Not really. My contact is hard to get. I think his family is being chased some. What I have gotten is that the primary location is south of the crater. Like Atlanta, Nashville was hit pretty hard by the aliens. We’ll have to be careful once we get into Tennessee at least.”

I nodded. “I was somewhat afraid of that. I’ve been looking at the map and have a couple of ideas about how to approach that area.” I pointed at two highlighted lines that I had drawn. “There’s not a lot of room for alternate routes when it’s primarily south to north. However, I have marked two routes that we can use. I hate to divide our forces too much but I don’t want the east or west prongs to lack all backup. Each group will need to be self-supporting because, by the time help could arrive, any fighting will be over. Finally, we don’t know where the bad guys are exactly.”