Feral Nation - Defiance (Feral Nation Series Book 8) Page 2

  “CAN YOU PLEASE LET me pick up my things before we go?” Daniel asked, as two of the men led him away, still in the handcuffs, to one of the pickups. They had kept the rifle and the gold coins, of course, but had left his other belongings scattered on the road where they’d dumped them after searching Greg’s truck. Daniel was being taken away with nothing but the clothes on his back, and he thought that surely they would understand his predicament. “All I had in my bag was a couple of changes of clothing and my personal items, like my toothbrush. It’s not much, but it’s all I have and I’m going to need it. Please?”

  “You won’t need that stuff. They’ll have everything you need at the refugee camp. Don’t worry about it.”

  “But that’s not where we’re going, is it? You said you wanted me to talk. I’ll talk, but what about my son? I can’t go to the camp without him. Who is going to go pick him up? I still need to talk to Commander Reyes about that.”

  The man ignored him and opened the back door of the truck. “Get in!”

  Daniel did, and the door was slammed shut behind him. He turned to one side to make room for his cuffed hands and continued to argue his case as the two got in the front seat and the driver started the engine.

  “You give us the information we want and then tell us where your son is, and we’ll send somebody over there.”

  “It won’t be simple to tell you! They’re on a boat out in the middle of nowhere! There’s nothing but swamp out there. I’m not sure if I even know how to find it!”

  “We’ll find it, don’t worry about that. All you need to do is concentrate and try to remember everything you can think of about where you’ve been staying and the other people that were staying there with you. And anything you can tell us about the other residents you know of that are still in the area, like how many you’ve seen, and where. You do that, and we’ll take care of the rest.”

  Daniel knew he didn’t have a choice in the matter, but at that point, he was angrier at how unreasonable these men were being than afraid of what was going to happen after they got what they wanted from him. He would later realize his mistake, but for now, all he could think about was telling these idiots anything he had to tell them that might satisfy them so that they would either let him go or give him the opportunity to talk to someone in authority who would. As they sat there in the truck with the engine idling and the air conditioning on, Daniel opened up.

  He began with how he came to Louisiana in the first place, and how he had been stuck there on the banks of the Atchafalaya, waiting for weeks while his wife and her ex-husband went west looking for their daughter. Daniel told them what he knew of Eric Branson’s involvement with C.R.I. out in New Mexico and Colorado, and how he’d bragged about killing several members of that same organization after the completion of some secret mission near the southern border. He told them what Eric claimed he’d later learned while he was in Mexico, about the larger operations of some drug cartel that was supposed to be affiliated with C.R.I., and how they were plotting to take over all of Texas and the other states along the Gulf coast. He told them essentially everything Eric had reported upon his return, but he also told them that he didn’t believe most of it, because Eric Branson’s motivation was clear. Now that he was back in a relationship with his ex-wife, he would tell her anything to get her to leave Daniel and go sail away with him.

  “I told her that if that was what she wanted to have at it, but I was going to do what was in the best interest of myself and my son. I know the part about C.R.I. being in control of Texas is true, because I got that directly from Shauna, as well as from Eric’s brother and father when they met with Reyes to get her back. I knew it was a risk to come here alone, but none of them would agree to come with me, and I couldn’t get to my son when I had the opportunity to escape, so I took a chance while I had it and left alone this very morning. Look! I know you guys must work for C.R.I. yourselves. Just take me to Commander Reyes and I’m sure we can get all this cleared up straightaway.”

  The two men listened without interrupting until Daniel finished his story, leading him to believe that he’d presented his case in a logical and persuasive manner. Of course, he had omitted the part about sabotaging the schooner aboard which his wife planned to sail away with her ex-husband. There was no need to confuse these men with minor details; the main thing was to show that he had a compelling reason for coming there and for seeking a meeting with Commander Reyes. The only questions they had for him were in regard to Eric’s brother, Keith, and the sheriff’s department for which he worked.

