Chapter 1

I was never the biggest kid in school or the strongest. In fact I was a nerd before the term ever became popular. I went through high school with a slide rule and pocket protector looking from the outside at the "Popular" group who walked around like they owned the place. I had friends but no one really close except for my extended family.

I was the second of eleven kids and the other members of my parents's generation had families equally as large. It was really something to see a family gathering. When we came together for a holiday, there were never less than fifty people. During hunting season we would cover an entire camping ground with two to three hundred relatives present. During our infrequent family reunions we would often have a thousand relatives in attendance. In spite of all this I was a loner. For some reason, I didn't fit in with the boisterous family that I had been born into. Gradually, over the years I lost track of many of my relatives as we moved from home.

Somehow I became a peace officer in Texas. To my surprise I really liked the job for the most part and was fairly good at it. I rarely did the same thing every day and a lot of it was outside. You hear about the big cases or the shootouts, but it was more boring than anything else. Most of police work is doing the same thing over and over again, filling out paperwork, sitting in a parked car for hours doing surveillance, etc. After a while it becomes like any other job. The only time when I made the news I wished that I hadn't.

I was shot while responding to a robbery in progress call in San Antonio. A nut with a desire to commit suicide by cop made the call and was waiting for the police to show up. He fired at us when we got there and a short gun fight erupted. We thought that he was out of rounds and went to make the arrest. I took the gun away from him when he aimed at the officer in front of him and the gun discharged during the struggle. He had one round left and I was unlucky enough to be the one that the round hit. The bullet went in the right leg breaking the bone and causing a lot of nerve damage. I went from being someone who ran a three minute half-mile to someone who had trouble walking across the room quickly. I tried to remain a part of the police force by becoming a dispatcher but missed the outside work too much. After two years attempting to make it as a dispatcher, the police department and I decided to go our separate ways when they offered me early retirement on disability.

I would have stayed in Texas but I figured that I had had enough heat for the rest of my life and decided to move to somewhere that had actual seasons. Besides, I found quickly that the officers I had worked with didn't want to see anyone who reminded them of what could happen to them on the job. The "brotherhood of police" crap you hear about is just that, crap. I was never contacted by anyone after I left the police force. I had thought that I had friends but soon learned that they were just acquaintances.

I bought a place in the hills of Eastern Oregon near the Idaho border with the money I received in compensation for my injury. It's a fairly good sized place, about a half section square (about 1/2 mile) with access to government lands on the back side where I hold a 99-year lease on about 10 sections of land. I'm going to build my own log cabin and try to be as self-sufficient as I can. I've had enough of fake friends and 'lost' relatives who never call me. With the money I'm getting for allowing hunters to use the land during deer season I can pay the taxes and the lease on the government land with about 3000 dollars left over. I qualified for permanent retirement from the state of Texas so with the monthly retirement check of 800 dollars I will be able to get by fine.

I saw this place advertised on the Internet. It was all that remained of a family homestead where all the known heirs had died. It was next to a national park, who would normally buy it. Since Bush became president though, money for buying additional land for the national parks has completely dried up. It was being sold "as is" at an cash only public auction for the back taxes on it. When I checked the property out I found it consisted of the land with a run-down shack that would have to be torn down. It had several large stands of trees with two creeks and several ponds on it so it can support livestock. The closest place to it was a small tourist town about twenty miles away. The nearest big city was over three hundred miles away. There were no power lines or telephone service within 5 miles around so it was really isolated from everyone. That suited me perfectly and I offered $20,000 for the place during the auction and got it. Later I learned the ten sections of government land behind the property was available for lease and managed to get a lease for 99 years on them.

After selling my place in San Antonio, I found that I have about 45 thousand dollars available for building a house and getting everything else that I need. I sold what I had in the house at a yard sale and everything that I couldn't sell went to Goodwill. I got into my 2000 4-wheel drive pickup and began my journey. I'm going to take my time getting there as I leased the land to a group of hunters for the deer season already.

I headed north on U.S. 281. I spent the first night in a small town called Cleburne where I enjoyed a hearty dinner of chile rellenos and washed it down with Lone Star beer. It felt strange to have to pay for my dinner, after being a peace officer for so long. Many restaurants in San Antonio would give you a free meal if you would eat in the restaurant. I had gotten out of the habit of watching the cost of a meal.

