Matthew Mark - Dark Days Rough Roads

Kayla asked him how he was doing. His breathing was still a little off. “Damn, I feel like someone dropped a brick wall on me. I’m pretty sure my ribs are broken.” Haliday had managed to catch the round from the .38 snubbed nose with his body armor. The impact had knocked the wind out of him and knocked him down. Kayla had thought he was hit because of the blood on his hands, but then noticed his shirt didn’t have any blood on it.

She remembered he still had his vest from when he worked as a police officer and used to tell her he would make contact with people because he had a little protection. It was only a level two vest, but would stop most handgun rounds. He sacrificed safety for comfort, a dumb thing to do. There was no doubt a level III would be better in this situation.

He looked at everyone and said, “From now on we make sure everyone is dead.” Linda asked him how they would do that. “With a head shot,” he replied. Mike, with an unsure tone of voice, asked him if he wanted him to shoot the last kid. Haliday looked over at the kid, who was staring at him. “No, just tie his ass up, and then come over here and help me get up.” Haliday laid there for a few minutes while they tied up their prisoner. The kid never said a word. Mike then came over and they all helped Haliday get on his feet.

Haliday took his shirt off and ripped open the Velcro side flaps holding the vest in place. He took it off wincing as he did this. He had a large welt growing on his right side. It would be a massive bruise soon. He pushed in and felt his ribs. “Might not be broken clean, but hairline fractured for sure,” he said. “A good 2 or 3 of them. This hurts like hell.”

He told Kayla to grab his bag. She brought it over and he dug out a t-shirt that was part cotton and lycra and changed his shirt. It was a size too small. He hoped the compression would help a bit. He called it his “Ahh-nuld” shirt. He’d put it on, tried his best Swarzenegger accent, and tried to look super buff. Kayla used to laugh at him and make him change it.

He kept it to help keep his “12 pack”, as he called it, from bouncing around during training. Next he wrapped it with an ace bandage. He looked at the vest and was amazed. Best investment he ever made at this point. He put the vest back on and then his shirt. The hole in the shirt would be hard to explain he thought.

Next he looked around and went over to the small office. Broken glass crunched under his feet. He opened a refrigerator that was inside complete with a couple bullet holes. Linda said, "You aren’t going to eat that stuff in there are you?"

“Nope,” he said. He held up some bottles of Fiji water, “Gotta love snobs and their quest for quality,” he said. “I’m going to wash my hands off.” He grabbed a couple of clean rags from one of those Box-O-Rags things and wiped his hands down. He asked Kayla to bring some antiseptic rinse over and she did.

As he wiped his hands with the rinse, he asked her how she was doing. She said, “I’m ok Dad.”

He said, “Come here sweetie.” She walked over and he hugged her. “It’s going to be ok,” he told her. “We had to do this, if we didn’t there’s no telling what might have happened.” Kayla teared up a little bit. Haliday had spent a lot of time with her training her in marksmanship and weapons handling, but never expected one day she would need it. She was a natural at it, just like her old man was.

They walked back over to the truck. It wasn’t a pretty sight at all. There were quite a few holes in the body and a couple in the side window glass. The kicker was a flat tire. A quick check of the KLR and it turned out to be ok, except for one hole in the front fender. Unfortunately the bike wouldn’t hold them all. He looked down at the ground trying to think this through. There was Max looking at him wagging his tail. “Max the mutant,” he said aloud.

“Hey, I heard that,” Kayla said.

Mike said, “I have an idea. I’ll take a quick look around at the vehicles here and see if I can find a match. If anything has the same bolt pattern and rim size, we can put one on.”

“The spare tire is full size and will work if it’s not flat,” Haliday said.

Mike said, “Ya, that might be fine, but then we’re out of a spare tire in case we get another flat. I’ll go look and see. You guys wait here.” Haliday thought that was a good idea.

“Hey Linda, grab a rifle and go with him. I’m going to have Kayla keep an eye on me while I rest a bit.” He laid down and did not get up until almost two hours later.

Linda was standing there watching him now. Kayla had laid down as soon as they got back, while Mike was working on the truck. Haliday got up still sore and moving a little slow. “How’s it going Mike?” he asked.

Mike looked up from the wheel and said, “Almost done.”

“I found a Chevy pickup around the back of the hangars; they must use it for plowing. I took the best two tires off it and put them on the back here. That’ll give us a matched pair in the back and we still keep our spare.”

“Thank you,” Haliday said. He looked around the hangar and saw Mike had dragged the bodies over to the side and covered them with a tarp. “Thank you again.”

Kayla got up now and stretched. The event took a toll on her. You can never fully prepare for this kind of thing. She walked over to the truck, reached in and grabbed the thermos with the coffee. “What are you doing with that?” Haliday asked her.

“What, I can’t have any?” she asked.

“Not unless you share,” he said.

She poured out four cups, one for each of them. They drank it down and looked around. It was now late evening and dark out. Haliday walked over to the kid sitting there tied up. The kid just looked up at him and told him to go to hell. “You’re going to pay for this,” he added.

Haliday said, “Look kid, we were just minding our own business trying to get home. Nothing here is stolen. You were walking through this place like it was your personal shopping mall. None of that stuff in that bag over there belongs to you. How do you explain that smart-ass? Not quite the exemplary citizen, are you?”

“Then you’re going to go pointing guns at people, then bitch and moan about getting shot at?” Haliday was getting angry now. Kayla walked up and touched his arm, “Dad, relax,” she said, “his gene pool is probably a little shallow.” She was a smart-ass like Haliday in this regard. He turned and walked away.

Kayla looked at the kid. He was her age, twenty maybe twenty one. “You can’t blame us,” she said, “you can only blame yourself. You caused this to happen. No one has the right to steal anything, regardless of what’s going on.”

“You clueless little bitch,” he said, “people out there are taking what they want, police can’t stop them, what’s the big deal anyway, they can afford it.”

Kayla looked at him. “If the lights came back on right now, how would you justify what you’ve done?” she asked.

The kid said, “Ask yourself the same question, bitch.”

“I did.” she answered, “I helped save my life and my family’s life.”

Haliday covered the holes in the back windows with some hundred mile an hour tape. Most people just called it duct tape, but in the army he came to know it as hundred mile an hour tape. Legend had it that during WWII, people said it was so strong it’d hold a Jeep together going a hundred miles an hour. He chuckled at that. Ya, try and find a Jeep that could do a hundred, he thought. He found a small whisk broom and they cleaned out what glass they could out of the Tahoe, but it was not a lot.

"What are we going to do with him?" Mike asked.

“We are going to walk him out to the gate, and we are going to cut him loose and drive away,” Haliday answered. “He can do whatever the hell he wants after that.” Mike reached down and he and Linda pulled the kid up. They opened the hangar door and Haliday slowly drove the truck out to the gate without the lights on then they walked the kid to that point. They cut the kid loose and everyone jumped in the truck.