  “Oh, you can’t really call it a ‘department’ anymore,” Daniel explained. “It’s really just Keith and Greg, the other deputy whose truck I was driving. The sheriff and the rest of the deputies were all killed earlier this summer, before we got there on the boat. There’s no real law and order left over there in that parish, which is the main reason I wanted to get my son out of there. That, and of course, the miserable conditions we endured. I can’t tell you how glad I am to be away from that swamp, and to be sitting here in an air-conditioned vehicle, even if I am wearing handcuffs. I don’t know why you think they’re necessary though, because I’m certainly not a criminal, much less a threat to anyone, but if you’re just following orders, it’ll all be resolved when I talk to your superior, so if you’re ready to go, then I guess I am too.”

  They apparently were ready, because with that, the driver put the pickup in gear and turned around to head for the roadblock, followed closely by the two men in the other truck that had accompanied them. When they reached the barricade, he weaved through a narrow gap that allowed them to pass through to the west side. The driver stopped to chat for a few seconds with an armed man at the checkpoint, and then pulled out onto the westbound lanes of the interstate, which was empty for a few miles until Daniel spotted what appeared to be a camp or outpost at the next exit. At first, he thought it might be the command post at the state line where he’d hoped to find Commander Reyes, but when he asked his captors if that were the case, they just laughed and told him they were nowhere near the state line. After taking the exit and leaving the highway, the driver headed into the cluster of RVs and tents and Daniel could see that the place was bustling with activity and that armed men were everywhere.

  “Remember what we told you,” the man in the passenger seat said, as he turned around to give Daniel a stern look. “You don’t say a word about any gold. If you do, you’ll never see your son again, and you’ll never leave this place alive. Have you got that?”

  Daniel assured the man that he did, but it was satisfying knowing he had something on his captors, even if it was his word against theirs. Of course, the four men that had arrested him didn’t want their colleagues or superiors to know about the coins! Split four ways, the stash amounted to a substantial windfall for each of them. If they reported it, no doubt someone higher up the chain of command would take it all for himself. Either way, Daniel knew he would never see it again, but at least there was the possibility that he could use their greed against them.

  When the truck pulled inside the camp perimeter and finally stopped, Daniel was ordered out and then led by his captors to an enclosure of tall chain-link fencing topped with razor wire. A man from the camp opened the gate, and Daniel was uncuffed and shoved inside. The enclosure was wide open to the blazing midday sun that baked the mixed gravel and clay of the bare ground inside. Other than a galvanized metal bucket half filled with water, there was nothing else inside; no shade, no place to sit other than on the ground and no privacy from the men milling about the camp that stopped to watch as he was locked in there.

  “What are you doing? You can’t put me in here! What about my interview with Commander Reyes?”

  The men ignored him and left as Daniel screamed after them until he realized there was no use and gave up. Looking around again inside the perimeter of the enclosure, Daniel estimated that it was about fifty or sixty feet square. When he walked around it, counting his paces,
he noticed numerous small mounds of gravel kicked up in little piles on the side opposite the water bucket. The clay in that area was damp and smelled strongly of urine. As he stared at the ground there, Daniel realized with disgust that the little piles probably covered human waste. He quickly returned to the other side of the pen and sat down near the water bucket. The cage into which they’d thrown him was unsuitable for a dog, much less a human being, but Daniel felt certain that he would only be detained there for a few minutes, until someone in authority sent for him to grant him the interview he was rightfully entitled to. All of this was a misunderstanding, but Daniel figured the lower-level guards that were responsible for this were too stupid to know any better and perhaps had been dealing with criminals that truly required rough treatment. It would all be straightened out once he could speak to someone capable of understanding why he was here.

