Darrel Sparkman - After the Fall

Katie sat for a while staring at the man. He slept lightly. Every time she’d make a slight rustling noise, his breathing would pause and then resume. She looked around her, wishing she had another cup of coffee, but settled for a drink from her canteen.

Reviewing the events of the day, she shook her head slowly in the darkness and smiled. A woman needs a man just as much as he needs her. Unless she missed her guess, this was quite a man.

Maybe, just maybe….

Dust rose in lazy clouds from their horses hooves, as four men pulled their mounts up in front of the rundown shack centered in the clearing. Slouched in their saddles the men surveyed the area, looking for signs of life in the adjoining buildings. The barn was falling in and the attached stock pens were overgrown with weeds. The forest was slowly winning the battle to take back the clearing. Smoke rose slowly from the chimney of the house.

“You better be right about this one, Pagan.” Red Seaver’s voice took on a plaintive note. “The woman at the last place we hit was downright ugly, and fattern’ a cow.”

The other men snickered, until Pagan Reeves silenced them with a glance. “I didn’t know you were so particular, Red.”

“He ain’t.” One of the other men spoke loudly, grinning and spitting a wad of tobacco into the weeds.

“Hello, the house.” Pagan’s voice echoed in the small clearing. When no response came, he said conversationally, “I know you’re in there, McCracken. You don’t come out, we’ll just burn this shack down around your ears.”

The front door slowly creaked open, and a gaunt man dressed in bib-overalls stepped onto the porch. A floppy hat came down to his ears, and his bare feet were stark white against the weathered boards of the porch. He held a shotgun in one hand, pointed at the floor. “I told you last time, Pagan. We want no part of you.” The man’s voice dripped with Arkansas drawl.

Pagan grinned at him. “Don’t matter a bit, McCracken. You had your chance. Now you don’t. So, why don’t you call out your women? Me and the boys would like to get acquainted.”

“What do you—” The man stopped short at the sight of Pagan’s gun on him. Casually, grinning widely, the other men drew their weapons.

“Drop the shotgun.”

Nervously, the settler started sidling toward the door, until a shot from Pagan’s gun splintered the boards in front of him. The shotgun fell to the floor, next to his bloodied feet.

Immediately, the others jumped from their mounts and swarmed onto the porch. One of them knocked McCracken senseless with the butt of a pistol as they brushed past him into the house. Moments later they emerged, towing two kicking and screaming women behind them.

“Now this is more like it.” Red was holding the younger of the two girls. His hands pulled up her blouse, roughly squeezing and fondling her. Both girls were crying, looking at their father lying next to the house.

Pagan dismounted, and walked up to the girls. Stopping at the older girl, he reached out and gently cupped one of her breasts. He spoke without turning his head. “Big, you and Smith keep watch for a while. Red and me have the first call on these ladies.”

Big Waters started to grumble, but a glance from Pagan shut him up. “You’ll get your turn, as many times as you want.”

The youngest girl started to scream.

Red silenced her with a slap.

“ Hey ,” Waters shouted at him as they rode to the outskirts of the clearing. “Don’t mess them up too much.”

The sun was sliding past noon, leaving scant shadows around Pagan as he sat on a stump out in the yard. The girls were cleaning up, after the meager meal they’d been forced to prepare for the men. Both were naked, and the younger girl had blood running down one leg.

Standing, Pagan motioned to the men. “We better be going. Burning daylight, boys.” He looked at Red. “You know what to do with them, don’t you Red?”

Red grinned as he pulled his knife. “Oh, I surely do.”

“No. Don’t hurt them anymore, Pagan.” The muffled and anguished cry came from the bound father.

“You should have joined us when you had the chance, McCracken. I warned you.”

“You people are vermin. Not fit to live on this earth. Some day you will get yours. I just wish I’d be there to see it.” The man’s voice choked with emotion, and his own blood. “Girls? I am sorry, girls. I should have done better for you.” He strained to see his daughters, who were huddled in a corner.

“Red, do the girls first, so McCracken can watch.”

Hours later, the four men reined in their lathered horses at a junction in the trail.

“We’ll split up here. Red, you take the men and head for Big Springs. Look around for some more people to recruit. You know the kind we want.” Pagan’s tone was terse, his mind on other things.

“Where you goin’?”

“I think it’s time to pay another visit to the Sanchez ranch.” He grinned.

The men exchanged grins. “I know what you’re after. That Sanchez woman is mighty fine looking.”

“Forget it, boys. That’s one I won’t share. Besides, if we get her cattle we’ll have all the women we want.” He stopped at the edge of the forest. “Red, you see Hobbs, you send him to Base Camp after that bartender—what’s his name, Walsh? He’s been giving colonel what’s-his-name too much information. Time we put a stop to it.”

Red raised his hand in answer and jogged his horse down the trail with Big Waters and Jumbo Smith.

Trent rode into the east side of Base Camp Bravo, leaving the protection of the forest and the things he understood—half sliding his horse down the rocky embankment and scattering leaves onto Farm Road AP. He let his horse blow a moment as he reacquainted himself with the layout of the Army base Colonel Bonham put together a few years ago.

Shunning the main roads, the colonel had put his camp right in the middle of the part of Mark Twain National Forest skirting the White River. Equidistant between Vanzant to the west, and Burnham to the east, the camp was just a wide place in the road, containing a few buildings and storage bunkers. All this, surrounded by the rolling hills and forest of the Ozark Mountains. The colonel had chosen this location for its remoteness and easy accessibility to the forest he hoped to control.

As a primary mission, Base Camp Bravo was to make seasoned soldiers out of raw recruits sent from the plague-ravished land back east, and somehow by their very presence, bring law and order to the new frontier.

The camp was reachable by vehicle if you had gas, which most did not. The army had meager supplies of fuel, hoarded and confiscated from civilians, but those supplies were for very special occasions.

This must be one of those occasions, Trent thought. He watched, slightly amazed, while a green truck, the back covered with a green tarpaulin, disgorged a squad of men dressed in green clothes, faces streaked with dark green paint, and carrying mottled green packs on their backs full of the standard army issue of useless equipment. It had been a long time since the jungles of Central America. The lessons learned, and paid for by blood, still ignored.

He rode toward the main building where he hoped to give his dispatches to Colonel Bonham, passing by the soldiers on the way. He carefully looked them over as he rode by. All had packs piled high on their backs. With the packs catching on every tree limb they passed, coupled with wearing a steel pot on their heads, those men would be deaf and blind in the forest while their enemies would be able to hear them coming hundreds of yards away. Trent saw one man looking at his SATCOM navigation gear, while another was calibrating motion and heat sensors. Amazing. Useless.