Matthew Mark - Dark Days Rough Roads

A white flare erupted and sailed into the air. Haliday’s group spotted movement, but only shadows on the ground. They were able to locate a couple of the vehicles, but these were too far away to accurately see what was going on. The flare drifted slowly to the ground. A couple of the strobe lights went out.

The militia sniper was surveying the area. His original thought was to take out the blinking lights, but there were simply too many of them. He would expose his position, which he did not want to do. When the flare went off, he spotted Alan up in the crow’s nest. He made his calculations and hugged the Barrett close. He heard the rustling behind him and reached for his pistol. Haliday had come out of his hide. He would have chosen this spot for his own hide; he counted on this man doing the same. He was only 15 feet away from the sniper.

The sniper rolled over in an attempt to protect himself and fire. Haliday had leapt forward and came down on his upper arm with one knee and accidently knocked the Barrett over with his other. He grabbed at the pistol and managed to move the slide back about a quarter of an inch. It didn’t fire. Haliday increased his grip and snapped the pistol around toward the man, nearly tearing his trigger finger off.

The man reached up and grabbed Haliday’s throat and tried to choke him. One of the first things Haliday taught people in his self-defense classes was how to avoid being choked. If you can stop yourself from breathing, you can stop the choking. Haliday did this with an exaggerated cough and stopped breathing. He managed to free the pistol from the man’s grip and tossed it aside.

The man let go of Haliday’s throat and punched Haliday in the side of the rib cage. The area was tender and the previously broken ribs had not yet mended. Haliday gasped for air. He had given Kayla his vest so he had no protection. There came another punch and Haliday went over. The man rolled and went to choke him again. Haliday pulled him in close in a bear hug and then brought his right arm up, quickly sinking his knife into the base of the man’s neck, severing his spine. Haliday blacked out for a brief minute. He opened his eyes to the sound of gunfire.

The security at the airport was heavier than normal. Rob had spread the word and they did what they could to coordinate the strike. The hunters within the group had taken up residence on the rooftops of the neighboring buildings as far away as they dared to go depending on their skill. Some of them found other places to hide. Haliday had also warned them about the sniper on the roof.

Down toward the south end of the airport, one townsman crawled up to the fence. He had previously spotted the end of a fence section and he started clipping the wire that held it to the pole. He had finished clipping by the pole, then started working along the top. He spotted a militia quad heading his way. The militia rider fired awkwardly with one hand toward the man as the man ran back to the tree line.

Once he reached the tree line, he grabbed his rifle and fired toward the quad. The rider skidded to a stop and jumped off. He leaned over the seat and fired a couple of bursts. Before he knew it the rider was facing the return fire from two shotguns and an SKS. He was using the quad as a shield. Two of the tires went flat and the gas tank was ruptured.

The guy by the quad reached up and tried to start it, but didn’t have any luck. He called for help on his radio. He aimed his rifle over the seat and would fire a few bursts in the direction of the woods. He looked back toward the compound and saw a side by side four wheeler coming up. One guy was standing in the back and firing. He had rigged up a harness to keep himself steady.

The militia man heard his partners yelling at him, “Get in. Get in.” He jumped up and ran over to the four wheeler and jumped in; it took off before he actually landed in the seat. The man in the back spun around as it left and laid down some more suppressing fire. The four wheeler shot toward the other side of the compound to get away from the townsmen and their fire.

They were passing a small wooded area when a blaze of rounds opened up from their left. The man in the back went down and dangled from his harness as the driver swerved to avoid the gunfire. The driver took a hit to the arm and floored it. The passenger they picked up was able to avoid getting hit. The four wheeler made its way quickly back toward the admin building.

The militia men cut the harness and lowered the man down. He was already dead. He had been hit four times total. One shot pierced a lung, one his spleen and another his stomach, with the final round severing his femoral artery. He had passed out and then bled out all within two minutes. The driver had a shattered forearm. He was taken inside and his friend was taken to an empty hangar, where they had set up a morgue of sorts until they could bury the men from the marina and the track fire.

Two townsmen ran back out to finish cutting the fence open. They had started to snip the wires again when another shot rang out. One man fell backwards and the other one grabbed his arms and started to pull him back toward the woods. Another shot rang out and the man was hit again. The militia sniper had made it up to his rooftop and went to work. The man was already dead when his friend dragged him into the woods.

The sniper had them scared. After Haliday had blown the guy’s foot off they went on the roof and fortified the position with more sandbags. Nobody could really see him now and they didn’t quite have the range to effectively reach him anyway. The man up there now wasn’t one of the two snipers the militia originally had, but he had been training to become their third. He was still a damn good shot.

Across from the main gate there was a small car repair shop. To the west of that were a couple of small houses and a clump of trees by the road. Rob and a couple of other guys had rigged up a huge redneck style slingshot behind the trees using rubber tubing. They filled a bunch of quart jars with gas and shot them toward the front gate and then sent over some flaming bottles.

The militia had set up two “U” shaped sand bag emplacements on each side of the gate. As soon as the gas started to hit they ran toward the row of cars behind them to use the defensive positions they had set up there. The sand bags were burning and causing the walls to falter as sand fell out of them.

The two guys had about 50 feet to make it to the row of cars. They had both run for fear of catching fire and burning like the people in the track had done. From the darkened window of the repair shop came an unnoticeable twang of a bow. The arrow hit one man right in the back and he stumbled forward, fell and crawled toward safety.

His partner just left him there to make it back on his own. The sniper looked around. He had concentrated on trying to find the guys firing the Molotov cocktails and without a muzzle flash he didn’t know where the shot came from. He assumed it was a suppressed weapon. It was too dark for him to see the arrow in his friends back.

The man hit by the arrow made it toward the row of cars and crawled behind them. The sniper continued to scan the area, but could not find the gunman. The fires were still burning and had turned the emplacements into piles of sand. The plastic type surplus sand bags weren’t such a good deal after all. The militia would be foolish to try and use these barricades again.

The archer inside the auto shop pulled out an arrow. The arrow had a card board tube on the shaft which was filled with black powder and finishing nails. He had taken care to balance it as much as possible and glued it to the shaft. The fuse was taken off some fireworks he had lying around. He drew back and another man lit the fuse. He released the arrow and sent it over the cars. They heard the arrow explode but it sounded like more of an M80 than a bomb.