  But the afternoon dragged by while Daniel was essentially ignored. At first, he tried yelling at any of the random men in the camp who passed close enough that it was impossible for them to ignore him, but it was to no avail. He paced back and forth inside the wire fence, wiping away the sweat that ran from his forehead and into his eyes in the relentless humidity. Sweating like that in the baking sun made him thirsty, of course, and though he’d at first turned up his nose at the water in the dirty-looking open bucket, his need for a drink finally overcame his disgust and he squatted beside it to scoop handfuls of the lukewarm liquid up to his lips. Whoever was in charge of things here would surely get an earful when Daniel finally got his chance to talk! There was simply no excuse for locking him up in such conditions, even for a few minutes, much less hours!

  As he sat on the ground with his back to the fence, Daniel contemplated what he could have done differently to avoid this situation, but could come up with nothing. Texas was his goal, and to get to Texas, he’d set out driving west. There was no other way, other than attempting to find his way there via some back road. But Keith himself had used the interstate when he and Bart and Greg went to get Shauna and the girls. It was the most direct route to the state line and traveling it in broad daylight seemed safer than any other option. Something had changed since the day Keith and the others had passed this way though, and all Daniel could think of was what Eric Branson had been saying; that the C.R.I. forces in Texas would soon be moving east into Louisiana. That had to be what was happening, Daniel reasoned, but it was still no excuse to treat law abiding residents the way they were treating him. He assumed it was because they didn’t believe him, probably because he was driving Greg’s sheriff’s department truck, but Daniel was certain he could convince any reasonable authority figure of the rationale behind his actions if he but had a chance to talk to one.

  He thought that moment had arrived when hours later, as the sun was finally low enough to give him a break from its heat, he saw a small group of men coming his way, walking directly towards the enclosure. When they drew nearer, however, Daniel saw that only two of them were armed and dressed like the other C.R.I. personnel. The rest were wearing torn and dirty civilian attire and were stumbling with fatigue as they walked under the guard of the two who prodded them on with rifles at their backs. These weary-looking, unshaven men were marched directly to the single gate of the enclosure and forced inside when one of the guards opened it. So, these were the prisoners this place was built for… They had been away during the day for some reason, probably to work, Daniel reasoned, and now they were back in for the night. Daniel was on his feet in a flash, skirting around the returning occupants in an attempt to force his way through to the gate and talk to the guards.

  Daniel’s shouts for help were cut short though when one of the men being ushered inside shoved him hard in the chest with an open-palm strike that was more punch than push. The blow took Daniel’s breath away and knocked him off balance, so that he stumbled and fell backwards. He heard laughter from the other detainees and the two guards alike as he struggled to catch his breath and speak.

  “What did you do that for?” He finally asked, when the gate had been closed again and locked. Daniel was still sitting in the gravel, looking up at the man who’d pushed him and his six companions that were locked inside with him.

  “To save you from getting hurt worse,” the man said. “If you want to survive in here, you’d better learn fast not to question the guards. “I don’t want to have to dig another grave. They’re working us hard enough as it is!”

  “I’m not supposed to be here!” Daniel retorted, as he slowly got to his feet. “I don’t know what you guys did, but I haven’t broken any laws!”

  Daniel’s statement was met with a round of laughter from the entire group. “Do you really think we’re in here for breaking the law man? Where in the hell did you come from?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on here! How would I? I’ve been stuck with my son out in a place called the Atchafalaya Swamp for weeks, waiting on my wife to get back. When she finally did, she said there were refugee centers in Texas where people were going. That’s where I was headed, until I ran into a roadblock on the interstate earlier today and got stopped! I thought they were bringing me here so I could speak to someone in charge. This is a total mistake, and I don’t know why you guys are here, but I’ve got to get out. My son needs my help!”

  “So, they picked you up at the roadblock on I-10 too? Well, welcome to the club! I guess they figured you looked young and healthy enough to work, so they brought you here.”

  “I’m not here to work!” Daniel said.