I slept in a hotel that night and woke up around two o'clock. Suddenly it hit me. I was no longer a peace officer and had no ties to anyone or any place. For the rest of the night I sat the room trying to decide what I was going to do. I realized that I had let myself drift through life with little interaction with anyone else. I looked at my life and didn't like what I found. Here I was 45 years old with no family or girlfriends. Morosely I thought to myself that if I disappeared no one, except for perhaps my family would even realize that I had ever existed. I decided that I would try to meet my neighbors in Oregon and get involved with the community.

I resumed my trip early the next day joining Interstate 35 and making it through Oklahoma and into Kansas where I started west on Interstate 70. By this time I was ready to get some sleep but there wasn't a room to be had anywhere. Finally I decided to spend the night at a rest stop between Hays and Lawrence. I had almost fallen asleep when I heard the sounds of a struggle near the truck.

Once a peace officer, always one I guess, because the next thing I was aware of, I was standing outside trying to locate where the noise was coming from. I had my 9-millimeter in my hand with my pistol belt around my waist. I hadn't had a light on in the camper shell and I didn't want to spoil my night vision with a flashlight. I slowly looked around and almost decided I had heard nothing when I saw movement out of the corner of my right eye. I was always proud of my peripheral vision while I was a peace officer and I had learned to pay attention to everything in my sight field not just what was directly in front of me.

I saw a woman being manhandled by two men into a small panel truck nearby. I turned and using the voice I had perfected during my police career shouted, "Freeze! Police!". I saw the woman being shoved into the truck and both men turned toward me. I could see in the light from the truck that both were wearing guns and they began to draw them. I don't know what they were thinking about. The glare from the car light made them night blind and there was no way they could see me. I had always scored highly on the range and reacted automatically. I fired three rounds at the center of mass of the first man and then dropped to the ground and fired three more rounds into the second one. Both men fell and I slowly got up and approached. I saw movement in the truck and reacted by bringing up my gun. "Come out with your hands in sight!", I yelled.

Slowly I saw two young women come out of the car with their hands in the air. "Move to the right of the vehicle!", I commanded. I kept them in view until I was able to glance into the car and see that it was empty. I looked at the women and saw that they were really just girls. I don't think either of them looked older than 16. I kept them in view and checked the men. Both were dead. I collected their guns and then looked around for anyone else. The girls were dressed or rather undressed with only panties and bras. I didn't see anyone other than the van and myself in the rest area. I had them turn around and confirmed that they weren't concealing a weapon on them. Finally I relaxed and tried to find out what was going on.

"Who are you and what's going on?", I asked.

They looked at me and shivered in the cold night. I realized that I was wearing only my shorts, t-shirt and a gun belt with flip flops on my feet, carrying a gun that I had just used to kill the two people lying in front of them. "Look, I'm David Morris, a retired Texas peace officer. I'm not going to hurt you." I glanced in the truck and was surprised not to see any clothes for the girls in it. I turned back to them, "You have any clothes around here?"

Finally one of them spoke up, "We had our clothes taken away when they grabbed us."

I had wondered if they spoke English. "Come to my truck and I'll find you something to put on. Now, what are your names and who are the they you're talking about?" I turned around and motioned them forward after replacing my gun in the holster. I headed toward my truck and realized that it couldn't be seen from this location. I had parked behind a landscaped separator area with a tree to block the glare from the occasional trucks that had been roaring by. That must have been the reason that they had chosen to park here with the girls.

"I'm Shannon and she's Linda. We were orphans at a group home near Topeka until last month. The housemother told us they were going to send several of us to another home as our home was getting too crowded. We discovered that the home they sent us to in Lawrence was a whorehouse and we were going to be auctioned off to the highest bidder for the first night. We managed to run away and hitchhiked to Hays. We were trying to catch a ride out of town when we were found by some of the bouncers from the house. I think we were being taken back to Lawrence when the men stopped to relieve themselves. I managed to loosen the rope they had used to tie me with enough to get free. I was attempting to free Linda when the men came back. That's when I ran trying to escape."