Enforcing Home (8 page)

The man looked back at Mario, “Billy’s not going to be happy about this; he wanted those candles. He said to tell you if you gave us any trouble that you’d have to deal with him next time.”

“Billy?” Sarge shouted, “Tall fucker with a beard, black hair?”

The two men stiffened a bit, “Yeah.” He looked at me, then the badge. “You the ones that killed our three men the other day?”

“No; my daughters killed two of them,” I said.

Mario interrupted the conversation, “Look, I’ll give you a peace offering.”

The man looked at Mario, “I knew you’d come around to your senses.”

I looked at Mario, trying to let him know that we had his back. He winked at me in reply. Looking back to the two men, he said, “It’s over here,” and headed towards the Mule.

The two men followed him, and I started to, but Shelly grabbed my arm. I looked at her curiously. She shook her head, so I stopped and watched Mario lead the men to collect their tax. At the Mule Mario reached into the bed and pulled out a box and handed it to one of the men, then a second to the other man.

“That’s honey,” Mario said as he picked up another box. “This one has candles; who wants it?” Mario asked with a smile.

“I’ll take it,” one of them replied.

Mario lifted the two top flaps of the box, quickly gripping the sides, and pitched it at them. The bees had been in the box all morning and weren’t real happy about it. They exploded from the box, covering both of their faces. Mario casually walked away as the men screamed and dropped their boxes, the jars breaking as they hit the ground.

“Oh hell no,” Thad said. “I don’t do bees,” and started to walk away.

Danny was hot on his heels, “Me neither.”

Sarge started to laugh as the two men slapped at the mass of bees on their faces and arms, only encouraging them to sting even more. As soon as the first bee was struck it released the
sting here
pheromone. Both men screamed and thrashed as they tried to get the stinging insects off them.

Doc and I responded the same, “Holy shit!”

Mario stood back and watched as one of the guys broke out into a run, what I call a blind lateral panic. No clear destination, just a deep need to get the hell away from where he currently was. The other man fell to the ground, his face already beginning to swell.

“Damn Mario, I ain’t never seen anyone use bees as a weapon!” Sarge shouted.

“Yeah, I picked the meanest damn hive I have. I got stung every time I worked the damn thing. It was hell getting them into the box.” He looked at the man writhing on the ground, “but worth it.”

“I guess so; that ole boy sure doesn’t look good,” Sarge said, looking at the man on the ground.

“That guy’s going to be dead in a minute; I believe he’s allergic to bees,” Doc said.

“That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen; I mean damn,” I said, still shocked at what I was seeing.

“Shame that honey was wasted,” Sarge said, pointing to the two boxes.

“Oh, that wasn’t honey,” Mario replied.

“What the hell was in them?” I asked.

“Pig shit,” Mario replied with a smile. “I’m not going to waste honey.”

Mario’s reply set Sarge to laughing again; he slapped his knee and pointed at Mario, “Damn I like your style!”

Just as Doc predicted, the man on the ground slowly stopped struggling. Even after he was motionless the bees continued to sting him, dying in the hundreds. Eventually they began to form a ball in a small oak tree; they’d found their queen.

“You going to get them back, trap the swarm?” I asked.

“Hell no; like I said, they were mean to start with. They served their purpose,” Mario replied.

“That one old boy will probably make it home; they’re going to be really pissed off,” Sarge said.

Now that the remaining bees were making their way to the tree, Thad and Danny walked up.

“We’re going to have to deal with them soon; we can’t leave something like that wandering around out here,” Thad said.

Sarge was still staring at the man on the ground, “We will soon enough.”

Danny and Doc walked down the tables and returned the items taken from folks sitting there. A couple of the people expressed fear, not wanting to take the items back, saying they didn’t want any trouble. Danny would just leave it on their table and walk away if they wouldn’t take it. Doc was looking the people over as he walked. Seeing a group, he stopped and watched them for a minute; turning back, he called Thad and waved him over.

Thad walked over, “What’s up?”

“You said there was a group that came through that looked sick the other day.” He pointed to a group of people sitting on the sidewalk in front of the store, “is that them?”

Thad studied them for a moment, “Yeah, I recognize the guy sitting beside the wagon. He’s the one that came and got water.”

Doc nodded in their direction, “Were those kids with them?”

“They had kids; I can’t say it was those kids.”

Doc walked towards the group; a woman sat wiping the chest of one of the children with a cloth. He stopped a short distance from them, “Hi there.”

The woman looked up but didn’t respond. Doc took a good look at the child. He was small and frail, seven, maybe eight years old, and dirty. The woman went back to mopping at the kid’s chest; and Doc took a good look at the lesion she was wiping. As the woman tended to the open sore, the child coughed and hacked. Doc took a couple of steps back. Everyone in the group had a cough, raspy and angry sounding. Having seen enough, he made way back to the group.

“That’s a problem over there,” he said, pointing at the sad cluster.

“What’s that?” Sarge asked.

Still staring at them, Doc replied, “I can’t be certain, but I think they have a pretty nasty case of TB running through all of them.”

Shocked, I replied, “TB?”  

“Can’t be certain without a test, but I’ve seen it before; and it sure as hell looks like it.”

“What can we do for them?” Danny asked.

“Nothing. It takes some serious antibiotics to clear that shit up, especially as advanced as they are. The kid has an open lesion on his chest, probably goes in pretty deep too.”

“Only thing we could do is quarantine ‘em,” Sarge added.

I looked over at him, “How the hell are we going to do that? We’d have to feed them and everything; we can’t do that. Not to mention that taking people against their will is screwed up.”

