Ray Gorham: Daunting Days of Winter

“Damn right I’m prepared. Spent the last eight years getting ready. Would have liked to have a couple more, but yeah, we’re in good shape.”

“We?”

“You’re asking too many questions. Maybe I got a militia. Maybe I have five sons with their guns leveled on you right now. Maybe I …”

“Oh Frank, relax. This one’s harmless.” A female voice came from above and behind Kyle, startling him.

Kyle lurched away from the rocks and jerked his head over his shoulder, causing Copper to growl and spring to his feet, ready to lunge.

“Down Copper!” Frank ordered. The dog slowly lowered back down to the ground. “You surprised him, Brenda. Good thing Copper’s on his best behavior today. Kyle, this is my wife, Brenda; she’s part of the we.”

Brenda scaled nimbly down the rocks and dropped to the ground beside Kyle. “Hi Kyle,” she said, extending her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.” She smiled brightly and seemed sincerely pleased to meet Kyle. Brenda was short, just a little over 5’, with short blonde hair, freckles that covered a nose that was bent noticeably to one side, gray eyes and dimpled cheeks. She wore tan pants and a camo jacket similar to Frank’s, but had a much slimmer build than her husband. Her jacket was unzipped, and Kyle could see a leather holster holding a weapon in addition to the assault rifle slung across her back.

Kyle took off his glove and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, too,” he said.

“Can I get you something to eat?” she offered. “I know you said you weren’t desperate, but you sure don’t look to be packing any extra weight either.”

“I’m fine, really,” Kyle said. “But I appreciate the offer.”

“You have kids, Kyle?”

He nodded.

“Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.” She smiled at Frank and headed down the hill.

“Damn woman’s too nice,” muttered Frank. “I try and scare the hell out of people, and she’s Mrs. Claus. Don’t let here fool you though, she’s a better shot than I am. She can take down a deer at over a thousand yards.”

“Can I pick my guns up?” Kyle asked.

“Do you like your arms, the ones attached to your shoulders?”

Kyle nodded.

“Then I suggest you leave your weapons there. You can take them when you leave, but for now it’s best that only I’m armed. You are on my property after all.”

“Fair enough,” Kyle answered, less nervous but still wary. “So what all do you have here, Frank. I can’t see much beyond a few animals, but eight years of prepping is a lot of time. You must have quite a bit.”

“Kind of nosy, aren’t you?”

Kyle shrugged. “Just making conversation.”

“That’s not information you need to have.”

“Sorry. Forget that I asked. Can I ask how you knew this was going to happen?”

“You can ask that. Let’s go sit down.” Frank motioned Kyle around the front of the rock outcropping to a dry patch of grass where he could sit. Frank sat on a rock, and Copper lay down at his feet. “How much do you want to know?”

“I don’t know, enough to make sense, I guess.”

“Hmm,” Frank stroked his beard as he thought. “I guess the beginning it is.” Frank leaned forward, looking directly at Kyle. “You have any military experience?”

Kyle shook his head.

“I do. Joined straight out of high school. My dad and grandfather were army, so I decided that was the place for me. I spent time in Kuwait, helping to kick Saddam Hussein’s ass out of that country. Stupid Iraqi army had no idea what hit them. Anyway, after that they thought I was smarter than some of the other grunts, so they sent me to school, and I ended up in military intelligence. Last ten years there I was analyzing the Middle East and its threats. You do that long enough and you understand that we’re screwed.”

“That’s a bleak assessment, don’t you think?” Kyle asked before catching himself. “Of course, I guess we kind of are screwed, aren’t we?”

“Five months ago people laughed at me when I shared my concerns. ‘America this, America that,’ they would say. And they were right, to an extent. We had an amazing military, still do for the most part, but they didn’t understand our enemy. The damn Muslims don’t think like we do. When mothers send their own sons out to blow themselves up, then celebrate when they do, that’s an enemy that should scare the stuffing out of you.”

“Scare the stuffing out of you?”

Frank shrugged. “Brenda doesn’t like me to swear. I have to use substitutes.”

“Got it.”

“Anyway, when the women think like that, that’s one screwed up culture. The leaders have no constraints. They can put their soldiers or the entire flipping country at risk.”

Kyle snickered.

“Shut up, Kyle. I could blow your damn head off if I wanted to.”

Kyle looked at Frank and raised his eyes.

“She lets me say damn,” he replied. “And hell, too. So I hope I don’t offend you with my French.”

“I’m sorry,” Kyle said, trying to hide his amusement. “Please continue.”

Frank cleared his throat and spit again. “I can stop talking, if you’d like. We can just sit here and wait for Brenda.”

“No, no. Please. Go on.”

Frank wiped at his nose. “You need to excuse me. My system doesn’t love this cold weather. But as I was saying, the Muslims don’t think like us. They are willing to sacrifice everything in this life, for the promise of what’s in the next. When you couple that with an absolute hatred of the West, it was obvious to me that they would forever do everything they could to bring us down, and an EMP was their best shot to get us. They paid a heavy price, but what do they care. They’re up there with Allah.”

“What kind of a price? I haven’t heard any news for weeks.”

“About three weeks ago the CIA traced the ship that launched the bomb back to Iran. Once we had sufficient proof, we went in there hard. Unloaded a hell of a lot of missiles on them. Any place suspected of having anything to do with their government or military is now a pile of rubble. Israel had already taken out Syria and Egypt and kicked Iran between the legs, but now with Tehran gone, the whole Middle East is in chaos. I sure as hell would hate to live in Israel right now, because there’s a butt load of angry Arabs. Those Jews always seem to be able to handle themselves though.” Frank laughed for a second. “To be honest, I bet right now the Jews are pretty glad that they aren’t Americans. At least they’ve got flush toilets and electricity.”

“So how did you end up here? Missoula isn’t exactly a hotbed for military intelligence.”

“I put my twenty years in, qualified for retirement, and got out. I was tired of all the PC bullcrap. Couldn’t say squat about the Muslims anymore.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Those damn Jihadists are our number one enemy, the ones we’ve spent over a decade at war with, and we have to go to sensitivity training classes to make sure we don’t say anything to hurt their feelings. And it wasn’t just that.”

The turkeys had come around after fleeing the earlier gunfire, and Frank threw a couple of rocks to shoo them away. He took a cough drop from his pocket, unwrapped it slowly, and put it in his mouth before continuing with his story. “To top it all off was the whole gay issue. They got rid of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, which was tolerable, but all of a sudden there’s a concerted outreach to homosexuals, and I just couldn’t take it. I know I sound like a bigot, and maybe I am, but that was too much. I don’t care what a person does in their bedroom. Hell, a couple of the best analysts I worked with seemed to bat left-handed. But as soon as they dropped that policy, the military became some big social experiment. Gays needed to be hired, gays needed to be promoted, gays needed to be on all the important analyst teams. Everything was being re-oriented. Being straight became bad for your career. Once I knew the date I qualified for retirement, I gave notice and was gone. We were all happy. I was out, and they could hire a homosexual who liked Islam.”