Chapter 8

Carl followed the smoke rising from the back of a hill just outside of Hagerstown. In the ten days since he had left the National Guard Armory he knew what that smoke meant and could tell that it was most likely from a mobile home. Burning mobile homes had a distinctive smoke, much different than the smoke from a wood-frame building.

He pulled behind the hill, out of sight of whatever was burning, and took a quick look at the fuel gauge. The 6.2 liter V-8 Diesel engine was a hog and he had to spend a lot of his time scouting for diesel fuel. In the ten days that it had taken him to travel one hundred miles, much of his time was spent looking for fuel and trying to avoid the few vehicles he met. When he did find a station that still had diesel left he had to pump it out of the tanks by hand; electricity was getting very scarce in the USA these days. The only time he saw lights at night was when someone was running a generator. Both times that he had witnessed someone running a generator; he had spotted some mob members creeping up to the house in the dark. He knew that they were intent on killing the owners of the house and taking over the house and its generator. Any fool running a generator was just hanging a sign out that said come get me.

Carl made his way to the top of the hill, crawling on his stomach for the last fifty yards. When he reached the top of the hill he saw that a mobile home, about two hundred feet from a farm house, was burning and two men were lying on the ground dead. There was a lot of shouting and an occasional scream coming from the farm house. There was a school bus in back of the farm house that Carl figured the mob had used to get to the farm house. A black man staggered out of the house and shot a couple of rounds into the air from a small pistol. The black man staggered back into the house and a couple of shots rang out and there was a lot more screaming, mixed with a lot of laughter.

Carl pulled out the sixty-power spotting scope that he had found in the sporting goods store that had been stripped of every gun and all of the ammunition. The mob was leaving things like the scopes, exercise equipment, tents and whatever they couldn't use to attack the homes that happened to be in their way. Guns and ammunition was what they were looking for.

After he focused the scope, Carl scanned the farm house. He stopped when he focused on a patio door that was apparently off of the living room of the farm house. He adjusted the focus again so that he could see into the room. Carl swung the scope so that he could watch the front of the house to focus on the movement that had caught his attention; a bearded white man came out of the house. The man was dragging the nude body of a woman in her forties out into the yard. The man was dragging the woman by her hair and the woman wasn't making any movements to stop the man. Carl looked at her trying to see any movement. The bearded man was drinking a beer and when he was finished with it he threw the can out toward the burning mobile home. The man then took a pistol out of his belt and emptied it into the woman's body. After the pistol was empty he threw the gun at the woman's face and walked back into the house.

Carl looked at the patio door again and had to adjust the focus again so that he could see into the room. His gaze fell on two men raping a young boy Carl guessed to be about twelve. The boy's arms hung down loosely and he wasn't making any moves as one of the men was raping him from behind and the other man was trying to make the boy blow him. After watching for a few seconds, Carl figured that the boy was dead but the lust-crazed men didn't realize it. He saw a young girl that looked to be about eight years old being raped by a man while another was pushing himself into her mouth. There was a lot of blood on her stomach and even more running down her legs. Her eyes looked straight up at the ceiling without blinking and Carl didn't know if she was alive or dead. He saw a movement over at the far wall over the room. As he looked through the scope he saw a young girl about sixteen being raped by one of the men. Three others were standing and watching him as if waiting their turn at the girl. He figured that the man, raping the young teen, was probably the leader of this group of animals. When Carl focused on the girl's face he saw that her eyes were glazed and she was watching what was happening to her as if it was happening to someone else. She was detached from what was happening to her. Carl knew that she had retreated into a special place in her mind where she felt that she could be safe. She would never let anyone into that special place to hurt her again. He knew that she would never be able to function as a human again; she had retreated into her special world and she would never come out of it again.

He took one last look to make sure where everyone was and slithered down the hill toward the Humvee. At the Humvee, he got an automatic weapon and made sure that it was loaded and that the safety was off and then pulled out an RPG and an extra shell. He made his way to the top of the hill again. He didn't make any attempt to hide himself because he knew that the animals in the house had not fulfilled their blood-lust yet and they wouldn't be looking for him.

Carl scanned the house one more time. He was trying to see if he could detect any movement in other rooms. He only detected movement in the one room. He laid the automatic weapon on one side of his body and the extra shell on the other. After looking at the farm house one last time, he put the RPG launcher on his shoulder and began to take aim. He checked his setting one last time and pulled the trigger. In a second the grenade went through the glass of the patio door and exploded in the room. The house seemed to raise and then settle and started burning. Carl picked up the automatic weapon and watched the farm house in case any of the men tried to escape the fire. When the house became fully engulfed in flame he relaxed and sat at the top of the hill and watched the house burn. He only felt a little remorse for the children but he knew that if they had lived through this that their life would be short. The roaming gangs would catch them again and this would happen a second time. He was sure that the young boy and the eight year old girl were dead before he shot the grenade into the house. He also knew that the older girl would never have been anything but a vegetable if she had been saved.

Within five minutes the house was fully engulfed in flames and he watched the house burn with the emotions of a marble statue. No one tried to leave the house. The sparks spiraled into the air and Carl watched as some of them burned out in mid-air and some of them fell to the ground still burning. The wind shifted ever so slightly and sparks began to fall on the barn which was about three hundred feet from the house. Carl didn't realize the barn was burning until he looked over at the barn and saw that the roof was on fire. He got up and picked up the weapons. He needed to get away from the blazé in case it attracted some other mobs.