“They’re going to spread that shit wherever they go; they’re a walking time bomb,” Doc added. Then he looked back at them, “it would be more merciful to just kill them.”

“What?” Danny asked.

Very seriously, Doc looked at him, then at all of us, “Have you ever seen anyone die from this shit?” He looked around again. “Of course not. Here in the US we could handle it when it popped up; but in the rest of the world it’s a killer, and it’s a miserable lingering death.”

“We’ll worry about them later; we got to get to town,” Sarge replied.

Loading up, we headed into Umatilla. It had been a while since I’d come through town, and the profound change was really starting to show. The streets were littered with leaves and limbs. We had to drive around a large limb near the old Ocala National Forest building; it was blocking the road. In town the parking lot of the Save-A-Lot was littered with trash; it made me wonder where it all came from. The Pizza Hut had been looted to no end; all the windows were busted out, the blinds hanging out and swaying in the breeze. I’m sure the Save-A-Lot was in the same condition; we just couldn’t see inside from the road.

At the intersection of Central Ave and Bulldog Lane is another convenience store; and a McDonald’s sits caddy-corner across the street. This was the new hub of life in Umatilla. This store, just like the one in Altoona was used as a market of sorts. A number of crude stalls filled the area under the canopy, mingling with the gas pumps. The traders there were offering anything they thought someone might want, and a load of crap no one would.

As we passed by, we drew the attention of everyone there. As always, the kids that seemed to be everywhere these days came running out towards the road. From my perch in the turret I got a bird’s-eye view of them as they waved and whistled. For better or worse, the change had returned kids to a time maybe sixty years in the past. Boys ran in groups, many mounted on bikes. Spears, bows and BB guns were nearly universal. The natural state of things was returning.

The adults all stood to watch as we passed, one woman waving. I waved back as we rolled through. Leaving Umatilla, we entered an open stretch of highway, and Sarge sped up. The wind in my face felt nice. I stood up and closed my eyes, enjoying the sense of speed as the wind rushed past. We passed the two grocery stores, their parking lots now empty, those that had been camped there having moved on. They had left their trash strewn about, mountains of it. At this point I dropped back into the turret and shouldered the SAW; this area just didn’t feel very friendly.

Sarge slowed as we approached the barricade of cars just outside Eustis; this time though, it was manned by Guardsmen. The car serving as a gate was pushed aside, and we rolled through without having to come to a stop. The guys and gals at the barricade waved as we passed through; it was nice to see friendly faces. I observed the lakefront as we passed it on the way to the armory. It was crowded with people, each of the little pavilions on the boardwalk along the lake packed with people fishing. It almost looked as though they were each claimed by a family or group of one sort or another. A couple of these small shelters had blankets or tarps hung to block the sun; and I saw smoke coming from more than one of them. Nothing like cooking up a fresh catch.

Rolling into the armory, we were met by Sheffield and Livingston. “Well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” Livingston said with a smile.

I popped my head out of the turret, “Dr. Livingston I presume?” Livingston smiled as I dropped down in the truck.

“Morning Captain,” Sarge said as he got out of the truck.

Sheffield stuck his hand out, “Morning Linus.” Sarge shook his hand as the two headed for the building.

Livingston was talking with Thad and Danny when I finally extracted myself from the truck. Livingston looked at me. “Morning Sheriff,” he said with a big smile. In reply I gave him the finger.

“So what’s up?” I asked.

“Let’s go inside,” Livingston replied.

Following him into the armory, I noticed an older black man sitting in a chair against the wall. What struck me about him was the crease in the jeans he wore, like they’d just been pressed. He had a hat pulled down over his eyes and his arms crossed over his chest, like he was asleep. A tooth pick was hanging limply from his lips.

“Who’s that?” I asked Livingston.

“You’ll meet him later; we’ve got bigger issues at the moment.”

In the conference room it felt stuffy; the lighting was dim as well, giving an overall depressing feeling to the place. As we sat down, the lights in the room finally flickered to life.

Sheffield looked up, “About damn time.”

“Alright, we’re here; what’s up?” Sarge asked.

“Where’s your crew?” Livingston asked.

“They were up all night, so we left them behind,” Sarge replied.

Sheffield raised his eyebrows, “Trouble?”

“Nothing we can’t handle.”

Sheffield looked at Livingston, “You want to lead off?”

Livingston opened a folder in front of him. “First the bad news; those buses of DHS prisoners never made it to Frostproof.”

“What?” I asked.

“We received a radio call from Frostproof, wondering if we had any information about that. We sent out a heavy patrol from our end; and they sent one from theirs. In an effort to prevent the convoy from having to drive through heavily populated areas, they were taking a longer route, using highway 33 out of Groveland.

“We found the buses on Fussell Road just north of Polk City. The buses were shot to shit and burned. One of the gun trucks was still on scene. We were able to account for eleven troops KIA on scene with six MIA.” Livingston closed the folder, “this was a very well coordinated complex ambush.”

Sarge sat listening, rolling a pencil on the table, “Do we have any idea who pulled it off?”

“We found several fighting positions with mountains of brass, and wire for command-detonated devices. It had to be other DHS assets.”

“Were there any DHS casualties?”

“There were several corpses on the buses, but they were burned so badly we couldn’t tell much about them.”

Sarge rolled the pencil across the table, “So these assholes are on the loose again.”

“It looks that way,” Sheffield added.

“You think they’re headed back here?” Danny asked.

Sarge looked across the table, “I can guarantee they are; those assholes are wanting some payback.”

“We don’t know where they are or what they’re up to. We’ve discussed this with Frostproof; and we think that it would be unlikely that they would try to return here. We believe they are linking up with additional DHS units,” Sheffield said.