Nathan Jones - First Winter

The man hesitated, looking as if he was going to spit some defiance, then glanced around Trev at the defenders standing in a firing line behind him. “Got it,” he said reluctantly.

Trev hauled the man to his feet and started marching him north out of town, his defenders rounding up the others. It took a while to get them out to the perimeter, where they shoved them away with shouts to keep going and not come back, training guns on the men as they took off in a stumbling run for safety with their hands still bound behind their backs.

For caution’s sake Trev had some of his defenders follow the men, confirming that they had in fact come from the large camp to the northwest. The camp accepted the humiliated and shaken men in with some jeers, but from the looks of it weren’t planning anything immediate so the defenders came home.

No telling whether the fate of their friends had served as a deterrent for the rest of the displaced refugees up there. Trev had his doubts, but he could hope.

The next four days didn’t get any better. In fact they got much, much worse as Matt struggled to deal with a situation on the brink of spiraling completely out of control.

Displaced refugees kept coming at the town, even more insistently than before, and were more likely to become violent when turned back. Those who were armed, violently aggressive, and moved fast provided little option but to shoot them in self defense. And from bitter experience, not just Trev’s but others who’d been involved in fighting the raiders and blockheads, the defenders didn’t hold back.

At Matt’s order, with the agreement of his friend and the town leaders, going forward they shot to stop their enemy, which usually meant seriously or even fatally wounding them. After the fact the town provided what medical help they could while using as few of the town’s supplies as possible, but the displaced refugees who got violent usually didn’t fare well.

Even the unarmed or less aggressive intruders who refused to be turned back were dealt with cautiously, in case they were hiding weapons or suddenly decided to attack with their bare hands. They were brought down with nonlethal crowd control like pepper spray or one of the town’s few stun guns, bound with zip ties, and held along with the wounded attackers while calls were made to the refugee camp to come deal with them.

Calls that were never answered, of course.

The town was forced to repeat its initial song and dance of dragging prisoners into a firing line and warning them not to come back. As an extra measure Lewis snapped pictures of each of them with his camera, so the men would know there’d be no mistakes and they wouldn’t fool the town trying to come in again.

If there was one small mercy it was that none of those who were turned back with the warning that they’d be shot actually did make another attempt. Matt was sure it was only a matter of time, but from the looks of it the defenders shooting to defend themselves from attack were providing some deterrent there, showing that Aspen Hill really was willing to use lethal force if called to. And when the first people actually did call the town’s bluff and were shot on sight, hopefully that would be an even stronger deterrent to the others.

Matt didn’t completely blame the refugees. They were being used by Rogers and had been put in a terrible position, and although their individual choices were their own responsibility they were largely acting in desperation. That didn’t change the town’s duty to protect itself, though.

As another deterrent, decided on after Trev’s group was attacked, Matt put far more of the town’s defenders to patrolling along roads for miles around the town, keeping peace and doing their best to protect their nearby neighbors. Over the last few days they’d also taken in a few families who’d been forced to flee their isolated homes or small communities, at least until this situation could be resolved.

Two days ago they’d caught a couple bandits who’d committed serious enough crimes to warrant more than warnings, with the testimony of a traumatized pair of children a patrol had found along a road and brought back to town, whose family had been victims of the two men. The crimes were horrific enough that no one had any objections to the criminals being executed according to the town’s openly stated laws.

All of it done with full disclosure over the radio and endless requests for the military to step in or at least offer input on the situation. Requests which were, as always, ignored.

Matt was glad Chauncey was tirelessly on the radio pleading their cause. The retired teacher honestly laid out the situation to everyone who would listen, while confirming that Rogers was doing his best to spread disinformation about the town and what was happening.

Even now the camp coordinator was misrepresenting the situation, suppressing facts, and capitalizing on the natural sympathy people had for refugees. His falsehoods were so outrageous it was no wonder Grimes had effectively booted out the Aspen Hill delegation in a fit of anger.

The way Rogers laid things out made the people of Aspen Hill look like unspeakable monsters. He wove an impressive fiction of an agreement by Aspen Hill to take the refugees in, with food and supplies delivered to the town ahead of time. Then, when the refugees came expecting aid, Aspen Hill instead opened fire in the air above them and drove them scattering into the hills, then hunted individual groups too close to town and chased them still farther away, wounding, injuring, and even killing some.

Needless to say his fictitious refugees were mostly defenseless women and children. Rogers even spoke of going to the town to retrieve the refugees’ food and deliver justice, only to have guns turned on his brave soldiers, forcing him to withdraw. Nobody seemed to question his timeline even though Chauncey had been giving Aspen Hill’s side of things for nearly two weeks, and even more vehemently in the eight days since they’d been forced to turn back the thousand refugees Rogers sent their way.

It was a sickening distorting of the true events to paint Aspen Hill in the worst possible light and make the major a saintly martyr. Matt couldn’t even conceive of the type of mind that could concoct such a scenario, let alone actually believe it.

The things the man was accusing the town, and specifically Matt, of made his blood boil, but there was nothing to be done but keep dealing with events as they came and telling the truth to anyone who would listen. Still, it was worrisome that things weren’t calming down, and were instead getting worse by the day. And Rogers got to sit back in his camp and watch things fall apart without needing to directly go after the town again.

After dinner on the eighth day found Matt sitting at the radio desk with a handful of others, listening to Chauncey’s regular report of what he’d heard and who he’d spoken to.

“I suppose the good news is that it’s not all bad news,” the retired teacher said. “Word is that the nearby towns are rumbling in protest and asking awkward questions about what’s going on up here. They don’t like the idea that the problems with banditry we’re seeing here might spread closer to them, they don’t like the idea that the military isn’t saying or doing anything about the situation, and they really don’t like the idea that their rations might be taken away as punishment for displeasing Rogers or someone like him.”

“That’s good,” Trev said.

Lewis shook his head. “Good but not great. Remember, the military is centered around the refugee camps. They’re going to have an unconscious bias for the refugees, not just because they’re responsible for them but because those people vastly outnumber the independent residents living in the area. They might not care as much about what the surviving towns have to say.”