  This brought Daniel another round of laughter and a hard slap in the middle of his back from one of the other men. “You’ll work all right,” that one said, “starting tomorrow! And if you don’t work or don’t work hard enough, you won’t get to come back here tomorrow evening with us. There were several others that didn’t, and you don’t want to be one of those. Trust me!”

  “Working doing what? Why are they making you work?”

  “Because they can,” the man that had pushed him down said. “These guys are all so busy running around the countryside rounding people up and setting up their checkpoints, they don’t have the manpower to do much else. We’re doing the grunt work for them, digging in and building bunkers and other fortifications and structures. Slave labor; at least for now. But they’ll just shoot us when we’re no longer useful; I’m sure of it!”

  Daniel looked at all the men as he tried to comprehend and make sense of what he was hearing. It was obvious from their appearance that they had spent the entire day doing hard labor. All of them were wearing sweat-stained, dirty clothing, and the fatigue was written on their faces. Not all of them looked like the kind of men that had done that type of work before the collapse either, and further conversation with them revealed that he was correct in that assessment.

  “You’re the only other survivor I’ve met here who made it out of that part of Florida,” a man named Wayne told him. “Not that it did us any good.” Wayne said he and his wife had made their way north from Vero Beach on foot, walking mostly at night to avoid people and surviving on what they could scrounge along the way. Their luck had run out a few weeks later, when Wayne was beaten and left for dead and his wife taken by thugs that found them while they were asleep in the roadside woods. “I sometimes wish I had died then and there, but I guess the Good Lord figures I haven’t suffered enough yet.”

  Like Daniel, most of the men penned up with him had heard there was safe refuge to be had in Texas. They were all survivors who had made their way here from other places both near and far, and like him, their journey had ended at similar roadblocks manned by the armed men who’d taken control of the highways.

  “Oh yeah, that checkpoint where they got you has only been there a few days,” another captive named Paul told him. “They brought us here to work on their new outpost as soon as they set it up. When I was first taken prisoner, they hadn’t even reached the state line, but they’re moving east, clearing people out and taking over everything.
I don’t know what their end game is.”

  Daniel didn’t want to admit it, but this was a story he’d heard before—the same story told to him by Eric Branson, who said that the end game of this coalition of mercenaries and cartel gunmen was to control the entire Gulf Coast region. Now, he was seeing it with his own eyes, and Daniel Hartfield realized that he’d made a terrible mistake. He should have listened to Eric’s warning, but he hadn’t wanted to believe that the situation could possibly be so bleak. Now, these men standing before him provided living evidence that Eric’s story was true, and Daniel realized in that moment that there would be no interview with any Commander Reyes, nor any safe refugee center where he would be reunited with his son. Daniel Hartfield had made a grave mistake and had taken the road to a hellish end that made all he’d endured before a mere inconvenience. He turned away from his fellow prisoners and stared back to the east through the wire, longing to be back in the swamp, and wishing he could hit the delete or undo button for what had been the worst day of his life—the day that brought an end to every hope he’d ever had.

  Three

  ERIC BRANSON BELLY-CRAWLED through the mud in the bottom of a shallow irrigation ditch as Keith and his partner, Greg, laid down covering fire from the woods behind him. Farther back along the road, hidden within a stand of large cypress trees between them and the spot where they’d parked the Jeep, Eric knew Bart Branson was scanning the house through the scope of his .308, ready to pick off any of the shooters foolish enough to exit or attempt to advance on them. The old man had already accounted for at least one gunman that kept his head up for a moment too long, and Eric had hit another with a round from his M4 as soon as the exchange began. The four of them were still taking significant incoming fire though, and it was difficult to determine the exact number of shooters they were facing. Whoever their adversaries were, they didn’t seem concerned with conserving ammunition. All Eric and his companions knew of them was that they had rolled into the little community around dawn, no doubt from nearby Interstate 10. The witness that brought them the news had narrowly escaped, but not before seeing the men rousting people out of their homes and lining them up along the street.